.jpg)
Promenade
IV
IV
When the first whippings were over Roddy had gone upstairs through the warm brown shadows to ask how Tiffany did. For himself he was very sore, and uncertain if it had been worth while. But the answering little voice, though weary, was surprisingly happy. A strange mounting sense of escape into freer air was round Tiffany kneeling at the keyhole on the other side of the locked door in the dark attic.
“But we've done it, Roddy. Don't you see? We've got the splendidness of knowing we've done something worth printing. He can't take that away ever. We—” she struggled for the right words, “we're people now, Roddy dear. We're us.”
“He says we're never to do it again,” murmured Roddy, unable to rise to that height.
“He can't stop us,” cried Tiffany, shocked when the words were out but instinctively knowing that she and page 166 Roddy had arrived at something that must be held on to. “I mean … he can stop the printing, but he can't stop us making poetry in our minds. He can't, Roddy … and I'm making one now.”
Tiffany being a pioneer to this extent was rather terrifying but comforting. Roddy knew just how she looked behind the locked door, with her eyes lit like candles and her russet hair standing out and her soft chin up, and he couldn't be beaten by her.
“Then I will too. But he'll try to stop us, Tiffy.” Incalculable persons, fathers; begetting you and then disliking what you did for ever after. Roddy, so fresh from an example of Peregrine disliking him, wondered why parents had children. “He's not starving you, Tiffy?”
“Only bread-and-water for indecency. But Aunt Darien brought a custard. If you could throw me up some peaches through the window….”
Roddy threw them up and went to spread lesson-books on his bed, winking away a few tears lest Brian, perched on the iron end of it, should see. Brian had such ways of making a fellow feel a fool, and his talk was always far more grown-up than Roddy's.
“Lord, what a fantique women make over catching a man,” said Brian, swinging back and forth like a little black monkey. “Madam Darien is proud as Punch over that stale little fish of hers.”
“Ladies don't catch men,” said Roddy, very certain that mamma had never tried to catch papa.
“That's all you know! Wait a few years, my boy, and they'll all be after you, as they're after Uncle Jermyn— he's too fly for the lot of 'em. Not that I ain't fond of the dear creatures,” declared Brian, remembering good fun with Uncle Lovel's girls, who squeaked so when you squeezed 'em. But the only girl Roddy liked was that Eriti Fleete. A nigger, thought Brian, who had already absorbed Auckland's notion of Maoris.
Roddy went on silently with his lessons. Never, he page 167 thought, had he felt so mixed up. He was still disorganized, going next day to float in the harbour between blue sky and blue milk-warm water, with a few white clouds like small ships sailing high. How wonderful it would be to float there for ever. To know for ever Beauty towering about him like celestial castles; to hear for ever wild birds making fleet sweet music across the water; to see for ever flying violet lights on old shaggy Rangitoto, feel for ever silver ripples running along his flanks until he lay in a bath of silken silver. To unripe, romantically-developing Roddy, Beauty was still a continual summer in the heart, although papa made ugliness everywhere.
“Curse Lovels,” said Roddy suddenly; then swam out and flung on his clothes in a hurry, running along the cliffs towards Orakei pa. As with Tiffany, the publishing of that poem had done something to him, and if he was not yet ready for fight at least he was rebellious. Always, declared Major Henry, something faintly wild in that brown gaze of Roddy's. Eyes of a Galahad, a Villon … who could tell? Life—and Peregrine—would discover that for him.
On the low cliff above Orakei pa a crowd of brown youngsters were at the moari—that monstrous Giant Stride whereon Maori warriors practise swinging themselves over ramparts into an enemy pa. But there were only children to-day on the moari; going round in huge leaps on the long flax-ropes; dropping over the cliff into the warm sea. All natives dive feet-first and all whites head-first because, said Uncle Jermyn, civilization allows nothing to be done in the natural way.
A bunch of ponies tied to flax-bushes told that all the Fleetes were here. Roddy stood watching the young naked bodies fly out against blue sky. There was Hemi, his muscles rippling, the cage of his ribs showing. Hemi was fast shooting up into a big man; but little Peto still kept his round child-belly, and Hori was thick-shouldered and black and hairy like an ape. There was chubby Rona, page 168 sleek as a seal. And there Eriti with her slim tawny limbs and her big soft tawny eyes, like a Syrian maid out of the Bible. Swift small-breasted Eriti, a yellow clout about her middle, the narrow hips and shoulders of her flowing like a song, like a sweet music. Roddy flung off his clothes, caught at a flying rope and followed her.
Eriti looked back, her long black hair streaming like a banner, and Roddy was gaining on her with great strides. Round and round they went, leaving the ground like birds, touching at longer intervals, and now her black hair blew in Roddy's face. Wonder filled him; tenderness, and a strange new desire. For the first time, he wanted to put his arms about this flying miracle and hold it close. Perhaps down in the water she would let him….
Now she was gone, dropping in a straight clear line through the gentle blueness. Now he was going, with the wind in his hair blowing it up as though he were going up to heaven, not down. Now the warm gay water had him, and there was she, smiling….
“Eriti …”