Véronique was a romantic child, yet Frederick Ackroyd, newly arrived from England, was enough of an anachronism in this country to make even an experienced matron stand and stare. There were men of wealth in Dunedin, but their wealth had been won by grueling hard work, and they bore the marks of it in a ruggedness of demeanor that did not allow of easy smiles and bows. Not so Frederick, who had never hitherto done a hand’s turn in his life. Yet his grace, though exquisite, was like that of a tiger lily, completely masculine. Véronique, bred to hardness, would not have been attracted by an effeminate man. The lover of her dreams had been a tiger-lily man, and Frederick exactly filled the bill. He was tall and dark, with a skin tanned brown by the long sea voyage from England. His face, with its oddly irregular features, was not perhaps strictly beautiful, but the challenging brilliance of his ardent dark eyes and flashing smile made it immensely attractive. His vitality was to most older people as shattering as a couple of days’ hard work with no night’s rest in between, but to those of his own generation, or to those like Marianne whose vitality nearly matched his own, as exciting as a gale of wind. Guardsman that he was, with a back as straight as a ramrod and strong hands hardened by much holding of the bridle, he yet wore the indolent clothes of the period, the velvet sack coat with a flower in the buttonhole, the soft turned-down collar and loosely knotted tie, with an easy naturalness that made them look exactly right on him. Until that afternoon Véronique had not met his like before, and Marianne had only seen it in the distance, so that by the time the concert was over and he had escorted them back to their lodgings, he had had them both completely captivated. . . . How, exactly, he had managed to introduce himself to them, they could not afterward remember, but they had assured William it had all been done in the most gentlemanly manner, without a trace of presumption. . . . And before they had had time to turn round, he had found them new lodgings and introduced them to the smartest society in Dunedin, and was attending them to all the parties, and Marianne was completely well again and Véronique was living in a fairyland of bliss.
Only William was unhappy. Frederick Ackroyd had not come out to New Zealand merely to visit his maternal uncle, old Tom Anderson the shipping magnate; he had come to stay. His uncle had given him work, and he was already slaving like a nigger—so he assured William, though William could see no signs of overwork—in the office of the Union Steamship Company. Why? Why should a young guardsman who—so one gathered from the little remarks that he let fall now and then with the most charming nonchalance—had had the London of the seventies entirely at his feet, throw the whole thing up and come out to the other side of the world to be a quill driver in his uncle’s office? Why? William was haunted by the remembrance that the colonies are a convenient dumping ground for unsatisfactory younger sons, but there seemed no one whom he could ask for precise information. Old Tom Anderson was a shrewd, hard-headed, genial old party who had also emigrated as a young man and had made his pile speculating in gold, but in spite of his geniality, and his obvious liking for William, it was difficult to question him about his nephew. For one thing, William knew that Tom Anderson was not incommoded by a conscience and spoke the truth only when he found it to his convenience to do so. And then there was the old unwritten law of pioneer life—never ask questions about a man’s past life—and there was the humbling memory that he himself in his youth had not been able to continue living in his native land. So he just blundered on from day to day, trying to think the best of Frederick, trying not to notice, on those rare occasions when his charming, irregular face was not irradiated by laughter, the hardness of Frederick’s jaw, the fullness of his lips, the ruthless ardor of his eyes when they rested on Véronique; above all, trying not to notice the extraordinary cleverness of his handling of Véronique and her mother.
In only one thing was Frederick’s judgment at fault; he regarded William as quite negligible. Love such as William’s for his daughter had not hitherto fallen within Frederick’s experience; he was unaware how, as regards the beloved, it can sharpen the perceptions of even those who are not in most things acute observers, and when the time comes for action can give to a naturally yielding nature an obstinacy as adamant as iron.
But if Frederick was not yet up against that hidden vein of strength in William, Marianne was. When at the end of the first month of their holiday his suggestion that they should all return home now had been vigorously resisted by his wife and daughter, he had yielded and agreed to stay on for two more months; but nothing would induce him to yield to the suggestion of Mr. Anderson that he should sell his farm and throw in his lot with the Union Steamship Company. Marianne, sensing at once the old man’s great liking for her husband, had put in an immense amount of skillful underground labor to induce him to make a very favorable offer to William. . . . Only to have William refuse it point-blank. . . . He liked being a sheep farmer, he told Mr. Anderson, and a sheep farmer he would remain, let the price of wool fall as it might.
His obstinacy was enough to drive one distracted, Marianne lamented to Véronique. Had he no consideration at all for his poor wife, enjoying a little ease and comfort for the first time since she had married him? She was so happy here, she was so well, she had made such friends with Mrs. Anderson, there was such a beautiful house for sale in the very next street to the Andersons, and Papa was most unfeeling and cruel to propose dragging her back again to the hardships of that detestable mountain valley. And Véronique, to whom in her new mood of hectic excitement her old home had become almost a forgotten dream of childhood, agreed with her mother. She had had an idea that they had originally settled in the Country of the Green Pastures to please Mamma, but evidently she had been mistaken, for according to Mamma it had been to please Papa, in which case Papa certainly ought to let Mamma, this time, choose where they should live.
Véronique, as she sat in the window seat looking across the street, was wishing, now, that she and Frederick could become properly engaged. Unknown to their relatives they had long ago, just a week after their first meeting, declared their undying and unalterable devotion to each other, but Frederick did not want their love to become known just yet. His affairs in England were not definitely wound up, he said, and it was better that they should be before he announced his engagement. Véronique acquiesced without question, though she was aware that Frederick was departing from the usual procedure in speaking to her before he had spoken to her Papa. Such was her faith in him that she was sure his reasons were all they should be. . . . But she did hate keeping their engagement secret. . . . It was the first time in her life that she had kept anything from her father.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed out the hour, and she jumped up. There was a ball at the Andersons’ this evening and they were all going, and Frederick was to fetch them. It was time she got dressed. Mamma was already dressing, had been for the last half hour, but then Mamma took so long to dress. Where Papa was she did not know.
In her room, instead of beginning at once to dress, she lay down for a little on her bed. She had not meant to do so, but her bed looked so cool and inviting, and her head was aching abominably. This headache was always with her nowadays, and it was a most dreadful nuisance. It was the serpent in her paradise, forcing her to the perpetual playing of a part. Pain divided one into two selves, she had discovered, a querulous, complaining person who only wanted to go to bed and stay there and not to be made to feel or do anything at all ever again, and another person who was always trying to be extravagantly bright and gay so that no one should notice the existence of the querulous person, and neither of these people seemed to be one’s real self. . . . And to feel so, like a lost soul, was simply horrid. . . . Now she came to think of it, she had not felt like her real self for a very long time, not, surely, since she had met Frederick. And she wanted to be her real self for Frederick’s sake. She did not want to give her wonderful lover either the querulous, headachy Véronique, nor the excited person whose laugh was too high and whose tal
k got so out of hand that there were times when the only thing she knew about what she was saying was that she oughtn’t to have said it. She wanted to give him the real Véronique who as one whole and happy person had moved so serenely through the peaceful days that now seemed to her as distant as a dream. . . . To her astonishment she found that she was crying.
She got up at once, poured cold water into her basin, and angrily bathed away the tears. It was absurd to cry when she was so gloriously happy! The douche of cold water stopped the crying fit, and did her head good, too; and as she dressed, she found herself thinking quite consecutively and clearly, almost as though the confusion of being two people had vanished and she was made one again, about being in love.
It was not a bit like she had expected it to be. She had expected that the coming together of two people destined to be one person would be a tranquilizing, satisfying, energizing thing. As a country girl she had knowledge of many matings. She had heard that exquisite, cool, tranquil note that creeps into the song of a bird when the beloved is won, had seen the union of sun and rain proclaim itself in the utterly satisfying circle of the rainbow, and new, strong energy spring from the union of shower and sod, flint and tinder, mill wheel and water. But what she was experiencing now wasn’t like that at all. There was nothing tranquil or cool about it—it was hot and scorching. Nor was it satisfying. Frederick’s kisses, tender yet given with hot lips, left her not satisfied but hungry for whatever it was that was pent up behind what Marianne called the gentlemanly rectitude of his behavior like flood water behind a dam; she was hungry for it, and yet she was instinctively afraid of it. And strength? She was worn out.
She pulled herself up sharply. Whatever was she thinking? To think this way was treason to her love. If this sudden momentary fusion of her two selves into one person again was making a traitor of her, then it would be better not to be whole. And if being in love was not what she had expected it to be, it was nevertheless glorious. In spite of the headache she was madly happy. When she walked along the street with Frederick, the wind sounded like trumpets and the clouds were banners flying in the air. If she drank tea in his presence, it turned to champagne, and the bread and butter to peaches and caviar. And as for waltzing with Frederick—there were no words at all that could describe what that was. It was the nearest thing to heaven that she had ever known.
At thought of the ball tonight she suddenly became like a mad thing for excitement. Oh, the ecstasy of the waltz! Although before she had come to Dunedin she had danced only the country dances that her mother had taught her, she had picked it up very quickly under Frederick’s expert tuition. Tonight, once again, they would circle together to the music of Strauss and Waldteufel, and she would rise to the topmost heights of ecstasy. . . . If her headache let her.
Profoundly exasperated, she paused in the feverish brushing of her curls to fish out from her drawer a little bottle of tablets that she had secretly bought from the chemist. She swallowed two, with one eye on the door lest Mamma should come in (for Mamma disapproved of drug-taking in the very mildest form and had expressly forbidden it), and then returned again to her toilette.
When she had finished it, she looked at herself for a long time in the glass and was satisfied. Her frock was a new one, made for her by Mrs. Anderson’s own dressmaker, and it was the very latest mode. It was white satin, fitting like a sheath over her breasts and into the curve of her waist, then breaking over the hips into a cascade of frills and flounces. A huge bow was perched upon the bustle at the back, and the neck was very low indeed. In her hair and in the front of her dress she fastened some crimson hothouse gardenias that Frederick had sent her. Altogether her toilette was exceedingly smart, and she was quite sure that Papa would not approve of it. This thought caused her only the tiniest pang. She left her room with head held high and proudly smiling mouth, and swept into the parlor like a queen.
William, slumped rather moodily in the armchair reading the paper with inattention, looked up and from force of habit gave her the old smile of comradeship that had always been hers only. Then his smile died out, for her proud mouth, though it went through the motions of smiling at him, could no longer achieve quite the old answering sweetness. . . . She no longer considered him her dearest on earth . . .
Yet never had he loved her so deeply as he did now, and he felt no bitterness that he was no longer first with her; only grief and pain that she seemed to be passing away from him into unworthy keeping. Looking at her, he thought for the hundredth time that he would pay any price demanded of him to secure her happiness. . . . Except separation from her. . . . That half-unconscious reservation was still present in his soul.
Her smile faded abruptly. “Papa!” she cried in exasperation. “You’re not dressed! And Frederick may be here at any moment. You’ll keep us all waiting. Hurry!”
Her usually gentle voice had an edge of sharp, nervous exasperation that he had never heard before. Though there was plenty of time, he got up quickly, almost as nervous as she was, and sent an ornate china vase full of peacocks’ feathers, that was balanced precariously upon a small unnecessary bracket next to his chair, crashing to the ground.
“Papa!” The shock and crash broke the tension of her strained nerves altogether, and she stamped her foot and began to sob.
“Allow me,” said Frederick’s cool voice.
He bent with William to retrieve the scattered pieces while she stood in the window struggling with her anger and her tears. Her father, red-faced, stout, breathing heavily, his collar awry and the perspiration of his embarrassment standing out on his forehead, looked to her newly critical eyes almost vulgar beside the immaculate Frederick, cool, shining and polished in his evening clothes. How could Papa shame her like this before Frederick!
“Don’t you trouble, sir. I’ll do it.”
The words were suavely polite, but William felt himself dismissed, and went humbly away to the large bedroom where Marianne had just hooked her staylaces to the bedpost. She looked round to rebuke him sharply, for he had forgotten to knock at the door, and she did not like to be intruded upon at these intimate moments without due warning, but something in his aspect checked her. He was looking like a sad old lion, looking, in fact, exactly as his father had done in moments of depression. She untethered herself, flung her wrapper round her, came to him and put her arms round his neck, feeling as she kissed him that her love was enfolding not one man but two, those two who had always been so good to her. “We have each other, William,” she consoled him. “Do you remember the day when you first came to the Island and we sat side by side on the packing case? Even then I loved you. There was no Véronique then. Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.”
He kissed her tenderly, but the vision that her words had called up was that of rosy, plump little Marguerite sitting on the stool at his father’s knee and smiling at him over the top of a huge slice of bread and treacle. Her smile was so vivid and so real that she might have been with him in the room, a living presence who had flown across time and space to comfort him. To Marianne’s intense delight his face shone as she had never yet seen it shining at words of hers. She glowed with triumph. With Véronique married he would be utterly hers.
2
Frederick, meanwhile, was comforting his love. “It is not your father who is late but I who am early, sweetheart,” he consoled her. “I am always early when I am to take you anywhere. It’s an intolerable affliction to be away from you. You look lovelier than ever, Véronique. It suits you to be a little angry.”
He look her in his arms gently, as he always did, but suddenly his calculated restraint snapped, and he pulled her so close to him that she could scarcely breathe. It came so suddenly that she was startled and unconsciously lifted her face to give him a butterfly kiss, as she did when William held her tighter than she liked. But Frederick was not accustomed to the delicacy of Arcadian love
and misunderstood her movement, and the ardor of his fiery kisses, the almost brutal grip of his arms, now not only startled but frightened her. She struggled to get free, and this time he knew that she was struggling, but his passion was roused and he could not let her go. And with a quick flash of understanding she recognized his refusal for what it was, the action of a selfish lover who puts his own pleasure before that of his beloved. Was it possible that marriage with Frederick, the prize toward which she had been running with such eagerness all these last weeks, would, when she got there, turn out to be a burden too heavy for her strength to lift?
Frederick abruptly released her. He had just been going to tell her something, or had already begun to tell her, she was not sure which, when her parents interrupted them. “Later,” he had whispered when he heard their bedroom door open. “I’ll tell you later. I’ve got the ring. And tomorrow, if you like, we’ll tell ’em all.”
Driving through the streets in the Andersons’ luxurious carriage, with Frederick his usual decorous self again and chatting quietly and amiably to Marianne and William about politics and the weather, walking across the strip of red carpet that stretched across the pavement to the imposing front door, taking off her shawl in company with other laughing girls and their proud mammas, Véronique managed to push the memory of that moment of recoil right away to the back of her mind. Frederick hadn’t really been rough with her, she told herself, she had just thought he was because she was tired and had a headache. She loved him and wanted to be his wife. And she loved this gay town life, and wearing smart clothes, and knowing she was beautiful, and being flattered and admired. That girl who had lived in a mountain valley, and got excited over sunrises and hoggets and the price of wool, had been as absurd as the things she had been interested in, just a ridiculous country bumpkin like her father’s shepherds, Murray and James and Mack and—John.