If Mount Egmont had suddenly erupted he couldn’t have been more shocked. “A ride? Where?”
“Not here. Let’s go out to the country, out of the city. I need to get out, Robert. I’ve been locked up inside myself for too long.”
“You are better.” He just stared back at her. “Dr. Hamilcar told me, but I had no idea.…”
“A prolonged period of mourning, he kept calling it. The dear man!” Her eyes fell. “I know—I know nothing I do can bring back Christopher. I realize that now. Just as I realize,” and she looked up at him, “that you couldn’t have prevented his death. I know you tried to keep him out of the militia. I needed someone, anyone to blame, and—well, I blamed the both of us.”
“Just a moment.” He hurried to his own carriage and instructed the driver to return home, then walked more slowly back to Holly’s, glanced up.
“Jack, take the south road out of the city.”
“Very well, sir.”
“You know where Brooks Farm is?”
“No sir, but I can find it.”
“Good. Let’s go, then.”
They rode for several hours. By the time they reached their destination Holly was chatting animatedly. She still wasn’t the old Holly, the sly and vivacious Holly of before the wars, but she had talked more to him in the past hours than she had in the previous year.
He directed Jack to pull up atop a hill. When the carriage rolled to a stop Coffin climbed out and offered Holly his hand. She emerged gingerly, fragile as an old woman.
They stood staring down at the city and the matchless harbor.
“Beautiful,” she murmured, pressing close to him. “I’d forgotten how beautiful.”
Rolling hills reached down to the ocean. Behind them a vast flock of sheep spilled across one hillside like foam which had broken away from its wave to crash upon the land. Their rhythmic voices echoed off the still sky. They advanced slowly, individual white carpets whose mass odor stained the air.
“Are all of those ours, Robert?”
“All of them and more than you can see. This is just Brooks Farm. There are others. Bath, Regis—we own a lot of land, Holly, that you’ve never seen.”
“I know.”
“You’ll see it all now. I’ll make sure of it. We’ll take the time, travel across the whole country.”
“Not—right away, Robert.” Suddenly she sounded tired and he realized how much the unaccustomed excursion had exhausted her.
“No, we’ve plenty of time. You’ve had a bad time of it for a while, old girl. You don’t want to be doing too much too soon.”
She smiled weakly up at him. “I’ll take care, Robert. It’s going to be better now, you’ll see. I’ve been making myself sick, withdrawing from the world. It’s time I rejoined it.” She reached up to gently caress his cheek. “I know it’s been hard on you. I know I’ve been unfair, but I couldn’t control what happened to me. Things will be different from now on. I promise.” She looked back toward the sea.
They stood quietly awhile before he spoke again. “You know about the depression, Holly?” She nodded slightly. “Then you know how badly we’re hurting, how badly the whole country’s hurting right now.”
“Mr. Vogel will change that. He seemed like a very clever man.”
“He’ll have to be the cleverest man to set foot in England since William the Conqueror, or we’ll all be done for.”
“Is that his ship?” She pointed out to sea where a large vessel was making its way out of the harbor.
“Maybe. Hard to tell from up here.”
What was England like these days, he wondered? He saw pictures in magazines but they could only hint, suggest. Though curious he found he had no desire to go and see for himself. Come what may this was his home. This was where he would live out the rest of his life. He no longer thought of himself as an Englishman. He was a New Zealander—whatever that was.
Holly was making conversation. “All that mutton. What a shame we can’t do something more with the meat.”
“The sheep are here to produce wool, Holly. You know that. We can raise sheep better and cheaper than anyone else in the world. But you’re right: we can’t do anything with the meat. I don’t think salt mutton will ever be very popular.”
“What a shame.”
They stood there for a long time, Holly watching the ship, Coffin staring far out to sea. They did not return home until well after sundown.
6
“He’s back! Vogel’s back!”
Coffin looked up from his desk as Elias Goldman burst into the office. Before Goldman shut the door behind him Coffin was able to hear the sounds of men busy at their own work. As the easy-to-mine placer gold vanished from Otago, clerks and accountants began drifting back to their old jobs. Coffin was only too glad to oblige the best of them. Most had to emigrate or take lesser-paying work. In the midst of depression, only a few could be rehired.
All morning he’d been agonizing over whether to sell Regis Farm. He didn’t want to. Selling land was like selling blood. But the offer was a good one, surprisingly fair considering the low price of produce. It had been made through an intermediary on behalf of Rose Hull. If she’d thought to fool him by employing such a childish ruse she’d failed miserably.
Not that it mattered. He needed the money, needed it badly. The thought of selling hundreds of acres of prime land to Hull House was mortifying.
He was grateful to Elias for breaking his train of thought.
“Where is he?” Coffin rose and strode out from behind the desk. “What has he told you? How did he do?”
Goldman glanced back toward the hall. “I haven’t seen him myself. A runner came with the news. I was told he’ll come here first, since you were his first supporter.”
“No, not I.” Coffin put an arm around Goldman’s shoulder, a gesture so shocking that the older man was taken aback. “You were his first supporter, Elias. He’s coming to tell you.”
“What matters, sir, is that he’s back.”
“Yes, hut with what news?”
“It must be at least partly good, sir, or we both know he wouldn’t have returned,” Goldman said carefully.
“Well, come on then! We’ll go and meet him.” Coffin led the way down the stairs. Heads turned and people stopped what they were doing to watch. Such uncharacteristic activity on the part of their lord and master was worth a stare.
Vogel was already there, standing in the hallway like a spectacled elf while the employees of Coffin House struggled unsuccessfully to ignore him. Enough knew who he was and they passed on the information to their colleagues. His gaze rose and his expression grew beatific as he espied the two men descending the stairway.
“Coffin! And Elias.”
In an instant all three were shaking hands. Then the smiles were replaced by looks of concern. Goldman tried to sound encouraging.
“You’re looking well, Julius. London must have agreed with you.”
“Ah, well.” Vogel sounded indifferent. “It’s all right. The theater, the concerts, the parades, all very edifying, you know. But it’s not New Zealand.”
“Never mind your social life,” Coffin said hastily. “What about our loan? Did you have any luck?”
Vogel studied his fingernails. “A little. They were very skeptical, very. It was as difficult as we thought it might be, Elias. The Bank of England is not the Bank of New Zealand.”
“How did they receive you?” Goldman asked him.
“With barely veiled contempt. Despite that I managed to convince them to extend some small credits to the colony.” When he looked up there was a sly gleam in his eye. “I convinced them that our situation here was desperate, that we stood on the very precipice of disaster.”
Coffin frowned. “Seems an odd way to convince a banker to invest more money.”
Vogel shook his head, smiling. “You never will understand modern economic theory, will you?”
That was Julius Vogel’s manner. He was as tactful as a shark and just as e
fficient. Coffin quelled the instinctive surge of anger that welled up inside him. Besides, Vogel was probably right.
“Perhaps not. Possibly you could explain this particular aspect of it in terms simple enough so that even I can understand it.”
“Certainly. You see,” he said excitedly, “once I had them convinced that we not only were in the midst of a severe depression but were on the verge of complete collapse, it was a simple matter to persuade them that unless they agreed to extend additional credit, every one of their outstanding loans would default. They would thus lose not only the interest they were due but the principal as well. My intention was to frighten them and I am happy to say I succeeded beyond my wildest hopes.
“In that state of mind it was easy to convince them that if we just had some real help our business here would recover and they would get all of their money back. I assured them that our troubles here were more a matter of insufficient credit leading to a lack of confidence than to any inherent faults of the colony itself. Furthermore, if we could just hang on until the price of wool and corn rebounds, trade would expand exponentially.”
“That’s all well and good.” Coffin was fighting his impatience. “But did you get any credit?”
“As I’ve said, a little.” Vogel removed a satchel from beneath his left arm and began fumbling through it until he found the paper he was looking for. It was attached to forty others, all covered with fine print. He flipped through them rapidly until settling on one sheet near the middle. Then he refolded the rest and passed them to Coffin.
Robert Coffin was a good reader, but not good enough to plow rapidly through the mass of legalese Vogel had handed him. In disgust he handed it to Goldman, whose experienced eyes scanned the small print far more rapidly.
“Well, well, what does it say?” Coffin prompted him anxiously.
Goldman adjusted his glasses, read aloud. “Agree to extend to the Colony of New Zealand new credit in the amount of.…” He swallowed, went on. “Credit in the amount of—ten million pounds?”
Everyone within earshot on the ground floor looked up sharply from their work.
“Let me see that!” Coffin ripped the papers from Goldman’s fingers, read the impossible last line for himself. When he looked up at Vogel, that worthy was leaning on his cane and smiling diffidently.
“It was the best I could do on short notice.” Reaching out, he took the sheaf of papers from Coffin’s limp fingers and slipped them back into his satchel. “Once we’ve spent that I intend to go back and ask for another ten million.”
Somewhere someone dropped a glass. The sound of its shattering was enough to break the spell. Everyone rushed forward, all talking at once, to crowd around the prodigal son. Vogel tried to shake everyone’s hand, accepting their excited accolades with as much modesty as was in him. There was little of that, but somehow no one seemed to mind.
It was astonishing how fast business recovered. In his wildest dreams Coffin couldn’t have predicted it, nor could McQuade, Wallingford or any of the others. Even Rushton made a special visit to commend Vogel.
It was as though the economy had simply halted itself in mid-slide, turned about like a cart in the middle of a street, and resumed marching in the opposite direction. Suddenly people who had been desperate to sell their holdings at a tenth of their real worth announced intentions to expand. The new credit gave confidence not only to the old-timers but to potential investors in Australia and elsewhere. Additional credit was forthcoming without anyone having to request it. There seemed a huge number of people who had wanted to invest in the colony all along, but who had been waiting for a sign. The new money was all it took to set off a frenzy of expansion and buying.
Now the problem was not insufficient credit but too much of it. Business boomed before settling down to a period of steady growth. The large landholders and merchants like Coffin and his friends were delighted with these new developments and planned their futures accordingly. The boom didn’t have the spice the discovery of gold had carried with it, but neither did it contain the seeds of sudden collapse or desperate risk.
Those who had hung on through near bankruptcy had their determination vindicated. For the first time in years people could make plans with a feeling of security. As if to emphasize the success of Vogel’s policies the price of wool began its long hoped for rise. New settlement expanded the market for every kind of product and produce.
Once again Coffin could concentrate his energies on the takeover of Hull House. Regis Farm and the rest of his enterprises were saved. For its part, Hull House continued to expand under Rose Hull’s administration, growing and thriving beyond anyone’s expectations. It had to be admitted she’d done well in spite of every obstacle both commercial and social that had been placed in her path.
Coffin’s reaction was unexpectedly ambivalent. On the one hand he’d not forgotten the promise he’d made to her to consume her company and merge it with his own burgeoning empire, already the largest in the country. What he hadn’t thought to feel and what he was careful not to express to anyone else was his admiration for what she’d managed to accomplish under circumstances adverse enough to have broken most other human beings.
While he didn’t speak of it, he was not the only one to take note of it. Goldman spoke of Hull House on more than one occasion.
“Perhaps we have been going about this business in the wrong fashion.”
“What business, Elias?” They were walking down Auckland’s main boulevard side by side, nodding occasionally to those they knew.
“The business of how we treat our women.”
“What’s wrong with how we treat our women?”
Goldman must have noted the disapproving tone in his employer’s voice but pressed his point regardless. “Let us take Rose Hull by way of example. It must be admitted she has done as well as any man in the running of Hull House.”
“I don’t have to admit to any such thing. She’s had the sense to hire good people, that’s all. Good men.”
“That in itself requires a certain knowledge and expertise.” Goldman was unusually persistent. “The world is changing around us, sir. Largely for the better, I should say.”
“I won’t disagree with that, Elias. What’s your point?” They turned a corner.
“There’s been talk of trying new things, new ideas. This is after all a new land still. There’s been talk of—well, of allowing women to have the vote.”
Coffin stopped abruptly in the middle of the street. “Vote? You’re joshing me, Elias.”
Goldman stared back at him through his thick glasses. “No sir. Not a bit of it. There has been talk of exactly that, in certain circles.”
“People who spend too much time in circles get dizzy.” Coffin resumed his stride. “The day women vote’ll be the day you grow hair again.”
Goldman laughed. Beneath his top hat was a streak of bare skin smooth as polished marble framed by a fringe of rapidly graying hair. “I think there’s more to this than talk, sir. You’d best prepare yourself. It may happen in spite of what any of us believe.”
“You and your dreams, Elias. You’ll do better to confine your imagination to your bookkeeping.”
“Yes, sir. I try to, sir.”
Conversation shifted to more prosaic subjects. Coffin had no trouble putting Goldman’s absurd ideas out of his head. Lately Elias had exhibited a disturbing tendency to engage in all sorts of wild speculation. Women voting! Coffin shook his head in disbelief. Why, the next thing you knew Elias would be proposing the vote for the Maori.
He could afford to be tolerant of such nonsense. Business was excellent. The colony was going to survive and prosper. Holly continued her slow but steady improvement. She still suffered from occasional relapses which would find her sitting in that damnable chair staring out the parlor window, but they were becoming far less frequent. Much of the time she was all but her old self, when her lively determination would again come to the fore to delight all who happened to be ne
ar her.
Next week he was due to make his monthly inspection of the inland estates. That would mean a week to ten days at the country house. A week to ten days with Merita, who never seemed to age.
It was no wonder as he and Elias entered the city’s finest restaurant that he was content.
7
“Andrew! Get out of there, you little aputo.” At the sound of his mother’s voice the boy looked up from where he was digging in the garden. “What are you doing in there, anyway?”
“Just chasin’ lizards.”
“Well you do it somewhere besides in my vegetables.”
She spoke it softly, shaking her head. She loved him too much to be mad at him for long and besides, that wasn’t the Maori way. “Go and get yourself cleaned up.”
“All right, mother.” He smiled back at her, ran and easily cleared the low fence that protected the garden from marauding chickens.
He was going to be tall, she mused. All legs now, but when he filled out he was going to be an impressive man. Bigger even than his father.
She was wiping her hands on her apron as she turned to go back inside when a noise made her pause. Someone was coming up the lakefront road. As the fame of the silica formations known as the Pink and White Terraces spread beyond Tarawera, the little town was becoming positively crowded.
It was a fine coach, though not a tourist one. She moved to close the front door to keep the dust of its passing outside the house. Then she noticed that it was slowing. A wealthy pakeha tourist sight-seeing alone, or perhaps just someone in quest of directions.
Sure enough, it halted across from the gate. A tall gentleman clad in top hat and fine suit emerged. Only when he’d opened the gate and raised his head was she able to recognize him. As she gaped in amazement he came toward her with a now familiar confident stride.
“Flynn? Flynn!” She took a step toward him before catching herself. Isolated the great house might be, but it was still best to maintain a sense of decorum when outside. You never knew who might come riding or walking up the road at any moment. Maybe even Father Spencer. Better if no one, not even the driver of the coach, witnessed the mistress of the house and her handsome visitor embracing passionately. She looked around but there was no sign of Andrew. Probably he was out back washing off garden dirt as he’d been instructed to do.
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