The Fever of Life

"Fashion for the nonce surrenders Giddy Mayfair's faded splendours, And with all her sons and daughters Hastens to health-giving waters; Rests when curfew bells are ringing, Rises when the lark is singing, Plays lawn tennis, flirts and idles, Laying snares for future bridals; Thus forgetting pleasures evil, In return to life primeval."

It was Toby Clendon who named it "Pinchler's Dockyard "--Toby Clendon, young, handsome, and a trifle scampish, who wrote witty essays for The Satirist, slashing criticisms for The Bookworm, and dainty society verses for any journal which chose to pay for such poetical effusions. A very cruel remark to make about Mrs. Pinchler's respectable private hotel at Marsh-on-the-Sea; but then the truth is always cruel, and Mr. Clendon proved the truth of his statement in this wise--

"A dockyard is a place where broken-down ships are repaired. Man, by poetical license, is a ship on the ocean of life. Some broken-down human ships under stress of circumstance put in to Pinchler's private hotel for repair in the matter of bodily ailments. Pinchler's harbours these broken-down human ships, therefore Pinchler's is a human dockyard. Strike out the word human as redundant, and there you are, Pinchler's Dockyard."

A whimsical deduction, doubtless, yet by no means void of a certain amount of truthful humour, as the guests at Pinchler's private hotel were for the most part deficient as regards physical completeness. If the lungs were healthy the liver was out of order. Granted that the head was "all there," the legs were not, unless one leg counted as two. Splendid physique, but something wrong with the internal organs. Yes, certainly a good many human ships were undergoing repair under the calculating eye of Mrs. Pinchler; and as her establishment was not healthy enough for a hotel nor sickly enough for an hospital, Toby Clendon's intermediate term "dockyard" fitted it exactly; so Pinchler's Dockyard it was called throughout Marsh-on-the-Sea.

It was a square red-brick house, built on a slight eminence, and facing the salt sea breeze of the Channel. On the one side a pleasant garden, on the other smooth green tennis lawns, and in front a mixture of turf, of flower-beds, and of gravel, sloping down to the road which divided it from the stony sea beach. A short distance away to the right was Marsh-on-the-Sea, with its rows of gleaming white houses set on the heights, while below was the red-roofed quaint old town, built long before its rival above became famous as a watering-place. To the left, undulating hills, clumps of trees, tall white cliffs, and here and there pleasant country houses, showing themselves above the green crests of their encircling woods. Add to this charming prospect a brilliant blue sea, a soft wind filled with the salt smell of the waters, and a sun tempered by intervening clouds, and it will be easily seen that Marsh-on-the-Sea was a pleasantly situated place, and Pinchler's Dockyard was one of the pleasantest houses in it.

"And why," said Mr. Clendon, continuing an argument, "and why English people want to go to the Riviera for beauty, when they have all this side of the Channel to choose from is more than I can make out."

It was just after luncheon, and the wrecks at present being repaired in the dockyard were sunning themselves on the tennis lawn. Some were reading novels, others were discussing their ailments, a few ladies were working at some feminine embroidery, a few gentlemen were smoking their after-dinner pipe, cigar, cigarette, as the case might be, and all were enjoying themselves thoroughly in their different ways.

Toby himself, arrayed in spotless white flannels, with a blue-ribboned straw hat was lying ungracefully on the grass, smoking a cigarette, and talking in an affectedly cynical vein to three ladies. There was Mrs. Valpy, fat, ponderous and plethoric; Miss Thomasina Valpy, her daughter, familiarly called Tommy, a charmingly pretty girl, small, coquettish and very fascinating in manner. As a rule, men of susceptible hearts fell in love with Tommy; but when they heard Mrs. Valpy say that she was like Thomasina when young, generally retreated in dismay, having a prophetic vision that this fragile, biscuit-china damsel would resemble her mother when old, and as Mrs. Valpy--well they never proposed, at all events.

There was a third lady present, Miss Kaituna Pethram, who was staying at Pinchler's with the Valpys, and without doubt she was very handsome; so handsome, indeed, that Tommy's brilliant beauty paled before her sombre loveliness. She was dark, unusually dark, with a pale, olive-coloured skin, coils of splendid dusky hair, luminous dark eyes, and clearly-cut features, which were not exactly European in their outline. Neither was her Christian name European, and this being taken in conjunction with her un-English look, led some people to think she had African blood in her veins. In this supposition, however, they were decidedly wrong, as there was no suggestion of the negro in her rich beauty. Indian? not delicate enough, neither as regards features nor figure. Spanish? no; none of the languor of the Creole; then no doubt Italian; but then she lacked the lithe grace and restless vivacity of the Latin race. In fact Miss Kaituna Pethram puzzled every one. They were unable to "fix her," as the Americans say, and consequently gave up the unguessable riddle of her birth in despair.

As a matter of fact, however, she was the descendant, in the third generation, of that magnificent New Zealand race, now rapidly dying out--the Maories, and the blending of the dusky Polynesian with the fair European had culminated in the production of this strange flower of two diverse stocks--neither wholly of the one nor of the other, but a unique blending of both. Her great grandparents had been full-blooded Maories, with uncivilised instincts and an inborn preference for a savage life. Their daughter, also a full-blooded Maori, being the daughter of a chief, had married a European settler, and the offspring of this mixed marriage was Kaituna's mother, a half-caste, inheriting the civilised culture of her father, and the savage instincts of her mother. Kaituna was born of this half-caste and an English father, therefore the civilised heredity prevailed; but she still retained the semblance, in a minor degree, of her primeval ancestry, and without doubt, though ameliorated by two generations of European progenitors on the male side, there lurked in her nature the ineradicable instincts of the savage.

Of course, self-complacent Europeans, pure-blooded in themselves, never argued out the matter in this wise, and were apt to look down on this inheritor of Maori ancestry as "a nigger," but were decidedly wrong in doing so, as the magnificent race that inhabits New Zealand is widely removed from the African black. At all events, whatever they might think, Kaituna Pethram was a uniquely beautiful girl, attractive to a very great degree, and inspiring more admiration than the undecided blondes and brunettes who moved in the same circle cared to acknowledge. Toby Clendon was not in love with her, as he preferred the saucy manner and delicate beauty of Miss Valpy, but Archie Maxwell, who was the best looking young man at Pinchler's, had quite lost his heart to this unique flower of womanhood, and the damsels of Pinchler's resented this greatly. Mr. Maxwell, however, was at present engaged in talking to some of them at a distance, and if his eyes did wander now and then to where Clendon was playing Shepherd Paris to goddesses three--Mrs. Valpy being Minerva in her own opinion--they did their best to enchain his attention and keep him to themselves. Kaituna herself did not mind, as she was not particularly taken with Mr. Maxwell, and was quite content to lie lazily back in her chair under the shelter of a large red sunshade and listen to Toby Clendon's desultory conversation.

It was a pleasant enough conversation in a frivolous fashion. Mr. Clendon made startling statements regarding the world and its inhabitants, Kaituna commented thereon. Tommy sparkled in an idle, girlish way, and Mrs. Valpy, with sage maxims, culled from the monotonous past of an uneventful life, supplied the busy element requisite in all cases. Three of the party were young, the fourth was gracefully old, so, juvenility predominating, the conversation rippled along pleasantly enough.

After the patriotic Toby had made his remark concerning the superiority of things English over all the rest of the world, Kaituna waved the banner of Maoriland, and laughed softly.

"Ah! wait till you see New Zealand."

"_Ultima Thule_," said Clendon classically. "Eh I why should I go there, Miss Pethram?"

"To see what nature can do in the way of beautiful landscape."

"I am a domestic being, Miss Pethram, and find the domestic scenery of England sufficiently beautiful to satisfy my artistic longings. New Zealand, I have been told, is an uncivilised country, full of horrid woods and wild beasts."

"There are no wild beasts at all," replied Kaituna indignantly, "and the bush is not horrid. As to it being uncivilised, that is the mistake you English make."

"Oh, the contempt in the term 'you English,'" interjected Toby, impudently.

"We have cities, railways, theatres, musical societies, shops, and everything else necessary to make life pleasant. That is civilisation, I suppose. We have also great plains, majestic mountains, splendid rivers, undulating pasture lands and what not. This is uncivilised--if you like to call it so. England is pretty--oh yes, very pretty, but tame like a garden. One gets tired of always living in a garden. A garden is nature's drawing-room. I don't say a word against England, for I like it very much, but at times I feel stifled by the narrowness of the place. England is very beautiful, yes; but New Zealand," concluded Miss Pethram with conviction, "New Zealand is the most beautiful place in the whole world."

"My dear," said Mrs. Valpy in a patronising manner, "are you not going a little too far? I've no doubt the place you come from is very nice, very nice indeed, but to compare it with England is ridiculous. You have no city, I think, like London. No, no! London is cosmopolitan, yes--quite so."

Having stated this plain truth, Mrs. Valpy looked round with a fat smile of triumph and resumed her knitting, while Tommy dashed into the conversation with slangy vivacity.

"Oh, I say, you know, New Zealand's a place where you can have a high old time, but London's the place for larks."

"Why not the country," said Clendon drily, "the morning lark."

"Oh, I don't mean that sort of lark," interrupted Tommy ingeniously, "the evenin' lark; my style, you know. Waltzin', flirtin', talkin', jolly rather."

"You move in the highest circles, Tommy," said Kaituna, who was a somewhat satirical damsel. "You drop your 'g's.'"

"Better than dropping your 'h's'."

"Or your money," said Toby, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I don't know what we're all talking about."