VI

Wages for labour had soared and soared again since my day in

Australia, even for elderly and 'down-along more than up-along 'men

like Isaiah Fetch. (The phrase is his own.) And, in any case, I told

myself, it was not for the likes of me to keep hired men. And so, when

the garden was made, and the other needed work done, I parted with

Isaiah--a good, honest, homespun creature, rich in a sort of bovine

contentment which often moved me to sincere envy--and was left quite

alone in my hermitage, save for the morning visit of perhaps a couple

of hours, which the worthy Mrs. Blades undertook to pay for the

purpose of tidying my rooms and cooking a midday meal for me. Her

coming between nine and ten each morning, and going between twelve and

one, formed the chief, if not the only, landmarks in the routine of my

quiet days. So it was when I parted with Isaiah. So it is to-day, and

so it is like to remain--while I remain.

Parting with Isaiah Fetch made a good deal of difference to me; more

difference than I should have supposed it possible that anything

connected with so simple a soul could have made. The plain fact is, I

suppose, that while Isaiah worked about the place here, I worked with

him, in my pottering way. I developed quite an interest in my bit of

garden, because of the very genuine interest felt in the making of it

by Isaiah. I had worked at it with him; but, once he had left it, I

regret to say the ordered ranks of young vegetables tempted me but

little, and soon became disordered, for the reason that the war I

waged against the weeds was but a poor, half-hearted affair. And so it

was with other good works we had begun together. I gave up my cow,

because it seemed far simpler to let Mrs. Blades have her for nothing,

on the understanding that she brought me the daily trifle of milk I

needed. I left the feeding and care of my few fowls to Mrs. Blades,

and finally made her a present of them, after paying several bills for

their pollard and grain. It seemed easier and cheaper to let Mrs.

Blades supply the few eggs I needed.

My horse Punch I kept, because we grew fond of each other, and the

surrounding bush afforded ample grazing for him. When Punch began his

habit of gently biting my arm or shoulder every time I led him here or

there, he sealed his own fate; and now will have to continue living

with his tamely uninteresting master willy nilly. Lovable, kindly,

spirited beast that he is, I never could have afforded the purchase of

his like but for a slight flaw in his near foreleg, which in some way

spoils his action, from your horsey man's standpoint, and pleases me

greatly, because it brought the affectionate rascal within my modest

reach. I give him very little work, and rather too much food; but he

has to put up with a good deal of my society, and holds long converse

with me daily, I suppose because he knows no means of terminating an

interview until that is my pleasure.

One piece of outdoor work I have continued religiously, for the

reason, no doubt, that I love wood fires, even in warm weather. I

never neglect my wood-stack, the foundations of which were laid for me

by Isaiah Fetch. Every day I take axe and saw and cut a certain amount

of logwood. My hearth will take logs of just four feet in length, and

I feed it royally. The wood costs nothing; when burning it is highly

aromatic, and I like to be profuse with it; I who can recall an

interminable London winter, in a garret full of leaks and draught

holes, in which the only warming apparatus, besides the poor lamp that

lighted my writing-table, was a miserable oil-stove, which I could not

afford to keep alight except for the brief intervals during which it

boiled my kettle for me.

Yes, I know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and

it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a

rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log--one of the little

fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose--is

enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of

comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think

of giving up my hermitage and returning to England, because of Punch

and my ever-glowing hearth; even if there were no other reasons, as of

course there are.

For, whilst the comparative zestfulness of the first months, when I

worked with Isaiah Fetch to improve my rough-hewn little hermitage,

may not have endured, yet are there many obvious and substantial

advantages for me in the life I lead here, in this little bush

back-water, where the few human creatures who know of my existence regard

me as a poor, harmless kind of crank, and no one ever disturbs the

current of my circling thoughts. Never was a life more free from

interruptions from without. And if disturbance ever emanates from

within, why, clearly the fault must be my own, and should serve as a

reminder of how vastly uneasy my life would surely be in more

civilised surroundings, where interruptions descend upon one from

without, thick as smuts through the window of a London garret--save

where the garreteer cares to do without air. Here I sit with a noble

fire leaping at one end of my unlined, wooden room, and wide open

doors and windows all about me. As regards climate, in New South Wales

a man may come as near as may be to eating his cake and having it too.

And, for that long-sought mental restfulness, content, peace, whatever

one may call it, is not my present task a long step towards its

attainment? A completed record of the fitful struggle one calls one's

life, calmly studied in the light of reason untrammelled by sentiment,

never interrupted by the call of affairs; surely that should bring the

full measure of self-comprehension upon which peace is based! To doubt

that contentment lies that way would be wretchedness indeed. But why

should I doubt what the world's greatest sages have shown? True, my

own experience of life has suggested that contentment is rather the

monopoly of the simplest souls, whose understanding is very limited

indeed. A stinging thought this, and apt to keep a man wakeful at

night, if indulged. But I think it should not be indulged. To doubt

the existence of a higher order of content than that of the blissfully

ignorant is to brush aside as worthless and meaningless the best that

classic literature has to offer us, and--such doubts are pernicious

things.

Living here in this clean, sweet air, so far removed from the external

influences which make for fret and stress, my bodily health, at all

events, has small excuse for failure one would suppose. And, indeed,

at first it did seem to me that I was acquiring a more normal kind of

hardihood and working efficiency in this respect. But I regret to say

the supposition was not long-lived. Four or five months after my

arrival here I took to my bed for a fortnight, as the result of one of

the severest attacks I have ever had; and in the fifteen months which

have elapsed since then, my general health has been very much what it

was during the years before I left London, while the acute bouts of

neuritis and gastric trouble, when they have come, have been worse, I

think, than those of earlier years.

But, none the less, without feeling it as yet, I may be building up a

better general condition in this quiet life; and the bitterly sharp

attacks that seize me may represent no more than a working off of

arrears of penalties. I hope it may be so, for persistent ill-health

is a dismal thing. But, as against that, I think I am sufficiently

philosophic--how often that blessed word is abused by disgruntled

mankind--to avoid hopes and desires of too extravagant a sort, and, by

that token, to be safeguarded from the sharper forms of

disappointment.

Contentment depends, I apprehend, not upon obtaining possession of

this or that, but upon the wise schooling of one's desires and

requirements. My aims and desires in life--behind the achievement of

which I have always fancied I discerned Contentment sitting as a

goddess, from whose beneficent hands come all rewards--have naturally

varied with the passing years. In youth, I suppose, first place was

given to Position. Later, Art stood highest; later, again, Intellect;

then Morality; and, finally. Peace, Tranquillity--surely the most

modest, and therefore practical and hopeful of all these goals.