Horrid!” said Harriet resentfully.
“He felt he had, I’m sure,” said Somers.
It was a period when Sydney was again suffering from a bubonic plague
scare: a very mild scare, some fifteen cases to a million people,
according to the newspapers. But the town was placarded with notices
“Keep your town clean,” and there was a stall in Martin Place where you
could write your name down and become a member of a cleanliness league,
or something to that effect.
The battle was against rats, fleas, and dirt. The plague affects rats
first, said the notices, then fleas, and then man. All citizens were
called upon to wage war with the vermin mentioned. Alas, there was no
need to call on Somers to wage the war. The first morning they had
awakened in Torestin, it was to a slight uneasy feeling of
uncleanliness. Harriet, who hated the thought of contamination, found
the apples gnawed, when she went to take one to eat before breakfast.
And rat dirts, she said, everywhere.
Then had started such a cleaning, such a scouring, such a stopping of
holes, as Torestin had never known. Somers sourly re-christened the
house Toscrubin. And after that, every night he had the joyful business
of setting two rat-traps, those traps with the powerful fly-back
springs. Which springs were a holy terror to him, for he knew his
fingers would break like pipe-stems if the spring flew back on them. And
almost every morning he had the nauseous satisfaction of finding a rat
pinned by its nose in the trap, its eyes bulging out, a blot of deep red
blood just near. Sometimes two rats. They were not really ugly, save for
their tails. Smallish rats, perhaps only half grown, and with black,
silky fur. Not like the brown rats he had known in the English country.
But big or little, ugly or not ugly, they were very objectionable to
him, and he hated to have to start the day by casting one or more
corpses gingerly, by the tip of the tail, into the garbage tin. He
railed against the practice of throwing cans and everything
promiscuously on to any bit of waste ground. It seemed to his embittered
fancy that Sydney harbour, and all the coast of New South Wales, was
moving with this pest. It reminded him of the land of Egypt, under the
hand of the Lord: plagues of mice and rats and rabbits and snails and
all manner of crawling things. And then he would say: “Perhaps it must
be so in a new country.” For all that, the words “new country” had
become like acid between his teeth. He was always recalling what
Flinders Petrie says somewhere: “A colony is no younger than the parent
country.” Perhaps it is even older, one step further gone.
This evening--or rather midnight--he went to the back kitchen to put
every scrap of any sort of food beyond rat-reach, and to bait the two
traps with bits of cheese-rind. Then he bent back the two murderous
springs, and the traps were ready. He washed his hands hard from the
contamination of them. Then he went into the garden, even climbed the
tub-like summer-house, to have a last look at the world. There was a big
slip of very bright moon risen, and the harbour was faintly distinct.
Now that night had fallen, the wind was from the land, and cold. He
turned to go indoors. And as he did so he heard a motor-car run quickly
along the road, and saw the bright lights come to a stop at the gate of
Wyewurk. Wyewurk was in darkness already. But a man left the car and
came along the path to the house, giving a peculiar whistle as he did
so. He went round to the back door and knocked sharply, once, twice, in
a peculiar way. Then he whistled and knocked again. After which he must
have heard an answer, for he waited quietly.
In a few minutes more the lights switched on and the door opened; Jack
was there in his pyjamas.
“That you, Jaz boy?” he said in a quiet tone. “Why the blazes didn’t you
come half an hour sooner, or half a minute later? You got me just as I’d
taken the jump, and I fell all over the bloomin’ hedge. Come in. You’ll
make a nervous wreck of me between you.”
The figure entered. It was William James, the brother-in-law. Somers
heard him go again in about ten minutes. But Harriet did not notice.
CHAP: IV. JACK AND JAZ
The following evening Somers could feel waves of friendliness coming
across the hedge, from Victoria. And she kept going out to the gate to
look for Jack, who was late returning home. And as she went, she always
looked long towards the verandah of Torestin, to catch sight of the
Somers.
Somers felt the yearning and amicable advance in the atmosphere. For
some time he disregarded it. Then at last he went out to look at the
nightfall. It was early June. The sun had set beyond the land, casting a
premature shadow of night. But the eastern sky was very beautiful, full
of pure, pure light, the light of the southern seas, next the Antarctic.
There was a great massive cloud settling low, and it was all gleaming, a
golden, physical glow. Then across the upper sky trailed a thin line of
little dark clouds, like a line of porpoises swimming in the extremely
beautiful clarity.
“Isn’t it a lovely evening again?” Victoria called to him as he stood on
the summer-house top.
“Very lovely. Australia never ceases to be a wonderland for me, at
nightfall,” he answered.
“Aha!” she said. “You are fond of the evening?”
He had come down from his point of vantage, and they stood near together
by the fence.
“In Europe I always like morning best--much best. I can’t say what it is
I find so magical in the evening here.”
“No!” she replied, looking upwards round the sky. “It’s going to rain.”
“What makes you think so?” he asked.
“It looks like it--and it feels like it. I expect Jack will be here
before it comes on.”
“He’s late to-night, is he?”
“Yes. He said he might be. Is it six o’clock?”
“No, it’s only a little after five.”
“Is it? I needn’t be expecting him yet, then. He won’t be home till
quarter past six.” She was silent for a while. “We shall soon have the
shortest day,” she said. “I am glad when it has gone. I always miss Jack
so much when the evening comes, and he isn’t home. You see I was used
to a big family, and it seems a bit lonely to me yet, all alone in the
cottage. That’s why we’re so glad to have you and Mrs Somers next door.
We get on so well, don’t we? Yes, it’s surprising. I always felt nervous
of English people before. But I love Mrs Somers. I think she’s lovely.”
“You haven’t been married long?” asked Somers.
“Not quite a year. It seems a long time in some ways. I wouldn’t not be
with Jack, not for anything. But I do miss my family. We were six of us
all at home together, and it makes such a difference, being all alone.”
“Was your home in Sydney?”
“No, on the South Coast--dairy-farming. No, my father was a surveyor, so
was his father before him. Both in New South Wales. Then he gave it up
and started this farm down south. Oh yes, I liked it--I love home. I
love going down home. I’ve got a cottage down there that father gave me
when I got married. You must come down with us some time when the people
that are in it go. It’s right on the sea. Do you think you and Mrs
Somers would like it?”
“I’m sure we should.”
“And will you come with us for a week-end? The people in it are leaving
next week. We let it furnished.”
“We should like to very much indeed,” said Somers, being polite over it
because he felt a little unsure still, whether he wanted to be so
intimate. But Victoria seemed so wistful.
“We feel so ourselves with you and Mrs Somers,” said Victoria. “And yet
you’re so different from us, and yet we feel so much ourselves with
you.”
“But we’re not different,” he protested.
“Yes, you are--coming from home. It’s mother who always called England
home. She was English. She always spoke so prettily. She came from
Somerset. Yes, she died about five years ago. Then I was mother of the
family. Yes, I am the eldest, except Alfred. Yes, they’re all at home.
Alfred is a mining engineer--there are coal mines down the South Coast.
He was with Jack in the war, on the same job. Jack was a Captain and
Alfred was a Lieutenant. But they drop all the army names now. That’s
how I came to know Jack: through Alfred. Jack always calls him Fred.”
“You didn’t know him before the war?”
“No, not till he came home. Alfred used to talk about him in his
letters, but I never thought then I should marry him. They are great
friends yet, the two of them.”
The rain that she had prophesied now began to fall--big straight drops,
that resounded on the tin roofs of the houses.
“Won’t you come in and sit with us till Jack comes?” asked Somers.
“You’ll feel dreary, I know.”
“Oh, don’t think I said it for that,” said Victoria.
“Come round, though,” said Somers. And they both ran indoors out of the
rain. Lightning had started to stab in the south-western sky, and clouds
were shoving slowly up.
Victoria came round and sat talking, telling of her home on the south
coast. It was only about fifty miles from Sydney, but it seemed another
world to her. She was so quiet and simple, now, that both the Somers
felt drawn to her, and glad that she was sitting with them.
They were talking still of Europe, Italy, Switzerland, England,
Paris--the wonderworld to Victoria, who had never been out of New South
Wales in her life, in spite of her name--which name her father had given
her to annoy all his neighbours, because he said the State of Victoria
was run like a paradise compared to New South Wales--although he too
never went a yard out of his home state, if he could help it; they were
talking still of Europe when they heard Jack’s voice calling from the
opposite yard.
“Hello,” cried Victoria, running out. “Are you there, Jack? I was
listening for the motor-bike. I remember now, you went by tram.”
Sometimes she seemed a little afraid of him--physically afraid--though
he was always perfectly good-humoured with her. And this evening she
sounded like that--as if she feared his coming home, and wanted the
Somers to shelter her.
“You’ve found a second home over there, apparently,” said Jack,
advancing towards the fence. “Well, how’s things?”
It was dark, so they could not see his face. But he sounded different.
There was something queer, unknown about him.
“I’ll come over for a game of chess to-night, old man, if you’ll say the
word,” he said to Somers. “And the ladies can punish the piano again
meanwhile, if they feel like it. I bought something to sweeten the
melodies with, and give us a sort of breathing-space now and then: sort
of little ear-rest, you know.”
“That means a pound of chocolates,” said Victoria, like a greedy child.
“And Mrs Somers will come and help me to eat them. Good!” And she ran in
home. Somers thought of a picture advertisement in the _Bulletin_:
“_Madge_: I can’t think what you see in Jack. He is so unintellectual.”
“_Gladys_: Oh, but he always brings a pound of Billyer’s chocolates.”
Or else: “Sweets to the Sweet. Give Her Billyer’s chocolates”; or else:
“Billyer’s chocolates sweeten the home.”
The game of chess was a very quiet one. Jack was pale and subdued,
silent, tired, thought Somers, after his long day and short night.
Somers too played without any zest. And yet they were satisfied, just
sitting there together, a curious peaceful ease in being together.
Somers wondered at it, the rich, full peace that there seemed to be
between him and the other man. It was something he was not used to. As
if one blood ran warm and rich between them. “Then shall thy peace be as
a river.”
“There was nothing wrong at the Trewhella’s, was there, that made
William James come so late?” asked Somers.
Jack looked up with a tinge of inquiry in his dark eyes at this
question: as if he suspected something behind it. Somers flushed
slightly.
“No, nothing wrong,” said Jack.
“I beg your pardon for asking,” said Somers hastily. “I heard a whistle
when I’d just done setting the rat-traps, and I looked out, and heard
you speak to him. That’s how I knew who it was. I only wondered if
anything was wrong.”
“No, nothing wrong,” repeated Jack laconically.
“That’s all right,” said Somers. “It’s your move. Mind your queen.”
“Mind my queen, eh? She takes some minding, that lady does. I feel I
need a special eye at the end of my nose, to keep track of her. Come out
of it, old lady. I’m not very bright at handling royalty, that’s a
fact.”
Somers was now silent. He felt he had made a _faux pas_, and was
rebuffed. They played for some time, Jack talking to himself mostly in
that facetious strain which one just had to get used to in him, though
Somers occasionally found it tiring.
Then after a time Jack put his hands into his lap, and looked up at
Somers.
“You mustn’t think I get the wind up, you know,” he said, “if you ask me
a question. You can ask me what you like, you know. And when I can tell
you, I’ll tell you. I know you’d never come shoving your nose in like a
rat from under the skirting board when nobody’s looking.”
“Even if I _seem_ to,” said Somers, ironically.
“No, no, you don’t seem to. And when I _can_ tell you, I’ll do so. _I_
know I can trust you.”
Somers looked up wondering, and met the meditative dark eyes of the
other man resting on his face.
“There’s some of us chaps,” said Jack, “who’ve been through the war and
had a lick at Paris and London, you know, who can tell a man by the
smell of him, so to speak. If we can’t see the _colour_ of his aura, we
can jolly well size up the _quality_ of it. And that’s what we go by.
Call it instinct or what you like. If I like a man, slap out, at the
first sight, I’d trust him into hell, I would.”
“Fortunately you haven’t anything _very_ risky to trust him with,”
laughed Somers.
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Jack. “When a man feels he likes
a chap, and trusts him, he’s risking all he need, even by so doing.
Because none of us likes to be taken in, and to have our feelings thrown
back in our faces, as you may say, do we?”
“We don’t,” said Somers grimly.
“No, we don’t. And you know what it means to _have_ them thrown back in
your face. And so do I. There’s a lot of the people here that I wouldn’t
trust with a thank-you, I wouldn’t. But then there’s some that I would.
And mind you, taking all for all, I’d rather trust an Aussie, I’d
rather trust an Australian than an Englishman, I would, and a lot
rather. Yet there’s some of the rottenest people in Sydney that you’d
find even if you sifted hell over. Rotten--absolute yellow rotten. And
many of them in public positions, too. Simply white-anting society,
that’s what they’re doing. Talk about public affairs in Sydney, talk
about undercurrents of business in Sydney: the wickedest crew on God’s
earth, bar none. All the underhanded tricks of a Chink, a blooming
yellow Chinaman, and all the barefaced fair talk of an Englishman. There
you are. And yet, I’m telling you, I’d rather trust even a Sydney man,
and he’s a special sort of wombat, than an Englishman.”
“So you’ve told me before: for my good, I suppose,” laughed Somers, not
without irony.
“No, now don’t you go running away with any wrong ideas,” said Jack,
suddenly reaching out his hand and laying it on Somers’ arm. “I’m not
hinting at anything. If I was I’d ask you to kick me out of your house.
I should deserve it. No, you’re an Englishman. You’re a European,
perhaps I ought to say, for you’ve lived about all over that old
continent, and you’ve studied it, and you’ve got tired of it. And you’ve
come to Australia. Your instinct brought you here, however much you may
rebel against rats and tin cans and a few other things like that. Your
instinct brought you here--and brought you straight up against me. Now
that I call fate.”
He looked at Somers with dark, burning questioning eyes.
“I suppose following one’s deepest instinct is one’s fate,” said Somers,
rather flatly.
“There--you know what I mean, you see. Well then, instinct brings us
together. I knew it the minute I set eyes on you when I saw you coming
across from the Botanical Gardens, and you wanted a taxi. And then when
I heard the address, 51 Murdoch Street, I said to myself, ‘That chap is
coming into my life.’ And it is so. I’m a believer in fate, absolute.”
“Yes,” said Somers, non-committal.
“It’s fate that you left Europe and came to Australia, bit by bit, and
unwilling to come, as you say yourself. It’s fate that brings you to
Sydney, and makes me see you that dinner-hour coming from the Botanical
Gardens. It’s fate that brings you to this house. And it’s fate that
sets you and me here at this minute playing chess.”
“If you call it playing chess,” laughed Somers.
Jack looked down at the board.
“I’m blest if I know whose move it is,” he said. “But never mind. I say
that fate meant you and Mrs Somers to come here: her as much as you. I
say fate meant me and you and Victoria and her to mean a lot to one
another. And when I feel my fate, I absolutely give myself up to it.
That’s what I say. Do you think I’m right?”
His hand, which held Somers’ arm lightly, now gripped the biceps of that
arm hard, while he looked into the other man’s face.
“I should say so,” said Somers, rather uncomfortably.
Jack hardly heeded the words. He was watching the face.
“You’re a stranger here. You’re from the old country. You’re different
from us. But you’re a man we want, and you’re a man we’ve got to keep. I
know it. What? What do you say? I cant trust you, can’t I?”
“What with?” asked Somers.
“What with?” Jack hesitated. “Why everything!” he blurted. “Everything!
Body and soul and money and every blessed thing. I can trust you with
_everything_! Isn’t that right?”
Somers looked with troubled eyes into the dark, dilated, glowing eyes of
the other man.
“But I don’t know what it means,” he stammered. “_Everything!_ It means
so much, that it means nothing.”
Jack nodded his head slowly.
“Oh yes it does,” he reiterated. “Oh yes it does.”
“Besides,” said Somers, “why should you trust me with _anything_, let
alone everything. You’ve no occasion to trust me at all--except--except
as one neighbour trusts another, in common honour.”
“Common honour!” Jack just caught up the words, not heeding the sense.
“It’s more than common honour. It’s most uncommon honour. But look
here,” he seemed to rouse himself. “Supposing I came to you, to ask you
things, and tell you things, you’d answer me man to man, wouldn’t
you?--with common honour? You’d treat everything I say with common
honour, as between man and man?”
“Why, yes, I hope so.”
“I know you would. But for the sake of saying it, say it. I can trust
you, can’t I? Tell me now, can I trust you?”
Somers watched him. Was it any good making reservations and
qualifications? The man was in earnest. And according to standards of
commonplace honour, the so-called honour of man to man, Somers felt that
he would trust Callcott, and that Callcott might trust him. So he said
simply:
“Yes.”
A light leaped into Jack’s eyes.
“That means you trust me, of course?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Somers.
“Done!” said Jack, rising to his feet and upsetting the chessmen. Somers
also pushed his chair, and rose to his feet, thinking they were going
across to the next house. But Jack came to him and flung an arm round
his shoulder and pressed him close, trembling slightly, and saying
nothing. Then he let go, and caught Somers by the hand.
“This is fate,” he said, “and we’ll follow it up.” He seemed to cling to
the other man’s hand. And on his face was a strange light of purpose and
of passion, a look at once exalted and dangerous.
“I’ll soon bring the others to see it,” he said.
“But you know I don’t understand,” said Somers, withdrawing his hand and
taking off his spectacles.
“I know,” said Jack. “But I’ll let you know everything in a day or two.
Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if William James--if Jaz came here one
evening--or you wouldn’t mind having a talk with him over in my shack.”
“I don’t mind talking to anybody,” said the bewildered Somers.
“Right you are.”
They still sat for some time by the fire, silent; Jack was pondering.
Then he looked up at Somers.
“You and me,” he said in a quiet voice, “in a way we’re mates and in a
way we’re not. In a way--it’s different.”
With which cryptic remark he left it. And in a few minutes the women
came running in with the sweets, to see if the men didn’t want a
macaroon.
On Sunday morning Jack asked Somers to walk with him across to the
Trewhellas. That is, they walked to one of the ferry stations, and took
the ferry steamer to Mosman’s Bay. Jack was a late riser on Sunday
morning. The Somers, who were ordinary half-past seven people, rarely
saw any signs of life in Wyewurk before half-past ten on the
Sabbath--then it was Jack in trousers and shirt, with his shirt-sleeves
rolled up, having a look at his dahlias while Vicky prepared breakfast.
So the two men did not get a start till eleven o’clock. Jack rolled
along easily beside the smaller, quieter Somers. They were an odd
couple, ill-assorted. In a colonial way, Jack was handsome, well-built,
with strong, heavy limbs. He filled out his expensively tailored suit
and looked a man who might be worth anything from five hundred to five
thousand a year. The only lean, delicate part about him was his face.
See him from behind, his broad shoulders and loose erect carriage and
brown nape of the neck, and you expected a good square face to match. He
turned, and his long lean, rather pallid face really didn’t seem to
belong to his strongly animal body. For the face wasn’t animal at all,
except perhaps in a certain slow, dark, lingering look of the eyes,
which reminded one of some animal or other, some patient, enduring
animal with an indomitable but naturally passive courage.
Somers, in a light suit of thin cloth, made by an Italian tailor, and an
Italian hat, just looked a foreign sort of little bloke--but a
gentleman. The chief difference was that he looked sensitive all over,
his body, even its clothing, and his feet, even his brown shoes, all
equally sensitive with his face. Whereas Jack seemed strong and
insensitive in the body, only his face vulnerable. His feet might have
been made of leather all the way through, tramping with an insentient
tread. Whereas Somers put down his feet delicately, as if they had a
life of their own, mindful of each step of contact with the earth. Jack
strode along: Somers seemed to hover along. There was decision in both
of them, but oh, of such different quality. And each had a certain
admiration of the other, and a very definite tolerance. Jack just barely
tolerated the quiet finesse of Somers, and Somers tolerated with
difficulty Jack’s facetious familiarity and heartiness.
Callcott met quite a number of people he knew, and greeted them all
heartily. “Hello Bill, old man, how’s things?” “New boots pinchin’ yet,
Ant’ny? Hoppy sort of look about you this morning. Right ’o! So long,
Ant’ny!” “Different girl again, boy! go on, Sydney’s full of yer
sisters. All right, good-bye, old chap.” The same breezy intimacy with
all of them, and the moment they had passed by, they didn’t exist for
him any more than the gull that had curved across in the air. They
seemed to appear like phantoms, and disappear in the same instant, like
phantoms. Like so many Flying Dutchmen the Australian’s acquaintances
seemed to steer slap through his consciousness, and were gone on the
wind. What was the consecutive thread in the man’s feelings? Not his
feeling for any particular human beings, that was evident. His friends,
even his loves, were just a series of disconnected, isolated moments in
his life. Somers always came again upon this gap in the other man’s
continuity. He felt that if he knew Jack for twenty years, and then went
away, Jack would say: “Friend o’ mine, Englishman, rum sort of bloke,
but not a bad sort. Dunno where he’s hanging out just now. Somewhere on
the surface of the old humming-top, I suppose.”
The only consecutive thing was that facetious attitude, which was the
attitude of taking things as they come, perfected. A sort of ironical
stoicism. Yet the man had a sort of passion, and a passionate identity.
But not what Somers called human. And threaded on this ironical
stoicism.
They found Trewhella dressed and expecting them. Trewhella was a coal
and wood merchant, on the north side. He lived quite near the wharf, had
his sheds at the side of the house, and in the front a bit of garden
running down to the practically tideless bay of the harbour. Across the
bit of blue water were many red houses, and new, wide streets of single
cottages, seaside-like, disappearing rather forlorn over the brow of the
low hill.