The three men sat on a bench just above the brown rocks of the water’s
edge, in the lovely sunshine, and watched the big ferry steamer slip in
and discharge its stream of summer-dressed passengers, and embark
another stream: watched the shipping of the middle harbour away to the
right, and the boats loitering on the little bay in front. A motor-boat
was sweeping at a terrific speed, like some broom sweeping the water,
past the little round fort away in the open harbour, and two tall white
sailing boats, all wing and no body, were tacking across the pale blue
mouth of the bay. The inland sea of the harbour was all bustling with
Sunday morning animation: and yet there seemed space, and loneliness.
The low, coffee-brown cliffs opposite, too low for cliffs, looked as
silent and as aboriginal as if white men had never come.
The little girl Gladys came out shyly. Somers now noticed that she wore
spectacles.
“Hello kiddie!” said Jack. “Come here and make a footstool of your
uncle, and see what your Aunt Vicky’s been thinking of. Come on then,
amble up this road.”
He took her on his knee, and fished out of his pocket a fine sort of
hat-band that Victoria had contrived with ribbon and artificial flowers
and wooden beads. Gladys sat for a moment or two shyly on her uncle’s
knee, and he held her there as if she were a big pillow he was scarcely
conscious of holding. Her stepfather sat exactly as if the child did not
exist, or were not present. It was neutrality brought to a remarkable
pitch. Only Somers seemed actually aware that the child was a little
human being--and to him she seemed so absent that he didn’t know what to
make of her.
Rose came out bringing beer and sausage rolls, and the girl vanished
away again, seemed to evaporate. Somers felt uncomfortable, and wondered
what he had been brought for.
“You know Cornwall, do you?” said William James, the Cornish singsong
still evident in his Australian speech. He looked with his light-grey,
inscrutable eyes at Somers.
“I lived for a time near Padstow,” said Somers.
“Padstow! Ay, I’ve been to Padstow,” said William James. And they talked
for a while of the bleak, lonely northern coast of Cornwall, the black
huge cliffs with the gulls flying away below, and the sea boiling, and
the wind blowing in huge volleys: and the black Cornish nights, with
nothing but the violent weather outside.
“Oh, I remember it, I remember it,” said William James. “Though I was a
half-starved youngster on a bit of a farm out there, you know, for
everlasting chasing half a dozen heifers from the cliffs, where the
beggars wanted to fall over and kill themselves, and hunting for a dozen
sheep among the gorse-bushes, and wading up to my knees in mud most part
of the year, and then in summer, in the dry times, having to haul water
for a mile over the rocks in a wagon, because the well had run dry. And
at the end of it my father gave me one new suit in two years, and
sixpence a week. Ay, that was a life for you. I suppose if I was there
still he’d be giving me my keep and five shillin’ a week--if he could
open his heart as wide as two half-crowns, which I’m doubting very
much.”
“You have money out here, at least,” said Somers. “But there was a great
fascination for me, in Cornwall.”
“Fascination! And where do you find the fascination? In a little
Wesleyan chapel of a Sunday night, and a girl with her father waiting
for her with a strap if she’s not in by nine o’clock? Fascination, did
you say?”
“It had a great fascination for me--magic--a magic in the atmosphere.”
“All the fairy tales they’ll tell you?” said William James, looking at
the other man with a smile of slow ridicule. “Why ye didn’t go and
believe them, did ye?”
“More or less. I could more easily have believed them there than
anywhere else I’ve been.”
“Ay, no doubt. And that shows what sort of a place it be. Lot of dum
silly nonsense.” He stirred on his seat impatiently.
“At any rate, you’re well out of it. You’re set up all right here,” said
Somers, who was secretly amused. The other man did not answer for some
time.
“Maybe I am,” he said at last. “I’m not pining to go back and work for
my father, I tell you, on a couple of pasties and a lot of abuse. No,
after that, I’d like you to tell me what’s wrong with Australia.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Somers. “Probably nothing at all.”
Again William James was silent. He was a short, thick man, with a
little felt hat that sat over his brow with a half humorous flap. He had
his knees wide apart, and his hands clasped between them. And he looked
for the most part down at the ground. When he did cock up his eye at
Somers, it was with a look of suspicion marked with humour and troubled
with a certain desire. The man was restless, desirous, craving
something--heaven knows what.
“You thinking of settling out here then, are you?” he asked.
“No,” said Somers. “But I don’t say I won’t. It depends.”
William James fidgetted, tapping his feet rapidly on the ground, though
his body was silent. He was not like Jack. He, too, was sensitive all
over, though his body looked so thick it was silently alive, and his
feet were still uneasy. He was young too, with a youth that troubled
him. And his nature was secretive, maybe treacherous. It was evident
Jack only half liked him.
“You’ve got the money, you can live where you like and go where you
like,” said William James, looking up at Somers. “Well, I might do the
same. If I cared to do it, I could live quietly on what I’ve got,
whether here or in England.” Somers recognised the Cornishman in this.
“You could very easily have as much as I’ve got,” he said laughing.
“The thing is, what’s the good of a life of idleness?” said William
James.
“What’s the good of a life of work?” laughed Somers.
Shrewdly, with quick grey eye, Trewhella looked at the other man to see
if he were laughing at him.
“Yet I expect you’ve got some purpose in coming to Australia,” said
William James, a trifle challenging.
“Maybe I had--or have--maybe it was just whim.”
Again the other man looked shrewdly, to see if it were the truth.
“You aren’t investing money out here, are you?”
“No, I’ve none to invest.”
“Because if you was, I’d advise you not to.” And he spat into the
distance, and kept his hands clasped tight.
All this time Jack sat silent and as if unconcerned, but listening
attentively.
“Australians have always been croakers,” he said now.
“What do you think of this Irish business?” asked William James.
“I? I really don’t think much at all. I don’t feel Ireland is my job,
personally. If I had to say, off-hand, what I’d do myself, why, if I
could I’d just leave the Irish to themselves, as they want, and let them
wipe each other out or kiss and make friends as they please. They bore
me rather.”
“And what about the Empire?”
“That again isn’t my job. I’m only one man, and I know it. But
personally, I’d say to India and Australia and all of them the same--if
you want to stay in the Empire, stay; if you want to go out, go.”
“And suppose they went out?”
“That’s their affair.”
“Supposing Australia said she was coming out of the Empire and governing
herself, and only keeping a sort of entente with Britain. What do you
think she’d make of it?”
“By the looks of things, I think she’d make a howling mess of it. Yet it
might do her good if she were thrown entirely on her own resources.
You’ve got to have something to keep you steady. England has really kept
the world steady so far--as steady as it’s been. That’s my opinion. Now
she’s not keeping it very steady, and the world’s sick of being bossed,
anyhow. Seems to me you may as well sink or swim on your own resources.”
“Perhaps we’re too likely to find ourselves sinking.”
“Then you’ll come to your senses, after you’ve sunk for the third time.”
“What, about England? Cling to England again, you mean?”
“No, I don’t. I mean you can’t put the brotherhood of man on a wage
basis.”
“That’s what a good many people say here,” put in Jack.
“You don’t trust socialism then?” said Jaz, in a quiet voice.
“What sort of socialism? Trades unionism? Soviet?”
“Yes, any.”
“I really don’t care about politics. Politics is no more than your
country’s housekeeping. If I had to swallow my whole life up in
housekeeping, I wouldn’t keep house at all; I’d sleep under a hedge.
Same with a country and politics. I’d rather have no country than be
gulfed in politics and social stuff. I’d rather have the moon for a
motherland.”
Jaz was silent for a time, contemplating his knuckles.
“And that,” he said, “is how the big majority of Australians feel, and
that’s why they care nothing about Australia. It’s cruel to the
country.”
“Anyhow, no sort of _politics_ will help the country,” said Somers.
“If it won’t, then nothing will,” retorted Jaz.
“So you’d advise us all to be like seven-tenths of us here, not care a
blooming hang about anything except your dinner and which horse gets
in?” asked Jack, not without sarcasm.
Now Richard was silent, driven into a corner.
“Why,” he said, “there’s just this difference. The bulk of Australians
don’t care about Australia--that is, you say they don’t. And why don’t
they? Because they care about nothing at all, neither in earth below or
heaven above. They just blankly don’t care about anything, and they live
in defiance, a sort of slovenly defiance of care of any sort, human or
inhuman, good or bad. If they’ve got one belief left, now the war’s
safely over, it’s a dull, rock-bottom belief in obstinately not caring,
not caring about anything. It seems to me they think it manly, the only
manliness, not to care, not to think, not to attend to life at all, but
just to tramp blankly on from moment to moment, and over the edge of
death without caring a straw. The final manliness.”
The other two men listened in silence, the distant, colonial silence
that hears the voice of the old country passionately speaking against
them.
“But if they’re not to care about politics, what are they to care
about?” asked Jaz, in his small, insinuating voice.
There was a moment’s pause. Then Jack added his question:
“Do you yourself really care about anything, Mr Somers?”
Richard turned and looked him for a moment in the eyes. And then,
knowing the two men were trying to corner him, he said coolly:
“Why, yes. I care supremely.”
“About what?” Jack’s question was soft as a drop of water falling into
water, and Richard sat struggling with himself.
“That,” he answered, “you either know or don’t know. And if you don’t
know, it would only be words my trying to tell.”
There was a silence of check-mate.
“I’m afraid, for myself, I don’t know,” said Jack.
But Somers did not answer, and the talk, rather lamely, was turned off
to other things.
The two men went back to Murdoch Street rather silent, thinking their
own thoughts. Jack only blurted once:
“What do you make of Jaz, then?”
“I like him. He lives by himself and keeps himself pretty dark--which is
his nature.”
“He’s a cleverer man than you’d take him for--figures things out in a
way that surprises me. And he’s better than a detective for getting to
know things. He’s got one or two Cornish pals down town, you see--and
they tip one another the wink. They’re like the Irish in many ways. And
they’re not uncommonly unlike a Chink. I always feel as if Jaz had got a
bit of Chinese blood in him. That’s what makes the women like him, I
suppose.”
“But do the women like him?”
“Rose does. I believe he’d make any woman like him, if he laid himself
out to do it. Got that quiet way with him, you know, and a sly sort of
touch-the-harp-gently, that’s what they like on the quiet. But he’s the
sort of chap I don’t exactly fancy mixing my broth with, and drinking of
the same can with.”
Somers laughed at the avowal of antipathy between the two men.
They were not home till two o’clock. Somers found Harriet looking rather
plaintive.
“You’ve been a long time,” she said. “What did you do?”
“Just talked.”
“What about?”
“Politics.”
“And did you like them?”
“Yes, quite well.”
“And have you promised to see them again to-day?”
“Who?”
“Why, any of them--the Callcotts.”
“No.”
“Oh. They’re becoming rather an institution.”
“You like them too?”
“Yes, they’re all right. But I don’t want to spend my life with them.
After all, that sort of people isn’t exactly my sort--and I thought you
used to pretend it wasn’t yours.”
“It isn’t. But then no sort of people is my sort.”
“Yes, it is. Any sort of people, so long as they make a fuss of you.”
“Surely they make an even greater fuss of you.”
“Do they! It’s you they want, not me. And you go as usual, like a lamb
to the slaughter.”
“Baa!” he said.
“Yes, baa! You should hear yourself bleat.”
“I’ll listen,” he said.
But Harriet was becoming discontented. They had been in their house only
six weeks: and she had had enough of it. Yet it was paid for for three
months: at four guineas a week. And they were pretty short of money, and
would be for the rest of the year. He had already overdrawn.
Yet she began to suggest going away: away from Sydney. She felt
humiliated in that beastly little Murdoch Street.
“What did I tell you?” he retorted. “The very look of it humiliated me.
Yet you wanted it, and you said you liked it.”
“I did like it--for the fun of it. But now there’s all this intimacy and
neighbouring. I just can’t stand it. I just can’t.”
“But you began it.”
“No, I didn’t; you began it. And your beastly sweetness and gentleness
with such people. I wish you kept a bit of it for me.”
He went away in silence, knowing the uselessness of argument. And to
tell the truth he was feeling also a revulsion from all this
neighbouring, as Harriet called it, and all this talk. It was usually
the same. He started by holding himself aloof, then gradually he let
himself get mixed in, and then he had revulsions. And to-day was one of
his revulsions. Coming home from Mosman’s Bay, he had felt himself
dwindle to a cipher in Jack’s consciousness. Then, last evening, there
had been all this fervour and protestation. And this morning all the
cross-examination by Trewhella. And he, Somers, had plainly said all he
thought. And now, as he walked home with Jack, Jack had no more use for
him than for the stump of cigar which he chewed between his lips merely
because he forgot to spit it away. Which state of affairs did not go at
all well with _our_ friend’s sense of self-importance.
Therefore, when he got home, his eyes opened once more to the delicacy
of Harriet’s real beauty, which he knew as none else knew it, after
twelve years of marriage. And once more he realised her gay, undying
courage, her wonderful fresh zest in front of life. And all these other
little people seemed so common in comparison, so common. He stood still
with astonishment, wondering how he could have come to betray the
essential reality of his life and Harriet’s to the common use of these
other people with their watchful, vulgar wills. That scene of last
evening: what right had a fellow like Callcott to be saying these things
to him? What right had he to put his arm round his, Richard’s shoulder,
and give him a tight hug? Somers winced to think of it. And now Callcott
had gone off with his Victoria in Sunday clothes to some other outing.
Anything was as good as anything else; why not!
A gulf there was between them, really, between the Somers and the
Callcotts. And yet the easy way Callcott flung a flimsy rope of intimacy
across the gulf, and was embracing the pair of his neighbours in
mid-air, as it were, without a grain of common foothold. And Somers let
himself be embraced. So he sat pale and silent and mortified in the
kitchen that evening thinking of it all, and wishing himself far away,
in Europe.
“Oh, how I detest this treacly democratic Australia,” he said. “It
swamps one with a sort of common emotion like treacle, and before one
knows where one is, one is caught like a fly on a flypaper, in one mess
with all the other buzzers. How I hate it! I want to go away.”
“It isn’t Australia,” said Harriet. “Australia’s lonely. It’s just the
people. And it isn’t even the people--if you would only keep your proper
distance, and not make yourself cheap to them and get into messes.”
“No, it’s the country. It’s in the air, I want to leave it.”
But he was not very emphatic. Harriet wanted to go down to the South
Coast, of which she had heard from Victoria.
“Think,” she said, “it must be lovely there--with the mountain behind,
and steep hills, and blackberries, and lovely little bays with sand.”
“There’ll be no blackberries. It’s end of June--which is their
mid-winter.”
“But there’ll be the other things. Let’s do that, and never mind the
beastly money for this pokey Torestin.”
“They’ve asked us to go with them to Mullumbimby in a fortnight. Shall
we wait till then and look?”
Harriet sat in silence for some moments.
“We might,” she said reluctantly. She didn’t want to wait. But what
Victoria had told her of Mullumbimby, the township on the South Coast,
so appealed to her that she decided to abide by her opportunity.
And then curiously enough, for the next week the neighbours hardly saw
one another. It was as if the same wave of revulsion had passed over
both sides of the fence. They had fleeting glimpses of Victoria as she
went about the house. And when he could, Jack put in an hour at his
garden in the evening, tidying it up finally for the winter. But the
weather was bad, it rained a good deal; there were fogs in the morning,
and foghorns on the harbour; and the Somers kept their doors continually
blank and shut.
Somers went round to the shipping agents and found out about boats to
San Francisco, and talked of sailing in July, and of stopping at Tahiti
or at Fiji on the way, and of cabling for money for the fares. He
figured it all out. And Harriet mildly agreed. Her revulsion from
Australia had passed quicker than his, now that she saw herself escaping
from town and from neighbours to the quiet of a house by the sea, alone
with him. Still she let him talk. Verbal agreement and silent opposition
is perhaps the best weapon on such occasions.
Harriet would look at him sometimes wistfully, as he sat with his brow
clouded. She had a real instinctive mistrust of other people--all other
people. In her heart of hearts she said she wanted to live alone with
Somers, and know nobody, all the rest of her life. In Australia, where
one can be lonely, and where the land almost calls to one to be
lonely--and then drives one back again on one’s fellow-men in a kind of
frenzy. Harriet would be quite happy, by the sea, with a house and a
little garden and as much space to herself as possible, knowing nobody,
but having Lovat always there. And he could write, and it would be
perfect.
But he wouldn’t be happy--and he said so--and she knew it. She saw it
like a doom on his brow.
“And why couldn’t we be happy in this wonderful new country, living to
ourselves. We could have a cow, and chickens--and then the Pacific, and
this marvellous new country. Surely that is enough for any man. Why must
you have more?”
“Because I feel I _must_ fight out something with mankind yet. I haven’t
finished with my fellow-men. I’ve got a struggle with them yet.”
“But what struggle? What’s the good? What’s the point of your struggle?
And what’s your struggle for?”
“I don’t know. But it’s inside me, and I haven’t finished yet. To make
some kind of an opening--some kind of a way for the afterwards.”
“Ha, the afterwards will make its own way, it won’t wait for you. It’s a
kind of nervous obstinacy and self-importance in you. You _don’t_ like
people. You always turn away from them and hate them. Yet like a dog to
his vomit you always turn back. And it will be the same old game here
again as everywhere else. What are these people after all? Quite nice,
but just common and--and not in your line at all. But there you are. You
stick your head into a bush like an ostrich, and think you’re doing
wonders.”
“I intend to move with men and get men to move with me before I die,” he
said. Then he added hastily: “Or at any rate I’ll try a bit longer yet.
When I make up my mind that it’s really no good, I’ll go with you and
we’ll live alone somewhere together, and forget the world. And in
Australia too. Just like a business man retiring. I’ll retire away from
the world, and forget it. But not yet. Not till I feel I’ve finished.
I’ve got to struggle with men and the world of men for a time yet. When
it’s over I’ll do as you say.”
“Ah, you and your men, men! What do these Callcotts and these little
Trewhella people mean to you after all? Are they men? They are only
something you delude yourself about. And then you’ll come a cropper, and
fall back on me. Just as it always is. You fall back on me, and I’m
expected to like it. I’m good enough to fall back on, when you’ve made a
fool of yourself with a lot of tuppenny little people, imagining you’re
doing something in the world of _men_. Much men there is about it.
Common little street-people, that’s all.”
He was silent. He heard all she had to say: and he knew that as far as
the past went, it was all quite true. He had started off on his fiery
courses: always, as she said, to fall back rather the worse for the
attempt, on her. She had no use at all for fiery courses and efforts
with the world of men. Let all that rubbish go.
“Well,” he said. “It’s my need to make these tries, yet. Wait till I’ve
exhausted the need, and we’ll have a little place of our own and forget
the world, really. I know I can do it. I could almost do it now: and
here in Australia. The country appeals to me that way: to lose oneself
and have done with this side of life. But wait a bit longer.”
“Ah, I suppose I shall have to,” she said recklessly. “You’ll have to go
one making a fool of yourself till you’re tired. Wives are _supposed_ to
have to take their husbands back a little damaged and repentant from
their _love affairs_ with other women. And I’m hanged if it wouldn’t be
more fun than this business of seeing you come back once more fooled
from your attempts with _men_--the world of men, as you call it. If they
_were_ real men I wouldn’t mind. But look at your Jack Callcott. Really,
and you’re supposed to have had some experience in life. ‘Clip in, old
man!’” She imitated Jack’s voice and manner. “And you stand it all and
think it’s wonderful! Nay, men are too foolish for me to understand
them; I give them up.”
He laughed, realising that most of what she said was true.
“You see,” he said, “I have the roots of my life with you. But I want if
possible to send out a new shoot in the life of mankind--the effort man
makes forever, to grow into new forms.”
She looked at him. And somehow she wanted to cry, because he was so
silly in refusing to be finally disappointed in his efforts with
mankind, and yet his silliness was pathetic, in a way beautiful. But
then it _was_ so silly--she wanted to shake him.
“Send out a new shoot then. Send it out. You do it in your writing
already!” she cried. “But getting yourself mixed up with these impudent
little people won’t send any shoots, don’t you think it. They’ll nip you
in the bud again, as they always do.”
He pondered this also, stubbornly, and knew it was true. But he had set
his will on something, and wasn’t going to give way.
“I want to do something with living people, somewhere, somehow, while I
live on the earth. I write, but I write alone. And I live alone. Without
any connection whatever with the rest of men.”
“Don’t swank, you don’t live alone. You’ve got _me_ there safe enough,
to support you. Don’t swank to me about being alone, because it insults
me, you see. I know how much alone you are, with me always there keeping
you together.”
And again he sulked and swallowed it, and obstinately held out.
“None the less,” he retorted, “I do want to do something along with men.
I _am_ alone and cut off. As a man among men, I just have no place. I
have my life with you, I know: _et preterea nihil_.”
“_Et preterea nihil!_ And what more do you want? Besides, you liar,
haven’t you your writing? Isn’t that all you want, isn’t that _doing_
all there is to be done? Men! Much _men_ there is about them! Bah, when
it comes to that, I have to be even the only man as well as the only
woman.”
“That’s the whole trouble,” said he bitingly.
“Bah, you creature, you ought to be grateful,” cried Harriet.
William James arrived one morning when the Callcotts were both out, and
brought a little basket of persimmons and passion fruits for Harriet. As
it happened, Somers also was out.