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 realized 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 of 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
