was following, in his shirt-sleeves.
“Fancy you being here!” gasped Mrs. Callcott, and Harriet was so flustered she could only cry:
“Oh, how do you do!”—and effusively shake hands, as if she were meeting some former acquaintance on Piccadilly. The shaking hands quite put Mrs. Callcott off her track. She felt it almost an affront, and went red. Her husband sauntered up and put his hands in his pockets, to avoid mistakes.
“Ha, what are you doing here,” he said to the Somers pair. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?”
Harriet glanced at Richard Lovat. He was smiling faintly.
“Oh, we should love it,” she replied to Mr. Callcott. “But where?—have you got a house here?”
“My sister has the end house,” said he.
“Oh, but—will she want us?” cried Harriet, backing out.
The Callcotts stood for a moment silent.
“Yes, if you like to come,” said Jack. And it was evident he was aware of Somers’ desire to avoid contact.
“Well, I should be awfully grateful,” said Harriet. “Wouldn’ you, Lovat?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling to himself, feeling Jack’s manly touch of contempt for all this hedging.
So off they went to “St. Columb.” The sister was a brown-eyed Australian with a decided manner, kindly, but a little suspicious of the two newcomers. Her husband was a young Cornishman, rather stout and short and silent. He had his hair cut round at the back, in a slightly rounded line above a smooth, sunburnt, reddened nape of the neck. Somers found out later that this young Cornishman—his name was Trewhella—had married his brother’s widow. Mrs. Callcott supplied Harriet later on with all the information concerning her sister-in-law. The first Trewhella, Alfred John, had died two years ago, leaving his wife with a neat sum of money and this house, “St. Columb,” and also with a little girl named Gladys, who came running in shaking her long brown hair just after the Somers appeared. So the present Trewhellas were a newly-married couple. The present husband, William James, went round in a strange, silent fashion helping his wife Rose to prepare tea.
The bungalow was pleasant, a large room facing the sea, with verandahs and other little rooms opening off. There were many family photographs, and a framed medal and ribbon and letter praising the first Trewhella. Mrs. Trewhella was alert and watchful, and decided to be genteel. So the party sat around in the basket chairs and on the settles under the windows, instead of sitting at table for tea. And William James silently but willingly carried round the bread and butter and the cakes.
He was a queer young man, with an Irish-looking face, rather pale, an odd kind of humour in his grey eye and in the corners of his pursed mouth. But he spoke never a word. It was hard to decide his age—probably about thirty—a little younger than his wife. He seemed silently pleased about something—perhaps his marriage. Somers noticed that the whites of his eyes were rather bloodshot. He had been in Australia since he was a boy of fifteen—he had come with his brother—from St. Columb, near Newquay—St. Columb Major. So much Somers elicited.
“Well, how do you like Sydney?” came the inevitable question from Mrs. Trewhella.
“The harbour, I think, is wonderful,” came Somers’ invariable answer.
“It is a fine harbour, isn’t it. And Sydney is a fine town. Oh yes, I’ve lived there all my life.”
The conversation languished. Callcott was silent, and William James seemed as if he were never anything else. Even the little girl only fluttered into a whisper and went still again. Everybody was a little embarrassed, rather stiff: too genteel, or not genteel enough. And the men seemed absolute logs.
“You don’t think much of Australia, then?” said Jack to Somers.
“Why,” answered the latter, “how am I to judge! I haven’t even seen the fringe of it.”
“Oh, it’s mostly fringe,” said Jack. “But it hasn’t made a good impression on you?”
“I don’t know yet. My feelings are mixed. The country seems to me to have a fascination—strange—”
“But you don’t take to the Aussies, at first sight. Bit of a collision between their aura and yours,” smiled Jack.
“Maybe that’s what it is,” said Somers. “That’s a useful way of putting it. I can’t help my aura colliding, can I?”
“Of course you can’t. And if it’s a tender sort of aura, of course it feels the bump.”
“Oh, don’t talk about it,” cried Harriet. “He must be just one big bump, by the way he grumbles.”
They all laughed—perhaps a trifle uneasily.
“I thought so,” said Jack. “What made you come here? Thought you’d like to write about it?”
“I thought I might like to live here—and write here,” replied Somers smiling.
“Write about the bushrangers and the heroine lost in the bush and wandering into a camp of bullies?” said Jack.
“Maybe,” said Somers.
“Do you mind if I ask you what sort of things you do write?” said Jack, with some delicacy.
“Oh—poetry—essays.”
“Essays about what?”
“Oh—rubbish mostly.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“Oh, Lovat, don’t be so silly. You know do speakyou don’t think your essays rubbish,” put in Harriet. “They’re about life, and democracy, and equality, and all that sort of thing,” Harriet explained.
“Oh, yes?” said Jack. “I’d like to read some.”
“Well,” hesitated Harriet. “He can lend you a volume—you’ve got some with you, haven’t you?” she added, turning to Somers.
“I’ve got one,” admitted that individual, looking daggers at her.
“Well, you’ll lend it to Mr. Callcott, won’t you?”
“If he wants it. But it will only bore him.”
“I might rise up to it, you know,” said Jack laconically, “if I bring all my mental weight to bear on it.”
Somers flushed, and laughed at the contradiction in metaphor.
“It’s not the loftiness,” he said, rather amused. “It’s that people just don’t care to hear some things.”
“Well, let me try,” said Jack. “We’re a new country—and we’re out to learn.”
“That’s exactly what we’re not,” broke out William James,
