in my head," he said to her, "and I mean to do big things, and with a safe man like your father to back me through now I think I can." Julia somehow was startled though this kind of saying in him was not new to her. "Why what do you mean Alfy?" "Why," he went on, "I want to do some things that have big money and big risks in them and a man as well known as your father for wealth and reliability for a father-in-law will do all that I need. Of course you know Julia," he added very simply enough for her, "you must not talk to him about such things now. You are my wife, my own darling, and you and I will live our lives together always loving and believing in the same good thing."
He said it simply enough to her and he was safe. Julia would not speak of such things now to her father. No torment of doubt, no certainty of misery could bring her to ask questions of her father, now, about the new life she had before her. Hersland was safe, though very simply now, he often made for her that sharp uncertain feeling more dreadful and more clear before her. He was not different in his ways or in his talk to her from the way he always had been with her, but somehow now it had come to her, to see, as dying men are said to see, clearly and freely things as they are and not as she had wished them to be for her.
And then she would remember suddenly what she had really thought he was, and she felt, she knew that all that former thought was truer better judgment than this sudden sight, and so she dulled her momentary clearing mind and hugged her old illusions to her breast.
"Alfy didn't mean it like that," she said over to herself, "he couldn't mean it like that. He only meant that papa would help him along in his career and of course papa will. Oh I know he didn't really mean it like that, he couldn't mean it like that. Anyhow I will ask him what he really meant."
And she asked him and he freely made her understand just what it was he meant. It sounded better then, a little better as he told it to her more at length, but it left her a foreboding sense that perhaps the world had meanings in it that could be hard for her to understand and judge.
But now she had to think that it was all, as it had a little sounded, good and best. She had to think it so else how could she marry him, and how could she not marry him. She had to marry him, and so she had to think it so, and she would think it so, and did.
In a few days more the actual marrying was done and their lives together always doing things and learning things was at last begun.
2.
Bear it in your mind my reader, but truly I never feel it that there ever can be for me any such a creature, no it is this scribbled and dirty and lined paper that is really to be to me always my receiver—but anyhow reader, bear it in your mind—will there be for me ever any such a creature—what I have said always before to you, that this that I write down a little each day here on my scraps of paper for you is not just an ordinary kind of novel with a plot and conversations to amuse you, but a record of a decent family progress respectably lived by us and our fathers and our mothers, and our grandfathers, and grandmothers, and this is by me carefully a little each day to be written down here; and so my reader arm yourself in every kind of a way to be patient, and to be eager, for you must always have it now before you to hear much more of these many kinds of decent ordinary people, of old, grown, grand-fathers and grand-mothers, of growing old fathers and growing old mothers, of ourselves who are always to be young grown men and women for us, and then there are still to be others and we must wait and see the younger fathers and young mothers bear them for us, these younger fathers and young mothers who always are ourselves inside us, who are to be always young grown men and women to us. And so listen while I tell you all about us, and wait while I hasten slowly forwards, and love, please, this history of this decent family's progress.
Yes it is a misfortune we have inside us, some few of us, I cannot deny it to you, all you others, it is true the simple interest I take in my family's progress. I have it, this interest in ordinary middle class existence, in simple firm ordinary middle class traditions, in sordid material unaspiring visions, in a repeating, common, decent enough kind of living, with no fine kind of fancy ways inside us, no excitements to surprise us, no new ways of being bad or good to win us.
You see, it is just an ordinary middle class tradition we must use to understand this family's progress. There must be no aspiring thoughts inside us, there must be a feeling always in us of being in a kind of way in business always honest, there must be in a kind of ordinary way always there inside us the sense of decent enough ways of living for us. Yes I am strong to declare that I have it, here in the heart of this high, aspiring, excitement loving people who despise it,—I throw myself open to the public,—I take a simple interest in the ordinary kind of families, histories, I believe in simple middle class monotonous tradition, in a way in honest enough business methods.
Middle-class, middle-class, I know no one of my friends who will admit it, one can find no one among you all to belong to it, I know that here we are to be democratic and aristocratic and not have it, for middle class is sordid material unillusioned unaspiring and always monotonous for it is always there and to be always repeated, and yet I am strong, and I am right, and I know it, and I say it to you and you are to listen to it, yes here in the heart of a people who despise it, that a material middle class who know they are it, with their straightened bond of family to control it, is the one thing always human, vital, and worthy it—worthy that all monotonously shall repeat it,—and from which has always sprung, and all who really look can see it, the very best the world can ever know, and everywhere we always need it.
The Herslands were a western family. David Hersland as a young man had gone far into the new country to make his money. He had succeeded very well there in making money. He had settled down in Gossols and had lived there for twenty years and more now.
He had made a big fortune. David Hersland was in some ways a splendid kind of person.
Mr. Hersland had brought his wife to Gossols with him. He had married her in Bridgepoint when his fortune was just beginning. His children had all been born in Gossols to him. They were really western, all of them, all through them. There were three of them, Martha, Alfred, David, there had been two others but they had died as little children. Now Martha, after many changes, was home again with him. Alfred who had never yet been any trouble to him was gone to Bridgepoint to marry Julia Dehning and then there as a lawyer to win for himself his own way of living. And the youngest David was soon to follow Alfred to Bridgepoint, to go to college there and to decide in him, as his way always had been and no one could ever understand him, from day to day what life meant to him to make it worth his living.
And so when Alfred Hersland first met Julia Dehning, his family father mother Martha and David were still living there in Gossols. The mother was already now a little ailing, the father had no longer his old strength for living, Martha had come back out of her trouble to them, Alfred had gone away and left them, David was very soon to follow him. They had their old place in Gossols to live in but it had not the beauty and the wonder now it had had all these years for them. Joy was a little dim inside now for all of them.
For many years it had been full of content, this home they had always lived in. The Herslands had never had a city house to be restless around them and to give restlessness inside to them. They had all these years been in the place they now lived in.
This house they had always lived in was not in the part of Gossols where the other rich people mostly were living. It was an old place left over from the days when Gossols was just beginning. It was grounds about ten acres large, fenced in with just ordinary kind of rail fencing, it had a not very large wooden house standing on the rising ground in the center with a winding avenue of eucalyptus, blue gum, leading from it to the gateway. There was, just around the house, a pleasant garden, in front were green lawns not very carefully
