Kangaroo Page 10

  ‘Cornwall had a great charm for me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know where you found it, I’m sure. But I suppose you’ve got a way of your own with a place, let it be Cornwall or where it may, to make it look well. It all depends where you’re born and where you come from.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Harriet.

  ‘I’ve never seen an Australian cottage looking like this, now. And yet it isn’t the number of things you’ve put into it.’

  ‘The number I’ve taken out,’ laughed Harriet.

  William James sat there with his quiet slumberous-seeming body, watching her: watching the quick radiance of her fair face, and the charm of her bearing. There was something quick and sure and, as it were, beyond the ordinary clay, about her, that exercised a spell over him. She was his real Cornish idea of a lady: simple, living among people as if one of themselves, and yet not one of themselves: a sort of magic about her. He could almost see a glow in the air around her. And he could see that for her he was just a nice fellow who lived in another world and on another plane than herself, and that he could never come up or she come down. She was the queen that slumbers somewhere in every Cornish imagination, the queen ungrudged. And perhaps, in the true Celtic imagination slumbers the glamorous king as well. The Celt needs the mystic glow of real kingliness. Hence his loneliness in the democratic world of industry, and his social perversity.

  ‘I don’t suppose Rose could ever learn to do this with a room, could she now?’ he asked, making a slight gesture with his hand. He sat with his clear, queer, light grey eyes fixed on Harriet’s face.

  ‘I think so,’ cried Harriet; then she met the watchful eyes. ‘In her own way she could. Every woman has her own way, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ he answered.

  ‘And you see,’ said Harriet, ‘we’re more or less lazy people who have no regular work in the world. If we had, perhaps we should live in a different way.’

  William James shook his head.

  ‘It’s what’s bred into you,’ he said, ‘that comes out. Now if I was a really rich man, I think I could learn to carry it off with the best of them, out here. But when it comes to being the real thing, why, I know it would be beyond me, so there you are.’

  ‘But can one be sure?’ she cried.

  ‘I think I can. I can see the difference between common and uncommon. I can do more than that. I can see the difference between gentlemen who haven’t got the gift, and those that have. Take Lord Washburn, for example. He’s a gentleman all right—he comes of an old family, they tell me. But I doubt very much if he’s any better than I am.’

  ‘Why should he be?’ cried Harriet.

  ‘What I mean is,’ said William James, ‘he hasn’t got the gift, you know.’

  ‘The gift of what?’ said Harriet, puzzled.

  ‘How shall I put it? The gift that you’ve got, now: and that Mr Somers has as well: and that people out here don’t have.’

  ‘But that may only be manner,’ said Harriet.

  ‘No, it’s more than manner. It’s the gift of being superior, there now: better than most folks. You understand me, I don’t mean swank and money. That’ll never give it you. Neither is it thinking yourself superior. The people that are superior don’t think it, and don’t even seem to feel it, in a way. And yet in a way they know it. But there aren’t many of them out here. And what there are go away. This place is meant for all one dead level sort of people.’

  He spoke with curious sarcasm.

  ‘But,’ said Harriet, ‘you are Australian yourself now, aren’t you? Or don’t you feel it?’

  ‘Oh yes, I suppose I feel it,’ he said shifting uneasily on his seat. ‘I am Australian. And I’m Australian partly because I know that in Australia there won’t be anybody any better than me. There now.’

  ‘But,’ laughed Harriet, ‘aren’t you glad then?’

  ‘Glad?’ he said. ‘It’s not a matter for gladness. It’s a fact. But I’m not one of the fools who think there’s nobody any better than me in the world. I know there are.’

  ‘How queer to hear you say so!’

  ‘But this isn’t the place for them. Here in Australia we don’t want them. We want the new-fashioned sort of people who are all dead-level as good as one another. You’re going to Mullumbimby this weekend with Jack and Victoria, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And I thought if we liked it we might stay down there for a while—by the sea—away from the town.’

  ‘You please yourselves, of course. Perhaps better there than here. But—it’s no business of mine, you know that’—he shrugged his shoulders. ‘But there’s something comes over me when I see Mr Somers thinking he can live out here, and work with the Australians. I think he’s wrong—I really do. They’ll drag him down to their level, and make what use they can of him—and—well, in my opinion you’d both be sorry for it.’

  ‘How strange that you should say so, you who are one of them.’

  ‘I am one of them, and I’m not. I’m not one of anybody. But I haven’t got only just the two eyes in my head that can tell the kettle from the teapot. I’ve got another set of eyes inside me somewhere that can tell real differences, when there are any. And that’s what these people don’t seem to have at all. They’ve only got the outside eyes.’

  Harriet looked at him in wonder. And he looked at her—at her queer, rather large, but thin-skinned, soft hands.

  ‘You need a thick skin to live out here,’ he said.

  But still she sat with her hands folded, lost in meditation.

  ‘But Lovat wants so much to do something in the world, with other men,’ she said at last. ‘It’s not my urging, I assure you.’

  ‘He’s making a mistake. He’s making a mistake to come out here, tell him from me. They’ll take him at their own level, not at his.’

  ‘But perhaps he wants to be taken at their level,’ said Harriet, rather bitterly, almost loving the short, thick man opposite for his quiet, Cornish voice and his uncanny grey eyes, and his warning.

  ‘If he does he makes the mistake of his life, tell him from me.’ And William James rose to his feet. ‘You’ll excuse me for stopping talking like this, over things that’s no business of mine,’ he added.

  ‘It’s awfully good of you,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Well, it’s not often I interfere with people’s doings. But there was just something about you and Mr Somers—’

  ‘Awfully good of you.’

  He had taken his little black felt hat. He had an almost Italian or Spanish look about him—from one of the big towns, Barcelona or even Palermo.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to be getting along,’ he said.

  She held out her hand to him to bid him good-bye. But he shook hands in a loose, slack way, and was gone, leaving Harriet uneasy as if she had received warning of a hidden danger.

  She hastened to show Somers the persimmons when he came home, and to tell of her visitor.

  ‘And he’s queer, Lovat, he’s awfully queer—nice too. He told me we were superior people, and that we made a mistake coming here, because they’d bring us down to their level.’

  ‘Not if we don’t let them.’

  ‘He says we can’t help it.’

  ‘Why did he come to tell you that, I wonder.’

  They were going down to Mullumbimby in two days’ time—and they had hardly seen anything of Jack and Victoria since the Sunday at Mosman’s Bay. But Victoria called across the fence, rather hesitatingly:

  ‘You’re going with us on Saturday, aren’t you, Mrs Somers?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’re looking forward to it immensely—if it really suits you.’

  ‘I’m so glad. I thought perhaps you didn’t want to go.’

  That same evening Jack and Victoria came across for a few minutes.

  ‘Look at the lovely cacchi,’ said Harriet, giving the persimmons their Italian name. ‘William James brought them me this morning.’

  ‘William James brought them!’ cried Vict
oria and Jack in a breath. ‘Why, whatever have you done to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ laughed Harriet. ‘I hope not, I’m sure.’

  ‘You must have given him a glad eye,’ said Jack. ‘Did he come in?’

  ‘Yes, he came in and talked to me quite a long time. He said he would see you tomorrow in town.’

  ‘Wonders never cease! I tell you, you’ve done it on him. What did he talk to you about, then?’

  ‘Oh, Australia. He said he didn’t think we should really like it.’

  ‘He did, did he? Wanted to warn you off, so to speak.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ laughed Harriet.

  ‘The little mingo. He’s as deep as a five hundred feet boring, and I’ve never got down to sweet water in him yet.’

  ‘Don’t you trust him?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Trust him? Oh yes, he’d never pick my pocket.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘That’s the only way I have of trusting folks,’ said Jack.

  ‘Then you don’t trust them far,’ mocked Harriet.

  ‘Perhaps I don’t. And perhaps I’m wise of it.’

  CHAPTER V

  COO - EE

  THEY went to Mullumbimby by the two o’clock train from Sydney on the Friday afternoon, Jack having managed to get a day off for the occasion. He was a sort of partner in the motorworks place where he was employed, so it was not so difficult. And work was slack.

  Harriet and Victoria were both quite excited. The Somers had insisted on packing one basket of food for the house, and Victoria had brought some dainties as well. There were few people in the train, so they settled themselves right at the front, in one of those long open second-class coaches with many cane seats and a passage down the middle.

  ‘This is really for the coal miners,’ said Victoria. ‘You’ll see they’ll get in when we get further down.’

  She was rather wistful, after the vague coolness that had subsisted between the two households. She was so happy that Somers and Harriet were coming with her and Jack. They made her feel—she could hardly describe it—but so safe, so happy and safe. Whereas often enough, in spite of the stalwart Jack, she felt like some piece of fluff blown about on the air, now that she was taken from her own home. With Somers and Harriet she felt like a child that is with its parents, so lovely and secure, without any need ever to look round. Jack was a man, and everything a man should be, in her eyes. But he was also like a piece of driftwood drifting on the strange unknown currents in an unexplored nowhere, without any place to arrive at. Whereas to Victoria, Harriet seemed to be rooted right in the centre of everything, at last she could come to perfect rest in her, like a bird in a tree that remains still firm when the floods are washing everything else about.

  If only Somers would let her rest in Harriet and him. But he seemed to have a strange vindictiveness somewhere in his nature, that turned round on her and terrified her worse than before. If he would only be fond of her, that was what she wanted. If he would only be fond of her, and not ever really leave her. Not love. When she thought of lovers she thought of something quite different. Something rather vulgar, rather common, more or less naughty. Ah no, he wasn’t like that. And yet—since all men are potential lovers to every woman—wouldn’t it be terrible if he asked for love. Terrible—but wonderful. Not a bit like Jack—not a bit. Would Harriet mind? Victoria looked at Harriet with her quick, bright, shy brown eyes. Harriet looked so handsome and distant: she was a little afraid of her. Not as she was afraid of Somers. Afraid as one woman is of another fierce woman. Harriet was fierce, Victoria decided. Somers was demonish, but could be gentle and kind.

  It came on to rain, streaming down the carriage windows. Jack lit a cigarette, and offered one to Harriet. She, though she knew Somers disliked it intensely when she smoked, particularly in a public place like this long, open railway carriage, accepted, and sat by the closed window smoking.

  The train ran for a long time through Sydney, or the endless outsides of Sydney. The town took almost as much leaving as London does. But it was different. Instead of solid rows of houses, solid streets like London, it was mostly innumerable detached bungalows and cottages, spreading for great distances, scattering over hills, low hills and shallow inclines. And then waste marshy places, and old iron, and abortive corrugated iron ‘works’—all like the Last Day of creation, instead of a new country. Away to the left they saw the shallow waters of the big opening where Botany Bay is: the sandy shores, the factory chimneys, the lonely places where it is still bush. And the weary half established straggling of more suburb.

  ‘Como’, said the station sign. And they ran on bridges over two arms of water from the sea, and they saw what looked like a long lake with wooded shores and bungalows: a bit like Lake Como, but oh, so unlike. That curious sombreness of Australia, the sense of oldness, with the forms all worn down low and blunt, squat. The squat-seeming earth. And then they ran at last into real country, rather rocky, dark old rocks, and sombre bush with its different pale-stemmed dull-leaved gum trees standing graceful, and various healthy-looking undergrowth, and great spiky things like zuccas. As they turned south they saw tree ferns standing on one knobbly leg among the gums, and among the rocks ordinary ferns and small bushes spreading in glades and up sharp hill slopes. It was virgin bush, and as if unvisited, lost, sombre, with plenty of space, yet spreading grey for miles and miles, in a hollow towards the west. Far in the west, the sky having suddenly cleared, they saw the magical range of the Blue Mountains. And all this hoary space of bush between. The strange, as it were, invisible beauty of Australia, which is undeniably there, but which seems to lurk just beyond the range of our white vision. You feel you can’t see—as if your eyes hadn’t the vision in them to correspond with the outside landscape. For the landscape is so unimpressive, like a face with little or no features, a dark face. It is so Aboriginal, out of our ken, and it hangs back so aloof. Somers always felt he looked at it through a cleft in the atmosphere; as one looks at one of the ugly-faced, distorted Aborigines with his wonderful dark eyes that have such an incomprehensible ancient shine in them, across gulfs of unbridged centuries. And yet, when you don’t have the feeling of ugliness or monotony, in landscape or in nigger, you get a sense of subtle, remote, formless beauty more poignant than anything ever experienced before.

  ‘Your wonderful Australia!’ said Harriet to Jack. ‘I can’t tell you how it moves me. It feels as if no one had ever loved it. Do you know what I mean? England and Germany and Italy and Egypt and India—they’ve all been loved so passionately. But Australia feels as if it had never been loved, and never come out into the open. As if man had never loved it, and made it a happy country, a bride country—or a mother country.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they ever have,’ said Jack.

  ‘But they will?’ asked Harriet. ‘Surely they will. I feel that if I were Australian, I should love the very earth of it—the very sand and dryness of it—more than anything.’

  ‘Where should we poor Australian wives be?’ put in Victoria, leaning forward her delicate, frail face—that reminded one of a flickering butterfly in its wavering.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet meditatively, as if they had to be considered, but were not as important as the other question.

  ‘I’m afraid most Australians come to hate the Australian earth a good bit before they’re done with it,’ said Jack. ‘If you call the land a bride, she’s the sort of bride not many of us are willing to tackle. She drinks your sweat and your blood, and then as often as not lets you down, does you in.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Harriet, ‘it will take time. And of course a lot of love. A lot of fierce love, too.’

  ‘Let’s hope she gets it,’ said Jack. ‘They treat the country more like a woman they pick up on the streets than a bride, to my thinking.’

  ‘I feel I could love Australia,’ declared Harriet.

  ‘Do you feel you could love an Australian?’ asked Jack, very much to the point.

  ‘Well,�
� said Harriet, arching her eyes at him, ‘that’s another matter. From what I see of them I rather doubt it,’ she laughed, teasing him.

  ‘I should say you would. But it’s no good loving Australia if you can’t love the Australian.’

  ‘Yes, it is. If as you say Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her and then treats her like dirt.’

  ‘It’s a good deal like that,’ said Jack.

  ‘And then you expect me to approve of you.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not all alike, you know.’

  ‘It always seems to me,’ said Somers, ‘that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it’s a real man’s country. The soil, the very plants seem to be waiting for it.’

  ‘You’ve got a lurid imagination, my dear man,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yes, he has,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s always so extreme.’

  The train jogged on, stopping at every little station. They were near the coast, but for a long time the sea was not in sight. The land grew steeper—dark, straight hills like cliffs, masked in sombre trees. And then the first plume of colliery smoke among the trees on the hill-face. But they were little collieries, for the most part, where the men just walked into the face of the hill down a tunnel, and they hardly disfigured the land at all. Then the train came out on the sea—lovely bays with sand and grass and trees, sloping up towards the sudden hills that were like a wall. There were bungalows dotted in most of the bays. Then suddenly more collieries, and quite a large settlement of bungalows. From the train they looked down on many many pale-grey zinc roofs, sprinkled about like a great camp, close together, yet none touching, and getting thinner towards the sea. The chimneys were faintly smoking, there was a haze of smoke and a sense of home, home in the wilds. A little way off, among the trees, plumes of white steam betrayed more collieries.

  A bunch of schoolboys clambered into the train with their satchels, at home as schoolboys are. And several black colliers, with tin luncheon boxes. Then the train ran for a mile and a half, to stop at another little settlement. Sometimes they stopped at beautiful bays in a hollow between hills, and no collieries, only a few bungalows. Harriet hoped Mullumbimby was like that. She rather dreaded the settlements with the many many iron roofs, and the wide, unmade roads of sandy earth running between, down to the sea, or skirting swamp-like little creeks.