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Title: The Record of Nicholas Freydon

Author: A. J. Dawson

Release date: December 18, 2009 [eBook #30704]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Clare Graham from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)


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E-text prepared by Clare Graham from page images generously made available
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THE RECORD OF NICHOLAS FREYDON

An Autobiography

[A novel by Alec John Dawson]







This etext prepared from the first edition published in 1914 by
Constable and Company Ltd, London.




EDITOR'S PREFATORY NOTE

It would ill become any writer to adopt an apologetic tone in
introducing the work of another pen than his own, and indeed I have no
thought of _apologia_ where Nicholas Freydon's writing is concerned.
On the contrary, it is out of respect for my friend's quality as a
writer that I am moved to a word of explanation here. It is this:
there are circumstances, sufficiently indicated I think in the text of
the book and my own footnote thereto, which tended to prevent my
performance of those offices for my friend's work which are usually
expected of one who is said to edit. It would be more fitting, I
suppose, if a phrase were borrowed from the theatrical world, and this
record of a man's life were said to be 'presented' rather than
'edited,' by me. I am advised to accept the editorial title in this
connection, but it is the truth that the book has not been edited at
all, in the ordinary acceptance of the term. A few purely verbal
emendations have been made in it, but Nicholas Freydon's last piece of
writing has never been revised, nor even arranged in deference to
accepted canons of book-making. It is given here as it left the
author's pen, designed, not for your eye or mine, but for that of its
writer, to be weighed and considered by him. But that weighing and
consideration it has not received.

So much I feel it incumbent upon me to say, as the avowed sponsor for
the book, in order that praise and blame may be rightly apportioned.
Touching the inherent value of this document, nothing whatever is due
to me. Any criticism of its arrangement, or lack of arrangement, to be
just, should be levelled at myself alone.




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTORY

CHILDHOOD--ENGLAND

BOYHOOD--AUSTRALIA

YOUTH--AUSTRALIA

MANHOOD--ENGLAND: FIRST PERIOD

MANHOOD--ENGLAND: SECOND PERIOD

THE LAST STAGE

EDITOR'S NOTE




THE RECORD OF NICHOLAS FREYDON


INTRODUCTORY


Back there in London--how many leagues and aeons distant!--I threw
down my pen and fled here to the ends of the earth, in pursuit of rest
and self-comprehending peace of mind. Here I now take up the pen again
and return in thought to London: that vast cockpit; still in pursuit
of rest and self-comprehending peace of mind.

That seems wasteful and not very hopeful. But, to be honest--and if
this final piece of pen-work be not honest to its core, it certainly
will prove the very acme of futility--I must add the expression of
opinion that most of the important actions of my life till now have
had the self-same goal in view: peace of mind. The surprising thing is
that, right up to this present, every one of my efforts has been
backed by a substantial if varying amount of solid conviction; of
belief that that particular action would bring the long-sought reward.
I suppose I thought this in coming here, in fleeing from London. Nay,
I know I did.

The latest, and I suppose the last, illusion bids me believe that if,
using the literary habit of a lifetime, I can set down in ordered
sequence the salient facts and events of that restless, struggling
pilgrimage I call my life, there is a likelihood that, seeing the
entire fabric in one piece, I may be able truly to understand it, and,
understanding it, to rest content before it ends. The ironical habit
makes me call it an illusion. In strict truth I listen to the call
with some confidence; not, to be sure, with the flaming ardour which
in bygone years has set me leaping into action in answer to such a
call; yet with real hope.

It is none so easy a task, this exact charting out of so complex a
matter as a man's life. And it may be that long practice of the
writer's art but serves to heighten its difficulties. For example,
since writing the sentence ending on that word 'hope,' I have covered
two whole pages with writing which has now been converted into ashes
among the logs upon my hearth. For the covering of those pages two
volumes had been fingered and referred to, if you please, and my
faulty memory drawn upon for yet a third quotation. So much for the
habit of literary allusiveness, engrained into one by years of
book-making, and yet more surely, I suspect, by labour for hire on the
newspaper press.

But, though I have detected and removed these two pages of
irrelevance, I foresee that unessential and therefore obscurantic
matter will creep in. Well, when I come to weigh the completed record,
I must allow for that; and, meanwhile, so far as time and my own
limitations as selector permit, I will prune and clear away from the
line of vision these weeds of errant fancy. For the record must of all
things be honest and comprehensive; rather than shapely, effective, or
literary. To be sure the pundits would say that this is to misuse and
play with words; to perpetrate a contradiction in terms. Well, we
shall see. Whatever the critics might say, your author by profession
would understand me well enough when I say: 'Honest, rather than
literary.'

How, to begin with, may I label and describe my present self? There,
immediately, I am faced with one of the difficulties of this task. One
can say of most men that they are this or that; of this class, order,
sect, party, or type; and, behold them neatly docketed! But in all
honesty I cannot say that I am of any special class, or that I
'belong' anywhere in particular. There is no circle in any community
which is indefeasibly my own by right of birth and training. I am
still a member of two London clubs, I believe. They were never more
than hotels for me. I am probably what most folk call a gentleman; but
how much does that signify in the twentieth century? Many simple
people would likely call me a person of education, even of learning,
belike, seeing a list of books under my name. A schoolman who examined
me would be pardoned (by me, at all events) for calling me an
ignoramus of no education whatever. For--and this I never reflected
upon until the present moment--I could not for the life of me
'analyse' the simplest sentence, in the rather odd scholastic sense of
that word. Inherited instinct and long practice make me aware, I
believe, of an error in syntax, when I chance upon one. But I could
only tell you that it was wrong, and never how or why. I know
something of literature, but less of mathematics than I assume to be
known by the modern ten-year-old schoolboy; something of three or four
languages, but nothing of their grammar. I have met and talked with
some of the most notable people of my time, but truly prefer cottage
life before that of the greatest houses. And so, in a score of other
ways, I feel it difficult informingly and justly to label myself.

But--let me have done with difficulties and definitions. My task shall
be the setting forth of facts, out of which definitions must shape
themselves. And, for a beginning, I must turn aside from my present
self, pass by a number of dead selves, each differing in a thousand
ways from every other, and bring my mind to bear for the moment upon
that infinitely remote self: the child, Nicholas Freydon. It may be
that curious and distant infant will help to explain the man.




CHILDHOOD--ENGLAND


I


The things I remember about my earliest infancy are not in the least
romantic.

First, I think, come two pictures, both perfectly distinct, and both
connected with domestic servants. The one is of a firelit interior,
below street level: an immense kitchen, with shining copper vessels in
it, an extremely hot and red fire, and a tall screen covered over with
pictures. An enormously large woman in a blue and white print gown
sits toasting herself before the fire; and a less immense female, in
white print with sprays of pink flowers on it, is devoting herself to
me. This last was Amelia; a cheerful, comely, buxom, and in the main
kindly creature, as I remember her. In the kitchen was a well-scrubbed
table of about three-quarters of a mile in length, and possessed of as
many legs as a centipede, some of which could be moved to support
flaps. (To put a measuring-tape over that table nowadays, or over
other things in the kitchen, for that matter, might bring
disappointment, I suppose.) These legs formed fascinating walls and
boundaries for a series of romantic dwelling-places, shops, caves, and
suchlike resorts, among which a small boy could wander at will, when
lucky enough to be allowed to visit this warm apartment at all. The
whole place was pervaded by an odour indescribably pleasing to my
infantile nostrils, and compact of suggestions of heat acting upon
clean print gowns, tea-cakes done to a turn, scrubbed wood, and hot
soap-suds.

But the full ecstasy of a visit to this place was only attained when I
was lifted upon the vast table by the warm and rosy Amelia, and
allowed to leap therefrom into her extended arms; she rushing toward
me, and both of us emitting either shrill or growling noises as the
psychological moment of my leap was reached. At the time I used to
think that springing from a trapeze, set in the dome of a great
building, into a net beneath, must be the most ravishing of all joys;
but I incline now to think that my more homely feat of leaping into
Amelia's warm arms was, upon the whole, probably a pleasanter thing.

This memory is of something which I believe happened fairly
frequently. My other most distinct recollection of what I imagine to
have been the same period in history is of a visit, a Sunday afternoon
visit, I think, paid with Amelia. I must have been of tender years,
because, though during parts of the journey I travelled on my own two
feet, I recollect occasional lapses into a perambulator, as it might
be in the case of an elderly or invalid person who walks awhile along
a stretch of level sward, and then takes his ease for a time in
victoria or bath-chair.

I remember Amelia lifting me out from my carriage in the doorway of
what I regarded as a very delightful small house, redolent of strange
and exciting odours, some of which I connect with the subsequent gift
of a slab of stuff that I ate with gusto as cake. My mature view is
that it was cold bread-pudding of a peculiarly villainous clamminess.
It is interesting to note that my delight in this fearsome dainty was
based upon its most malevolent quality: the chill consistency of the
stuff, which made it resemble the kind of leathery jelly that I have
seen used to moisten the face of a rubber stamp withal.

In this house--it was probably in a slum, certainly in a mean
street--one stepped direct from the pavement into a small kitchen,
where an elderly man sat smoking a long clay pipe. A covered stairway
rose mysteriously from one side of this apartment into the two
bedrooms above. A door beside the stairway opened into a tiny scullery,
from which light was pretty thoroughly excluded by the high, black wall
which dripped and frowned no more than three feet away from its
window. I have little doubt that this scullery was a pestilent place.
At the time it appealed to my romantic sense as something rather
attractive.

The elderly man in the kitchen was Amelia's father. That in itself
naturally gave him distinction in my eyes. But, in addition, he was an
old sailor, and, with a knife which was attached to a white lanyard,
he could carve delightful boats (thoroughly seaworthy in a wash-hand
basin) out of ordinary sticks of firewood. It is to be noted, by the
way, a thing I never thought of till this moment, that these same
sticks and bundles of firewood have a peculiarly distinctive smell of
their own. It is the smell of a certain kind of grocer's shop whose
proprietor, for some esoteric reason, calls himself an 'Italian
warehouse-man.' In later life I occasionally visited such a shop,
between Fleet Street and the river, when I had rooms in that locality.

Boat-building figured largely in that visit to Amelia's parents. (The
girl had a mother; large, flaccid, and, on this occasion, partly
dissolved in tears.) But the episode immediately preceding our
departure is what overshadowed everything else for me that day, and
for several subsequent nights. Amelia and the tearful mother took me
up the dark little stairway, and introduced me to Death. They showed
me Amelia's sister, Jinny, who died (of consumption, I believe) on the
day before our visit. I still can see the alabaster white face, with
its pronounced vein-markings; the straight, thin form, outlined
beneath a sheet, in that tiny, low-ceiled, airless garret. What a
picture to place before an infant on a sunny Sunday afternoon! It
might be supposed that I had asked to see it, for I remember Amelia
saying, as one about to give a child a treat:

'Now, mind, Master Nicholas, you're to be a very good boy, and you're
not to say a word about it to any one.'

But, no, I do not think I can have desired the experience, for to this
day I cherish a lively recollection of the agony of sick horror which
swam over me when, in obedience to instructions given, I suffered my
lips to touch the marble-like face of the dead girl.

How strange is that unquestioning obedience of childhood! Recognition
of it might well give pause to careless instructors of youth. The kiss
meant torture to me, in anticipation and in fact. But I was bidden,
and never dreamed of refusing to obey. No doubt, there was also at
work in me some dim sort of infantile delicacy. This was an occasion
upon which a gentleman could have no choice....

Ah, well, I believe Amelia was a dear good soul, and I am sure I hope
she married well, and lived happily ever after. I have no recollection
whatever of how or when she drifted out of my life. But the visit to
Jinny's deathbed, and the exciting leaps from the immeasurably long
kitchen table into Amelia's print-clad arms, are things which stand
out rather more clearly in my recollection than many of the events of,
say, twenty years later.


II


How is it that my earliest recollections should centre about folk no
nearer or dearer to me than domestic servants? I know that my mother
died within three months of my birth. There had to be, and was,
another woman in my life before Amelia; but I have no memories of her.
She was an aunt, an unmarried sister of my mother's; but I believe my
father quarrelled with her before I began to 'take notice' very much;
and then came Amelia.

The large underground kitchen really was fairly big. I had a look at
it no more than a dozen years ago. The house, too, was and is a not
unpleasing one, situated within a stone's throw of Russell Square,
Bloomsbury. Its spaces are ample, its fittings solidly good, and its
area less subterranean than many. Near by is a select livery stable
and mews of sub-rural aspect, with Virginia creeper climbing over a
horse's head in stucco. Amelia shared with me a night nursery and a
nursery-living room in this house, the latter overlooking the mews,
through the curving iron rails of a tiny balcony. Below us my father
occupied a small bedroom and a large sitting-room, the latter being
the 'first floor front.'

At this time, and indeed during all the period of my first English
memories--say, eight years--my father was engaged in journalistic
work. I know now that he had been called to the bar, a member of
Lincoln's Inn; but I do not know that he ever had a brief. He gave
some years, I believe, to coaching and tutoring. I remember seeing,
later in my boyhood, a tattered yellow prospectus which showed that he
once delivered certain lectures on such subjects as 'Mediaeval English
Poetry.' In my time I gather that my father called no man master or
employer, but was rather the slave of a number of autocrats in Fleet
Street. 'The office,' as between Amelia and myself, may have meant all
Fleet Street. But my impression now is that it meant the building then
occupied by the ----. (Here figures the name of one of London's oldest
morning newspapers.--Ed.) And, it may be, the ---- Club; for I have
reason to believe that my father did much of his work at his club. I
have even talked there with one member at least who recollected this
fact.

But the memory of my father as he was in this early period is
curiously vague. It would seem that he produced no very clear
impression on my mind then. Our meetings were not very frequent, I
think. As I chiefly recall them, they occurred in the wide but rather
dark entrance hall, and were accompanied by conversation confined to
Amelia and my father. At such times he would be engaged in polishing
his hat, sometimes with a velvet pad, and sometimes on his
coat-sleeve. I used to hear from him remarks like these:

'Well, keep him out of doors as much as possible, so long as it
doesn't rain. Eh? Oh, well, you'd better buy another. How much will it
be? I will send up word if I am back before the boy's bed-time.'

And then he might turn to me, after putting on his hat, and absently
pull one of my ears, or stroke my nose or forehead. His hands were
very slender, warm, and pleasantly odorous of soap and tobacco. 'Be a
good man,' he would say. And there the interview ended. He never said:
'Be a good child'; always 'a good man'; and sometimes he would repeat
it, in a gravely preoccupied way.

Once, and, so far as I remember, only once, we met him out-of-doors;
in the park, it was, and he took us both to the Zoological Gardens,
and gave us tea there. (Yellowish cake with white sugar icing over it
has ever since suggested to me the pungent smell of monkey-houses and
lions' cages.) The meeting was purely accidental, I believe.

It must have been in about my ninth year, I fancy, that I began really
to know something of my father, as a man, rather than as a sort of
supernatural, hat-polishing, He-who-must-be-obeyed. We had a small
house of our own then, in Putney; and the occasion of our first coming
together as fellow-humans was a shared walk across Wimbledon Common,
and into Richmond Park by the Robin Hood Gate. The period was the
'sixties of last century, and I had just begun my attendance each day
at a local 'Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen.' To us, in the Academy,
my father descended as from Olympus, while the afternoon was yet
young, and carried me off before the envious eyes of my fellow
sufferers and what I felt to be the grudging gaze of the usher, who
had already twice since dinner-time severely pulled my ears, because
of some confusion that existed in my mind between Alfred and his burnt
cakes and Canute and his wet feet. (As I understood it, Canute sat on
the beach upon one of those minute camp-stools which mothers and
nurses used at the seaside before the luxurious era of canopied
hammock chairs.)

In my devious childish fashion, I presently gathered that there had
been momentous doings in London town that day, and that in the upshot
my father had terminated his connection with the famous newspaper from
which the bulk of his earnings had been drawn for some years. For a
little while I fancied this must be almost as delightful for him as my
own unexpected escape from the Academy that afternoon had been for me.
But, gradually, my embryo intelligence rejected this theory, and I
became possessed of a sense of grave happenings, almost, it might be,
of catastrophe. Quite certainly, my father had never before talked to
me as he did that summer afternoon in Richmond Park. His vein was, for
him, somewhat declamatory, and his unusual gestures impressed me
hugely. It is likely that at times he forgot my presence, or ceased,
at all events, to remember that his companion was his child. His
massive, silver-headed malacca cane did great execution among the
bracken, I remember.

(I had been rather pleased for my school-mates to have had an
opportunity of observing this stick, and had regretted the absence of
my father's usual hat, equal in refulgence to the cane. Evidently, he
had called at the house and changed his head-gear before walking up to
the Academy, for he now wore the soft black hat which he called his
'wideawake.')

That he was occasionally conscious of me his monologue proved, for it
included such swift, jerky sentences as:

'Remember that, my son. Have nothing to do with this accursed trade of
ink-spilling. Literary work! God save the mark!' (I wondered what
particular ink 'mark' this referred to.) 'The purse-proud wretches
think they buy your soul with their starveling cheques. Ten years' use
of my brain; ten years wasted in slavish pot-boiling for them; and
then--then, this!'

'This,' I imagine, was dismissal; accepted resignation, say. I
gathered that my father had been free to do his work where he chose;
that he had used the newspaper office only as a place in which to
consult with his editor before writing; and that now some new broom in
the office was changing all that; that my father had been bidden to
attend a certain desk during stated hours to perform routine work each
day; that he had protested, refused, and closed his connection with
the journal, after a heated interview with some managerial bashaw.

In the light of all I now know, I apprehend that my father had just
been brought into contact with the first stirrings of those radical
changes which revolutionised the London world of literature and
journalism during the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
The Board School had not quite arrived, but the social revolution was
at hand; and, there among the bracken in Richmond Park, my father with
his malacca cane was defying the tide--like my friend of the
camp-stool: Canute. Remembered phrases like: 'Underbred little clerk!';
'His place is the counting-house, and ---- [the editor] should have
known better than to leave us at the mercy of this impudent cad,'
convince me that my father's wrath was in great part directed less
against an individual than a social movement or tendency.

Much that my father said that afternoon would probably have a
ridiculous seeming in this twentieth century. Compulsory education and
the æsthetic movement, not to mention the Labour Party, Tory
Democrats, and the Halfpenny Press, were as yet undiscovered delights
when my father talked to me in Richmond Park. A young man of to-day,
reading or listening to such words, would almost certainly be misled
by them regarding the character and position of the speaker. My father
was no scion of a noble house, but the only son of a decayed merchant.
His attitude of mind and disposition, however, were naturally somewhat
aristocratic, I think. Also, as I have said, our talk was in the
'sixties. He was sensitive, very proud, inclined, perhaps, to
scornfulness, certainly to fastidiousness, and one who seldom suffered
fools either gladly or with much show of tolerance. It was a somewhat
unfortunate temperament, probably, for a man situated as he was,
possessed of no private means and dependent entirely upon his
earnings. In my mother, I believe he had married a lady of somewhat
higher social standing than his own, who never was reconciled to the
comparatively narrow and straitened circumstances of her brief
wifehood.

'The people who have to do with newspapers are the serfs and the
prostitutes of literature. It was not always so, but I've felt it
coming for some time now. It is the growing dominion of the City, of
commerce, of their boasted democracy. The People's Will! Disgusting
rubbish! How the deuce should these office-bred hucksters know what is
best? But, I tell you, my boy, that it is they who are becoming the
masters. There is no more room in journalism for a gentleman;
certainly not for literary men and people of culture. They think it
will pay them better to run their wretched sheets for the proletariat.
We shall see. Oh, I am better out of it, of course. I see that
clearly; and I am thankful to be clear of their drudgery.' (My
listening mind brightened.) 'But yet--there's your education to be
thought of. Expenses are--And, of course--H'm!' (Clouds shadowed my
outlook once more.) 'This pitiful anxiety to cling to the safety of a
salary is humiliating--unworthy of one's manhood. Good heavens! why
was I born, not one of them, and yet dependent on the caprices of such
people?'

It may be filial partiality, but something makes me feel genuinely
sorry for my father, as I look back upon that outpouring of his in
Richmond Park. And that was in the 'sixties. I wonder how the
twentieth-century journalism would have struck him. The later
subtleties of unadmitted advertising, the headline, the skittishly
impressionistic descriptive masterpieces of 'our special
representative,' and the halfpenny newspapers, were all unthought-of
boons, then. And as for the advancing democracy of his prophecies,
why, there were quite real sumptuary laws of a sort still holding sway
in the 'sixties, and well on into the 'eighties, for that matter!

We walked home from the Roehampton Gate, and in some respects I was no
longer quite a child when I climbed into bed that night.


III


In my eyes, at all events, there was a kind of a partnership between
my father and myself from this time onward. Before, there had been
three groups in my scheme of things: upon the one hand, Amelia (or her
successor) and myself, with, latterly, some of the people of the
Putney Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; in another and quite
separate compartment, my father; and, finally, the rest of the world.
Gradually, now, I came to see things rather in this wise: upon the one
hand, my father and myself, with, perhaps, a few other folk as
satellites; and, on the other hand, the rest of the world.

And at this early stage I began to regard the world--every one outside
our own small camp--in an antagonistic light, as a hostile force, as
the enemy. Life was a battle in which the odds were fearfully uneven;
for it was my father and myself against the world. Needless to say, I
did not put the matter to myself in those words; but at this precise
period I am well assured that I acquired this attitude of mind. It
dated from the admittance into partnership with my father, which was
signalised by the walk and talk among the bracken in Richmond Park.

I ought to say that I had always had a great admiration for my father.
He seemed to me clearly superior in a thousand ways to other men. But
never before the Richmond episode had there been personal sympathy,
nor yet any loyal feeling of fellowship, mingled with this admiration.

I remember very distinctly the pride I felt in my father's personal
appearance. He was not a dandy, I think; but there was a certain quiet
nicety and delicacy about his dress and manner which impressed me
greatly. The hair about his ears and temples was silvery grey; one of
the marks of his superiority, in my eyes. He always raised his hat in
leaving a shop in which a woman served; his manner of accepting or
tendering an apology among strangers was very grand indeed. In
saluting men in the street, he had a spacious way of raising his
malacca stick which, to this day, would charm me, were it possible to
see such a gesture in these rushing times. The photograph before me as
I write proves that my father was a handsome man, but it does not show
the air of distinction which I am assured was his. And, let me record
here the fact that, whatever might be thought of the wisdom or
otherwise of his views or actions, I never once knew him to be guilty
of an act of vulgar discourtesy, nor of anything remotely resembling
meanness.

In these days it is safe to say that the very poorest toiler's child
has more of schooling than I had, and, doubtless, a superior sort of
schooling. I spent rather less than a year and a half at the Putney
Academy, and that was the beginning and the end of my schooling.
Before being introduced to the Academy, I was a fairly keen reader;
and that remained. At the Academy I was obliged to write in a copy-book,
and to commit to memory sundry valueless dates. There may have
been other acquisitions (irrespective of ear-tweakings and various
cuts from a vicious little cane), but I have no recollection of them;
and, to this day, the simplest exercises of everyday figuring baffle
me the moment I take a pencil in my hand. If I cannot arrive at
solution 'in my head' I am done, and many a minor monetary loss have I
suffered in consequence.

I trust I am justified in believing that to-day there are no such
schools left in England as that Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, in
Putney. As a training establishment it was more suitable, I think, for
the sons of parrots or rabbits. I never even learned to handle a
cricket bat or ball there. Neither, I think, did any of my
contemporaries in that futile place. The headmaster and proprietor was
a harassed and disappointed man, who exhausted whatever energies he
possessed in interviewing parents and keeping up appearances. His one
underpaid usher was a young man of whom I remember little, beyond his
habit of pulling my ears in class, and the astoundingly rich crop of
pimples on his face, which he seemed to be always cultivating with
applications of cotton-wool, plaster, and nasty stuff from a flat
white jar. His mind, I verily believe, was as innocent of thought as a
cabbage. When sent to play outdoor games with us, and instruct us in
them, he always reclined on the grass, or sat on a gate, reading the
_Family Herald_, or a journal in whose title the word 'Society'
figured; except on those rare occasions when his employer came our way
for a few moments. Then, cramming his book into his pocket, the poor
pimply chap would plunge half hysterically into our moody ranks
(forgetful probably of what we were supposed to be playing) with
muttered cries of: 'Now then, boys! Put your heart into it!' and the
like. 'Put your heart into it!' indeed! Poor fellow; he probably was
paid something less than a farm labourer's wage, and earned
considerably less than that.

No, any education which I received in boyhood must have come to me
from my father; and that entirely without any set form of instruction,
but merely from listening to his talk, and asking him questions. Also,
the books I read were his property; and I do not recall any trash
among them. It was the easiest thing in the world to evade the
'home-work' set me by the usher, and I consistently did so. As a rule, he
was none the wiser, and when he did detect me, the results rarely went
beyond perfunctory ear-pulling; a cheap price for free evenings, I
thought. The usher was frankly sick of us all, and of his employment,
too; and I do not wonder at it, seeing that he was no more equipped
for his work than for administering a state. He never had been trained
to discharge any function in life whatever. How then could he be
expected to know how to train us?

Withal, I somehow did acquire a little knowledge, and the rudiments of
some definite tastes and inclinations, during this period. Recently,
in London, I have once or twice endeavoured to probe the minds of
County Council schoolboys of a similar age, with a view to comparing
the sum of their knowledge with my own in those Putney days. And,
curious though it seems, it does certainly appear to me that the
comparison was never to the advantage of the modern boy; though I am
assured he must enjoy the benefits of some kind of thought-out
educational system. I certainly did not. These things partake of the
nature of mysteries.

I suppose the successive servant maids who chiefly controlled my early
childhood must have been more ignorant than any member of their class
in post-Board School days. Yet it seems beyond question clear to me
that such beginnings of a mind as I possessed at the age of ten, such
mental tendencies as I was beginning to show, were at all events more
hopeful, more rational, better worth having, than those I have been
able to discern in the twentieth-century London office boy, fresh from
his palatial County Council School. I may be quite wrong, of course,
but that is how it appears to me--despite all the uplifting influences
of halfpenny newspapers, and picture theatres, and the forward march
of democracy.

Then there is that notable point, the question of speech; the vehicle
of mental expression and thought transference. Between the ages of one
year and nine years, society for me was confined almost exclusively to
servant girls. From their lips it was that I acquired the faculty of
speech. Yet I am certain that the boy who walked in Richmond Park with
my father in the 'sixties spoke in his dialect, and not in that of
Cockney nursemaids. Why was that? If my father ever corrected my
speech it was upon very rare occasions. I remember them perfectly.
They were not such corrections as would very materially affect a lad's
accent or choice of words.

Having read a good deal more than I had conversed, I was mentally
familiar with certain words which I never had happened to have heard
pronounced. One instance I recall. (It was toward the end of my
Academy period.) I had occasion to read aloud some passage to my
father, and it included the word 'inevitable,' which in my innocence I
pronounced with the accent on the third syllable. Up went my father's
eyebrows. 'Inev_it_able,' he mimicked, with playful scorn. And that
was all. He offered no correction. I recall that I was covered in rosy
confusion, and, guessing rightly, by some happy chance (or unconscious
recollection) hit upon the conventional pronunciation, never to forget
it. But, judged by any scholastic standard I ever heard expounded,
there is no doubt about it, I was, and for that matter am, a veritable
ignoramus.

During all the year which followed the beginning of intimacy between
us, my impression is that my father was increasingly worried and
depressed. Children have a shrewder consciousness of these things than
many of their elders suppose; and I was well aware that things were
not going well with my father. I saw more of him, and missed no
opportunities of obtaining his companionship. He, for his part, saw a
good deal less of other people, I fancy, and lost no opportunity of
avoiding intercourse with his contemporaries. He brooded a great deal;
and was very fitful in his reading, writing, and correspondence. I
began to hear upon his lips significant if vague expressions of his
desire to 'Get away from all this'; to 'Get out of this wretched
scramble'; to 'Find a way out of it all.'

And then with bewildering suddenness came the first big event of my
career; the event which, I suppose, was chiefly responsible also for
its latest episode.


IV


No doubt one reason why our migration to Australia seemed so
surprisingly sudden a step to me was that the preliminaries were
arranged without my knowledge. Apart from this, I believe the step was
swiftly taken.

My father had no wife or family to consider. I do not think there was
a single relative left, beside myself, with whom he had maintained
intercourse of any kind. Our household effects were all sold as they
stood in the house, to a singularly urbane and gentlemanly old dealer
in such things, a Mr. Fennel, whose stock phrase: 'Pray don't put
yourself about on my account, sir, I beg,' seemed to me to form his
reply to every remark of my father's. And thus, momentous though the
hegira might be, and was, to us, I suppose it did not call for any
very serious amount of detailed preparation, once my father had made
his decision.

Looking back upon it now, in the light of some knowledge of the
subject, and of old lands and new, it seems to me open to question
whether, in all the moving story of British oversea adventuring, there
is an instance of any migration more curious than ours, or of any
person emigrating who was less suited for the venture than my father.
In the matter of our baggage and personal effects, now, the one thing
to which my father devoted serious care was something which probably
would not figure at all in any official list of articles required for
an emigrant's kit: his books.

His library consisted of some three thousand volumes, the gleanings of
a quarter of a century when books were neither so numerous nor so
cheap as they are to-day. From these he set himself the maddening task
of selecting one hundred volumes to be taken with us. The rest were to
be sold. The whole of our preparations are dominated in the retrospect
for me, by my father's absorption in the task of sifting and re-sifting
his books. Acting under his instructions, I myself handled
each one of the three thousand and odd volumes a good many times.
Eventually, we took six hundred and seventy-three volumes with us, of
which more than fifty were repurchased, at a notable advance, of
course, upon the price he paid for them, from the dealer who bought
the remainder.

This was my first insight into the subtleties of trade, and I noted
with loyal anger, in my father's interest, how contemptuously the
dealer belittled our books in buying them, and how eloquently he
dilated upon their special values in selling back to us those my
father found he could not spare. In every case these volumes were rare
and hard to come by, greatly in demand, 'the pick of the basket,' and
so forth. Well, I suppose that is commerce. At the time it seemed to
me amply to justify all my father's lofty scorn and hatred for
everything in any way connected with business.

If only the book-dealer could have adopted Mr. Fennel's praiseworthy
attitude, I thought: 'Pray don't put yourself about, sir, on my
account, I beg.' But then, Mr. Fennel, I make no doubt, was heading
straight for bankruptcy. I have sought his name in vain among Putney's
modern tradesfolk. Whereas, Mr. Siemens, the gentleman who bought our
library, apart from his various thriving establishments in London, now
cherishes his declining years, I believe, in a villa in the Italian
Riviera, and a manor house in Hampshire. Though young, when I met him
in Putney, he evidently had the root of the matter in him, from a
commercial point of view, and was possibly even a little in advance of
his time in the matter of business ability. He drove a very smart
horse, I remember, was dressed smartly, and had a smart way of saying
that business was business. Yes, I dare say Mr. Siemens was more a man
of his time than my poor father.

It was on the afternoon of May 2, 1870, the day after my tenth
birthday, that we sailed from Gravesend for Sydney, in the full-rigged
clipper ship _Ariadne_, of London, with one hundred and forty-seven
other emigrants and eighteen first-class passengers. It was, I
suppose, a part of my father's enthusiastically desperate state of
mind at this time that we were booked as steerage passengers. We were
to lay aside finally all the effete uses of sophisticated life. We
were emigrants, bent upon carving a home for ourselves out of the
virgin wilderness. Naturally, we were to travel in the steerage. And,
indeed, I have good reason to suppose that my father's supply of money
must have been pretty low at the time. But we occupied a first-class
railway carriage on the journey down to Gravesend; and I know our
porter received a bright half-crown for his services to us, for my
father's hands were occupied, and the coin was passed to me for
bestowal.

Long before the tug left us, we sat down to our first meal on board;
perhaps a hundred of us together. A weary poor woman with two babies
was on my left, and a partly intoxicated man of the coal-heaving sort
(very likely a Cabinet Minister in Australia to-day) on my father's
right. This simple soul made the mistake of endeavouring to establish
an affectionate friendship with my father, who was sufficiently
resentful of the man's mere proximity, and received his would-be
genial advances with the most freezing politeness. But the event which
precipitated a crisis was the coal-heaver's removal of his knife from
his mouth--the dexterity with which his kind can manipulate these
lethal weapons, even when partly intoxicated, is little less than
miraculous--after the safe discharge there of some succulent morsel
from his plate, to plunge it direct into the contents of the
butter-dish before my father.

Black wrath descended upon my father's face as he rose from the table,
and drew me up beside him. 'Insufferable!' he muttered, as we left
that curious place for the first and last time. I see it now with its
long, narrow, uncovered tables, stretching between clammy iron
stanchions, and supported by iron legs fitting into sockets in the
deck. It was lighted by hanging lanterns which threw queer, moving
shadows in all directions, and stank consumedly.

'Are we hogs that we should be given our swill in such a sty?' asked
my father, explosively, of some subordinate member of the crew whom we
met as we reached the open deck.

'I dunno, matey,' replied this innocent. 'Feelin' sickish, are ye?
You've started too soon.'

'Yes, I'm feeling pretty sick,' said my father, as the glimmer of the
humorous side of it all touched his mind. 'Look here, my man,' he
continued, 'here's half a crown for you. I want to see the purser of
this ship. Just show me where I can find him, like a good fellow, will
you?'

We found the purser in that condition of harassment which appears to
belong, like its uniform, to his post, when a ship is clearing the
land. He was inclined at first to adopt a pretty short way with us. He
really didn't know what emigrants wanted these days. Did they think a
ship's steerage was a _ho_-tel? And so forth.

But my father was on his mettle now, and handled his man with
considerable skill and suavity. There was no second-class
accommodation on the ship. But in the end we were taken into the
first-class ranks, at a substantial reduction from the full first-class
fares, on the understanding that we contented ourselves with a
somewhat gloomy little single-berth cabin which no one else wanted.
Here a makeshift bed was presently arranged for me, and within the
hour we emigrants from the steerage had become first-class passengers.
The translation brought such obvious and real relief to my father that
my own spirits rose instantly; I began to take great interest in our
surroundings, and, from that moment, entirely forgot those prophetic
internal twinges, those stomachic forebodings which, in the 'other
place,' as politicians say, had begun to turn my thoughts toward the
harrowing tales I had heard of sea-sickness.

My father, poor man, was not so fortunate. He began before long to pay
a heavy price in bodily affliction for all the stress and excitement
of the past few days. For a full fortnight the most virulent type of
sea-sickness had him in its horrid grip. I have since seen many other
folk in evil case from similar causes, but none so vitally affected by
the complaint as my father was, and never one who bore it with more
patient courtesy than he did. Not in the cruellest paroxysm did he
lose either his self-respect, or his consideration for me, and for
others. The mere mention of this fell complaint excites mirth in the
minds of the majority; but rarely can a man or woman be found whose
self-control is proof against its attacks; and I take pleasure in
remembering my father's admirable demeanour throughout his ordeal. In
the steerage he had hardly survived it, I think. Here, with decent
privacy, no single complaint passed his lips; and there was not a day,
hardly an hour, I believe, in which he ceased to take thought for his
small son's comfort and wellbeing. His courtesy was no skin-deep pose
with my father. No doubt we are all much cleverer and more enlightened
nowadays, but--however, that is one of the lines of thought which it
is quite unnecessary for me to pursue here.

I was quite absurdly proud of my father, I remember, when, at length,
he made his first appearance on the poop, leaning on my shoulder, his
own shoulders covered by the soft rug we called the 'Hobson rug,'
because, years before, a friend of that name had bequeathed it to us,
after a visit to the house near Russell Square. In all the time that
came afterwards, I am not sure that my father's constitution ever
fully regained the tone it lost during our first fortnight aboard the
_Ariadne_. But, if his health had suffered a set-back, his manner had
not; that distinction of bearing in him which always impressed me, in
which I took such pride, seemed to me now more than ever marked.

Child though I was, I am assured that this characteristic of my
father's had a very real existence, and was not at all the creation of
my boyish fancy. From my very earliest days I had heard it commented
upon by landladies and servants, and, too, in remarks casually
overheard from neighbours and strangers. Now, among our fellow-passengers
on board the _Ariadne_, I heard many similar comments.

Looking back from this distance I find it somewhat puzzling that in my
father's personality there should have been combined so much of real
charm, dignity, and distinction, with so marked a distaste for the
society of his fellows. Here was a man who seemed able always to
inspire interest and admiration when he did go among his equals (or
those not his equals, for that matter), who yet preferred wherever
possible to avoid every form of social intercourse. By nature he
seemed peculiarly fitted to make his mark in society; by inclination
and habit, more especially in later life, it would seem he shunned
society as the plague itself. Withal, there was not the faintest
suggestion of moroseness about him, and when circumstances did lead
him into converse with others he always conveyed an impression of
pleased interest. This product of his exceptional courtesy and
considerateness must have puzzled many people, taken in conjunction
with his invariable avoidance of intercourse wherever that could be
managed with politeness. Far more than any monetary or more practical
consideration, it was, I am certain, this desire of my father's to get
away from people which had led to our migration.

'People interrupt one so horribly,' was a remark he frequently made to
me.


V


Folk whose experience of sea travel is confined to the passengers'
quarters on board modern steamships of high tonnage can have but a
shadowy conception of what a three months' passage round the Cape
means, when it is made in a 1200 ton sailing vessel. I can pretend to
no technical knowledge of ships and seafaring; but it is always with
something of condescension in my mental attitude that I set foot on
board a steamship, or hear praise of one of the palatial modern
'smoke-stacks.' It was thus I remember that the _Ariadne's_ seamen
spoke of steamships.

I suppose room could almost be found for the _Ariadne_ in the saloons
of some of the twentieth-century Atlantic greyhounds. But I will wager
that the whole fleet of them could not show a tithe of her grace and
spirited beauty in a sea-way. And, be it noted, they would not be so
extravagantly far ahead of the _Ariadne_ even in point of speed, say,
between the Cape and Australia, when, in running her easting down with
a living gale on her quarter, she spurned the foam from her streaming
sides to the tune of a steady fourteen to fifteen knots in an hour;
'snoring along,' as seamen say, with all her cordage taut as
harp-strings, and her clouds of canvas soaring heavenward tier on tier,
strained to the extreme limit of the fabric's endurance.

From talk with my father, I knew the _Ariadne_ of mythology, and so
the sight of the patent log-line trailing in the creamy turmoil of our
wake used always to suggest imaginings to me, as I leaned gazing over
our poop rail, of a modern Theseus being rescued by this line of ours
from the labyrinthine caverns of some submarine Minotaur.

Aye, she was a brave ship, and these were brave days of continuously
stirring interest to the lad fresh from Putney and its Academy for the
Sons of Gentlemen; or, as I should probably say, from one of its
academies. I do not recall that life itself, the great spectacle, had
at this period any interest for me, as such. My musings had not
carried me so far. But the things and people about me, the play of the
elements, and the unceasing and ever-varying activities of the ship's
working, appealed to me as his love to a lover, filling my every hour
with waiting claims, each to my ardour more instant and peremptory
than its fellow.

Rhapsodies have been penned about the simple candour of children, the
unmeasured frankness of boys. These qualities were not, I think,
conspicuous in me. At least, I recall a considerable amount of
play-acting in my life on board the _Ariadne_, and, I think, in even
earlier phases. As a boy, it seems to me, I had a very keen appetite
for affection. I was somewhat emotional and sentimental, and always
interested in producing an impression upon the minds of those about
me. Without reaching the point of seeing life as a spectacle, I
believe my own small personality presented a spectacle of which I was
pretty generally and interestedly conscious. There was a good deal of
drama for me, in my own insignificant progress. I often watched
myself, and strove to gauge the impression I produced on others, and
to mould and shape this to my fancy. There may possibly be something
unpleasant, even unnatural about this, in so young a boy. I do not
know, but I am sure it is true; and so it is rightly set down here.

There was a Mrs. Armstrong among our passengers, who was accompanied
by two daughters; a bonny, romping girl of sixteen, in whom I felt
little or no interest, and a serious young woman of two or
three-and-twenty, with whom I fell in love in an absurdly solemn fashion.
Miss Armstrong had a great deal of shining fair hair, a good figure, and
pleasing dark blue eyes. That is as far as memory carries me regarding
her appearance. She rather took me up, as she might have taken up
crewel work, whatever that may be, or district visiting, or what not.
No doubt she was among the majority in whom my father inspired
interest. She talked to me in an exemplary way, and held up before me,
as I remember it, a sort of blend of little Lord Fauntleroy and the
dreadful child in _East Lynne_, as an ideal to strive after.

She assuredly meant most kindly by me, but the influence was not,
perhaps, very wholesome; or, it may be, I twisted and perverted it to
ill uses. At least, I remember devious ways in which I sought to earn
her admiration, and other yet more devious ways in which I schemed to
win petting from her. I actually used to invent small offences and
weave circumstantial romances about pretended wrong-doings, in order
to have the pleasure of confessing, with mock shame, and getting
absolution, along with caresses and sentimental promises of help to do
better in future. In retrospect it seems I was a somewhat horrid
little chap in this. I certainly adored Miss Armstrong; though in an
entirely different way from the manner of my subsequent passion for
little black-haired Nelly Fane. The Fane family consisted of the
father, mother, one boy, and two girls: Nelly, and her sister Marion,
both charming children, the first very dark, the other fair. Nelly was
a year older than I, Marion two years younger. The boy, Tom, was
within a month or two of my own age.

It might be that I was wearying a little of the solemn sentimentality
of my attachment to Miss Armstrong; possibly the pose I thought
needful for holding this young lady's regard withal proved exhausting
after a time. At all events, I remember neglecting her shamefully in
equatorial latitudes, when the _Ariadne_ was creeping along her zig-zag
course through the Doldrums. For me this period, fascinating in
scores of other ways, belongs to Nelly Fane, with her long black
curls, biscuit-coloured legs and arms, and large, melting dark eyes.
At the time the thought of being separated from this imperious little
beauty meant for me an abomination of desolation too dreadful to be
contemplated. But, looking back upon the circumstances of my suit, I
think it likely my heart had never been captivated but for jealousy,
and my trick of seeing myself as the first figure in an illustrated
romance.

There was another boy on board--I remember only his Christian name:
Fred--who, in addition to being a year older than myself, had the huge
advantage of being an experienced traveller. He was an Australian, and
had been on a visit with his parents to the Mother-country. At a quite
early stage in our passage, he won my cordial dislike by means of his
old traveller's airs, and--far more unforgiveable--the fact that he
had the temerity to refer to my father, in my hearing, as 'The old
chap who can't get his sea-legs.' I fear I never should have forgiven
him for that.

In addition, as we youngsters played together about the decks, this
Fred used to arrogate to himself always the position of leader and
director. He knew the proper names of many things of which the rest of
us were ignorant, and, where his knowledge did not carry him, I was
assured his conceit and hardihood did. To such ears as Nelly Fane's,
for instance, 'Jib-boom,' 'Fore topmast-staysail,' must have an
admirably knowledgeable note about them, I thought, even if ever so
wrongly used. My first attack upon Fred consisted in convicting him of
some such swaggering misuse of a nautical term to the which, as luck
had it, I had given careful study on the fo'c'sle-head during the
previous evening's second dog-watch, when my friends among the crew
were taking their leisure. He bore no malice, I think; in any case,
his self-esteem was a very hardy growth, and little liable to suffer
from any minor check.

We never came to blows, the Australian and myself, which was probably
as well for me, since I make no doubt the lad could have trounced me
soundly, for he was disgustingly wiry and long of limb. That was how I
saw his physical advantages. But, apart from this matter of physical
superiority, he was no match for me. In the subtler qualities of
intrigue I was his master; and he, never probably having observed
himself as a hero of romance, had to yield to my proficiency in the
art of producing a desired impression. It was in his capacity as an
old campaigner, a knowing dog, and a seasoned salt, that he had
carried Nelly Fane's heart by storm, and established himself an easy
first in her regard. And seeing this it was, I believe, which first
weakened my devotion to the fair Miss Armstrong, by turning my
attention to Nelly Fane.

I did not really deserve to win Nelly, my suit at first being based
upon foundations so unworthy. But the pursuit of her stirred me
deeply; and in the end--say, in a couple of days--I was her very
humble and devoted slave. She really was an attractive child, I fancy,
in her wilful, imperious way. And, Cupid, how I did adore her by the
time I had driven Master Fred from the field! Even my father suffered
a temporary eclipse in my regard during the first white-hot fervour of
my devotion to Nelly. I lied for her, in word and deed; I stole for
her--from the cabin pantry--and I am sure I risked life and limb for
her a dozen times, in my furious emulation of any achievement of
Fred's, in my instant adoption of any suggestion of Nelly's, however
mischievous. And how many of us could truthfully say as much of their
enthusiasm in any mature love affair? How many grown men would
deliberately risk life to win the passing approval of a mistress?

For example, I recall two typical episodes. Neither had been
remarkable, perhaps, for a boy devoid of fear or imagination; but I
was one shrewdly influenced by both qualities. There was a roomy cabin
under the _Ariadne's_ starboard counter, which served the Fane family
as a sort of sitting-room or day nursery. It had two circular port-holes,
brass-rimmed, of fairly generous proportions. Under the spur of
verbal taunts from Fred, and passive challenges from Nelly's dark
eyes, I positively succeeded in wriggling my entire body out through
one of those port-holes, feet first, until I hung by my hands outside,
my feet almost touching the water-line. And then it seemed I could not
win my way back.

Nelly, moved to tears of real grief now, was for seeking the aid of
grown-ups. I wasted precious breath in adjuring her as she loved me to
keep silence. For my part death seemed imminent and certain. But I
pictured Fred's grinning commiseration should our elders rescue me,
and--I held on. By slow degrees I got one arm and shoulder back into
the cabin, pausing there to rest. From that moment I was safe; but I
was too cunning to let the fact appear. My reward began then, and most
voluptuously I savoured it. I had Mistress Nelly on her biscuit-coloured
knees to me before I finally reached the cabin floor on my
hands, my toes still clinging to the port-hole. Poor Fred could not
possibly equal this feat. His girth would not have permitted it.

Again, there was the blazing tropical afternoon, in dead calm, when I
established a new record by touching the ship's prow under water. It
was siesta time for passengers. The watch on deck was assembled right
aft, scraping bright-work. Pitch was bubbling in the deck seams, and
every one was drowsy, excepting Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself.
We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the _Ariadne's_ anchors,
right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this
piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about
'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own
assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it
gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking
reply that I jolly well dared do no such a thing. Nelly's provocative
eyes were in the background, of course.

Three several times I tried and failed, swinging perilously at a
rope's end below the dolphin-striker. And then the _Ariadne_, with one
of those unaccountable movements which a ship will make at times in
the flattest of calms, brought me victory, and the narrowest escape
from extinction in one and the same moment. I swung lower than before,
and the ship ducked suddenly. I not only touched her bows below the
water-line, but had all the breath knocked out of me by them, and was
soused under water myself, as thoroughly as a Brighton bathing woman
could have done the trick for me. To this day I remember the
breathless, straining agony of the ascent, when my clothes and myself
seemed heavier than lead, and the ship's deck miles above me. My
clothes--a jersey and flannel knickerbockers--dried quickly in the
scorching sun, and no grown-up ever knew of the escapade, I think.
But, the peril of it, in a shark-infested sea!

No doubt these feats helped me to the subjugation of Nelly. Yet, after
all, in sheer physical prowess, I could not really rival Fred, who
stood a full head taller than I did. But I had a deal more of finesse
than he had, made very much better use of my opportunities, and was a
far more practised poseur. Fred was well supplied with self-esteem--a
most valuable qualification in love-making--but he lacked the
introspectively seeing eye. He might compel admiration, in his rude
fashion. He could never force a tear or steal a sigh.

Fred--Fred without a surname, I wonder what has been your lot in life,
and where you air your prosperity to-day! For, prosperous I feel
certain you are. And, who knows? Nelly may be Mrs. Fred to-day, for
aught I can tell. When all is said and done, you all of you had more
in common, one with another, and each with all, than I had with any of
you!

And that reminds me of a trifle overlooked. During all my association
with these my contemporaries on board the _Ariadne_, but with special
keenness in the beginning, I was conscious of something outside my own
experience, which they all shared. At that time it was to me just a
something which they had and I had not; a quality I could not define.
Looking back upon it I see clearly that the thing was in part
fundamental, a flaw in my temperament; and, in part, the family sense.
They all knew what 'home' meant, in a way in which I knew it not at
all. They were more carelessly genial and less serious and preoccupied
than I was. They all had mothers, too. I do not wish to say that they
were necessarily much better off than I. They had certain qualities
which I lacked, the product of experiences I had never enjoyed. And I
had various qualities which they had not. On the whole, perhaps, I
was more mature than they were; and they, perhaps, were more happy
and care-free--certainly less self-conscious--than I was. There was a
kind of Freemasonry of shared experience among them, and I had never
been initiated. They were established members of a recognised order,
to which I did not belong. They were members of families of a certain
defined status. I was an isolated small boy, with a father, and no
particular status.




BOYHOOD--AUSTRALIA


I


It has often occurred to me to wonder why my recollections of our
arrival and first days in Sydney should be so blurred and
unsatisfactorily vague. One would have thought such episodes should
stand out very clearly in retrospect. As a fact, they are far less
clear to me than many an incident of my earlier childhood.

What I do clearly recall is lying awake in my makeshift bunk for some
time before daylight on the morning we reached Sydney, and, finally,
just before the sun rose, going on deck and sitting on the teak-wood
grating beside the wheel. There, on our port side, was the coast of
Australia, the land toward which we had been working through gale and
calm, storm and sunshine, for more than ninety days. Botany Bay, said
the chart. I thought of the grim record I had read of early settlement
here. And then came the pilot's cutter, sweeping like a sea-bird under
our lee. The early sunshine was bright and gladsome enough; but my
recollection is that I felt somehow chilled, and half frightened. That
sandy shore conveyed no kindly sense of welcome to me.

The harbour--oh, yes, the harbour was, and is, beautiful, and I can
remember thrilling with natural excitement as we opened up cove after
cove, while the _Ariadne_--stately as ever, but curiously quiescent
now, with her trimly furled and lifeless sails--was towed slowly to
her anchorage. The different bays--Watson's, Mossman's, Neutral, and
the rest--had not so many villas then as now. Manly was there, in
little; but surf-bathing, like some other less healthful 'notions'
from America, was still to come. From the North Shore landing-stage
one strolled up the hill, and, very speedily, into the bush.

Yes, the place was naturally beautiful enough; but the _Ariadne_ was
home; her every deck plank was familiar to me; I knew each cleat about
her fife-rails, every belaying-pin along her sides, every friendly
projection from her deck that had a sheltering lee. The shining
brass-bound, teak-wood buckets ranged along the break of her poop--the
crew's lime-juice was served in one of these, and they all were
painted white inside--I see them now. _Ay di mi!_ as the Spanish
ladies say; I am not so sure that any place was ever more distinctly
home to me. Over the rail, across the dancing waters of the harbour,
where the buildings clustered about Circular Quay; as yet, of course,
there could be nothing homely for me about all that. And, as to me, it
never did become very homely; perhaps that is why my recollections of
our first doings there are so vague.

How often, in later years, my heart swelled with vague aspiring
yearnings toward what lay beyond, while my eyes ranged over that same
smiling scene, from the Domain, Lady Macquarie's Chair, and the
purlieus of Circular Quay! (There were no trams there then.) Here one
saw the ships that carried folk to and from--what? To and from Home,
was always my thought; though what home I fancied that distant island
in her grey northern sea had for me, heaven knows! Here one rubbed
shoulders, perchance, with some ruddy-faced, careless fellow in dark
blue clothes, who, but a short couple of months ago, walked London's
streets, and would be there again in the incredibly brief space of six
weeks or so. Dyspepsia itself knows no more fell and spirit-racking
anguish than nostalgia brings; and at times I have fancied the very
air--bland, warm, and kindly seeming--that circulates about the famous
quay must be pervaded and possessed by germs of this curious and
deadly malady. At least, that soft air is breathed each day by many a
victim to the disease; old and young, and of both sexes.

No doubt we must have spent some days in Sydney, my father and myself;
but from the _Ariadne_, and the parting with Nelly Fane and my other
companions, memory carries me direct to the deck of a little
intercolonial steamer, bound north from Sydney, for Brisbane and other
Queensland ports. I see myself in jersey and flannel knickers sitting
beside my father on the edge of a deck skylight, and gazing out across
dazzlingly sunlit waters to the near-by northern coast of New South
Wales. Suddenly, my father laid aside the book which had been resting
on his knee, and raised to his eyes the binoculars he used at sea.

'How extraordinary,' he murmured. And, my gaze naturally following
his, I made out clearly enough, without glasses, a vessel lying high
and dry on the white sand of a fair-sized bay.

My father's keen interest in that derelict ship always seemed to me to
spring into being, as it were, full-grown. There was in it no period
of gradual development. From the moment his eyes first lighted upon
the tapered spars of the _Livorno_, where she lay basking in her sandy
bed, his interest in her was absorbing. Everything else was forgotten.
In a few minutes he was in eager conversation about the derelict with
the chief officer of our steamer. I remember the exact words and
intonation of the man's answer to my father's first question:

'Well, I couldn't say for that, Mr. Freydon' (In Australia no one ever
forgets your name, or omits to use it in addressing you), 'but I can
tell you the day I first saw her. She was lying there exactly as she
is to-day. I was third mate of the _Toowoomba_ then; my first trip in
her, and that was seven years ago come Queen's Birthday. Seen her
every trip since--just the same. No, she never seems to alter any.
She's high and dry, you see; bedded there on an even keel, same's if
she was afloat. Yes, it is a wonder, as you say, Mr. Freydon; but it's
a lonely place, you see; nothing nearer than--what is it? Werrina, I
think they call it; fifteen mile away; and that's a day's march from
anywhere, too. Oh yes, there might be an odd sundowner camp aboard of
her once in a month o' Sundays; but I doubt it. She isn't in the track
to anywhere, as ye might say. No, I guess it would only be bandicoots,
an' the like o' that you'd find about her; an' birds, maybe. Only
thing I wonder about her is, how she landed there without ever losing
her top-hamper, and why nobody's thought it worth while to pick her
bones a bit cleaner. Must be good stuff in her stays an' that, to have
stood so long, with never a touch o' the tar-brush.'

There was more in the same vein, but this much comes back to me as
though it were yesterday that I heard the words. I see the mate's hard
blue eye, and crisply curling beard; I see the upward tilt of the same
beard as he spat over the rail, and my father's little retreating
movement at his gesture. (My father never lost his sensitiveness about
such things, though I doubt if he ever allowed it to appear to eyes
less familiar with his every movement than my own.) It seems to me
that my father talked of the derelict--we did not know her name then,
and spoke of her simply as 'the ship'--for the rest of the day, and
for days afterwards; and the key to his thoughts was given in one of
his earliest remarks:

'What a home a man might make of that ship--all ready to his hand for
the asking! The sea, trees--there were plenty of trees--sunshine,
solitude, and space. Think of the peacefulness of that sun-washed bay.
Nothing nearer than fifteen miles away, and that a mere hamlet,
probably. Werrina--not a bad name, Nick--Werrina. Aboriginal origin, I
imagine. And all that for the mere taking; open to the poorest--even
to us. You liked the _Ariadne_, Nick. What would you think of a ship
of our own?'

Assuredly, we were the strangest pair of emigrants....


II


Naturally, my father's suggestion, thrown out as it were in jest,
whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But
can we, really, father?'

It was less than a week later that we walked out of Werrina's one
street into the bush to the westward of that township, accompanied by
Ted Reilly and a heavily-laden pack-horse--Jerry. Ted was one of
Werrina's oddities, and, in many respects, our salvation. The Werrina
storekeeper shook his grizzled head over Ted, and vowed there wasn't
an honest day's work in the man.

'What's the matter with Ted is he's got no Systum; never had since he
was a babby.' (My thoughts reverted at once to a highly coloured
anatomical diagram which hung in the cabin of the _Ariadne's_ captain:
the flayed figure of a man whose face wore the incredibly complacent
look one sees on the waxen features of tailors' dummies, though the
poor fellow's heart, liver, kidneys, and other internal paraphernalia
were shamelessly exposed to the public gaze. The storekeeper's
tone convinced me for the time that poor Ted had been born lacking
some one or other of the important-looking purple organs which the
diagram had shown me as belonging to the human system.) 'He's a
here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow, come-day-go-day-God-send-Sunday sort of a
customer, is Ted--my oath! Wanter Systum. That's what I'm always telling
'em in this place. It's wanter Systum that's the curse uv Australia; an'
Ted's got it worsen most. Don't I know it? I gave him a chanst here in
my store. Might ha' made a Persition frimself. But, no; no Systum at
all. He was off in a fortnight, trappin' dingoes in the bush, or some
such nonsense. He's for no more use than--than a bumble bee, isn't Ted
Reilly; nor never will be.'

Well, he was of a good deal of practical use to us, the storekeeper
notwithstanding; but I admit that there was a notable absence of
'Systum' about the man. He was singularly unmethodical and haphazard,
even as his kind go in the remoter parts of Australia. He made our
acquaintance very casually by asking my father for a match, almost
before we had descended from the coach outside the Royal Hotel,
Werrina. (There was nothing royal, or even comfortable, about this
weatherboard and iron inn, except its name.) And, oddly enough, my
father fell into conversation with him, and seemed rather to take to
the man forthwith.

I know it was by his advice, as kindly meant, I am sure, as it was
shrewd, that my father said nothing to any one else in the township of
his fantastic ideas regarding what we now knew to be the derelict
Italian barque, _Livorno_, of Genoa. It was given out that we were
going camping, between Werrina and the coast; and, no doubt my father
was credited by the local wiseacres with the possession of some crafty
prospecting scheme or another. Most of the folk thereabouts had been
always wont to look to the bush (chiefly for timber) as a source of
livelihood, but their attention was usually turned inland rather than
seaward; for the bulk of the country between Werrina and the sea is
poor and swampy, or sandy. The belt of timber we had seen behind our
derelict's bay was not extensive.

It was Ted who bought Jerry for us for the modest price of £3, 15s.;
and I make no doubt that serviceable beast would have cost my father
£7 if he had had 'the haggling of it.' Pack-saddle and tent, with a
number of other oddments, had come with us from across the Queensland
border; first, by rail, and thence by numerous devious coach routes to
Werrina. The only thing about our expedition which I think Ted really
mistrusted and disliked was the fact that we set forth on foot. He
told my father of horses he could buy, if not for three a penny,
certainly at the rate of two for a five-pound note. (Animals no
better, or very little better, are selling for £20 apiece in the same
country to-day.) But my father spoke of the cost of saddlery and the
like. He had been brought up in a land where horse-keeping means
considerable expense, and the need for husbanding his slender
resources was strongly foremost in his mind just now. But Ted had all
his life long thought of horses as a natural and necessary adjunct to
man's locomotion. I have seen him devote considerable time and energy
to the task of catching Jerry in order to ride across a couple of
hundred yards of sand to his favourite wood-cutting spot. To be poor,
that is, short of money, was a natural and customary thing enough in
Ted's eyes; but to go ajourneying as a footman suggested a truly
pitiable kind of destitution, and did, I am convinced, throw a shadow
over what otherwise had been the outset of a jaunt entirely after his
own heart.

As the morning wore on, however, and we left behind us all likelihood
of chance encounters with more fortunately placed and therefore
critical people, bestriding pigskin, Ted's spirits rose again to their
normal easy altitude, and mounted beyond that to the level of boyish
jollity. Myself, I incline to think that walking along a bush track,
with a long stick in his hand and a pack-horse to drive before him,
was really an ideal situation for Ted, despite his preference for
riding. Afoot, he could so readily step aside to start a 'goanner' up
a tree, or pluck an out-of-the-way growth to show me.

There never was such a fellow for 'noticing' things, as they say of
children. Print he never read, so far as I know, and perhaps this
helped to make him so amazingly keen a reader of Nature. Not the
littlest comma on that page ever eluded him.

'Hullo!' he would say when Werrina was miles away behind us. 'Who'd've
thought o' that baldy-faced steer o' Murdoch's bein' out here?' One
gazed about to locate the beast. But, no. No living thing was in
sight. In passing, quite casually, Ted's roving eye had spied a hoof
mark, perhaps a day old or more, in the soft bottom of a tiny
billabong; a print I could hardly make out, leave alone identify as
having been made by this beast or the other, even under the guidance
of Ted's pointing finger. Yet for Ted that casual glance--no stooping,
no close scrutiny--supplied an accurate and complete picture: the
particular beast, its gait, occupation, and way of heading, and the
period at which it had passed that way. Withal, it was true enough, as
the storekeeper said, poor Ted had no 'Systum'; or none, at all
events, of the kind cultivated in shops and offices.


III


However much at fault I may be in recollection of our arrival at
Sydney, my memories of our first night at Livorno Bay (so my father
christened the derelict's resting-place) could hardly be more vivid
and distinct. That night marks for me the beginning of a definite
epoch in my life.

I passed the spot in a large inter-state steamer last year. There was
no sign of any ship there then, so far, at all events, as I could make
out with a borrowed pair of glasses; and the place looked very much
the same as any other part of the Australian coast. There are
thousands of such indentations around the shores of the island
continent, with low headlands of jagged rock by way of horns, and
terraces of shell-strewn sand dotted over with ti-tree scrub, which
merges into a low-lying bush of swamp oak and suchlike growths, among
which, as like as not, you shall find, as we found, a more or less
extensive salt-water lagoon, over the sandy bar of which big, tossing
breakers will roll in from the Pacific in stormy weather. Yes, I would
say now that there is nothing very peculiar or distinctive about
Livorno Bay for the observer who is familiar with other parts of
Australia's coast.

But in my youthful eyes, seen on the evening of our arrival, after a
fifteen miles' walk, and, seen, too, in the glow of a singularly
angry-looking evening sky, Livorno Bay, with its derelict barque to
focus one's gaze, presented a spectacle almost terrifying in its
desolation. Years must have passed since anything edible could have
been found on board the _Livorno_. Yet I hardly think I should
exaggerate if I said that two thousand birds rose circling from
various points of vantage about the derelict as we approached her
sides. That this winged and highly vocal congregation resented our
intrusion was not to be doubted for a moment. Short of actually
attacking us with beak and claw, the creatures could hardly have given
more practical expression to their sentiments. The circumstance was
trivial, of course, but I think it somewhat dashed my father's ardour,
and I know it struck into my very vitals.

'Begone, you interlopers, or we will rend you! This is no place for
humans. Here is only death and desolation for the likes of you. This
place belongs of immemorial right to us, and to our masters, the
devouring elements. Begone!'

So it seemed we were screamed at from thousands of hoarse throats.

For my part I was well pleased when my father agreed to Ted's
suggestion that we should postpone till morning our inspection of the
ship, and, in the meantime, concentrate upon the more immediate
necessity of pitching camp for the night in the shelter of the timber
belt and outside the domain of the screaming sea-birds. Our tent was
fortunately not one of the cumbersome sort I had seen on Wimbledon
Common at home, but a light Australian contrivance of cotton,
enclosing a space ten feet by eight, and protected by a good large
fly. Thanks mainly to Ted and his axe we had the necessary stakes cut,
and the tent pitched before dark. Meanwhile, the little fire Ted had
lighted against a blackened tree-stump had grown into the sort of
fiery furnace that was associated in my mind with certain passages in
the Old Testament; and, suspended by a piece of fencing wire from a
cross stake on two forked sticks, our billy was boiling vigorously.

In all such bush-craft as this Ted was _facile princeps_, and he asked
no better employment. Jerry was turned out to graze, belled and
hobbled (for safety in a strange place), and just as actual darkness
closed in upon us--no moon was visible that night--we sat down at the
mouth of the tent to sup upon corned beef, bread and cheese and jam;
the latter in small tins with highly coloured paper wrappers.

By this time my sense of chill and depression had pretty well
evaporated. The details of our domesticity were most attractive to me.
But I am not sure that my father quite regained his spirits that
evening. We each had a canvas camp-stretcher of the collapsible sort.
In ten minutes Ted had made himself a hammock bed of two sacks, two
saplings, and four forked stakes, which for comfort was quite equal to
any camp cot I have yet seen. Sleep came quickly to me, at all events,
and whenever I woke during the night, as I did some three or four
times, there was booming in my ears that rude music which remained the
constant accompaniment of all our lives and doings in Livorno Bay: the
dull roar of Pacific breakers on the sand below us, varied by a long
sibilant intaking of breath, as it seemed, caused by the back-wash of
every wave's subsidence.

Very gently, to avoid disturbing my father--I can see his face on the
flimsy cot pillow now, looking sadly fragile and worn--I crept out
from our tent in time to see the upper edge of the sun's disc (like a
golden dagger of the Moorish shape) flash out its assurance across the
sea, and gild with sudden bravery the trucks and spars and frayed
rigging of the barque _Livorno_. Life has no other reassurance to
offer which is quite so emphatic as that of the new risen sun; and it
is youth, rather than culture, which yields the finest appreciation of
this. In its glad light I ran and laughed, half naked, where a few
hours earlier, in the murk of coming night, the sense of my own
helpless insignificance in all that solitude had descended upon me in
the shape of physical fear. Sea and sand laughed with me now, where
before they had smitten me with lonely foreboding, almost with terror.
I had my first bathe from a Pacific beach that morning; and, given
just a shade more of venturesomeness in the outsetting, it had been
like to be my last. In Livorno Bay the breakers were big, and the
back-wash of their surf very insistent.

The fire of his enthusiasm was once more alight in my father when I
got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it
nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his
share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him
a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the
ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might
have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, and indeed every uncovered
part of the _Livorno_, was encrusted in the droppings of multitudinous
sea-fowl. For almost as many years as I had lived, probably, these
creatures had made a home of the derelict. To be sure, they had as
good a right to it as we had; yet I remember how keenly we resented
their claims, in the broad light of day; even as they, on the previous
evening, had resented us. Ted promised them a warm time of it, and
congratulated himself on having brought his old gun.

'I'll show 'em whose ship it is,' he said, 'to-night.' And the boy in
me rose in sympathetic response. I suppose I looked forward to the
prospect of those birds being given a taste of the fear they had
helped to inspire in me.

The _Livorno_ had a long, low poop, no more than three feet high, and
extending forward to the mainmast. She had none of the _Ariadne's_
bright-work, as the polished teak was always called on that ship. Her
rails and deck-houses had been painted in green and white, and I made
out the remains of stencilled ornamentation in the corners of panels.
No doubt my father had his preconceptions regarding the derelict of
which he had thought so much in the past week. In any case he did not
linger by the way, but walked direct to the cuddy or saloon, which we
entered by a deeply encrusted, sun-cracked scuttle, just forward of
the mizzen-mast. So here we were, at length, at the heart of our
quest.

Personally, I was for the moment disappointed. My father, being wiser
and knowing better what to expect, was pleased, I think. My
anticipations had doubtless taken their colour from recent experience
of the trim, well-ordered smartness of the _Ariadne's_ saloon. Here,
on board the derelict, nothing was left standing which could easily be
carried away. The cabins opening into the little saloon had no doors,
save in the case of one--the captain's room--that had been split down
the centre, apparently with an axe, and its remains hung drunkenly now
upon one hinge, which, at a touch from Ted's hand, parted company with
its bulkhead, leaving the door to fall clattering to the deck. But,
curiously enough, the good hardwood bunks were all intact, except in
the case of one, which had, apparently, been wantonly smashed, perhaps
by the same insensate hand that smashed the door.

The saloon table had gone, of course, and the chairs; but the brass
cleats which had held them to their places in the deck were there
still to show us where our predecessors here had sat and taken their
meals. Here they had done their gossiping, no doubt, over the remains
of savoury macaroni, with, perchance, an occasional flagon of Chianti
or Barolo. There was a sort of buffet built into the forward bulkhead;
and by a most surprising chance this was unhurt, save for a great star
in the mirror behind it. Even its brass rail was intact. Some idle
boor must have observed this solid little piece of man's handiwork,
and then, I suppose, struck at the mirror with his axe--a savage and
blackguardly act. But here, at all events, was our little store
cupboard.

'Sideboard's all right then,' was Ted's grinning comment. 'And a man
could still see to shave in the glass.'

The saloon skylight had been removed bodily, perhaps to serve some
cockatoo bush farmer for a cucumber frame! And the result of this,
more than any other circumstance, had been to give the saloon its
desolate look; for, beneath the yawning aperture where once the
skylight had stood, there was now an unsavoury mound of bird's
droppings, near three feet high at its apex. This was now dust-dry;
but the autumnal rains of bygone seasons had streamed upon it no
doubt, with the result that all the rest of the saloon was several
inches deep in the same sort of covering. There were naturally no
stores in the pitch-black lazareet which one reached through a trap-door
in the saloon deck; but among the lumber there we found an old
bucket, a number of empty tins, packing-cases, and the like, a coal
shovel with a broken handle, and two tanks in which ship's biscuits
had been kept. How these latter commodities came to have been spared
by marauding visitors it would be hard to say; for, in the bush, every
one, without exception, requires tanks for the storage of rain-water.

From the saloon we made our way right forward to the forecastle, in
which practically no damage had been done; for the reason, I suppose,
that little was there which easily could be damaged or removed. No
anchors or cables were to be seen, but the seamen's bunks remained
much as I imagine they had left them; and, on the side of one, some
sundowner had contrived to scrawl, apparently with a heated wire, this
somewhat fatuous legend:

'Occewpide by me Captin Ned Kelli Bushranger. Chrismas day 1868. Not
too bad.'

In many other parts of the ship we found, when we came to do our
cleaning, initials, dates, and occasional names, rudely carved. But
the only attempt at a written tribute to the derelict's quality as a
camping-place was the pretended bushranger's 'Not too bad'; a
thoroughly Australian commentary, and probably endorsed in speech at
the time of writing by the exclamation: 'My word!'

Internally, the _Livorno_ had been very thoroughly gutted, even to the
removal of many of her deck joists and 'tween-decks' stanchions. But
in her galley, which, having remained closed, was in quite good order,
we found the cooking range, though rusty, intact. It had been built
into the deck-house, and, being partly of tiles, would hardly have
lent itself to easy transport or use in another place. Ted had a fire
burning in it that very day, and water boiling on it in tins. Hidden
under much mouldering rubbish in the boatswain's locker were found two
deck scrapers, which proved most useful.

Ted strongly advised the adoption, as living-room, of the forecastle;
and he may have been in the right of it. The place was weather-proof,
its tiny skylight being intact. But sentiment, I think, attracted my
father to the quarter-deck. 'The weather side of the poop's my only
promenade,' he said gaily. 'And those square stern ports, with the
carving under them--it would be a sin to leave them to the birds. Oh,
the saloon is clearly our place, and we must rig a shelter over the
skylight by and by.'

In the end we accomplished little or nothing beyond inspection that
day. Towards evening Ted laid in a stock of firewood beside our camp,
while my father wrote a letter to the Werrina storekeeper, which Ted
was to take in next day with a cheque. I say we accomplished nothing,
because I can remember no useful work done. Yet I do vividly remember
falling asleep over my supper, and feeling more physically weary than
I had ever been before. We were on our feet all day, of course. We
were gleaning new impressions at a great rate. The day was, I suppose,
a pretty full one; and assuredly one of us slept well after it.


IV


When my eyes opened next morning, dawn, though near at hand, had not
yet come. His pale-robed heralds were busy, however, diffusing that
sort of nacreous haze which in coastal Australia lights the way for
each day's coming. Looking out over the pillow of my cot I saw Ted
among the trees, girthing the pack-saddle on Jerry. In a very few
moments I was beside him, and in five minutes he had started on his
journey.

'I'll be in Warrina for breakfast,' he said.

I walked a few hundred yards beside him, and the last glimpse I caught
of him, at a bend over which the track rose a little, showed Ted
seated sideways on the horse's hindquarters, one hand resting on the
pack-saddle, the other waving overhead to me. A precarious perch I
thought it, but as it saved him from the final degradation of walking,
I have no doubt it suited Ted well enough.

The sun was still some little way below the horizon when Ted
disappeared, and I was perhaps a quarter of a mile from camp. Inland,
I had very likely been bushed. Here, vague though the track was, the
sea's incessant call was an unfailing guide. But it was in those few
minutes, spent in walking back towards our tent, that I was given my
first taste of solitude in the Australian bush; and, boy that I was,
it impressed me greatly. It was a permanent addition to my narrow
store of impressions, and it is with me yet.

At such times the Australian bush has qualities which distinguish it
from any other parts of the world known to me. I have known other
places and times far more eerie. To go no farther there are parts of
the bush in which thousands of trees, being ring-barked, have died and
become ghosts of trees. Seen in the light of a half moon, when the sky
is broken by wind-riven cloud, these spectral inhabitants of the bush,
with their tattered winding sheets of corpse-white bark, are
distinctly more eerie than anything the dawn had to show me beside
Livorno Bay.

Withal, the half-hour before sunrise has a peculiar quality of its
own, in the bush, which I found very moving and somewhat awe-inspiring
upon first acquaintance. There was a hush which one could feel and
hear; a silence which exercised one's hearing more than any sound. And
yet it was not a silence at all; for the sea never was still there. It
was as though the bush and all that dwelt therein held its breath,
waiting, waiting for a portent; and, meantime, watching me. In a few
moments I found myself also waiting, conscious of each breath I drew.
It was not so much eerie as solemn. Yes, I think it was the solemnity
of that bush which so impressed me, and for the time so humbled me.

A few moments later and the kindly brightness of the new-risen sun was
glinting between tree-trunks, the bush began to breathe naturally, and
I was off at a trot for my morning dabble in the surf.

My father and I made but a poor show as housekeepers that day. I
suppose we neither of us had ever washed a plate, or even boiled a
kettle. In all such matters of what may be called outdoor domesticity
(as in the use of such primitive and all-round serviceable tools as
the axe), the Colonial-born man has a great advantage over his Home-born
kinsman, in that he acquires proficiency in these matters almost
as soon and quite as naturally as he learns to walk and talk. And not
otherwise can the sane easy mastery of things be acquired.

My father had some admirably sound theories about cooking. He had
knowledge enough most heartily to despise the Frenchified menus which,
I believe, were coming into vogue in London when we left it, and
warmly to appreciate the sterling virtue of good English cookery and
food. The basic aim in genuine English cookery is the conservation of
the natural flavours and essences of the food cooked. And, since sound
English meats and vegetables are by long odds the finest in the world,
there could be no better purpose in cooking than this. Subtle methods
and provocative sauces, which give their own distinctive flavour to
the dishes in which they are used, are well enough for less favoured
lands than England, and a much-needed boon, no doubt. They are a
wasteful mistake in England, or were, at all events, so long as
unadulterated English food was available.

My father taught me these truths long ago, and I am an implicit
believer in them to-day. All his theories about such matters were
sound; and it may be that, in a properly appointed kitchen, he could
have turned out an excellent good meal--given the right mood for the
task. But I will admit that in Livorno Bay, both on this our first day
alone there, and ever afterwards, my father's only attempts at
domestic work were of the most sketchy and least satisfactory
description; his grip of our housekeeping was of the feeblest, and in
a very short time the matter fell entirely into my hands when Ted was
not with us. Ted was my exemplar; from him such knowledge and ability
as I acquired were derived. But to his shrewd practicality I was able
to add something, in the shape of theory evolved from my father's
conversation; and thus presently I obtained a quite respectable grasp
of bush domesticity.

This day of Ted's absence in Werrina we devoted to a more or less
systematic exploration of our territory. My father was in a cheery
vein, and entertained me by bestowing names upon the more salient
features of our domain. The two horns of Livorno Bay, I remember, were
Gog and Magog; the lagoon remained always just The Lagoon; the timber
belt was Arden; our camp, Zoar; and so forth. We found an eminently
satisfactory little spring, not quite so near at hand as the water-hole
from which Ted had drawn our supplies till now, but yielding
brighter, fresher water. And we botanised with the aid of a really
charming little manuscript book, bound in kangaroo-skin, and given to
my father by the widow of a Queensland squatter whom we had met on the
coasting steamer. That little volume is among my few treasured
possessions to-day. Some of its watercolour sketches look a little
worn and pallid, after all these years, but it is a most instructive
book; and from it came all my first knowledge of the various wattles,
the different mahoganies, the innumerable gums, the ferns, creepers,
and wild flowers of the bush.

It was almost dark when Ted returned--in a cart. We were greatly
surprised to see Jerry between the shafts of this ancient vehicle, and
my father found it hard to credit that any cart could be driven over
the bush track by which we had travelled, with its stumps and holes
and sudden dips to watercourses. However, there the cart was, its
harness plentifully patched with pieces of cord and wire; and it
seemed well laden, too.

'Who lent it you?' asked my father. And Ted explained how the cart had
been offered to him for £3, and how, at length, he had bought it for
£2, 5s. and a drink. It seemed a sin to miss such a chance, but if my
father really did not want it, well, he, Ted, would pay for it out of
his earnings. Of course my father accepted responsibility for the
purchase, and very useful the crazy old thing proved as time went on;
for, though its collapse, like that of other more important
institutions, seemed always imminent, it never did actually dissolve
in our time, and only occasionally did it shed any vital portion of
its fabric. Even after such minor catastrophes, it always bore up
nobly under the rude first (and last) aid we could give with cord, or
green-hide and axed wood.

To my inexperience it seemed that Ted had brought with him a wide
assortment of most of the commodities known to civilisation. The
unloading of the cart was to me as the enjoyment of a monstrous bran-pie;
an entertainment I had heard of, but never seen. And when I heard
there was certainly one more load, and probably two, to come, I felt
that we really were rich beyond the dreams of most folk. I recalled
the precise manner in which Fred (the _Ariadne_ rival and
fellow-passenger, whose surname I never knew) had wilted when he heard
that my father and I had intended travelling steerage, and from my heart
I wished he could see this cart-load of assorted goods. 'Goods' was the
correct word, I thought, for such wholesale profusion; and 'cart-load'
had the right spaciousness to indicate a measure of our abundance.

There were several large sheets of galvanised iron, appearing exactly
as one in the cart, but covering a notable expanse of ground when
spread out singly. These were for a roof in the place of the saloon
skylight. My father had pished and tushed and pressed for a bark roof;
but Ted, in his bush wisdom, had insisted on the prosaic 'tin,' as a
catchment area for rain-water to be stored in the two ship's tanks.
There were brooms, scrubbing-brushes, kettles, pots, pans, crockery,
fishing-lines, ammunition for Ted's highly lethal old gun, and there
were stores. I marvelled that stores so numerous and varied could have
come out of Werrina. My imagination was particularly fired by the
contemplation of a package said to contain a gross of boxes of
matches. Reckoning on fifty to the box, I struggled for some time with
a computation of the total number of our matches, giving it up finally
when I had reached figures which might have thrilled a Rothschild. Our
sugar was not in blue paper packages of a pound weight, but in a sack,
as it might be for the sweetening of an army corps' porridge. And our
tea! Like the true Australian he was, Ted had actually brought us a
twenty-six pound case of tea. It was a wondrous collection, and I drew
a long breath when I remembered that there was more, much more, to
come. Here were nails, not in spiral twists of paper, but in solid
seven-pound packages, and quite a number of them.

Had I been a shopkeeper's son, I suppose these trifles from Werrina
would have been esteemed by me at something like their real value. So
I rejoice that I was not a shopkeeper's son, for I still cherish a
lively recollection of the glad feeling of security and comfortable
well-being which filled my breast as I paced round and about our cart
and all it had brought us. Long before sun-up next morning, Ted was
off again to Werrina; but, seeing our incapacity on the domestic side,
the good fellow gave an hour or two before starting to washing up and
cooking work; and I pretended to work with him, out there in the
star-light, conversing the while in whispers to avoid disturbing my
father.

Two more journeys Ted made, and returned fully laden both times,
the old cart fairly groaning under the weight of goods it held. And then
the services of a bullock-driver and his team and dray had
subsequently to be requisitioned to bring out our English boxes and
baggage, including the cases of my father's books. Those books, how
they tempt one to musing digressions.... But of that in its place.

By the time the carrier's work was done we had established something
of a routine of life, though this was subject to a good deal of
variation and disorder, as I remember, so long as the tent was in use.
Ted had arranged with butcher and storekeeper both to meet one of us
once a week at a point distant some six miles from Livorno Bay, where
our track crossed a road. Our bread, of course, we baked for
ourselves; and excellent bread it was, while Ted made it. I believe
that even when the task of making it fell into my hands, it was more
palatable than baker's bread; certainly my father thought so, and that
was enough for me.

Our hardest work, by far, was the cleaning of the _Livorno_. There was
a spring cleaning with a vengeance! We used a mixture of soft soap and
soda and sand, which made our hands all mottled: huge brown freckles
over an unwholesome-looking, indurated, fish-belly grey. The stuff
made one's finger-ends smart horridly, I remember. For days on end it
seemed we lived in this mess; our feet and legs and arms all bare, and
perspiration trickling down our noses, while soapy water and sand
crept up our arms and all over our bodies. My father insisted on doing
his share, though frequently driven by mere exhaustion to pause and
lie down at full length upon the nearest dry spot. I have always
regretted his persistence at this task, for which at that time he was
totally unfit.

However, the scraping and sanding and scrubbing were ended at last,
and I will say that I believe we made a very creditable job of it. We
could not give back to our barque the soundness of her youth, her
sea-going prime, but I think we made her scrupulously clean and sweet;
and I shall not forget the jubilant sense of achievement which spurred us
on all through the scorching hot day upon which we really installed
ourselves.

Ted had rigged an excellent table between the saloon stanchions, and
three packing-cases with blankets over them looked quite sumptuous and
ottoman-like, as seats. Our bedding was arranged in the solid hardwood
bunks which had accommodated the captain and mates of the _Livorno_
what time she made her first exit from the harbour of Genoa. Our
stores were neatly stowed in various lockers, and in Ted's famous
'sideboard'; our kitchen things found their appointed places in the
galley; our incongruous skylight roof, with its guttering and adjacent
tanks, awaited their baptism of rain; my father's books were arranged
on shelves of Ted's construction; our various English belongings,
looking inexpressibly choice, intimate, and valuable in their new
environment, were disposed with a view to convenience, and, be it
said, to appearances; and--here was our home.

We were all very tired that night, but we were gay over our supper,
and it was most unusually late before I slept. Late as that was,
however, I could see by its reflected light on the deck beams that my
father's candle was burning still. And when I chanced to wake, long
afterwards, I could hear, until I fell asleep again, the slight sound
he made in walking softly up and down the poop deck--a lonely man who
had not found rest as yet; who, despite bright flashes of gaiety, was
far from happy, a fact better understood and more deeply regretted by
his small son than he knew.


V


My first serious preoccupation regarding ways and means--the money
question--began, I think, in the neighbourhood of my eleventh
birthday, and has remained a more or less constant companion and
bedfellow ever since.

Now, as I write, I am perhaps freer than ever before from this sordid
preoccupation; not by reason of fortunate investments and a plethoric
bank balance, but because my needs now are singularly few and
inexpensive, and the future--that Damoclean sword of civilised life--no
longer stretches out before me, a long and arid expanse demanding
provision. This preoccupation began for me in the week of my eleventh
birthday, when my father asked me one evening if I thought we could
manage now without Ted's services.

'It's not that I pay him much,' said my father, stroking his chin
between thumb and forefinger, as his manner was when pondering such a
point; 'but the fact is we can by no manner of juggling pretend to be
able to afford even that little. Then, again, you see, the poor chap
must eat. The fish he brings us are a real help, and no wage-earner I
ever met could take pot-luck more cheerfully than Ted. What's more, I
like him, you like him, and he is, I know, a most useful fellow to
have about. But, take it any way one can, he must represent fifty
pounds a year in our rate of expenditure, and-- Well, you see, Nick, we
simply haven't got it to spend.'

It was on the tip of my tongue, I remember, to ask my father why he
did not send to the bank and ask for more money; and by that may be
gauged the crudely unsophisticated stage of my development. But I must
remember, too, that I bit back the question, and, ignorant of all
detail though I was, felt intuitively sure, first, that the whole
subject was a sore and difficult one for my father, and, secondly,
that I must never ask for or expect anything calling for monetary
expenditure. My vague feeling was that the World had somehow wronged
my father by not providing him with more money. I felt instinctively
that It never would give him any more; and that It had given him
whatever he had, only as the result of personal sacrifices which
should never have been demanded of him. I resented keenly what seemed
to me the World's callous and unreasonable discourtesy to such a man
as my father, whom, I thought, It should have delighted to honour.

As illustrating the World's coarse and brutal injustice, I thought,
there was the case of a man like Nelly Fane's father, or, again, the
storekeeper in Werrina. (Mr. Fane would hardly have thanked me for the
conjunction.) Neither, it was clear, possessed a tithe of the brains,
the distinction, the culture, or the charm of my father; yet it was
equally obvious (in different ways) that both were a good deal more
liberally endowed with this world's gear than we were. I felt that the
whole matter ought to be properly explained and made clear to those
powers, whoever they were, who controlled and ordered It. I distinctly
remember the thought taking shape in my mind that Mr. Disraeli ought
to know about it! Meantime, my concern was, as far as might be, to
relieve my father of anxiety, and so minimise as much as possible the
effects of a palpable miscarriage of justice.

The thing has a rather absurd and pompous effect as I set it down on
paper; but I have stated it truly, none the less, however awkwardly.

The fact that I had known no mother, combined with the progressive
weakening of my father's health and peace of mind during the previous
year or so, may probably have influenced my attitude in all such
matters, may have given a partly feminine quality to my affection for
my father. I know it seemed to me unfitting that he should ever take
any part in our domestic work on the _Livorno_, and very natural that
I should attend to all such matters. Also I had felt, ever since the
day in Richmond Park when, to some extent, he gave me his confidence
regarding the severance of his connection with the London newspaper
office, that my father needed 'looking after,' that it was desirable
for him to be taken care of and spared as much as possible; and that,
obviously, I was the person to see to it. Our departure from England
had been rather a pleasure than otherwise for me, because it had
seemed to place my father more completely in my hands. Such an
attitude may or may not have been natural and desirable in so young a
boy; I only know that it was mine at that time.

It follows therefore that I told my father we could perfectly well
manage without Ted, though, as a fact, I viewed the prospect, not with
misgiving so much as with very real regret. I had grown to like Ted
very well in the few months he had spent with us, and to this day I am
gratefully conscious of the practical use and value of many lessons
learned from this simple teacher, who was so notably wanting, by the
Werrina storekeeper's way of it, in 'Systum.' A more uniformly kindly
fellow I do not think I have ever met. The world would probably
pronounce him an idler, and it is certain he would never have
accumulated money; but he was not really idle. On the contrary, he was
full of activity, and of simple, kindly enthusiasms. Rut his chosen
forms of activity rarely led him to the production of what is
marketable, and he very quickly wearied of any set routine.

'Spare me days!' Ted cried, when my father, with some
circumlocutionary hesitancy and great delicacy, conveyed his decision
to our factotum. 'Don't let the bit o' money worry ye, Mr. Freydon.
It's little I do, anyway. Give me an odd shilling or two for me 'baccy
an' that, when I go into Werrina, an' I'll want no wages. What's the
use o' wages to the likes o' me, anyhow?'

I could see that this put my father in something of a quandary. A
certain delicacy made it difficult for him to mention the matter of
Ted's food--the good fellow had a royal appetite--and he did not want
to appear unfriendly to a man who simply was not cognisant of any such
things as social distinctions or obligations. Finally, and with less
than his customary ease, my father did manage to make it plain that
his decision, however much he might regret being forced to it, was
final; and that he could not possibly permit Ted's proposed gratuitous
sacrifice of his time and abilities.

'There's the future to be thought of, you know, Ted,' he added. (For
how many years has that word 'future' stood for anxiety, gloom,
depression, and worry?) 'Such a capable fellow as you are should be
earning good pay, and, if you don't need it now, banking it against
the day when you will want it.' (My father was on firmer ground now,
and a characteristic smile began to lighten his eyes and voice,
besides showing upon his expressive mouth. I am not sure that I ever
heard him laugh outright; but his chuckle was a choice incentive to
merriment, and he had a smile of exceptional sweetness.) 'There'll be
a Mrs. Ted presently, you know, and how should I ever win her
friendship, as I hope to, if she knew I had helped to prevent her lord
and master from getting together the price of a home? No, no, Ted; we
can't let you do that. But if anything I can say or write will help
you to a place worth having, I'm very much at your service; and if you
will come and pay us a visit whenever you feel like sparing a Sunday
or holiday, we shall both take it kindly in you, and Nick here will
bless you for it, won't you, Nick?'

I agreed in all sincerity, and so the matter was decided. But Ted
positively insisted on being allowed to stay one further week with us,
without pay, in order, he said, 'to finish my mate's eddication as a
bushman.' 'My mate,' of course, was myself. In the Old World such
freedom of speech would perhaps indicate disrespect, and would almost
certainly be resented as such. But we had learned something of
Australian ways by this time; and if my father's eyebrows may have
risen ever so slightly at that word 'mate,' I was frankly pleased and
flattered by it. Then, as now, I could appreciate as a compliment the
inclination of such a good fellow to give me so friendly a title; and
yet I fear me no genuine democrat would admit that I had any claim to
be regarded as a disciple of his cult!

His mind deliberately bent on conveying instruction, Ted proved rather
a poor teacher. In that rôle he was the least thing tiresome, and
given to enlargement upon unessentials, while overlooking the things
that matter. Unconsciously he had taught me much; in his teaching week
he rather fretted me. But, all the same, I was sorry when the end of
it arrived. We had arranged for him to drive with me to the point at
which our track crossed a main road, where we should meet the
storekeeper's cart. There would be stores for me to bring back, and
Ted would finish his journey with the storekeeper's man. Ted insisted
on making me a present of his own special axe, which he treated and
regarded as some men will treat a pet razor. He had taught me to use
and keep it fairly well. I gave him my big horn-handled knife, which
was quite a tool-kit in itself; and my father gave him a hunting-crop
to which he had taken a desperate fancy.

The storekeeper's man witnessed our parting, and that kept me on my
dignity; but when the pair of them were out of sight, I felt I had
lost a friend, and had many cares upon my shoulders. Driving back
alone through the bush with our stores, I made some fine resolutions.
I was now in my twelfth year, and very nearly a man, I told myself. It
would be my business to keep our home in order, to take particularly
good care of my father, and to see that he was as comfortable as I
could make him. Certainly, I was a very serious-minded youngster; and
it did not make me less serious to find when I got back to the
_Livorno_ that my father was lying in his bunk in some pain, and, as I
knew at first glance, very much depressed. He had strained or hurt
himself in some way in cutting firewood.

'You oughtn't to have done it, you know, father,' I remember saying,
very much as a nurse or parent might have said it. 'We've plenty
stacked in the main hatch, and you know the wood's my job.'

He smiled sadly. 'I'm not quite sure that there's any work here that
doesn't seem to be your "job," old fellow,' he said. 'At least, if any
of it's mine, it must be a kind that's sadly neglected.'

'Well, but, father, you have more important things; you have your
writing. The little outside jobs are mine, of course. I've learned it
all from Ted. You really must trust me for that, father.'

'Ah, well, you're a good lad, Nick; and we must see if I cannot set to
seriously in the matter of doing some of this writing you talk of.
It's high time; and it may be easier now we are alone. No, I don't
think I'll get up to supper this evening, Nick. I'm not very well, to
tell the truth, and a quiet night's rest here will be best for me.'

We had a few fowls then in a little bush run, and I presently had a
new-laid egg beaten up for my patient. This he took to oblige me; but
his 'quiet night's rest' did not amount to much, for each time I waked
through the night I knew, either by the light burning beside him, or
by some slight movement he made, that my father was awake.


VI


In this completely solitary way we lived for some eight months after
Ted left us. There were times when my father seemed cheery and in much
better health. In such periods he would concern himself a good deal in
the matter of my education.

'It may never be so valuable to you as Ted's "eddication,"' he said;
'but a gentleman should have some acquaintance with the classics,
Nick, both in our tongue (the nobility of which is not near so well
understood as it might be) and in the tongues of the ancients.'

Once he said: 'We have lived our own Odyssey, old fellow, without
writing it; but I'd like you to be able to read Homer's.'

As a fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in
the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that
such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in
our cuddy living-room on board the _Livorno_ was quite valueless. But
I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are.
In the schoolman's sense I learned little or nothing. But natheless I
believe these hours spent with my father among his books, and yet
more, it may be, other hours spent with him when he had no thought of
teaching me, had their very real value in the process of my mental
development. If they did not give me much of actual knowledge, they
helped to give me a mind of sorts, an inclination or bent toward those
directions in which intellectual culture is obtainable. Else, surely,
I had remained all my days a hewer of wood and a drawer of water--with
more of health in mind and body and means, perhaps, than are mine to-day!
Well, yes; and that, too, is likely enough. At all events I
choose to thank my father for the fact that at no period of my life
have I cared to waste time over mere vapid trash, whether spoken or
printed.

Outside his own personal feelings and mental processes, the which he
never discussed with me, there was no set of subjects, I think, that
my father excluded from the range of our conversations. Indeed, I
think that in those last months of our life on the _Livorno_, he
talked pretty much as freely with me, and as variously, as he would
have talked with any friend of his own age. In the periods when we
were not together, he would be sitting at the saloon table, with paper
and pens before him, or pacing the seaward side of the poop, or lying
resting in his bunk, or on the deck. Frequent rest became increasingly
necessary for him. His strength seemed to fade out from him with the
mere effluxion of time. He often spoke to me of the curious effects
upon men's minds of the illusions we call nostalgia. But he allowed no
personal bearing to his remarks, and never hinted that he regretted
leaving England, or wished to return there.

Physically speaking, I doubt if any life could be much healthier than
ours was on the _Livorno_. Dress, for each of us alike, consisted of
two garments only, shirt and trousers. Unless when going inland for
some reason, we went always barefoot. Of what use could shoes be on
the _Livorno's_ decks--washed down with salt water every day--or the
white sands of the bay. Our dietary, though somewhat monotonous, was
quite wholesome. We lacked other vegetables, but grew potatoes,
pumpkins, and melons in plenty. Fresh fish we ate most days, and
butcher's meat perhaps twice or thrice a week. Purer air than that we
breathed and lived in no sanatorium could furnish, and the hours we
kept were those of the nursery; though, unfortunately, bed-time by no
means always meant sleeping-time for my father.

Withal, even my inexperience did not prevent my realisation of the
sinking, fading process at work in my father. Its end I did not
foresee. It would have gone hard with me indeed to have been
consciously facing that. But I was sadly enough conscious of the
process; and a competent housewife would have found humorous pathos,
no doubt, in my efforts, by culinary means, to counteract this. My
father's appetite was capricious, and never vigorous. There was a
considerable period in which I am sure quite half my waking hours (not
to mention dream fancies and half waking meditations in bed) were
devoted to thinking out and preparing special little dishes from the
limited range of food-stuffs at my command.

'A s'prise for you this morning, father,' I would say, as I led the
way, proudly, to our dining-table, or, in one of his bad times,
arrived at his bunk-side, carrying the carefully pared sheet of
stringy bark which served us for a tray. There would be elaborate
uncoverings on my side, and sniffs of pretended eagerness from my
father; and, thanks to the unvarying kindliness and courtesy of his
nature, I dare say my poor efforts really were of some value, because
full many a time I am sure they led to his eating when, but for
consideration of my feelings, he had gone unnourished, and so
aggravated his growing weakness.

'God bless my soul, Nick,' he would say, after a taste of my latest
concoction; 'what would they not give to have you at the Langham, or
Simpson's? I believe you are going to be a second Soyer, and control
the destinies of empires from a palace kitchen. Bush cooking,
forsooth! Why this--this latest triumph is nectar--ambrosial stuff,
Nick--more good, hearty body in it than any wines the gods ever
quaffed. You'll see, I shall begin forthwith to lay on fat, like a
Christmas turkey.'

My father could not always rise to such flights, of course; but many
and many a time he took a meal he would otherwise have lacked, solely
to gratify his small cook.

There came a time when my father passed the whole of every morning in
bed, and, later, a time when he left his bunk for no more than an hour
or two each afternoon. The thought of seeking a doctor's help never
occurred to me, and my father never mentioned it. I suppose we had
grown used to relying upon ourselves, to ignoring the resources of
civilisation, which, indeed, for my part, I had almost forgotten. Not
often, I fancy, in modern days has a boy of eleven or twelve years
passed through so strange an experience, or known isolation more
complete.

The climax of it all dates in my memory from an evening upon which I
returned with Jerry from a journey to the road (for stores) to find my
father lying unconscious beside the saloon table, where his paper and
pens were spread upon a blotting-pad. Fear had my very heart in his
cold grip that night. There was, no doubt, a certain grotesqueness,
due to ignorance, about many of my actions. In some book (of
Fielding's belike) I had read of burnt feathers in connection with
emotional young ladies' fainting fits. So now, like a frightened stag,
I flew across the sand to our fowl run, and snatched a bunch of
feathers from the first astonished rooster my hand fell upon. A few
seconds later, these were smoking in a candle flame, and thence to my
father's nostrils. To my ignorant eyes he showed no sign of life
whatever, but none the less--again inspired by books--I fell now to
chafing his thin hands. And then to the feathers again. Then back to
the hands. Lack of thought preserved me from the customary error of
attempting to raise the patient's head; but no doubt my ignorance
prevented my being of much real service, though every nerve in me
strained to the desire.

My father's recovery of robust health, or my own sudden acquisition of
a princely fortune, could hardly have brought a deeper thrill of
gladness and relief than that which came to me with the first flutter
of the veined, dark eye-lids upon which my gaze was fastened. A few
moments later, and he recognised me; another few minutes, and, leaning
shakily on my shoulder, he reached the side of his bunk. When his head
touched the pillow, he gave me a wan smile, and-- 'So you see you
can't trust me to keep house even for one afternoon, Nick,' he said.

This almost unbalanced me, and only an exaggerated sense of
responsibility as nurse and housekeeper kept back the tears that were
pricking like ten thousand needles at my eyes. Savagely I reproached
myself for having been away, and for having no foreknowledge of the
coming blow. In one of his bags my father had a flask of brandy, and,
guided by his directions, I unearthed this and administered a little
to the patient. Promising that I would look in every few minutes, I
hurried off then to relight the galley fire and prepare something for
supper.

Later in the evening my father became brighter than he had been for
weeks, and, child-like, I soon exchanged my fears for hopes. And then
it was, just as I was turning in, that, speaking in quite a cheery
tone, my father said:

'I haven't taken half thought enough for you, Nick boy; and yet you've
set me the best possible kind of example. It's easy to laugh at the
simple folks' way of talking about "if anything happens" to one. But
the idea's all right, and ought not to be lost sight of. Well then,
Nick, if "anything" should "happen" to me, at any time, I want you to
harness up Jerry and drive straight away into Werrina, with the two
letters that I left on the cuddy table. One is for the doctor
there--deliver that first--and the other is for a Roman Catholic priest,
Father O'Malley; deliver that next. It is important, and must not be
lost, for there's money in it. I wish it were more--I wish it were.
Bring them here now, Nick.'

I brought the letters, and they were placed under a weight on the
little shelf over my father's head.

'Don't forget what I said, Nick; and do it--exactly, old fellow. And
now, let us forget all about it. That gruel, or whatever it was you
gave me just now, has made me feel so comfortable that I'm going to
have a beautiful sleep, and wake up as fit as a fiddle to-morrow. Give
me your hand, boy. There--good-night! God bless you!'

He turned on his shoulder, perhaps to avoid seeing my tears, and
again, perhaps, I have thought, to avoid my seeing the coming of tears
in his own eyes. He had kissed my forehead, and I could not remember
ever being kissed by him before. For, as long as my memory carried me,
our habit had been to shake hands, like two men....

I find an unexpected difficulty in setting down the details of an
experience which, upon the whole, produced a deeper impression on me,
I think, than any other event in my life. When all is said, can any
useful purpose be served by observing at this stage of my task a
particularity which would be exceedingly depressing to me? I think
not. There is assuredly no need for me, of all people, to court
melancholy. I think that, without great fullness at this point in my
record, I can gauge pretty accurately the value as a factor in my
growth of this particular experience, and so I will be very brief.

On the fifth evening after that of the attack which left him
unconscious on the saloon deck, my father died, very peacefully, and,
I believe, quite painlessly. He spoke to me, and with a smile, only a
few minutes before he drew his last breath.

'I'm going, Nick--going--to rest, boy. Don't cry, Nick. Best son....
God bless....'

Those were the last words he spoke. For two hours or more before that
time, he had lain with eyes closed, breathing lightly, perhaps asleep,
certainly unconscious. Now he was dead. I was under no sort of
illusion about that. Something which had been hanging cold as ice over
my heart all day had fallen now, like an axe-blade, and split my heart
in twain. So I felt. There was the gentle suggestion of a smile still
about the dead lips, but something terrible had happened to my
father's eyes. I know now that mere muscular contraction was
accountable for this, and not, as it seemed, sudden terror or pain.
But the effect of that contraction upon my lonely mind! ...

Well, I had two things to do, and with teeth set hard in my lower lip
I set to work to do them. With shaking hands I closed my father's
eyelids and drew the sheet over his face. Then I took the two letters
from the shelf and thrust them in the breast of my shirt.

Walking stiffly--it seemed to me very necessary that I should keep all
my muscles quite rigid--I left the ship, harnessed Jerry, and drove
off into the darkling bush towards Werrina. The sun had disappeared
before I left my father's side, and the track to Werrina was fifteen
miles long. A strange drive, and a queer little numbed driver,
creaking along through the ghostly bush, exactly as a somnambulist
might, the most of his faculties in abeyance. Three words kept shaping
themselves in my mind, I know, and then fading out again, like
shadows. They never were spoken. My lips did not move, I think, all
through the long, slow night drive. The three words were:

'Father is dead.'




YOUTH--AUSTRALIA


I


We wore no uniform at St. Peter's Orphanage, but there were plenty of
other reminders to keep us conscious that we were inmates of an
institution, and what is called a charitable institution at that. At
all events I, personally, was reminded of it often enough; but I would
not say that the majority of the boys thought much of the point. My
upbringing, so far, had not been a good training for institutional
life. And then, again, my ignorance of the Roman Catholic religion was
complete. I had not been particularly well posted perhaps regarding
the church of my fathers--the Church of England; but I had never set
foot in a Roman Catholic place of worship, nor set eyes upon an image
of the Virgin. Occasionally, my father had gone with me to church in
London; but, as a rule, the companion of my devotions had been a
servant. And in Australia neither my father nor I had visited any
church.

I gathered gradually that my father had once met and chatted with
Father O'Malley for a few minutes in Werrina, learning in that time of
the reverend father's supervisory connection with St. Peter's
Orphanage at Myall Creek, eleven miles down the coast. It is easy now
to understand how, pondering sadly over the question of what should
become of me when 'anything happened' to him, my father had seized
upon the idea of this Orphanage, the only institute of its kind within
a hundred miles. He had never seen the place, and knew nothing of it.
But what choice had he?

And so I became a duly registered orphan, and an inmate of St.
Peter's. The letter I took to Father O'Malley contained, in bank-notes,
all the money of which my father died possessed. To this day I
do not know what the amount was, save that it was more than one
hundred pounds, and, almost certainly, under three hundred pounds. The
letter made a gift of this money to the Orphanage, I believe, on the
understanding that the Orphanage took me in and cared for me. It also,
I understood, authorised Father O'Malley to sell for the benefit of
the Orphanage all my father's belongings on board the _Livorno_, with
the exception of the books and papers, which were to be held in trust
for me, and handed over to me when I left the institution. Knowing
nobody in the district, I do not see that my father could with
advantage have taken any other course than the one he chose; and I am
very sure that he believed he was doing the best that could be done
for me in the circumstances.

Like every other habitation in that countryside, the Orphanage was a
wooden structure: hardwood weatherboard walls and galvanised iron
roof. But, unlike a good many others, it was well and truly built,
with a view to long life. It stood three feet above the ground upon
piers of stone, each of which had a mushroom-shaped cap of iron, to
check, as far as might be, the onslaught of the white ant, that
destructive pest of coastal Australia and enemy of all who live in
wooden houses. Also, it was kept well painted, and cared for in every
way, as few buildings in that district were. In Australia generally,
even in those days, labour was a somewhat costly commodity. At the
Orphanage it was the one thing used without stint, for it cost nothing
at all.

As I was being driven to the Orphanage in Father O'Malley's sulky,
behind his famous trotting mare Jinny, I hazarded upon a note of
interrogation the remark that my father would be buried.

'Surely, surely, my boy; I expect he will be buried at Werrina
to-morrow.'

This was on the morning after my delivery of the letters in Werrina. I
had spent the night in Father O'Malley's house. Somehow, I conveyed
the suggestion that I wanted to attend that burying. The priest nodded
amiably.

'Aye,' he said; 'we'll see about it, we'll see about it, presently.
But just now you're going to a beautiful house at Myall Creek--St.
Peter's. And, if ye're a real good lad, ye'll be let stay there, an'
get a fine education, an' all--if ye're a good lad. Y'r poor father
asked this for ye, like a wise man; and if we can get ut for ye, the
sisters will make a man of ye in no time--if ye're a good lad.'

'Yes, sir,' I replied meekly; and, so far as I remember, spake no
other word while seated in that swiftly drawn sulky. I learned
afterwards that the reverend father was not only a good judge of
horse-flesh, but a famous hand at a horse deal, just as he was a
notably shrewd man of business, and good at a bargain of any kind. So
I fancy was every one connected with the Orphanage.

I did not, as a fact, attend my father's funeral, nor was I ever again
as far from Myall Creek as Werrina during the whole of my term at the
Orphanage.

There were fifty-nine 'inmates,' as distinguished from other residents
there, when my name was entered on the books of St. Peter's Orphanage.
So I brought the ranks of the orphans up to sixty. The whole
institution was managed by a Sister-in-charge and three other sisters:
Sister Agatha, Sister Mary, and Sister Catharine. No doubt the
Sister-in-charge had a name, but one never heard it. She was always
spoken of as 'Sister-in-charge.' There was no male member of the staff
except Tim the boatman; and he was hardly like a man, in the ordinary
worldly sense, since he was an old orphan, and had been brought up at St.
Peter's. He played an important part in the life of the place,
because, in a way, he and his punt formed the bridge connecting us
with the rest of the world.

St. Peter's stood on a small island, under three hundred acres in
area, at the mouth of the Myall Creek, where that stream opens into
the arm of the sea called Burke Water. Our landing-stage was, I
suppose, a couple of hundred yards from the Myall Creek wharf--the
'Crick Wharf,' as it was always called; and it was Tim's job to bridge
that gulf by means of the punt, which he navigated with an oar passed
through a hole in its flat stern. The punt was roomy, but a cumbersome
craft.

The orphans ranged in age all the way from about three years on to the
twenties. Alf Loddon was twenty-six, I believe; but he, though strong,
and a useful hand at the plough, or with an axe, or in the shafts of
one of our small carts, was undoubtedly half-witted. We had several
big fellows whose chins cried aloud for the application of razors. And
none of us was idle. Even little five-year-olds, like Teddy Reeves,
gathered and carried kindling wood, and weeded the garden; while boys
of my own age were old and experienced farm hands, and had adopted the
heavy, lurching stride of the farm labourer.

I suppose there never was a 'charitable' institution conducted more
emphatically upon business lines than was St. Peter's Orphanage. The
establishment included a dairy farm, a poultry farm, and a market
garden. Indeed, at that period, so far as the production of vegetables
went, we had no white competitors within fifty or a hundred miles, I
think. As in many other parts of Australia, the inhabitants of this
countryside regarded any form of market gardening as Chinaman's work,
pure and simple. There were any number of settlers then who never
tasted vegetables from one year's end to another, though the ground
about their houses would have grown every green thing known to
culinary art. In the townships, too, nobody would 'be bothered'
growing vegetables; but, unlike many of the 'cockatoo' farmers, the
town people were ready enough to buy green things; and therein lay our
opportunity. We rarely ate vegetables at St. Peter's, but we
cultivated them assiduously; and sixpence and eightpence were quite
ordinary prices for our cabbages to fetch.

So, too, with dairy products. We 'inmates' saw very little of butter
at table, treacle being our great standby. (The sisters had butter, of
course.) But St. Peter's butter stamped 'S.P.O.' was famous in the
district, and esteemed, as it was priced, highly. Exactly the same
might be said (both as regards our share of these commodities and the
public appreciation of them) of the eggs and milk produced at St.
Peter's. Save in the way of occasional pilferings I never tasted milk
at St. Peter's; but between us, the members of the milking gang, of
which I was at one time chief, milked twenty-nine cows, morning and
evening. I have heard Jim Meagher, the chief poultry boy, boast of a
single day's gathering of four hundred and sixty-eight eggs; but eggs,
save when stolen, pricked, and sucked raw, never figured in our bill
of fare. At first glance this might appear unbusinesslike, but the
prices obtainable for these things were good, as they still are and
always have been in Australia; and the various items of our
dietary--treacle, bread, oatmeal, tea, and corned beef--could of course
be bought much more cheaply.

Father O'Malley did most of the purchasing for the Orphanage, and
audited its accounts, I believe. Sister Catharine and the
Sister-in-charge, between them, did all the collecting throughout the
countryside for the Orphanage funds. And I have heard it said they
were singularly adept in this work. I have heard a Myall Creek farmer
tell how the sisters 'fairly got over' him, though, as he told the
story, it seemed to me that in this particular case he had been the
victor. They were selling tickets at the time for a 'social' in aid of
the Orphanage funds. The farmer flatly refused to purchase, saying he
could not attend the function.

'Ah, well, but ye'll buy a ticket, Misther Jones; sure ye will now,
f'r the Orphanage.' But Mr. Jones was obdurate. Well, then, he would
give a few pounds of tea and sugar? But he was right out of both
commodities. Some of his fine eggs, or, maybe, a young pig? Mr. Jones
continued in his obduracy. He was a poor man, he said, and could not
afford to give.

'May we pick a basket av y'r beautiful oranges thin, Misther Jones?'
They might not, for he had sold them on the trees.

'Ah, well, can ye let us have a whip, just a common whip, Misther
Jones, for we've come out without one, an' the horse is gettin' old,
an' needs persuasion.' Mr. Jones would not give a whip, as he had but
the one.

'Ah, thin, just a loan of it, Misther Jones, till this evening?' No,
the farmer wanted to use the whip himself.

'Well, well, thin, Misther Jones, I see we'll have to be gettin'
along; so I'll wish ye good-morning--if ye'll just let us have a cup
o' milk each, for 'tis powerful warm this morning, an' I'm thirsty.'
At this the farmer forgot his manners, in his wrath, and said
explosively:

'The milk's all settin', an' the water tank's near empty, so I'll wish
ye good-morning, _anyhow_, mum!' And this valiant man moved to the
door.

But I am well assured that such a defeat was a rare thing in the
sisters' experience. Indeed, Mr. Jones made it his boast that he was
the only man in that district--'Prodesdun or Papish'--who ever
received a visit from the Orphanage sisters without paying for it. On
the other hand, it was very generally admitted that no farm in that
countryside was more profitable than ours; and that no one turned out
products of higher quality, or obtained better prices. These smaller
rural industries--dairying, market gardening, and the like--demand
much labour of a more or less unskilled and mechanical sort, but do
not provide returns justifying the payment of high wages. In this
regard St. Peter's was, of course, ideally situated. It paid no wages,
and employed twenty pairs of hands for every one pair employed by the
average producer in the district.


II


Looking back now upon the period I spent as an 'inmate' of St. Peter's
Orphanage, it seems a queer unreal interlude enough; possessing some
of the qualities of a dream, including brevity and detachment from the
rest of my life. But well I know that in the living there was nothing
in the least dream-like about it; and, so far from being brief, I know
there were times when it seemed that all the rest of my life had been
but a day or so, by comparison with the grey, interminable vista of
the St. Peter's period.

It appears to me now as something rather wonderful that I ever should
have been able to win clear of St. Peter's to anything else; at all
events, to anything so unlike St. Peter's as the most of my life has
been. How was it I did not eventually succeed Tim, the punt-man, or
become the hind of one or other of the small farmers about the
district, as did most of the Orphanage lads? The scope life offered to
the orphans of St. Peter's was something easily to be taken in by the
naked eye from Myall Creek. It embraced only the simplest kind of
labouring occupations, and included no faintest hint of London, or of
the great kaleidoscopic world lying between Australia and England; no
sort of suggestion of the infinitely changeful and various thing that
life has been for me.

It is certain that I cherish no sort of resentment or malice where the
Orphanage and its sisters are concerned. But neither will I pretend to
have the slightest feeling of gratitude or benevolence towards them. I
should not wish to contribute to their funds, though I possessed all
the wealth of the Americas. And I will say that I think those
responsible for the conduct of the place were singularly indifferent,
or blind, to the immense opportunities for productive well-doing which
lay at their feet.

Here were sixty orphans; lads for the most part plastic as clay. The
sisters were the potters. No ruling sovereign possesses a tithe of the
absolute authority that was theirs. They literally held the powers of
life and death. Unquestioned and god-like they moved serenely to and
fro about the island farm, in their floating black draperies,
directing the daily lives of their subjects by means of a nod, a
gesture of the hand, a curt word here or there. They were the only
gods we had. (There was nothing to make us think of them as
goddesses.) And, so blind were they to their opportunities, they
offered us nothing better. By which, I do not mean that our chapel was
neglected. (It was not, though I do not think it meant much more for
any of us than the milking, the wood-chopping, or the window-cleaning.)
But, rather, that these capable, energetic women entirely ignored their
unique opportunities of uplifting us. It was an appalling waste of
god-like powers.

I could not honestly say that I think the sisters ever gave anything
fine, or approximately fine, to one of their young slaves. They taught
us, most efficiently, to work, to do what Americans call 'Chores.' No
word they ever let fall gave a hint of any real conception of what
life might or should mean. I recall nothing in the nature of an
inspiration. Some of us, myself included, possessed considerable
capacity for loving, for devotion. This latent faculty was never drawn
upon, I think, by any of the sisters. We feared them, of course. We
even respected their ability, strength, and authority. We certainly
never loved them.

In fact, I do not think it was ever hinted to one of us that there was
anything beautiful in life. There were wonderful and miraculous things
connected with the Virgin and the Infant Christ. But these were not of
the world we knew, and, in any case, they were matters of which Father
O'Malley possessed the key. They had nothing to do with the farm, with
our work, or with us, outside the chapel. Heaven might be beautiful.
There was another place that very certainly was horrible. Meantime,
there was our own daily life, and that was--chores. That this should
have been so means, in my present opinion, a lamentable waste of young
life and of unique powers. I consider that our young lives were
sterilised rather than developed, and that such sterilisation must
have meant permanent and irrevocable loss for every one of the
orphans, myself included.

But I would be the last to deny the very real capacity and ability of
the sisters in their discharge of the duties laid upon them. I have no
doubt at all about it that they succeeded to admiration in doing what
Father O'Malley and the powers behind him (whoever they may have been)
desired done. I can well believe that the Orphanage justified itself
from a utilitarian standpoint. I believe it paid well as a farm. And I
do not see how any one could have extracted more in charity from the
inhabitants of the district (and, too, from the orphans) than the
sisters did. Oh, I give them all credit for their competence and
efficiency.

Indeed, I find it little less than wonderful to recall the manner in
which the Sister-in-charge and her three assistants maintained the
perfect discipline of that Orphanage, with never an appeal for the
assistance of masculine brute force. The Australian-born boy is not by
any means the most docile or meek of his species; and, occasionally, a
newly arrived orphan would assert himself after the universal urchin
fashion. Such minor outbreaks were never allowed to produce scenes,
however. We had no intimidating executions; no birch-rods in pickle,
or anything of that sort. Sister Agatha and Sister Catharine were
given rather to slappings, pinchings, and the vicious tweaking of
ears. I have seen Sister Agatha kick an orphan's bare toes, or his
bare shin, with the toe of her boot; and at such times she could throw
a formidable amount of venom into two or three words, spoken rather
below than above the ordinary conversational pitch of her voice. But
ceremonial floggings were unknown at St. Peter's. And indeed I can
recall no breaches of discipline which seemed to demand any such
punishment.

The most usual form of punishment was the docking of a meal. We fed at
three long tables, and sat upon forms. Meals were a fairly serious
business, because we were always hungry. A boy who was reported to the
Sister-in-charge, say, for some neglect of his work, would have his
dinner stopped. In that case it would be his unhappy lot to stand with
his hands penitentially crossed upon his chest, behind his place at
table, while the rest of us wolfed our meal. By a refinement which, at
the time, seemed to me very uncalled for, the culprit had to say
grace, before and after the meal, aloud and separately from the rest
of us.

There were occasions upon which we were one and all found wanting.
Eggs had been stolen, work had been badly done; something had happened
for which no one culprit could be singled out, and all were held to
blame. Upon such an occasion we were made to lay the dinner-tables as
usual, and to wait upon the sisters at their own table, and for the
rest of an hour to stand to attention, with hands crossed around the
long tables. Then we cleared the tables and marched out to work, each
nursing the vacuum within him, where dinner should have been, and,
presumably, resolving to amend his wicked ways.

Boys are, of course, curious creatures. I have said that we were
always hungry. I think we were. And yet the staple of our breakfast
(which never varied during the whole of my time there) was never once
eaten by me, though I was repeatedly punished for leaving it. The dish
was 'skilly,' or porridge of a kind, with which (except on the
church's somewhat numerous fast-days) we were given treacle. The
treacle I would lap up greedily, but at the porridge my gorge rose. I
simply could not swallow it. Ordinary porridge I had always rather
liked, but this ropy mess was beyond me; and, hungry though I was, I
counted myself fortunate on those mornings when I was able to go empty
away from the breakfast-table without punishment for leaving this
detestable skilly. If Sister Agatha or Sister Catharine were on duty,
it meant that I would have at least one spoonful forced into my mouth
and held there till cold sweat bedewed my face. In addition there
would be pinchings, slappings, and ear-tweakings--very painful, these
last. And sometimes I would be reported, and docked of that day's
dinner to boot. But Sister Mary would more often than not pass me by
without a glance at my bowl, and for that I was profoundly grateful.
In fact, I could almost have loved that good woman, but that she had a
physical affliction which nauseated me. Her breath caused me to
shudder whenever she approached me. She had a mild, cow-like eye,
however, and I do not think I ever saw her kick a boy.

Yes, when I look back upon that queer chapter of my life, I am bound
to admit that, however much they may have neglected opportunities that
were open to them, as moulders of human clay, those four sisters did
accomplish rather wonderful results in ruling St. Peter's Orphanage,
without any appeal to sheer force of arms. There were young men among
us, yet the sisters' rule was never openly defied. I think the secret
must have had to do chiefly with work and food. We were never idle, we
were always hungry, and we never had any opportunities for relaxation.
I never saw any kind of game played at the Orphanage; and on Sundays
devotions of one kind or another were made to fill all intervals
between the different necessary pieces of work, such as milking,
feeding stock, cleaning, and so forth.

We began the day at five o'clock in the summer, and six in the winter,
and by eight at night all lights were out. We had lessons every day;
and there, oddly enough, in school, the cane was adjudged necessary,
as an engine of discipline, and used rather freely on our hands--hands,
by the way, which were apt at any time to be a good deal
chipped and scratched, and otherwise knocked about by our outdoor
work. So far as I remember our schooling was of the most primitive
sort, and confined to reading aloud, writing from dictation, and
experimenting with the first four rules of arithmetic. History we did
not touch, but we had to memorise the names of certain continents,
capitals, and rivers, I remember.

All this ought to have been the merest child's play for me; it
certainly was a childish form of study. But I did not appear to pick
up the trick of it, and I remember being told pretty frequently to
'Hold out your hand, Nicholas!' I had a clumsy knack of injuring my
finger-tips, and getting splinters into my hands, in the course of
outdoor work. The splinters produced little gatherings, and I dare say
this made penmanship awkward. I know it gave added terrors to the
canings, and, too, I thought it gave added zest to Sister Agatha's use
of that instrument in my case. Unfortunately for me Sister Agatha, and
not the mild-eyed Sister Mary, was the schoolmistress.

It may be, of course, that I lay undue stress upon the painful or
unpleasant features of our life at the Orphanage, because I was
unhappy there, and detested the place. But certainly if I could recall
any brighter aspects of the life there I would set them down. I do not
think there were any brighter aspects for me, at all events. I not
only had no pride in myself here; I took shame in my lot.

On the first Sunday in each month visitors were admitted. Any one at
all could come, and many local folk did come. They made it a kind of
excursion. I was glad that our devotions kept us a good deal out of
the visitors' way, because, especially at first, I had a fear of
recognising among them some one of the handful of people in Australia
whom I might be said to have known--fellow-passengers by the
_Ariadne_. The thought of being recognised as an 'inmate' by Nelly
Fane was dreadful to me; and even more, I fancy, I dreaded the mere
idea of being seen by Fred-without-a-surname. I pictured him grinning
as he said: 'Hallo! you in this place? You an orphan, then?' I think I
should have slain him with my wood-chopping axe.

On these visitors' days we all wore boots and clothes which were never
seen at other times. I hated mine most virulently, because they were
not mine, but had been worn by some other boy before they came to me.
It was never given to me to learn what became of the ample store of
clothing I had on board the _Livorno_. The sisters were exceedingly
thorough in detail. On the mornings of these visitors' Sundays, before
going out to work, we 'dressed' our beds. That is to say we were given
sheets, and made to arrange them neatly upon our beds. Before retiring
at night we had to remove these sheets and refold them with exact
care, under the sister's watchful eyes, so that they might be fresh
and uncreased for next visitors' Sunday. We never saw them at any
other times. Our boots really were rather a trial. Running about
barefoot all day makes the feet swell and spread. It hardens them,
certainly, but it makes the use of boots, and especially of hard,
ill-fitting boots, abominably painful.

And with it all, having said that I detested the place and was unhappy
during all my time there, how is it I cannot leave the matter at that?
For I cannot. I do not feel that I have truly and fully stated the
case. It is not merely that I have made no attempt to follow my life
there in detail. No such exhaustive and exhausting record is needed.
But I do desire to set down here the essential facts of each phase in
my life.

I have referred already to the precociously developed trick I had of
savouring life as a spectator, of observing myself as a figure in an
illustrated romance--probably the hero. Now, as I am certain this
habit was not entirely dropped during my life at St. Peter's, I think
one must argue that I cannot have been entirely and uniformly unhappy
there. Indeed, I am sure I was not, because I can distinctly remember
luxuriating in my sadness. I can remember translating it into unspoken
words, the while my head was cushioned in the flank of a cow at
milking time, describing myself and my forlorn estate as an orphan and
an 'inmate' to myself. And, without doubt, I derived satisfaction from
that. I can recall picturesquely vivid contrasts drawn in my mind
between Master Nicholas Freydon, as the playmate of Nelly Fane on the
_Ariadne_, and the son of the distinguished-looking Mr. Freydon whom
every one admired, and as the 'inmate' of St. Peter's, trudging to and
fro among the other orphans, with corns on the palms of his hands and
bruises and scratches on his bare legs and feet.

And then when visitors were about: 'If they only knew,' 'If they could
have seen,' 'If I were to tell them'--such phrases formed the
beginning of many thoughts in my mind. I can remember endeavouring to
mould my expression upon such occasions to fit the part I consciously
played; to adopt the look I thought proper to the disinherited
aristocrat, the gently-nurtured child now outcast in the world, the
orphan. Yes, I distinctly remember, when a visitor of any parts at all
was in sight, composing my features and attitude to suit the orphan's
part, as distinguished from that of the mere typical 'inmate,' who,
incidentally, was an orphan too. I found secret consolation in the
conception that however much I might be in St. Peter's Orphanage, I
would never be wholly of it--a real 'inmate' I remember, as I thought
not unskilfully, scheming to arouse Sister Mary's interest in me, as I
had aroused the interest of other people in myself on the _Ariadne_
and elsewhere, and only relinquishing my pursuit when baffled, upon
contact, by the poor sister's physical infirmity before-mentioned. I
am bound to say that she made less response to my overtures than that
made by the cows I milked, who really did show some mild, bovine
preference for me.

But there it is. In view of these things I cannot have been wholly
unhappy, for I remained a keenly interested observer of life, and of
my own meanderings on its stage. But I will say that I liked St.
Peter's less than any other place I had known, and that mentally,
morally, emotionally, and spiritually, as well as physically, I was
rather starved there. The life of the place did arrest my development
in all ways, I think, and it may be that I have suffered always, to
some extent, from that period of insufficient nutrition of mind and
body.


III


The custom of St. Peter's Orphanage was to allow farmers and local
residents generally to choose an orphan, as they might pick out a
heifer or a colt from a stockyard, and take him away for good--or ill.
I believe the only stipulation was that the orphan could not in any
case be returned to St. Peter's. If the selector found him to be a
damaged or incomplete orphan, that was the selector's own affair, and
he had to put up with his bargain as best he might. The person who
chose an orphan in this way became responsible for the boy's
maintenance while boyhood lasted, and I believe it was not customary
to send out lads under the age of ten or twelve years. After a time
the people who took these lads into their service were, theoretically,
supposed to allow them some small wage, in addition to providing them
with a home.

It was rather a blow to my self-esteem, I remember, to see my
companions being removed from the institution one by one as time ran
on, and to note that nobody appeared to want me. I may have been
somewhat less sturdy than the average run of 'inmates,' but I think we
were all on the spare and lean side. It is possible, however, that in
view of my father's legacy to St. Peter's, the authorities felt it
incumbent upon them to keep me. The departure of a boy always had an
unsettling effect upon me; and when, as happened now and again, an
ex-inmate paid us a visit on a Sunday, possibly with members of the
family with whom he worked, I was filled with yearning interest in the
life of the world outside our island farm and workshop.

But these yearnings of mine were quite vague; mere amorphous
emanations of the mind, partaking of the nature of nostalgia, and
giving birth to nothing in the shape of plans, nor even of definite
desires. Then, suddenly, this vague uneasiness became the dominant
factor in my daily life, as the result of one of those apparently
haphazard chances upon which human progress and development so often
seem to pivot.

In the late afternoon of a visitors' Sunday, as I was making my way
down to the milking-yard with a pail on either arm, my eyes fell upon
the broad shoulders of a man who was leaning contemplatively over the
slip-rails of the yard. The sight of those shoulders sent a thrill
right through me; it touched the marrow of my spine. I, who had
thought myself the most forlorn and friendless of orphans; I had a
friend, and he was here before me. There was no need to see his face.
I knew those shoulders.

'Ted!' I cried. And positively I had to exercise deliberate
self-restraint to prevent myself from rushing at our _Livorno_ friend and
factotum, and flinging my arms about him, as in infantile days I had
been wont to make embracing leaps at Amelia from the kitchen table of
the house off Russell Square.

'God spare me days! Is it you, then, chum?' exclaimed Ted, as he swung
round on his high heels. (In those days the Sunday rig of men like Ted
Reilly comprised much-polished, pointed-toe, elastic-side boots with
very high heels, and voluminously 'bell-bottomed' trousers.) I rattled
questions at him, as peas from a pea-shooter; and when I had laid
aside my buckets he pumped away at my right arm, as though providing
water to put a fire out.

It seemed he had only that week returned to the district, after a long
spell of wandering and desultory working in southern Queensland. No,
he had not had time yet to go out to the _Livorno_, and he had not
heard of my father's death--'Rest his soul for as good an' kindly a
gentleman as ever walked!' And so--'Spare me days!'--I was an orphan
at St. Peter's! The queer thing it was he had taken it into his head
to be wandering that way, an' all, having nothing else to do to pass
the time, like! How I blessed the casual ways of the man, the marked
absence of 'Systum' in his character, that led him to make such
excursions! He squatted beside me on his heels, whilst I, fearing
admonition from above, got to work with my cows, and saw the rest of
the milking gang started.

Passionate disappointment swept across my mind when I learned that he
had been several hours on the island before I saw him, and that it
wanted now but ten minutes to five o'clock, the hour at which the punt
made its last trip with visitors. And in almost the same moment joy
shook and thrilled me as I realised the romantic hazard of our meeting
at all, which was accentuated really by the narrowness of our margin
of time. A matter of minutes and he would be gone. A matter of minutes
and I should never have seen him at all. But that could not have been.
I refused to contemplate a life at St. Peter's in which this
inestimable amelioration (now nearly five minutes old) played no part.
The hopeless emptiness of life at the Orphanage without a meeting with
Ted was something altogether too harrowing to be dwelt upon. It could
not have been borne.

'You'll be here first thing next visitors' Sunday, Ted--first thing?'
I charged him, as he rose in response to the puntman's bell. 'I
couldn't stand it if you didn't come, Ted.'

'Oh, I'll come, right enough, chum. But that's a month. Why, spare me
days, surely I---'

'You'll have to go, Ted. That's his last ring. Sister Agatha's
looking. Don't seem to take much notice o' me, Ted, or she might-- Oh,
good-bye, Ted! Don't seem to be noticing. Good-bye, good-bye!'

My head was back in the cow's flank now, and very hot tears were
running down my cheeks and into the milk-pail. My lip was cut under my
front teeth, and--'Oh, Ted, first thing in the morning--don't forget
the Sunday,' I implored, as he passed away, drawing one hand
caressingly across my shoulder as he went.

In a hazy, golden dream I finished my milking, staggering and swaying
up to the dairy under my two brimming pails, and turned to the
remaining tasks of the evening, longing for bed-time and liberty to
review my amazing good fortune in privacy; thirsting for it, as a
tippler for his liquor. I dared not think about it at all before
bed-time. In some recondite way it seemed that would have been indecent,
an exposure of my new treasure to the vulgar gaze. Now, it was
securely locked away inside me, absolutely hidden. And there it must
remain until, lights being doused, I could draw it out under the
friendly cover of my coarse bed-clothes (after visiting-day sheets had
been removed) and voluptuously abandon myself to it. Meantime, I moved
among my fellows as one having possession of a talisman which raised
him far above the cares and preoccupations of the common herd. I even
looked forward with pleasure to the next day, to Monday! I should have
no breakfast. Sister Agatha would be on duty. I should be pestered,
and probably robbed of dinner, too. But what of that? The coming of
that cheerless and hungry Monday would carry me forward one whole day
toward the next visitors' Sunday, and--Ted.

I had not begun yet to consider in any way the question of how seeing
Ted could help me. Enough for me that I had seen him; that I had a
friend; and that I should see him again. Indeed, even if I had had no
hope of seeing him again, I still should have been thrilled through
and through by the delicious kindliness, the romantic interest of the
thought that, out there in the world beyond Myall Creek, I had a
friend; a free and powerful man, moving about independently among the
citizens of the great world, in which Sister Agatha was a mere nobody;
in which all sorts of delightful things continually happened, in which
task work was no more than one incident in a daily round compact of
other interests, hazards, meetings, and--and of freedom.

It was extraordinary the manner in which ten minutes in the society of
a man, who would have been adjudged by many most uninspiring, had
transformed me. It seemed the mere sight of this simple bushman, in
his 'bell-bottomed' Sunday trousers, had lifted me up from a slough of
hopeless inertia to a plane upon which life was a master musician, and
all my veins the strings from which he drew his magic melodies.


IV


A week passed, and brought us to another Sunday. On this morning I
stepped out of bed into the dimness of the dawn light, full of
elation.

'It's only seven weeks now to next visitors' day. In seven weeks I
shall see Ted again. Seven times seven days--why, it's nothing,
really,' I told myself.

By this time I had devised a plan for helping Time on his way. It
hardly commends itself to my mature judgment, but great satisfaction
was derived from it at the time. It consisted merely of telling myself
in so many words that a month comprised eight weeks. Thus, ostensibly,
I had seven weeks to wait. But my secret self knew that the reality
was incredibly better than that. Next Sunday, outwardly, I should have
only six weeks to wait, the following Sunday only five. And then, a
week later, with only a paltry four weeks to wait, my secret self
would be thrilling with the knowledge that actually the day itself had
come, and only an hour or so divided me from Ted. Childish, perhaps,
but it comforted me greatly; and, to some extent, I have indulged the
practice through life. With a mile to walk when tired, I have caught
myself, even quite late in life, comforting myself with the absurd
assurance that another 'couple of miles' would bring me to my
destination! To the naturally sanguine temperament this particular
folly would be impossible, though its antithesis is pretty frequently
indulged in, I fancy.

And so it was while going about my various duties, nursing the
pretence that in seven more weeks I should see my friend again, that I
came face to face with the man himself; then, after no more than one
little week of waiting, and when no visitors at all were due. I
gasped. Ted grinned cordially. Sister Mary was on duty. Ted showed her
a note from Father O'Malley, and she nodded amiably. Thrice blessed
goddess! Her fat, white face took on angelic qualities in my eyes. One
little movement of her hooded head, and I was wafted from purgatory,
not into heaven, but into a place which seemed to me more attractive,
into the freedom of the outside world--Ted's world. Not that I was
permitted to leave the island, but, until the time for evening
milking, I was allowed to walk about the farm and talk at ease with
Ted. By a further miracle of the goddess's complaisance I was
permitted to ignore the Orphanage dinner that day, and intoxicate
myself with Ted upon sandwiches and cakes and ginger-beer. That was a
banquet, if you like!

It seemed that Father O'Malley was quite well disposed toward Ted, and
had even allowed him to make a little contribution (which he could ill
spare) to the Orphanage funds. With what seemed to me transcendent
audacity Ted had actually tried to adopt me, to take me into his
service, as neighbouring farmers took other orphans from St. Peter's.
This had been firmly but quite pleasantly declined; but Ted had been
given permission to come and see me whenever he liked, on Sundays--upon
any Sunday. I could have hugged the man. His achievement seemed
to me little short of miraculous. I figured Ted manipulating threads
by which nations are governed. To be able to bend to one's will august
administrators, people like Father O'Malley! Truly, the world outside
St. Peter's was a wondrous place, and the life of its free citizens a
thing most delectable.

We talked, but how we did talk, all through that sunny, windy Sunday!
(A bright, dry westerly had been blowing for several days.) I gathered
that Ted was in his customary condition of impecuniosity, and that,
much against his inclination, it would be necessary for him to take a
job somewhere before many days had passed; or else--and I saw, with a
pang of desolate regret, that his own feeling favoured the
alternative--to pack his swag and be off 'on the wallaby'; on the
tramp, that is, putting in an occasional day's work, where this might
offer, and sleeping in the bush. He was a born nomad. Even I had
realised this. And he liked no other life so well as that of the
'traveller,' which, in Australia, does not mean either a bagman or a
tourist, but rather one who strolls through life carrying all his
belongings on his back, working but very occasionally, and camping in
a fresh spot every night.

It required no great penetration upon Ted's part to see that I was
weary of St. Peter's. (My first day at the Orphanage had brought me to
that stage.)

'Look here, mate,' he said, late in the afternoon. 'I've got pretty
near thirty bob left, and a real good swag. Why not come with me, an'
we'll swag it outer this into Queensland?'

I drew a quick breath. It was an attractive offer for a boy in my
position. But even then there was more of prudence and foresight in
me, or possibly less of reckless courage and less of the born nomad,
than Ted had.

'But how could I get away?'

'You can swim,' said Ted. 'I'd be waiting for ye at the wharf. We'd be
outer reach by daybreak.'

'And then, Ted, how should we live?' My superior prudence questioned
him. I take it the difference in our upbringing and tradition spoke
here.

'Live! why, how does any one live on the wallaby? It's never hard to
get a day's work, if ye want a few bob. Up in the station country they
never refuse a man rations, anyway; it's in the town the trouble is.
I've never gone short, travelling.'

'I don't think I'd like begging for meals, Ted,' I said musingly. And
in a moment I was wishing with all my heart I could withdraw the
words. It seemed that, for the first time in all our acquaintance, I
had hurt and offended this simple, good-hearted fellow.

'Beggin', is it?' he cried, very visibly ruffled. 'I'd be sorry to ask
ye to, for it's what I've never done in me life, an' never would.
Would ye call a man a beggar for takin' a ration or a bitter 'baccy
from a station store? Why, doesn't every traveller do the same? An',
for that matter, can't a man always put in a day's work, gettin'
firewood or what not, if he's a mind to? Ye needn't fear Ted Reilly'll
ever come to beggin'!'

In my eager anxiety to placate my only friend I almost accepted his
offer. But not quite. Some little inherited difference held me back,
perhaps. I wonder! At all events, the thing was dropped between us for
the time; and, before he left, Ted promised he would tackle a bit of
work a Myall Creek farmer had offered him--to clear a bush paddock of
burrajong fern, which had poisoned some cattle. Thus, he would be able
to come and see me again on the following Sunday. On that we parted;
and, before I was half way through my milking, fear and regret
oppressed me as with a physical nausea; fear that I might have lost my
only friend, regret that I had not accepted his offer, and so won to
freedom and the big world outside St. Peter's.

The night that followed was one of the most unhappy spent by me at St.
Peter's. My prudence appeared to me the merest poltroonery, my remark
about 'begging' the most finicking absurdity, my failure to accept
Ted's offer the most reckless and offensive stupidity. Evidently I was
unworthy of any better lot than I had. I should live and die an
'inmate' and a drudge. I deserved nothing else. In short, I was a very
despicable lad, had probably lost the only friend I should ever have,
and, certainly, I was very miserable.

Monday brought some softening (helped by the fact that Sister Mary was
on duty at breakfast-time, so that I escaped the addition of
punishment to hunger), and, as the week wore slowly by, hope rose in
my breast once more, and with it a return of what I now regard as the
common-sense prescience which made me hesitate to adopt a swagman's
life. I could not honestly say that I had any definite ideas as to
another and more reputable sort of occupation or career. As yet, I had
not. But I did vaguely feel that there would be derogation in becoming
what my father would have called a 'tramp.'

My father's memory, the question of what he would have thought of it,
affected my attitude materially. He had accepted it as axiomatic, I
thought, that his son must be a gentleman. My present lot as an
'inmate' of St. Peter's hardly seemed to fit the axiom, somehow; and
Ted, whatever I might think or say about 'beggin'' or the like, was
all the friend I had or seemed likely to have, and a really good
fellow at that. But withal a certain stubbornly resistant quality in
me asserted that there would be a downward step for me, though not for
Ted, or for any of my fellow orphans, in taking to the road; that the
step might prove irrevocable, and that I ought not to take it. I dare
say there was something of the snob in me. Anyhow, that was how I felt
about it. Also, I remember deriving a certain comically stern sort of
satisfaction from contemplation of the spectacle of myself, alone,
unaided, declining to stoop, even though stooping should bring me
freedom from the Orphanage! Yes, there was a certain egotistical
satisfaction in that thought.

Ted came to see me again on the next Sunday, but our day was far less
cheery than its predecessor had been. We were good friends still, but
there was a subtle constraint between us, as was proved by the fact
that Ted did not again mention the suggestion of my taking to the road
with him. Also, Ted was for the moment a wage-earner, working during
fixed and regular hours for an employer; and I knew he hated that. In
such case he felt as one of the mountain-bred brumbies (wild horses)
of that countryside might be supposed to feel, when caught, branded,
and forced between shafts.

On the following Sunday Ted's downcast constraint was much more
pronounced, and I saw plainly that my Sabbath visitor was on the eve
of a breakaway. The name of the farmer for whom he had been working
was Mannasseh Ford, and, having such a name, the man was always spoken
of in just that way.

'I pretty near bruk my back finishing Mannasseh Ford's paddick last
night,' explained Ted moodily. 'There was three days' fair work left
in it when I got there in the morning. But I meant gettin' shut of it,
an' I did. Mannasseh Ford opened his eyes pretty wide when I called up
for me money las' night, an' he looked over the paddick. Wanted to
take me on regler, he did; pounder week an' all found, he said. I
thanked him kindly, him an' his pounder week! Well, he said he'd make
it twenty-five shillin', an' I thanked him for that.'

Thanks clearly meant refusal with Ted, and I confess he rose higher in
my esteem somehow, for the fact that he could actually refuse what to
me seemed like wealth. I recalled the fact that my father had paid Ted
exactly half this amount, and had found him quite willing to stay with
us for half that again, or even for occasional tobacco money. Perhaps
there was a mercenary vein in me at the time. I think it likely. The
talk of my fellow orphans was largely of wages, and materialism
dominated the atmosphere in which I lived. I know this refusal of
twenty-five shillings a week and 'all found' struck me as tolerably
reckless; splendid, in a way, but somewhat foolhardy, and I hinted as
much to Ted.

'Och, bother him an' his twenty-five shillin'!' said Ted. 'Just
because I cleared his old paddick, he thinks I'm a workin' bullick. He
offered me thirty shillin' after, if ye come to that; an' I told him
he hadn't money enough in the bank to keep me. Neither has he.'

'But, Ted,' I urged, 'why not? It's good money, and you've got to work
somewhere.'

'Aye,' said Ted, his constraint lifting for a moment to admit the
right vagabondish twinkle into his blue eyes. 'Somewhere! An'
sometimes. But not there, mate, an' not all the time, thank ye; not
me. It's all right for Mannasseh Ford; but, spare me days, I'd sooner
be in me grave.'

I pondered this for a time, while a voice within me kept on repeating
with sickening certainty: 'He's going away; he's going away. You've
lost your friend; you've lost your friend.' And then, as one thrusts a
foot into cold water before taking a plunge: 'Well, then, what shall
you do, Ted?' I asked him. But, for the moment, I was not to have the
plunge.

'Oh, if ye come to that,' he said, weakly smiling, 'I've money in
hand, an' to spare. Look at the wealth o' me.' And he drew out for my
edification a little bundle of greasy one-pound notes, which, for me,
certainly had a very substantial look. I knew instinctively that my
friend wanted me to help him out by pursuing the inquiry; but for the
time I shirked it, and we talked of other things. Later in the day I
returned to it, as a moth to a candle, undeterred, partly impelled
thereto, in fact, by the assured foreknowledge that the process would
hurt.

'But what will you do, Ted, now you've given up Mannasseh Ford? Will
you take another job round the Creek here, or----'

I paused, scanning my only friend's face, and seeing my loss of him
writ plainly in his downcast eyes and half-shamed expression. (I am
not sure but what there may have been more of the human boy, the
child, in Ted, than in myself.)

'Oh, well, mate,' he said haltingly, and then stopped altogether. He
was drawing an intricate pattern in the dust with the blade of his
pen-knife, a favourite pastime with bushmen. The pause was pregnant.
At last he looked up with a toss of his head. 'Oh, come on, mate,' he
said impatiently. 'Swim across to-night, an' we'll beat up Queensland
way. I tell ye, travellin' 's fine. Ye've got no boss to say do this
an' that. You goes y'r own way at y'r own gait. Ye'd better come.'

'So you'll go, Ted. I knew you would,' I said, musing in my rather
old-fashioned way. It seems a smallish matter enough now; but I know
that at the time I was conscious of making a momentous sacrifice, of
taking a step of epoch-making significance. Somehow, the very
greatness of the sacrifice made me the more determined about it. I
should lose my only friend, a devastating loss; and the more clearly I
realised how naked this loss would leave me, the more convinced I felt
that my decision was right. There is, of course, a kind of gluttony in
self-denial; one's appetite for sacrifice, and particularly in youth,
may be undeniably avid.

'Well, I did try to stop,' he muttered, almost sullenly for him. And
then, with that toss of his head, and the glimmering of a frank smile:
'But I can't stick it. Humpin' a swag's about all I'm fit for, I
reckon. You're right, too, it's no game for your father's son.' And
here his kindly face lost all trace of anything but friendliness.
'Only, what beats me is what in the world else can ye do, mewed up in
this--this blessed work'us. That's what has me beat.'

The crisis was passed, and with it the last of Ted's shamefaced
constraint. It was admitted between us that he must be off again to
his wandering, and that I must stay behind. And now Ted had no thought
for anything but my welfare. There was no more awkwardness between us,
but only the warmth of this good fellow's real affection, and the
almost agreeable melancholy and self-righteous consciousness of wise
denial which possessed me. Ted fumbled under his coat with a packet of
some food he had brought me: 'Spare me days, the cats might give a lad
a bit o' bread to his breakfast--drat 'em!'--and, finally pressed it
into my hands, with injunctions to be careful in opening it, as he had
put a scrap of writing in with it, for me to remember him by.

And so we parted, with no shadow on our friendship, on the track down
to the punt.

But though my friend was gone, after these three Sunday visits, and I
was alone again, the influence of his coming remained. I should not
revert to the unhoping inertia of my previous state. Some instinct
told me that. And the instinct was right. My curiosity had been too
fully roused. My relationship to the world of people outside St.
Peter's had been definitely re-established by the kindly, rather
childlike, bushman, and would not again be allowed to lapse. The mere
talk of swimming to the wharf, of cutting the painter, of walking
forth into the real world which was not ruled by a Sister-in-charge--all
this had wrought a permanent change in me.

The 'scrap of writin'' fumblingly inserted into the packet of cakes was
no writing of Ted's, but a crumpled, greasy one-pound Bank of New South
Wales note; one of his little store, useless to me at St. Peter's--yes;
but, even as my eyes pricked to the emotion of gratitude, some inner
consciousness told me my friend's gift would yet prove of very real use
to me outside the Orphanage, one day. And, before Ted came, I had been
unable to descry any future outside the Orphanage.


V


I do not remember the exact period that elapsed between Ted's
departure and the visit of the artist, Mr. Rawlence. But it must have
been early winter when Ted was at Myall Creek, because my fifteenth
birthday fell at about that time; and it was spring when Mr. Rawlence
came, for I know the wattle was in bloom then. Very likely it was in
August or September, three or four months after Ted's departure. At
all events my mind was still much occupied by thoughts of the outside
world and of my future.

Some one had told me that a Sydney artist, a Mr. Rawlence, had
permission to land on the island, as he wished to sketch there. But he
had not been much about the house or the yards, and I had not seen
him. And then, one late afternoon, when I had arrived at the
milking-yards a few minutes before the others of the milking gang, I
stood with two pails in my right hand, leaning over the slip-rails at the
very spot upon which I had caught my first glimpse of Ted at St.
Peter's. I was thinking of that Sunday when I had recognised his broad
shoulders, and recalling the thrill that recognition had brought me.

The romantic hazardousness of life had for some considerable time now
made its appeal felt by me. It seemed infinitely curious and
interesting to me that I and my father ever should have known Ted
intimately, as one who shared our curious life on the _Livorno_; Ted
who was born and bred there in Werrina; we who came there across
thousands of miles of ocean from the world's far side, from Putney,
from places whose names Ted had never heard. And then that I should
have walked down to that milking-yard with my pails, and, so to say,
stumbled upon Ted, after his long wanderings in Queensland, where at
this moment he was probably wandering again, hundreds of miles away
and, possibly, thinking of me, of that same milking-yard, of these
identical slip-rails and splintery grey fence. A wonderful and
mysterious business, this life in the great world, I thought; and with
that I threw up my left hand to lift the rails down.

'Oh, hold on! Don't move! Stay as you were a minute!'

I jumped half out of my skin as these words, apparently spoken in my
very ear, reached me; and, wheeling abruptly round, I saw a man
wearing a very large grey felt hat, and holding pencils and a paper
block in his hands, peering at me from a little wooded hummock at the
end of the cowshed. The skin about his eyes was all puckered up, he
held a pencil cross-wise between his white teeth, and was shaking his
head from side to side as though very much put about over something.

'What a pity! It's gone now,' he said, as he strode down the slope
towards me.

He clearly was disappointed about something; but yet I thought that
never since the days when my father was with me had I heard any one
speak more pleasantly, or seen any one smile in kindlier fashion.
Later, I realised that no one I had met since my father's death
possessed anything resembling the sort of manner, address, intonation,
or mental attitude of this Mr. Rawlence. I had no theories then about
social divisions, and the like; but here, I thought, was a man who
would find nobody in the district having anything in common with
himself. By the same token, I thought, had my father been alive this
newcomer would have recognised a possible companion in him. And,
finally, as Mr. Rawlence came to a standstill before me, this absurd
reflection flitted through my mind:

'If he only knew it, there's me! But he will never know--how could
he?'

The absurd vanity and audacity of the thought made me blush like a
bashful schoolgirl. The ridiculous pretentiousness of the thought that
in me, the 'inmate' of St. Peter's, this splendid person could find a
companion, impressed me now so painfully that I felt it must be
plainly visible; that the visitor must see and be scornfully amused by
it. Yet, with really extraordinary cordiality, he was holding out his
right hand in salutation. Here again my awkwardness made me bungle.
What he meant by his gesture I could not think. Some amusing trick,
perhaps. It did not occur to me in that moment of self-abasement that
he wished to shake an 'inmate's' hand.

'Won't you shake?' he asked, with that smile of his--so unlike any
expression one saw on folks' faces at St. Peter's.

'I beg your pardon,' I faltered, and gave him a limp hand, reviling
myself inwardly for conduct which I felt would utterly and for ever
condemn me in this gentleman's eyes. 'Of course,' I told myself,
'he'll be thinking: "What can one expect from these unfortunate
inmates--friendless orphans, living on charity?"' As a fact, I suppose
no man's demeanour could have been less suggestive of any such
uncharitable thought.

'I suspect you thought it like my cheek, yelling at you like that. The
fact is, I had just begun to sketch you. See!'

He showed me his sketch-block, upon which I saw in outline the figure
of a boy carrying pails and leaning over a fence. What chiefly caught
my eye in this was the reproduction of my absurd trousers, one torn
leg reaching midway down the calf, the other in jagged scallops about
my knee. He might have idealised my rags a little, I thought, in my
ignorance. No doubt I had been better pleased if Mr. Rawlence had
endowed me in the sketch with the dress of, say, a smart clerk. And,
apart from the artistic aspect, the man who would sniff at this as
evidence of contemptible snobbishness in me, would take a more lenient
view, perhaps, if he had ever spent a year or two in an orphanage like
St. Peter's.

'It has the makings of quite a good little character study, I fancy.
Later on, when you're free--perhaps, to-morrow--I'll get you to give
me half an hour, if you will, to make a real sketch of it.'

It was in my mind that if only I could make a remark of the right kind
I might immediately differentiate myself in this artist's eyes from
the general run of 'inmates.' This again may have been an unworthy and
snobbish thought, but I know it was mine at the time, based in my mind
upon the unvoiced but profound conviction that I was different in
essence from the other orphans. This was not mere conceit, I think,
because it emanated rather from pride in my father than from any
exalted opinion of myself. But, whatever the rights of it, no suitable
remark came to me. Indeed, beyond an incoherent mumble over the
hand-shaking, I might have been a mute for all the part I had so far
taken in this interview. And just then I caught a glimpse of Sister
Agatha emerging from behind the wood-stack at the end of the vegetable
garden, and that gave me something else to think about.

'Excuse me!' I said, angrily conscious that I was flushing again and
that all my limbs were in my way, and that I was presenting a most
uncouth appearance. 'I must get on with the milking.' And then I made
my plunge. 'Perhaps you would speak to Sister-in-charge. Not this one
here, but Sister-in-charge,' I hurriedly added as Sister Agatha drew
nearer, her thin lips tightly compressed, her gimlet eyes full of
promise of ear-tweakings. 'She would perhaps give me leave to--to do
anything you wanted. I--I am sure she would. Good-bye!'

Having hurriedly fired this last shot, I bolted into the milking-shed.
Just for an instant I had succeeded in meeting Mr. Rawlence's eye. I
had very much wanted to show him something, as, for example, that I
would gladly do anything he liked, even to the extent of allowing him
to trample all over me--if only I had been a free agent. In some way I
had longed to claim kinship with him, in a humble fashion; to say that
I understood him and his kind, despite my ragged trousers and scarred,
dusty bare feet. Now, with a pail between my knees, and my head in a
cow's flank, I was very sure I had utterly failed to convey anything,
except that I was an uncouth creature. My eyes smarted from
mortification; and the grotesque thought crossed my mind that if only
I had had a photograph of my father, and could have shown it to Mr.
Rawlence, the position would have been quite different! I suppose I
must have been a rather fatuous youth. Also, I was obsessed to the
point of mania by the determination not to become a veritable 'inmate'
of St. Peter's, like my fellows there, however long I might be
condemned to live in the place.

During the next three days I was greatly depressed by the fact that I
never caught a glimpse of the artist anywhere. In fact, it was said
that he had gone away from Myall Creek altogether. And then, greatly
to my secret joy, the Sister-in-charge sent for me one morning and
said:

'There is an artist gentleman coming here, Mr. Rawlence. You are to do
whatever he tells you, and carry his things for him while he is here.
Be careful now. I have word from Father O'Malley about this. Be sure
you don't neglect your milking. You can tell the gentleman when you
have to go to that. You can do some wood-chopping after tea, if he
should want you in your chopping time. Run along now, and go over in
the punt with Tim when he goes to meet the gentleman.'

It would seem the good-will of the Great Powers had once more been
invoked in connection with me; and I learned afterwards that Mr.
Rawlence had not left the district, but had been staying in Werrina
for a few days. While there, no doubt, he had met Father O'Malley, and
very casually, I dare say, had mentioned his fancy for sketching me.
At the time these trivial events stirred me deeply. That Father
O'Malley should have been approached seemed to me a fact of high
portent. If only I had had a portrait of my father!

As Destiny ruled it, Mr. Rawlence spent but the one day at St.
Peter's, in place of the enthralling vista of days, each of more
romantic interest than its predecessor, of which I had dreamed. He had
news demanding his return to Sydney; and, as he said, he ought not to
have come out to St. Peter's even for this one day. But he wanted to
complete his sketch. So that, in a sense, he really came to see me
again. This radiant being's swift and important movements in the great
world outside the Orphanage were directly influenced by me. It was a
stirring thought, and went some way toward compensating me for the
shattered vista of many days spent in leisurely attendance upon the
man belonging to my father's order. It was thus I thought of him.

I cannot of course recall every word spoken and every little event of
that momentous day, and it would serve no useful purpose if I could.
It was important for me, less by reason of anything remarkable in
itself, than by virtue of what was going on in my own mind while I
posed for Mr. Rawlence (possibly in more senses than one) and
subsequently carried his paraphernalia for him, showed him his way
about the island, and generally attended upon him. I had hoped that he
would question me about my life before coming to St. Peter's, and he
did. By this time I was at my ease with him, and I think I told my
brief story intelligently. In any case, I interested him; so much I
saw clearly and with satisfaction. I noted, too, that he was impressed
by the name of the London newspaper with which my father had been
connected before his determination to seek peace in the wilds.

'H'm!' 'Ah!' 'Strange!' 'A recluse indeed!' 'And you think he had
never seen this--St. Peter's, that is, when he wrote the letter
arranging for you to come here? Well, to be sure, there was little
choice, of course, little choice enough, and in such a lonely,
isolated place.'

I remember these among his exclamations and comments upon my story.
And then he asked me what ideas I had about my future, and I told him,
none. I also told him of Ted's visit and of his offer to me, and my
refusal of it.

'Yes,' he said, 'that was wise of you, I think; that certainly was
best. In some countries now, in the Old World, one might advise you to
stick to the country. But here-- Well, you know, there must be some
real reason for the rapid growth of the Australian capital cities, and
the comparative stagnation of the countryside. The more cultured
people won't leave the capitals, and that affects country life. Yes,
but why won't they leave the cities? They do in the Old World, for
I've met 'em in the villages and country towns there. But why is it?'

Mr. Rawlence could hardly have expected an answer from me; but part of
his charm was that he made it seem, while he talked and I listened,
that we were jointly discussing the subject of his monologue, and that
he was much interested by my views. He had that air; his smile and his
manner made one feel that.

'Well, you know,' he continued, 'it must be partly the crude material
difficulties which the actual and physical conditions of country life
here present to educated people, and partly the fact that our country
in Australia has got no traditions, no associations, no atmosphere. It
is just a negation, a wilderness; not a rural civilisation, but a mere
gap in civilisation. Pioneering is picturesque enough--in fiction. In
fact, it permits of no leisure and no idealisation; and without those
things----'

Mr. Rawlence paused with outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and
the smile of one who should say--'You understand, of course.' My
modest contribution was in three words, delivered with emphatic
gestures of acquiescence--'That's just it.'

'Exactly,' resumed the artist. 'Without leisure, without time for
anything outside the material things of life, where is your culture?
Where is art? Where is romance? Where, in short, is civilisation? And
so, as I say, I cannot advise you to stick to the country here. No,
one really can't conscientiously advise that, you know.'

A listener might fairly have supposed that I was a young gentleman of
means who had sought advice as to the desirability of investing
capital in rural New South Wales, and taking up, say, the pastoral
life, in preference to a professional career in Sydney. I pinched my
knees exultingly; perhaps to demonstrate to myself the fact that all
this was no dream. It was I, the orphan, who was carrying on this
thrilling conversation with an accomplished man of the world, a
distinguished artist. I felt that Mr. Rawlence must clearly be a
distinguished artist.

'And so what--what would you advise me to do?' I asked when a pause
came. And, immediately, I reproached myself, feeling that I had broken
a delightful spell, and risked abruptly ending the most interesting
conversation in which I ever took part. The words of my question had
so crude a sound. They dragged our talk down to a lower plane, to a
plane merely utilitarian, almost squalid by comparison with the
roseate heights we had been easily skimming. That was how the sound of
my own poor words struck me; but my companion was not so easily
dashed. My crudity could not fret his accomplished _savoir-faire_.
(Mr. Rawlence impressed me as the most finished man of the world I had
ever met, with the single exception of my father; and, indeed, the
Sydney artist did shine brightly beside the sort of people I had lived
among of late.)

'Well,' he said, with smiling thoughtfulness, 'I would advise you,
when--when the time comes, to make your way to Sydney, and to--to work
up a place for yourself there. Of course, there is your native
country--England. Who knows? Some day, perhaps-- But, meantime, I
think Sydney offers better chances than any other place in this
country. Yes, I think so. Have you any special leanings? Is there any
particular work that you are specially keen on?'

Like a flash the thought passed through my mind: 'What a miserable
creature I must be! There's nothing I particularly want to do. If he
finds that out, there's an end to any interest in me, of course. Why
haven't I thought of this before? What can I say?' And in the same
moment, without appreciable pause, I was startled, but agreeably
startled, to hear my own voice saying in quite an intelligent way:
'Well, my father wrote, of course; his work was literary work,
and--newspapers, you know.'

I can answer for it that I had never till that moment given a single
thought to any such notion as a literary career for myself. As well
think of a prime minister's career, I should have thought. But, as I
well remember, my very accent, intonation, and choice of words had all
insensibly changed to fit, as I thought, the taste and habit of my new
friend. And I felt it would be an extravagant folly to talk to him as
I had talked with Ted, or as I talked with fellow orphans at St.
Peter's, of 'pound-er-week-an'-all-found' jobs, or the 'good money'
there was 'in carting,' or the fine careers that offered in connection
with the construction of new railways. I had often been told you could
not beat the job of cooking for a shearers' or a navvies' camp; and
that a wideawake boy could earn 'good money' while learning it, as a
rouseabout assistant. It seemed to me that there would have been
something too absurdly incongruous in attempting to talk of such
things to Mr. Rawlence. Hence, perhaps, my audacious suggestion of the
literary career. There I might secure his interest. And, sure enough,
I did.

'Ah! to be sure, to be sure,' he said, nodding encouragingly. 'Well,
with that in view, Sydney is practically the only place, you know.
Mind you, I don't say it's easy, or that one could hope to make
headway quickly; but gradually, gradually, a fellow could feel his way
there, if anywhere in the colony. It is undoubtedly our centre of art
and literature, and culture generally. At first you might have to do
quite different sort of work; but, while doing it, you know, you could
be always on the lookout, always feeling your way to better things.
Sydney is, at all events, a capital city, you see. There is society in
Sydney, in a metropolitan sense. There is culture. One is continually
meeting interesting people who are doing interesting things. It's not
Paris or London, you know, but----'

He had a trick of using a radiant smile in place of articulation, by
way of finishing a sentence; and I found it more eloquent than any
words, and, to me, more subtly flattering. It said so clearly, and
more tactfully than words: 'But you follow me, I see; I know _you_
understand me.' And I felt with rare delight that I could and did
follow this fascinating man, and understand all his airy allusions to
things as far beyond the purview of my present life and prospect as
the heavens are beyond the earth, or as Mr. Rawlence was above an
'inmate' of St. Peter's. To a twentieth-century English artist, Mr.
Rawlence might have seemed a shade crude, possibly rather pompous and
affected, somewhat jejune and trite, perhaps. But our talk took place
in the 'seventies of last century, in New South Wales. The Board
School was a new invention in England, and in Australia there was
quite a lot of bushranging still to come, and the arrival of
transported convicts had but recently ceased.

I have not attempted to set down anything like the whole of the talk
between the artist and myself; rather, to indicate its quality. Much
of it, I dare say, was trivial, and all of it would appear so in
written form. Its effect upon me was altogether out of proportion to
its real significance, no doubt. It was all new talk to me, but I
admit it is not easy now to understand its profoundly stirring and
inspiring influence. A casual phrase or two, for example, affected my
thoughts for long months afterwards. Mr. Rawlence said:

'There's an accomplishment coming into general use now that might help
you enormously: phonography, shorthand-writing, you know. I am told it
will mean a revolution in ordinary clerical work, and newspaper work
already rests largely on it. The man who can write a hundred words a
minute--I think that's about what they manage with it--will command a
good post in any office, or on any newspaper, I should think. I should
certainly learn shorthand, if I were you. Perhaps you could get them
to introduce it here.'

I thought of Sister Agatha, and pictured myself suggesting to her the
introduction of shorthand into our curriculum in the Orphanage school.
And at the same moment I recalled the occasions, only yesterday, upon
which I had had to 'hold out' my hand to this bitterly enthusiastic
wielder of the cane. My palms had purple weals on them at that moment,
tough though they were from outdoor work. I clenched my hands
involuntarily, and was thankful the artist could not see their palms.
That would have been a horrid humiliation; the very thought of it made
me flush. No, this shorthand would hardly be introduced at St.
Peter's; but I would learn it, I thought, all the same; and in due
course I did, to find (again in due course) that even the acquisition
of this mystery hardly represented quite the infallible key to fame
and fortune that Mr. Rawlence thought it in the 'seventies.

But my attitude toward this sufficiently casual suggestion was typical
of the immensely stirring and impressive influence which all the
artist's talk of that day had upon me. It was undoubtedly most kindly
of him to show all the interest he did in one from whom he could not
by any stretch of the imagination be said to have anything to gain. We
were quite old friends, he said, in his amiable way, by the time
evening approached, and we began to pack up his paraphernalia. My
crowning triumph came when, in leaving, he gave me his card, and wrote
my full name down in his dainty little pocket-book.

'When you do get to Sydney you must come and look me up without fail.
My studio is at the address on the card, and I'm generally to be found
there. Mind, I shall expect a call as soon as you arrive, and we will
talk things over. I'm certain you'll reach Sydney, by and by. Like
London, at home, you know, it's the magnet for all the ambitious here.
Good-bye, and best of good luck!'

'Mr. Charles Frederick Rawlence, Filson's House, Macquarie Street,
Sydney,' was what I read on the card. And then, in very small type in
one corner, 'Studio, 3rd Floor.'

I think it had been the most vividly exciting day in my life up till
then; and, though still an orphan, and officially an 'inmate,' I
walked among the clouds that night; a giant among dwarfs and slaves by
my way of it. Youth--aye, the immemorial magic of it was alive in my
blood on this spring night, if you like; and not all the Sister
Agathas in all the hierarchy of Rome had power to dull the wonder of
it!


VI


'If it's to be done at all, why not now? There's nothing to be gained
by waiting. I'm only wasting time.'

Phrases of this sort formed the burden of all my thoughts for a number
of weeks after my memorable 'day out' (as the servants say) with the
Sydney artist. I no longer debated with myself at all the question as
to whether or not I should leave the Orphanage. It would have seemed
treachery to my new self, and in a way to Mr. Rawlence (my source of
inspiration) to debate the point. It was quite certain then that I
should take my fate into my own hands, leave St. Peter's, and make an
attempt to win my way in the world alone.

Having no belongings, no friends to consult, no possessions of any
sort or kind (save Ted's one-pound note, and a neatly bound manuscript
volume of bush botany, which latter treasure had been in my pocket on
the day of my father's death, and so had remained mine), there really
were no preparations for me to make. And so, as I said to myself a
score of times a day: 'There's nothing to be gained by waiting.'
Still, I waited, some underlying vein of prudence in me, or of
cowardice, offering no reason--no reason against the move, no
objection, but just negation, the inertia of that which is still. But,
yes, I was most certainly going, and soon. That was my last waking
thought every night when I dug my head into my straw pillow, and my
first waking thought when I swung my feet down to the floor. I was
going out into the world to make my own way.

I was too closely engaged by the material aspect of my position to
spare thoughts for its abstract quality. But, looking back from the
cool greyness of later life, one sees a wistful pathos, and, too, a
certain stirring fineness in the situation. And if that is so, how
infinitely the pathos and the fineness are enhanced by this thought:
Every day in the year, in every country in the world, some lad,
somewhere, is gazing out toward life's horizon, just as I was, and
telling himself, even as I did, that he must start out upon his
individual journey; for him the most important of all the voyages ever
undertaken since Adam and Eve set forth from their garden. I suppose
it is rarely that a long distance train enters a London terminal but
what one such lad steps forth from it, bent upon conquest, and, in how
many cases, bound for defeat! Even of Sydney the same thing was and is
true, on a numerically smaller scale.

In all lands and in all times the outsetting is essentially the same:
the same high hopes and brave determinations; the same profound
conviction of uniqueness; the same perfectly true and justifiable
inner knowledge that, for the individual, this journey is the most
important in all history. In many cases, of course, there are a
mother's tears, a father's blessing, and suchlike substitutes for the
stirrup-cup. And, withal, in every single case, how absolutely alone
the young voyager really is, and must be! For our scientists have not
as yet discovered any means of precipitating the experience gleaned in
one generation (or a thousand) into the hearts and minds of another
generation. Circumstances differ vastly, of course; but the central
facts are the same in every case; the traveller must always be alone.
The adventure upon which he sets out, be he prince or pauper,
university graduate or 'inmate' of St. Peter's, is one which cannot be
delegated by him, or taken from him, for it is his own life; his and
his alone, to make or to mar, to perfect or to botch, to cherish or to
waste, to convert into a fruitful garden, or to relinquish, when his
time comes, a sour and derelict plot of barrenness.

And this tremendous undertaking, with all its infinite potentialities
of good and evil, joy and agony, pride and despair, is in every
country approached by somebody, by some one of our own kind, every
single morning, and has been down through the ages since time began,
and will be while time lasts. And there are folk who call modern life
prosaic, dull, devoid of romance. Romance! Why, in the older lands
there is hardly a foot of road space that has not been trodden at one
time or another by youth or maid, in the crucial moment of setting out
upon this amazing adventure. There are men and women who drum their
fingers on a window-pane after breakfast of a morning, and yawn out
their disgust at the empty dullness of life, the vacant boredom of
another day. And within a mile of them, as like as not, some one is
setting forth--lips compressed, brow knit--upon the great adventure.
And, too, some one else is face to face with the other great
adventure--the laying down of life. Somewhere close to us every single
morning brings one or other, or both of these two incomparably
romantic happenings.

Truly, to confess ennui, or make complaint of the dullness of life, is
to confess to a sort of creeping paralysis of the mind. To be weary is
comprehensible enough. Yes, God knows I can understand the existence
of weariness or exhaustion. To be bored even is natural enough, if one
is bored by, say, forced inaction, or obligatory action of a futile,
meaningless kind. But negative boredom; to be uninterested, not
because adverse circumstances confine you to this or that barren and
uncongenial milieu, but because you see nothing of interest in life as
a whole; because life seems to you a dull, empty, or prosaic
business--that argues a kind of blindness, a poverty of imagination,
which amounts to disease, and, surely, to disease of a most humiliating
sort.

But this is digression of a sort I have not hitherto permitted myself
in this record. To be precise, I should say, it is digression of a
sort which up till now has, when detected, been religiously
expunged--sent to feed my fire. Well, one has always pencils; the fire is
generally at hand; we shall see. After all, a great deal of one's life
is made up of digressions.


VII


In the summer-time there were sharks in Myall Creek, but I had never
seen them there in the spring. It was, I think, still somewhere short
of midnight when I stepped quietly out of the low window of the room I
shared with seven other orphans. (The house was all of one storey.) I
would have taken boots, but, excepting on visitors' Sundays, these
were kept in a locked cupboard in the sisters' building. My outfit
consisted of a comparatively whole pair of trousers--not those
immortalised in Mr. Rawlence's sketch--a strong, short-sleeved shirt
of hard, grey woollen stuff, a dilapidated waistcoat, a belt, my
little book of bush flowers and trees, and my one-pound note. Oh, and
an ancient grey felt hat with a large hole in the crown of it. That
was all; but I dare say notable careers have been started upon less;
in cash, if not in clothing.

Beside the punt I hesitated for a few moments, half inclined to cross
by that obvious means, and leave Tim to do the swimming by daylight.
Finally, however, I slipped off my clothes, tied them in a bundle on
my head, and stepped silently into the water, closely and interestedly
observed by one of the Orphanage watch-dogs, chained beside the
landing-stage. If he had barked, it would have been only from desire
to come with me, in which case, to save trouble, I should probably
have become guilty of dog-stealing. The dogs were all good friends of
mine.

The water was cold that spring night, but I was soon out of it, and
using my shirt for a hard rub down in the scrub beside the creek
wharf. As a precaution I had waited for a moonless night, and had made
my exit with no more noise than was caused by one of the night birds
or little beasts that visited our island. I had seen maps, and knew
the compass bearings of the locality. My ultimate destination being
Sydney, I turned to the southward, and stepped out briskly along the
track leading towards Milton, and away from Werrina.

That was the simple fashion of my outsetting into the world, and for a
time I gave literally no thought at all to its real significance. My
recognition of it as the beginning of the great adventure of
independent life was temporarily obscured by my preoccupation with its
detail.

At the end of a silent hour or two, when I suppose half a dozen miles
lay between myself and the Orphanage, the reflective faculties came
into play again. I began to see my affair more clearly, and to see it
whole, or pretty nearly so. From that point onward, I put in quite a
good deal of steady thinking with regard to the future. I had two or
three definite objects in view, and the first of these was to reach as
quickly as possible some point not less than about fifty miles distant
from Myall Creek, at which I could feel safe from any likely encounter
with a chance traveller from that district.

So much accomplished my plans represented in effect a pedestrian
journey to Sydney. But I recognised that the journey might occupy some
time, since, in the course of it, I was to earn money and then learn
shorthand; the money, by way of working capital and insurance against
accidents; the shorthand, to furnish my stock-in-trade and passport in
the metropolitan world. So mine was not to be exactly a holiday
walking tour. Yet I do not think any one could have set out upon a
holiday tour with more of zest than I brought to my tramping. My mood
was not of gaiety, rather it was one attuned to high and almost solemn
emprise; but, yes, I was full of zest in my walking.

An hour or so before daybreak I lay down on some dead fern at the foot
of a huge and sombre red mahogany tree, where the track forked. It was
partly that I wanted a rest, and partly that I was uncertain which
track led to the township of Milton, where I purposed buying some food
before any chance word of my flight from the Orphanage could have
travelled so far. The authorities at the Orphanage were little likely
to trouble themselves greatly over a runaway orphan; but I cherished a
hazy idea that in my case the matter might be somehow a little
different, in the same way that I had not been farmed out to any one
in the district, possibly because in receiving me St. Peter's had also
received some money, certainly more than could be represented by the
cost of my maintenance. In any case, I did not want to take any
unnecessary risks.

Two minutes after lying down I was asleep. When I waked the sun was
clear of the horizon, and I was partly covered over by dead bracken.
The dawn hours had been chilly, and evidently I had grappled the fern
leaves to me in my sleep, as one tugs a blanket over one's shoulder,
without waking, when cold. While I was chuckling to myself over this,
and picking the twigs from my clothes, I heard the pistol-like crack
of a bullock whip, and then, quite near at hand, the cries of a
'bullocky,' as they called the bullock-drivers thereabout, full of
morning-time vehemence.

'Woa, Darkey! Gee, Roan! Baldy, gee! Nigger! Strawberry! Gee, now,
Punch! I'll ----y well trim you in a minute, me gentleman. Gee, Baldy;
ye ----y cow, you!'

It was thus the unseen bushman discoursed to his cattle, and in a
minute or two the horns of his leaders, swaying slightly in their
yoke, appeared at the bend of the track, the bolt-heads in the yoke
shining like bosses of silver in the slanting rays of the new-risen
sun. Clearly the wagon had been loaded overnight, for the huge
tallow-wood log slung on it could hardly have been placed in its bed
since sun-up.

'I'm your ----y man, if it's Milton you want,' said the driver
good-humouredly, in response to my inquiries. 'I'm taking this stick into
the Milton saw-mill. ----y solid stick, eh? My oath, yes; there's not
enough pipe in that feller to stick a ----y needle in. No, he ought to
measure up pretty well, I reckon.' A pause for expectoration, and
then: 'Livin' in Milton?'

'No,' I told him, 'just travelling that way.' I flattered myself I had
put just the right note of nonchalance into what I knew was a
typically familiar sort of phrase. But the bullocky eyed me curiously,
all the same, and I instantly made up my mind to part company with him
at the earliest convenient moment.

'You travel ----y light, sonny,' he said; 'but I suppose that's the
easiest ----y way, when all's said.'

'Yes,' I agreed, with fluent mendacity; 'I got tired of the swag, and
I've not very far to go anyway.'

'Ah! Where might ye be makin' for, then?'
At this point I realised for the first time the grave disadvantages of
redundance in speech, of unnecessary verbiage. There had been no
earthly need for my last words, and now that my fatal fluency had
found me out, for the life of me I could not think of the name of a
likely place. At length, with clumsily affected carelessness, I had to
say, 'Oh, just down south a bit from Milton.'

'H'm! Port Lawson way, like?' suggested the curious bullocky.

'Yes, that's it,' I said hurriedly. 'Port Lawson way.'

'Ah, well, I've got a brother works in the ----y saw-mills there.
Ye'll maybe know him--Jim Gray; big, slab-sided chap he is, with his
nose sorter twisted like, where a ----y brumby colt kicked him when he
was a kid. ----y good thing for him it was a brumby, or unshod,
anyway; he'd a' bin in Queer Street else, I'm thinkin'. Jever meet him
down that way?'

I admitted that I never had, but promised to look out for him.

'Aye, ye might,' said the bullocky. 'An', if ye see him, tell him ye
met me--Bill's my name--Bill Gray, ye see--an' tell him-- Oh, tell him
I said to mind his ----y p's an' q's, ye know, an' be good to his ----y
self.'

I readily promised that I would, and our conversation lapsed for a
time, while Bill Gray filled his pipe, cutting the tobacco on the ball
of his left thumb from a good-sized black plug. For the rest of our
walk together, I used extreme circumspection, and was able to confine
our desultory exchanges to such safe topics as the bullocks, the
weather, the roads, and so forth, all favourite subjects with bushmen.
And then, as we drew near the one street of the little township, there
was the saw-mill, and my opportunity for bidding good-day to a too
inquisitive companion.

'So long, sonny,' said he, in response to my salutation. 'Take care of
your ----y self.' (His favourite adjective had long ceased to have any
meaning whatever for this good fellow. He now used it even as some
ladies use inverted commas, or other commas, in writing. And
sometimes, when he had occasion to use a word as long as, say,
'impossible,' he would actually drag in the meaningless expletive as
an interpolation between the first and second syllables of the longer
word, as though he felt it a sinful waste of opportunities to allow so
many good syllables to pass unburdened by a single enunciation of his
master word.)


VIII


The freedom of the open road was infinitely delightful to me after the
incessant task work of St. Peter's. And perhaps this, quite as much as
the policy of getting well away from the Myall Creek district, was
responsible for the fact that I held on my way, with never a pause for
work of any sort, through a whole week. My lodging at night cost me
nothing, of course; and the expenditure of something well under a
shilling a day provided a far more generous dietary than that to which
St. Peter's had accustomed me. I began to lay on flesh, and to feel
strength growing in me.

Mere living, the maintenance of existence, has always been cheap and
easy in Australia, where an entirely outdoor life involves no hardship
at any season. This fact has no doubt played an important part in the
development of the Australian national character. The Australian
national character is the English national character of, say, seventy
or eighty years ago, subjected to isolation from all foreign
influences, and to general conditions much easier and milder than
those of England; given unlimited breathing-space, and freed from all
pressure of confined population; cut off also, to a very great extent,
from the influence of tradition and ancient institutions. For the
lover of our British stock and the student of racial problems, I
always think that Australia and its people offer a field of unique
interest.

I did not come upon Jim Gray, the slab-sided one, in Port Lawson, so
was unable to bid him mind his ensanguined p's and q's. Indeed, up to
this point, I sternly repressed my social instincts, and refrained, so
far as might be, from entering into talk with any one. But after the
third day I began to feel that my freedom was assured, and that the
chances of meeting any one from the Orphanage neighbourhood were too
remote to be worth considering. My tramping became then so much the
more enjoyable, for the reason that I chatted with all and sundry who
showed sociable inclinations, and at that time this included
practically every wayfarer one met in rural Australia. (There has been
no great change in this respect.)

'The curse o' this country, my sonny boy,' said one red-bearded
traveller whom I met and walked with for some miles, 'is the near-enough
system. It's a great country, all right; whips o' room, good
land, good climate, an' all the like o' that; but, you mark my words,
the curse of it is the "near-enough" system--that an' the booze, o'
course; but mainly it's the "near-enough" system, from the nail in
your trousers in place of a brace button to the saplin's tied wi'
green-hide in place of a gate, an' the bloomin' agitator in parliament
in place of a gentleman. It's "near-enough" that crabs us, every time.
Look at me! I owned a big store in Kempsey one time. You wouldn't
think it to look at me, would ye? Well, an' I didn't booze, either.
But it was "near-enough" in the accounts, an' "near-enough" in the
buyin', an' "near-enough" in the prices, an'--here I am, barely makin'
wages--worse wages than I paid counter hands--cuttin' sleepers. But I
get me tucker out of it, an' me bitter 'baccy, an' that; an'---well,
it's "near-enough," an' so I stick at it.'

It was on a Sunday morning of delicious brightness and virginal
freshness that I reached the irregularly spreading outskirts of
Dursley, a pretty little town in Gloucester county, the appearance of
which, as I approached it from the highest point of the long ridge
upon whose lower slopes it lay, appealed to me most strongly. Though
still small Dursley is an old town, for Australia. The figures against
it in the gazetteers are not imposing: 'School of Arts, 1800 vols.,
etc.--' But, even in the late 'seventies, it possessed that sort of
smoothness, that comparative trimness and humanised air of comfort,
which only the lapse of years can give. Your new settlement cannot
have this attraction, no matter how prosperous or well laid out; and
it is a quality which must always appeal especially to the native of
an old, much-handled land, such as England. A newcomer from old
Gloucester might have thought Dursley raw and new-looking enough, with
its galvanised iron roofs and water-tanks, and its painted wooden
houses, fences, and verandah posts. But in such a matter my standards
had become largely Australian, no doubt. At all events, as I skirted
the orchard fence of the most outlying residence of Dursley, I
remember saying to myself aloud, as my habit was since I had taken to
the road:

'Now this Dursley is the sort of place I'd like to get a job in. I'd
like to live here, till----'

'H'm! Outer the mouths o' babes and suckerlings! Tssp! Well, I admire
your perspicashon, youngfellermelad, anyhow, an' you can say I said
so.'

At the first sound of these words, apparently launched at me from out
the _Ewigkeit_, I spun round on my bare heels in the loamy sand of the
track, with a moving picture thought in my mind of little gnomes in
pointed caps and leathern jerkins, with diminutive miner's picks in
their hands, and a fancy for the occasional bestowal of magical gifts
upon wandering mortals. The picture was gone in a second, of course;
and I glared at the orchard fence as though that should make it
transparent.

'Higher up, sonny! Think of your arboracious ancestors, an' that
sorter thing.'

This time my ears gave me truer guidance as to the direction from
which the voice came, and, looking up, I saw a man reclining at his
ease upon a 'possum-skin rug, which was spread on a sort of platform
set between the forked branches of a giant Australian cedar, fully
thirty feet from the ground, and higher than the chimneys of the house
near by. The man's head and face seemed to me as round and red as any
apple, and what I could see of his figure suggested at least a
comfortable tendency to stoutness. Whilst not at all the sort of
person who would be described as an old man, or even elderly, the
owner of the mysterious voice and round, red face had clearly passed
that stage at which he would be spoken of by a stranger as a young
man.

'He doesn't look a bit like a tree-climber,' I thought. The girth of
the great cedar prevented my seeing the species of ladder-stairway
which had been built against its far side. I had breakfasted as the
sun rose this fine Sunday morning, and walked no more than a couple of
miles since, so that the majority of Dursley's inhabitants had
probably not begun to think of breakfast yet. My 'arboracious'
gentleman, anyhow, was still in his pyjamas, the pattern and colouring
of which were, for that period, quite remarkably daring and bright.

'Well, young peripatater, I suppose you're wondering now if I've got a
tail, hey? No, sir, I am fundamentally innocent--virginacious, in
fact. But, all the same, if you like to just go on peripatating till
you get to my side gate, and then come straight along to this
arboracious retreat, I will a tale unfold that may appeal greatly to
your matutinatal fancy. So peri along, youngfellermelad, an' I'll come
down to meet ye.'

'All right, sir, I'll come,' I told him. And those were the first
words I spoke to him, though he seemed already to have said a good
deal to me.

By this time I had become seized with the idea that here was what is
called 'a character.' I had, as it were, caught on to the whimsical
oddity of the man, and liked it. Indeed, he would have been a
singularly dull dog who failed to recognise this man's quaint good-humour
as something jolly and kindly and well-meaning. The gentleman
spoke by the aid, not alone of his mouth, but of his small, bright,
twinkling eyes, his twitching, almost hairless brows, his hands and
shoulders, and his whole, rosy, clean-shaved, multitudinously lined,
puckered, and dimpled face. And then his words; the extraordinary
manner in which he twisted and juggled with the longer and less
familiar of them--arboreal, peripatetic, matutinal, and the like! He
had an entirely independent and original way of pronouncing very many
words, and of converting certain phrases, such as 'young fellow my
lad,' into a single word of many syllables. I never met any one who
could so clearly convey hyphens (or dispense with them) by intonation.

Having passed through a small gateway, I skirted the side of a
comfortable-looking house of the spreading, bungalow type, with wide
verandahs; and so, by way of a shaded path, arrived at the foot of the
big cedar, just as the rosy-faced gentleman reached the ground from
his stairway.

'Well-timed, young peripatater,' he said, with a chuckling smile. I
noticed as he reached the earth that he walked with a peculiar,
rolling motion of the body. He certainly was stout. There were no
angles about him anywhere, nothing but rotundity. Withal, and despite
the curious, rotary gait, there was a suggestion of quickness and of
well-balanced lightness about all his movements. His hands and feet I
thought quite remarkably small. There was a short section of the bole
of a large tree, with a flattened base, lying on the ground near the
stairway. The gentleman subsided upon this airily, as though it had
been made of eider-down, and, crossing his pyjamed legs, beamed upon
me, where I stood before him.

'Peripatacious by habit, what might your name be, youngfellermelad?'

I told him, and he repeated it after me, twice, with a distinct
licking of his lips, suggestive of the act of deliberate wine-tasting.

'Good. Yes. Ah! Nicholas Freydon, Nick to his friends, no doubt. Quite
a mellifluant name. Nicholas Freydon. Tssp! Very good. You'd hardly
think now that my name was George Perkins, would you? Don't seem
exactly right, does it?--not Perkins. But that's what it is; and it's
a significacious name, too, in Dursley, let me tell you. But that's
because of the meaning I've given to it. But for that, it's certainly
an unnatural sort of a name for me. Perkins is a name for a thin man,
with a pointed nose, no chin, a wisp of hair over his forehead, and an
apron. Starch, rice, tapioca: a farinatuous name, of course. But there
it is; it happens to be the name of Dursley's Omnigerentual and
Omniferacious Agent, you see; and that's me. Tssp! Wharejercomefrom,
Nickperry, or Peripatacious Nick?'

The idea of using precautions with or attempting to deceive this
rosily rotund 'character' seemed far-fetched and absurd. I not only
told him I came from Myall Creek, but also named the Orphanage.

'Ah! I'm an orphantulatory one myself. You absquatulated, I presume; a
levantular movement at midnight--ran away, hey?'

I admitted it, and Mr. Perkins nodded in a pleased way, as though
discovering an accomplishment in me.

'That's what I did, too; not from an orphanage, but from the paternal
roof and shop. My father was a pedestrialatory specialist, a
shoemaker, in fact, and brought me up for that profession. But I gave
up pedestriality, finding omniferaciousness more in my line. Matter of
temperment, of course--inward, like that, with an awl, you know, or
outward, like that'--he swung his fat arms wide--'as an omnigerentual
man of affairs: an Agent. I'm naturally omnigerentual; my father was
awlicular or gimletular--like a centre-bit, y'know. Tssp! So you like
Dursley, hey? Little town takes your fancy as you see it from the
ridge? Kinduv cuddlesome and umbradewus, isn't it? Yes, I felt that
way myself when I came here looking for pedestrial work--repairs a
speciality, y' know. Whatsorterjobjerwant?'

I found that Mr. Perkins usually wound up his remarks with a question
which, irrespective of its length, was generally made to sound like
one word. The habit affected me as the application of a spur affects a
well-fed and not unwilling steed. I did not resent it, but it made me
jump. On this occasion I explained to the best of my ability that I
wanted whatever sort of job I could get, but preferably one that would
permit of my doing a little work on my own account of an evening.

'Ha! Applicacious and industrial--bettermentatious ambitions, hey?
Quite right. No good sticking to the awlicular if you've anything
of the embraceshunist in you.' He embraced his own ample bosom
with wide-flung arms, as a London cabman might on a frosty
morning. 'Man is naturally multivorous--when he's not a vegetable.
Howjerliketerworkferme?'

'Very much indeed,' said I, rising sharply to the spur.

'H'm! Tssp!' It is not easy to convey in writing any adequate idea of
this 'Tssp' sound. It seemed to be produced by pressing the tongue
against the front teeth, the jaws being closed and the lips parted,
and then sharply closing the lips while withdrawing the tongue inward.
I am enabled to furnish this minutiae by reason of the fact that I
deliberately practised Mr. Perkins's favourite habit before a
looking-glass, to see how it was done. This was on the day after our
first meeting. The habit was subtly characteristic of the man, because it
was so suggestive of gustatory enthusiasm. He was for ever savouring
the taste of life and of words, especially of words.

'Well, as it happeneth, Nickperry, your desire for a job is curiously
synchronacious with my need of a handy lad. My handy lad stopped being
a lad yesterday morning, was married before dinner, and is now away
connubialising--honeymoon. After which he goes into partnership with
his father-in-law--greens an' fish. It's generally a mistake to make
partnerial arrangements with relations, Nickperry--apt to bring about
a combustuous staterthings. So I wanterandyladyersee.'

'Yes, sir.'

'My name is Mister Perkins, Nickperry, not "Sir."'

'Yes, Mr. Perkins.'

'That's better. I know you don't mean to be servileacious, but that
English "sir" is--we don't like it in Australia, Nickperry. You are
from the Old Country, aren't you?'

I admitted it, and marvelled how Mr. Perkins could have known it.

'H'm! Tssp! Fine ol' institootion the Old Country, but cert'nly a bit
servileacious. D'jerknowhowtermilkercow?'

'I've been milking four, night and morning, for over two years,
s'--Mister Perkins,' I answered, with some pride.

'Good for yez, Nickperry. Whataboutgardening?'

'I worked in the garden every day at the Orphanage, s'--Mister
Perkins.'

Mr. Perkins smiled even more broadly than usual. 'It's "Mister" not
"Smister" Perkins, Nickperry.'

I smiled, and felt the colour rise in my face. (How I used to curse
that girlish blushing habit!)

'Tssp! Well, I see you can take a joke, anyway; an' that's even more
important, really, than horticulturous knowledge. Tssp! There's my
breakfast bell, an' I'm not dressed. Jus' come along this way,
Nickperry.'

In the neatly paved yard at the back of the house stood a
well-conditioned cow, of the colour of a new-husked horse chestnut. She
was peacefully chewing her cud, oblivious quite to the flight of time.
Mr. Perkins ambled swiftly into the house, rolling out again, as it
seemed within the second, as though he had bounced against an inner wall,
and handing me a milk-pail.

'Stool over there. Jus' milk the cow for me, Nickperry.
Seeyagaindreckly!'

And he was gone, having floated within doors, like a huge ball of
thistledown on well-oiled castors. Next moment I heard his mellow,
rotund voice again, several rooms away.

'Sossidge! Sossidge! Whajerdoin'?' Then a pause. Then--'Keep brekfus'
three minutes, Sossidge; I'm not dressed.'

With a mind somewhat confused, I turned to the red cow, and my first
task for Mr. Perkins. Bella--I learned subsequently that the cow, when
a young heifer, had been given this name by Mr. Perkins, because she
distinguished herself by bellowing incessantly for a whole night--proved
a singularly amiable beast. I was light-handed, and a fair
milker, I believe. Still, my hands were strange to Bella; yet she gave
down her milk most generously, and, though standing in the open,
without bail or leg-rope, never stirred till the foaming pail was
three parts full, and her udder dry. It was something of a revelation
to me, for our cows at St. Peter's had been rough scrub cattle, and
had been left to pick up their own living for the most part; whereas
Bella was aldermanic, a monument of placid satiety.

I very carefully deposited the pail inside the scullery entrance, and
withdrew then to a respectful distance, with Bella. Would this amazing
Mr. Perkins engage me? There was no doubt in my mind that I hoped he
would. I had seen practically nothing of the place, and my impressions
of it must all have been produced by the personality of its owner, I
suppose. But it did seem to me that this establishment possessed an
atmosphere of cheery kindliness and jollity such as I had never before
found about any residence. The contrast between this place and St.
Peter's was extraordinarily striking. I wondered what Sister Agatha
would have made of Mr. Perkins, or he of Sister Agatha. 'Acidulacious'
was the word he would have applied to Sister Agatha, I thought, with a
boy's readiness in mimicry; and I chuckled happily to myself in the
thinking.


IX


While I stood in the yard cogitating, a woman whose white-spotted blue
dress was for the most part covered by a very white apron emerged from
the scullery door, holding one hand over her eyes to shade them from
the morning sun.

'Ha!' she said, in a managing tone; 'so you're the new lad, are you?'
I smiled somewhat bashfully, this being a question I was not yet in a
position to answer definitely. 'Well, you're to come into breakfast
anyhow, and be sure and rub your boots on the-- Oh, you haven't any.
Well, rub your feet, then. Come on! I must see to my fire.'

So I followed her through the scullery (a spacious and airy place)
into the kitchen, having first carefully rubbed the dust off my horny
soles on the door-mat. And then, with a boy's ready adaptability in
the matter of meals, I gave a good account of myself behind a plate of
bacon and eggs, with plentiful bread and butter and tea, though I had
broken my fast in the bush an hour or two earlier by polishing off the
sketchy remains of the previous night's supper, washed down by water
from a bright creek.

Domestic capability was the quality most apparent in my breakfast
companion. Her age, I should say, was nearer fifty than forty, but she
was exceedingly well-preserved; and she was called, as she explained
when we sat down, Mrs. Gabbitas. That in itself, I reflected, probably
recommended her warmly to Mr. Perkins. (I guessed in advance that he
might refer to the lady as the Gabbitacious one; and he did, more than
once, in my hearing.)

'Nick Freydon's your name, I'm told. Oh, well, that's all right then.'

Mrs. Gabbitas always spoke, not alone as one having authority, but,
and above all, as one who managed all affairs, things, and people
within her reach, as indeed she did to a great extent. A most capable
and managing woman was Mrs. Gabbitas. I adopted an air of marked
deference towards her, I remember; in part from motives of policy, and
partly too because her capability really impressed me. Before the
bacon was finished we had become quite friendly. I had learned that my
hostess had a full upper set of artificial teeth--quite a distinction
in those days--and that on a certain occasion, I forget now at what
exact period of her life, she had earned undying fame by being called
upon by name, from the pulpit of her chapel, to rise in her place
among the congregation and sing as a solo the anthem beginning: 'How
beautiful upon the mountains!' I gathered now and later that this
remarkable event formed in a sense the pivot upon which Mrs.
Gabbitas's career turned. Having spent all her life in Australia, she
had not been presented at Court; but, alone, unaccompanied, and from
her place among the chapel congregation, she had, in answer to the
minister's call, made one service historic by singing 'How beautiful
upon the mountains!' It was a pious and pleasant memory, and I admit
the story of it did add to her dignity in my eyes. Her false teeth,
though admittedly a distinction at that period, did not precisely add
to her dignity. They were somehow too mobile, too responsive in front
to the forces of gravitation, for a talkative woman.

'Has he given you a name yet?' she asked, as we rose from the table,
giving her head a jerk as she spoke in the direction of the little
pantry, in which I gathered there was a revolving hatch communicating
with the dining-room.

'Well, he called me "Nickperry,"' I said, 'or "Peripatacious Nick."'

'Ah! Yes, that sounds like one of his,' she said, apparently weighing
the name and myself, not without approval. 'There's nothing nor nobody
he hasn't got some name for. He don't miscall me to me face, for I'd
allow no person to do such. But in speakin' to Missis, I've heard him
refer to me with some such nonsensical words as "Gabbitular" and
"Gabbitaceous," or some such rubbish, although no one wouldn't ever
think such a thing of me--nobody but him, that is. But he means no
harm, y'know. There's no more vice in the man than--than in Bella
there.'

She pointed with a wooden spoon toward the open window, through which
we could see the red cow, still contentedly chewing over the memories
of her last meal.

'No, there's no harm in him, or you may be sure I wouldn't be here;
but he's a great character, is Mr. Perkins; a regler case, he is, an'
no mistake. Well, this won't get my kitchen cleaned up--and Sunday
morning, too! You might take out that bucket of ashes for me. You'll
find the heap where they go down in the little yard behind the stable.
There now! That's what comes o' talkin'! If I didden forget to ask a
blessin', an' you an orphan, too, I believe! F'what we've received.
Lor', make us truly thangful cry-say-carmen--Off you go!'

Her eyes were screwed tightly shut while the words of the gabbled
invocation passed her lips, and opened widely as, with its last
mysterious syllables, she dropped the wooden spoon she had been
holding and turned to her fire. The fire was always 'my' fire to
worthy Mrs. Gabbitas. So was the kitchen, for that matter, the
scullery, the pantry, and all the things that therein were. Indeed,
she frequently spoke of 'my' dining-room table, bedrooms, silver,
front hall, windows, and the like. Even the meals served to Mr. and
Mrs. Perkins were, until eaten, 'my dining-room breakfast,' 'my
dining-room tea,' and so forth.

On my way back from the ash-heap with Mrs. Gabbitas's bucket, I almost
collided with Mr. Perkins, as he rolled swiftly and silently into view
from round the end of the rustic pergola, between the house yard and
the big cedar.

'Aha! The Peripatacious one! Tssp! Yes. Mrs. Perkins wants a word with
you, youngfellermelad. Come on this way. She's on the front verandah.'

I found myself involuntarily seeking to emulate Mr. Perkins's
remarkable method of locomotion. But I might as well have sought to
mimic an albatross or a balloon. It was not only his splendid
rotundity which I lacked. The difference went far beyond that. He had
oiled castors running on patent ball bearings, and I was but the
ordinary pedestrian youth.

We found Mrs. Perkins reclining on a couch on the front verandah, a
very gaily coloured dust-rug covering the lower part of her figure.
Like many people in Australia she could hardly be classified socially;
or, perhaps, I should say she did not possess in any marked form the
characteristics which in England are associated with this or that
social grade. If there was nothing of the aristocrat about her, it
might be said that she was not in the least typically 'middle-class';
and I am sure the severest critic would have hesitated to say that
hers were the manners, disposition, or outlook of any 'lower' class.
Yet she had married an itinerant cobbler, or at best a
'pedestrialatory specialist,' and, I am sure, without the smallest
sense of taking a derogatory step.

Mrs. Perkins was the more a revelation to me perhaps, because, as it
happened, Mrs. Gabbitas had said nothing whatever about her. I learned
presently that she had not stood upon her feet for more than ten
years. I was never told the exact nature of the disease from which she
suffered, but I know she had lost permanently the use of her legs, and
that she was not allowed to sit up in a chair for more than an hour at
a time. She never moved anywhere without her husband. He carried her
from one room to another, and at times to different parts of the
garden; always very skilfully, and without the slightest appearance of
exertion. I think it likely she did not weigh more than six or seven
stone. Whenever I saw her carried, there was always draped about her a
gaily coloured rug or large shawl; and she was for ever smiling, or
actually laughing, or making some quaintly humorous little remark. I
wondered sometimes if she had borrowed her playfulness in speech from
her husband, or if he had borrowed from her. I do not think I ever met
a happier pair.

'So here you are!' she said, as we drew near. Her tone suggested that
my coming were the arrival of a very welcome and long-looked-for
guest. 'You see, Nick, I am so lazy that I never go to any one; and
people are so kind that every one comes to me, sooner or later.'

I experienced a desire to do something graceful and chivalrous, and
did nothing, I suspect, but grin awkwardly and shuffle my toes in the
dust. It seemed to me clumsy and rude to stand erect before this
crippled little lady, yet impossible to adopt any other attitude. Mr.
Perkins had subsided, softly as a down cushion, on the edge of the
verandah. But he had no angles, and I had no curves. Mr. Perkins
removed his hat and caressingly polished that glistening orb, his
head, with a large rainbow-hued handkerchief.

'You see, Insect,' he said, beaming upon his wife, 'this young feller,
Nickperry, an orphantual lad, as I explained, has taken a fancy to
Dursley.'

'And you've taken a fancy to Nickperry, I suppose--as you call him.'

The master waved his fat arms to demonstrate his aloofness from
fancies. 'Well, we want a new handy lad,' he said; 'and this
peripatacious young chap comes strolling along just as Bella wants
milking. The Gabbitual one says he's all right.' This is an elaborate
stage aside.

'And how did Bella behave, Nick?' asked the mistress.

'She gave down her milk very nicely--madam,' I said, conscious of a
blush over the matter of addressing this little lady.

'Merely a passing weakness for the servileacious, inherited from
feudalising ancestors,' said Mr. Perkins in an explanatory tone to his
wife. And then to me: 'This is Missis Perkins, Nickperry, not "Madam."
When you want to speak to the Missis, you must always come and find
her, because she don't get about much, do you, Pig-an'-Whistle?'

One of the points of difference between husband and wife, in their
spoken whimsicalities, was that the man had no sense of shame and the
wife had. Mr. Perkins was no respecter of persons. He would have
addressed his wife as 'Blow-fly,' or 'Sossidge,' or 'Piggins,' or by
any of the ridiculous names of the sort that he affected, in the
presence of the queen or his own handy lad. I have overheard similar
expressions of playful ribaldry upon his wife's lips many a time, but
never when I was obviously and officially in their presence.

'And what about pay, Nickperry? How do you stand now on the wages
question? What did the Drooper start on, Whizz?' This last question
was addressed to Mrs. Perkins, whose real name, as I learned later--never
once heard upon her husband's lips--was Isabel.

'Eight shillings,' replied Mrs. Perkins. 'But, of course, wages have
risen a good bit since then.'

'Yes, yes; the gas of the agitators does sometimes serve to inflate
wages; I'll say that for the beggars. What do you say, Nickperry?'

'Well, si--Mister Perkins----'

'He always calls me "Smister." It's a friendly way they have in
England, like the eye-glass and the turned-up trousers.'

In her smile Mrs. Perkins managed to convey merriment, sympathy for me
as the person chaffed, and humorous disapproval of her husband. I
would gladly have worked for her for nothing, for admiration of her
bright eyes.

'I was going to say that I'd be willing to work for whatever you
liked, till you saw whether I suited you or not,' I managed to
explain.

Mrs. Perkins nodded approvingly, and her husband said: 'That's a very
fair offer. You have an engagious way with you, Nickperry; and so
we'll engage you at ten bob and all found for a start. How's that,
Whizkers?'

The mistress assented pleasantly, and added: 'You'll tell Mrs.
Gabbitas to see to the room, George, won't you, and--and to give
Nickperry what he needs? She will understand. I dare say he'd like a
bath.'

I blushed red-hot at this, but Mrs. Perkins kindly refrained from
looking my way, and the interview ended. Then, like a dinghy in the
wake of a galleon, I followed my new employer to the rearward parts of
the establishment.


X


I used to tell Heron, and others who came into my later life, that the
happiest days I ever knew were the 'ten bob a week and all found' days
of my handy-lad time. It was very likely true, I think; though really
it is next door to impossible for any man to tell which period in his
life has been the more happy; and especially is this so in the case of
the type of man who finds more interest in the past than in the
future. The other side of the road always will be the cleaner, the
trees on the far side of the hill will always be the greener, for a
great many of us. Any other time seems preferable before the present
moment, to some folk; and to many, times past are in every sense
superior to anything the future can have to offer.

At all events I was fortunate in the matter of my first situation, and
I was contented in it, being satisfied that it was an excellent means
to an end which I had decided should be very fine indeed.

I have never yet been able to make up my mind whether I am like or
unlike to the majority of mankind in this: with me every phase of
life, every occupation, every effort, almost every act and thought
have been regarded, not upon their own merits or in relation to
themselves, but as means to ends. The ends, it always appeared, would
prove eminently desirable; they would give me my reward. The ends,
once they were attained, would certainly bring me peace, happiness,
fame, health, enjoyment, leisure, monetary gain, or whatever it was
they were designed to bring. I am still uncertain whether or not the
bulk of my fellow-men are similarly constituted; but I am tolerably
certain that one misses a great deal in life as the result of having
this kind of a mind.

To a great extent, for example, one misses whatever may be desirable
in the one moment of time of which we are all sure--the present. One
is not spared the worries and anxieties of the present, because they
seem to have their definite bearing upon the end in view. But the
good, the sound sweetness of the present, when it chances to be there,
so far from cherishing and savouring every fraction of it, we spare it
no more than a hurried smile in passing, as a trifling incident of our
progress toward the grand end which (just then) we have in view. And
how often time proves the end a thing which never actually draws one
breath of life; a mere embryo, a phantom, vaporous product of our own
imagination! So that for one, two, or fifty years, as the case may be,
we have derived no benefit from a number of tangible good things, by
reason of our strenuous pursuit of a shadow.

Is this a peculiar disease, or am I merely noting a characteristic of
my own which is also a characteristic of the age in which I have
lived? I wonder! It is, at all events, a way of living which involves
a rather tragical waste of the good red stuff of life; and, yes, upon
the whole it is a form of restless waste and extravagance which I
fancy is far from rare among the thinking men and women of my time.
They do not travel; they hurry from one place to another. They do not
enjoy; they pursue enjoyment. They do not rest; they arrange very
elaborately, cleverly, strenuously to catch rest--and miss it. Is it
not possible that some of us do not live, but use up all the time at
our disposal in sweating, toiling, scheming preparation for the
particular sort of life we think would suit us; the kind of life we
are aiming at; the end, in fact, in pursuit of which we expend and
exhaust our whole share of life as a means?

Though these things strike me now, it is needless to say they formed
no part of my mental outlook in Dursley.

As is often the case in Australian homes, the colony of out-buildings
upon Mr. Perkins's premises at Dursley was more extensive than the
parent building. Between the main house and the stable, with all its
attendant minor sheds and lean-to, was a long, low-roofed wooden
structure, divided into dairy, wash-house, tool-room, workshop, and,
at the end farthest from the dairy, what is called a 'man's room.'
This latter apartment was now my private sanctuary, entered by nobody
else, unless at my invitation. I grew quite fond of this little room,
which measured eight feet by twelve feet, and had a window looking
down the ridge and across the creek to Dursley in its valley and the
wooded hills beyond.

I had no lamp in my sanctuary, and no fireplace. But the climate of
New South Wales is kindly, and, when one is used to it and one's eyes
are young, the light of a single candle is surprisingly satisfying.
That, at all events, was the light by which I mastered the intricacies
of Pitman's system of shorthand, besides reading most of the volumes
in Dursley's School of Arts library. The reading I accomplished in
bed; the shorthand studies on the top of a packing-case which hailed
originally from a match factory in east London, and doubtless had
contained the curious little cylindrical cardboard boxes of wax
vestas, stamped with a sort of tartan plaid pattern, that are seen so
far as I know only in Australia, though made in England.

At first, like others who have trodden the same thorny path, I went
ahead swimmingly with my shorthand, confining myself to the writing of
it on the packing-case. Being at the end of the current bed-book (it
was Charles Reade's _Griffith Gaunt_) I took my latest masterpiece of
shorthand to bed with me one night, only to find that I could barely
read one word in ten. That was a rather perturbed and unhappy night,
and my progress thereafter was a somewhat slower and more laborious
process.

The habit of rising with the sun was now fairly engrained in me. At
about daybreak then my first duties would take me to the wood-heap,
with axe and saw, and subsequently to the scullery with a heaped
barrow-load of fuel for the day. Arrived there I polished the
household's boots and knives, washed my hands at Mrs. Gabbitas's
immaculate sink--a more scrupulously clean housewife I have yet to
meet--and proceeded to the feeding and milking of Bella. Then I fed
the horse, cleared out the stable, spruced myself up, and so to
breakfast with 'The Gabbitular One.' Three meat meals and two
snacks--'the eleven o'clock' and 'the four o'clock'--were the order of
the day in this establishment. The snacks consisted of tea, which was
also served at every meal, including dinner, and scones and butter; the
meals included always some sort of flesh food and varying adjuncts.
After the lean dietary of St. Peter's this regime seemed almost
startling to me at first, a thing which could hardly be expected to
last. But I adapted myself to it without difficulty or complaint, and
thrived upon it greatly.

During the day my main work was the cultivation of the garden, and the
care of the front lawn, in which Mr. Perkins took a very special pride
and interest; chiefly, I think, because it was the foreground of his
wife's daily outlook. But the routine work of the garden, which always
was demanding a little more time than one had to spare for it, was
subject, of course, to interruptions. I did the churning twice a week,
and Mrs. Gabbitas the 'working' and 'making up' of the butter. And
there were other matters, including occasional errands to the town--a
message for a storekeeper, or a note for the master at his office.

Over the entrance to this office of Mr. Perkins's hung a huge board on
which were boldly painted in red letters on a white ground the name of
George Perkins, and the impressive words--'Dursley's Omnigerentual and
Omniferacious Agent.' It really was a remarkable notice-board, and
residents invariably pointed it out to visitors as one of the sights
of the town. Indeed, Dursley was very proud of its Omniferacious
Agent, who for three successive years now had been also its mayor.

But I gathered from veteran gossips in the town's one street that this
had not always been so. Mr. Perkins had originally arrived in the town
but very slightly more burdened with worldly gear than I was. The
tools of his craft as a cobbler had left room enough in one bundle for
the rest of his property. Dursley did not want a cobbler at that time,
I gathered; so in this respect Mr. Perkins had been less fortunate
than I was; for when I arrived some one had wanted a handy lad.
However, what proved more to the point was the fact that the cobbler
did want Dursley. He stayed long enough to teach the townsfolk to
appreciate him as a cobbler of boots--and of affairs, of threatened
legal proceedings, frayed friendships, and the like. And then, for
some months prior to a general election, the cobbler edited the local
weekly newspaper, and was largely instrumental in returning the
Dursley-born candidate to parliament, in place of an interfering
upstart from Kempsey way. It was not at all a question of politics,
but of Dursley and its interests.

By this time Mr. Perkins had gone some way towards Omniferacious
Agenthood. He had very successfully negotiated sundry sales and
purchases for townsmen, who shared that disinclination to call in
conventionally recognised professional assistance which I have often
noticed in rural Australia. Then he married the daughter of the
newspaper proprietor, whose brother was one of Dursley's leading
storekeepers. Everybody now liked him, except a few crotchety or petty
souls, who, not understanding him, suspected him of ridiculing or
exposing them in some way, and in any case mistrusted his jollity, his
success, and his popularity. Even in the beginning, before the famous
notice-board was thought of, and while Mr. Perkins's work was yet
'awlicular,' I gathered that several old residents had set their faces
firmly against this invincibly merry fellow, and done all they could
to 'keep him in his place.'

And now he bought and sold for them: their houses, land, timber,
fruit, produce, live-stock, and property of every sort and kind,
making a larger income than most of them in the doing of it, and
accomplishing all this purely by force of his personality. He
succeeded where others failed, because so few could help liking him;
and if he failed but seldom in anything he undertook, that was
probably due in part to the fact that he never thought and never spoke
of failure, preferring always as topics more cheerful matters. His
wife had become a permanent invalid very shortly after their marriage,
yet no person could possibly have made the mistake of thinking George
Perkins's marriage a failure. I doubt if a happier married pair could
have been found in Australia.

The meal we called tea (though we drank tea at every other meal) was
partaken of by Mrs. Gabbitas and myself at half-past five, and by Mr.
and Mrs. Perkins at six o'clock. I was given to understand at the
outset that no work was expected of me after tea. Once or twice of a
summer evening I went out into the garden to perform some trifling
task I had overlooked, and upon being seen there by Mr. Perkins was
saluted with some such remark as:

'Stealing time, Nickperry, stealing time! You an' me'll fall out, my
friend, if you can't manage to keep proper working hours.
Applicatiousness is all very well, but stealing time after tea is
gluttish and greedular, and must be put down with an iron hand, with
an iron hand, Nickperry. Tssp! Howzashorthandgetnon?'

Before expelling the last interrogative omnibus word, he would clench
one fat fist and knead the air downward with it, to illustrate the
process of putting down greediness with an iron hand.

I saw comparatively little of him, of course, owing to his
preoccupation with business, his own and that of Dursley and most of
its inhabitants; but we were excellent good friends, and it was rarely
that he missed his Sunday morning walk round the whole place with me,
when my week's work would be passed in more or less humorous review,
and the programme for the next week discussed. After this tour of
inspection I generally went to church, and the afternoon I almost
invariably spent in my room over the packing-case. That is a period
which many people give to letter-writing, and it is queer to recall
the fact that, so far as I can remember, I had written only two
letters in my life up to this period--one to a Sydney bookseller,
whose address I got from Mr. Perkins, and one to Mr. Rawlence, the
Sydney artist, to tell him of my present position, and to say that I
had made a start upon shorthand. His kindly and encouraging reply was,
I think, the first letter I ever received through the post. But I now
began to write letters by the score, addressed to imaginary
correspondents, and based in style upon my studies of correspondence
in various books. These epistles, however, all ended their brief
careers under the kindling wood in Mrs. Gabbitas's kitchen grate.

'Applicatious and industrial, with bettermentatious ambitions,' Mr.
Perkins had said of me within a few moments of our first meeting, and
at this period I think I justified the sense of his comment. My daily
work was pleasant enough, of course, healthy and not fatiguing. Still,
it was perhaps odd in a youth of my age that I should have had no
desire for recreation or amusement. My study of shorthand did not
interest me in the faintest degree; but I was greatly interested by my
growing mastery of it, because I thought of the mastery of shorthand,
as Mr. Rawlence had described it, as a very valuable means to an end,
to various ends. I thought of it, in short, as the key which should
open Sydney's doors to me; for, happy as my life was in Dursley, I
never regarded it in any other light than as a useful preliminary to
the next stage of my career. And that again, from all I have since
been told, was hardly an attitude proper to my years.

It certainly was not due to any conscious discontent with my life and
work in Dursley. I must suppose it was the beginning of that restless
temperamental itch which all through life has made me regard
everything I did as no more than the necessary prelude to some more or
less vague thing I meant presently to do, which should be much better
worth doing. A praiseworthy doctrine I have heard it called. It may
be. But I would like to be able to warn all and sundry who cultivate
or inculcate it in this present century, that the margin between it
and the wastefully extravagant body and soul-devouring restlessness
which I sometimes think the key-note of our time--the margin is a
perilously slender one.


XI


Every day the _Sydney Morning Herald_ was delivered at the Perkins's
establishment, and every evening it reached the kitchen at tea-time.
Mrs. Gabbitas regarded it as a very useful journal for fire-lighting
purposes, but having no other interest in it was quite agreeable to
its being out-of-date by one day when it reached her hands. Thus the
daily newspaper became my perquisite each evening, to be returned
faithfully in the morning with the day's supply of fuel, in order that
it might duly fulfil its higher and more serviceable destiny in Mrs.
Gabbitas's stove.

For quite a long time I never scanned the news columns of that really
admirable newspaper. I might have thought that their perusal would
have been helpful to me, especially as I cherished vague ideas of one
day earning my living in a newspaper office. But, for the time, my
mind was too much occupied with thoughts of another means to an
end--shorthand. The longest chunks of unbroken letterpress were the
leading articles. For months I never looked beyond them, and never
stopped short of copying out at least one column of them, and often more,
especially in those misguided early days before I awoke to the stern
necessity of reading over every written line of shorthand.

I am afraid the leader-writers' eloquence and style--real and
ever-present features in this journal's pages--were entirely wasted upon
me. I copied them with slavish lack of thought, intent only on my
shorthand, and most generally upon the physical difficulty of keeping
my eyes open. I invariably fell asleep three or four times before
finishing my allotted task, and only managed to keep awake for the
reading of it by standing erect beside the packing-case and reading
aloud. How it would have astonished those gifted leader-writers if
they could have walked past, overheard me, and recognised in my
halting, drowsy declamation their own well-rounded periods!

As I read the last word my spirits always rose instantly, and my
craving for sleep left me. With keen anticipatory pleasure I would
fold up the newspaper ready for the morning, take one look out from
the doorway to note the weather, shed my clothes, snuff the candle,
and climb luxuriously into bed with the current book, whatever it
might be. No newspaper for me. This was real reading, and while I read
in bed (travel, biography, and fiction) I lived exclusively in the
life my author depicted. Vanished utterly for me were Dursley and its
worthy folk, and Australia too for that matter. Practically all the
books I read carried me to the Old World, and most often to England,
which for me was rapidly becoming a synonym for romance, charm,
interest, culture, and all the good things of which one dreams.
Everything desirable, and not noticeable or recognised as being in my
daily life, I grew gradually to think of as being part and parcel of
English life. I did not as yet long to go to England. One does not
long to visit the moon. But when some well-wrought piece of
atmosphere, some happy turn of speech, some inspiring glimpse of high
and noble motives or tender devotion, caught and held me, in a book, I
would sigh quietly and say to myself:

'Ah, yes; in England!'

Looking back upon it, I am rather pleased with myself for the stubborn
persistence with which I slogged away at the shorthand; because it
never once touched my interest. For me, it was a veritable treadmill.
And, for that reason, I suppose, I was never really good at it. I have
no doubt whatever that it had real value for me as a disciplinary
exercise.

And then my candle would gutter and expire. I have sometimes, by means
of sitting up in bed, holding the book high, and using great
concentration, devoured a whole chapter between the first sputtering
sound of the candle's death-rattle and the moment of its actual
demise. Indeed, I have more than once finished a chapter, when within
half a page of it, by matchlight. But that, of course, was gross
extravagance. Our candles seemed to me abominably short, and I once
tried to seduce Mrs. Gabbitas into allowing me two at a time; but she,
good soul, wisely said that one was more than I had any right to burn
in an evening, and I was too miserly to buy them for myself.

Yes, it seems horribly unnatural in a youth, but I am afraid I was
rather miserly at that time. I wanted passionately to do various
things. Precisely what, I had never so far thought out. But I did not
desire the less ardently for that. I suppose the thing I wanted was to
'better myself,' as the servants say. Was I not a servant? Without
ever reasoning the matter out, I felt strongly that the possession of
some money, a certain store, was very necessary to my well-being; that
in some mysterious way it would add immensely to my chances, to my
strength in the world; that it would put me on a footing superior to
that I had at present. I even thought of it, in my innocence, as
Capital. Many of my musings used to begin with: 'If a fellow has
Capital'--and I believed that if he had not this magic talisman his
position was very different and inferior. I thought of the world's
hewers of wood and drawers of water as being the folk who had no
Capital; the others as the people who had somehow acquired possession
of the talisman. And I suppose I wanted to be of the company of the
others.

Ten shillings a week means twenty-six pounds a year; and I very well
remember that on the first anniversary of my entering Mr. Perkins's
employ, my Government Savings Bank book showed a balance to my credit
of twenty-two pounds three and fourpence. This sum, I decided, might
fairly rank as Capital; it really merited the august name, I felt,
being actually above the sum of twenty pounds. Eighteen pounds was a
respectable nest-egg. Yes, but twenty-three [sic] pounds three and
fourpence--that was Capital; and I now definitely took rank, however
humbly, among the people who possessed the talisman. I realised very
well that I was poor; that this sum of money was not a large one.
Still, it was Capital, and, as such, it gave me a deal of
satisfaction, and more of confidence than I could have had without it.
I am certain of that. What a pity it is that one cannot always, later
in life, obtain the same secure and confident feeling by virtue of
possessing twenty pounds!

This meant that I had spent less than four pounds in the year. But no;
Mr. Perkins gave me ten shillings, and Mrs. Perkins five shillings, at
Christmas time. Also, I won ten shillings as a prize in a competition
arranged by the _Dursley Chronicle_. It was for the best five hundred
word description of an Australian scene, and I described Livorno Bay
and its derelict; and, as I thought at the time--quite mistakenly, I
am sure--described them rather well. Apart from a book or two I had
bought practically nothing, save boots and socks and a Sunday suit of
clothes. Mrs. Perkins had kindly supplied quite a stock of shirts for
me, by means of operations performed upon old shirts of her husband's.
My Sunday suit of clothes had occupied me greatly for some weeks. I
had never before bought clothing of any kind. After two or three
visits to the store, and many talks at mealtimes with Mrs. Gabbitas, I
finally decided upon blue serge.

'It do show the dust, but it don't show the wear so much as the rest
of 'em,' was the Gabbitular verdict which finally settled this
momentous business. A tie to match was given in with the suit, a
concession which I owed entirely to Mrs. Gabbitas's determined
enterprise. The tie was of satin, and, taken in conjunction with a
neatly arranged wad of silk handkerchief, extraordinarily variegated
in colour (Mrs. Gabbitas's present), protruding from the breast-pocket
of the new coat, it produced on the first Sunday after its purchase an
effect which I found at once arresting and sedately rich. My
looking-glass was not more than six inches square, but, by propping it up
on a chair, and receding from it gradually, I was able to obtain a very
fair view of my trousers; while, by replacing it on the wall, and
observing my reflection carefully from different angles, I was able to
judge of most parts of the coat and waistcoat.

After a good deal of thought, I decided that the best effect was
obtained by fastening the top button of the coat, turning back one
lower corner with careful negligence, and keeping it there by holding
one hand in my trouser pocket. In that order, then, I interviewed Mrs.
Gabbitas in the scullery, to receive her congratulations before
proceeding to church. Altogether, it was a day of pleasing excitement;
but, greatly though it intrigued me, the purchase left me as much a
miser as ever, my only other extravagance for a long time being a
cream-coloured parasol--my present to Mrs. Gabbitas; and---I may as
well confess it--I could not have brought myself to buy that, but for
the fact that it was called 'slightly shop-soiled,' and had been
'marked down' from 8s. 11d. to 4s. 10 1/2d.

Yes, for a youth of sixteen years, I fear it must be admitted that I
was unnaturally parsimonious, and a good deal of what schoolboys used
to call a smug and a swatter. It really was curious, because I do not
recall that I had any ambition to be actually rich. Mr. Smiles and his
_Self Help_ would have left me cold if I had read that classic. I
indulged no Whittingtonian dreams of knighthood, mayoral chains, vast
commercial or financial operations, or anything of that sort. The
things that interested me were largely unreal. I was immensely
appealed to, I remember, by a phase in the career of Charles Reade's
_Griffith Gaunt_, in which that gentleman lived incognito for awhile
in a remote rural inn, and wooed (if he did not actually marry) the
buxom daughter of the house, while his real wife was being accused of
having murdered him. I think that was the way of it. I know the
sojourn in that isolated inn--I pictured its lichen-grown walls; a
place that would be approached quite nearly in the stilly night by
wild woodland creatures--appealed to me as a wholly delightful
episode.

I never had a dream of commercial triumphs. I did not think of fame.
For what was I striving? And why did I so assiduously save? It is not
easy to answer these questions. I find the thing puzzles me a good
deal. There was my means-to-an-end attitude; but what was the precise
end in view? If one comes to that I have been striving all my life
long, and to what end? I know this, that in the midst of my physical
content as a handy lad in a comfortable home, I had at least thought
definitely of my future up to a certain point. I had told myself that
there were two kinds of people in the world: the hewers of wood and
drawers of water, earning a mere living, as I was earning mine, by the
labour of their hands; and the others. I knew very little of what the
others did, and had no very definite plan or desire to follow, myself,
any of their occupations. But I did know that I wished to live in
their division of the community. I wished to be one of those others. I
should be unworthy of my father if I did not presently take my place
among those others. And, I suppose, the only practical steps in that
direction which I knew of and could take were the saving of my wages
and the study of shorthand. I think that was about the way of it. And
if my diligence with regard to these two matters may be taken as the
measure of my desire to join the ranks of the others, it is safe to
say I must have desired it very much indeed.


XII


Every one has noticed the odd vividness with which certain apparently
unmemorable episodes stand out among one's recollections, though the
details of far more important occasions have become merged in the huge
and nebulous mist of the things one has forgotten. (Memory is a
longish gallery, but the mass of that which is unremembered, how
enormous this is!)

I recall a Sunday evening in Dursley. I had been to church, a rare
thing for me, of an evening, to hear a strange, visiting parson; a man
who had done missionary work in east London and in Northern
Queensland. I remember nothing that he said, and nothing occurred that
night to make it memorable for me. And yet ...

The aftermath of the sunset beyond Dursley valley was very beautiful.
It often was. Venus shone out with mellow brilliance a little to the
right of the church. The air was full of bush scents, and somewhere,
not far from where I stood, dead brushwood was burning and diffusing
abroad the aromatic pungency that fire draws from eucalyptus leaves.

Gradually, I was overcome by that sense of the infinitely romantic
potentialities of life which I suppose overpowers all young people at
times; and, more especially, rather lonely young people. The main
events of my short life filed past before me in review against the
background of an exquisitely melancholy evening sky, illumined by one
perfect star. Even this dim light was further softened for me
presently by the moisture that gathered in my eyes; tears that pricked
with a pain that was almost intolerably sweet. I recalled how, as a
child, I had longed to see strange and far-off lands; how I had
bragged to servants and childish companions that I would travel. And
then, how I had travelled--the _Ariadne_, my companions, my father,
the derelict, Livorno Bay. And then, the blow that cut off all I had
held by, and made of me an unconsidered scrap, owning nothing, and
owned by nobody.

I had been very miserable at the Orphanage. Yes, there was distinct
pleasure in recalling and weighing the sum of my unhappiness at St.
Peter's. I had longed to be quit of it; I had willed to be out in the
open world, free to make what I could of my own life. And, behold, I
was free. My will had accomplished this, had brushed aside the
restraining bonds of the whole organisation supervised by Father
O'Malley. I, a friendless, bare-legged orphan had done this, because I
desired to do it. And now I was a recognised and respectable unit in a
free community, earning and paying my way with the best. (I was
pleasantly conscious of my blue serge suit, the satin tie, and the
multi-coloured silk handkerchief.) I was possessed of Capital--more
than twenty pounds; quite a substantial little sum in excess of twenty
pounds, even without the interest shortly to be added thereto.
Finally, that very evening, had I not been addressed as 'Mister
Freydon,' I, the erstwhile bare-footed 'inmate' of St. Peter's? There
was nothing of bathos, nothing in the least ludicrous, to me in this
last reflection.

'It's nothing, of course,' I told myself, with proud deprecation; 'and
he's only a shop assistant. But there it is. It does show something
after all. And, besides, he is a member of the School of Arts
Committee!'

The 'he' in this case was, of course, the person who had shown
discernment enough to address me as 'Mister Freydon.' And, deprecate
as I might, the thing had given me a thrill of deep and real
satisfaction. Merely recalling the sound of it added to the exaltation
of my mood, and to my obsession by the wonder, the romance of the
various transitions of my life.

The hazards of life, the wonder of it all--this it was that filled my
mind. How would Ted be struck by it? I thought. And there and then I
composed in my mind the letter which should accompany my return of the
pound he had given me when I could find an address to which it could
be sent. There should be no flinching here, no blinking the exact
truth. I may have been an insufferable young prig and snob. Very
likely I was. As I recall it that letter, composed while I gazed
across the valley at the evening star, was informed by a sort of easy
condescension and friendly patronage. Grateful, yes, but with a faint
hint, too, that Ted had been rather fortunate, a little honoured
perhaps in having enjoyed the privilege of assisting, however
slightly, in the launch of my career. At one time I had gladly
regarded it as a present. That, it seemed, was a blunder of my remote
infancy. Honest Ted's pound was a loan, of course, and like any other
honourable man I should naturally repay the loan!

Musing in this wise I turned away from the evening star, and walked
very slowly past the dairy and the wash-house to my own little room.
Now the odd thing was that, though I seemed to have given not one
single thought to the future, though I seemed to have made no plan,
but, on the contrary, to have confined myself exclusively to the
idlest sort of musing upon the past, yet, as I walked into my dark
room, I knew that I had definitely decided to leave Dursley at once,
and take the next step in my career. I actually whispered to myself:

'It's a good little room. I shall miss this room. I shall often think
of the nights I've spent here.'

All this, as though my few belongings had been packed, and I had
arranged to depart next morning; though, in fact, I had not given a
single conscious thought to the matter of leaving Dursley until I
turned my back on the evening star.

Next morning at breakfast I told Mrs. Gabbitas I meant to leave and
make for Sydney; and Mrs. Gabbitas gave me to understand that, with
all their infinite varieties of foolishness, most young fellows shared
one idiosyncrasy in common: they none of them had sense enough to know
when they were well off. I spoke of my shorthand, and said I had not
been working at it for nothing. Mrs. Gabbitas sniffed, and expressed
very plainly the doubts she felt about shorthand ever providing me
with meals of the kind I enjoyed at her kitchen table.

'I suppose the fact is gardening isn't good enough for you, and you
want to be a gentleman,' the good soul said, with sounding irony. And,
whilst I made some modestly deprecatory sound in reply, my thoughts
said: 'You are precisely right.'

With news in hand I have no doubt Mrs. Gabbitas took an early
opportunity of a chat with Mrs. Perkins. At all events I had no sooner
got my lawn-mower to work that morning than the mistress called me to
her where she lay on the verandah.

'Is it true we're going to lose you, Nick?' she said very kindly. And,
as my irritating way still was, I blushed confusedly as I endorsed the
report.

'Well, of course, we knew we should, sooner or later; and, though
we'll be sorry to lose you, you are right to go; quite right. I am
sure of that, and so is Geo--so is Mr. Perkins. But have you got a
situation to go to, Nick?'

I told her I had not, and that I did not think I could secure a berth
in Sydney while I was still in Dursley.

'No, no, perhaps not,' she said musingly. 'You must talk to Mr.
Perkins about it, and I will, too. What made you decide on going now,
Nick?'

'I--I don't know,' I replied awkwardly. And then the sweet kindliness
of her face emboldened me to add: 'I was just thinking last
night--thinking about my life as I looked at the sky where the sunset had
been, and--somehow, I found I was decided.' Then, as if to justify if
possible the exceeding lameness of my explanation: 'You see, Mrs.
Perkins, I've got the hang of the shorthand pretty well now,' I added.

She nodded sympathetically. 'Well, I'm sure you'll succeed, Nick, I'm
sure you will; for you're a good lad, and very persevering. The main
thing is being a good lad, Nick; that's the main thing. It's sad for
you, having lost your parents, and--and everything. But when you go
away, Nick, just try to think of me as if I were your mother, will
you? I'll be thinking quite a lot of you, you know. Don't you go and
fancy there's nobody cares about you. We shall all be thinking a lot
about you. And, Nick, if ever you find yourself in any trouble, if you
begin to feel you're going wrong in any way, if you feel like doing
anything you know is wrong, or if you feel downhearted and lonesome--you
just get into a train and come to Dursley, Nick. Come straight
here to me, and tell me everything about it, and--and I think I'll be
able to help you. I'll try, anyhow; and you'll know I should want to.
And if it isn't easy to come tell me just the same; write and tell me
all about it. Promise me that, Nick.'

I promised her. She held out her white, thin hand and clasped my hard
hand in it; and I went off to my mowing very conscious of my eyes
because they smarted and pricked, but little indebted to them because
they failed to show me anything more definite than a blur of greenery
at my feet, and a blur of sunlight above.

A fortnight elapsed before I did really leave that place; but for me
most of the emotion of leaving, of parting with my kindly employers
and friends, and with pretty, peaceful Dursley, was epitomised in that
little conversation on the verandah with Mrs. Perkins. I know now that
there are many other sweet and kindly women in the world. At that time
no one among them had ever been so sweet and kind to me.


XIII


When I stepped out of the train at Redfern Station in Sydney, I
carried all my worldly belongings in a much worn carpet-bag which had
been given me by Mr. Perkins. Its weight did not at all suggest to me
the need of obtaining a porter's services, and hardly would have done
so even if I had been accustomed to engaging assistance of the sort.
Stepping out with my bag into the bustle of the capital city I walked,
as one who knew his way, to where the noisy and malodorous old steam
tram-cars started, and made my way by tram to Circular Quay. (I had
had my directions in Dursley.) Here I boarded a ferry-boat, and at the
cost of one penny was carried across the shining waters of the harbour
to North Shore. Half an hour later I had mounted the hill, found Mill
Street and Bay View Villa, and actually become a boarder and a lodger
there, with a latch-key of my own.

The landlady having left the bedroom to which she had escorted me, my
carefully sustained nonchalance fell from me; I turned the key in the
door, and sat down on the edge of my bed with a long-drawn sigh. The
celerity, the extraordinary swiftness of the whole business left me
almost breathless.

'Yesterday,' I told myself, as one recounting a miracle, 'I was
planting out young tomatoes in Mr. Perkins's garden in Dursley. Only a
few minutes ago I was still in the train. And now--now I'm a lodger,
and this is my room, and--I'm a lodger!'

I did not seem able to get beyond that just then, though later on,
with a recollection of a certain passage in a favourite novel, I tried
the sound, in a whisper, of:

'Mr. Nicholas Freydon was now comfortably installed in rooms on the
shady side of--North Shore.' At the same time I ran over a few
variants upon such easy phrases as: 'My rooms at North Shore,' 'Snug
quarters,' 'My boarding-house,' 'My landlady,' and the like.

One must remember that I was less than two years distant from St.
Peter's and from Sister Agatha and her cane.

There were two beds in my room; one small and the other very small. I
was sitting on the very small one. The other belonged to Mr. William
Smith, whose real name might quite possibly have been something else.
For already, though I had not seen him, I had gathered that my room-mate
was an elderly man with a history, of which this much was
generally admitted: that he had seen much better days, and was a
married man separated from his wife.

'But a pleasanter, kinder-hearted, nicer-spoken gentleman you couldn't
wish to meet, that I will say,' Mrs. Hastings, the landlady, had told
me. 'Which,' she added, after a pause given to reflection, with eyes
downcast, 'if he was otherwise I should not've thought of letting a
share of his room to anybody with recommendations from me nephew in
Dursley--not likely. No, nor for that matter, of havin' him in my
house at all.'

My landlady was an aunt of that Mr. Jokram who had earned distinction
(apart from his membership of the School of Arts Committee) by being
the first to address me as 'Mister Freydon.' This good man had taken a
most friendly interest in my outsetting, and had written off at once
to his aunt to know if she could include me among her boarders. Mrs.
Hastings had explained that she was 'Full up as per usual, but if your
gentleman friend would care to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, him being as
quiet and respectable a gentleman as walks, it will be easy to put in
another bed.'

This was before any mention had been made of terms. These, we
subsequently learned, ranged from a minimum of 17s. 6d. per week,
including light and use of bath. Later, the nephew was able to obtain
special concessions for me, as the result of which I had the
opportunity of securing all the amenities of Mrs. Hastings's refined
home, including a share of Mr. Smith's room, and such plain washing as
did not call for the use of starch--all for the very moderate charge
of 16s. weekly.

Thus it was that, although a stranger and without friends in Sydney, I
was able to go direct into my new quarters, without any loss of time
or money; an important consideration even for a capitalist whose
fortune at this time amounted to something nearer thirty than twenty
pounds. (Mr. Perkins had given me an extra month's wages. Mrs. Perkins
had supplemented this by half a sovereign, six pairs of socks, three
linen shirts, and half a dozen collars; and Mrs. Gabbitas had given me
a brand new Bible and Prayer-book, with ornate bindings and perfectly
blinding type, and another of the silk handkerchiefs coloured like a
tropical sunset.)

'I shall not be in to tea this evening, Mrs. Hastings, I said, with
fine carelessness, as I left the house, after unpacking my belongings
and paying a visit to the bathroom, an apartment formed by taking in a
section of the back verandah. (The bath was of the same material as
the verandah roof--galvanised iron.) 'I've got some business in Sydney
that will keep me rather late.'

The good woman rather pierced my carefully assumed guise of
nonchalance by the smile with which she said: 'Oh, very well, Mr.
Freydon; I hope you'll not be kept too late--by business.'

'How in the world did she guess?' I thought as I walked down to the
ferry. It may be that the virus of city life had in some queer way
already entered my veins. Here was I, the parsimonious 'handy lad,'
who had been saving ninety per cent. of my wages and never indulging
myself in any way, actually contemplating the purchase of an evening
meal in Sydney, while becoming indebted for an evening meal I should
never eat in North Shore; to say nothing of making deceitful remarks
about being detained by business, when I had deliberately made up my
mind to postpone all business until the next day. Truly, I was making
an ominous start in the new life; or so my twitching conscience told
me, as I sat enjoying the harbour view from the deck of the ferry-boat
which took me to Circular Quay.

My notion of dissipation and extravagance would have proved amusing to
the bloods of that day, and merely incredible to those of the present
time. There was an unnecessary twopence for the ferry--admitting the
whole business to have been unnecessary. There was sixpence for a
meal, consisting of tea and a portentous allowance of scones with
butter. There was threepence for a packet of cigarettes ('colonial'
tobacco), the first I had ever smoked, and a purchase which had
actually been decided upon some days previously. Finally, there was
fourpence for a glass of colonial wine in a George Street wine-shop;
and this also, like the rest of the outing, had been practically
decided upon before I left Dursley. But with regard to the wine there
had been reservations. The cigarettes were certainly to be tried. The
wine was to be had if circumstances proved favourable, and such a
plunge seemed at the time desirable. It did; and so I may suppose the
outing was successful.

During my wanderings up and down the city streets, I examined
carefully the vestibules of various places of amusement--rather dingy
most of them were at that date--but had no serious thought of
penetrating further. The shops, the road traffic, and the people
intrigued me greatly, but especially the people, the unending streams
of lounging men, women, and children. Some, no doubt, were on business
bent; but the majority appeared to me to take their walking very
easily, and every one seemed to be chattering. My life since as a
child I left England had all been spent in sparsely populated rural
surroundings, and the noisy bustle of Sydney impressed me very much,
as I imagine the Strand would impress a Dartmoor lad, born and bred,
on his first visit to London.

It did not oppress me at all. On the contrary, I felt pleasantly
stimulated by it. Life here seemed very clearly and emphatically
articulate; it marched past me in the streets to a stirring strain.
There were no pauses, no silences, no waiting. And then, too, one felt
that things were happening all the time. The atmosphere was full of
stir and bustle. Showy horses and carriages went spanking past one;
cabs were pulled up with a jerk, and busily talking men clambered out
from them, carelessly handing silver to the driver, as though it were
a thing of no consequence, and passing from one's sight within doors,
waving cigars and talking, talking all the time. Obviously, big things
were toward; not one to-day and one to-morrow, but every hour in every
street. Fortunes were being made and lost; great enterprises planned
and launched; great crimes, too, I supposed; and crucial meetings and
partings.

Yes, this was the very tide of life, one felt; and with what pulsing,
irresistible strength it ebbed and flowed along the city highways!
Among all these thousands of passers-by no one guessed how closely and
with what inquisitive interest I was observing them. I suppose I must
have covered eight or ten miles of pavement before walking
self-consciously into that wine-shop, and sitting down beside a little
metal table. I know now that, with me, nervousness generally takes the
form of marked apparent nonchalance. Doubtless, this is due to
concentrated effort in my youth to produce this effect. I did not know
the name of a single Australian wine; but I remembered some
enthusiastic comment of my father's upon the 'admirable red wine of
the country,' so I ordered a glass of red wine, and, with an amused
stare, the youth in attendance served me.

Like many of the wines of the country it was fairly potent stuff, and
rather sweet than otherwise, probably an Australian port. I sipped it
with the air of one who generally devoted a good portion of his
evenings to such dalliance, and ate several of the thin biscuits which
lay in a plate on the table. Meanwhile, I observed closely the other
sippers. They were all in couples, and the snatches of their
conversation which I heard struck me as extraordinarily dramatic in
substance; most romantic, I thought, and very different from the
leisurely, languid gossip of those who draw patterns in the dust with
their clasp-knives, and converse chiefly about 'baldy-faced steers,'
'good feed,' 'heavy bits o' road,' and the like, with generous
intervals of say ten or twelve minutes between observations. These
folk in the wine-shop, on the contrary, tripped over one another in
their talk; their hands and shoulders and brows all played a part, as
well as their lips, and their glances were charged with penetrant
meaning.

As I made my way gradually down to Circular Quay and the ferry, some
one stepped out athwart my path from a shadowy doorway, and I had a
vision of straw-coloured hair, pale skin, scarlet lips, a woman's
figure.

'Going home, dear? What about coming with me? Come on, de-ear!'

Somehow I knew all about it. Not from talk, I am sure. Possibly from
reading; possibly by instinct. I felt as though the poor creature had
hit me across the face with a hot iron. I tried to answer her, but
could not. She barred my path, one hand on my arm. It was no use; I
could not get words out. Those waiting seconds were horrible. And then
I turned and fairly ran from her, a rather hoarse laugh pursuing me
among the shadows as I went.

It was horrible, and affected me for hours. But it did not spoil my
outing. No, I think on the whole it added to the general excitation. I
had a sense of having stepped right out into the deep waters of life,
of being in the current. The drama of life was touching me now; its
sombre and tragical side as well as the rest of it.

'This really is life,' I told myself as the ferry bore me among
twinkling lights across the harbour. 'This is the big world, and
Dursley hardly was.'

It stirred me deeply. The harbour itself; the dim, mysterious outlines
of ships, the dancing water, the sense of connection with the world
outside Australia, the very latch-key in my pocket, and the thought
that I would presently be going to bed at my lodgings, in a room
shared by an experienced and rather mysterious man, with a past; all
combined to produce in me a stirring alertness to the adventurous
interest of life.


XIV


One of the odd things about that first evening of mine in Sydney was
that it introduced me to the tobacco habit, one of the few indulgences
which I have never at any time since relinquished. I smoked several
cigarettes that evening, with steadily increasing satisfaction. And,
on the following day, acting on the advice of my room-mate, Mr. Smith,
I bought a shilling briar pipe and a sixpenny plug of black tobacco as
a week's allowance. From that point my current outgoings were
increased by just sixpence per week, no less, and for a considerable
period, no more.

For some days, at least, and it may have been for longer, Mr. William
Smith became the mentor to whom I owed the most of such urban
sophistication as I acquired. He was a very kindly and practical
mentor, worldly, but in many respects not a bad adviser for such a lad
so situated. When I recall the stark ugliness of his views and advice
to me regarding a young man's needs and attitude generally where the
opposite sex was concerned, I suppose I must admit that a moralist
would have viewed my tutor with horror. But, particularly at that
period, I am not sure that the average man of the world, in any walk
of life, would have differed very much from Mr. Smith in this
particular matter. One could imagine some quite worthy colonels of
regiments giving not wholly dissimilar counsel to a youngster, I
think.

Morning and evening Mr. Smith applied some sort of cosmetic to his
fine grey moustache, which kept its ends like needles. He always wore
white or biscuit-coloured waistcoats, and was scrupulously particular
about his linen. He generally had an air of being fresh from his bath.
His thin hair was never disarranged, and his mood seemed to be
cheerfully serene. Summer heats drew plentiful perspiration from him,
but no sign of languor or irritation. On Sunday mornings he stayed in
bed till ten-thirty, with the _Sydney Bulletin_, and on the stroke of
eleven o'clock he invariably entered the church at the corner of Mill
Street. I used to marvel greatly at this, because he never missed his
bath, and his Sunday morning appearance gave the impression that his
toilet had received the most elaborate attention. He carried an ivory
crutch-handled malacca walking-stick, and in church I used to think of
him as closely resembling Colonel Newcome. His voice was a mellow
baritone, he never missed any of the responses; and the odour which
hung about him of soap and water, cosmetic, light yellow kid gloves,
and good tobacco--he smoked a golden plug, very superior to my cheap,
dark stuff--seemed to me at that time richly suggestive of luxury,
sophistication, distinction, and knowledge of affairs.

Many years have passed since I set eyes on Mr. Smith, and no doubt he
has long since been gathered to his fathers; but I believe I am right
in saying that his was a rather remarkable character. I know now that
he really was a dipsomaniac of a somewhat unusual kind. At ordinary
times he touched no stimulant of any sort. But at intervals of about
three months he disappeared, quite regularly and methodically, and
always with a handbag. To what place he went I do not know. Neither I
think did Mrs. Hastings or his employers. At the end of a week he
would reappear, clothed as when he went away, but looking ill and
shaken. For a few days afterwards he was always exceedingly subdued,
ate little, and talked hardly at all. But by the end of a week he was
himself again, and remained perfectly serene and normal until the time
of his next disappearance. I once happened to see the contents of the
handbag. They consisted of an old, rather ragged Norfolk coat and
trousers and a suit of pyjamas; nothing else.

Mr. Smith was a sort of time-keeper at the works of Messrs. Poutney,
Riggs, Poutney and Co., the wholesale builders' and masons' material
people. I was informed that he had once been the chief traveller for
this old-established firm, on a salary of seven hundred pounds a year,
with a handsome commission, and all travelling expenses paid. His
salary now was two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week; and I
apprehend that his services were retained by the firm rather by virtue
of what he had done in the past than for the sake of what he was doing
at this time. I was told that commercial travelling in New South
Wales, when Mr. Smith had been in his prime, was a dashing profession
which produced many drunkards. But from Mr. Smith himself I never
heard a word about his previous life.

I recall many small kindnesses received at his hands, and at the
outset the domestic routine of my Sydney life was largely arranged for
me by Mr. Smith.

'Never wear a collar more than once, or a white shirt more than
twice,' was one of the first instructions I received from him.
Subsequently he modified this a little for me, upon economic grounds,
advising me to take special care of my shirt on Sunday, in order that
it might serve for Monday and Tuesday. 'Then you've two days each for
the other two shirts in each week, you see. But socks and collars you
change every day. In Sydney you must never wear a coloured shirt;
always a stiff, white shirt, in Sydney.'

On my second evening there Mr. Smith took me to a hatter's shop and
chose a billycock hat for me, in place of the soft felt which I
usually wore.

'You must have a hard hat in Sydney,' he said, 'except in real hot
weather; and then you could wear a flat straw, if you liked. I prefer
a grey hard hat for summer. But straw will do for a youngster. You
should have a pair of gloves, for Sunday, you know. They're useful,
too, for interviewing principals.'

One might have fancied that gloves were a kind of passport, or perhaps
a skeleton key guaranteed to open principals' doors. It was Mr. Smith
who first made me feel that there was a connection between morals,
respectability, and cold baths. To miss the morning tub, as Mr. Smith
saw it, was not merely a calamity but also a disgrace; a thing to make
one ashamed; a lapse calculated seriously to affect character. How
oddly that does clash, to be sure, with his views of a young man's
relations with the other sex! And yet, I am not so sure. Shocked as
many people would be by those views, they might admit in them perhaps
a sort of hygienic intention. It was that I fancy, more than anything
else, which did as a fact shock me. As companions, co-equals,
fellow-humans, I believe this curious man absolutely detested women. I
wonder what sort of a wife he had had! ...

When I come to compare my launch in Sydney with all that I know and
have read of youthful beginnings in Old World centres, I marvel at the
luxurious ease and freedom of Australian conditions. To put it into
figures now--my start in Sydney did not cost me a sovereign. I did not
spend two days without earning more than enough to defray all my
modest outgoings. My search for employment, so far from wearing out
shoe-leather, was confined to a single application, to one brief
interview. This was not at all due to any cleverness on my part, but
in the first place to the good offices of Mr. Perkins of Dursley, and
in the second place to the easygoing character of prevailing
Australian conditions.

On the morning after my first evening's dissipation in Sydney, I made
my way to the business premises of Messrs. Joseph Canning and Son, the
Sussex Street wholesale produce merchants and commission agents. This
firm had had dealings with Dursley's Omnigerentual and Omniferacious
Agent ever since his first appearance in that part, and it was no
doubt because of this that Mr. Perkins wrote to them on my behalf.
After waiting for a time in a dark little chamber containing specimens
of cream separators and churns, I was taken to the private room of Mr.
Joseph Canning, the senior partner, who, as I was presently to learn,
visited the office chiefly to attend to such out-of-the-way trifles as
my call, to smoke cigars, and to take selected clients out to lunch.
The practical conduct of the business was entirely in the hands of Mr.
John, this gentleman's only son.

I found Mr. Joseph Canning with his feet crossed on his blotting-pad,
his body tilted far back in his chair, and his first morning cigar
tilted far upward between his teeth, its ash perilously close to one
bushy grey eyebrow.

'Well, me lad,' he said as I entered, 'how's the Omniferacious one?
Blooming as ever, I hope.'

I explained that I had left Mr. Perkins in the best of health, and
proceeded to answer, so far as I was able, the string of subsequent
questions put to me regarding the town of Dursley, its principal
residents, business progress, and chief hotel. I gathered that Mr.
Canning had paid one visit to Dursley, under the auspices of its
Omnigerentual Agent, and that while there he had contrived, with Mr.
Perkins's assistance no doubt, 'to make that little town fairly hum.'

We talked in this strain for some time, and then Mr. Canning rose from
his chair, clearly under the impression that his business with me had
been satisfactorily completed, and prepared to dismiss me cordially,
and proceed to other matters.

'Ah!' he ejaculated cheerfully, extending his right hand to me, and
moving toward the door. 'Quite pleasant to have a chat about little
Dursley. Well, take care of yourself in the big city, you know--bed by
ten o'clock, and that sort of thing, you know; and--er--never touch
anything in the morning. Safest plan.'

By this time the door was open, and I, on the threshold, was feeling
considerably bewildered. With a great effort I managed to force out
some such words as:

'And if you should hear of any sort of situation that I----'

At that he grabbed my hand again, and pulled me back into the room.

'Of course, of course! God bless my soul, I'd clean forgotten!' he
exclaimed hurriedly as he strode across to his table and rang a bell.

'Ask Mr. John to kindly step this way a minute, will ye?' he said to
the lad who answered the bell. 'Forget me name next, I suppose,' he
added to me in a confidential undertone. 'Tut, tut! And I read
Perkins's letter again just before you came in, too! Ah, here you are,
John. Come in a minute, will you?'

A vigorous-looking fair-haired man of about five-and-thirty came into
the room now, with the air of one who had been interrupted. He wore no
coat, and his spotless shirt-sleeves were held well up on his arms by
things like garters clasped above the elbow.

'Ah, John,' began his father, 'this is Mr. Perkins's "Nickperry"; you
remember? Nick Freydon.' He referred to a letter on the table.
'Shorthand, you know, and all that. Well, what about it? D'jew
remember?'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. Well, what about it?' This seemed to be a
favourite phrase between father and son.

'Well, what was it you said? Thirty-five bob for a start, eh? Oh,
well, you'll see to it, anyway, won't you? That's right. So
long--er--Nickperry!'

'Good-morning, sir!'

And with that I found myself following Mr. John along a darkish
passage to a well-lighted apartment, divided by a ground-glass
partition from an office in which I saw perhaps eight or ten clerks at
work.

'Now, Mr. Freydon,' said my guide, as he flung himself into a
revolving chair, and motioned me to another on the opposite side of
the table. 'We'll make it no more than five minutes, please, for I've
got a stack of letters to answer, and some men to see at eleven
sharp.'

And then I had a rather happy inspiration.

'Do you write your own letters, sir?' I asked.

'Eh? Oh, Lord, yes!' he said brusquely. 'I know some men dictate 'em
to clerks, to be done in copper-plate, an' all that. But, goodness, I
can write 'em myself quicker'n that! And we have to be mighty careful
to say just the right kind of thing in our letters, too. It makes a
difference.'

'Well, will you just try dictating one or two to me, sir, and let me
take them in shorthand. Then I would bring them to you when you have
seen the gentlemen at eleven.'

'Eh? Well, that's rather an idea. Let's have a shot. Here you are
then. Pencil? Right? Well: "Dear Mr. Gubbins, yours of 14th, received
with thanks." Got that? Yes; well, tell him--that is--"You are quite
mistaken, I assure you, about your butter having been held back till
the bottom was out of the market." Old fool's always grousing about
his rotten butter. You see, the fact is his butter is second or third
quality stuff, and he reads the quotations in the paper for the
primest, and kicks like a steer because he doesn't get the same, or a
penny more. Always threatening to change his agents, and I wish to God
he would; only, o' course, it doesn't do to tell 'em so. There's a lot
like Gubbins, an' one has to try an' sweeten 'em a bit once a week or
so. Yes! Well, where were we? Eh? That all right?'

'Yes, sir. "Yours faithfully," or "Yours truly," sir?'

'Oh, well, I always say: "'shuring you vour bes' 'tention, bleeve me,
yours faithfully, J. Canning and Son." It pleases them, an'----'

'Yes, sir.'

And some of the others were a good deal more sketchy, but fortunately
there were only five in all. I asked Mr. John to let me take the
original letters. It was plain that dictation was not his strong
point. Neither, I thought, had he much idea of letter-writing; whereas
I, so I flattered myself, could do it rather well. At least I had read
something about commercial correspondence, and had also read the
published letters of many famous people. So, as soon as I decently
could, I pretended Mr. John had really dictated replies to his five
letters, and that I had recorded his words in indelible shorthand.
Then I said I would run away and write the letters while he kept his
engagements.

'Right!' he said. 'Tell you what. Go into my father's room. He's gone
out now, and you'll find paper and that there.'

So I made my first practical essay in commercial correspondence from
the chair of the head of the firm, and among the fumes of the head's
morning cigar.

In an old pocket-book I discovered a year or two ago the draft of the
first letter I wrote for J. Canning and Son. Here it is:

'_To_ Mr. R. B. Gubbins,
'Ferndale Farm,
'Unaville, N.S.W.

'Nov. 3rd, 1879.

'Dear Mr. Gubbins,--Thank you for your letter of the 2nd inst. We have
looked carefully into the matter of your complaint, and are glad to be
able to assure you that your fears are quite unnecessary. We were, of
course, prepared to take the matter up seriously with those
responsible, but investigation proved that there had been no delay
whatever in disposing of your last consignment of butter. It happened,
however, that an exceptionally large supply of the very primest
qualities were on offer that morning, and though one or two may have
reached higher prices, as the result of exceptional circumstances, the
bulk changed hands at the price obtained for yours, and many
consignments at a lower figure. In several cases the prices given in
the newspapers are either incorrect, or apply only to one or two
special lots.

'In conclusion, permit us to assure you, dear Mr. Gubbins, that while
your interests are entrusted to our hands they will always receive the
closest possible attention, and that nothing will be left undone which
could be in any way of benefit to you.

'Trusting this will make the position perfectly clear to you, and that
you will be under no further anxiety with regard to your consignments
to us, now, or at any future time.--We are, dear Mr. Gubbins, yours
faithfully,'

In the same unexceptional style I wrote to four other clients, after
very careful perusal of their letters, combined with reflections upon
Mr. John's running commentaries. As I wrote what my father had called
'an almost painfully legible and blameless hand,' and gave the closest
care to these particular letters, their appearance was tolerably
business-like when finished. Carrying these letters, and those they
answered, I now began to reconnoitre passages and doorways to
ascertain the whereabouts and occupation of Mr. John. Presently I saw
him come hurrying in from the street, wiping his lips with a
handkerchief.

'The letters, sir,' I began.

'Ah! Got 'em done already? Right. Come into my room.'

I stood and watched him reading my effusions, at first with upward
twitching brows, and then with smiling satisfaction.

'H'm!' he said, as he gave them the firm's signature. 'It's a pretty
good thing then, this shorthand. Wonderful the way you've got every
little word down. That "In conclusion, permit us to assure you, dear
Mr. Gubbins"--now, that's as a business letter should be, you know.
There's not a house in Sussex Street turns out such good sweeteners as
we do. I've always been very careful about that. That's how we keep up
our connection. These farmers are touchy beggars, you know; but if
only you take the right tone with 'em, you can twist 'em round your
little finger. That's why I always lay it on pretty thick in the
firm's letters. It pays, I can assure you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, that's very good, Mr. Freydon; very good. We've never had this
shorthand in the office before; but I think it's time we did, high
time. It's no use my wasting valuable time writing all these letters
myself, and with this shorthand of yours, I believe you can take 'em
down as fast as I can say it--eh?'

'Oh yes, sir; easily,' I said, with shameless mendacity. As a fact,
neither that morning, nor at any other time, did I 'take down' what
Mr. John said in shorthand. But it was already apparent to me that he
could be made quite happy by fancying that the letters were of his
composition, and I did not conceive that it was part of my duty to
undeceive him.

'Ah! Well, now, when could you begin work, Mr. Freydon?'

I smiled, and told him I could go on at once with any further letters
he had.

'Yes, yes; to be sure. Begun already, as you say. Well, I told the
old--I told my father I thought thirty-five shillings a week would-- Well,
I'll tell you what. You go ahead as you've begun, and at the end
of a month we'll make your pay two pounds a week. How'll that suit?'

'Thank you, sir; that will suit me very well.'

'Right. By the way, don't say "sir" to me, please. They all call me
"Mr. John," and my father "Mr. Canning." See! Now, I'll just introduce
you to Mr. Meadows, our accountant, and he will show you round. Mr.
Meadows has charge of our clerical staff, you understand; but you'll
have most to do with me, of course. There's a little bit of a room
opposite mine, where we keep the stationery an' that. I dare say
you'll be able to work there.'

In this wise, then, with most fortunate ease, I secured my first
employment in the capital city; and very well it suited me, for the
present. Within a week I found that I was left to open all letters,
and to deal with them very much as I thought best, with references of
course to Mr. John, and at times, in a matter of accounts, to Mr.
Meadows, or again to the storekeeper and others. It was not good
shorthand practice, but his correspondence pleased Mr. John very
much--especially its more rotund phrases--whilst for my part I keenly
relished the fact that I, the most junior member of the staff, had
really less of supervision in my work than any one else in the office.

Upon the whole I was entitled, on that evening of my first day in the
Sussex Street offices, to feel that I had made a tolerably creditable
beginning, and that Sydney had treated the latest suppliant for her
favour rather well. What I very well remember I did feel was that I
should have an interesting story for Mr. William Smith that night when
I reached 'my rooms' at North Shore.


XV


My third day at J. Canning and Son's offices was a Saturday, and the
establishment closed at one o'clock. My room-mate, Mr. Smith, had
invited me to spend the afternoon with him at Manly, the favourite
sea-beach resort close to Sydney Heads. I had other plans in view, but
did not like to refuse Mr. Smith, and so spent the time with him, not
without enjoyment.

Manly was not, of course, the thronged and crowded place it is to-day,
but its Saturday afternoon visitors were fairly numerous, and most of
them were people who showed in a variety of ways that they did not
have to consider very closely the expenditure of a sovereign or so.
For our part, Mr. Smith's and mine, I doubt if our outing cost more
than five shillings; and, though I succeeded in paying my own boat-fares,
my companion insisted upon settling himself for the refreshments we had:
a cup of tea in the afternoon, and a sort of high tea or supper before
leaving. I had not begun to tire of watching people, and was innocent
enough to derive keen satisfaction from the thought that I, too, was one
of these city folk, business people, office men, who gave their Saturday
leisure to the quest of ocean breezes and recreation in this well-known
resort.

Yes, from this distance, it is a little hard to realise perhaps, but
it is a fact that at this particular time I was genuinely proud of
being a clerk in an office, in place of being a handy lad, and one of
the manual workers. It was my lot in later years to dictate
considerable correspondence to young men who practised shorthand and
typewriting--they called themselves secretaries, not correspondence
clerks--and I always felt an interest in their characters and affairs,
and endeavoured to show them every consideration. But I cannot say
that those who served me in this capacity ever played just the sort of
part I played as a correspondence clerk in Sussex Street. But they
always interested me, none the less, and I showed them special
consideration; no doubt because I remembered a period when I took much
secret pride and satisfaction in having obtained entrance to their
ranks, from what in all countries which I have visited is accounted a
lowlier walk of life. And yet, as I see it now, I must confess that I
am inclined to think the handy lad in the open air has rather the best
of it. I admit this is open to question, however. Fortunately there
are compensations in both cases.

'For a young fellow you do a lot of thinking,' said Mr. Smith to me as
we walked slowly down to the ferry stage in leaving Manly. Of course I
indulged in one of my idiotic blushes.

'No; oh no,' I told him. 'I was only watching the people.'

'Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in thinking,' he justly said.
'If most of the youngsters in Sydney did a deal more of it, it would
be a lot better for them.'

'Ah, you mean thinking about their work.' I knew instinctively, and
because of remarks he had made, that my elderly room-mate thought well
of me as being a very practical lad, seriously determined to get on in
the world. And so, also instinctively, I played up, as they say, to
this view of my character, and I dare say overdid it at times;
certainly to the extent of making myself appear more practical, or
more concentrated upon material progress, than I really was.

'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Mr. Smith as we boarded the
steamer. 'Business isn't the only thing in life, and there are plenty
other things worth thinking about.' Yes, odd as it seems, it was I who
was being reminded that there were other things worth thinking of
besides business; I ... 'No, but it would be better for 'em to do a
lot more thinking about all kinds of things. Thinking is better than
running after little chits of girls who ought to be smacked and put to
bed.'

Two refulgent youths had just passed us, in the wake of damsels whose
favour they apparently sought to win as favour is perhaps won in
poultry-yards--by cackling.

'I've had to do a powerful lot of talking in my time,' continued Mr.
Smith; 'and now I like to see any one, and especially any young
fellow, understand that it's not necessary to talk for talking's sake,
and that when you've nothing particular to say, it's better to be
quiet and think, than--than just to blither, as so many do.'

I endeavoured to look as much as possible like a deep thinker as I
acquiesced, and made mental note of the fact that I had evidently been
rather neglecting my companion.

'Mind you,' he added, 'it isn't only in office hours and at his work
that a man makes for success in business. Not a bit of it. It's when
he's thinking things out away from the office. Why, some of the best
business I ever brought off I've really done in bed--the planning out
of it, you know.'

I nodded the understanding sympathy of a wily and experienced hand at
business. I wonder if the average youth is equally adaptive! Probably
not, for I suppose it means I was a good deal of a humbug. All I knew
of business, so far, was what Sussex Street had shown me; and if I had
been perfectly candid, I should have admitted that, so far from
striking me as interesting, it seemed to me absurdly, incredibly dull
and uninteresting; so much so as to have a guise of unreality to me.
But my letters interested me none the less.

The facts of the situation were unreal. I cared nothing about Canning
and Son's profits, or the prices of Mr. Gubbins's butter; nothing
whatever. But I derived considerable satisfaction from turning out a
letter the fluent suavity of which I thought would impress Mr.
Gubbins. Primarily, my satisfaction came from the impression the
letters made upon me personally. Also, I enjoyed the sense of
importance it gave me to open the firm's letters myself, and to tell
myself that, given certain bald facts to be acquired from this man or
the other, I could reply to them far better than Mr. John could. I
liked to make him think my smugly correct phrasing was his own,
because I knew it was much more polished, and I thought it much more
effective than his own; and I liked to figure myself a sort of
anonymous power behind the throne--the Sussex Street throne!

As we breasted the hill together from the North Shore landing-place,
Mr. Smith delivered himself of these sapient words, designed, I am
sure, to be of real help to me:

'What they call success in life is a simple business, really; only
nobody thinks so, and so very few find it out. They're always looking
round for special dodges, and wasting time following up special
methods recommended by this fool or the other. There's only one thing
wanted really for success, and that's just keeping on. Just keeping
on; that's all. If you never let go of yourself--never, mind you, but
just keep on, steady and regular, you can't help succeeding. It just
comes to you. But you must keep on. It's no good having a shot at
this, and trying the other. The way is just to keep on.'

My mentor was in a seriously practical vein on this Saturday night;
partly perhaps because, as the event proved, he was within four days
of one of his periodical disappearances.


XVI


In the early afternoon of Sunday I set out upon the visit I had
originally intended to pay on the previous day.

Three o'clock found me rather nervously ringing a bell at the door of
Filson House in Macquarie Street. Under the brightly polished bell-pull
was the name C. F. Rawlence, and the legend: 'Do not ring unless
an answer is required.' It was my first experience of such a notice,
and I felt uncertain how it was intended to apply. Neither for the
moment could I understand why in the world any sane person should ring
a bell unless desirous of eliciting a response of some kind. Finally,
I decided that it must be a plaintive and exceedingly trustful appeal
to the good nature of urchins who might be tempted to ring and run
away.

A smiling young Chinaman presently opened the door to me, and said:
'You come top-side alonga me, pease; Mr. Lollance he's in.'

So I walked upstairs behind the silent, felt-shod Asiatic, and
wondered what was coming next. I had hitherto associated Chinamen in
Australia exclusively with market-gardening and laundry work. The
house was not a very high one, but it really was its 'top-side' we
walked to, and, arrived there, I was shown into what I thought must
certainly be the largest and most magnificent apartment in Sydney.

I dare say the room was thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, without
counting the huge fireplace at one end, which formed a room in itself,
and did actually accommodate several easy chairs, though I cannot
think the weather was ever cold enough in Sydney to admit of people
sitting so close to a log fire as these chairs were placed. There were
suits of armour, skins of beasts, strange weapons, curious tapestries,
and other stock properties of artists' studios, all conventional
enough, and yet to me most startling. I had never before visited a
studio, and did not know that artists affected these things. The
magnificence of it all impressed me enormously. It almost oppressed me
with a sense of my own temerity in venturing to visit any one who
maintained such state.

'This is what it means to be a famous artist,' I told myself, well
assured now, in my innocence, that Mr. Rawlence must be very famous.
'Every one else probably knew it before,' I thought. And just then the
great man himself appeared, not at the door behind me, but between
heavy curtains which hid some other entrance. He came forward with a
welcoming smile. Then, for a moment this gave place to rather blank
inquiry. And then the smile returned and broadened.

'Why, it's-- No, it can't be. But it is--my young friend of St.
Peter's. I'm delighted. Welcome to Sydney. Sit down, sit down, and let
me have your news.'

He reclined in a sidelong way upon a sort of ottoman, and gracefully
waved me to an enormous chair facing him.

'There are always a few charitable souls who drop in upon me of a
Sunday afternoon, but I'd no idea you would be the first of them to-day.'

Here was a disturbing announcement for me!

'Perhaps it would be more convenient if I came one evening, Mr.
Rawlence,' I said awkwardly, half rising from the chair.

'Tut, tut, my dear lad! Sit down, sit down. Why should other visitors
disturb you? There will only be good fellows like yourself. Ladies are
rarities here on a Sunday. And in any case-- Why, you are quite the man
of the world now.' This with kindly admiration. Then he screwed up his
eyes, moved his head backward and from side to side, as though to
correct his view of a picture. 'Just one point out of the picture.
Dare I alter it? May I?' And, stepping forward, he thrust well down in
my breast coat pocket Mrs. Gabbitas's gorgeous silk handkerchief.
'Yes,' as he moved backward again, 'that's better. One never can see
these things for oneself. But let me make sure of your important news
before we are interrupted.'

So I told my story as well as I could, and Mr. Rawlence was in the act
of expressing his kindly interest therein, when I heard steps and
voices on the stairs below.

'If you're not otherwise engaged you must stay till these fellows go,
Nick,' said my host. 'We haven't half finished our talk, you know.
And--er--if you should be talking to any one here of--er--your present
situation, I should leave it quite vague, if I were you; secretarial
work you know--something of that sort. We may have some newspaper men
here who might be useful to you one day--you follow me?'

'Ah! Hail! Good of you to have come, Landon. Ah, Foster! Jones! Good
men! Do find seats. Oh, let me introduce a new arrival--Mr. Nicholas
Freydon; Mr. Landon, the disgracefully well-known painter, Mr. Foster
and Mr. Jones, both of the Fourth Estate, though frequently taken for
quite respectable members of society. We may not have a Fleet Street
here, you know, Freydon, but we have one or two rather decent
newspapers, as you may have noticed.'

He turned to the still smiling young Chinaman. 'Let's have cigars and
cigarettes, Ah Lun.'

I gathered that I had been presented as a new arrival from England. It
was rather startling; but so far I found that an occasional smile was
all that seemed expected of me, and I was of course anxious to do my
best. 'Good thing I've started smoking,' I thought, as Ah Lun began
passing round two massive silver boxes, with cigars and cigarettes.
The visitors were mostly young, rather noticeably young, I thought, in
view of the greying hair over Mr. Rawlence's temples; and I felt less
and less alarmed as I listened to their talk. In fact, shamelessly
disrespectful though the idea was, I found myself, after a while,
wondering whether Mr. Smith might not have called some of the
conversation 'cackle.' And then some technicalities, journalistic and
artistic, began to star the talk, and I meekly rebuked my own
presumption. But I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Smith would have
called most of it 'cackle,' and it is possible he would have been
tolerably near the truth.

Within an hour I had been introduced to perhaps a score of visitors,
and Ah Lun was just as busy as he could be, serving tea, whisky, wine,
soda-water, cigars, cigarettes, sandwiches, and so forth. It was all
tremendously exciting to me. The mere sound of so many voices, apart
from anything else, I found wonderfully stimulating, if a trifle
bewildering.

'This,' I told myself, in a highly impressive, though necessarily
inarticulate stage-whisper of thought, 'This is Society; this is
what's called the Social Vortex; and I am right in the bubbling centre
of it.' And then I thought how wonderful it would have been if Mr.
Jokram, of Dursley's School of Arts Committee, and one or two
others--say, Sister Agatha, for example--could have been permitted to
take a peep between the magnificent curtains, and have a glimpse of me,
engaged in brilliant conversation with a celebrity of some kind, whose
neck-tie would have made an ample sash for little Nelly Fane--of me,
the St. Peter's orphan, in Society!

Truly, I was an innocent and unlicked cub. But I believe I managed to
pull through the afternoon without notably disgracing my distinguished
host and patron; and, too, without referring even to 'secretarial
work.' I might have been heir to a dukedom, a distinguished remittance
man, or even a congenital idiot, for all the company was allowed to
gather from me as to my means of livelihood.


XVII


Towards six o'clock the company began to thin out somewhat, and within
the hour I found myself once more alone with Mr. Rawlence.

'Well, and what do you think of these few representatives of Sydney's
Bohemia?' asked my host. 'They are not, perhaps, leading pillars of
our official society, as one may say--the Government House set, you
know--but my Sunday afternoon visitors are apt to be pretty fairly
representative of our best literary and artistic circles, I think.
Interesting fellows, are they not? I was glad to notice you had a few
words with Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_. If you still have
literary or journalistic ambitions, and have not been entirely
captivated by the pundits of commerce and money-making, Foster might
be of material assistance to you.'

Just then Ah Lun passed before us (still smiling), carrying a tray
full of used glasses.

'We'll have a bit of dinner here, Ah Lun. I won't go out to-night. I
dare say you have something we can pick over. Let us know when it's
ready.'

Really, as I look back upon it, I see even more clearly than at the
time that the artist was extraordinarily kind to me; to an obscure and
friendless youth, none too presentable, and little likely just then to
do him credit. I would prefer to set down here only that which I
understood and felt at the time. Perhaps that is not quite possible,
in the light of subsequently acquired knowledge and experience. This
much I can say: there was no hint at this time of any wavering or
diminution in the almost worshipful regard I felt for Mr. Rawlence.

Seen in his own chosen setting, he was the most magnificent person I
had met. Æstheticism of a pronounced sort was becoming the fashion of
the day in London; and, as I presently found, Mr. Rawlence followed
the fashions of London and Paris closely. Indeed, I gathered that at
one time he had settled down, determined to live and to end his days
in one or other of those Old World capitals. But after a year divided
between them, he had returned to Sydney, and gradually formed his
Macquarie Street home and social connections. No doubt he was a more
important figure there than he would have been in Europe. His private
income made him easily independent of earnings artistic or otherwise.
I apprehend he lived at the rate of about a thousand pounds a year, or
a little more, which meant a good deal in Sydney in those days. I
remember being told at one time that he did not earn fifty pounds in a
year as a painter; but, of course, I could not answer for that.

I think he derived his greatest satisfactions from the society of
young aspirants in art, literature, and journalism; and I incline to
think it was more to please and interest, to serve and to impress
these neophytes, than from any inclination of his own, that he also
assiduously cultivated the society of a few maturer men who were
definitely placed in the Sydney world as artists, writers, editors,
and so forth. But such conclusions came to me gradually, of course. I
had not thought of them during that delightfully exciting experience--my
first visit to the Macquarie Street studio.

The simple little dinner was for me a thrilling episode. The deft-handed
Chinaman hovering behind our chairs, the softly shaded table-lights, the
wine in tall, fantastically shaped Bohemian glasses, the
very food--all unfamiliar, and therefore fascinating: olives, smoked
salmon--to which I helped myself largely, believing it to be sliced
tomato--a cold bird of sorts, no slices of bread but little rolls in
place of them, no tea, and no dishes ever seen in Mrs. Gabbitas's
kitchen, or at my North Shore lodging. And then the figure of my host,
lounging at table in the rosy light, a cigarette between the shapely
fingers of his right hand--I had not before seen any one smoke at the
dinner-table--his brown velvet coat, his languidly graceful gestures,
the delicate hue of his flowing neck-tie, the costly sort of
negligence of his whole dress and deportment--all these trifling
matters were alike rare and exquisite in my eyes.

After their fashion the day, and in particular the evening, were an
education for me. I spent a couple of hours over the short homeward
journey to Mill Street, the better to savour and consider my
impressions. The previous day belonged to my remote past. I had
travelled through ages of experience since then. For example, I quite
definitely was no longer proud of being a clerk in an office. As I
realised this I smiled down as from a great height upon a recollection
of the chorus of a Scots ditty sung by a sailor on board the
_Ariadne_. I have no notion of how to spell the words, but they ran
somewhat in this wise:

  'Wi' a Hi heu honal, an' a honal heu hi,
  Comelachie, Ecclefechan, Ochtermochty an' Mulgye,
  Wi' a Hi heu honal, an' a honal heu hi,
  It's a braw thing a clairk in an orfiss.'

Well, it was no such a braw thing to me that night, as it had seemed
on the previous day. I had heard the word 'commercial' spoken with an
intonation which I fancied Mr. Smith would greatly resent. But I did
not resent it. And that was another of the fruits of my immense
experience: Mr. Smith would never again hold first place as my mentor.
How could he? Why, even some of my own innocent notions of the past--of
pre-Macquarie Street days--seemed nearer the real thing than one or
two of poor Mr. Smith's obiter dicta. I had noted the hats of that
elect assemblage, and there had not been a billycock among them. Not a
single example of the headgear which Mr. Smith held necessary for the
self-respecting man in Sydney! But, on the contrary, there had been
quite a number of a kind which approximated more or less to the soft
brown hat purchased by me in Dursley, and discarded upon Mr. Smith's
urgent recommendation in favour of the more rigid and precise
billycock. I reflected upon this significant fact for quite a long
while.

Certainly, the world was a very wonderful place. Was it possible that
a week ago I had been a handy lad, dressed merely in shirt and
trousers, and engaged in planting out tomatoes? I arrived at the
corner of Mill Street, and turning on my heel walked away from it. I
wanted to try over, out loud, one or two such phrases as these:

'I've been dining with an artist friend in Macquarie Street!'--'I was
saying this afternoon to the editor of the _Chronicle_'--'I met some
delightful people at my friend Mr. Rawlence's studio this afternoon!'

But, upon the whole, there was a more subtle joy in the enunciation of
certain other remarks, supposed to come from somebody else:

'I met Mr. Freydon, Mr. Nicholas Freydon, you know, this afternoon. He
had looked in at Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street. In fact, I
believe he stayed there to dinner before going on to his rooms at
North Shore. Rawlence certainly does get all the most interesting
people at his place. Landon, the painter, was deep in conversation
with Mr. Freydon. No, I don't know what Mr. Freydon does--some
secretarial appointment, I fancy. He's evidently a great friend of
Rawlence's.'

It is surprising that I can set these things down with no particular
sense of shame. I distinctly remember striding along the deserted
roads, speaking these absurdities aloud, in an only slightly subdued
conversational voice. My mood was one of remarkable exaltation. I
wonder if other young men have been equally mad!

'How d'ye do, Foster?' I would murmur airily as I swung round a
corner. 'Have you seen my new book?'; or, 'I noticed you published
that article of mine yesterday!' Presently I found myself in open,
scrub-covered country, and singing, quite loudly, the old sailor's
doggerel about its being a braw thing to be a 'clairk in an orfiss';
my real thought being that it was a braw thing to be Nicholas Freydon,
a clerk in an office, who was very soon to be something quite
otherwise.

I am not quite sure if this mood was typical of the happy madness of
youth. There may have been a lamentable kind of snobbery about it; I
dare say. I only know this was my mood; these were my apparently crazy
actions on that remote Sunday night. And, too, before getting into bed
that night--fortunately for himself, perhaps, poor Mr. Smith was
already asleep, and so safe from my loquacity--I carefully folded the
two magnificent rainbow-hued silk handkerchiefs which good Mrs.
Gabbitas had given me, and stowed them away at the very bottom of my
ancient carpet-bag.

The sort of remarks which I had been addressing to the moon were not
remarks which I ever should have dreamed of addressing to any human
being. I think in justice I might add that. But I had greatly enjoyed
hearing myself say them to the silent night.


XVIII


Actually, I dare say the process of one's sophistication was gradual
enough. But looking back now upon my Dursley period, and the four
years spent in Sydney--and, indeed, my stay in the Orphanage, and my
life with my father in Livorno Bay--it appears to me that my growth,
education, development, whatever it may be called, came at intervals,
jerkily, in sudden leaps forward. The truth probably is that the
development was constant and steady, but that its symptoms declared
themselves spasmodically.

It would seem that there ought to have been a phase of smart, clerkly
dandyism; but perhaps Mr. Rawlence's kindly hospitality in Macquarie
Street nipped that in the bud, substituting for it a kind of twopenny
æstheticism, which made me affect floppy neckties and a studied
negligence of dress, combined with some neglect of the barber. In
these things, as in certain other matters, there were some singular
contradictions and inconsistencies in me, and I was distinctly
precocious. The precocity was due, I take it, to the fact that I had
never known family life, and that my companions had always been older
than myself. I fancy that most people I met supposed me to be at least
three or four years older than I was, and were sedulously encouraged
by me in that supposition. I was precocious, too, in another way. I
could have grown a beard and moustache at seventeen. Instead, I
assiduously plied the razor night and morning, and derived
satisfaction from something which irritated me greatly in later
years--the remarkably rapid and sturdy growth of my beard.

As against these extravagances I must record the fact that my
parsimony in monetary matters survived. Mr. John, in Sussex Street,
presently raised my salary to two pounds ten shillings a week; but I
continued to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, and to pay only sixteen
shillings weekly for my board and lodging. What was more to the point,
I was equally careful in most other matters affecting expenditure, and
never added less than a pound each week to my savings bank account; an
achievement by no means always equalled in after years, even when
earnings were ten times larger. I may have, and did indulge in the
most extravagant conceits of the mind. But these never seriously
affected my pocket.

There is perhaps something rather distasteful in the idea of so much
economic prudence in one so young. A certain generous carelessness is
proper to youth. Well, I had none of it, at this time, in money
matters. And, distasteful or not, I am glad of it, since, at all
events, it had this advantage: at a very critical period I was
preserved from the grosser and more perilous indulgences of youth.
When the time did arrive at which I ceased to be very careful in money
spending, I had presumably acquired a little more balance, and was a
little safer than in those adolescent Sydney years.

Here again my qualities were presumably the product of my condition
and circumstances. To be left quite alone in the world while yet a
child, as I had been, does, I apprehend, stimulate a certain worldly
prudence in regard, at all events, to so obvious a matter as the
balance of income and expenditure. I felt that if I were ever stranded
and penniless there would be no one in the whole world to lend me a
helping hand, or to save me from being cut adrift from all that I had
come to hold precious, and flung back into the slough of manual
labour--for that, curiously enough, is how I then regarded it. Not, of
course, that I had found manual work in itself unpleasant in any way;
but that I then considered my escape from it had carried me into a
social and mental atmosphere superior to that which the manual worker
could reach.

Except when he was absent from Sydney, Mr. Rawlence always received
his friends at the Macquarie Street studio on Sundays, and none was
more regular in attendance than myself. It would be very easy, of
course, to be sarcastic at Mr. Rawlence's expense; to poke fun at the
well-to-do gentleman approaching middle age, who clung to the pretence
of being a working artist, and to avoid criticism, or because more
mature workers would not seek his society, liked to surround himself
with neophytes--a Triton among minnows. And indeed, as I found, there
were those--some old enough to know better, and others young enough to
be more generous--who were not above adopting this attitude even
whilst enjoying their victim's hospitality; aye, and enjoying it
greedily.

But neither then nor at any subsequent period was I tempted to
ridicule a man uniformly kind and helpful to me; and this, not at all
because I blinded myself to his weaknesses and imperfections, but
because I found, and still find, these easily outweighed by his good
and genuinely kindly qualities. His may not have been a very dignified
way of life; it was too full of affectations for that; particularly
after he began to be greatly influenced by the rather sickly æsthetic
movement then in vogue in London. But it was, at least, a harmless
life; and, upon the whole, a generous and kindly one.

Its influence upon me, for example, tended, I am sure, to give me a
pronounced distaste for the coarse and vulgar sort of dissipation
which very often engaged the leisure of my office companions, and
other youths of similar occupation in Sydney. It may be that the
causes behind my aloofness from mere vulgar frivolity, and worse, were
pretty mixed: part pride, or even conceit, and part prudence or
parsimony. No matter. The influence was helpful, for the abstention
was real, and the distaste grew always more rooted as time wore on.
Also, the same influence tended to make me more fastidious, more
critical, less crude than I might otherwise have been. It led me to
give more serious attention to pictures, music, and literature of the
less ephemeral sort than I might otherwise have given. It was not that
Mr. Rawlence and his friends advised one to study Shakespeare, or to
attend the better sort of concerts, or to learn something of art and
criticism. But talk that I heard in that studio did make me feel that
it was eminently desirable I should inform myself more fully in these
matters.

Listening to a discussion there of some quite worthless thing more
than once moved me to the investigation of something of real value. I
was still tolerably credulous, and when a man's casual reference
suggested that he and every one else was naturally intimate with this
or that, I would make it my business, so far as might be, really to
obtain some knowledge of the matter. I assumed, often quite
mistakenly, no doubt, that every one else present had this particular
knowledge. Thus the spirit of emulation helped me as it might never
have done but for Mr. Rawlence and his sumptuous studio, so rich in
everything save examples of his own work.

* * * * *

I fancy it must have been fully a year after my arrival in Sydney that
I met Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, as I was walking down
from Sussex Street to Circular Quay one evening.

'Ah, Freydon,' he said; 'what an odd coincidence! I was this moment
thinking of you, and of something you said last Sunday at Rawlence's.
I can't use the article you sent me. It's-- Well, for one thing, it's
rather too much like fiction; like a story, you know. But, tell me,
what do you do for a living?'

'I'm a correspondence clerk, at present, in a Sussex Street business
house.'

'H'm! Yes, I rather thought something of the sort--and very good
practical training, too, I should say. But I gather you are keen on
press work, eh?'

I gave an eager affirmative, and the editor nodded.

'Ye--es,' he said musingly as we turned aside into Wynyard Square. 'I
should think you'd do rather well at it. But, mind you, I fancy there
are bigger rewards to be won in business.'

'If there are, I don't want them,' I rejoined, with a warmth that
surprised myself.

'Ah! Well, there's only one way, you know, in journalism as in other
things. One must begin at the foundations, and work right through to
the roof. I'll tell you what; if you'd care to come on the
_Chronicle_--reporting, you know--I could give you a vacancy now.'

No doubt I showed the thrill this announcement gave me when I thanked
him for thinking of me.

'Oh, that's all right. There's no favour in it. I wouldn't offer it if
I didn't think you'd do full justice to it. And, mind you, there's
nothing tempting about it, financially at all events. I couldn't start
you at more than two or three pounds a week.'

Now here, despite my elation, I spoke with a shrewdness often
recalled, but rarely repeated by me in later life. A curious thing
that, in one so young, and evidence of one of the inconsistencies
about my development which I have noted before in this record.

'Oh, well,' I said, 'I should not, of course, like to lose money by
the change; but if you could give me three pounds a week I shouldn't
be losing, and I'd be delighted to come.'

It falls to be noted that I was earning two pounds ten shillings a
week from Messrs. J. Canning and Son at that time. I do not think
there was anything dishonest in what I said to Foster; but it
certainly indicated a kind of business sharpness which has been rather
noticeably lacking in my later life. The editor nodded ready
agreement, and it was in this way that I first entered upon
journalistic employment.


XIX


The work that I did as the most junior member of the _Chronicle's_
literary staff no doubt possessed some of the merits which usually
accompany enthusiasm.

Memory still burdens me with the record of one or two articles thought
upon which makes my skin twitch hotly. It is remarkable that matter so
astoundingly crude should have seen the light of print. But, when one
comes to think of it, the large, careless newspaper-reading public,
the majority, remains permanently youthful so far as judgment of the
written word is concerned; and so it may be that raw youngsters, such
as I was then, can approach the majority more nearly than the tried
and trained specialist, who, just in so far as he has specialised as a
journalist, has removed himself from the familiar purview of the
general, and acquired an outlook which, to this extent, is exotic.

At all events, I know I achieved some success with articles in the
_Chronicle_ of a sort which no experienced journalist could write,
save with his tongue in his cheek; and tongue-in-the-cheek writing
never really impressed anybody. What seems even more strange to me, in
the light of later life and experience, is the fact that upon several
occasions I proved of some value to the business side of the
_Chronicle_. My efforts actually brought the concern money, and
increased circulation. I find this most surprising, but I know it
happened. There were due solely to my initiative 'interviews' with
sundry leading lights in commerce, and in the professional sporting
world, which were highly profitable to the paper; and this at a time
when the 'interview' was a thing practically unknown in Australian
journalism.

Stimulated perhaps by the remarks of the good Mr. Smith, my room-mate,
I planned ventures of this kind in bed, descending fully armed with
them upon Mr. Foster by day, in most cases to fire him, more or less,
by my own enthusiasm. Upon the whole I earned my pay pretty well while
working for the _Chronicle_, even having regard to the several small
increases made therein. If I lacked ability and experience, I gave
more than most of my colleagues, perhaps, in concentration and
initiative.

The two things most salient, I think, which befell in this phase of my
life were my determination to go to England, and my only adolescent
love affair; this, as distinguished from the sentimental episodes of
infancy and childhood, which with me had been a rather prolific crop.

The determination to make my way to England, the land of my fathers,
did not take definite shape until comedy, with a broad smile, rang
down the curtain upon my love affair. But I fancy it had been a long
while in the making. I am not sure but what the germ of it began to
stir a little in its husk even at St. Peter's Orphanage; I feel sure
it did while I browsed upon English fiction in my little wooden room
beside the tool-shed at Dursley. It was near the surface from the time
I began to visit Mr. Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street, and busily
developing from that time onward, though it did not become a visible
and admitted growth, with features and a shape of its own, until more
than two years had elapsed. Then, quite suddenly, I recognised it, and
told myself it was for this really that I had been 'saving up.'

In the Old World the adventurous-minded, enterprising youth turns
naturally from contemplation of the humdrum security of the
multitudinously trodden path in which he finds himself to thoughts of
the large new lands; of those comparatively untried and certainly
uncrowded uplands of the world, which, apart from the other chances
and attractions they offer, possess the advantage of lying oversea,
from the beaten track--over the hills and far away. 'Here,' he may be
supposed to feel, as he gazes about him in his familiar, Old World
environment, 'there is nothing but what has been tried and exploited,
sifted through and through time and again, all adown the centuries.
What chance is there for me among the crowd, where there is nothing
new, nothing untried? Whereas, out there--' Ah, the magic of those
words, 'Out there!' and 'Over there!' for home-bred youth! It is good,
wholesome magic, too, and it will be a bad day for the Old World, a
disastrous day for England, when it ceases to exercise its powers upon
the hearts and imaginations of the youth of our stock.

Well, and in the New World, in the case of such sprawling young giants
among the nations of the future as Australia, what is the master dream
of adventurous and enterprising youth there? Australia, like Canada,
has its call of the west and the north, with their appealing tale of
untried potentialities. Canada has also, across its merely figurative
and political southern border, a vast and teeming world, reaching down
to the equator, and comprising almost every possible diversity of
human effort and natural resource. Australia, the purely British
island continent, is more isolated. But, broadly speaking, the very
facts which make the enterprising Old World youth fix his gaze upon
the New World cause the same type of youth in Australia, for example,
to look home-along across the seas, toward those storied islands of
the north which, it may be, he has never seen: the land which, in some
cases, even his parents have not seen since their childhood.

'Here,' he may be imagined saying, as he looks about him among the raw
uprising products of the new land, where the past is nothing and all
hope centres upon the future, 'Here everything is yet to do;
everything is in the making. Here, money's the only reward. Who's to
judge of one's accomplishment here? Fame has no accredited deputy in
this unmade world. Whereas, back there, at home--' Oh, the magic of
those words 'At Home!' and 'In England!' alike for those who once have
seen the white cliffs fade out astern, and for those who have seen
them only in dreams, bow on!

Everything has been tried and accomplished there. The very thought
that speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant;
drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another
toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn
and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the
real history of the British Empire....

But, as I said, before final recognition of the determination to go to
England came my youthful love affair. With every apparent deference
toward the traditions of romance, I fell in love with the daughter of
my chief; and my fall was very thorough and complete. I was in the
editorial sanctum one afternoon, discussing some piece of work, and
getting instructions from Mr. Foster--'G.F.' as we called him--when the
door was flung open, as no member of the staff would ever have opened
it, and two very charming young women fluttered in, filling the whole
place by their simple presence there. One was dark and the other fair:
the first, my chief's daughter Mabel; the second, her bosom friend,
Hester Prinsep.

'Oh, father, we're all going down to see Tommy off. I want to get some
flowers, and I've come out without a penny, so I want some money.'

My chief had risen, and was drawing forward a chair for Miss Prinsep.
I do not think he intended to pay the same attention to his daughter,
but I did, and received a very charming smile for my pains. Upon which
G.F. presented me in due form to both ladies. Turning then to his
daughter, he said with half-playful severity:

'You know, Mabel, we are not accustomed to your rough and ready Potts
Point manners here. We knock at doors before we open them, and do at
least inquire if a man is engaged before we swoop down upon him
demanding his money or his life.'

'Father! as though I should think of you as being engaged! And as for
the money part, I thought this was the very place to come to for
money.'

'Ah! Well, how did you come?'

'The cab's waiting outside.'

'Dear me! You may have noticed, Freydon, that cabmen are a peculiarly
gallant class. They don't show much inclination to drive us about when
we have no money, do they?'

Then he turned to Miss Prinsep. 'And so your brother really starts for
England to-day, Hester? I almost think I'll have to make time to dash
down and wish him luck.'

'Oh, do, Mr. Foster! Tommy would appreciate it.'

'Yes, do, father,' echoed Miss Foster. 'Come with us now. That will be
splendid.'

'No, I can't manage that. You go and buy your flowers, and I'll try
and get away in time to take you both home. Here's a sovereign; and-- Ah!
you'd better have some silver for your cab. H'm! Here you are.'

'Thanks awfully, father. You are a generous dear. That will be lots.
The cab's Gurney's, you see, so I can tell him to put it down in the
account. But the silver's sure to come in handy, for I'm dreadfully
poor just now.'

G.F. shrugged his shoulders, with a comic look in my direction.
'Feminine honesty! Take the silver, and tell the cabman to charge me!
Freydon, perhaps you'd be kind enough to see this brigand and her
friend to their cab, will you? I think we are all clear about that
article, aren't we? Right! On your way ask Stone to come in and see
me, will you?'

So he bowed us out, and I, in a state of most agreeable fluster,
escorted the ladies to their waiting cab.

'Good-bye, Mr. Freydon,' said Mabel Foster as she gave me her softly
gloved little hand over the cab door. And, from that moment, I was her
slave; only realising some few minutes later that I had been so
unpardonably rude as never even to have glanced in Miss Prinsep's
direction, to say nothing of bidding her good-bye.

Miss Foster's was a well recognised and conventional kind of beauty,
very telling to my inexperienced eyes, and richly suggestive of
romance. Her eyes were large, dark, and, as the novelists say,
'melting.' Her face was a perfectly regular oval, having a clear olive
complexion, with warm hints of subdued colour in it. Her lips were
most provocative, and all about the edges of that dark cloud, her
hair, the light played fitfully through a lattice of stray tendrils. A
very pretty picture indeed, Miss Foster was perfectly conscious of her
charms, and a mistress of coquettishness in her use of them. A true
child of pleasure-loving Sydney, she might have posed with very little
preparation as a Juliet or a Desdemona, and to my youthful fancy
carried about with her the charming gaiety and romantic tenderness of
the most delightful among Boccaccio's ladies. (Sydney was just then
beginning to be referred to by writers as the Venice of the Pacific,
and I was greatly taken with the comparison.)

A week or so later, I was honoured by an invitation to dine at my
chief's house one Saturday night; and from that point onward my visits
became frequent, my subjugation unquestioning and complete. This was
the one brief period of my youth in which I flung away prudence and
became youthfully extravagant, not merely in thought but in the
expenditure of money. I suppose fully half my salary, for some time,
was given to the purchase of sweets and flowers, pretty booklets and
the like, for Mabel Foster; and, of the remainder of my earnings, the
tailor took heavier toll than he had ever done before.

For example, when that first invitation to dinner reached me--on a
Monday--I had never had my arms through the sleeves of a dress-coat.
Mr. Smith kindly offered the loan of his time-honoured evening suit,
pointing out, I dare say truly, that such garments were being 'cut
very full just now.' But, no; I felt that the occasion demanded an
epoch-marking plunge on my part; and to this end Mr. Smith was good
enough to introduce me to his own tailor, through whom, as I
understood, I could obtain the benefit of some sort of trade reduction
in price, by virtue of Mr. Smith's one time position as a commercial
traveller.

During the week the eddies caused by my plunge penetrated beyond the
world of tailoring, and doubtless produced their effect upon the white
tie and patent leather shoe trade. But despite my lavish preparations,
Saturday afternoon found me in the blackest kind of despair. Fully
dressed in evening kit, I had been sitting on my bed for an hour, well
knowing that all shops were closed, and facing the lamentable fact
that I had no suitable outer garment with which to cloak my splendour
on the way to Potts Point. It was Mr. Smith who discovered the
omission, and he, too, who had made me feel the full tragedy of it.
The covert coat he pressed upon me would easily have buttoned behind
my back, and Mrs. Hastings's kindly offer of a shawl (a vivid plaid
which she assured me had been worn and purchased by no less an
authority upon gentlemen's wear than her father) had been finally,
almost bitterly, rejected by me.

It was then, when my fate seemed blackest to me, that Mr. Smith
discovered in the prolific galleries of his well-stored memory the
fact that it was perfectly permissible for a gentleman in my case to
go uncovered by any outer robe, providing--and this was
indispensable--that he carried some preferably light cloak or overcoat
upon his arm.

'And the weather being close and hot, too, as it certainly is to-night,
I'll wager you'll find you're quite in the mode if you get to
Potts Point with my covert coat on your arm. So that settles it.'

It did; and I was duly grateful. It certainly was a hot evening, and
in no sense any fault of Mr. Smith's that its warmth brought a heavy
thunderstorm of rain just as I began my walk up the long hill at Potts
Point, so that, taking shelter here and there, as opportunity offered,
but not daring to put on the enormously over-large coat, I finally ran
up to the house in pouring rain, with a coat neatly folded over one
arm. A few years later, no doubt, I should have been glad to slip the
coat on, or fling it over my head. But--it did not happen a few years
later....

My worshipful adoration of Miss Foster made me neglectful even of Mr.
Rawlence's Sunday afternoon receptions. To secure the chance of being
rewarded by five minutes alone with her, in the garden or elsewhere, I
suppose I must have given up hundreds of hours from a not very
plentiful allowance of leisure. And it is surprising, in retrospect,
to note how steadfast I was in my devotion; how long it lasted.

The young woman had ability; there's not a doubt of that. For, ardent
though I was, she allowed no embarrassing questions. I am free to
suppose that my devotion was not unwelcome or tiresome to her, and
that she enjoyed its innumerable small fruits in the shape of
offerings. But she kept me most accurately balanced at the precise
distance she found most agreeable. My letters--the columns and columns
I must have written!--were most fervid; and a good deal more eloquent,
I fancy, than my oral courtship. But yet I have her own testimony for
it that Mabel approved my declamatory style of love-making; the style
used when actually in the presence.

The end was in this wise: I called, ostensibly to see Mrs. Foster, on
a Saturday afternoon, when I knew, as a matter of fact, that my chief
and his wife were attending a function in Sydney. It was a winter's
day, very blusterous and wet. The servant having told me her mistress
was out, and Miss Mabel in, was about to lead me through the long,
wide hall to the drawing-room, which opened through a conservatory
upon a rear verandah, when some one called her, and I assured her I
could find my own way. So the smiling maid (who doubtless knew my
secret) left me, and I leisurely disposed of coat and umbrella, and
walked through the house. The shadowy drawing-room was empty, but, as
I entered it, these words, spoken in Mabel's voice, reached me from
the conservatory beyond:

'My dear Hester, how perfectly absurd. A little unknown reporter boy,
picked up by father, probably out of charity! And, besides, you know I
should always be true to Tommy, however long he is away. Why, I often
mention my reporter boy to Tommy in writing. And he is delicious, you
know; he really is. I believe you're jealous. He is a pretty boy, I
know. But you'd hardly credit how sweetly he-- Well, romances, you
know. He really is too killingly sweet when he makes love-- Oh, with
the most knightly respect, my dear! Very likely he will come in this
afternoon, and you shall hear for yourself. You shall sit out here,
and I'll keep him in the drawing-room. Then you'll see how well in
hand he is.'

It was probably contemptible of me not to have coughed, or blown my
nose, or something, in the first ten seconds. But the whole speech did
not occupy very many seconds in the making, and was half finished
before I realised, with a stunning shock, what it meant. It went on
after the last words I have written here, but at that point I retired,
backward, into the hall to collect myself, as they say. I had various
brilliant ideas in the few seconds given to this process. I saw
myself, pitiless but full of dignity, inflicting scathing punishment
of various kinds, and piling blazing coals of fire upon Mabel's pretty
head. I thought, too, of merely disappearing, and leaving conscience
to make martyrdom of my fair lady's life. But perhaps I doubted the
inquisitorial capacity of her conscience. At all events, in the end, I
rattled the drawing-room door-handle vigorously, and re-entered with a
portentous clearing of the throat. There was a flutter and patter in
the conservatory, and then the hitherto adored one came in to me, an
open book in her hand, and witchery in both her liquid eyes.

And then a most embarrassing and unexpected thing happened. My wrath
fell from me, carrying with it all my smarting sense of humiliation,
and every vestige of the desire to humiliate or punish Mabel. I was
left horribly unprotected, because conscious only of the totally
unexpected fact that Mabel was still adorable, and that now, when
about to leave her for ever, I wanted her more than at any previous
time. Then help came to me. I heard a tiny footfall, light as a leaf's
touch, on the paved floor of the conservatory. I pictured the
listening Hester Prinsep, and pride, or some useful substitute
therefor, came to my aid.

'I'm afraid I've interrupted you,' I said, making a huge effort to
avoid seeing the witchery in Mabel's eyes. 'I only came to bring this
book for Mrs. Foster. I had promised it.'

'But why so solemn, poor knight? What's wrong? Won't you sit down?'
said Mabel gaily.

'No, I mustn't stay,' I replied, with Spartan firmness. And then, on a
sudden impulse: 'Don't you think we've both been rather mistaken,
Mabel? I've been silly and presumptuous, because, of course, I'm
nobody--just a penniless newspaper reporter. And you--you are very
dear and sweet, and will soon marry some one who can give you a house
like this, in Potts Point. I--I've all my way to make yet, and--and so
I'd like to say good-bye. And--thank you ever so much for always
having been so sweet and so patient. Good-bye!'

'Why? Aren't you--Won't you--Good-bye then!'

And so I passed out; and, having quite relinquished any thought of
reprisals, I believe perhaps I did, after all, bring a momentary
twinge of remorse to pretty, giddy Mabel Foster. I never saw her again
but once, and that as a mere acquaintance, and when almost a year had
passed.


XX


I have no idea what made me fix upon the particular sum of two hundred
pounds as the amount of capital required for my migration oversea to
England; but that was the figure I had in mind. At the time it seemed
that the decision to go home--England is still regularly spoken of as
'home' by tens of thousands of British subjects who never have set
eyes upon its shores, and are not acquainted with any living soul in
the British Isles--came to me after that eventful afternoon at Potts
Point. And as a definite decision, with anything like a date in view,
perhaps it did not come till then. But the tendency in that direction
had been present for a long while.

It would seem, however, that at every period of my life I have always
been feeding upon some one predominant plan, desire, or objective. For
many months prior to that afternoon at Potts Point, my adoration of
Mabel Foster had overshadowed all else, and made me most unusually
careless of other interests. This preoccupation having come to an
abrupt end was succeeded almost immediately by the fixed determination
to go to England as soon as I could acquire the sum of two hundred
pounds. Into the pursuit then of this sum of money I now plunged with
considerable vehemence.

As a matter of fact, I suppose the task of putting together a couple
of hundred pounds, in London say, would be a pretty considerable one
for a youngster without family or influence. It was not a hard one for
me, in Sydney. I might probably have possessed the amount at this very
time, but for my single period of extravagance--the time of devotion
to Miss Foster. Putting aside the vagaries of that period, I saved
money automatically. Mere living and journeying to and from the office
cost me less than a pound each week. My pleasures cost less than half
that amount all told; and as one outcome of my year's extravagance, I
was now handsomely provided for in the matter of clothes.

But I will not pretend that hoarding for the great adventure of going
to England did not involve some small sacrifices. It did. To take one
trifle now. I had formed a habit of dropping into a restaurant, Quong
Tart's by name, for a cup of afternoon tea each day; in the first
place because I had heard Mabel Foster speak of going there for the
same purpose with her friend Hester Prinsep. Abstention from this
dissipation now added a few weekly shillings to the great adventure
fund. To the same end I gave up cigarettes, confining myself to the
one foul old briar pipe. And there were other such minor abstinences,
all designed to increase the weight of the envelope I handed across
the bank counter each week.

The disadvantages of the habit of making life a consecutive series of
absorbing preoccupations are numerous. The practice narrows the sphere
of one's interests and activities, tends to introspective egoism, and
robs the present of much of its savour. But, now and again, it has its
compensations. Save for a single week-end of rather pensive moping,
the end of my love affair changed the colour of my outlook but very
little indeed. Its place was promptly filled, or very nearly filled,
by the other preoccupation. And, keen though I was about this, I did
not in any sense become an ascetic youth held down by stern resolves.
I think I rather enjoyed the small sacrifices and the steady saving;
and I know I very much enjoyed applying for and obtaining another
small increase of salary, after completing a trumpery series of
sketches of pleasure resorts near Sydney, the publication of which
brought substantial profit to the _Chronicle_.

One thing that did rather hurt me at this time was a comment made upon
myself, and accidentally overheard by me in the reporters' room at the
office. This was a remark made by an American newspaper man, who,
having been a month or two on the staff, was dismissed for
drunkenness. He spoke in a penetrating nasal tone as I approached the
open door of the room, and what he said to his unknown companion came
as such a buffet in the face to me that I turned and walked away. The
words I heard were:

'Freydon? Oh yes; clever, in his ten cent way. I allow the chap's
honest, mind, but, sakes alive, he's only what a N'York thief would
call a "sure thing grafter."'

The phrase was perfectly unfamiliar to me, but intuitively I knew
exactly what it meant, and I suppose it hurt because I felt its
applicability. A 'sure thing grafter' was a criminal who took no
chances, I felt; an adventurer who played for petty stakes only,
because he would face no risks. Even the American pressman knew I was
no criminal. He probably would have despised me less if he thought I
stole. But--there it was. The chance shaft went home. And it hurt.

I dare say there was considerable pettiness about the way in which I
saved my earnings instead of squandering them with glad youthfulness,
as did most of my colleagues. There was something of the huckster's
instinct, no doubt, in many of the trivial journalistic ideas I
evolved, took to my chief, and pleased my employers by carrying out
successfully. I suppose these were the petty ways by which I managed
somehow to clamber out of the position in which my father's death had
left me. They are set down here because they certainly were a part of
my life. I am not ashamed of them, but I do wonder at them rather as a
part of my life; not at all as something beneath me, but as something
suggesting the possession of a kind of commercial gift for 'getting
on,' of which my after life gave little or no indication. In all my
youth there was undoubtedly a marked absence of the care-free jollity,
the irresponsible joyousness, which is supposed to belong naturally to
youth. This was not due, I think, to the mere fact of my being left
alone in the world as a child. We have all met urchins joyous in the
most abject destitution. I attribute it to two causes: inherited
temperamental tendencies, and the particular circumstances in which I
happened to be left alone in the world. Had I been born in a slum, and
subsequently left an orphan there; or had my father's death occurred
half a dozen years earlier than it did; in either case my
circumstances would, I apprehend, have influenced me far less.

As things were with me when I found myself in the ranks of the
friendless and penniless, I had formed certain definite tastes and
associations, the influence of which was such as to make me earnestly
anxious to get away from that strata of the community which my
companions at St. Peter's Orphanage, for example, accepted
unquestioningly as their own. Now when a youngster in his early teens
is possessed by an earnest desire of that sort, I suppose it is not
likely to stimulate irresponsible gaiety and carelessness in him.

But, withal, I enjoyed those Sydney years; yes, I savoured the life of
that period with unfailing zest. But, incidents of the type which dear
old Mrs. Gabbitas called 'Awful warnings,' were for me more real, more
impressive, than they are to youths who live in comfortably luxurious
homes, and know the care of mother and sisters. The normal youth is
naturally not often moved to the vein of--'There, but for the grace of
God, goes ---- etc.' But I was, inevitably.

For instance, there was the American journalist who so heartily
despised my bourgeois prudence and progress. As I walked through the
Domain one evening, not many months after I had heard myself compared
with a 'sure thing grafter,' I saw a piece of human wreckage curled up
under a tree in the moonlight. It was not a very infrequent sight of
course, even in prosperous Sydney, This particular wreck, as he lay
sleeping there, exposed the fact that he wore neither shirt nor socks.
He was dreadfully filthy, and his stertorous breathing gave a clue to
the cause of his degradation. As I drew level with him, the moon shone
full on his stubble-grown face. He was the American reporter.

Here was a chance to return good for evil. I might have done several
quite picturesque things, and did think of leaving a coin beside the
poor wretch. Then I pictured its inevitable destination, and
impatiently asked myself why sentimentality should carry money of mine
into public-house tills. So I passed on. Finally, after walking a
hundred yards, I retraced my steps and slid half a crown under the
man's grimy hand, where it lay limply on the grass.


XXI


The work that gave me most satisfaction at this time was writing of a
kind which I could not induce my chief to favour for his own purposes.
He said it was not sufficiently 'legitimate journalism' for the
_Chronicle_. (The 'eighties were still young.) And only at long
intervals was I able to persuade him to accept one or two examples,
though I insisted it was the best work I had ever attempted for the
paper; as, indeed, it very likely was.

'But this is practically a story,' or 'This is really fiction,' or
'This is a sketch of a personal character, not a newspaper feature,'
he would say. And then, one day, in handing me back one of my rejected
offspring, he said: 'Look here, Freydon, see if you can condense this
a shade, and then send it to the editor of the _Observer_. I've
written him saying I should tell you this.'

I followed this kindly advice, and, a month later, enjoyed the
profound satisfaction of reading my little contribution in the famous
Australian weekly journal. The fact would have no interest for any one
else, of course, but I have always remembered this little sketch of a
type of Australian bushman, because it was the first signed
contribution from my pen to appear in any journal of standing; the
first of a series which appeared perhaps once in a month during the
rest of my time in Sydney.

People I met in Mr. Rawlence's studio occasionally mentioned these
sketches, and I took great pleasure in them. Incidentally, they added
to my hoard at the bank. Mr. Smith, my room-mate at North Shore, had
hitherto regarded my newspaper work strictly from a business
standpoint; judging it solely by the salary it brought. Suddenly now I
found I had touched an unsuspected vein of his character. He was
surprisingly pleased about these signed _Observer_ sketches. This was
authorship, he said; and he spoke to every one, with most kindly
pride, of his young friend's work.

My account at the savings bank touched the desired two hundred pounds
mark, when I had been just three years and nine months in Sydney. I
decided to add to it until I had completed my fourth year; and,
meantime, made inquiries about the passage to England. From this point
on I made no secret of my intentions, and a very kindly reply came
from Mrs. Perkins in Dursley to the letter in which I told her of my
plan. At a venture I addressed a letter to Ted, my old friend of
_Livorno_ days; but it brought no answer. Neither had the letter of
nearly four years earlier, in which his loan of one pound had been
returned with warm thanks.

The months slipped by, and the fourth anniversary of my start in
Sydney arrived; and still I postponed from day to day the final step
of resigning my appointment, and booking my passage. I cannot explain
this at all, for I had become more and more eager for the adventure
with every passing month. I do not think timidity restrained me. No, I
fancy a kind of epicurean pleasure in the hourly consciousness that I
was able now to take the step so soon as I chose induced me to prolong
the savouring of it; just as I have sometimes found myself
deliberately refraining for hours, and even for a day or so, from
opening a parcel of books which I have desired and looked forward to
enjoying for some time previously.

The awakening from this sort of epicurean dalliance was, as the event
proved, somewhat sharp and abrupt.

I did presently resign my post and engage my second-class berth in the
mail steamer _Orion_. Upon this reservation I paid a deposit of twenty
pounds; and it seemed that when my passage had been fully paid, and
one or two other necessary expenses met, I might still have my two
hundred pounds intact to carry with me to England.

Thus I felt that I was handsomely provided for; and, upon the whole, I
think the average person who has reached middle life, at all events,
would find it easy to regard with understanding tolerance the fact
that I was rather proud of what I had accomplished. It really was
something, all the attendant circumstances being taken into account.
But, perhaps, it is not always safe to trust too implicitly in the
genial old faith that Providence helps those who help themselves;
though the complementary theory, that Providence does not help those
who do not help themselves, may be pretty generally correct. Maybe I
was too complaisant. (If I have a superstition to-day, it is that a
jealous Nemesis keeps vengeful watch upon human complaisance.)

On a certain Thursday morning, and in a mood of some elation, I walked
into the bank to close my account. The amount was two hundred and
forty-seven pounds ten shillings. Of this some twenty-five pounds was
destined to complete the payment that morning of my passage money. The
cashier was able to furnish me with Bank of England notes for two
hundred pounds, and the balance, for convenience and ready-money, I
drew in Australian notes and gold. Never before having handled at one
time a greater sum than, say, five-and-twenty pounds, it was with a
sense of being a good deal of a capitalist that I buttoned my coat as
I emerged from the bank, and set out for the shipping-office. The sun
shone warmly. My arrangements were all completed. I was going home.
Yes, it was with something of an air, no doubt, that I took the
pavement, humming as I passed along the bright side of Pitt Street.

All my life I have had a fondness for byways. Main thoroughfares
between the two great arteries, Pitt and George Street, were at my
service; but I preferred a narrow alley which brings one to the back
premises of Messrs. Hunt and Carton's, the wholesale stationers.
Bearing to the left through that firm's stableyard, one passes through
a little arched opening which debouches upon Tinckton Street, whence
in twenty paces one reaches George Street at a point close to the
office for which I was bound.

I can see now the sleek-sided lorry horses in Hunt and Carton's yard, and
I recall precisely the odour of the place as I passed through it that
morning; the heavy, flat wads of blue-wrapped paper, and the fluttering
bits of straw; the stamp of a draught horse's foot on cobble-stones. I
saw the black, clean-cut shadow of the arched place. I turned half round
to note the cause of a soft sound behind me. And just then came the dull
roar of a detonation, in the same instant that a huge weight crashed upon
me, and I fell down, down, down into the very bowels of the earth....

* * * * *

'No actual danger, I think. Excuse me, nurse!'

Those were the first words I heard. The first I spoke, I believe,
were:

'I suppose the arch collapsed?'

'Ah! To be sure, yes. There was quite a collapse, wasn't there?' said
some one blandly. 'However, you're all right now. Just open your mouth
a little, please. That's right. Better? Ah! H'm! Yes, there's bound to
be pain in the head; but we'll soon have that a bit easier.'

After that, it seemed to me that I began to take some kind of warm
drink, and to talk almost at once. As a fact, I believe there was
another somnolent interval of an hour or so before I did actually
reach this stage of taking refreshment and asking questions. It was
then late evening, and I was in bed in the Sydney Hospital. There had
been no earthquake, nor yet even the collapse of an archway. Nothing
at all, in fact, except that I had been smitten over the head with an
iron bar. There had been two blows, I believe; and, if so, the second
must really have been a work of supererogation, for I was conscious
only of the one crash.

In one illuminating instant I recalled my visit to the bank, my two
hundred and forty-seven pounds ten shillings, my intended visit to the
shipping-office, the approaching end and climax of my work in Sydney
and Dursley--six years of it.

'Nurse,' I said, with sudden, low urgency, 'will you please see if my
pocket-book is in my coat?'

'Everything is taken out of patients' pockets and locked up for
safety,' she said.

'Well, will you please inquire what amount of money was taken from my
pockets, nurse. It's--it's rather important,' I told her.

The nurse urged the importance of my not thinking of business just
now; but after a few more words she went out, gave some one a message,
and, returning, said my matter would be seen to at once.

It seemed to me that a very long time passed. My head was full of a
tremendous ache. But my thoughts were active, and full of gloomy
foreboding. Just as I was about to make another appeal to the nurse,
the doctor came bustling down the ward with another man, a plain
clothes policeman, I thought, with recollection of sundry newspaper
reporting experiences. The surmise was correct. The doctor had a look
at my head--his fingers were furnished apparently with red-hot steel
prongs--and held my right wrist between his fingers. The police
officer sat down heavily beside the bed, drew out a shiny-covered
note-book, and began, in an astoundingly deep voice, to ask me
laboriously futile questions.

'Look here!' I said, after a few minutes, 'this is all very well, but
would you be kind enough to tell me what money was found in my
pockets?'

'Two sovereigns, one half sovereign, seven shillings in silver, and
tuppence in bronze,' said the sepulchral policeman, as though he
thought 'tuppence' was usually 'in' marble, or _lignum vitæ_, or
something of the sort. 'Also one silver watch with leather guard, one
plated cigarette-case, and----'

'No pocket-book?' I interrupted despondently. The policeman brightened
at that.

'So there was a pocket-book? I thought so,' the brilliant creature
said. And after that I lost all interest in these bedside proceedings.
I referred the man to the _Chronicle_ office, the bank, and the
shipping-office, and requested as a special favour that Mr. Smith
should be sent for; also, on a journalistic afterthought, a reporter
from the _Chronicle_. The numbers of the bank-notes had been written
down. Oh yes, on the advice of the bank clerk, I had done this
carefully at the bank counter, and preserved the record scrupulously--in
the missing pocket-book.

The police--marvellous men--ascertained next morning that the notes
had been cashed at the Bank of New South Wales, in George Street,
within half an hour of the time at which I obtained them from the
savings bank. And that was the last I ever heard of them.

Twenty-four hours later I was called upon to identify an arrested
suspect who had been seen in the vestibule of the bank at the time of
my call. I did identify the poor wretch. He was the American reporter
who had been discharged from the _Chronicle_ staff. But nobody at the
Bank of New South Wales remembered ever having seen the man, and I
said at once that I could not possibly identify my assailant, not even
having known that any one had attacked me until I was told of it in
hospital.

The police appeared to regard me as a most unsatisfactory kind of
person, as I doubtless was from their point of view. But they had to
release the American, although, when arrested, he had two shining new
sovereigns in his ragged pockets, and was full of assorted alcoholic
liquors. Their theory was that in some way or another the American had
known of my movements and plans, and communicated these to a
professional 'strong arm' thief; that I had been shadowed to and from
the bank, and that I might possibly have escaped attack altogether but
for my addiction to byways.

Their theory did not greatly interest me. For the time the central
fact was all my mind seemed able to accommodate. My savings were gone,
my passage to England forfeited, my bank account closed, and--so my
hot eyes saw it--my career at an end.


XXII


From the medical standpoint there were no complications whatever in my
case; it was just as simple as a cut finger. Regarded from this point
of view, a broken head is a small matter indeed, in a youth of
abstemious habits and healthy life. Well, he was a very thoroughly
chastened youth who accepted the cheery physician's congratulations
upon his early discharge from hospital.

'Nuisance about the money,' admitted the doctor genially, as he
twiddled his massive gold watch-chain. 'But it might have been a deal
worse, you know; a very great deal worse. After all, health's the
thing, the only thing that really matters.'

The remark strikes me now as reasonable enough. At the time I thought
it pretty vapid twaddle. Four quiet days I spent at my North Shore
lodging, and then (by Mr. Foster's freely and most kindly given
permission) back to the _Chronicle_ office again, just as before, save
for one detail--I no longer had a banking account. But was it really,
'just as before,' in any single sense? No, I think not; I think not.

Often in the years that have passed since that morning chat with the
cheerful physician in Sydney Hospital, I have heard folk speak lightly
of money losses--other people's losses, as a rule--and talk of the
comparative unimportance of these as against various other kinds of
loss. Never, I think, at all events, since those Sydney days of mine,
could any one justly charge me with overestimating the importance of
money. And yet, even now, and despite the theories of the
philosophers, I incline to the opinion that few more desolating and
heart-breaking disasters can befall men and women than the loss of
their savings. I would not instance such a case as mine. But I have
known cases of both men and women who, in the later years, have lost
the thrifty savings of a working life, savings accumulated very
deliberately--and at what a cost of patient, long-sustained
self-denial!--for a specific purpose: the purchase of their freedom in
the closing years; their manumission from wage-earning toil. And I say
that, in a world constituted as our world is, life knows few tragedies
more starkly fell.

As for my little loss I now think it likely that in certain ways I
derived benefits from it; and, too, in other ways, permanent hurt. I
was still standing in the doorway of my manhood; all my life and
energy as a man before me. But it did not seem so at the time. At the
time I thought of this handful of money as being the sole outcome and
reward for six years of pretty strenuous working effort. (What a lot I
overlooked!) I was far from telling myself that a lad of one-and-twenty
had his career still to begin. On the contrary, it seemed my
career had had for its culminating point the great adventure of going
to England, to attain which long years of toilsome work had been
necessary. These years had passed, the work was done, the culmination
at hand; and now it was undone, the career was broken, all was lost.
Oh, it was a dourly tragical young man who shared Mr. Smith's bedroom
during the next few months.

One odd apparent outcome of my catastrophe in a teacup has often
struck me since. No doubt, if the truth were known quite other causes
had been at work; but it is a curious fact that never, at any period
of my life since the morning on which I so gaily closed that savings
bank account, have I ever taken the smallest zest, interest, or
pleasure in the saving of money. This seems to me rather odd and
noteworthy. It is, I believe, strictly true.

For a few weeks after resuming my working routine I plodded along in a
rather dazed fashion, and without any definite purpose. And then,
during a wakeful hour in bed (while Mr. Smith snored quite gently and
inoffensively on the far side of our little room), I came to a
definite decision. The brutal episode of the crowbar--the weapon which
had felled me was found beside me, by the way; a heavy bar used for
opening packing-cases, which the thief had evidently picked up as he
came after me through Hunt and Carton's yard--should not be allowed to
divert me from my course. Diversion at this stage was what I could not
and would not tolerate. I would go to England just the same, and soon.
I would put by a few pounds, and then work my passage home. I was
perfectly clear about it, and fell asleep now, quite content.

On the next day I began making inquiries. At first I thought I could
manage it as a journalist, by writing eloquent descriptions of the
passage. A little talk at the shipping-office served to disabuse my
mind of this notion. Then I would go as a deck-hand. I was gently
apprised of the fact that my services as a deck-hand might not greatly
commend themselves to the average ship-master. My decision was not in
the least affected by the little things I learned.

Finally, I secured a personal introduction to the manager of the
shipping-office in which my twenty pounds deposit was still held, and
induced this gentleman to promise that he would, sooner or later,
secure for me a chance to work my passage home. He would advise me, he
said, when the chance arrived.

With this I was satisfied, and returned in a comparatively cheerful
mood to my plodding. I have a shrewd suspicion that my chief, Mr.
Foster, used his good offices on my behalf with the shipping company's
manager.

Three months went slowly by. And then one morning a laconic note
reached me from the shipping-office.

'Could you do a bit of clerking in a purser's office? If so, please
see me to-day.'

It appeared that the assistant purser of one of the mail-boats had
died while on the passage between Melbourne and Sydney. The company
preferred to fill such vacancies in England, and so a temporary
clerical assistant for the purser would be shipped. Would I care to
undertake it for a five-pound note and my passage?

Forty-eight hours later I had said good-bye to Sydney friends, and was
installed at a desk in the purser's office on board the _Orimba_. I
had twenty-two pounds and ten shillings in my trunk, and the promise
of a five-pound note when the steamer should reach London. It was a
kind of outsetting upon my great adventure quite different from that
which I had planned. But it was an outsetting, and a better one than I
had expected, for I had been prepared to work my passage as a deck-hand
or steward.

And so it fell out that when I did actually leave Australia I was too
busy at my clerking, and at inventing soporific answers to the mostly
irrelevant inquiries of more or less distracted passengers, to catch a
glimpse of the land disappearing below the horizon--the land in which
I had spent the most formative years of my life--or to spare a thought
for any such matter as sea-sickness.




MANHOOD--ENGLAND: FIRST PERIOD


I


Of late years the printers have given us reams and reams of first
impressions of such world centres as London and New York. Not to
mention the army of unknown globe-trotters and writers, celebrities of
every sort and kind have recorded their impressions. I always smile
when my eyes fall upon such writings; and, generally, I recall,
momentarily at all events, some aspect of my own arrival in England as
purser's clerk on board the _Orimba_.

When I read, for example, the celebrity's first impressions of New
York--a confused blend of bouquets, automobiles, newspaper
interviewers, incredibly high buildings, sumptuous luncheons, barbaric
lavishness, bad road surfaces, frenetic hospitality, wild expenditure
of paper money--I think it would be more interesting perhaps,
certainly more instructive, to have the first impressions of the
immigrant, who lands with five pounds, and it may be a wife and a
child or two. Then there is the immigrant from the same end of the
ship who is not allowed to land, who is rejected by the guardians of
this Paradise on earth, because he has an insufficient number of
shillings, or a weakness in his lungs. The bouquets, automobiles,
sumptuous luncheons, and things do not, one may apprehend, figure
largely in the first impressions of these last uncelebrated people,
though their impressions may embrace quite as much of the reality
concerned as do those of the famous; and, it may be, a good deal more.

Broadly speaking, and as far as outlines go, I was in the position of
one who sees England for the first time. There were, I know, subtle
differences; yet, broadly speaking, that was my position. The native-born
Australian, approaching the land of his fathers for the first
time, comes to it with a mass of cherished lore and associations at
least equal in weight and effect to my childhood's knowledge and
experience of England. He very often comes also to relatives. I came,
not only having no claim upon any single creature in these islands,
but having no faintest knowledge of any one among them. I carried two
letters of introduction: one from Mr. Foster to a London newspaper
editor whom he knew only by correspondence, and the other from Mr.
Rawlence to a painter, who just then (though I knew it not) was in
Algiers.

The purser paid me my five pounds before I left the ship, wished me
luck, and vowed, as his habit was in saying good-bye to people, that
he was very glad he had met me. And then I got into the train with my
luggage, and set out for Fenchurch Street and the conquest of London.

The passengers had all disappeared long since. England swallows up
shiploads of them almost every hour without winking. My arrival
differed in various ways from theirs. For instance, I had had no
leisure in which to think about it, to anticipate it, until I was
actually seated in the train, bound for Fenchurch Street. They had
been arriving, in a sense, ever since we left the Mediterranean; after
a passage, by the way, resembling in every particular all other
passages from Australia to England in mail steamers.

To be precise, I think the first impression received by me was that
the England I had come to was a quite astonishingly dingy land. The
people seemed to me to have a dingy pallor, like the table-linen of
the cheaper sort of lodging-house. They looked, not so much ill as
unwashed, not so much poor as cross, hipped, tired, worried, and
annoyed about something. They wore their hats at an angle then
unfamiliar to me, with a forward rake. They must laugh or, at any
rate, smile sometimes, I thought. This is where _Punch_ comes from. It
is the land of Dickens. It is, in short, Merry England. But, as I
regarded the dingy, set faces from the railway's carriage window, it
seemed inconceivable that their owners ever could have laughed, or
screwed up the skin around their eyes to look out happily under sunny
blue skies upon bright and cheery scenes.

Since then I have again and again encountered the most indomitable
cheerfulness in Londoners, in circumstances which would drive any
Australian to tears, or blasphemy, or suicide, or to all three. And I
know now that many Londoners wash as frequently as Australians, or
nearly so. But my first impression of the appearance of those I saw
was an impression of sour, cross, unwashed sadness. And, being an
impressionable person, I immediately found an explanatory theory. The
essential difference between these folk and people following similarly
humble avocations in Sydney, I thought, is that these people, even
those of them who, personally, were never acquainted with hunger, live
in the shadow of actual want; even of actual starvation. In Sydney they
do not. That accounts for the don't-care-a-damn light-heartedness seen in
Australian faces, and for the dominance of care in these faces.

I still had everything to learn, and have since learned some of it.
And I do not think now that my theory was particularly incorrect. The
mere physical fact that the working men in Sydney take a bath every
day as a matter of course, and that in London they do not all take one
every week, trifling as it may seem, is itself accountable for
something. But the ever-present knowledge that starvation is a real
factor in life, not in Asia, but in the house next door but one, if
not in one's own house--that is a great moulder of facial expression.
It plays no part whatever in the life of the country from which I had
come.

As my train drew to within half a dozen miles of its destination, I
became vaguely conscious of the real inner London as distinguished
from its extraordinary dockland and water approaches. We passed a huge
and grimy dwelling-house, overlooking the railway, a 'model'
dwelling-house; and in passing I caught sight of an incredible legend,
graven in stone on the side of this building, intimating that here were
the homes of more than one thousand families. That rather took my breath
away.

Then we dived into a tunnel, and emerged a few seconds later,
screeching hoarsely, right in London. It hit me below the belt. I
experienced what they call a 'sinking' feeling in the pit of my
stomach. I thought what a fool I was, how puny and insignificant; and,
again, what a fool I must be, to come blundering along here into the
maw of this vast beast, this London--I and my miserable five-and-twenty
pounds! For one wild moment the panic-born thought of hurrying
back to my purser and begging re-engagement for the outward trip to
Australia scuttled across my mind. And then the train jolted to a
standstill, and, with a faint kind of nausea in my throat, I stepped
out into London.

I have to admit that it was not at all a glorious or inspiriting
home-coming. It was as different from the home-coming of my dreams (when
a minor capitalist) as anything well could be. But yet this was
indubitably London, my destination; the objective of all my efforts
for a long time past. A uniformed boot-black gave me a sudden thought
of St. Peter's Orphanage--the connection, if any existed, must have
been rather subtle--and that somehow stiffened my spine a little. Here
I was, after all, the utterly friendless Orphanage lad who, a dozen
thousand miles away, had willed that he should go out into the world,
do certain kinds of things, meet certain kinds of people, and journey
all across the world to his native England. Well, without much
assistance, I had accomplished these things, and was actually there,
in London. There was tingling romance in the thought of it, after all.
No drizzling rain could alter that. Having successfully adventured so
far, surely I was not to be daunted by dingy faces, bricks, and
mortar, and houses said to accommodate a thousand families!

And so, with tolerably authoritative words to a porter about luggage,
I squared my shoulders in response to life's undeniable appeal to the
adventurous.


II


When I had been a dozen years or more in London, a man I knew bewailed
to me one night the fact that he had to leave Fenchurch Street Station
in the small hours of the next morning, and did not know how on earth
he would manage it.

'Why not sleep there to-night?' I suggested carelessly.

'Sleep there!' he repeated with a stare. 'But there are no hotels in
that part of the world.'

'Oh, bless you, yes!' said I. 'You try the Blue Boar. You will find it
almost as handy as sleeping in the booking-office, without nearly so
strong a smell of kippers and dirt.'

I do not think my friend ventured upon the Blue Boar; but I did, a
dozen years earlier, and stayed there for two nights. I wonder if any
other new arrival from Australia has done that! Hardly, I think. And
yet there is something to be said for it. It was quite inexpensive, as
London hotels go. (They are all much more expensive than Australian
hotels, though the cost of living in England is appreciably lower than
it is in the Antipodes.) And putting up there obviates the
embarrassing necessity of taking a cab from the station, when you
cannot think of a place to which you can tell the man to drive.

I cherish the thought that I have become something of a tradition at
the Blue Boar, where I have reason to think I am probably remembered
to-day by a now aged Boots and others--many, many others--as 'The
genelmun as orduder bawth.'

On rising after my first insomnious night there, I went prowling all
about the house in search of the bathroom. Finally, I was routed back
to my room by a newly-wakened maid (in curl-pins), who told me rather
crossly that I could not have a 'bawth' unless I ordered it
'before'and.' She did not say how long beforehand. But I was in a
hurry to get out of doors, so I did without my bath, and promised
myself I would see to it later in the day.

That afternoon, footsore, tired, and feeling inexpressibly grimy, I
interviewed the lady again, and begged permission to have a bath. She
was then in a much brighter humour, and in curls in place of pins. She
promised to arrange the matter shortly, and send some accredited
representative to warn me when the psychological moment arrived. Where
could I be found?

'Oh, I'll go and undress at once,' I said.

'No, don't do that, sir; I cawn't get a bawth all in a minute,' she
told me. 'Perhaps you'd like to wite in the smokin'-room.'

Grateful for the absence of the morning's crossness I agreed at once,
and retired to the fly-blown smoking-room, where there was ample
choice of distraction for a writing man between a moth-eaten volume
called _King's Concordance_ and a South-Eastern Railway time-table
cover, very solidly fashioned, with lots of crimson and gold, but no
inside. Here I smoked half a pipe, and would have rested, but that I
felt too dirty. Presently Boots came in, elderly and sad but furtively
bird-like, both in the way he held his head on one side and in the
jerky quickness of his movements:

'You the genelmun as orduder bawth?' he asked anxiously. I admitted
it, and he gave a long sigh of relief.

'Oo! All right,' he said, almost gladly. 'I'll letcher know when it's
ready.'

And he hopped out. I finished my pipe, yawned, opened the Concordance,
and shut it again hastily, by reason of the extraordinarily pungent
mustiness its pages emitted. Then I went prospecting into the passage
between the stairs and the private bar. Here I passed a sort of
ticket-office window, at which a middle-aged Hebrew lady sat, eating
winkles from a plate with the aid of a hairpin. Her face lit up with
sudden interest as she saw me:

'Oo!' she cried with spirit, 'er you the genelmun has orduder bawth?'
Again I pleaded guilty, and with a broad, reassuring smile, as of one
who should say: 'Bless you, we've had visitors just as mad as you
before this, and never attempted to lasso or otherwise constrain them.
There's no limit to our indulgence toward gentlemen afflicted as you
are,' she nodded her ringleted head, and said: 'Right you are, sir.
I'll send Boots to letcher know when it's ready.'

Apart from consideration of her occupation, which seemed to me to
demand privacy, I could not stand gazing at this lady, though I was
momentarily inclined to ask if the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen had
been invited to attend my bathing; so I passed on to the only refuge
from the Concordance room--the private bar. There was a really
splendid young lady in attendance here, who smiled upon me so sweetly
that I felt constrained to order something to drink. Also, I was
greatly athirst. But the trouble was it happened I had never tasted
beer, and could think of nothing else suitable that was likely to be
available. While I pondered, one hand on the counter, the still
smiling barmaid opened conversation brightly:

'Er you the genelmun what's orduder bawth?' she asked engagingly.

I began to feel that there must be some kind of a special London joke
about this formula. Perhaps it is a phrase in the current comic opera,
I thought. A pity that ignorance should prevent my capping it! At all
events I was saved for the moment from choosing a drink, for three
hilarious city gentlemen entered from the street just then, and
demanded instant attention. As I hung indeterminately, waiting, I
heard a voice in the passage outside, and recognised it as belonging
to that elderly bird, the Boots.

'No, I ain't awastin' uv me time,' it said. 'I'm alookin' fer
somebody. I serpose you ain't seed the genelmun as orduder bawth
anywhere abart, 'ave yer?'

Fearful lest further delay should lead to the bricking up of the
bathroom, or to a crier being sent round the town for 'the genelmun,'
etc., I hastened out almost into the arms of the retainer, and
forcibly checked him, as he began on an interrogative note to cheep
out: 'You the genelmun as orduder----'

Coming from a country where, even in the poorest workman's house, the
bathroom at all events is always in commission, I was greatly struck
by this incident; more especially when, an hour later, I heard the
chambermaid cry out over the banisters:

'Mibel! The genelmun as orduder bawth sez 'e'll 'ave a chop wiv 'is
tea!'


III


It was at the beginning of the second day at the Blue Boar that I
counted over my money, and was rather startled to discover that
expenditure in pennies can mount up quite rapidly.

In those days pennies were comparatively infrequent, almost
negligible, in Australia; the threepenny-bit representing for most
purposes the lowest price asked for anything. (It still is a coin more
generally used in Australia than anywhere else, I think.) Now, during
my first day or so in London I was so struck by the number of things
one could do and get for a penny, that it seemed I was really spending
hardly anything. I covered enormous distances on the tops of
omnibuses, and talked a great deal with their purple-faced drivers,
most of whom wore tall hats, and carried nosegays in their coats. When
beggars and crossing-sweepers asked, I gave, unhesitatingly, in the
Australian fashion, as one gives matches when asked for them. I gave
only pennies; and now was startled to find what a comparatively large
sum can be disbursed in a day or so, in single pennies, upon 'bus
fares, newspapers, charity, and the like.

The two men to whom my only letters of introduction were addressed
were both out of town: one in Algiers, the other, I gathered, on the
Riviera. I suppose most people in London have never reflected on the
oddity of the position of that person in their midst who does not know
one solitary soul in the entire vast city. And yet, there must always
be hundreds in that position. There was a time when I had serious
thoughts of asking a policeman to recommend to me the cheapest quarter
in which one might obtain a lodging, for I had already conceived a
great admiration for the uniformed wardens of London's streets.

I studied the newspaper advertisements under the heading 'Apartments.'
But some instinct told me these did not refer to London's cheapest
lodgings, and I felt a most urgent need for economy in the handling of
my small hoard. These few pounds must support me, I thought, until I
could cut out a niche for myself, here where there seemed hardly room
for the feet of the existing inhabitants. Already in quite a vague way
I had become conscious of the shadow of that dread presence whose
existence colours the outlook of millions in England. I wonder if the
consciousness had begun to affect my expression!

My choice of a locality was made eventually upon ridiculously
inadequate grounds. In a newspaper article dealing with charitable
work, I came upon some such words as these: 'Life is supported upon an
astoundingly small outlay of money among the poor householders, and
even poorer lodgers, in these streets opening out of the Seven Sisters
Road in the district lying between Stoke Newington and South
Tottenham. Here are families whose weekly rental is far less than many
a man spends on his solitary dinner in club or restaurant,' etc.

'This appears to be the sort of place for me,' I told myself.
Remembering certain green omnibuses that bore the name of Stoke
Newington, I descended from one of them an hour later outside a
hostelry called the Weavers' Arms. (Transatlantic slang has dubbed
these places 'gin-mills'; a telling name, I think.)

One of my difficulties was that I had no clear idea what amount would
be considered cheap in London, by way of rent for a single room. The
one thing clear in my mind was that I must, if possible, find the
cheapest. I had already gathered from chance talk, on board the
_Orimba_ and elsewhere, that the Australian 'board and lodging' system
was not much used in London, save in strata which would be above my
means. The cheaper way, I gathered, was to pay so much for a room and
'attendance,' which should include the preparation of one's own food.
The cheapest method of all, I had heard, and the method I meant to
adopt, was to rent a furnished room, but without 'attendance,' and to
provide meals for myself in the room or outside.

By this time the thing most desirable in my eyes was the possession of
a room of my own. I wanted badly to be able to shut myself in with my
luggage; to secure privacy, and be able to think, without the
distracting consciousness of my small capital melting away from me at
an unnecessary and alarmingly rapid pace. Anything equivalent to the
comparative refinement, quietness, cleanliness, and spacious outlook
of my North Shore quarters was evidently quite out of the question;
and would have been, as a matter of fact, even at double their cost in
Sydney.

Late that afternoon a cab conveyed me with my baggage to No. 27 Mellor
Street, a small thoroughfare leading out of the Seven Sisters Road.
Here I had secured a barely furnished top-floor room, with a tiny
oil-stove in it, for 4s. 6d. per week. I paid a week's rent in advance,
and, having deposited my bags there, I sallied forth into the Seven
Sisters Road, with the room key in my pocket, to make domestic
purchases. Billy cans were not available, but I bought a tin kettle
for my oil-stove, some tea, a very little simple crockery and cutlery,
some wholemeal brown bread (which I had heard was the most nutritious
variety), butter, and cheese. Also some lamp oil, for the simple
furniture of my room included, in addition to its oil-stove, a blue
china lamp with pink and silver flowers upon its sides. Most of these
things I ordered in one shop, and then, carrying one or two other
purchases, hurried back to my room to be ready for the shop-boy who
was to deliver the remainder.

Over the little meal that I presently prepared, with the aid of the
oil-stove, my spirits, which had fallen steadily during the hunt for a
room, brightened considerably. Pipe in mouth I made some alterations
in the disposition of my furniture, placing the little table nearer to
the window, and shifting the bed to give me a glimpse of sky when I
should be occupying it. The oil-stove made a regrettable stench I
found, and the lamp appeared to suffer from some nervous affection
which made its flame jump spasmodically at intervals. The mattress on
my bed was extraordinarily diversified in contour by little mountain
ranges, kopjes which could not be induced to amalgamate with its
general plan. Also, I was not so much alone in my sanctum as I had
hoped to be. There were other forms of life, whose company I do not
think I ever entirely evaded during my whole period as a lodger of the
poorest grade in London.

But for the time these trifles did not greatly trouble me. Drunken
brawls which occurred later in the evening, immediately under my
window, were a nuisance. But it was all new; my health of mind and
body was sound and unstrained; and I presently went to bed rather well
pleased with myself, after an hour spent in considering and adding to
sundry notes I had accumulated, for articles and sketches presently to
be written.

My hope was to be able to win a place in London journalism without
having any sort of an appointment. The very phrase 'free-lance'
appealed to my sense of the romantic. 'All the clever fellows are
free-lances, you know, in the Old Country.' I recalled many such
statements made to me in Sydney. Prudence might have led me to offer
myself for a post of some kind, if the editor to whom my letter of
introduction was addressed had been visible. But he was not in London;
and, in my heart, I was rather glad. It should be as a free agent, an
unknown adventurer in Grub Street, that I would win my journalistic
and literary spurs in the Old World. Other men had succeeded....

Musing in this hopeful vein I fell asleep, with never a hint of a
presentiment of what did actually lie before me. I suppose the
chiefest boon that mortals enjoy is just that negative blessing: their
total inability to see even so far into the future as to-morrow
morning.


IV


The compilation of anything like a detailed record of my first two
years in London would be a task to alarm a Zola. I could not possibly
face it; and, if I did, no good end could be served by such a
harrowing of my own feelings.

Such a compilation would be a veritable monument of squalid details;
of details infinitely mean and small, and, for the most part,
infinitely, unredeemedly ugly. Heaven knows I have no need to remind
myself by the act of writing of all those dismal details. Mere
poverty, starvation itself, even, may be lightsome things, by
comparison with the fetid misery which surrounded me during the major
part of those two years.

People say, with a smile or a sigh, as their mood dictates, that one
half the world does not know how the other half lives. So far is that
truism from comprehending the tragic reality of what poverty in London
means, that I have no hesitation in saying this: there is no wider
divergence between the lives of tigers and the lives of men than lies
between the lives of English people, whose homes in some quarters I
could name are separated by no more than the width of a street, a
mews, and, it may be, a walled strip of blackened grass and tree-trunks.

It is not simply that some well-to-do people are ignorant regarding
details of the lives of the poor. It is that not a single one among
the cultivated and comfortably off people, with whom I came to mix
later on, had any conception at all regarding the nature and character
of the sort of life I saw all round me during my first two years in
London. I consider that London's cab horses were substantially better
off than the section of London's poor among whom I lived in places
like South Tottenham, the purlieus of that long unlovely highway--the
Seven Sisters Road.

Had I been of a more gregarious and social bent, the experience must
have broken my heart, or unhinged my mind, I think. But, from the very
first day, I began systematically to avoid intercourse with those
about me; and in time this became more and more important to me. So
much so indeed that, as I remember it, quite a large proportion of my
many changes of lodgings were due to some threatened intimacy, some
difficulty over avoiding a fellow lodger. Other moves were due to
plagues of insects, appalling odours, persistent fighting and
screaming in the next room, wife-beating; in one case a murder; in
another the fact that a sodden wretch smashed my door in, under the
impression that I had hidden his wife, by whose exertions he had
lived, and soaked, for years. I must have removed more than a score of
times in those two years, and more than once it was to seek a cheaper
lodging--cheaper than the previous hell!

No, it would never do for me to attempt a detailed record of this
period. Even consideration of it in outline causes the language of
melodrama to spring to the pen. Melodrama! What drama ever conceived
in the mind of man could plumb the reeking depths of the life of the
vicious among London's poor? Things may be a little better nowadays.
Beyond all question, the way of the aspirant in Grub Street appears
vastly smoother than in my time. It is all cut and dried now, they
say--schools of journalism, literary agents, organisations of one sort
and another. But with regard to the life of the very poor, of the
submerged, I have seen signs in the twentieth century which to my
experienced eye suggested that no fundamental change had taken place
since I lived among these cruelly debased people.

One would never dare to say it in print, of course, but I know very
well that, while I lived among them, I was perfectly convinced that,
for very many--not for all, of course, but for very many--there could
be no fundamental improvement this side of the grave. For them the
only really suitable and humane institution, I told myself a hundred
times, would be a place of compulsory euthanasia--comfortably equipped
lethal cubicles. For some there would be little need of the compulsory
element. Police court officials (especially the court missionaries,
the only philanthropic workers who earned my admiration; and they, of
course, belonged to a properly organised corps, working on salary)
know something of these people; but the big, bright, busy world of
cleanly, educated folk know less of them than they know of prehistoric
fauna.

I have lived under the same roof with men who beat their wives every
week of their lives, and figured in police courts every month of their
lives, when not in prison; with women who, in their lives, had
swallowed up a dozen small homes, through the pawn-shops and in the
form of gin; with men and women who, so degraded were they, were like
as not to kick an infant as they passed if they saw one on the ground;
with human beings who had fallen so very low that on my honour I had
far liefer share a room with a hog than with one of them. Yes, the
close companionship of swine would have been much less distasteful;
and, be it noted, less unwholesome. I have written articles about
Australian wattle blossom, about the bush and the sea--oh, about a
thousand things!--with nothing more than a few inches of filthy lath
and plaster between my aching head and such human wrecks as these.

'Quite brutal!' one has heard some ignorant innocent exclaim, when
accident gave him a fleeting glimpse of a denizen of the under world.
Brutal! I know something of brutes, and something of London's under
world, and I am well assured no brute known to zoology ever reaches
the loathsome depths touched by humanity's lowest dregs. It would
sicken me to recall instances in proof of this; but I have known
scores of them. The beast brutes have no alcohol. That makes a world
of difference. They are actuated mainly by such cleanly motives as
healthy hunger. They have no nameless vices; and they live in
surroundings which make dirt, as dirt exists among humanity's under
world, impossible. In changing my lodging I have fled from neighbours
who, at times, sheltered acquaintances of whom it might literally be
said that you could not walk upon pavement they had trodden without
risk of physical contamination.

Drink! A man occupied a room next to mine, at one time, of which his
mother was the tenant. Somewhere, I was told, he had at least one
wife, upon whom he sponged, and children. (His kind invariably beget
children, many children.) This man was in middle life, and his mother,
a frail creature, was old. She had some small store of money; enough,
I was told, for the few more months she was likely to live, and to
save her from a pauper funeral. She had some lingering internal
complaint. When the man had finished drinking his mother's little
hoard away, he drove her out of doors--not merely with shameful words,
but with blows--to get work, and earn liquor for him. Incredible as it
seems she did get work, and he did take her earnings, and drink them,
for a number of weeks. Then came the morning when she could not leave
her bed. That week the rest of her furniture was sold, and the son
drank it. On Saturday night he threw his mother from her bed to the
floor, removed the bed and bedding, and drank them. She was dead when
he returned, and on Sunday morning he took from his murdered mother's
body the wedding ring which she, miraculously, had preserved to the
end, and drank that. No one slew him. There was no lethal chamber for
him. He did not even figure in a police court for this particular
murder.

People think _L'Assommoir_ dreadful, horrible. I cannot imagine what
stayed Zola's hand; I am at a loss to account for his astonishing
reticence, if he really knew anything of the worst degradation for
which drink is accountable. In two short years I must have come upon a
score of instances in every respect as horrible as that I have
mentioned. And some that were worse; yes, more vile; too vile to
recall even in thought. Brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters,
mothers and sons-- Oh! shame and degradation unspeakable! I do not know
if any section of the community is to blame. I do know that the glory
and brightness of life, the romance and the splendour of life--beauty,
chivalry, loyalty, pomp, grandeur, nobility--all have been for ever
robbed of some of their refulgence for me, as the result of two years
in the under world of London. Life could never be quite the same
again.

I stood at the base of a statue and watched the stately passage among
her cheering subjects of the most venerable lady in Christendom. My
very soul thrilled loyalty to Queen Victoria, loyalty that was proud
and glad. And on the instant it was stabbed by the thought of another
widowed mother, flung from the death-bed her worn fingers had toiled
to save, and flung to die on the floor, by her son. The shame of it,
in Christian London!

Were the poor always with us? Probably. But the awful human vermin
that I knew, were they always with us? I doubt it; nay, I do not
believe it. I believe they are part of England's sin, of England's
modern wickedness. I believe they are the maggots bred out of the sore
upon which our modern industrialism is based. When I looked upon the
vilest of this city spawn, if my rising gorge permitted thought at
all, I always had visions of little shrinking children whipped to work
in English factories and mines and potteries; of souls ground out of
anæmic bodies that Manchester might fatten. Free trade--licensed
slaughter! The rights of the individual--the sacred liberty of the
subject! Oh, I know it made England the emporium of the world, and
built up some splendid fortunes, and--well, I believe it gave us the
human vermin of our cities.

There is no cure for them in this world. Nor yet for their damned and
doomed offspring--while the individual liberty shibboleths endure,
while mere numbers rule, or while our degenerate fear of every form of
compulsion lasts. And the present tendency is, not merely to stipulate
for complete freedom of action for the poor wretches, but to invite
them to govern, by count of heads. So marvellously enlightened are we
becoming!

Those nightmarish two years seem a long way off. I must be careful not
to mislead myself regarding them. I have used such phrases as 'The
poor of London.' I think I would delete those phrases if I were
writing for other than my own eyes. I would not pretend that I like
the poor of London, as companions. But they have, as a class, notable
and admirable qualities. And many of the very poorest of them have
more of courage, and more I think of honesty, than the average member
of the class I came to know better later on: the big division which
includes all the professional people. The human wrecks are of the
poor, of course. But the really typical poor people are workers; the
wrecks, their parasites.

Nothing in life is much more remarkable to me than an old man or an
old woman of the poorer working-class, say, in South Tottenham, who,
at the end of a long, struggling life remains decent, honest, cleanly,
upright, and self-respecting. That I think truly marvellous. I am
moved to uncover my head before such an one. The innate decency of
such people thrills me to pride of race, where a naval review or a
procession of royalties would leave me cold. I know something of the
environment in which those English men and women have lived out their
arduous lives. Among them I have seen evidences of a bravery which I
deliberately believe to be greater than any that has won the Victoria
Cross.

I once had a room--which I had to leave because of its closeness to a
noisy street--immediately over a basement in which one old bed-ridden
man and two women lived. The man had been bed-ridden for more than
thirty years, and still was alive; for more than thirty years! His
wife and daughter supported him and themselves. The daughter made
match-boxes, and was paid 2 1/4d. for each gross; but out of that
generous remuneration she had to buy her own paste and thread. The
mother lived over a wash-tub. They all worked, slept, and ate, in the
one room, of course, and the man was never outside it for a moment.

At the time of my arrival in that house, the daughter had recently
taken to her bed. She was a middle-aged woman, far gone in
consumption. It happened that a notorious inebriate, a woman, during
one of her periodical visits to the local police court, told a
missionary about my neighbours. He visited them, and was impressed,
though accustomed to such sights. But he could do nothing to help, it
seemed. They were very proud, and the mother washed very well; so well
that she had work enough to keep her going day and night; and, working
day and night, was able to earn an average of close upon eleven
shillings weekly, of which only four shillings had to be paid in rent,
and a trifle in medicine, soap, fuel, etc., leaving from five to six
shillings a week for the two invalids and herself to live upon. So
there was nothing to worry about, she said. She had stood at the tub
for thirty years, and ...

Well, the missionary spoke to other folk, and other folk were touched,
and finally a lady and a gentleman came, with an ambulance and a
carriage, and twenty golden sovereigns. The old woman's liberty was
not to be interfered with. She herself was to have the spending of the
money. She was to take her patients to the seaside, and rest for a few
weeks, after her thirty years at the tub. I find a difficulty in
setting the thing down, for I can smell the steamy odours of that
basement now.

This remarkable old woman quite civilly declined the gift, and
explained how well she could manage without assistance; proudly adding
that she had no fear of failing in her weekly subscription to the
funeral club, so that her husband was happy in the knowledge that no
pauper funeral awaited him. She was barely sixty-two herself, and had
managed very well these thirty years and more, and trusted, with
thanks, that she would manage to the end without charity.

Argument was futile. So the lady and gentleman drove away with their
bright sovereigns; and when my next removal came the old woman was
still at her tub, the other two helpless ones still on their beds, and
living yet. One need not consider the wild unwisdom of it; but in the
astounding courage and endurance of it, I hold there is lesson and
ensample for the bravest man in British history. And among the working
poor such incidents cannot be very rare, because I knew of quite a
number in my very brief experience.

That the England from whose loins such master men and women have
sprung should have bred also the festering spawn of human vermin that
litters many of the mean streets of London, aye, and the seats in its
parks and gardens, is a tragic humiliation; an indictment, too, as I
see it. Charity may cover a multitude of sins. It can never cover this
running sore; or, if it should ever cover it completely, so much the
worse; for I swear it can never heal, cleanse, or remove it. Nothing
sentimental, personal, and voluntary, nothing sporadic and spasmodic
can ever accomplish that. And to approach it with bleatings about the
will of the people, universal suffrage, old age, or any other kind of
pension, dole, or the like, is to be guilty of a cruel and
contemptible kind of mockery.


V


Looking back across the long succession of crowded years upon the
period of my struggle to obtain a foothold in the London world of
journalism and literature, I see a certain amount of pathos, some
bathos, and something too in the way of steadfast, unmercenary
endurance, which is not altogether unworthy of respect.

In my humble opinion a foothold in that world was at least rather
better worth having in those days than it is to-day for a thinking man
of literary instincts. It was certainly vastly harder to obtain, in
the absence of any influence or assistance from established friends.

Of late years I have met representatives of a type of young journalist
which had not yet come into existence when I arrived in London. In
those days (when the published price of novels was still 31s. 6d., and
halfpenny dailies were unknown) there were three kinds of newspaper
men. There were the hacks, very able fellows, some of them, but mostly
given to bar and taproom life; there were thoroughly well qualified,
widely informed, sober pressmen of the middle sort, who often spent
their whole lives in one employ; and there were literary men,
frequently of high scholarly attainments, who wrote for newspapers.
To-day, there are not very many representatives of these three
divisions. The modern host of journeymen, with their captains, keen
men of business, may represent a great advance upon their
predecessors. Since I am told we live in an age of wonderfully rapid
progress, I suppose they must. They certainly are different. To
realise this fully one has only to come in contact, once, with one of
the few surviving practitioners of the earlier type. They stand out
like trees in--shall I say?--a flower-bed.

Ignorance of journalistic conditions and requirements, combined with a
foolish sort of personal sensitiveness or vanity, had more to do with
my early hardships and difficulties than anything in the quality of my
work. In the light of practical knowledge acquired later I see that I
might with ease have earned at least five times the amount of money I
did earn in those first years by doing about half the amount of work I
did, and--knowing how to dispose of it. I concentrated my entire stock
of youthful energy upon writing and reading, and really worked very
hard indeed. That, I thought, was my business. Some vague, benevolent
power, 'the World,' I suppose, was to see to it that I got my reward.
My part was to do the work. Good work might be trusted to bring its
own reward. And, in any case, I asked no more than that I should be
able to live with decency and go on with my work. I no longer had the
faintest sort of interest in the idea of saving money. That ambition
died with the end of my saving days in Sydney. I never thought about
it at all. It simply had ceased to exist.

Well, my work, as a matter of fact, was not at all bad, and it was
amazingly abundant. I would wager I wrote not less than three hundred
articles, sketches, and stories during my first year, probably more,
and always in the most hostile and unsuitable sort of environments.
And my reward in that first year was slightly less than twenty pounds
sterling, something well below an average of two guineas each month. I
suppose I might have starved in that first year if I had not had some
twenty pounds in hand at the beginning of it. I had not twenty
shillings in hand at the end of it, and yet I had already learned what
hunger meant; not the bracing sensation of being sharp set and
enjoying one's meal, but the dull, deadening, sickly sensation which
comes of sustained work during weeks of bread and butter (or dripping)
diet, and none too much of that.

The devilish thing about an insufficient dietary is that it saps one's
manhood. Few people whose circumstances have been uniformly
comfortable realise that the stomach is the real seat of self-respect,
courage, dignity, good manners, and the higher sort of honour, not to
mention the spirits and emotions. Most would scoff at the suggestion,
of course, feeling that it showed the low nature of the suggester. And
the thing of it is they cannot possibly test the truth of it. For,
given an average share of self-control and will-power, any educated
person can starve him or herself for a week or more, deliberately and
of set purpose, without much inconvenience, with no difficulty, and no
loss of self-respect.

It is starvation, or semi-starvation _from necessity_, combined with a
hard-working routine of life, and without the soul-supporting
knowledge that one can stop and order a good meal whenever one
chooses; it is continuous and enforced lack of proper nutriment,
endured throughout sustained and unsuccessful efforts to overcome the
poverty that enforces it, that tells upon one's humanity and coarsens
the fibre of one's personality. There is a certain sustaining
exhilaration about voluntary abstinence from food, due to the
contemplation of one's mind's mastery. The reverse is true of the
hunger due to the unsuccess of one's efforts to obtain the wherewithal
to get better food and more of it.

Poverty is a teacher, a most powerful schoolmaster, I freely grant.
But the most of the lessons it teaches are lessons I had liefer not
learn. As a teacher its one vehicle of instruction is the cane. First,
it weakens and humiliates the pupil; and then, at every turn, it beats
him, teaching him to walk with cowering shoulders, furtive eyes, a
sour and suspicious mind. I have no good word to say for poverty; and
I believe an insufficient dietary to be infernally bad for any
one--worse, upon the whole, than an over-abundant one--and especially so
for young men or women who are striving to produce original work.

I have heard veterans criticise their sleek juniors, with a round
assertion that if these youngsters had had to fight their way on a
crust, as the veteran said he did, they would be vastly better men for
it. I do not believe it. Hard work, and even disappointment and loss,
are doubtless rich in educational and disciplinary values; but not
that wolfish, soul-crushing fight for insufficient food, not mere
poverty. I have tried them, and I know.

Every day a procession of more or less battered veterans in life's
fight straggles across the floors of the police courts, from waiting-room
to dock and dock to cells. 'How extraordinarily vicious the poor
are!' says some shallow observer. In reality, a very large proportion
of these battered ones are there as drinkers. And, in any case, the
whole of them put together (including the many who require not penal
but medical treatment), supposing they were all viciously criminal--all
violent thieves, say--what a tiny handful they represent of the
poor of London!

The enormous majority of the poor never set foot in a police court.
And yet, for one who knows anything of the conditions in which they
live, how marvellous that is! Most educated people, after all, go
through life, from cradle to grave, without once experiencing any
really strong temptation to break the law of the land. The very poor
are hardly ever free from such temptation; hardly ever free from it. I
know. I, with all the advantages behind me of traditions,
associations, memories, hopes, knowledge, and tastes, to which most
very poor people are strangers, I have felt my fingers itch, my
stomach crave woundily, as I passed along a mean street in which
food-stuffs were exposed outside shop windows; a practice which, upon a
variety of counts, ought long since to have been abolished by law.

Oh, the decency, the restraint, and the enduring law-abidingness of
London's poor, in the face of continuously flaunting plenty, of gross
ostentation! It is the greatest miracle of our time. The comparative
absence of either religion or philosophy among them to-day makes the
spectacle of their docility, to me, far more remarkable than anything
in the history of mediaeval martyrdom. When I come to consider also
the prodigiously irritant influences of modern life in its
legislation, journalism, amusements, swift locomotion, and, not least,
its education for the masses, then I see wireless telegraphy and such
things as trifles, and the abiding self-restraint of the very poor as
our greatest marvel.


VI


After my second year in London I became approximately wealthy. Early
in the third year, at all events, I earned as much as five guineas in
a single month, and ate meat almost every day; in other words I began
to earn pretty nearly one-third as much as I had earned some years
previously in Sydney. I now bought books, and no longer always, as
before, at the cost of a meal or so. Holywell Street was a great
delight to me, and I never quite comprehended how Londoners could
bring themselves to let it go. I doubt if Fleet Street raised a single
protest, and yet-- Well, it was surprising.

I wrote rather less in this period, and used more method in my attacks
upon the editors. I even succeeded in actually interviewing one or two
of them, including the gentleman to whom I carried a note of
introduction from a colleague he had never met. But I do not think I
gained anything by these interviews. I might possibly have done so had
they come earlier, while yet the freedom of easier days and of
sunshine was in my veins. But my mean street period had affected me
materially. It had made me morbidly self-conscious, and suspiciously
alive to the least hint of patronage or brusqueness.

It is true I gave hours to the penetration of editorial sanctums; but
in nearly every case my one desire, when I reached them, was to escape
from them quickly without humiliation. In a busy man's very natural
dislike of interruption, or anxious glance toward his clock, I saw
contempt for my obscurity and suspicion of my poverty. And, after all,
I had nothing to say to these gentlemen, save to beg them to read the
effusions I pressed upon them; an appeal they would far rather receive
on half a sheet of notepaper. As to impressing my personality upon
them in any way, as I say, my uneasy thoughts in their presence were
usually confined to the problem of how best I might escape without
actual discredit.

Once, I remember, in a very lean month, I chanced to see one of the
Olympians passing with god-like nonchalance into the restaurant of a
well-known hotel. On the instant, and without giving myself time for
reflection, I followed him down the glittering vestibule, and into a
palatial dining-hall. The hour was something between one and two
o'clock, and a minute before I had been thoughtfully weighing the
relative merits of an immediate allowance of sausages and mashed
potatoes for fivepence, or a couple of stale buns for one penny, to be
followed at nightfall by a real banquet--seven-pennyworth of honest
beef and vegetables. Now, with a trifle over four shillings in my
pocket, I was, to outward seeming, carelessly scanning a menu, in
which no single dish, not even the soup, seemed to cost less than
about three times the price of one of my best dinners.

But at the next table sat a London editor. I was free to contemplate
him. Was not that feast enough for such as I? Evidently I thought it
was, for I told the waiter with an elaborate assumption of boredom
that I did not feel like eating much, but would see what I could make
of a little of the soup St. Germain. I wondered often if the man
noticed the remarkable manner in which the crisp French rolls on that
table disappeared, while I toyed languidly with my soup. I did not
dare to ask for more rolls when I had made an end of the four or five
that were on the table; but I could have eaten a dozen of them without
much difficulty.

'No, thank you, I think I shall be better without anything to-day,' I
said to the waiter who drew my attention to a sumptuous volume which I
had already discovered to be the wine-list. There was a delicate
suggestion in my tone (I hoped) that occasional abstinence from wine,
say, at luncheon had been found beneficial for my gout. Certainly, if
he counted his rolls, the man could hardly have suspected me of a
diabetic tendency.

All this time I studied the profile of the editor, while he leisurely
discussed, perhaps, half a sovereign's worth of luncheon. I hoped--and
again feared--he might presently recognise me; but he only looked
blandly through me once or twice to more important objects beyond. And
just as I had concluded that it was not humanly possible to spend any
longer over one spoonful of practically cold soup, he rose, gracefully
disguised a yawn, and strolled away to an Elysian hall in which, no
doubt, liqueurs, coffee, and cigars of great price were dispensed.
This was not for me, of course.

They managed somehow to make my bill half a crown, and, as a trifling
mark of my esteem, I gave the waiter the price of two of my ordinary
dinners, for himself. I badly wanted to give him sixpence, but lacked
the requisite moral courage, though I do not suppose he would have
wasted a thought upon it either way, and if he had--but, as I say, I
gave him a shilling. After all I do not suppose the poor fellow earned
much more in a day than I earned in a week. And then (still with
prudent thought for my gouty tendency, no doubt) I loftily waved aside
all suggestions of coffee in the lounge, and made my way to the
street, with the air of one who found luncheon a rather annoying
interruption in his management of great affairs.

'Now if you had as much enterprise and resourcefulness as--as a
bandicoot,' I told myself, passing down the Thames Embankment, 'you
would have entered into conversation with A----, and by this time he
would be pressing you to write articles for him. Instead of that,
you'll have to content yourself with dry bread to-night and to-morrow,
my friend.'

But I did not altogether regret that bread and soup luncheon, after
all. It was an adventure of sorts, and quite a streak of colour in its
way, across the drab background of South Tottenham days.

There were times when the spirit of revolt filled my very soul, and
all life seemed black or red in my eyes. But I do not recall any day
of panic or suggested surrender. On one day of revolt, when I told
myself that this slum life in London was too horrible for a
self-respecting dingo, let alone a man, I buttoned up my coat and
walked with angry haste all the way to Epping Forest. In that noble
breathing-place I raged to and fro under trees and through scrub,
delighting in the prickly caress of brambles, and pausing in
breathless ecstasy to watch rabbits at play in a dim, leafy glade.
Fully twelve miles I must have walked, and then, healed and tamed, but
somewhat faint from unwonted exercise and wonted lack of good food, I
sat down in a little arbour and wolfishly devoured just as much as I
could get in the form of a ninepenny tea. I fear there can have been
no margin of profit for the good woman who served me.

At that period my digestive faculties still were holding up
miraculously, or my sufferings on the homeward tramp would have been
acute. As a fact I reached home in rare spirits, and almost--so cheery
was I--cancelled the notice I had given that morning of my intention
to vacate the current garret. But the smell of the house smiting my
forest freshness as I stepped over the boards, jammed in its threshold
to keep crawling children in, saved me from that indiscretion. There
were fewer drunkards, less fighting, and not many more insects in that
house than in most of my places of residence; but the smell of it I
shall never, never forget. In that respect it was the vilest in a vile
series of slum dwellings, and many and many a time had caused me to
revile my naturally keen olfactory organs. I had endured it for almost
a month, and would suffer its unmanning horrors no more. Indeed, I
would suffer nothing like it again. Why should I? My earnings were
increasing. I would escape from the whole district, its miseries, its
smells, its infamies, and its thousand dehumanising degradations. I
would emigrate.

Yes, that tramp in Epping Forest was quite epoch-making. It came after
more than two years of struggle in London. I had made fully five
pounds in the past month. I had actually laid aside a couple of
sovereigns, and doubtless that salient fact emboldened me. Also, I had
had a number of quite meaty meals of late. But the wild stamping to
and fro under trees, the sight of the bonny, white-sterned rabbits at
play, the copious tea in a pleached arbour, the clean forest air--these
I am sure had been as a fiery stimulant to my drooping manhood.
I went to bed full of the most reckless resolves, and astonishingly
light-hearted.

In the morning, having feasted (as well as the prevailing smell
permitted) upon an apple, brown bread, and tea--butter was 'off' that
day, I remember--I set forth upon a prospecting tour, working westward
from my north-easterly abode, through Holloway, Finsbury, the Camden
Road, and such places, into the neighbourhood of Regent's Park. The
park, which was strange to me, pleased me greatly; as did also certain
minor streets in its neighbourhood, a mews which I found quaint and
quite rural in its suggestions, and sundry white houses with green
shutters which, for some reason, I remember I called 'discreet.' There
was nothing here that looked poor enough for me, but none the less I
inquired at one or two of the smaller houses whose windows held cards
indicating that rooms were to let in them.

At length, in a quiet and decent thoroughfare called Howard Street, I
happened upon Mrs. Pelly's house--No. 37. The girl who answered my
knock had a pleasant little face, and a soft, kindly tone in speaking.
I supposed she was not more than one-and-twenty, perhaps less. Her
mother was out, she said, but she would show me the only vacant room
they had. Indeed--with a little smile--she really did more for the
lodgers than her mother did.

The room was at the back of the house on the first floor, and there
was but one other floor above it. It had a French window, with a tiny
iron balcony, three feet by eighteen inches. The furnishings were
greatly superior to any I had had in London. There was actually a
little writing-table with drawers, and from the window one could see
distinctly the waving green tops of trees in the park. The rent was
eleven shillings. Whereat I sighed heavily. But the writing-table,
and, above all, the actual view of tree-tops in the distance! I sighed
again, and explained regretfully that I feared my limit was eight
shillings. Then the young woman sighed too, and mentioned, with
apparent irrelevance, that her mother might be in any moment now.

I had earned five pounds in the previous month. With reasonable care
my food need not cost more than seven to ten shillings a week. Of
course I had managed on considerably less. I knew very well that that
sort of semi-starvation was in every way bad; but, when I thought of
that quiet back room, the distant tree-tops, the absence of smells,
the fact that I had seen no filthy or drunken people in the
neighbourhood, the soft-spoken girl at my side--'By heavens! It's
worth it,' I said to myself.

And just then--we were in the narrow ground floor passage--the mother
arrived, bringing with her an unmistakable whiff of a public-house
bar. This stiffened my relaxing prudence considerably. I had no kindly
feeling left for taverns, especially where women were concerned. But,
by an odd chance, it happened that Mrs. Pelly was not only in a
talkative mood, but also in higher spirits than I ever saw her
afterwards. She insisted on reinspection of the room, a sufficiently
dangerous thing in itself for me. And then, standing beside its open
window, with arms folded over the place in which her waist once had
been, she avowed that she thought the room would suit me, and that I
should suit the room.

'There's a writing-table in it, an' all, ye see,' she said, having
received a hint as to my working habits.

There was indeed. I was little likely to forget it. It now seemed the
charge for the room was eleven shillings weekly, without 'attendance.'
But Mrs. Pelly had never been a woman to stick out over trifles, that
she hadn't; and, right or wrong, though she hoped she might never live
to rue the day, she would let the gentleman this room for nine
shillings a week, and include 'attendance' in that merely nominal
rate--'So there, Miss!' This, to her daughter Fanny, and in apparent
forgetfulness of my presence.

It was a thrilling moment for me, standing there with one hand on the
writing-table, my gaze fixed over the scantily covered top of Mrs.
Pelly's head--she wore no hat--upon the trees in the distance.
Prudence gabbled at me: 'You can't afford it. You must eat. You'll be
sold up, and serve you right.' But, of course, the table and the
window won. After all, had I not earned five pounds in the past month?
And, excepting boots, my outfit was still pretty good!

I could not wait for Monday. The window and the table pulled too hard.
So I installed myself at No. 37 on the Saturday afternoon, and thanked
God sincerely that I was no longer in a slum.


VII


On fine mornings I used to leave door and window blocked open in my
room, and take half an hour's walk in the park before breakfast. The
weather was sometimes unkind, of course, but Fanny never, and she
would neglect the rooms of other lodgers in order to hasten the
straightening of mine. The other lodgers were all folk whose business
took them away from Howard Street as soon as breakfast was dispatched,
and kept them away till evening.

It often happened that I would work at my little writing-table until
the small hours of the morning; and in such cases, more often than
not, I would leave the house directly after breakfast, walk down
Tottenham Court Road, and tack through Bloomsbury to Gray's Inn and
Fleet Street, or wherever else the office might lie for which the
manuscript I carried was destined. Where possible, I preferred this
method of disposing of manuscripts. Not only did it save stamps--a
considerable item with me--but it seemed quicker and safer than the
post. I had a dishonest little formula for porters and bell boys in
these offices, from the enunciation of which I derived a comforting
sense of security and dispatch.

'You might let the editor have this directly he comes in,' I would say
as I handed over my envelope; 'promised for to-day, without fail.'

Well, I had promised--myself. And this little formula, in addition to
making for prompt delivery, I thought, gave one a sense of actual
relationship with the editor. Save for the trifling fact that the
manuscript would, probably, in due course be returned, or even
consigned to the waste-paper basket, my method seemed to put me on the
footing of one who had written a commissioned article. The dramatic
value of the formula was greatly enhanced where one happened to know
the editor's name, and could say in a tone of urgent intimacy: 'You
might let Mr. ---- have this directly he comes in,' etc. In those
cases one walked down the office stairway humming an air. It was next
door to being one of the Olympians, and that without sacrificing one's
romantic liberty as a free-lance.

As my earnings rose--and they did rise with agreeable rapidity after
my establishment in Howard Street--I wrote less and thought more. I
also walked more, and saw more of London, But I was still writing a
great deal; more probably than any salaried journalist in the town,
though a large proportion of my writings never saw the light of print.
When I had been living for five or six months in Howard Street, my
earnings were averaging from ten pounds to fifteen pounds each month.
For a long time I seemed able to maintain something like this average,
but not to improve upon it. It may be that my efforts slackened at
that point, and that I gave more time to reading and walking. This is
the more likely, because I know I felt no interest whatever in the
progress of the account I opened in the Post Office savings bank.

It was about this time, I fancy, though only in my twenty-fourth or
twenty-fifth year, that I began seeking advice from chemists and their
assistants, under whose guidance I tapped the fascinating but deadly
field of patent medicines. The fact was I had completely disorganised
my digestive system during two years and more of catering for myself
upon an average outlay of six or seven shillings weekly (sometimes
much less, of course), whilst living an insanely sedentary life in
which the allowance of sleep, exercise, and fresh air had been as
inadequate as my dietary. A wise physician might possibly have been
able to steer me into smooth waters now, especially if he had driven
me out of London. But the obstinate energy and conceit of youth was
still strong in my veins. I had no money to waste on doctors, I told
myself. And so I held desultory consultations across the counters of
chemist's shops, and, supremely ignorant as to causes, attacked
symptoms with trustful energy, consuming great quantities of mostly
valueless and frequently harmful nostrums.

Another step I took at this time, after quaintly earnest discussion
with Fanny, was to arrange an additional payment of eight shillings a
week to Mrs. Pelly, in return for the provision of my very simple
breakfast and a bread and cheese luncheon each day. This relieved me
of a task for which I had never had much patience, and very likely it
was also an economy. My evening meal I preferred, as a general thing,
to obtain elsewhere. It was one of my few entertainments this foraging
after inexpensive dinners, and watching and listening to other diners.
At that time my prejudices were the exact antithesis of those that
came later on, and I preferred foreign restaurants and foreign service
and cooking, quite apart from the fact that I found them nearly always
cheaper and more entertaining than the native varieties.

It was in a dingy little French eating-house near Wardour Street
(where I must say the cooking at that time really was skilful, though
I dare say the material used was villainously bad, since the prices
charged were low, even judged by my scale in such matters) that I
first made the acquaintance of Sidney Heron. I felt sure that Heron
must be a remarkable man, even before I spoke to him, or heard him
speak, for he lived with a monocle fixed in his right eye, and never
moved it, even when he blew his nose and gesticulated violently, as he
so often did. The monocle was attached to a broad black ribbon which,
in some way, seemed grotesque as contrasted with the dingy greyish-white
flannel cricketing shirts which Heron always wore, with a red
tie under the collar. Linen in any guise he clearly scorned. I do not
think his boots were ever cleaned, and he appeared to spend even less
upon clothing than I did. I do not know just how he disposed of his
money, but he earned two hundred or three hundred a year as a writer,
and he was invariably short of funds. I think it quite conceivable
that he may have maintained some poor relation or relations, but in
all the years of our acquaintance I never heard him mention a
relative. He certainly lived poorly himself.

Our acquaintance resulted from his tipping a rum omelette into my lap.
The tables at this little restaurant were exceptionally narrow, and I
suppose Heron was exceptionally cross, even for him. The omelette was
burnt, he said, and after pishing and tushing over it for a moment or
two he shouted to the overworked waiter, giving his plate so angry a
thrust at the same time that it collided violently with mine, and the
offending omelette ricochetted into my lap.

Heron's apologies indicated far more of anger than contrition, I
thought; but they led to conversation, at all events, and as he lived
in the Hampstead Road we walked a mile or more together after leaving
the restaurant. It was the beginning of companionship of a sort for
me, and if we did not ever become very close friends, at all events
our intimacy endured without rupture for many years.

At the outset I was given an inkling of the irascibility of his
temper, and my subsequent method, in all our intercourse, was simply
to leave him whenever he became quarrelsome, and to take up our
relations when next we met at the point immediately preceding that at
which temper had overcome him. At heart an honourable and I am sure
kindly man, Heron had a temper of remarkable susceptibility to
irritation. The stomachic causes which, as time went on, produced
melancholy and dense, black depression in me, probably accounted for
his eruptions of violent irascibility. And I fancy we were equally
ignorant and brutal in our treatment of our own physical weaknesses.

Heron certainly became one of my distractions, one of my human
interests outside work, at this time. But there was another, and the
other came closer home to me.

I suppose I spent seven or eight months in discovering that Mrs. Pelly
was a singularly unpleasant woman. But the thing did eventually become
plain to me, so plain indeed that it would have caused me to give up
my French window and writing-table and migrate once more, but for
certain considerations outside my own personal comfort. That Mrs.
Pelly consumed far more gin than was good for her became apparent to
me during my first week, if not my first day, in Howard Street. But as
she rarely entered my room, and our encounters were merely accidental
and momentary, this weakness would never have affected me much.

What did affect me was my very gradual discovery of the fact that this
woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty--a thing
happily unusual in her class, as it is also, I think, among the very
poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing
knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to Fanny had begun to weigh
on my mind a good deal. It was a singular case, in many ways. Here was
a girl, a young woman rather, in her twenty-first year, who to all
intents and purposes might be said to be carrying on with her own
hands the entire work of a house which sheltered five lodgers; and, as
a fact, it was rarely that a day passed without her suffering actual
physical violence at the hands of that gin-soaked termagant, her
mother.

The woman positively used to pinch Fanny in such a way as to leave
blue bruises on her arm. She used to pull her hair violently, slap her
face, and strike at her with any sort of weapon that happened to be
within reach. Further, when the vicious fit took her, she would lock
up pantry and kitchen, and make this hard-working girl go hungry to
bed at night, by way of punishment for some pretended misdeed. And the
astounding thing was that, with all this and more, Fanny retained a
very real affection for her unnatural parent; and used to plead that,
but for the effect of liquor upon her, Mrs. Pelly would be and was a
good mother.

It appeared that Fanny had lost her father when she was about twelve
years old, and ever since that time her mother's extraordinary
attitude towards her had become increasingly harsh and cruel. She
never had a penny of her own, though she did the work of two servants,
and her clothes were mostly home-made make-shifts from discarded
garments of her mother's. When necessity caused her to ask for new
boots, for example, the penalty would be perhaps a week of vile abuse
and bullying, of slaps, pinches, docked meals and other humiliations,
all of which must be endured before the wretched woman would buy a
pair of the cheapest and ugliest shoes obtainable, and fling them to
her daughter from out her market-basket. If they were a misfit, Fanny
would have to suffer them as best she could. Or, in other cases, new
shoes would be refused altogether, and she would be ordered to make
shift with a pair her mother had worn out.

It was only very gradually that I came to know these things. Once,
when I knew no more than that Fanny worked very hard and seldom
stirred out of the house, I chanced to encounter mother and daughter
together on the stairs early on a Sunday evening. The girl looked
pinched and unhappy, and something moved me to make a suggestion I
should hardly have ventured upon then, if the mother had not happened
to be present.

'You look tired, Fanny,' I said. 'Why not come out for a walk in the
park with me? The air would do you good, and perhaps you will have a
bit of dinner somewhere with me before getting back. Do! It would be
quite a charity to a lonely man.'

I saw her tired brown eyes brighten at the thought, and then she
turned timidly in Mrs. Pelly's direction.

'Oh!' said I, on a rather happy inspiration, 'I believe you're one of
the vain people who fancy they are indispensable. I am sure Mrs. Pelly
would be delighted for you to come; wouldn't you, Mrs. Pelly? There
will be no lodgers home till late this fine evening.'

Mrs. Pelly simpered at me, with a rather forbidding light in her eye,
I thought. But I had struck the right note in that word
'indispensable.'

'Oh, she's very welcome to go, for me, Mr. Freydon; and I'm sure it's
very kind of you to ask her. Girls nowadays don't do so much when they
are at work but what it's easy enough to spare 'em. But, haven't you
got a tongue, miss? Why don't you thank Mr. Freydon?'

'No, indeed,' I laughed. 'The thanks are coming from me. I'll just go
back to my room and write a letter, and you will let me know as soon
as you're ready, won't you, Fanny?'

Well, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed that little outing.
I thought there never had been any one who was so easily pleased and
entertained. Doubtless her worshipful attitude flattered my youthful
vanity. But, apart from this, it was a real delight to see the flush
of enjoyment come and go in her pale, pretty face, when we rode on the
top of an omnibus, examined flowers in the park, and sat down to a
meal with the preparation and removal of which she was to have no
concern whatever. It was a pretty and touching sight, I say, to see
how these very simple pleasures delighted her. But I very soon learned
that this experience must not be repeated. Indeed, it was in this wise
that I obtained my first inklings of the real wretchedness of Fanny's
life. She had to suffer constant humiliations for a week or more, as
the price of the little jaunt she had with me. Her mother found it
hard to forget or forgive the fact that her daughter had had an hour
or two of freedom and enjoyment. Realisation of this made me detest
the woman.

And then, it may have been three months after this little outing,
there came another Sunday incident that moved me. I returned to my
room unexpectedly about six o'clock, having forgotten to take out with
me a certain paper. The house was very silent, and perhaps that made
me walk more softly than usual up the stairs. As I opened my door the
warm, yellow light of the setting sun was slanting across my
writing-table, and in the chair before it sat Fanny, reading a magazine.

My first thought was of irritation. I did not like to see any one
sitting at my writing-table. I was touchy regarding that one spot--the
table, my papers, and so forth. In the same instant irritation gave
place to some quite other feeling, as the sunlight showed me that
tears were rolling down Fanny's pale face.

She sprang to her feet in great confusion, murmuring almost passionate
apologies in her habitually soft, small voice.

'Oh, please forgive me, Mr. Freydon! I know it was a liberty. Please
do forgive me. I will never do it again. Please say you will overlook
it, and--and not tell my mother.'

She unmistakably shrank, trembling, almost cowering before me, so that
I was made to feel a dreadful brute.

'My dear Fanny,' I said, touching her arm with my fingers, 'there's
nothing to forgive. How absurd! I hope you will always sit there
whenever you like. As though I should mind! But what were you
reading?'

The question had no point for me, and was designed merely to relieve
the tension.

'Oh, your story, Mr. Freydon. It's--it's too beautiful. That was what
made me forget where I was, and sit on here. I just glanced at it--like;
and then--and I couldn't leave it. Oh!'

And she drew up her apron and dabbed her eyes. I don't believe the
poor soul possessed a handkerchief. Here was a pretty pass then! I had
forgotten for the moment that one of the three magazines on the table
contained a short story of which, upon its appearance, I had been
inordinately proud. I was young, and no one else flattered me.
Literally nobody had shared my gratification in the publication of
this story. Here was somebody from whom it drew indubitable tears;
some one who was deeply moved by its beauty....

I patted her shoulder. I drew confidences from her regarding the
wretchedness of her home life. I laid down emphatic instructions that
she was to regard my room as her sanctuary; to use it whenever and
howsoever she might choose, irrespective of my presence or absence. I
bade her make free with my few books--as though the poor soul had
abundance of leisure--comforted her to the best of my ability; and-- Yes,
let me evade nothing. I stroked her hair, and in leaving her, with
reiterated instructions to remain there and rest, I touched her cool
white cheek with my lips, and was strangely thrilled by the touch.

A warm wave of what I thought pity and sympathy passed over me as I
walked from her.


VIII


It is rather a matter of regret with me now that I never kept a diary.
Mine has been upon the whole a somewhat lonely life, and lonely men
often do keep diaries. But, in my case, I suppose writing was too much
the daily business of life to permit of leisure being given to the
same task.

However, the dates of certain volumes of short stories, which appeared
long ago with my name upon their covers, are for me evidence that,
after the first six months of my stay in Howard Street, my work began
to tend more and more towards fiction, and away from newspaper
articles. My dealings at this time brought me more closely into touch
with magazines than with newspapers. I became more concerned with
human emotions and character, but especially with emotions, than with
those more abstract or again more matter-of-fact themes which had
served me in the writing of newspaper articles.

This may have helped me in some ways, since it meant that my name was
fairly frequently seen in print now. But the point I have in mind is,
that I take this tendency in my work to have been an indication of the
particular phase of character development through which I was passing
at the time. It was at this period that I indulged myself in
occasional dreams of fame. I do not know that my conceit made me
offensive in any way. I hardly think it went so far. But, in my inmost
heart, I believe I judged myself to be a creative artist of note. I
certainly had a lively imagination, a good deal of fluency--too much,
indeed--as a writer, and a considerable amount of emotional capacity
and sympathy.

Later in life I often wondered, not without depression, why I no
longer seemed able to move people, to influence them in a given
direction, or to arouse their enthusiasm, with the same facility which
I had known in my twenties. I see now the reasons of this. My
emotional capacity spent itself rapidly in writing and living; and
with its exhaustion (and the development of my critical faculties)
came an attenuation, a drying up, so to say, of the quality of facile
emotional sympathy, which in earlier years had made it easy for me to
attract, prepossess, or influence people at will.

Given some practical organising qualities which I certainly did not
possess, I apprehend that at this period I might have engineered
myself into a considerable vogue of popularity as a writer of fiction.
A little later I might almost have slid into the same position, even
in the absence of the practical qualities aforesaid, but for the trend
of circumstances which then became highly antagonistic to that sort of
development.

But I note with some interest that the stories I took to writing at
this period were highly emotional in tone, and somewhat exotic in
their setting. The exotic settings may have been due in part to the
fact that I had travelled, and yet more I fancy to revulsion from the
material background of my early life in London. And the emotionalism
must be attributed, I apprehend, in part to my age and temperament,
and in part to my comparative solitude.

I find it extremely difficult justly to appraise or analyse my
relations with Fanny. In one mood I see merely youth, folly, vanity,
and romantic emotionalism, directing my conduct; and again I fancy I
discern some loftier motive, such as sincerely chivalrous generosity,
humanity, unselfish desire to help and uplift, etc. Doubtless, in this
as in most matters, a variety of motives and influences played their
part in shaping one's conduct. Single and entirely unmixed motives are
much more rare than most people believe, I fancy. Pride and vanity
have a way of dogging generosity's footsteps very closely; steadfast
endurance and selfish obstinacy are nearly related; and I dare say
real kindness of heart often has a place where we most of us see only
reckless self-indulgence.

I remember very well a cold, clear moonlight night in the Hampstead
Road, when reaction from solitary reflection made me unbosom myself a
good deal to Sidney Heron, in the form of seeking his advice. On
previous occasions I had told him something of Fanny and her dismal
position, and he had seen her once or twice at my lodging.

'H'm! Yes. Precisely. So I inferred.'

It was with such ejaculations, rather sardonic in tone, I thought,
that he listened to me as we walked.

'Well, what shall I do?' I said at length as we reached his gate.

'What will you do?' he echoed. 'Well, my friend, since you are an
inspired ass, and a confirmed sentimentalist, I imagine you----'

'What would you advise in the circumstances, I mean?' I interpolated
hurriedly.

'My advice. Oh, that's another matter altogether, and of absolutely no
value.'

'But, on the contrary, you are older than I.'

'I am indeed--centuries.'

'And your advice should be very helpful to me.'

'So it should. But it won't be, because you won't follow it.'

'How can you know that?'

'From my knowledge of human nature, sir; and, in particular, my
observation of your sub-species.'

'Try me, anyhow.'

'Very well. Change your lodging to-morrow, and never set foot in
Howard Street again. There's my advice, and it's the best you'll ever
get--and the last you'd ever think of following. Give me a cigarette
if you want to continue this perfectly useless conversation.'

'But, my dear Heron, I'm anxious to do the wisest thing----'

'Not you!'

'But consider the plight of that poor girl.'

'Oh, come! This opens new ground. I thought I was engaged to advise
you.'

'Certainly. But in relation to--to what we've been talking about.'

'H'm! In relation, you mean, to Fanny Pelly? Phoebus, what a name! I
wonder if you know what you mean, Freydon! Let's assume you mean
having equal regard to your own interests and those of your gin-drinking
landlady's daughter. Hey?'

'Well, yes. Always remembering, of course, that I am only a man, and
she----'

'Oh, Lord! Excuse me. Yes; you are only a man, as you so truly say;
and she is--your landlady's daughter. Well, well, upon the whole, and
giving her interests a fair show, I think my advice would be precisely
the same--clear out to-morrow.'

'And what about her future?'

'My dear man, am I a reasoning human being, or a novelette-reading
jelly-fish? Did I not say that having regard to the interests of both,
that is my advice? Kindly credit me with the modicum of intelligence
required for adequate consideration of both sides. It isn't an
international complication, you know; neither is it a situation
entirely without precedent in history. But, mind you, I'm perfectly
well aware that no advice, however good, is ever of any practical use;
least of all in circumstances of this order. It does, I believe,
occasionally impel its victim in the direction opposite to the one
indicated. Yes, and especially in such cases. Well, my friend, upon
reconsideration then, my advice is that first thing to-morrow morning
you proceed to Doctors' Commons, wherever and whatever that may be,
procure a special licence, and many the girl. Only--don't you dare to
ask me to have anything to do with it.'

The suggestion has a fantastic look, but I am more than half inclined
to think Heron's final piece of advice did have its bearing upon my
subsequent actions. For it started a train of thought in my mind
regarding marriage. It gave a practical shape to mere vague
imaginings. It set me looking into details. For example, I distinctly
remember murmuring to myself as I turned the corner of Heron's street:

'Yes, after all, I suppose getting married is quite a simple job,
really. There are registrar's offices, aren't there? I suppose it's
pretty well as simple, really, as getting a new coat.'

How Heron would have grinned if he had been able to follow this
soliloquy!

Fanny was on her knees before my hearth when I reached my room. The
lamp burned clear and soft beside my blotting-pad. The fire glowed
cheerily, and Fanny had just swept the hearth, so that no speck showed
upon it. And my slippers were in the fender. Less than a year earlier
my homecomings had been singularly different; a dark, cold room in a
malodorous house, with very possibly a drunken couple brawling on the
landing outside.

But there were tears in Fanny's eyes. The mother was in one of her
vicious tempers, it seemed, and had gone to bed in her basement room
with the keys of larder and kitchen, and a bottle of gin. The
daughter's last meal had been whatever she could get for midday
dinner. And it was now nine o'clock in the evening.

'Just you wait there. Don't stir from where you arc. I'll be back in
three minutes,' I told her.

There was a ham and beef shop at the junction of Howard and Albany
Street. Thither I hastened. Leaving this convenient repository of
ready-cooked comestibles, I bethought me of the question of something
to drink. I was bent on doing this thing well, according to my lights.
Presently I reached my room again, armed with pressed beef, cold
chicken, bread, butter, mustard, salt, plates, cutlery, a segment of
vividly yellow cake, and, crowning triumph, a half bottle of Macon.

The Dickensian tradition rather suggests that the ripe experience of a
middle-aged _bon vivant_ is desirable in the host at such occasions.
Well, in that master's time youth may have lasted longer in life than
it does with us. My own notion is that mine was the ideal age for such
a part. I think of that little supper--Fanny's tremulous sips of
Burgundy from my wash-stand tumbler, the warm flush in her pale
cheeks, and the sparkle in her brown eyes--as crystallising a good
deal of the phase in which I was living just then. I am quite sure I
did it well, very well.

In buying those viands I knew I should keenly enjoy our little supper.
I pictured very clearly how delightful it would all seem to poor
Fanny; her flushed enjoyment; just what a rare treat the whole episode
would be for her. I knew how pleasantly that spectacle would thrill
me. I thought too, in a way, what a devilish romantic chap I was,
rushing out at night to purchase supper--and Burgundy; that was
important; claret would not have served--for a forlorn and unhappy
girl, who, but for my resourcefulness, would have gone starving to
bed. How oddly mixed the motives! The Burgundy, now; I believed it a
more generous and feeding wine than any other. Also, for some reason,
it was for me a more romantic wine; more closely associated with, say,
the Three Musketeers and with Burgundian Denys, comrade of Reade's
Gerard.

I quite genuinely wanted to help Fanny, to do her good, to brighten
her dull life. The contemplation of her pleasure gave me what some
would call the most unselfish delight. Withal, as I say, how oddly
various are one's motive springs, especially in youth! And, in some
respects, what a blind young fool I was! That wine, now.... Who
knows? ... I took but a sip or two, for ceremony's sake, and insisted on
fragile Fanny finishing the half bottle. And I kissed her lips, not
her cheek, as I held the lamp high to light her on her way to the
garret where she slept.

* * * * *

I have not the smallest desire to make excuses for such foolishness as
I displayed, at this or any other period. But I think it just to
remind myself that there are worse things than foolishness, and that
my relations with Fanny might conceivably have formed a darker page
for me to look back upon than they actually did form. We both were
young, both lonely; neither of us had found much tenderness in life,
and I--I was passing through an extremely emotional phase of life, as
my work of that period clearly shows.

Within a month of that evening of the supper in my room, Fanny and I
were married in a registrar's office in St. Pancras, and set up
housekeeping in one tiny bedroom and a sitting-room in Camden Town. I
had convinced Fanny that this was the only way out of her troubles,
and goodness knows I believed it. Heron refused point blank to witness
the ceremony, such as it was; but he shared our table at his favourite
little French restaurant that evening, and even consented to prolong
the festive occasion by spending a further hour with us in our new
quarters.

I think Fanny was pretty much preoccupied in wondering what her mother
would make of the joint note we had left for her. (I had removed all
my belongings from No. 37 several days before.) But I thought she made
a pretty little figure as a bride--gentle, clinging, tender, and no
more than agreeably shy. And Heron, what a revelation to me his manner
was! Throughout the evening there appeared not one faintest hint of
his habitual acidulated brusqueness. Not one sharp word did he speak
that night, and his manner toward my wife was the perfection of gentle
and considerate courtesy. I was dumbfounded and deeply moved by his
really startling behaviour. He was so incredibly gentle. His parting
words, such words as I had never thought to hear upon his lips, were:

'Heaven bless you both!' And then, as I could have sworn, with
moisture in his eyes, he added: 'You are both good souls, and--after
all, some are happy!'

For so convinced and angry a cynic and pessimist, his behaviour had
been remarkable. When I returned to Fanny she was admiring her pretty,
new, dove-coloured frock in the fly-blown mirror of our sitting-room.
Poor child, her experience of new frocks had not been extensive.

'He's a real gentleman, is Mr. Heron,' she said with a little
welcoming smile to me. I liked the smile; but, almost for the first
time I think, on that day at all events, her words jarred on me a
little. But what jarred more perhaps was the fact that these words, so
apparently innocent and harmless, sent a vagrant thought through my
mind that filled me with harsh self-contempt. The thought will
doubtless appear even more paltry than it was if put into words, but
it was something to the effect that-- Of course, Heron was a
gentleman! Why else would he be a friend of mine?

Perhaps the thought was hardly so absurd as my solemn self-contempt
over it! ...


IX


I have sometimes thought that, in its early days at all events, and
before the more serious trouble arose, our married life might have
been a little brighter if we had quarrelled occasionally. It would
perhaps have shown a more agreeable disposition in me. But we did not
quarrel. I felt, and probably showed, displeasure and dissatisfaction;
and Fanny-- But how shall I presume to tell what Fanny felt? She
showed occasional tears, and what I grew to think rather frequent
sulks and peevishness.

Our first difficulties began within a day or two of our marriage.
Chief among them I would place what I regarded as my wife's altogether
unaccountable and quite unreasonable determination to keep up
relations with her mother. I thought I was unfairly treated here, and
I made no allowance for filial feelings, or the influence of Fanny's
life-long tutelage. I only saw that she had very gladly allowed me to
rescue her from the tyranny of a spiteful, gin-drinking, old woman;
and that, within forty-eight hours, she was for visiting her mother as
a regular thing, and even proposed that I should join her in this.

That was one of the early difficulties; and another, more distressing
in its way, was my discovery of the fact that it was apparently
impossible for me to think consecutively, or to write when I had
thought, in a room which was my wife's living place. It was strange
that I should never have given a thought before marriage to a
practical point so intimately touching my peace of mind and means of
livelihood.

At present it did not seem to me that I could possibly afford to rent
another room. I certainly was not prepared to banish Fanny to our tiny
bedroom, separated from the other room by folding doors. She had no
notion as yet that her presence or doings constituted any sort of
interruption in my work. The change from carrying on the whole work of
a lodging-house to living in lodgings with practically no domestic
work to do was one which, in my foolish ignorance, I had thought would
prove immensely beneficial to overworked Fanny. As a fact I think it
bored her terribly after the first week. She sometimes liked to read,
but never, I think, for more than half an hour at a stretch. She never
wrote a letter, and did not care for thinking.

I have found very few people in any class of life who like to sit and
think; very few, even among educated people, who showed any sympathy
or comprehension in the matter of my own lifelong desire for leisure
in which to think. To do this or that, yes; but just to think! That
seems to be a lamentable and most boring kind of futility, as most
folk see it. It has for many years figured as the most desirable thing
in life to me.

Looking back upon my married life, I believe I may say with truth that
for two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a
success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I
tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to
make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my
efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify
or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up
trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much to blame. Well,
I did not go unpunished.

It would not be easy for a literary man who had never tried it to
understand what it means to live practically in one room (with a
sleeping cubicle opening out of it) with a woman. I suppose a woman
would never forgive or see much excuse for the man who makes a failure
of married life. I wonder how it would strike a literary woman if she
tried life in these circumstances with an unliterary man who, whilst
clinging to leisure and having no inclination to forfeit an hour of it
in a day, yet was bored extremely from lack of occupation and
resource.

The horrid intimacy of urban life for all poor and needy people must
be very wearing. Its lack of privacy is most distressing. But this
becomes enormously aggravated, of course, where the bread-winner must
do his work within the walls of the cramped home. And that aggravation
of difficulties is multiplied tenfold if the bread-winner's work must
not only be done inside the home, but must also be the product of
sustained and concentrated thought; if it be work of that sort which
lends itself readily to interruption, in which a moment's break may
mean an hour's delay, and an hour's delay may mean for the worker a
fit of hot disgust in which his unfinished task finds its way into
fireplace or waste-paper basket.

The year which I gave to trying to make a success of our married life
appears to me in the retrospect as a monotonous series of abortive
honeymoons, separated by interludes of terribly hard and unfruitful
labour for me (more exhausting than any long sustained working effort
I ever made), throughout which, out of respect for my praiseworthy
resolutions as a would-be good husband, my exacerbated temper was
cloaked in a sort of waxy fixative, even as some men discipline their
moustaches. I see myself in these periods as a man acutely tired,
miserably conscious of the barren nature of his exhausting daily toil,
and wearing a horrible set smile of connubial amiability; the sort of
smile which, in time, produces a kind of facial cramp.

My wife, poor little soul, was not, I think, burdened by any self-imposed
task touching the set of her lips. And it may be this was so
much the worse for her. In the absence of any recognised duty she knew
of no distraction save her visits to her mother, regarding which she
felt a certain furtiveness to be necessary, by reason of my ill-judged
show of impatience in this matter, and my refusal to open my own arms
to the woman who, for years, had made Fanny's life a burden to her.

'Confound it!' I thought. 'My part was to release her from this
harridan's clutches, not to go round and mix tears and gin with the
woman.'

But I was wrong. I should have gone much farther, or not near so far.
(How often that has been my fault!) Either I should have prevented
those visits, or sterilised them by taking part in them.

By the time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had
brought me near to breaking point, Fanny would be frequently tearful
and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I
fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of
a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within
doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a
sleepless night or two) of black, dyspeptic melancholy, and quite
hopeless depression. Then, as like as not, I would try a long tramp,
probably in Epping Forest, and after that--another abortive honeymoon.
In other words, full of wise resolutions and determined hopefulness, I
would apply the fixative to my domestic circle smile and amiability,
and make an entirely fresh start, with a little jaunt of some kind as
a send off.

I fancy Fanny's faith in these foredoomed attempts remained
permanently unsullied. I know she used to resolve to discontinue the
long gossipy afternoons with her mother in Howard Street--in some
mysterious way the mother had lain aside all her old pretensions as a
tyrannical autocrat, and they met now, I gathered, as friendly
gossips--and to become an ideal wife for a literary man. She would
even tell our landlady not to clean or tidy our rooms any more, since
she, Fanny, intended to do this in future. And she would do it--for a
week or so; just as I would keep up my sickening grin, and the attempt
to make myself believe that I really liked doing my work in public
libraries, reading-rooms, waiting-rooms, and other such inspiring
places. Not even on the first day of a new honeymoon could I force
myself to fancy I liked the attempt to work in our joint sitting-room.
That affected me like a neuralgia.

The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my
admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I
have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights,
strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I
did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our
joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and,
in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather
pitifully little.


X


It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some
of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life
and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my
reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But
also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my
earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration,
both in quality and quantity.

If it had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one
of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good
deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus
Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who
presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name.
This letter--written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully
embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle
perfume about it--requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon
with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club--the Court, in
Piccadilly.

He received me with beautiful urbanity, if a thought languidly. It was
clearly a point of honour with him to refer to nothing so prosaic as
any kind of work until he had plied me with the best which his
luxurious club had to offer; and I gladly record that our luncheon was
by far the most ambitious meal I had ever made, or even dreamed of, up
to that day. And then, over the delicate Havannahs and fragrant coffee
and liqueurs--the enterprise of youth was still mine in these matters,
and in those days I accepted any such delicacies as the gods sent my
way with never a thought of question, or of consequence--I was
informed, with truly regal complaisance, that a certain bundle of
manuscript short stories of mine (which by this time had been the
round of quite a number of publishers' readers without making any
perceptible progress towards germination and print) had been chosen
for the honour of inclusion in the new _Fin de siècle_ Library of
Fiction, which, as all the world knows--or knew, at all events, during
that season--represented the last word, both in literary excellence
and artistic publishing.

I was perhaps less overpowered than I might, and no doubt ought to
have been, by reason of the fact that I had at least been shrewd
enough to know in advance that it was hardly for my bright eyes the
famous publisher was entertaining me. However, I assumed a decent
amount of ecstasy, and was genuinely glad of the prospect of seeing my
first book handsomely published. After a proper interval I ventured
upon a delicate inquiry as to terms; whereupon the deprecatory wave of
Sylvanus Creed's white and jewelled hand made me feel (or pretend to
feel) a low fellow for my pains. I gathered that on our return to the
sumptuously appointed studio from which my host directed the destinies
of his publishing house, one of his secretaries of state would submit
to me a specimen of the regulation agreement for the publication of
first books.

That airy mention of 'first books' caused a chill presentiment to
pierce the ambrosial fumes by which I was surrounded. The transaction
was to bring me no particular profit, I thought. Well, the luncheon
had been superfine. The format of Sylvanus Creed's books was
indubitably pleasing to hand and eye. And, true enough, it was a
'first book.' Money, after all--and particularly after such a
luncheon ...

But I will say that in subsequently signing the daintily embossed
agreement (subtly perfumed, I thought, like the letter paper) I was
blissfully ignorant of the fact that it also gave Mr. Sylvanus Creed
my second book, whatever that might prove to be, upon the same
exiguous terms. The fault was wholly mine, of course. There was the
agreement (in the most elegant sort of copper-plate script) quite open
for my perusal. I fancy, perhaps, the Court Club's liqueurs were even
more agreeably potent than its wines. I know it seemed absurdly
curmudgeonly that I should think of wading through the document, and
while Sylvanus's own fair hand held a pen waiting for me, too. And,
indeed, I do not in the least grudge that signature now.

And thus, with every circumstance of artistic fitness and ease, I was
committed to authorship. The second floor back in Camden Town looked a
shade dingy after my publisher's sanctum; but I carried a couple of
gift copies of the _Fin de siècle_ books in my hand, and my own
effusions were to form the fifth volume of the series. With such news
I clearly was justified in bidding Sidney Heron take his dinner with
us that night. Fanny rather cooled about the great event, when its
monetary insignificance was made partially clear to her. But she
enjoyed the little dinner with Heron; and, as a matter of fact, we
were doing rather well in the monetary way just then, though hardly
well enough to enable me to rent a third room for use as study.

I found that sovereigns had somehow shrunken and lost much of their
magic in Fanny's hands with the passage of time. At the time of our
marriage, I had been agreeably surprised to learn that Fanny was a
cleverer economist than I, with all my grim learning in South
Tottenham. The few pounds I was able to give her on the eve of our
marriage had been made to work miracles I thought. But lately it had
seemed a little different. Fanny had, of course, changed in many small
ways; and one result, as I gathered, was that our sovereigns had
become less powerful. Their purchasing power was notably reduced, it
seemed. Fortunately, I was earning more. But it was clear the increase
in my earnings would not as yet permit of any increase in our
expenditure upon rent. Sometimes in the Cimmerian intervals
immediately preceding one of our fresh starts, my reflections upon
such a point were very bitter. There was no sort of doubt that the
quality of my work was suffering seriously from lack of a private
workshop....

On the day my second book was published--the first, while favourably
reviewed, had not precisely taken the world by storm; its successor
was my first novel--I had said that I should not get back to our rooms
before about seven o'clock, in time for the evening meal. A dizzy
headache, combined with a series of interruptions in the public
reading-room where I had been at work, brought me to Camden Town
between four and five, determined to take a couple of hours' rest, to
sleep if possible on our bed. It happened that I met our landlady on
the steps of the house, and asked her casually if my wife had returned
yet. Fanny had said in the morning that she had promised to go and see
her mother that day. The landlady looked at me a little oddly, I
thought. Her reply was normal, and, characteristically enough, more
wordy than informing:

'Oh, I couldn't sye, Mr. Fr'ydon; I reely couldn't sye. I know Mrs.
Fr'ydon went art early this mornin', because she 'appened to speak to
me in passin', an' she said she was goin' to see 'er mother, "Oh, are
yer?" I says. "An' I 'ope you'll find 'er well," I says.'

I passed on indoors and upstairs, thinking dizzily about Cockney
dialect--I had the worst kind of dyspeptic headache--and feeling
rather glad my wife was away. 'An hour's sleep will set me right,' I
muttered to myself as I entered our tiny bedroom.

But Fanny was lying on the bed, fully dressed, even to her hat, and
with muddy boots. She was maundering over to herself the silly words
of some inane song of the day. She was horribly flushed, and-- But let
me make an end of it. My wife was grossly and quite unmistakably
drunk, and the stuffy little room reeked of gin.

As it happened I never had been drunk. It was not one of my
weaknesses. But if it had been, I dare say I should have been no whit
the less horrified and alarmed and disgusted by this lamentable
spectacle of my wife--stupid, maundering, helpless, and looking
like ... But I need not labour the point.

In a flash I recalled a host of tiny incidents. It was extraordinary
how recollection of the series rattled through my aching brain like
bullets from a machine gun.

'This has been going on for some time,' I thought. And then, 'I
suppose this is hereditary.' And then, 'This comes of the visits to
Howard Street.' And then, curiously, recollection of those wedding
night words of Heron's which had so touched me: 'Heaven bless you! You
are both good souls, and--after all, some are happy!'

'Perhaps some are,' I thought bitterly. 'I wonder how much chance
there is for us!'

In just the same way that I think the beginning of our married life
might have been more agreeable, less strained, if we had had
occasional quarrels, so I dare say at this critical juncture, when I
discovered that my wife had taken to drinking gin, my right cue would
have been that of open anger, or, at all events, of very serious
remonstrance. It is easy to be wise after the event. I did not seem to
be capable just then of talk or remonstrance. All I did actually say
was commonplace and unhelpful enough. I said as I remember very well:

'Good God, Fanny! I never thought to see you in this state.' And
then--the futility of it--I added, 'You'd better take your hat and boots
off.'

With that I walked into the sitting-room, closing the dividing door
after me, and subsided, utterly despondent, into the chair beside the
empty grate. A man could hardly have been more wretched; but after a
minute or two I could not help noticing, as something singular, the
fact that my sick, dizzy headache had disappeared. The pain had been
horridly severe, or I should hardly have noticed its cessation. But
now, with my spirits at their lowest and blackest, my head was clear
again; not by a gradual recovery, but in one minute.


XI


Fanny had spoken no word to me, and I wondered greatly at that. She
had only smiled and laughed in a foolish way. And a few minutes later
I knew by her breathing--even through the closed doors, so much was
unmistakable--that she slept.

I may have sat there for an hour, nursing the bitterest kind of
reflections. Then I decided to go out, and found I had left my hat in
the bedroom. Very cautiously I opened one leaf of the folding doors,
tip-toed into the small room, and took my hat from the chair on which
it lay. My gaze fell for one instant across the recumbent figure of my
wife, and was withdrawn sharply. I went out with anger and revulsion
in my heart, and walked rather quickly for an hour, conscious of no
relief from bitterness, no softening of my feelings.

Then I happened to pass a familiar restaurant, and told myself I would
have some dinner. 'She must go her own way,' I muttered savagely.

I entered the place, found a seat, and consulted the bill of fare. A
greasily smiling Italian came to take my order.

'Madame is not wiz you, sare?' the fellow said.

We had not been there for a month, but he remembered; and, on the
instant, I recalled our last visit--the beginning of one of our fresh
starts. And this was the end of it. Well!

Suddenly I found myself reaching for my hat.

'No,' I said, 'madam is late. I will go and look for her.' And out I
went. In that moment I had seen pictures: Fanny, before our marriage,
on her knees at my hearth in the room in Howard Street; in her
dove-coloured frock on our marriage night, clinging to my arm when
she was fresh from the excitement of leaving Howard Street. There were
other scenes. What an immature and helpless child she was! And how
much help had I given her? After all, food and clothing and so forth,
freedom from tyranny--well, these were not everything. She needed more
intimate care and guidance. The responsibility was mine.

In the end I went to a shop and bought the materials for a meal, even
as on an evening which seemed very long ago, when I had given her
supper in my bedroom. Only, on this occasion, with a sigh which
contained considerable self-reproach, I omitted Burgundy, or any
equivalent thereto. We had the wherewithal for brewing tea in our
rooms. And so, carrying a supper for us both, I returned to the
lodging. And there was Fanny on her knees before the hearth in the
sitting-room, just as she had been on that previous occasion. And now
she was crying. Her nerveless fingers held no brush. The hearth was
far from speckless, and the grate held only dead grey ashes, and some
scraps of torn paper--my own wasted manuscript.

Fanny was weeping, weakly and quietly. She knew, then. She had not
forgotten that I had seen her. But her hair had been brushed. She wore
a different gown. She looked shrinkingly and fearfully up at me as I
came in.

'You better, little woman?' I said as I began to put down my parcels.
I had tried hard to make the words sound careless and normal,
kindly and cheerful. But I thought as I heard them that a man with a
quinsy might have managed a better tone.

In another moment she was clinging to me somehow, without having risen
to her feet, and sobbing out an incoherent expression of her penitence
and shame. I was tremendously moved. And, while seeking to console
her, my real sympathy for this sobbing child was shot through and
illumined by the most fatuous sort of optimism.

'I've been making a tragedy out of a disagreeable mishap,' I told
myself. 'She is only a child who has made herself ill. The thing won't
happen again, one may be sure. This is a lesson she will never forget.
No one could possibly mistake the genuineness of all this.' By which I
meant her heaving shoulders, streaming eyes, and penitent
self-abasement.

In the process of soothing her, of course, I made light of her
self-confessed baseness. I suppose I spent at least half an hour in
comforting her. Then we supped, with a hint of April gaiety towards
the end. I endeavoured to be humorous in a lover-like way. Fanny
dabbed her eyes, smiled, and choked, and even laughed a little. But
the vows, protestations, resolves for the future--these were all most
solemn and impressive.

And they all held good, too,--for a week and a half. And then our
landlady gave me notice, because in the broad light of mid-afternoon
Fanny had stumbled over the front door-mat on entering the house, and
lain there, laughing and singing; she had refused to move, and had had
to be dragged upstairs for appearance's sake.

The landlady must have occupied ten minutes, I think, in giving me
notice. Almost, I could have struck the poor soul before she was
through with it. When at length she drew breath, and allowed me to
escape, I thought her Cockney dialect the basest and vilest ever
evolved among the tongues of mankind. Yet the good woman was really
very civil, and rather kindly disposed towards me than otherwise, I
think. There was no good reason why I should have felt bitter towards
her. Rather, perhaps, I should have been apologetic. And it was clean
contrary to my nature and disposition, this savage bitterness. But one
of the curses of squalor is that it exacerbates the mildest temper,
corrodes and embitters every one it touches.

On the third morning after our instalment in new lodgings--two almost
exactly similar rooms, a little farther away from Mrs. Pelly and
Howard Street, in a turning off the lower Hampstead Road--I received a
letter, forwarded on from our first lodging, from Arncliffe, the
editor to whom, some four years before this time, I had taken a letter
of introduction. At intervals Arncliffe had accepted and published
quite a number of articles from my pen, but we had not again met,
unless one counts the occasion upon which I followed him into an
expensive restaurant at luncheon time, on the off-chance of being
noticed by him. The letter ran thus:

'Dear Mr. Freydon,--As you are probably aware, I am now in the chair
of the _Advocate_, and a pretty uneasy seat I find it, so far. It
occurs to me that we might be able to do something for each other.
Will you give me a call here between three and four one afternoon this
week, if you are not too busy.--Yours sincerely,     Henry Arncliffe.'

The letter gave me rather a thrill. Sylvanus Creed had published two
books of mine, and my work had recently appeared in several of the
leading journals. But the _Advocate_ was certainly one of the oldest
and most famous of London's daily newspapers--I vaguely recalled
having read somewhere that it had changed its proprietors during the
past week or so--and I had never before received a summons from the
editor of such a journal. Fanny had a headache and was cross that
morning; but I told her of the letter, and explained that it might
easily mean some increase in my earnings.

'If he would commission me for a series of articles, we might afford
to take a room on the next floor for me to work in,' I said rather
selfishly perhaps.

'Groceries seem to be dearer every week,' said Fanny, 'and Mrs. Heaps
charges sevenpence for every scuttle of coal. I never heard of such a
price. Mother never charges more than sixpence, no matter if coal goes
up ever so.'

This touched a sore spot between us. It seemed Mrs. Pelly had two
rooms empty, and Fanny did not find it easy to forgive me for my
refusal to go and live in Howard Street.

If Arncliffe found his editorial chair an uneasy seat, it was not the
chair's fault. A more dignified and withal more ingeniously contrived
and padded resting-place for mortal limbs I never saw. And the
editorial apartment, how spacious, silent, and admirably adapted, in
the dignity of its lines and furnishings, for the reception of Cabinet
Ministers, and the excogitation of thunderbolts for the chancelleries
of Europe! It was currently reported in Fleet Street that Lord
Beaconsfield had been particularly familiar with the interior of that
apartment.

I found the great man in cheerful spirits, and looking fresher than
ordinary mortals, I suppose because his day had only just begun. From
him I learned how, some eight days previously, the _Advocate_ had been
purchased, lock, stock, and barrel (from the family whose members had
inherited possession of it), by Sir William Bartram, M.P., head of the
great engineering and contracting firm which bore his name. It seemed
Sir William had been advised by a very great statesman indeed to
secure the editorial services of Mr. Arncliffe; and he had managed to
do it in forty-eight hours by dint of the exercise of a certain amount
of political and social influence in various quarters, and by entering
into a contract which, for some years, at all events, would make
Arncliffe a tolerably rich man.

A good deal was left to my imagination, of course. It was assumed,
very kindly, that I understood the relations existing between this
nobleman and the other, as touching Sir William's precise influence
and sphere in the world of politics. Naturally, when the Party Whip
heard so and so, he went to Mr. ----, and the result, of course, was
pressure from Lord ----, which settled the matter in five minutes. I
nodded very intelligently at intervals, to show my recognition of the
inevitableness of it all; and so an end was reached of that stage in
our conversation.

In the slight pause which followed Arncliffe touched a spring
releasing the door of a cabinet apparently designed to hold State
Papers of the highest importance, and disclosed some beautiful boxes
of cigars and other creature comforts. It became clear to me, as I
thanked Arncliffe for the match he handed me, that he must have
forgotten the first impressions he had formed of me some years
earlier. Perhaps he had confused me in his mind with some other more
important and affluent person. And yet he did remember some of my
articles. His remarks proved that. I wondered if he could also
remember that they had reached him, some of them, from South
Tottenham. Probably not. And, if he did, his editorial omniscience
could hardly have given him knowledge of any of my slum garrets. On
the other hand, he clearly assumed that I was familiar with the life
of the House of Commons and the clubs of London, if not with that of
the other august and crimson-benched Chamber.

'You know L----,' he said, casually mentioning a leader in literary
journalism so prominent that I could not but be familiar with his
reputation.

'By name, of course,' I agreed.

'Ah! To be sure. And T----, and R----, and, I think, J----; yes, I've
got 'em all. So we ought to make the _Advocate_ move things along, if
the most brilliant staff in London can accomplish it.'

I nodded sympathetically, and presently gathered that over and above
all this the kindly and intimate relations subsisting between
Arncliffe and the principal occupants of the Treasury Bench (not to
mention a certain moiety of influence which might conceivably be
exercised by the new proprietor, Sir William) were such as to ensure
brilliant success and greatly increased prestige to the _Advocate_,
under the new regime.

All this was very pleasant hearing, of course, and at suitable
intervals I offered congratulatory movements of the head and eyebrows,
with murmured ejaculations to similar effect. But, as touching myself
and my obscure problems (of which such an Olympian as Arncliffe could,
naturally, have no conception), it was all somewhat insubstantial and
remote; rather of the stuff of which dreams are compounded. And so,
watching my opportunity, I presently ventured a tentative inquiry as
to the direction in which I might hope to justify the terms of Mr.
Arncliffe's letter, and be of any service.

'Oh! Well, of course, that's for you to say,' said the editor, with a
suggestion of having been suddenly curbed in full career. 'I may be
quite wrong in supposing such things would have any interest for you.
But I--I have followed--er--your work, you know; followed your work
and, in fact, it struck me you might like to join us here, you know.
It is a staff worth joining, I think, and-- But, of course, you are the
best judge of your own affairs.'

'It's extremely kind of you, extremely kind.'

'Not at all. I think you could do good work for the _Advocate_.'

'There's nothing I'd like better. But-- Do I understand that you mean
me to join your permanent staff, and come and work here in the
building every day?'

'Why, yes; yes, to be sure.'

'I see.'

It meant an end to my free-lancing then. But, after all, what had this
free-lancing meant, since my marriage? It would provide a place to
work in. The hours might not be excessive. The pay ... Fanny was for
ever talking of the increase in prices. My earnings, though on the up
grade, had seemed very insufficient of late. There certainly was
nothing to make me cling to our home as a place in which to carry on
my work.

'And in the matter of salary?' I said, as who should say that in such
a business it is well to glance at even the most trivial of details.

'Ah!' replied Arncliffe. 'Yes; that's a point now, isn't it? You see
the fact is I had a bit of a scene with the business side here
yesterday. We are new to each other as yet, you know--the manager and
myself. But he's a very decent fellow, and I shall soon have him
properly in hand, I'm sure of that. Meantime, of course, I have been
rather going it, you know, from his point of view. You can't get
L----, and T----, and R----, for tuppence-ha'penny, you know.'

'No, indeed, that's true,' said I, with the air of one who had tried
this game and proved its impossibility.

'No. And so, in the matter of pay I must go gently, you know, at
first. I must ca' canny for a while. I shall be able to make things
all right a little later on, you know, but just to begin with I'm
afraid I couldn't manage more than three or four hundred a year.'

I did not think it necessary to mention that my London record so far
was little more than half the lower sum mentioned. On the contrary, I
pinched my chin and said: 'Oh!' rather blankly, and without really
knowing what I said, or why I said it. I wanted to think, as a matter
of fact. But what I said was well enough.

'H'm! Yes, I see what you mean. It is poor, I know,' said Arncliffe,
in his quick, burbling way. 'But, as I say, I should hope to improve
it a little later on, you know. And, meantime, you may probably
continue to earn something outside, you know; so that two or three
hundred--say three hundred--but of course you're the best judge.'

Perhaps I was. I wonder! At all events, my mind was made up. The life
of the last few months had made it clear that I needed more money.

'Oh, I'll be very glad,' I said. 'By the way, you did mention at first
three or four, not two or three hundred.'

'Did I? Ah! Well, say three to begin with.'

I gathered it was rather difficult for the real Olympian to think at
all in figures so absurdly low. So we let it go at that, and, this
being a Friday, I agreed to start work at the office on the following
Monday.

'I shall be able to get a room here, shall I not?' I asked with some
anxiety.

'A room? Oh, surely, surely. Yes, yes, that's all right. Ask for me.
Come and see me before doing anything, and I'll see to it. So glad
we've fixed it. Good-bye!'

And so, very affably, I was bowed out of my free-lance life, the which
I had entered by way of the north-eastern slums.


XII


My first Monday in the _Advocate_ office was not a pleasant day.
Arriving there about ten o'clock in the morning, I learned that the
editor was never expected before three in the afternoon. I knew no
other person in the building, and so no place was open to me except
the waiting-room. However, I whiled away the morning in that apartment
by making a pretty thorough study of a file of the _Advocate_, in the
course of which I took notes and made memoranda of suggestions which
would have kept an editor busy for a week or two had he acted upon one
half of them.

The time thus spent was far from wasted, since it gave me more of an
insight into current politics (as reflected in the pages of this
particular organ) than I had obtained during my whole life in England
up till then, and it gave me a thorough grasp of the policy of the
_Advocate_. After a somewhat Barmecidal feast in a Fleet Street
eating-house (domestic expenditure left me very short of funds at this
time), I returned to my post and wrote a political leading article
which I ventured to think at least the equal in persuasive force and
profundity of anything I had read that morning. At three o'clock
precisely, my name, written on a slip of paper, was placed on the
editorial table. There were then nine other people in the waiting-room.
At four I began a second leading article, which was finished at
half-past five. At a quarter to six the manuscript of both effusions
was sent in to the editor. At a quarter to seven inquiry elicited the
information that the editor had left the building almost an hour
since, with Sir William Bartram, after a crowded afternoon which had
brought disappointment to many beside myself who had wished to see
him.

Unused as I was now to salary earning I felt uneasy. It seemed to me
rather dreadful that any institution should be mulcted to the extent
of a guinea in the day, by way of payment to a man who spent that day
in a waiting-room. I looked anxiously for my leading articles next
morning. But, no; the editorial space was occupied by other (much less
edifying) contributions upon topics which had not occurred to me.
During that morning I began to fancy that the very bell-boys were
suspicious, and might be contemplating the desirability of laying a
complaint against me for not earning my princely salary.

However, at a few minutes after three o'clock, I was escorted by the
head messenger--who had rather the air of a seneschal or chamberlain--to
the editorial apartment, where I found Arncliffe giving audience to
his news editor, Mr. Pink, and one of his leader-writers, a very old
_Advocate_ identity, Mr. Samuel Harbottle---a white-whiskered and
rubicund gentleman, who was entitled to use most of the letters of the
alphabet after his name should he so choose. I was presented to both
these gentlemen, and in a few minutes they took their departure.

'Poor old Harbottle!' said Arncliffe, when the door had closed behind
the leader-writer. 'An able man, mind you, in his prehistoric way;
but-- Well, he can hardly expect to live our pace, you know. He has
had a very fair innings. Still, we must move gradually. The change has
to be made, but we don't want to upset these patriarchs more than is
absolutely necessary. Have a cigar? Sure? Well, I dare say you're
right. I'll have a cigarette. Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday. Now
I'll tell you what I want you to tackle for me, first of all:
Correspondence.'

For a moment I had a vision of almost forgotten days in Sussex Street,
Sydney: 'Dear Mr. Gubbins,--With regard to your last consignment of
butter,' etc.

'The correspondence of this paper has been disgracefully neglected.
And, mind you, that's a serious mistake. Nothing people like better
than seeing their names in the paper. They make their relatives read
it, and for each time you print their rubbish, they'll be content to
scan your every column for a fortnight. I mean to do it properly.
We'll give two or three columns a day to our Letters to the Editor.
But, the point is, they must be handled intelligently, both with
regard to which letters should be used and which should not; and also
in the matter of condensation. We can't let 'em ramble indefinitely,
or they'd fill the paper. Now that's what I want you to tackle for me
for a start. I can't possibly get time to wade through them myself;
but if you once get the thing licked into proper shape, it will make a
good permanent feature, and--er--you will gradually drop into other
things, you know.'

'Yes. I've made notes of a few suggestions,' I began.

'Quite so. That's what I want. That's where I hope we shall be really
successful. There's no good in having a brilliant editorial staff if
one doesn't get suggestions from them, and act on 'em.'

I drew some memoranda from my pocket. But the editor swept on.

'I'm a thorough believer in suggestions. The moment I have got things
running a little more smoothly, I shall have a round table conference
every afternoon to deal with suggestions for the day. Meantime, I'll
tell my secretary to have all letters for publication passed straight
on to you, so that you can sift and prepare a correspondence feature
every day. They may want helping out a bit occasionally, of course. A
friendly lead, you know, from "An Old Reader," or "Paterfamilias," to
keep 'em to their muttons. You'll see.'

'And where can I work?' I asked.

'Ah, to be sure. Yes. You want a room. Come with me now. I'll
introduce you to Hutchens, the manager, and he'll fix you up.'

Mr. Hutchens proved to be a miracle of correctness. I never knew much
of Lombard Street, Cornhill, Threadneedle Street, and their purlieus;
but I felt instinctively that Mr. Hutchens, in his dress, tone, and
general deportment, had attained as closely as mortal might to the
highest city standards of what a leading city man should be. I never
saw a speck of dust on his immaculately shining boots or hat. His
manner would have been almost priceless, I should suppose, in the
board room of a bank. His close-clipped whiskers--resembling some
costly fur--his large, perfectly white hands and frozen facial
expression were alike eloquent of massive dividends, of balance sheets
of sacred propriety, of gravely cordial votes of thanks to noble
chairmen, of gilt-edged security and success.

There was something, too, of the headmaster in the way in which he
shook hands with me, and in the automatic geniality of the smile with
which he favoured Arncliffe. (In this connection, of course, Arncliffe
was a parent, and I a future incumbent of the swishing block.)

'Another star in our costly galaxy,' he said; and, having reduced me
by one glance to the proportions of a performing flea, rather poorly
trained, he gave his attention indulgently to the editor.

'With regard to that question of the extra twenty minutes for the last
forme,' he began.

'Yes, I know,' said Arncliffe. 'Drop in and see me about it later,
will you?' (I marvelled at his temerity. As soon would I have thought
of inviting the Lord Mayor to forsake his Mansion House and turtles to
'drop in and see me later!') 'Meantime, I want you to find a home for
Freydon, will you? He's going to tackle the--a new feature, you know,
and must have a room.'

'There's not a vacant room in the building, Mr. Arncliffe--hardly a
chair, I should suppose. We now have a staff, you know, which----'

'Yes, I know, I know; there's got to be a good deal of sifting, but we
must go gently. We don't want to set Fleet Street humming. Look here!
What about old Harbottle? He has a room, hasn't he?'

'Mr. Harbottle has had his room here, Mr. Arncliffe, for just upon
twenty-seven years.'

'Yes; I thought so. Where is it?'

'Mr. Harbottle's room is immediately overhead.'

'Let's have a look at it. Do you mind? Can you spare a minute?'

'Oh, I am quite at your service, of course, Mr. Arncliffe.'

A minion from the messenger's office walked processionally before us
bearing a key, and presently we were in Mr. Harbottle's sanctuary. Two
well-worn saddle-bag chairs stood before the hearth, and between them
a chastely designed little table. On the rug was a pair of roomy
slippers. In a glass-fronted cabinet one saw decanters and tumblers.
Against one wall stood a large and comfortable couch. The writing-table
was supplied with virgin blotting-paper, new pens, works of
reference, ash-tray, matches, and the like; and over the mantel hung a
full-length portrait of Lord Beaconsfield. There was also an
ivory-handled copper kettle, and a patent coffee-making apparatus.

'H'm! The old boy makes himself comfortable,' said Arncliffe. 'He has
written one short leader note since--since the change. And where does
the other old gentleman work, Hutchens? The one with gout, you know.
What's his name? The very old chap, I mean.'

'Dr. Powell? Dr. Powell's room is the next one to this.'

A key was brought to us, and we inspected another very similar
apartment, which had a green baize-covered leg-rest on its hearth-rug.

'H'm! Dr. Powell is not quite so busy, of course. We haven't had a
line from him yet. Well, Hutchens, you might have Dr. Powell's things
put in Mr. Harbottle's room at once, will you? or the other way about,
you know. It doesn't matter which. Then Freydon here can have one of
these rooms. He will want to start in at once.'

'As you like, of course, Mr. Arncliffe,' said the manager, with
portentous suavity. 'These gentlemen are of your staff, not mine. But,
really! Well, it is for you to say, but I greatly fear that one or
both of these gentlemen will be quite likely to resign if we treat
them in so very summary a fashion.'

'No! Do you really think that?' asked Arncliffe, so earnestly that I
felt my chance of having a room to myself was irretrievably lost.

'I do indeed, Mr. Arncliffe. You see, these gentlemen have been
accustomed for very many years to--well, to a considerable amount of
deference, and----'

'Well, then, in that case, I'll tell you what, Hutchens; put 'em both
in the other old gentleman's room upstairs, will you? Mr. Thingummy's,
you know, who specialises on Egyptology. I know he's got a nice room,
because he insisted on my drinking a glass of port there the other
night. Port always upsets me. Put 'em both in there, will you? Then
we'll give one of these rooms to L----, and you might let Freydon here
start work in the other right away, will you? By Jove! If you're only
right, you know, that will simplify matters immensely. An excellent
idea of yours, Hutchens. I'm no end obliged to you.'

'But, Mr. Arncliffe, I really----'

'Right you are! I'll see you later about that last forme question.
Look in in about an hour, will you? I must bolt now--half a dozen
people waiting. You'll get the letters from my secretary, Freydon,
won't you? Come and see me whenever you've got any suggestions. Always
ready for suggestions, any time!'

His last words reached us faintly from the staircase.

'Tut, tut!' said Mr. Hutchens. 'I am afraid these violent upheavals
will make for a good deal of trouble; a good deal of trouble.
However!' And then he glared formidably upon me, as who should say:
'At least, _you_ cannot give me any orders. Let me see you open your
mouth, you confounded newcomer, and I will smite you to the earth with
a managerial thunderbolt!'

'Well,' said I cheerfully, 'I'd better go and fetch those letters. And
which of these rooms would you prefer me to take?'

'I would prefer, sir, that you took neither of them. But as Dr.
Powell's gout is very bad, and he is therefore not likely to be here
this week, you had better occupy this room--for the present.'

The emphasis he laid on these last words seemed meant to convey to me
a sense of the extreme precariousness of my tenure of any room in that
building, if not of existence in the same city.

'I trust you understand that this choice of rooms is no affair of
mine,' I said.

I thought his frozen expression showed a hint of softening at this,
but he only said as he swept processionally away:

'I will give the requisite instructions.'


XIII


For some weeks I was rather interested by the manipulation of that
correspondence. Treated in a romantic spirit, the work was not unlike
novel or play-writing; and, on paper, I established interesting
relations with quite a number of rural clergymen, country squires,
London clubmen, a don or two, and some lady correspondents.

I availed myself generously of the hint about giving an occasional
lead, and in starting new topics of discussion entered with zest into
the task of creating and upholding imaginary partisans with one hand,
whilst with the other hand bringing forth caustic opponents to vilify
and belittle them. As a fact, I believe I made its correspondence the
most amusing and interesting feature in the paper. But, as his way
was, Arncliffe lost his enthusiasm for it after a time, and,
delegating the care of its remains to some underling, spurred me on to
fresh fields of journalistic enterprise.

It was not easy for me to develop quite the same interest in these
later undertakings, whatever their intrinsic qualities, for the reason
that my domestic circumstances were becoming steadily more and more of
a preoccupation and an anxiety. It had not taken very long for me to
learn that, in my case at all events, the fact of one's income being
doubled does not necessarily mean that one's life is made smooth and
easy upon its domestic side. By virtue of my increased earnings we had
moved, after my first month as a salaried man, to rather better rooms;
but there seemed no point in having more than two of them, since I now
had a room of my own at the _Advocate_ office, _vice_ poor Dr. Powell
and his leg-rest, now no longer to be met with in that building.

As time went on many unpleasant things became evident, among them the
conclusion that ours, Fanny's and mine, was to be a nomadic sort of
existence, though it was apparently never to fall to me to give notice
of an intended change of residence. The notice invariably came from
our landladies. And the better the lodging, the briefer our stay in
it, because our notice came the sooner. In view of this it was, more
than for any monetary reason--though, as a fact, it did seem to me
that I was rather more short of money now than in my poorer days--that
we took to living in shabby quarters, and in the frowzier types of
apartment houses, where few questions are asked, and no particular
etiquette is observed....

So I set these things down as though looking back across the years
upon the affairs of some unfortunate stranger on the world's far side.
But, Heaven knows, this is not because I have forgotten, or shall ever
forget, any of the squalid misery, the crushing, all-befouling
humiliation and wretchedness of those years. Just as one part of the
period burnt its mark into me for ever by means of its effects upon my
bodily health, just as surely as it burned its way through my poor
wife's constitution; so indelibly did every phase of it imprint itself
upon my brain, and permanently colour my outlook upon life.

Men, and even women, who have never come into personal contact with
the pestilence that infected my married life, are able to speak
lightly enough of it.

'Bit too fond of his glass, I'm told!'

'His wife is a bit peculiar, you know. Yes, he has to keep the
decanters under lock and key, I believe.'

Remarks of that sort, often semi-jocular, are common enough. The
pastry-cooks and the grocers know a lot about the feminine side of
this tragedy, at which so many folk smile. But those who, from
personal experience, know the thing, would more likely smile in the
face of Death himself, or joke about leprosy and famine.

I had seen something of the working of the curse among London's very
poor people. Now, I learned much more than I had ever known. At first
I thought it terrible when, once in a month or so, Fanny became
helpless and incapable from drinking gin. I came eventually to know
what it meant to see ground for thankfulness, if not for hope, in a
period of forty-eight consecutive hours of sobriety for my wife.

The practical difficulties in these cases are very great for people as
comparatively poor as we were. They are intolerably acute in the
households of workmen earning from one to two pounds a week. In such
families the presence of children--and there generally are children--is
an added horror, which sometimes leads to the most gruesome kind of
murder; murder for which some poor, unhinged, broken-hearted devil of
a man is hanged, and so at last flung out of his misery.

I never gave Fanny any money now if I could possibly avoid it.
Accordingly, I discovered one day, when I had occasion to look for my
dress clothes, that, having sold practically every garment of her own,
my wife had cleared out the major portion of my small wardrobe.

But a far worse thing happened shortly afterwards, when my wife pawned
some plated oddments belonging to our landlady. This episode kept me
on the rack for a full week. Replacing the stolen articles was,
fortunately, not difficult; but the landlady was. She was bent upon
prosecution, and our escape was an excruciatingly narrow one. I had a
four days' 'holiday' over this episode, during which my editor was
allowed to picture me in cheerful recuperation up-river--one of a
merry boating party.

After this I made inquiries about trained nurses, and gathered that
they were quite beyond my means; not alone in the matter of the scale
of remuneration they required, but, even more markedly, in the scale
of household comfort which their employment necessitated. I talked the
matter over very seriously with Fanny, and begged her to try the
effect of three months in a curative institution of which I had
obtained particulars. At first she was very bitter and angry in her
refusal to discuss this. Then she wept, sobbed, and became hysterical
in imploring me never to think of such a thing for her. But the
extremely difficult and harrowing escape from police court proceedings
had impressed me very deeply.

As soon as we could get together the bare necessities by way of
furnishings, I insisted on our moving into unfurnished rooms in which
we could cater for ourselves. But the result was not merely that there
was never a meal prepared for me, but also that Fanny never had a
proper meal. I engaged servants. They either gave notice after a week,
or worse, much worse, my wife made boon companions of them. We moved
again, this time into unfurnished rooms in a house whose landlady
undertook to serve meals to us at stated hours. But the house was too
respectable for us, and in a month we were given notice.

No, it was not easy to develop any very warm interest in Mr.
Arncliffe's projects for the stimulation of the _Advocate's_
circulation. But I occupied Dr. Powell's old room during most days,
and did my best; and, rather to my surprise, when I quite casually
said I was not able to afford some luxury or another--lawn tennis, I
believe it was, recommended by my chief as a remedy for my fagged and
unhealthy appearance--I was given an increase of salary to the extent
of an additional fifty pounds a year. I expressed my thanks, and
Arncliffe said:

'Not at all, not at all. I'm only too glad. Your work's first rate,
and I much appreciate your suggestions. I don't want you to work less;
but, in all seriousness, my dear fellow, you should take it easier. Do
just as much work, but don't worry so much about it. Carry your
whatsaname more lightly, you know. Believe me, that's the thing.'

I agreed of course, and went home to give Fanny the news of the
increased salary. I found her helpless and comatose on the hearth-rug.

I had talked to doctors, and gleaned little or nothing therefrom. Now
I tried a lawyer, with a view to finding out the legal aspect of my
position. Was it possible to oblige my wife to enter a curative
institution against her will? Certainly not, save by a magistrate's
order, and as the result of repeated appearances in the dock at police
courts.

The lawyer told me that our 'man-made' laws were pretty hard upon
husbands in such cases as mine. They offered no relief or assistance
whatever, he said; though in the case of a persistently drunken
husband, the law was fortunately able to do a good deal for the wife.
'But nothing at all when it's the other way round,' he added; 'a fact
which leads to much misery, and not a little crime, among the poorer
classes. I'm very sorry for you,' he added; 'but to be frank, I must
say that the law will not help you one atom; neither will it offer you
any kind of redress if your wife sells up your home once a week.
Neither may you legally put her out from your home because of that.
Under our law a wife may claim and hold her husband's company until
she drives him into the bankruptcy court, or the lunatic asylum--or
his grave. It is worse than senseless, but it is the law; and if your
business prevents you keeping watch and ward over your wife yourself,
the only course is to employ some relative, or a professed caretaker,
to do it for you. The law shows a little more common sense where the
case is the other way round. A wife can always get a separation order
to relieve her of the presence of a persistently drunken husband; and,
with it, an order for her maintenance, which he must obey or go to
prison.'

So I did not get very much for my six-and-eightpence, beyond an
explicit confirmation of the impression already pretty firmly rooted
in my mind, that the most burdensome portion of my particular load in
life was something which nobody could help me to carry.

By this time Fanny had lost the sense of shame and humiliation which
had characterised all her early recoveries, and informed all her good
resolutions and frantic promises of amendment. She made no resolutions
now, and in place of shame, poor soul, was conscious only of the
physical penalties which her excesses brought in their train. These
made her very sullen, and, at the same time, very irritable. There
were times, as I well knew, when she had no other means of obtaining
drink, but yet did obtain it, from that misguided woman--her mother,
whose craving she inherited, without a tithe of the brute strength
which apparently enabled the older woman to defy all consequences.

I do not think it necessary to set down here precisely the miserable
ways in which I saw her habits gradually sap all self-restraint and
womanly decency from my wife. The process was gradual, pitilessly
inexorable as the growth of a malignant tumour, and a ghastly and
humiliating thing to witness. In the case of a woman, my impression is
that alcoholism reacts even more directly upon character, and the
mental and nervous system, than it does in men. Their fall is more
complete. At least, for a man it is more horrible to witness than any
degradation of another man.


XIV


In these days it was my habit each evening to make  my way as directly
as might be from the _Advocate_ office to our home of the moment.
There was, of course, always a certain measure of uncertainty in my
mind as to what might await me in our rooms; and there were many
occasions when my presence there as early as possible was highly
desirable. It was my dismal task upon more than two or three occasions
to visit police stations, and enter into bail to save my wife from
spending a night in the cells.

Naturally, in view of all these circumstances, I remained as much a
hermit as though living in Livorno Bay, so far as the social life of
my colleagues and of London generally was concerned. During all this
time social intercourse was for me confined to Fanny (who became
steadily less social in her habits and inclinations) and to occasional
meetings with Sidney Heron. Once and again a man at the office would
ask me to dine with him (regarding me as a bachelor, of course), and
always I felt bound to plead a prior engagement. One night, when Fanny
had gone early to bed, feeling wretchedly ill, and sullenly angry
because I would have no liquor of any sort on the premises, not even
the lager beer which it had been my own habit for some time past to
drink with meals, Heron sat with me in our living-room, smoking and
staring into the fire. It was late, and something had moved Heron to
stir me into giving him the outline of my early life and Australian
experiences.

'Yes, you're a queer bird,' he opined, after a long silence. 'And your
life confirms my old conviction that, broadly speaking, there are only
two kinds of human beings: those who prey--with an "e," and rarely
with an "a"--and those who are preyed upon: parasites and their hosts.
There are doubtless subdivisions in infinite variety; but I have yet
to meet the man or woman who, in essence, is not parasite or host, the
preyer or the preyed upon.'

'And I----'

'Oh, clearly, and all along the line, you're the host. Mind, I waste
no great sympathy upon you. It is quite an open point which class is
the less deserving or the better off. But in your case it is, perhaps,
rather a pity, because upon the whole I doubt if your fibre is tough
enough to sustain the part. On the other hand, you haven't half
enough--well--suction for a successful parasite; and those between are
apt to get ground up rather small. My advice to you-- But, Lord, is
there any greater folly in all this foolish world than the giving of
advice?'

'Never mind. Let's have it.'

'No, I'll not give advice. But I will state what I believe to be a
fact; and that is that you would be the better for it if you were
sedulously to cultivate a self-regarding policy of _laissez-faire_. It
may be as rotten as you please as a national policy. Our own beloved
countrymen are even now, I think, preparing for the world a most
convincing demonstration of that. But for certain individuals--you
among 'em--it has many points, and, pursued with discretion, is likely
to prove highly beneficial.'

'Ah! The let-be policy?'

Heron nodded. 'Of all creeds,' he said, 'perhaps the one that calls
for the most rigid self-control--for a certain type of man, the type
that most needs its use.'

I had lowered my voice involuntarily, though I knew that Fanny had
long since been sleeping heavily. 'Do you realise what it would mean
in my particular case, on the domestic side?' I asked.

'Well, yes; I think so.'

'Hardly, my friend. It would mean relinquishing the care of my wife to
the police.' There were no secrets between us in this matter.

'Yes, something rather like that, I suppose,' said Heron. 'And don't
you think upon the whole they may be rather better equipped for the
task?'

'My dear Heron!'

'Oh, of course, that tone's unanswerable. But lay aside the
sentimental aspect, and consider the practical logic of it. You might
as well see where you really stand, you know. It won't affect your
actions, really. You belong to the wrong division of the race. But
what are you doing to remedy your wife's case?'

I admitted I was doing nothing. I had tried in many directions,
including the clandestine administration of costly specifics, which
had merely seemed to rob poor Fanny of all appetite for food, without
in any way affecting the lamentable craving which wrecked her life.

'Precisely,' resumed Heron. 'You are doing nothing to remedy it,
because there is nothing you are in a position to do. You are merely
"standing by," as sailors say, from sentimental motives. It is
_laissez-faire_, of a sort; only, it's an infernally painful and
wearing sort for you. It reduces your life to something like her own,
without, so far as I can see, benefiting her in the least. I think the
police could do as well. In fact, in your place, I should clear out
altogether, and give Mrs. Pelly a show. But, failing that, I would at
least wash my hands, so to say. I would refuse the situation any
predominant place in my mind, join a club and use it, and-- O Lord!
what is the use of talking of absolutely hopeless things? I don't know
that I'd do anything of the sort, and I do know very well that you
won't.'

There fell another silence between us, which lasted several minutes.
And then Heron rose to his feet, knocked the ashes out of his pipe,
and said he must be going. I walked down the road with him, and paused
at its corner, where he would pick up an omnibus. The moon emerged
from behind a cloud, touching with a delicate sepia some fleecy edge
of cumuli.

'Has it ever occurred to you, my innocent, that there is anything in
England beyond the metropolitan radius?' asked Heron suddenly.
'Honest, now; have you ever been ten miles from Charing Cross since
you landed from that blessed ship?'

'Well, it does seem queer, now you mention it; but I don't believe I
have-- Except to Epping Forest, you know. I'm not sure how far that
is; but I used often to go there at one time, not lately, but----'

'Before you mortgaged your soul to the _Advocate_, eh? Though I
suppose the more serious mortgage was the one before that. Look here!
Bring your wife on Saturday, and meet me at Victoria at ten o'clock.
We'll go and have a look at Leith Hill. A tramp will do you both good.
Will you come?'

By doing a certain amount of work there on Sunday, I could always
absent myself from office on a Saturday. So I agreed to go. On the
Friday Fanny seemed unusually calm and well. I was quite excited over
the prospect of our little jaunt, and Fanny herself appeared to think
cheerfully and kindly of it. In the lodging we occupied at that time I
had a tiny bedroom of my own. I woke very early on the Saturday
morning, but when I found it was barely five o'clock turned over for
another doze. When next I woke it was to find, greatly to my
annoyance, that the hour was half-past eight; and there were several
little things I wanted to have done before starting for Victoria. I
hurried into our sitting-room before dressing, meaning to rouse Fanny,
whose room opened from it. But she was not in her bedroom, and
returning to the other room I found a note on the table.

'I am not feeling well,' the note said, 'and cannot come with you to-day.
So I shall spend the day with mother, and be back here about tea-time.'

For a moment I thought of hurrying round to Mrs. Pelly's, and seeing
if I could prevail on Fanny to change her mind. But I hated going to
that house, and, of late, I had had some experience of the futility of
trying to influence Fanny in any way during these sullen morning
hours, when she was very often possessed by a sort of lethargy, any
interference with which provoked only excessive irritation.

It was most disappointing. But-- 'Very well, then,' I muttered to
myself, 'she must stay with her mother. I can't leave Heron waiting at
Victoria.'

So I dressed and proceeded direct to the station, relying upon having
a few minutes to spare there during which to break my fast in the
refreshment-room.

Heron nodded rather grimly over my explanation of Fanny's absence, and
we were both pretty silent during the journey to Dorking. But once out
in the open, and tramping along a country road, we breathed deeper of
an air clean enough to dispel town-bred languors. I felt my spirits
rise, and we began to talk. The day was admirable, beginning with
light mists, and ripening, by the time we began our tramp, into that
mellow splendour which October does at times vouchsafe, especially in
the gloriously wooded country which lies about Leith Hill.

The foliage, the occasional scent of burning wood--always a talisman
for one who has slept in the open--glimpses of new-fallowed fields of
an exquisite rose-madder hue, bracken and heather underfoot, and
overhead blue sky sweetly diversified by snowy piles of cloud--these
and a thousand other natural delights combined to enlarge one's heart,
ease one's mind, and arouse one's dormant instinct to live, to laugh,
and to enjoy. Worries rolled back from me. I responded jovially to
Heron's grim quips, and felt more heartily alive than I had felt for
years.

Having walked swingingly for four or five hours we sat down in a
pleasant inn to a nondescript meal, at something like the
eighteenth-century dining hour; consuming large quantities of cold boiled
beef, salad, cheese, home-baked bread, and brown ale. (I had learned now
to drink beer, on such occasions as this, at all events; and did it with
a childish sense of holiday 'swagger.' Its associations with rural
life pleased me. But in the town I was annoyed to find that even half
a glass of it was apt to make my head ache villainously.) We sat and
smoked, talking lazily in the twilight; missed one train, and walked
leisurely to the next station to catch a later one.

The approach to London rather chilled and saddened me by the sharp
demand it seemed to make for the laying aside of calm reflection or
cheerful conversation, and the taking up of stern realities, practical
considerations--the hard, concrete facts of daily life. The outlines
of the huddled houses, the moving lights of thronged streets, the
Town-- It seemed to grip me by the shoulder.

'Come! Wake up from your fancies. Been laughing, joking, chatting,
drawing deep breaths, have you? Ah, well, here am I. You know me. Hear
the ring of the hurrying horses' feet on my hard ways? See the anxious
ferret faces of my workers? I am Reality. I am your master, and the
world's master. You may escape me for a day, and dream you are a free
man in the open. Grrrr!--' The train jars to a standstill. 'That may
be well enough for a dream; but I am Reality. Come! There's no time
here for reflection. Pick up your load. Get on; get on; or I'll smash
you down in my gutters, where my human wastage lies!'

That is how cities have always spoken to me as I have entered them
from the country. And yet--and yet, most of my life has been spent
within their confines. Long imprisonment makes men fear liberty, they
say. But how could a man fear the kindly country and its liberty for
reflection? And, attaining to it, how could he possibly desire return
to the noisy, crowded cells of the city? Impossible, surely, unless of
course the city offered him a living, his life; and the country--calm
and beautiful--refused it. And that perhaps is rather often the
position, for your sedentary man, at all events; your modern, who
cannot dig and is ashamed to beg--a numerous and ever increasing body.

Big Ben struck the hour of eight as we trundled past into Whitehall on
the top of an omnibus. I thought of Fanny with some self-reproach. She
would have reached the lodgings by about five, and our evening meal
hour was seven. I hoped she had not waited without her meal. I left
Heron on the 'bus, for he had farther than I to go, and hurried along
to No. 46 Kent Street--the dingy house in which we had been living now
for a month or more.

Fanny was not there, and, to my surprise, the landlady told me she had
not been in all day, save for five minutes in the early afternoon,
after which she went out carrying a parcel. I went to my bedroom for
an overcoat, as the night was chilly. I possessed two of these
garments at the time--one rather heavy and warm, the other a light
coat. Both were missing from their accustomed pegs.

'Tcha! Now what does this mean?' I growled to myself; knowing quite
well what it meant. 'And I take holidays in the country! I might have
known better.'

And with that--all the brightness of the day forgotten now--I hurried
out, bound for Howard Street and Mrs. Pelly's house.

But Mrs. Pelly had no idea as to her daughter's whereabouts. It seemed
Fanny had left her before three o'clock, intending to go home.

Then began a search of the kind which had become only too familiar
with me of late. I suppose I must have entered upon scores of such
dismal quests since my marriage. First, I visited some twenty or
thirty different 'gin-mills.' (In one of them I stayed a few minutes
to eat a piece of bread and cheese.) Then I went to two police
stations, at the two opposite ends of that locality. Finally, I
tramped back to Kent Street, thinking to find Fanny there, and
picturing in advance the condition in which I should find her. The
most I ventured to hope was that she had been able to reach her room
without assistance. But she had not been there at all.

I went out again into the street, somewhat at a loss. It was now past
ten o'clock. After some hesitation I caught a passing omnibus and
journeyed back towards Howard Street, near which stood a third police
station, which I had not before visited.

'Wait there a minute, will you?' said the officer to whom my inquiry
here was addressed. A moment later I heard his voice from an adjacent
corridor; 'Has the doctor gone?' it asked. I did not hear the answer.
But a minute or two later a tall man in a frock coat entered the room
and walked up to me. I could see the top of a stethoscope protruding
from one of his inner breast-coat pockets.

'Name of Freydon?' he said tersely.

'Yes.'

'Ah! Will you step this way, please, to my room?'

And, as we passed into an inner room, he wheeled upon me with a look
of grave sympathy in his eyes. 'I have serious news for you, Mr.
Freydon; if--if it is your wife who is here.'

Then I knew. Something in the doctor's grave eyes and meaning voice
told me. It was not really necessary for me to ask. I knew quite
certainly, and had no wish, no intention to say anything. My
subconscious self apparently was bent upon explicitness. For, next
moment, I heard my own voice, some little distance from me, saying, in
quite a low tone:

'My God! My God! My God!' And then: 'You don't mean that she is dead?'

But I knew all the time.

Then I heard the doctor speaking. His body was close to me, but his
voice, like my own, came from some distance away.

'A woman was brought here by a constable this afternoon ...
helpless ... intoxication.... Did your wife ... is she addicted to
drink?' I may have nodded. 'There was a pawnticket in the name of
Freydon.... She passed away less than an hour ago.... The condition ...
heart undoubtedly accelerated ... alcoholism ... a very short time, in
any case.... Medically, an inquest would be quite unnecessary, but....
Will you come with me, and ...'

From a long way off now these phrases trickled into my consciousness,
the sense of them somewhat blurred and interrupted by a continuous
buzzing noise in my head. We walked along dead white passages, and
down steps. We stopped at length where a man in uniform stood at a
door, which he opened for us at a sign from the doctor. Inside, a
woman was bending over a low pallet, and on the little bed was my wife
Fanny. A greyish sheet was drawn over her body to the chin. I think it
was so drawn up as we entered the room. I stared down upon Fanny's
calm, white face, in which there was now a refinement, a pathetic
dignity, a something delicate and womanly which I had not seen there
before; not even in the early days, when gentle prettiness had been
its quality.

The thought that flashed through my mind as I stood there was not the
sort of thought that would be associated with such a scene. The
buzzing noise was still going on in my head, but yet I was conscious
of a vast silence all about me; and looking down upon my wife's face,
I thought:

'Death has certainly been courteous, considerate, to poor Fanny.'




MANHOOD--ENGLAND: SECOND PERIOD


I


My wife was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, a populous London city of
the dead. And that afternoon I resigned my position on the staff of
the _Advocate_.

I do not think that even at the time I had any definite reason for
this step, and I do not know of any now. I remember Arncliffe
remonstrated very kindly with me, spoke of plans he had in view for
me, about which he was unable to enter into detail just then, and
strongly urged me to reconsider the matter. I told him, without much
relevance really, that I had buried my wife that morning; and he, very
naturally, said he had not even known I was a married man.

'Look here, Freydon,' he said; 'be guided by me. Take a month's
holiday, and then come and talk to me again.'

This was no doubt both wise and kindly advice, but I merely repeated
that I must leave; and, within a week or two, I did leave, Arncliffe,
in the most friendly way, making things easy for me, and agreeing to
take a certain contribution from me once a week. This gave me three
guineas a week, and I was grateful for the arrangement.

'You must let me see something of you occasionally. I'm really sorry
to lose you. You know I've always appreciated your suggestions,' said
Arncliffe, when I looked in to bid him good-bye. He spoke with a
friendly sincerity which I valued; because it was a fact that he had,
as editor, adopted and developed a good many suggestions of mine,
without apparent acknowledgment, and after keeping them in his
pigeon-holes until, as I thought, he had forgotten their existence, and
come to think the ideas subsequently acted upon were his own.

With funds in hand amounting to something well under twenty pounds, I
took lodgings on the outskirts of Dorking--a bedroom and a sitting-room
in the rather pretty cottage of a jobbing carpenter and joiner
named Gilchrist. Mrs. Gilchrist, a wholesome, capable woman, performed
some humble duties in the church close by, in which she made use of a
very long-handled feather duster, and sundry cloths of a blue and
white checked pattern. Her husband had a small workshop in the cottage
garden, but his work more often than not took him away from home
during the day. Jasmine and a crimson rambler strayed about the window
of my little study, from which the view of the surrounding hills was
delightful. For some days I explored the neighbourhood assiduously.
And then I began to write my fourth book. The third--a volume of short
stories of mean streets, written in the days preceding my marriage--was
then passing through the press.

When I first went to Dorking my health was in a very poor way. I
imagine I must at the time have been on the verge of a pretty bad
breakdown. The preceding six or eight months had greatly aggravated my
digestive troubles, and I had also suffered a good deal from
neuralgia. The constantly increasing stress of my domestic affairs,
superimposed upon steady sedentary work in which the quest for new
ideas was a continuous preoccupation, and combined with the effects of
an irregular and indifferent dietary and lack of air and exercise, had
reduced me physically to a low ebb.

During those last weeks in London, after Fanny's death, I was not
conscious of this collapse; and my first week in Dorking had a
curiously stimulating effect upon me. Indeed, I fancy that week was
the saving of me. But at the end of it, after one long day's writing,
I took to my bed with influenza, and remained there for some time,
dallying also with bronchitis, incipient pneumonia, gastritis, and a
diphtheritic throat.

Six weeks passed before I left my bedroom, but during only one of
those weeks did I fail to produce my weekly contribution to the
_Advocate_. If the quality of those contributions in any way reflected
my low and febrile condition, Arncliffe mercifully refrained from
drawing my attention to it. At the end of the six weeks I sat at an
open window, amused by the ghostly refinement of my hands, and
grateful to Providence for sunshine and clean air.

The doctor was a cheery soul, toward whom I felt most strongly drawn,
because he was the only man I ever met in England who smoked my
particular brand of Virginia plug tobacco. I had suffered from the
lack of it since leaving Australia, but this good doctor told me how
to get it in England, from an agent in Yorkshire; and I was deeply
grateful to him for the information. He also told me, as I sat at the
open window, that he did not think much of my stewardship of my own
body.

'Let me tell you, Mr. Freydon, you have been sailing several points
closer to the wind than a man has any right to sail. If you treated a
child so, or a servant, aye, or a dumb beast, some preventive society
would be at you for cruelty and neglect. They'd call me for the
prosecution, and by gad, sir, my evidence would send you to Portland
or Dartmoor--fine healthy places, both of 'em, by the way! But people
seem to think they're licensed to treat their own bodies with any
amount of cruelty and neglect. A grave mistake; a grave mistake! In
the ideal state, sir, Citizen Jones will no more be allowed to
maltreat and injure the health of Citizen Jones than he will be
allowed to break the head or poison the food of Citizen Smith. Why
should he? Each is of the same value in the eyes of the state; and, we
may suppose, in the eyes of his Maker.'

The good man blew his nose, and endeavoured to introduce extreme
severity into his kindly and indomitably cheerful expression.

'Yes, sir,' he resumed. 'You've got to turn over a new leaf from now
on. Three good, plain meals a day, taken to the stroke of the clock.
Eight hours in bed every night of your life, and nine if you can get
'em. Two hours of walkin', or other equally good exercise--if you can
discover its equal; I can't--in the open air every day. And anything
less will be a flat dereliction of duty, and bad citizenship, remember
that. This is for by and by, of course. Just now you want twelve hours
in bed, and half a dozen light meals a day. Mrs. Gilchrist knows all
about that. Good, sensible woman, Mrs. Gilchrist. Wish there were more
like her, these days. Oh, I'll be seeing you again, from time to time.
Don't you bother your head about "accounts," my dear sir. And when you
begin to get about now do oblige me by remembering your duty to
yourself, as I've told you. As your doctor, I warn you, it's necessary
in your case--absolutely necessary. _Good_-morning!'

And so he trotted off to his high dog-cart and his morning rounds. An
excellent and kindly man, designed by Nature, his own temperament, and
long use, for the precise part in life he played. Such adequacy and
fitness are rare, and very admirable. I sometimes think that if I
could have exactly obeyed this excellent physician, my whole life had
been quite different. But then, to be able exactly to obey him,
perhaps it would have been necessary for me to have been a different
person in the beginning. And then, I might never have met him,
and--there's the end of a profitless speculation.

As a fact I surreptitiously resumed work on that book long before the
doctor gave permission, and within a week of settling his account I
was once more living a life of which he would have strongly
disapproved; though it certainly was a very much less wearing and
unwholesome one than the life I had always lived in London. But, as
against that, I now had a good deal less in the way of staying power
and force of resistance. So far from having paid up in full, and wiped
off all old scores, in the matter of those first years in London, I
had barely discharged the first instalment of a penalty which was to
prove part and parcel of every subsequent year in my life. And yet, as
I have said, I sometimes think that doctor gave me my chance, if only
it had been in me to live by his instructions. But, apparently, it was
not.


II


Sidney Heron, the man who had introduced me to the country round about
Leith Hill, was the first visitor received in my Dorking lodging. He
came one Saturday morning when I had resumed work (though the doctor
knew it not), and returned to town on the Sunday night.

I think Heron enjoyed his visit, though, out of consideration for my
lack of condition, he walked less than he would have chosen. It was a
real pleasure to me to have him there; and, in the retrospect, I can
clearly see that I was powerfully stimulated by talk with him on
literary subjects. So much was this so, that on the Saturday night
when I lay down in bed I found my brain in a ferment of activity. I
read for half an hour; but even then, after blowing out my candle, the
plots of new books, ideas for future work, literary schemes of every
sort and kind, all promising quite remarkable success, were spinning
through my mind in most exhilarating fashion. The morning found me
somewhat weary, though not unpleasantly so; and consideration of all
this made me realise, as I had not realised before, the isolation and
retirement of my life there in Dorking; the very marked change it
represented from the busy routine of days spent in the _Advocate_
office. I prized my retirement more than ever after this.

'For,' I thought, 'of what use or purport was all that ceaseless
mental stress and fret in London? It was all quite barren and
fruitless, really. Whereas, here--one can develop thoughts here. This
life makes creative work possible.'

I am afraid I gave no credit to Heron, or to the stimulating effects
upon my own mind of contact with his bracing, if somewhat harsh,
intelligence. All was attributed by me at the time to the advantages
of my sequestered life. The effect of mental stimulus was not by any
means so evanescent as such things often are, and the Monday following
upon Heron's return to town saw me hard at work upon the book which I
had outlined and begun before my illness.

There followed, in that modest little cottage room of mine, some three
or four months of incessant work at high pressure; long days, and
nights, too, at the table, during which my only exercise and
relaxation in a week would be an occasional five minutes' walk to the
post-office, or a stroll after midnight, when I found the cool night
silence soothed me greatly before going to my bedroom. The doctor's
counsels were all forgotten, of course, or remembered only in odd
moments, as when going to bed, or shaving in the morning. Then I would
promise myself reformation when the book was finished. That done I
would live by rote and acquire bucolic health, I told myself.

In most respects that period was thoroughly typical of my life during
the next half dozen years. When the end of a book was reached, there
came the long and wearing process of its revision. Then interviews
with publishers, the correction of proof sheets, the excogitation of
writings for magazines--fuel for the fire that kept my pot a-boiling.
There were intervals of acute mental weariness, and there were
intervals of acute bodily distress. But the intervals of reformed
living, when they came at all, were too brief and spasmodic to make a
stronger or a healthier man of me. My business visits to London were
sometimes made to embrace friendly visits to Sidney Heron's lodgings.
Two or three times I dined with Arncliffe, and very occasionally I was
visited at Dorking by two of the literary journalists who had joined
Arncliffe's staff at the time of his appointment.

With but very few exceptions the critics were very kindly to my
published work, and I apprehend that other writers who read their
reviews of my books must have thought of me as one of the coming men.
(The early nineties was a prolific period in the matter of 'coming
men.') I even indulged that thought myself for a time. But not, I
think, for very long. Like every other writer who ever lived, I would
have liked to reach a large and appreciative audience. But I had the
most lofty scorn for the methods by which I supposed such an
achievement might be accomplished.

For a long time I sincerely believed that it was not from any lack of
substance, style, merit, or quality that my books failed to reach a
really large public; but, rather, that they were without a certain
vulgarity which would commend them to the multitude. If not precisely
that they were too good, I doubtless thought that, whilst good in
every literary sense, they happened to be couched in a vein only to be
appreciated by the subtler minds of the minority. The critics
certainly helped me to sustain this congenial theory; and it was not
until long afterwards that I accepted (with more, perhaps, of sadness
or sourness than philosophy) the conclusion that if my work never had
appealed to a big audience, the simple reason was that it was not big
enough to reach so far. It was perhaps, within the limits of literary
judgment, to some extent praiseworthy. And it won praise. I should
have been content.

I certainly was not content, and I dare say the life I led was too far
removed from the normal, both socially and from a health standpoint,
to permit of content for me, quite apart from any question of personal
temperament or idiosyncrasy. I worked and I slept, and that was all.
That is probably not enough for the purchase of healthy content; at
all events, where the work is sedentary and productive of strain upon
the mind, nerves, and emotions.

As society is constituted in England to-day, a man of my sort may be
almost as completely isolated, socially, in a place like Dorking as he
would expect to be in the middle of the Sahara. The labouring sort of
folk, the trades-people, and the landowners and county families, each
form compact social microcosms. The latter class, in normal
circumstances, remains not so much indifferent to as unaware of the
existence of such people as myself, as bachelors in country-town
lodgings. The other two compact little worlds had nothing to offer me
socially. And so, socially, I had no existence at all.

The same holds good, to a great extent, of my sort of person
practically anywhere to-day. (The latter part of the nineteenth
century produced a quite large number of people who belonged to no
recognised class or order in our social cosmos.) But it is most
noticeable in the case of such a man living in a country town. In
London, or Paris, or New York, there is no longer any question of a
man being in or out of society, since there is no longer any compact
division of the community which forms society. Rather, the community
divides itself into hundreds of circles, most of which meet others at
some point of their circumference.

My doctor in Dorking was a bachelor. I did not attend any church.
There literally was no person in that district with whom I held any
social intercourse whatever. And then, by chance, and in a single day,
I became acquainted with many of the socially superior sort of people
in my neighbourhood.

Arncliffe's chief leader writer on the _Advocate_ staff was a man
called Ernest Lane, who, after winning considerable distinction at
Oxford, falsified cynical anticipations by winning a good deal more
distinction in the world outside the university. It was known that he
had been invited to submit himself to the electors of a constituency
in one of the Home counties, and his work while secretary to a
prominent statesman had earned him a high reputation in political
circles. His book on greater British legislation and administration
added greatly to this reputation, and his friends were rather
surprised when Lane showed that he intended to stick to the writer's
life rather than enter parliament, or accept any political
appointment. Without having become very intimate, Lane and myself had
been distinctly upon good and friendly terms during my time in the
_Advocate_ office, and he had visited me three or four times in my
retreat in Dorking. Lane thought well of my work, and he was the only
man I knew whose political conversation and views had interested me.
It was not without some pleasure, therefore, that I read a letter
received from him in which he said he was coming to see me.

'It appears to be a case of Mohammed coming to the mountain,' this
letter said; 'and, if you will put me up, I should like to spend
Saturday and Sunday nights at your place. I think you will receive an
invitation to Sir George and Lady Barthrop's garden-party on Saturday
next, and if so I hope you will accept, and go there with me. The fact
is, one of my sisters is about to marry Arnold Barthrop, the younger
of the three sons, and the whole tribe of us are supposed to be there
this week-end. I am not keen on these big house-parties, and would far
sooner have the opportunity of seeing something of you if you would
care to have me; but I have promised to attend the garden-party, and
to bring you if I can. Some of the Barthrop's Dorking friends are
rather interesting people, so it will be just as well for you, my dear
hermit, to make their acquaintance.'

Of course, I wrote to Lane to the effect that he would be very
welcome, which was perfectly true; but I was somewhat exercised in my
mind regarding Lady Barthrop's garden-party, although, when her card
of invitation reached me, I replied at once with a formal acceptance.
Sir George Barthrop's house, Deene Place, was quite one of the show
places of the district, and the baronet and his lady were very
prominent people indeed in that part of the county.

Every time my eye fell upon the invitation card, I was conscious of a
sense of irritation and disturbance. What had I to do with
garden-parties? The idea of my attending such a function was absurd. I
should have nothing whatever in common with the people there, nor they
with me. Either I should never again meet one of them, or their
acquaintance would be an irritation and a nuisance to me, robbing me
of my treasured sense of complete independence in that countryside.
Finally, I decided that I would have a headache when the time came,
and get Lane to make my excuses-- 'Not that the hostess, or any one
else there, would know or care anything about my absence or presence,'
I thought.

But my unsocial intention was airily swept aside by Ernest Lane. I did
accompany him to Deene Place, and in due course was presented by him
to Sir George and Lady Barthrop. No sooner had we left the host and
hostess to make way for other guests than Lane touched my elbow.

'Here's the first of the five Graces,' he whispered, nodding towards a
lady who was walking down the terrace in our direction. I remembered
that my friend had five sisters, and a moment later I was being
introduced to this particular member of the sisterhood, whose name, as
I gathered, was Cynthia. As Lane moved away from us just then, to
speak to some one else, I asked my companion if she had been going to
any particular place when we met her. She smiled as we walked slowly
down the terrace steps to the lawn.

'I am afraid my only object just then was the ungracious one of evading
Sir George and Lady Barthrop,' she said. 'Theirs is such a dreadfully
busy neighbourhood. I think being solemnly introduced to a stream of
people is rather a terrible ordeal, don't you?'

'The experience would at least have the advantage of novelty for me,'
I told her. 'But, upon the whole, I fancy I should perhaps prefer a
visit to the dentist.'

'Really!' she laughed. 'Now I didn't know men ever felt like that.
It's exactly how I feel about it. It really is worse than dentistry,
you know, because you are not allowed gas.'

'At least, not laughing gas, but only gaseous laughter and small
talk,' I suggested.

'Which makes you all hazy and muddled without the compensating boon of
unconsciousness. But you are an author and a journalist, Mr. Freydon--my
brother often speaks of you, you know--and so you must have had
lots of experience of this sort of thing; enough to have made you as
hardened as royalty, I should think. I always think of authors and
journalists as living very much in the limelight.'

I explained that some might, but that I had spent several years in
Dorking without, until that day, attending a single social function of
any kind. This seemed to interest her greatly, once I had overcome her
initial incredulity on the point. Then I had to answer questions about
my way of living, and one or two, of a discreet and gently curious
kind, about my methods of working, and the like. There was flattery of
the most delightful kind in the one or two casual references she made
to characters in books of mine. Miss Lane never said: 'I have read
your books,' or, 'I have been interested by your books,' statements
which always produce an awkward pause, and are not interesting in
themselves. But she showed in a much more pleasing way that one's work
had entered into her life, and been welcomed by her.

Quite apart from this, I do not think I could possibly have spent a
quarter of an hour with Cynthia Lane without concluding that she was
the most charming woman I had ever met. 'Charming woman,' I say.
Heavens! How extraordinarily inadequate these threadbare words do
look, as I write them, recalling the image of Cynthia Lane as she
paced with me across that smooth-shaven lawn--green velvet it seemed,
deeply shaded here and there by noble copper beeches.

I suppose Cynthia was beautiful, even judged by technical standards;
for her figure was lissom and very shapely, and the contour of her
sweet face perfect--so far, at least, as I am any judge of such
matters. Her eyes and her hair had a rare loveliness which I have not
seen equalled. But it was the soul of her, the indefinable essence
that was Cynthia Lane, which made her truly lovely. This personality
of hers, at once tender and adroit, bright and grave, humorous and
most sweetly gentle, most admirably kind, shone out upon one from her
face, from her very movements and gestures even, giving to her outward
person a soft radiance which I cannot attempt to describe. This nimbus
of delicate sweetness, this irradiation of her person by her
personality it was, which made Cynthia Lane lovely, as no other woman
I have met has been.

I must have stolen fully half an hour of her time that day, to the
annoyance it may be of many other people. And it was not until she was
being in a sense almost forcibly drawn away from me by the claims of
others that I learned, from the manner in which she was addressed by
Lady Barthrop, that she, Cynthia Lane, of whom I had thought only as
one of Lane's five sisters, as one among my own fellow guests, was
indeed the guest of the occasion, and the betrothed of Lady Barthrop's
younger son.

Other things happened, no doubt. I was presently introduced to young
Barthrop, the bridegroom to be; and, mechanically, I endeavoured to
comport myself fittingly as a guest. But, for me, the entertainment
ended with my separation from Cynthia.

'Do please stop being a recluse, and call while I am here,' she had
said as she was being drawn away from me into a sort of maelstrom of
gaily coloured dresses, and laughing, compliment-paying men. And I
blessed her for that.


III


Charles Augustus Everard Barthrop, third son of the baronet and his
wife, was the assistant manager of some financial company in London,
of which his father was a director. I fancy the young man himself was
also a director, but am not sure as to that. In any case he had the
reputation of being one who was likely to achieve big things in the
world of finance and company promotion, a world of which I was as
profoundly ignorant as though a dweller in the planet Mars. In another
field, too, this young man had won early distinction. He was a mighty
footballer, and a rather notable boxer. He was very blonde, very
handsome, very large, and, I gathered, of a very merry and kindly
disposition. He looked it. His sunny face and bright blue eyes
contained no more evidence of care or anxiety than one sees in the
face of a healthy boy of twelve.

'Here is a man,' I thought, 'peculiarly rich in everything that I
lack; and all his life long he has been equally rich in his possession
of everything I have lacked. And now he is going to marry Cynthia
Lane. The rest seems natural enough, but not this.'

As yet I had little enough of evidence on which to base conclusions.
But, as I saw it, Charles Barthrop was a handsome and materially
well-endowed young animal, whose work was company-promoting, and whose
diversions hardly took him beyond football and the Gaiety Theatre. I
dare say it was partly because he was so refulgently well-dressed that
I assumed him devoid of intellect. As a fact, my assumption was not
very wide of the mark.

'And Cynthia,' I thought, 'has a mind and a soul. She _is_ mind and
soul encased, as it happens, in a beautiful body. She is no more a
mate for him than a great poet would be mate for a handsome fishwife;
an Elizabeth Barrett Browning for a champion pugilist.'

It was natural that, during that Saturday evening and the following
day, conversation between Lane and myself should turn more than once
towards his sister Cynthia and her forthcoming marriage, which, I
understood, was to take place within a few weeks at St. Margaret's,
Westminster. We had become fairly intimate of late, Lane and myself,
and the introduction to various members of his family seemed to have
made us much more intimate.

'You have made no end of an impression on Miss Cynthia,' he said
pleasantly on the Saturday evening. 'She was always the literary and
artistic member of the sisterhood. She gave me special instructions to
bring you along in time for some tea to-morrow, and she means to force
you out of your hermitage while she is at Deene Place, so I warn you.
Seriously, I think, it may be good for you. You will be sure to meet
some decent people there, who will be worth knowing, not only just
now, but when Cynthia is married and set up in Sloane Street. Barthrop
has taken a house there, you know.'

With a duplicity not very creditable to me, I pretended thoughtful
agreement. A brother can tell one a good deal without putting his
information into plain words. I gathered from our talk then, and on
the following day, that the Lane family occupied the difficult
position of people who have, as it were, been born to greater riches
than they possess. Of them more had always been expected, socially,
than their straitened means permitted. The pinch had been a very real
one of late years, towards the end of the grand struggle which their
parents had passed through in educating and launching a family of two
sons and five daughters. It was easy to gather that good marriages
were very necessary for those five daughters, of whom Cynthia was the
first-born. I even gathered that, a year or two earlier, there had
been scenes and grave anxiety over a preference which Cynthia had
shown for a painter, poor as a church mouse, who, very considerately,
had proceeded to die of a fever in Southern Italy. Mrs. Lane had, to a
large extent, arranged the forthcoming marriage with Charles Barthrop,
I think. In the interests of the whole family Cynthia had been
'sensible'; she had been brought to see reason.

'And, mind you,' said Lane, 'I do think Barthrop is an excellent chap,
you know. Oh, yes; he's quite a cut above your average city man. And a
kinder-hearted chap you never met. The pater swears by him.'

I gathered that 'the pater' had been given the most useful information
and guidance in financial matters by this Apollo of Throgmorton
Street.

'He's modest, too,' continued Lane, 'which is unusual in his type, I
think. He told me his favourite reading was detective stories, outside
the sporting and financial news, of course; but he has the greatest
respect for Cynthia's literary tastes-- You know she has published
some verse? Yes. Not in book form, but in some of the better
magazines. Oh, yes, Barthrop's a good chap: simple-minded, a shade
gross, too, perhaps, in some ways. These chaps in the city do
themselves too well, I think. But quite a good chap, and sure to make
an excellent husband. I fancy his kind do, you know--no tension, no
fret, no introspection.'

Again I made signs of agreement which were not strictly honest.

On Sunday afternoon we both drank our tea under the copper beeches at
Deene Place. I deliberately monopolised Cynthia's attention as long as
I possibly could, and then devoted myself to the cold-blooded study of
the man she was to marry. I found him very good-natured, gifted with
abundant high spirits, agreeably modest, and, as it seemed to me,
intellectually about on a par with a race-horse or a handsome St.
Bernard dog.

'Cynthia tells me we are to bully you into coming out of your
hermitage,' he said to me with a sunny smile. 'A good idea, too, you
know. After all, being a recluse can't be good for one's health; and I
suppose if a man isn't fit, it tells--er--even in literary work,
doesn't it?'

I felt towards him as one feels towards some bright, handsome
schoolboy. And yet, in many ways, I doubt not he had more of wisdom
than I had. I had spoken to Cynthia of Leith Hill, and she had said
that, when staying at Deene Place, she walked almost every day either
on the hill or the common. Upon that I had relinquished her attention
with a fair grace.

Of course, I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used
no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in
Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness
was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people;
one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as
much a little later on.

Looking back upon it I must suppose that my conduct during the next
week or so would be condemned by most right-thinking people as
ungentlemanly and even dishonourable. I have no inclination to defend
it; and I could not affirm that, at the time, I loved honour more than
Cynthia Lane. To speak the naked truth, I believe I would have
committed forgery, if by doing so I could have won Cynthia for my
wife. The one and only way in which I showed any discretion (and that,
not from any moral scruple, but purely as a matter of tactics) was in
withholding any open declaration to Cynthia herself.

My feeling was that my chance of a life's happiness was confined to
the cruelly short period of a week or two. There was no time for
taking risks. There must be no refusals. I must use my time, every day
of it, I thought, in the effort to win her heart; and trust to the
very end to win her consent. I availed myself fully of my advantage in
living in Dorking while my rival spent his days in London. The
obstacles in my path were such as to justify me in grasping every
possible advantage within reach, I told myself. Every day we met.
Every day I walked and talked with Cynthia. Every day love possessed
me more utterly. And, I believe I may say it, every day Cynthia drew
nearer to me. No word did I breathe of marriage; that which was
arranged, or that which I desired. It seemed to me that every
available moment must be given to the moulding of her heart, to
preparation for the last crucial test, when I should ask her to
sacrifice everything, and cross the Channel and the Rubicon with me.

There is no need for me to burke the words. Cynthia did love me when
she left Dorking for her parents' house in London; not, perhaps, with
the absorbing passion she had inspired in me; yet well enough, as I
was assured, to face social disaster and a break with her family, in
order that she might entrust her life to me.

'Cynthia,' I said, at the end of that last walk, 'London is not to rob
me of you? Promise me!'

'If you call me, I will come,' she said, looking at me through tears,
and well I knew that perfect truth shone in those dear eyes.

Regarding this as the most serious undertaking of my life, I had
endeavoured to overlook nothing. I had obtained a marriage licence. A
London registrar's office was to serve our purpose. I had previously
secured a temporary lodging in London, and now went there with my
luggage. Love did not blind me to practical considerations. While
Cynthia was still in Dorking I had no time to spare. Now that she was
entangled in her own home among last preparations for the wedding that
was not to be, I turned my attention to matters affecting her future
life with me.

Three afternoon appointments I kept with Arncliffe in the _Advocate_
office. When I left him after our third talk, I was definitely re-engaged
as a member of his staff, at a salary of six hundred pounds
per annum, having promised to take up my duties with him in one month
from that date. Every nerve in my body had been keyed to the
attainment of this result, and I was grateful, and not a little
flattered by its achievement. I was still a poor man; but this salary,
with the few hundred pounds I might hope to add to it in a year, by
means of independent literary work, would at all events mean that
Cynthia need not face actual discomfort in her life with me. Further,
I sincerely believed (and may very well have been correct in this)
that her influence upon me would enlarge the scope and appeal of my
literary work. I realised clearly that my beautiful lady-love had very
much to give me. My life till then had not entirely lacked culture or
intellectuality. But it emphatically had lacked that grace, that
element of gentle fineness and delicacy which Cynthia would give it.

Cynthia, who in giving me herself would give all that I desired which
my life had lacked, should come to me empty-handed, I thought. I did
not want her to borrow from out the life which for my sake she was
relinquishing. On the day before that fixed upon for the wedding at
St. Margaret's, she should come to me in the park, near her home.
There would be quite another sort of wedding, and by the evening train
we would leave for the Continent. Every detail was arranged for. We
met on the afternoon of the preceding day. I put my whole fate to the
test, and Cynthia never wavered. We arranged to meet at two o'clock
next day.

On the morning itself, just before noon, I hurried out from my lodging
upon a final errand, intending to change my clothes and lock my bags,
upon my return, within half an hour. My papers were in the pockets of
the clothes I intended to wear, and a supply of money was left locked
in my handbag. The most important moment of my life was at hand, and,
as I walked down the crowded Strand into Fleet Street, I was conscious
of such a measure of exaltation as I had never known before that day.

And then, for the second time in my life, brute force intervened, and
made utter havoc of all my plans and prospects. Crossing Fleet Street,
close to Chancery Lane, the pole of an omnibus struck my shoulder and
flung me several yards along the road. The driver of a hansom cab
shouted aloud as he jerked his horse to its haunches to avoid running
over me. And in that moment, pawing wildly, the horse struck the back
of my head with one of his fore feet.

For the second time in my life I lay in a hospital, suffering from
concussion of the brain. Almost twelve hours passed before I first
regained consciousness, and the morning of the following day was well
advanced before I was able to inform the hospital authorities of my
identity. No papers, nothing but a handful of silver, had been found
in my pockets.

At eleven o'clock that morning there was solemnised at St. Margaret's
Church the marriage of Cynthia and Charles Barthrop.

'If you call, I will come.'

But I had not called. I had even left Cynthia to pace to and fro
through an afternoon in the park; at that most critical juncture in
both our lives I had failed her. In a brief letter, posted to an
address given me by her brother, I acquainted Cynthia with the facts
of my accident, and nothing more than the facts.

In ten days I was out of the hospital; and Cynthia, another man's
wife, was in Norway.


IV


I dare say no place would have looked very attractive to me when I
came out from that hospital; but London and my lodging in it did seem
past all bearing unattractive. The Dorking lodging had been definitely
relinquished, and in any case I had no wish now to see Dorking, Leith
Hill, or the common.

Knowing practically nothing of my native land outside its capital, I
packed a small bag at my lodging, and walked to the nearest large
railway station, which happened to be Paddington. Arrived there, I
spent some dull moments in staring at way-bills, and finally took a
ticket at a venture for Salisbury. There I found a quiet lodging, and
spent the evening in idly wandering about the cathedral close.

The next day found me tramping over short turf--turf more ancient than
the cathedral--in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge. And so I spent the
better part of a fortnight, greatly to the benefit I dare say of my
bodily health. I shall always love the tiny hamlets of that sun and
wind-washed countryside, between Warminster, Andover, Stockbridge, and
Salisbury. Yet always they will be associated in my mind with a bowing
down sense of loneliness, of empty, unredeemed sadness, and of
irretrievable loss. I cannot pretend that I experienced any sense of
remorse or penitence, where my abortive attempt to win another man's
bride was concerned. I had no such feeling. But, discreditable as that
fact may be, it did not make the aching sorrow that possessed me any
the less real.

I was conscious of no remorse, and yet, God knows my state of mind was
humble enough, though too sombre and despairing to be called resigned.
I believe that in the retrospect my loss seemed more, a great deal
more to me, than just a lover's loss; though upon that score alone I
was smitten to the very dust. It was rather as though, at the one
blow, I had lost my heart's desire and a fortune and a position in the
world; or, at least, that these had been snatched from my grasp in the
moment of becoming mine.

I do not think I could ever explain this to any one else; since I
suppose that in the monetary sense the rupture of my plans left me the
better off. But I, who had always been something of an outlier in the
social sense, an unplaced wanderer bearing the badge of no particular
caste, I had grown in some way to feel that marriage with Cynthia
would in this sense bring me to an anchorage, and admit me to a
definite place of my own in the complex world of London. The idea was
not wholly unreasonable. I had lived very rapidly in those few
critical weeks. Years of hope, endeavour, determination, and emotional
experience, I had crowded into my last days in Dorking. And through it
all I had been upheld and exalted by a pervasive conviction (which I
apprehend is not part of the ordinary lover's capital) that now, at
length, I was to know peace, rest, content; the calm, glad realisation
of all the vague yearnings and strivings which had spurred me to
strenuousness, to unceasing effort, all my life long.

Cynthia had been the object of my love, of my passionate adoration,
indeed. But she had also been a great deal more. When she had bowed
her beautiful head to my wooing, when she had promised that upon my
call she would come, she had (all unconsciously, of course) become
more than my beloved. She became for me the actual embodiment, the
incarnate end, aim, and reward of all the strivings of my lonely life,
from the night of my flight from St. Peter's Orphanage down to that
very day. In my rapt contemplation of her, of the personality which
enthralled me far, far more than her beautiful person could, I smiled
over recollection of my bitter struggles in London slums, of the
heart-racking anxiety and grinding humiliation of life with poor
Fanny. I smiled happily at that squalid vista as at some trifling
inconvenience by the way, too small to be remembered as an obstacle in
my path toward the all-sufficing and radiant peace of union with
Cynthia.

'Now I see why all my life has been worth while,' I told myself on the
eve of the clumsy, brutal blow of Fate's hand that had for ever robbed
me of Cynthia.

In the living, the end had sometimes seemed too hopelessly far off to
justify the wearing strain of the means. There had been so little
refreshment by the way. But with Cynthia's promise there had come to
me an all-embracing certainty that my whole life had been justified;
that the end and reward of all my struggles was actually in my hands;
that I now had arrived, and was about to step definitely out from the
ranks of the striving, unsatisfied, hungry outliers, into the serene
company of those whose faces shine with the light of assured
happiness; of those who fight and struggle no longer; for the reason
that they have found their allotted place in life, and are at anchor
within the haven of their ambitions.

I may have been very greatly to blame in my passionate wooing of
another man's affianced wife; but, at least, I believe that my loss of
Cynthia was a far greater and more crushing loss for me than the loss
of any woman could possibly have been for Charles Barthrop. For me,
she had stood for all life held that was desirable--the sum and plexus
of my aims. For Barthrop there were his keenly relished sports and
pastimes, his host of friends, his family, his luxurious and well-defined
place in the world--not to mention the city of London.


V


When I left the spacious purlieus of Salisbury, it was to engage
chambers--bedroom, sitting-room, and bathroom--in a remodelled adjunct
to one of the Inns of Court. Here my arrangement was that a simple
breakfast should be served to me each day in my sitting-room, and that
I was free to obtain my other meals wherever I might choose. Thus
provided for in the matter of a place of residence, I resumed the
discarded journalistic life, as a member of the _Advocate's_ editorial
staff, in accordance with the engagement entered into with Arncliffe,
when I believed I had been arranging to secure an income for Cynthia
and myself.

Before renting these rooms I had called upon Sidney Heron, and invited
him to share a set of chambers with me.

'No,' he said, in his blunt way, 'I'd rather keep you as a friend.'

I dare say he was right; and, in any case, he had a fancy for living
at a good distance from the centre of the town; whereas my own
inclination was to avoid the town altogether, if that might be, and
failing this to have one's sanctuary right in the centre of it. My
chambers were within five minutes' walk of the _Advocate_ office, and
not much more than half that distance from the Thames Embankment--a
spot which interested me as much as its lively neighbour, the Strand,
irritated and worried me. An uneasy, shoddy street I thought the
Strand, full of insistent tawdriness and of broken-spirited folk whose
wretchedness had something in it more despicable than pitiable. Save
for its occasional gaping rustics (whom I thought sadly misguided to
be there at all) I cordially hated the Strand. But the Embankment I
regarded as one of the most romantic thoroughfares in London; and many
a score of articles (which brought me money) do I owe to the
inspiration of that broad, darkling, river-skirted road, and the queer
human flotsam and jetsam one may meet with there.

Among the direct results of Cynthia Lane's influence, I must place my
interest in politics. I had hardly realised that women had any concern
with politics until I met Cynthia. She was in no sense a politician,
but she followed the political news of the day with the same bright
and illuminating intelligence which she brought to bear upon all the
affairs of her life; and her attitude toward them was informed by a
fine patriotism, at once reasoning and ardent. Chance phrases from her
lips had opened my eyes to the existence of a love for England, for
our flag, and race, such as I had not dreamed of till that time.

We spoke once or twice of my Australian experiences. And here again
Cynthia's patriotism suggested whole avenues of unsuspected thought
and feeling to me. It was Cynthia who introduced to my mind the
conception of the British Empire, and our race, as a single family,
having many branching offshoots. I do not mean that Cynthia supplied
facts or theories hitherto unknown to me. But I do mean that her
woman's mind first made me feel these things, intimately and
personally, as people feel the joys and sorrows of members of their
own households.

As a result I looked now with changed eyes upon many things. Before, I
had loathed and detested the slums of London, and the vicious, ugly
squalor of the lives of many of their inhabitants; hated them with the
bitterness of one who has been made to feel their poison in his own
veins. There had been far more of loathing than of pity or sorrow in
my attitude toward the canker at London's heart. Gradually, now,
because of the insight I had had into Cynthia's love of England, my
view became more kindly. I looked upon the canker less with hatred,
and more with the feeling one might have regarding some horrible and
malignant disease in a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister. And,
too, with more of a sense of responsibility and of shame.

So, from a lofty and quite ignorant scorn of things so essentially
mundane, I grew to take an understanding interest in current politics,
and more particularly in their wider aspects, as touching not England
alone but all British lands and people. I obtained a press pass from
Arncliffe, and attended an important debate in the House of Commons,
subsequently recording my impressions, in the form of an article by an
Outsider, from Australia. Journalistically, that article was a rather
striking success; and I began to attend the House frequently, and to
write more or less regular political impressions for the _Advocate_.

For several years my interest in these matters continued to be
progressive. (Three volumes of a political or quasi-political and
sociological character have appeared under my name.) I am grateful for
that interest, because it gave me some additional hold upon life, at a
time when such anchorage as I had had seemed to have been wrested from
me.

There was a quite considerable period--five or six years, at least, I
think--during which political work tended to broaden my mind, widen my
sympathies, and enhance my esteem for a number of my contemporaries.
Beyond that point I am afraid no good came to me from the study of
politics; from which fact it is probably safe to assume that any
influence I exercised ceased to be beneficial. For a time it had, I
think, been helpful in its small way. That was while faith remained in
me.

I remember conceiving a warm respect for a number of men engaged in
political work as writers, organisers, and speakers. I admired these
men for the fervour with which they appeared to devote their lives to
the service of political ends. I even derived from my conception of
their enthusiasm, strong, almost emotional interest in certain
political issues, tendencies, and developments. Later, as I learned to
know the men and their work better, came rather painful
disillusionment. We differed fundamentally, it seemed, these eloquent
fellows and myself. One actually told me in so many words, and with a
cynical smile at his other companion of the moment, as who should say:
'Really, this innocent needs awakening'; that I was playing the gull's
part on the surface of things. 'We are not concerned with principles,'
he said, in effect. 'That may be all right for the groundlings--our
audience. Our concern is parties, office--the historic game of ins and
outs, in which we have our careers to make.'

Until I put the whole business for ever behind me, I never lost my
interest in issues and principles; neither did I ever acquire one jot
or tittle of the professional's interest in the political game, as
such; or endeavour to utilise its complex machinery for the
furtherance of my own career. But in the course of time the study, not
so much of politics as of political life, came to fill me with a kind
of sick weariness and disgust; a sort of dull nausea and shame, such
as I imagine forms one of the penalties for the unfortunate
sisterhood, of what is sardonically called the life of pleasure. Upon
the whole, I am afraid there is a good deal in common between the
political life and the life of the streets. Certainly, the camp
followers in political warfare are a motley crew of mercenaries, and
they take their tone from quite a number of their leaders.

It would be quite beside the mark to add that there are some fine men
in British politics. There are, of course, in all professions,
including (I dare say) that of burglary. There still are in the
political arena gentlemen whose single aim, pursued with undeviating
loftiness of purpose, is the service of their country. I will not
pretend to think their number large, for I know it is not. (But I dare
say it is larger than it will be a few years hence, when we have
pursued a little farther the enlightened ideal of governance by the
least fit for the least fit, by the most poorly equipped for the most
poorly equipped, by the most ignorant and irresponsible for the most
ignorant and irresponsible.) But the class of well-meaning, decent,
clean-lived politicians is a fairly large one. As these worthy if
unremarkable men have not a tithe of the brains of the most prominent
among the quite unscrupulous sort--the undoubted birds of prey--their
good intentions are of small value to their generation or their
country, and represent little or nothing in the shape of hindrance to
the skilled pirates of political waters.

But my personal concern was not so much with the rank and file of
actual politicians as with the great army of camp followers; the band
of fine, whole-souled, well-dressed, fluent fellows, for whom
'something must be done, you know,' because of this or that interest,
because of the alleged wishes of this great person or the other; and
because, above all, of their own quite wonderful pertinacity, untiring
pushfulness, and, of course, their valuable services and great
abilities as talkers, writers, 'organisers,' and what not.

I have known men who, for years, had found it worth not less than £800
or £1000 a year to them to have been spoken of by Mr. ----, Lord ----,
or Sir ----, as 'an exceedingly capable organiser, and--er--devoted to
the Cause.' No one ever knew precisely what they had organised (apart
from their own comfortable subsistence in West End clubs and houses)
or were to organise; but there they were, fine fellows all, tastefully
dressed, in the best of health and spirits, and indefatigably fluent
in--in--er--the service of the Cause, you know!

There was a period in which I fancied these parasites were the
monopoly of one political party. But I soon learned that this was far
from being the case. All the four parties which the twentieth century
saw established in parliament are equally surrounded by their camp
followers, who each differ from each other only superficially, and,
not unseldom, transfer their allegiance in pursuit of fatter game. The
differences do impress one at first, but, as I say, they are mainly
superficial. All are equally self-centred and true to type as
parasites; though one brood is better dressed than another, and has a
more formidable appetite. What makes rich pickings for the follower of
one camp would leave the follower of another camp lean and hungry
indeed. But the necessary scale of expenditure being higher in one
division than another, things equalise themselves pretty much. I
believe it is much the same in the case of the other ancient
profession I have mentioned.

I have seen quite a large number of promising young men, fresh from
the Universities, and beginning life in London with high aspirations
and genuine patriotism in their hearts, only to become gradually
absorbed into the gigantic parasitical incubus of the body politic.
The process of absorption was none the less saddening and embittering
to watch, because its subjects usually waxed fatter and more
apparently jovial with each stage in their gradual exchange of ideals
for cash, patriotism for nepotism, enthusiasm for cynicism, and
disinterestedness for toadyism. Some had in them the makings of very
good and useful citizens. Their wives, so far as I was able to see,
almost invariably (whether deliberately or unknowingly) egged them on
in the downward path to complete surrender. As a rule, complete
surrender meant less striving and contriving, a better establishment,
and a freer use of hansom cabs in place of omnibuses. (I am thinking
for the moment of the days which knew not taxi-cabs.)

When they were writers, a frequent sign of the beginning of their end
(from my standpoint; of their success, from other standpoints,
including, no doubt, those of their wives) was that they began to
write of persons rather than principles; to eulogise rather than to
exhort, criticise, and suggest. So surely as they began their written
panegyrics of individuals, I found them laying aside the last remnants
of their private hero-worship. Very soon after this stage they
generally changed their clubs, becoming members of the most expensive
of these establishments; and from that point on, their progress
towards finished cynicism, fatty degeneration of the intellect, and
smiling abandonment of all scruples, all ideals, and all modesty, was
rapid and certain.

The inquiring student of such processes would perhaps have found
banquets, luncheons, and public dinners of a more or less political
colour his most prolific fields. Upon such occasions I always found
the genus very strongly represented. In one camp the dress clothes of
the followers would be of a better cut and more gracefully worn than
in the other camp; and those of the better-dressed camp had more of
assurance, more of brazen impudence, and more of hopelessly shallow
cynicism, I think, than those of other divisions. In many cases, too,
they had more of education; but, I fear, less of brains.

It was, I think, the contemplation of these gentlemen, even more
perhaps than my saddening knowledge of their shifty, time-serving,
shilly-shallying, or glaringly unscrupulous leaders and masters, that
finally disgusted me with those branches of political work which were
open to me. I have no wish to sit in judgment. Other and stronger men
may find that they may keep the most evil sort of company without ever
soiling their own hands. I know and very sincerely respect a few
political journalists and workers of different parties, whose
uprightness is beyond suspicion; whose fine enthusiasm remains
untarnished, even to-day. I yield to none in my admiration for such
men. But however much I admired, or even envied, it was not for me to
emulate these gentlemen. I probably lacked the necessary strength of
fibre.

Arncliffe was, as ever, very kindly when I showed him my feeling in
the matter; and, so far as might be, he released me from all
journalistic obligations of a political sort. But more, I was given a
complimentary dinner. Speeches were made, and I was genuinely
astonished by the length of the list of my avowed services to
politics. It was affirmed that, under Providence, and Arncliffe, and
one or two people with titles, I had been instrumental in starting
movements, launching an organ of opinion, and bringing about all kinds
of signs and portents. The occasion embarrassed me greatly.

It was true enough that, for a season, I had thrown myself heart and
soul into the furtherance of certain political aims; and, in all
honesty, I had worked very hard. And--heavens! how I was sick of the
fluent humbugs, and the complacent parasites! If only they could have
been dumb, and, in their writings, forbidden by law the use of all
such words as 'patriotism,' I could have borne much longer with them.

London is our British centre, and your true parasite makes ever for
the kernel. I have seen them treated with the gravest and most modest
deference by working bees from outlying hives--the Oversea Dominions
and the Services--as men who were supposed to be fighting the good
fight, there in the hub, the heart, and centre of our House. And,
listening to their complacent oozings, under the titillations of
innocent flattery, I have turned aside for very shame, in my
impatience, feeling that in truth the heart and centre were devoid of
virtue, and that true patriotism was a thing only to be found (where
it was never named) in unknown officers of either service, and obscure
civilians engaged in working out their own and the Empire's destinies
in its remote outposts, and upon the high seas.

And, impatient as that thought may have been, how infinitely better
founded and less extravagant it was than the presumptuous arrogance of
these gentlemen, who, by their way of it, were 'Bearing the heat and
burden of the day, here in the busy heart of things--the historic
metropolis of our race!'


VI


Upon three occasions only, in five times that number of years, did I
meet Cynthia--Cynthia Barthrop; and those meetings, I need hardly say,
were accidental.

The promise of Cynthia's youth was to all outward seeming amply
fulfilled. As a matron she would have been notable in any company, by
reason of her sedate beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her
manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content
to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant
brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not
survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might
regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my
eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the
passage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of
convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural mating. The key to
the changed expression of her beautiful face, and, in particular, of
her eloquent eyes, as I saw it, lay in the fact that she was
unsatisfied; her life, so rich in bloom, had never reached fruition.

One letter I had written to Cynthia, within a few days of her
marriage. And there had been no other communication between us. I
trust that forgetfulness came more easily to her than to me.

My withdrawal from political work I connect with the death of Queen
Victoria, the Coronation of King Edward, and the end of the South
African War. From the same period--a time of the inception of radical,
far-reaching change in England--I date also my final emergence from
that phase of one's existence in which one is still thought of, by
some people at all events, as a young man. The phase has a longer
duration in our time, I think, than in previous generations, because
we have done so much in the direction of abolishing middle age. Grey
hairs were fairly plentiful with me well before the admitted end of
this phase.

Those last years of the young man, the author and journalist of
'promise,' who was a 'coming man,' and, too, the maturer years which
followed, ought, upon all material counts, to have been the happiest
and most contented in my life; since, during this time, my position
was an assured one, and I went scatheless as regards anxiety about
ways and means--the burden which lines the foreheads of eight
Londoners in ten, I think. Yes, by all the signs, these should have
been my best and most contented years. As a fact, I do not think I
touched content in a single hour of all that period.

What then was lacking in my life? It certainly lacked leisure. But the
average modern man would say that this commonplace fact could hardly
rob one of content. My income did not fall below from seven hundred to
a thousand pounds in any year. In all this period, therefore, there
was never a hint of the bitter, wolfish struggle for mere food and
shelter which ruled my first years in London; neither was I ever
obliged to live in squalid quarters. On the contrary, I lived
comfortably, and had a good deal more of the sort of social
intercourse which dining out furnishes than I desired. And, withal,
though I knew much of keen effort, the stress of unremitting work,
and, at times, considerable responsibility, I do not think I tasted
content in one hour of all those long, crowded, respectable, and
apparently prosperous years.

If one comes to that, could I honestly assert that in the years
preceding these I had ever known content? I fear not. Elation, the
sense of more or less successful striving, occasional triumphs--all
these good things I had known. But content, peace, secure and restful
satisfaction-- No, I could not truly say I had ever experienced these.
Perhaps they have been rare among all the educated peoples of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; particularly, it may be,
among those who, like myself, have been more or less freely admitted
prospectors in the home territories of various classes of the
community, without ever becoming a fully accredited and recognised
member of any one among them.

I would like very much to comprehend fairly the reason of the
barrenness, the failure to attain content or satisfaction, in all
those years of my London life. And, for that reason, I linger over my
review of them, I state the case as fully as I can. But do I explain
it to myself? I fear not. Doubtless, some good people would tell me
the secret lay in the apparent absence of definitely dogmatic
religious influence in my life. Ah, well, there is that, of course.
But it does not give me the explanation. Others would tell me the
explanation could be given in one word--egoism; that there has been
always too much ego in my cosmos. Yes, there is doubtless a great deal
in that. And yet, goodness knows, mine has not been a self-indulgent
life.

As I see it, there was a period in which I urgently desired to secure
a safe foothold in London's literary and journalistic life. Material
needs being moderately satisfied I happened, pretty blindly, into my
marriage. That effectually shut out any possibility of content while
it lasted, and added very materially to the inroads made by the
previous struggling period upon my health. Later, came my strongest
literary ambitions: a striving for achievement and success, and I
suppose for fame, as author. And then the brief, tremendous struggle
to win Cynthia for my wife. So far, naturally enough, there had been
no content.

After the collapse of my attempt to win a mate, it seems to me that I
became definitely middle-aged; though any outside observer of my life
would probably have dated the serious beginnings of my career--the
'young man of undoubted promise,' etc.--from that time, since it was
from then on that my position became more important. I directed the
energies of others, was a leading editor's right hand man, initiated
and controlled new departures, and commanded far more attention for my
writings than ever before.

But--and here, it seems to me, lies the crux of the matter--in all
this period the present moment of living never appealed to me in the
least. I derived no suggestion of satisfaction or enjoyment from it. I
was for ever striving, restlessly, uneasily, and to weariness, for
something to be attained later on. And for what did I strive? Well, I
know that the old ambitions in the direction of world-wide recognition
as a literary master did not survive my return to Fleet Street, the
landmark for me of Cynthia's marriage. Equally certain am I that I
cherished no plan or desire to accumulate money and become rich. I had
no desire to become a politician, or to obtain such a post as
Arncliffe's. The desires of my youth were dead; the energies of my
youth were dulled; the health and physical standard of my early
manhood was greatly and for ever lowered. The enthusiasms of my youth
had given place not to cynicism but to weary sadness. It was perhaps
unfortunate for myself that I had no cynicism.

Very well. In other words, a disinterested observer might say: You
became middle-aged--the common lot--and dyspeptic: the usual penalty
of sedentary life. But there is a difference. If middle age brings to
most, as no doubt it does, some failure of health and a notable
attenuation of aims, desires, ambitions, and zest, does it not also
bring some satisfaction in the present? I think so; at all events,
where, as in my case, it brings the outward and material essentials of
a moderate success in life. Now in my case, though the definite aims,
the plans for the future, the desired goals, had merely ceased to
exist, the present was Dead Sea fruit--null and void, a thing of
nought. Just where does my poor personal equation enter in, and how
far, I wonder, is all this typical of twentieth-century human
experience, for us, the heirs of all the ages, with our wonderful
enlightenment and progress? I wonder!

This, at all events, I think, is as near as I can come to explanation.
Yet how very far short it falls of explaining, of furnishing me with
the key which the making of this record was to provide!

However, the task shall not be shirked. At least, some matters have
been made clearer. I will complete my record--if I can.




THE LAST STAGE


I


'What do you aim at in your life?' I said to Sidney Heron one night,
when the first decade of the new century was drawing near its close.
Heron had dined with me, and we had continued our talk in my rooms. It
was a Saturday night, and therefore for me free of engagements.

'The end of it,' replied Heron, without a moment's hesitation.

'Ah! Nothing else? Nothing to come before the end?'

'Oh, well, to be precise, I suppose one does, in certain moods,
cherish vague hopes of coming upon a--a way out, you know, some time
before the end; time to compose one's mind decently before the prime
adventure. Yes, one cherishes the notion vaguely; but I apprehend that
realisation of it is only for such swells as you. I have sometimes
known thrifty bursts, in which I have saved a little; but--a man
doesn't buy estates out of my sort of work, you know. He's lucky if he
can keep out-- Well, out of Fleet Street, say, saving your worship's
presence.'

'Yes, yes; you've always done that, haven't you? A negative kind of
ambition, perhaps, but----'

'Oh, naturally, you must pretend scorn for it, I see that,' said
Heron.

'Not at all, my dear chap, not a bit of it. Indeed, I should be one of
the last to scorn that particular aim. But I was wondering if you
cherished any other. A "way out." Yes, there's something rather
heart-stirring about the thought. I wonder if there is such a thing as a
"way out." I forget the name of the Roman gentleman who hankered after
a "way out." Once in a year or so he used to wake up, full of the
conviction that he'd found it. Out came the family chariots, and off
he would gallop across the Campagna to the hills beyond, where, no
doubt, he had a villa of sorts, vineyards, and the rest of it. Here,
in chaste seclusion, was his "way out": a glorious relief, the
beginning of the great peace. And, a few weeks later, Rome would see
his chariots dashing back again into the city, even harder driven than
on the passage out. However, I suppose there is a "way out" somewhere
for every one.'

'Well, I wouldn't say for every one,' said Heron thoughtfully. 'It
doesn't matter how fast you drive, you can't get away from yourself,
of course. The question of whether there is or is not a "way out"
depends on what you want to get away from, and where you want to
reach.'

It may be well enough to say with the poet: 'What so wild as words
are?' But the fact remains that mere words, and the grouping of words,
apart from their normal, everyday significance, have a notable
influence upon the thoughts of some folk, and especially, I suppose,
of writers. I know that Heron's careless 'way out' phrase occupied my
mind greatly for many weeks after it was spoken.

'After all,' I sometimes asked myself, 'what has my whole life
amounted to but an uneasy, restless, striving search for a "way out"?
It has never been "to-day" with me, but always "to-morrow"; and the
morrow has never come. Never for a moment have I thought: "This thing
in my hand is what I want; this present Here and Now is what I desire.
I will retain this, and so shall be content." No, my strivings--and I
have been always striving--have been for something the future was to
bring. And, behold, what was the future is more barren than the past;
it is that thing which I seem incapable of valuing--the present. Is
there a "way out" for me? Surely there must be. I certainly am no more
fastidious than my neighbours, and indeed am much simpler in my tastes
than most of them.'

And that was true. If I could lay claim to no other kind of progress,
I could fairly say that I had cultivated simplicity in taste and
appetite, and did in all honesty prefer simple ways. That otherwise
abominable thing, my disabled digestive system, had perhaps influenced
me in this direction. In days gone by, I should have said my most
desired 'way out' would be the path to independent leisure for
literary work. Now, if I desired anything, it was independent leisure,
not for the production of immortal books, but for thinking; for the
calm thought that should yield self-comprehension. Yes, I told myself,
I hated the daily round of Fleet Street, with its never-slackening
demand for the production of restrained moralising, polished twaddle,
and non-committal, two-sided conclusions, or careful omissions, and
one-eyed deductions. It was thus I thought of it, then.

'What you want is a holiday, my friend,' said Arncliffe, upon whose
kindly heart and front of brass the beating of the waves of Time
seemed powerless to develop the smallest fissure.

'You are right,' I thought. 'A holiday without an end is what I want.
And, why not take it, instead of waiting till the other end comes, and
shuts out all possibility of holidays, work, or thought? Why not?'

I began a reckoning up of my resources. But it was a perfunctory
reckoning. The facts really did not greatly interest me. After all,
had I not once calmly set up my establishment in the country, with a
total capital of perhaps twenty pounds? Or, if one came to that, had I
not cheerfully sallied forth into the world, armed only with a one-pound
note? True, I told myself, with some bitterness, the youth had
possessed many capabilities which the man lacked. Still, the reckoning
did not greatly interest me. And, while I made it, my thoughts
persistently reverted to Australian bush scenes; never, by the way, to
my days of comparative prosperity in Sydney, but always to bush
scenes: camp fires under vast and sombre red mahogany trees; lonely
tracks in heavily timbered country; glimpses of towns like Dursley,
seen from the rugged tops of high wooded ridges; little creeks,
lisping over stones never touched by the feet of men or beasts; tiny
clearings among the hills, where a spiral of blue smoke bespoke an
open hearth and human care, though no sound disturbed the peaceful
solitude save the hum of insects and the occasional cry of birds.

Now and again I would allow myself to compose a mental picture of some
peaceful retreat upon the outskirts of a remote English village, where
every stock and stone would have a history, and every inhabitant prove
a repository of folklore and local tradition. From actual experience I
still knew very little of rural England, though of late years I had
done some exploring. But, vicariously, I had lived much in Wessex,
East Anglia, the delectable Duchy, and other parts of the country,
through the works of favourite writers. And so I did dream at times of
an English retreat, but always such musings would end upon a note of
scepticism. These parts were not far enough away to furnish anything
so wonderful, so epoch-making, as my desired 'way out.' For persons of
my temperament one of the commonest and most disastrous blunders of
life is the tacit assumption that the thing easy of attainment and
near at hand cannot possibly prove the thing one wants.

Gradually, then, the idea developed in my mind that the true solution
of my problems lay in a working back upon my life's tracks. My
thoughts wandered insistently to the northern half of the coast of New
South Wales. Even now I could hardly say just how much of my
retrospective vision was genuine recollection, and how much the
glamour of youth. I tried to recall without sentiment the effects
produced upon me, for example, by the climate of that undoubtedly
favoured region. But I am not sure that my efforts gave results of any
practical value. For practical purposes it is extremely difficult, in
middle life, to form reliable estimates of the congeniality to one's
self of any place to which one has been a stranger since youth.
Recollections pitched in such a key as, 'How good one used to feel
when--,' or,'How beautiful the country looked at ---- when one--,' are
apt to be very misleading for a man of broken health and middle age;
the one thing he cannot properly allow for being the radical change
which has taken place in himself. I bore the name of the lad who
tramped the roads from Myall Creek down to Dursley. In most other
respects I was not now that person, but somebody else--a totally
different somebody.

I could not very well talk of the plans which now took shape in my
mind to Sidney Heron; because, in effect, he declined to discuss them.

'I think it would be a rather less reasonable step than suicide, and I
have always declined to discuss suicide. One must see some glimmer of
rationality in a project to be able to discuss it, and in this notion
of yours I can see none, none whatever.'

A vague suspicion that others might be likely to share Heron's view
prevented my seeking the counsel of my few friends; and also, I fear,
tended rather to strengthen my inclinations to go my own way. The more
I thought upon it, the more determined I became to cut completely
adrift from my present life; to find a way of escaping all its
insistent calls; to get far enough away from my life (so to say) to be
able calmly and thoughtfully to observe it, and seek to understand it.
I did not admit this, but I suppose my real aim was to escape from
myself.

'Your lease is not a long one, in any case,' I told myself. 'While yet
you have the chance cease to be a machine, and begin to live as a
rational, reasoning creature. Be done with your petty striving after
ends you have forgotten, or cannot see, or care nothing for. Get out
into the open, and live, and think!'

I do not quite know the basis of my conviction that I should never
make old bones, as the saying goes. The life assurance offices
certainly shared this view, for they would have none of me. (I had
long since thought of taking out what is called a double endowment
policy.) My father died at an early age, and I had known good health
hardly at all since my first two years in London. The doctor who had
last examined me showed that he thought poorly of my heart; and,
indeed, experience had taught me that prolonged gastric disorder is
calculated to affect injuriously most organs of the human anatomy. But
the thinking and planning with regard to a radical change in my life
had given me a certain interest in living, and that had acted
beneficially upon my health; so that, for the time being, I felt
better than for a long while past.

While this fact gave a certain air of unreality to the resignation, on
the grounds of ill-health, from my appointment as a member of
Arncliffe's staff, it did not in the least affect my weariness of
Fleet Street and all its works, or my determination to be done with
them. The circle of my intimates was so very small that the task of
explaining my intentions was not a formidable one, nor even one which
I felt called upon to perform with any particular thoroughness. I
proposed to take a voyage for the good of my health, and did not know
precisely when I should return. That I deemed sufficient for most of
those to whom anything at all needed to be said.


II


There was something strange, a dream-like want of reality, about my
final departure from England, after five-and-twenty years of working
life in London. I am not likely to forget any incident of it; but yet
the whole experience, both at the time and now, seemed (and seems) to
be shrouded in a kind of mist, a by no means disagreeable haze of
unreality, which in a measure numbed all my senses. More than ever
before I seemed to be, not so much living through an experience, as
observing it from a detached standpoint.

Investigation of my resources showed that I had accumulated some means
during the past dozen years of simple living and incessant work, not
ill-paid. I had just upon two thousand pounds invested, and between
one and two hundred pounds lying to my credit at call, I told myself
that living alone and simply in the bush, a hundred pounds in the year
would easily cover all my expenses. That I had anything like twenty
years of life before me was a supposition which I could not entertain
for one moment. And, therefore, I told myself again and again, with
curious insistence, there really was no reason why I need ever again
work for money, or waste one moment over petty anxiety regarding ways
and means. That was a very great boon, I told myself; the greatest of
all boons, and better fortune than in recent years I had dared to hope
would be mine. And, puzzled by the coldness with which my inner mind
responded to these assurances, I would reiterate them, watching my
mind the while, and almost angered by the absence of elation and
enthusiasm which I observed there.

'You have not properly realised as yet what it means, my friend,' I
murmured to myself as I walked slowly through city alley-ways, after
booking my passage to Sydney in a steam ship of perhaps seven times
the tonnage of the old _Ariadne_ of my boyhood's journey to Australia.
'But it is the biggest thing you have ever known. You will begin to
realise it presently. You are free. Do you hear? An absolutely free
man. You need never write another line unless you wish it, and then
you may write precisely what you think, no more, no less. You are
going right away from this howling cockpit, and never need set foot in
it again. You are going to a beautiful climate, a free life in the
open, with no vestige of sham or pretence about it, and long, secure
leisure to reflect, to think, to muse, to read, to do precisely what
you desire to do, and nothing else. You are free--free! Do you hear,
you tired hack? Too tired to prick your ears, eh? Ah, well, wait till
you've been a week or two at sea!'

Very quietly I addressed my sluggish and jaded self in this wise. Yet
more than one hurried walker in the city ways looked curiously at me,
as I passed along, with a wondering scrutiny which amused me a good
deal. 'Too tired to prick your ears.' The suggestion came from the
contemptuously self-commiserating thought that I was rather like a
worn-out 'bus horse, to whom some benevolent minor Providence was
offering the freedom of a fine grazing paddock. 'You're too much
galled and spavined, you poor devil, to be moved by verbal assurances.
Wait till you scent the breezy upland, and your feet feel the turf.
You'll know better what it all means then.'

I had entertained vague notions of a little farewell feast which I
would give to Heron, and, possibly, to one or two other friends. But
from the reality of such convivial enterprise I shrank, when the time
came, preferring to adopt, even to Heron, the attitude of a traveller
who would presently return. And when, as the event proved, I found
myself the guest of honour at a dinner presided over by Arncliffe, my
embarrassment pierced through all sense of unreality and caused me
acute discomfort.

It is odd that I, who always have been foolishly sensitive to blame
(from professed critics and others), should shrink so painfully from
spoken praise or formal tribute of any kind. It makes my skin hot even
to recall the one or two such episodes I have faced. The wretched
inability to think where to dispose of one's hands and gaze during the
genial delivery of after-dinner encomiums; the distressing difficulty
of replying! Upon the whole, I think I was better at receiving
punishment. But it is true, the latter one received in privacy, and
was under no obligation to answer; since replying to printed
criticisms was never a folly I indulged.

On the eve of my departure from London I did a curious and perhaps
foolish thing, on the spur of a moment's impulse. I hailed a cab, and
drove to Cynthia's house in Sloane Street. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Barthrop
were at home, and alone, the servant told me; and in another few
moments I was shaking hands with them. Naturally, they called my visit
an unexpected pleasure. It was, in fact, not a very pleasurable
quarter of an hour for either one of us. For years I had known nothing
of their interests, or they of mine. Our talk was necessarily shallow,
and I dare say Cynthia, no less than her husband, was glad when I rose
to take my leave. The sweet, clear candour of her face had given
place, I thought, to something not wholly unlike querulousness. But, I
had one glance from her eyes, as she took my hand, which seemed to me
to say:

'God speed! I understand.'

It may have meant nothing, but I like to think it meant understanding.

From Cynthia's house I went on to Heron's lodging, for I had a horror
of being 'seen off,' and wished to bid my friend good-bye in his own
rooms. Our talk was constrained, I remember. The stress of my
uprooting affected me far more than I knew at the time. Heron regarded
my going with grave disapproval as a crazy step. He regretted it, too;
and such feelings always tended to exaggerate his tendency to
taciturnity, or to a harsh, sardonic vein in speech.

As his way was in such a matter, Heron calmly ignored my stipulation
about being 'seen off,' and he was standing beside the curb when I
stepped out of my cab at Fenchurch Street Station next morning. There
was nearly half an hour to spare, we found, before the boat train
started.

'The correct thing would be a stirrup-cup,' growled Heron.

'The very thing,' I said; conversation in such a place, and in such
circumstances, proving quite impossible for me. By an odd chance I
recalled my first experiences upon arrival at this same mean and
dolorous station, more than twenty years previously. 'We will go to
the house in which the "genelmun orduder bawth,"' I said, and led
Heron across into the Blue Boar.

The forced jocularity of these occasions is apt to be a pitifully
wooden business, and I suppose it was a relief to us both when my
train began slowly to move.

'By the way--I had forgotten,' said Heron, very gruffly. 'Take this
trifle with you-- May be of some use. Good-bye! Look me up as soon as
you get back. I give you a year--or nearly.'

He waved his hand jerkily, and was gone. He had given me the silver
cigarette-case which he had used for all the years of our
acquaintance. It bore his initials in one corner, and under these I
now saw engraved: 'To N. F., 1890-1910.' I do not recall any small
incident that impressed me more than this.

I still moved through a mist. The voices of my travelling companions
seemed oddly small and remote. I felt as though encased and insulated,
in some curious way, from the everyday life about me. And this mood
possessed me all through that day. Through all the customary bustle of
an ocean liner's departure, I moved slowly, silently, aloofly, as a
somnambulist. It was a singular outsetting, this start upon my 'way
out.'


III


In ordinary times my thrifty instinct might have led me to travel in
the second class division of the great steamer. But it had happened
that the sum I set aside to cover my travelling expenses proved more
than ample. Several small unreckoned additions had been made to it
during my last month in England; and the upshot was that I decided to
travel by first saloon, and even to indulge myself in the added luxury
of a single-berth, upper-deck cabin. For me privacy had for long been
one of the few luxuries I really did value. Heron had mildly satirised
my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut
life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and
privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put
me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view
was the more correct.

At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the
_Oronta_. My books I had deliberately packed in boxes marked 'Not
wanted on voyage.' There was not so much as a sheet of manuscript
paper among my cabin luggage. Beyond an odd letter or two for postage
at ports of call, and any casual browsing in the ship's library to
which I might feel impelled in my idleness, I was prepared to give no
thought to reading or writing for the present; since for five-and-twenty
years I had been giving practically all my days and half my
nights to these pursuits as a working man of letters.

I had amused myself of late with elaborate anticipations of the
delights of idleness during this passage to Australia. My ideas of sea
travel were really culled from recollections of life on a full rigged
clipper ship--not a steamboat. (The homeward passage from Australia
had hardly been sea-travel in the ordinary sense for me, but rather
six weeks of clerking in an office.) In my anticipations of the
present journey, the dominant impressions had been based upon memories
of the spotless cleanliness, endless leisure, and primitive simplicity
of the old time sailing ship life. I do not mean that I had thought I
should trot about the decks of the _Oronta_ bare-footed, as I and my
childish companions had done aboard the _Ariadne_; but I do mean that
the atmosphere of the _Ariadne_ life had coloured all my thoughts of
what the present trip would be for me.

And that, of course, was a mistake. The smoothly ordered life of the
_Oronta's_ saloon passengers was very much that of a first-class
seaside hotel, say in Bournemouth. So far from sprawling upon the
snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in
the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the
_Oronta_ were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck--the
ship had no forecastle-head--which was reserved for the uses of the
crew. Also, in the conventional black and white of society's evening
uniform for men, I suppose one does not exactly sprawl on decks, even
where these are spotless, as they never are on board a steamship.

The pleasant race of sailor men, of shell-backs, such as those who
swung the yards and tallied on to the halliards of the _Ariadne_, may
or may not have become extinct, and given place to a breed of sea-going
mechanics, who protect their feet by means of rubber boots when
washing decks down in the morning. In any case, I met none of the old
salted variety among the _Oronta's_ multitudinous crew. For me there
was here no sitting on painted spars, or tarry hatch-covers, or rusty
anchor-stocks, and listening to long, rambling 'yarns,' or 'cuffers,'
in idle dog-watches or restful night-watches, when the southern Trades
blew steadily, and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a
week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn
constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first
night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk,
and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products
of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of
relieving wheel or look-out aboard the _Oronta_, and long before the
beginning of the middle watch I had usually switched off for the night
the electric reading-lamp over my pillow.

The fact is, of course, that I had never had any kind of training for
such a life as that in which I now found myself. I will not pretend to
regret that, for, to be frank, it is a vapid, foolish, empty life
enough. But there it was; one could not well evade it, and I had had
no previous experience of anything at all like it. The most popular
breakfast-hour was something after nine. Beef-tea, ices, and suchlike
aids to indigestion were partaken of a couple of hours later. Luncheon
was a substantial dinner. The four o'clock tea was quite a meal for
most passengers. Caviare and anchovy sandwiches were the rule in the
half hour preceding dinner, which was, of course, a serious function.
But ours was a valiant company, and supper was a seventh meal achieved
by many. The orchestra seemed never far away; games were numerous
(here again I had hopelessly neglected my education), and at night
there were concerts, impromptu dances, and balls that were far from
being impromptu.

It is, I fear, a confession of natural perversity, but by the time we
reached the Mediterranean I was exceedingly restless, and inclined to
nervous depression.

I welcomed the various ports of call, and was properly ashamed of the
unsocial irritability which made me resent the feeling of being made
one of a chattering, laughing, high-spirited horde of tourists, whose
descent upon a foreign port seriously damaged whatever charm or
interest it might possess. At least the trading residents of these
ports were far more sensible than I, their preference undoubtedly
causing them to welcome the wielders of camera and guide-book in the
vein of 'the more the merrier.'

It was in Naples, outside the Villa Nazionale, that it fell to me to
rescue the elegant young widow, Mrs. Oldcastle, from the embarrassing
attentions of a cabman, whose acquaintances were already rallying
about him in great force. So far as speech went, my command of Italian
was not very much better than Mrs. Oldcastle's perhaps; but at least I
had a pocketful of Italian silver, while she, poor lady, had only
English money. The cabman was grossly overpaid, of course, but the
main point was I silenced him. And then, her flushed cheeks testifying
to her embarrassment, Mrs. Oldcastle turned towards the gardens, and,
in common courtesy, I walked with her to ascertain if I could be of
any further service. The upshot was that we strolled for some time,
took tea in the Café Umberto, walked through the Museo, visited one of
the city's innumerable glove-shops, and finally, still together, drove
back to the port and rejoined the _Oronta_.

As fellow-passengers we had up till this time merely exchanged casual
salutations, Mrs. Oldcastle being one of the three who shared the
particular table in the saloon at which I sat. No one else of her name
appeared in the passenger list, in which I had already read the line:
'Mrs. Oldcastle and maid.' I imagined her age to be still something in
the earliest thirties, and I had been informed by some obliging gossip
that she was English by birth; that she had married an Australian
squatter, who had died during the past year or so; that her permanent
home was in England, but that she was just now paying a visit to the
Commonwealth upon some business connected with her late husband's
estates there.

'You have been most kind, Mr. Freydon,' she said, as we stepped from
the gangway to the steamer's deck. 'I was in a dreadful muddle by
myself, and now, thanks to you, I have really enjoyed my afternoon in
Naples. Believe me, I am grateful. And,' she added, with a faint
blush, 'I shall now find even greater interest than before in your
books. Au revoir!'

So she disappeared, by way of the saloon companion, while I took a
turn along the deck to smoke a cigarette. Naturally I had not
mentioned my books or profession, and I thought it an odd chance that
she should know them. She certainly had been a most agreeable
companion, and----

'There's no doubt that life in any other country, no matter where,
does seem to enlarge the sympathies of English people,' I told myself.
'It tends to mitigate the severity of their attitude towards the
narrower conventions. If this had been her first journey out of
England she might have accepted my help in the matter of the cabman,
but would almost certainly have felt called upon to reject my company
from that on. Instead of which-- H'm! Well, upon my word, I have
enjoyed the day far more than I should have done alone. She certainly
is very bright and intelligent.'

And I nodded and smiled to myself, recalling some of her comments upon
certain figures in the marble gallery of the Museo that afternoon.
There was nothing in the least inane or parrot-like about her
conversation. I experienced a more genial and friendly feeling than
had been mine till then toward the whole of my fellow-passengers.

'After all,' I told myself, 'this forming of hasty impressions of
people, from snatches of their talk and mannerisms and so forth, is
both misleading and uncharitable. Here have I been sitting at table
for a week, and, upon my word, I had no idea that any one among her
sex on board had half so much intelligence as she had shown in these
few hours away from the crowd. The crowd--that's it. It's misleading
to observe folk in the mass, and in the confinement of a ship.'

The passengers' quarters on an ocean liner are fully equal to the
residences in a cathedral close as forcing beds of gossip and scandal.
Thus, before we reached the Indian Ocean, I was aware that the gossips
had so far condescended as to link my name with that of one whom I
certainly rated as the most attractive of her sex on board. Indeed, it
was Mrs. Oldcastle herself who drew my attention to this, with a
little _moue_ of contempt and disgust.

'Really, people on board ship are too despicable in this matter of
gossip,' she said. 'It would seem that they are literally incapable of
evolving any other topic than the doings, or supposed doings, of those
about them. And the men seem to me just as bad as the women.'


IV


Naturally, the fact that various idle people chose to use my name in
their gossip in no sense disturbed my peace of mind. Neither had I any
particular occasion to regret it, for Mrs. Oldcastle's sake, since I
fancy that independent and high-spirited little lady took a
mischievous pleasure in spurring the rather sluggish imaginations of
those about her. I found a hint of this in her demeanour occasionally,
and could imagine her saying, as she mentally addressed her
fellow-passengers:

'There! Here's a choice crumb for you, you silly chatterers!'

With some such thought, I am assured, she occasionally took my arm
when we chanced to pace the deck late in the evening. At least, I
noted that such actions on her part came frequently when we happened
to pass a group of lady passengers in the full glare of an electric
lamp, and rarely when we were unobserved.

There is doubtless a certain forceful magic about the combined
influences of propinquity and sea air, as these are enjoyed by the
idle passengers upon a great ocean liner. They do, I think, tend to
advance intimacy and accelerate the various stages of intercourse
leading thereto, and therefrom, as nothing else does; more
particularly as affecting the relations between men and women. Whilst
unlike myself (as in most other respects) in that her social instincts
were I am sure well developed, it happened that Mrs. Oldcastle did not
feel much more drawn toward the majority of her fellow-passengers than
I did. By a more remarkable coincidence, it chanced that she had read
and been interested by several of my books. From such a starting-point,
then, it followed almost inevitably that we walked the decks
together, and sat and talked together a great deal; these being the
normal daily occupations of people so situated, if not indeed the only
available occupations for those not given over to such delights as
deck quoits.

I am very sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was never what is called a flirt,
and I believe the general tone of our conversations was sufficiently
rational. Yet I will not deny that there were times--on the balcony of
the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, and on the _Oronta's_ promenade deck
by moonlight--when my attitude towards this charming lady was
definitely tinged by sentiment. Withal, I doubt if any raw boy could
have been more shy, in some respects, than I; for I was most
sensitively conscious during this time of the fact that I was a very
unsocial, middle-aged man, of indifferent health, and, for that
reason, unattractive appearance. Whereas, Mrs. Oldcastle had all the
charms of the best type of 'the woman of thirty,' including the
evident enjoyment of that sort of health which is the only real
preservative of youth. Being by habit a lonely and self-conscious
creature, I had even more than the average Englishman's horror of
making myself ridiculous.

We were off the coast of south-western Australia when I sat down in my
cabin one morning for the purpose of seriously reviewing my position,
with special reference to recent conversations with Mrs. Oldcastle.
Certain things I laid down as premises which could not be questioned;
as, for example, that I found this gracious little lady (Mrs.
Oldcastle was petite and softly rounded in figure; I am tall and
inclined in these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a
most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and
unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of
humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there
had been nothing in the faintest degree compromising in our relations
so far.

From such premises I began to argue with myself upon the question of
marriage. It is not very easy to get these things down in black and
white. I was perfectly sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was heartwhole. And
yet, absurdly presumptuous as it must look when I write it, I was
equally sure that it would be possible for me to woo and win her. It
may seem odd, but this charming woman did really enjoy my society. She
liked talking with me. She found my understanding of her ready and
sympathetic, and--what doubtless appealed to both of us--she found
that talk with me had a rather stimulating effect upon her; that it
drew out, in combating my point of view, the best of her excellent
qualities. Using large words for lesser things, she laughingly
asserted that I inspired her; and she added that I was the only person
she knew who never bored or wearied her. Yes, no matter how awkward
the written words may look, I know I was convinced that, if I should
set myself to do it, I could woo and win this charming woman, whose
first name, by the way, I did not then know.

I did not know Mrs. Oldcastle's precise circumstances, of course, but
there were many ways in which I gathered that she was rather rich than
poor. A young Australian among the passengers volunteered to me the
information that this lady had been the sole legatee of her late
husband, who had owned stations in South Australia and in Queensland
certainly worth some hundreds of thousands of pounds. Few men could be
less attracted than myself by a prospect of controlling a large
fortune or extensive properties. But, as against that, whilst marriage
with any one possessed of no means would have been mere folly for me,
the possession of ample means would remove the most obvious barriers
between myself and matrimony.

It was passing strange, I thought, that a woman at once so charming
and so rich should be travelling alone, and, so far from being
surrounded by a court of admirers, content to make such a man as
myself almost her sole companion. Mrs. Oldcastle had a mind at once
nimble and delicate, sensitive, and quite remarkably quick to seize
impressions, and to arrive at (mostly accurate) conclusions. She had a
vein of gentle satire, of kindly and withal truly humorous irony, most
rare I think in women, and quite delightful in a companion. I learned
that her father (now dead) had been the secretary of one of the
learned societies in London, and a writer of no mean reputation on
archæology and kindred subjects. Her surviving relatives were few in
number, of small means, and resident, I gathered, in the west of
England. I had told her a good deal about my London life, and of the
circumstances and plans leading up to my present journey. Her comment
was:

'I think I understand perfectly, I am sure I sympathise heartily, and--I
give you one more year than your friend, Mr. Heron, allowed. I
prophesy that you will return to London within two years.'

'But, just why?' I asked. 'For what reasons will my attempted "way
out" prove no more than a way back?'

'Well, I am not sure that I can explain that. No, I don't think I can.
It may prove a good deal more than that, and yet take you back to
London within a couple of years. Though I cannot explain, I am sure.
It is not only that you have been a sedentary man all these years. You
have also been a thinker. You think intellectual society is of no
moment to you. Well, you are very tired, you see. Also, bear this in
mind: in the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top,
there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the
buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities
of the New World have to offer. I suppose it is a matter of tradition
and association. The endeavours of the New World are material; a
proportion at least of the Old World's efforts are abstract and ideal.
You will see. I give you two years, or nearly. And I don't think for a
moment it will be wasted time.'

Sometimes our talk was far more suggestive of the intercourse between
two men, fellow-workers even, than that of a man and a woman. Never, I
think, was it very suggestive of what it really was: conversation
between a middle-aged, and, upon the whole, broken man, and a woman
young, beautiful, wealthy, and unattached. Love, in the passionate,
youthful sense, was not for me, of course, and never again could be. I
think I was free from illusions on that point. But I believed I might
be a tolerable companion for such a woman as Mrs. Oldcastle, and I
felt that her companionship would be a thing very delightful to me.
After all, she had presumably had her love affair, and was now a fully
matured woman. Why then should I not definitely lay aside my plans--which
even unconventional Sidney Heron thought fantastic--and ask this
altogether charming woman to be my wife? Though I could never play the
passionate lover, my æsthetic sense was far from unconscious or
unappreciative of all her purely womanly charm, her grace and beauty
of person, as apart from her delightful mental qualities.

I mused over the question through an entire morning, and when the
luncheon bugle sounded had arrived at no definite conclusion regarding
it.

That afternoon it happened that, as I sat chatting with Mrs.
Oldcastle---we were now in full view of the Australian coast, a rather
monotonous though moving picture which was occupying the attention of
most passengers--our conversation turned upon the age question; how
youth was ended in the twentieth year for some people, whilst with
others it was prolonged into the thirtieth and even the fortieth year;
and, in the case of others again, seemed to last all their lives long.
Mrs. Oldcastle had a friend in London who had placidly adopted middle
age in her twenty-fifth year; and we agreed that a white-haired,
rubicund gentleman of fully sixty years, then engaged in winning a
quoits tournament before our eyes, seemed possessed of the gift of
unending youth.

'You know, I really feel quite strongly on the point,' said Mrs.
Oldcastle. 'My friend, Betty Millen, has positively made herself a
frump at five-and-twenty. We practically quarrelled over it. I don't
think people have any right to do that sort of thing. It is not fair
to their friends. Seriously, I do regard it as an actual duty for
every one to cherish and preserve her youth.'

'And _his_ youth, too?' I asked.

'Certainly, I think there is even less excuse for men who go out half-way
to meet middle-age. That sort of middle-age really is a kind of
slow dying. Age is a sort of gradual, piecemeal death, after all. It
can be fended off, and ought to be. Men have more active and
interesting lives than women, as a rule; and so have the less excuse
for allowing age to creep upon them.'

'But surely, in a general way, the poor fellows cannot help it?'

'Oh, I don't agree. I have known men old enough to be my father, so
far as years go, who were splendidly youthful. The older a man is,
within limits of course, the more interesting he should be, and is,
unless he has weakly allowed age to benumb him before his time. Then
he becomes merely depressing, a kind of drag and lowering influence
upon his friends; and, too, a horridly ageing influence upon them.'

I nodded, musing, none too cheerily.

'After all,' she continued vivaciously, 'science has done such a lot
for us of late. Practically every one can keep bodily young and fit.
It only means taking a little trouble. And the rest, I think, is just
a question of will-power and mental hygiene. No, I have no patience
with people who grow old; unless, of course, they really are very old
in years. I think it argues either stupidity or a kind of
profligacy--mental, nervous, and emotional, I mean--and in either case
it is very unfair to those about them, for there is nothing so horribly
contagious.'

I have sometimes wondered if Mrs. Oldcastle had any deliberate purpose
in this conversation. Upon the whole, I think not. I remember
distinctly that the responsibility for introducing the subject was
mine. She might have been covertly instructing me for my own benefit,
but I doubt it, I doubt it. My faults of melancholy and unrestfulness
had not appeared, I think, in my intercourse with Mrs. Oldcastle, so
cheery and enlivening was her influence. No, I think these really were
her views, and that she aired them purely conversationally, and
without design or afterthought, however kindly. Her own youth she had
most admirably conserved, and in a manner which showed real force of
character and self-control; for, as I now know, she had had some
trying and wearing experiences, though her air and manner were those
of a woman young and high-spirited, who had never known a care. As a
fact she had known what it was, for three years, to fight against the
horrid advance of what was practically a disease, and a terrible one,
in her late husband, the chief cause of whose death was alcoholic
poisoning.

But, though I am almost sure that this particular conversation was in
no sense part of a design or meant to influence me in my relations
with her, yet it did, as a matter of fact, serve to put a period to my
musings, and bring me to a definite decision, which it may be had
considerable importance for both of us. Within forty-eight hours Mrs.
Oldcastle was to leave the _Oronta_, her destination being the South
Australian capital. That I had become none too sure of myself in her
company is proved by the fact that when I left her that evening, it
was with mention of a pretended headache and chill. I kept my cabin
next day, and before noon on the day following that we were due at
Port Adelaide. Mrs. Oldcastle expressed kindly sympathy in the matter
of my supposed indisposition, and that rather upset me. I could see
that my non-appearance during her last full day on board puzzled her,
and I was not prepared to part from her upon a pretence.

'Why, the fact is,' I said, 'I don't think I can accept your sympathy,
because I had no headache or chill. I was a little moody--somewhat
middle-aged, you know; and wanted to be alone, and think.'

'I see,' she said thoughtfully, and rather wonderingly.

'I don't very much think you do,' I told her, not very politely. 'And
I'm not sure that I can explain--even if it were wise to try. I think,
if you don't mind, I'll just say this much: that I greatly value your
friendship, and want to retain it, if I can. It seemed to me better to
have a headache yesterday, in case--in case I might have done anything
to risk losing your friendship.'

'Oh! Well, I do not think you are likely to lose it, for I--I am as
much interested as you can be in preserving it. I want you to write to
me. Will you? And I will write to you when you have found your
hermitage and can give me an address. I will give you my agent's
address in Adelaide, and my own address in London, where I shall
expect a call from you within two years. No, you wall not find it so
easy to lose touch with me, my friend; nor would you if--if you had
not had your headache yesterday.'

Upon that she left me to prepare for going ashore. I think we
understood each other very well then. After that we had no more than a
minute together for private talk. During that minute I do not think I
said anything except 'Good-bye!' But I very well remember some words
Mrs. Oldcastle said.

'You are not to forget me, if you please. Remember, I am not so dull
but what I can understand--some headaches. But they must not be
accompanied by "moody middle-age." Do please remember when the
hermitage palls that it may be left just as easily as it was found.
And then, apart from Mr. Heron and others, there will be a friend
waiting to see you in London, and--and wanting to see you.... That's
my agent, the man with the green-lined umbrella. Good-bye--friend!'


V


The _Oronta_ was a dull ship for me once she had passed Adelaide;
duller even than in the grey days between Tilbury and Naples. Adelaide
passed, an Australian-bound liner seems to have reached the end of her
outward passage, and yet it is not over. The remainder, for Melbourne,
Sydney, and Brisbane-bound folk, is apt to be a weariness, even as a
train journey is, with passengers coming and going and trunks and
boxes much in evidence.

I had lost my friend, though I had called this my method of retaining
her friendship; and rightly, I dare say. To be worthy of her a man
should have left in him ten times my vitality, I thought; he should be
one who looked forward rather than back; he should bring to their
joint wayfaring a far keener zest for life than my years in our modern
Grub Street had left me. How vapid was the talk of my remaining
fellow-passengers; how slow of understanding, and how preoccupied with
petty things they seemed! They discussed their luggage, and questions
regarding the proper amounts for stewards' tips. Had not some
traveller called Adelaide Australia's city of culture? It seemed a
pleasant town. The Mount Lofty country near by was beautiful, I
gathered. It might well have been better for me to have left the ship
there. My musings were in this sort; somewhat lacking, perhaps, in the
zest and cheerfulness which should pertain to a new departure in life.

I spent a few days in Sydney, chiefly given to walks through the city
and suburbs. There was a certain interest, I found, to be derived from
the noting of all the changes which a quarter of a century had wrought
in this antipodean Venice. Some of the alterations I noticed were
possibly no more than reflections of the changes time had wrought in
myself; for these--the modifications which lie between ambitious youth
and that sort of damaged middle-age which carries your dyspeptic
farther from his youth than ever his three score years and ten take
the hale man--had been radical and thorough with me. But, none the
less, Sydney's actual changes were sufficiently remarkable.

At the spot whereon I made my entry into society (as I thought), in
the studio of Mr. Rawlence, the artist, stood now an imposing red
building of many storeys, given over, I gathered, to doctors and
dentists. The artist, I thought, was probably gathered to his fathers
ere this, as my old fellow-lodger, Mr. Smith, most certainly must have
been. Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, had died some years
previously. The offices and premises of Messrs. J. Canning and Son, my
first employers in Sydney, were as though I had left them but
yesterday, unchanged in any single respect. But the head of the firm,
as I had known him, was no more; and his son, of whom I caught one
glimpse on the stairway, had grown elderly, grey, and quite
surprisingly stout.

There was some interest for me in prowling about the haunts of my
youth; but to be honest, I must admit there was no pleasure, even of
the mildly melancholy kind. However beautiful their surroundings, no
New World cities are in themselves beautiful or picturesque. That
which is new in them is--new, and well enough; and that which is not
new or newish is apt to be rather shabby than venerable. I apprehend
that Old World cities would be quite intolerably shabby and tumble-down
but for the fact that, when they were built, joint stock
companies were unknown, and men still took real pride in the
durability of their work. We have made wondrous progress, of course,
and are vastly cleverer than our forbears; but for the bulk of the
work of our hands, there is not very much to be said when its newness
has worn off.

I thought seriously for an hour or more of going to Dursley to visit
its Omniferacious Agent, and, more particularly, perhaps to see his
wife; possibly even to settle in the neighbourhood of that pretty
little town. Then I reckoned up the years, and decided against this
step. The Omnigerentual One would be an old man, if alive; and his
wife--I recalled her fragile figure and hopeless invalidism, and
thought I would sooner cherish my recollections of five-and-twenty
years than put them to the test of inquiry.

On the fourth or fifth day I drove with my bags to the handsome new
railway station which had taken the place of the rambling old Redfern
terminal I remembered, and took train for the north. I found I had no
wish, at present, to visit Werrina, Myall Creek, or Livorno Bay, and
my journey came to an end a full fifty miles south of St. Peter's
Orphanage. Here, within five miles of the substantial township of
Peterborough, I came, with great ease, upon the very sort of place I
had in mind: a tiny cottage of two rooms, with a good deep verandah
before, and a little lean-to kitchen, or, in the local phrase,
skillion, behind; two rough slab sheds, a few fruit trees past their
prime, an acre of paddock, and beyond that illimitable bush.

I bought the tiny place for a hundred and five pounds, influenced
thereto in part by the fact that the daughter of its owner, a small
'cockatoo' farmer's wife, lived no more than a quarter of a mile away;
and was willing, for a modest consideration, to come in each day and
'do' for me, to the extent of cooking one hot meal, washing dishes,
and tidying my little gunyah. Thus, simply and swiftly, I became a
landed proprietor, and was able to send to Sydney for my heavy
chattels, knowing that, for the first time in my life, I actually
possessed in my own right a roof to shelter them withal, though it
were only of galvanised iron. (The use of stringy bark for the roofing
of small dwellings seemed to have ceased since my last sojourn in
these parts, the practical value of iron for rain-water catchment
having thrust aside the cooler and more picturesque material.)

In the township of Peterborough I secured, for the time being, the
services of a decent, elderly man named Fetch--Isaiah Fetch--and
together we set to work to make a garden before my little house; to
fence it in against the attacks of bandicoots and wandering cattle,
and to effect one or two small repairs, additions and improvements to
the place. This manual work interested me, and, I dare say, bettered
my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had
as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior,
was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance.


VI


Wages for labour had soared and soared again since my day in
Australia, even for elderly and 'down-along more than up-along 'men
like Isaiah Fetch. (The phrase is his own.) And, in any case, I told
myself, it was not for the likes of me to keep hired men. And so, when
the garden was made, and the other needed work done, I parted with
Isaiah--a good, honest, homespun creature, rich in a sort of bovine
contentment which often moved me to sincere envy--and was left quite
alone in my hermitage, save for the morning visit of perhaps a couple
of hours, which the worthy Mrs. Blades undertook to pay for the
purpose of tidying my rooms and cooking a midday meal for me. Her
coming between nine and ten each morning, and going between twelve and
one, formed the chief, if not the only, landmarks in the routine of my
quiet days. So it was when I parted with Isaiah. So it is to-day, and
so it is like to remain--while I remain.

Parting with Isaiah Fetch made a good deal of difference to me; more
difference than I should have supposed it possible that anything
connected with so simple a soul could have made. The plain fact is, I
suppose, that while Isaiah worked about the place here, I worked with
him, in my pottering way. I developed quite an interest in my bit of
garden, because of the very genuine interest felt in the making of it
by Isaiah. I had worked at it with him; but, once he had left it, I
regret to say the ordered ranks of young vegetables tempted me but
little, and soon became disordered, for the reason that the war I
waged against the weeds was but a poor, half-hearted affair. And so it
was with other good works we had begun together. I gave up my cow,
because it seemed far simpler to let Mrs. Blades have her for nothing,
on the understanding that she brought me the daily trifle of milk I
needed. I left the feeding and care of my few fowls to Mrs. Blades,
and finally made her a present of them, after paying several bills for
their pollard and grain. It seemed easier and cheaper to let Mrs.
Blades supply the few eggs I needed.

My horse Punch I kept, because we grew fond of each other, and the
surrounding bush afforded ample grazing for him. When Punch began his
habit of gently biting my arm or shoulder every time I led him here or
there, he sealed his own fate; and now will have to continue living
with his tamely uninteresting master willy nilly. Lovable, kindly,
spirited beast that he is, I never could have afforded the purchase of
his like but for a slight flaw in his near foreleg, which in some way
spoils his action, from your horsey man's standpoint, and pleases me
greatly, because it brought the affectionate rascal within my modest
reach. I give him very little work, and rather too much food; but he
has to put up with a good deal of my society, and holds long converse
with me daily, I suppose because he knows no means of terminating an
interview until that is my pleasure.

One piece of outdoor work I have continued religiously, for the
reason, no doubt, that I love wood fires, even in warm weather. I
never neglect my wood-stack, the foundations of which were laid for me
by Isaiah Fetch. Every day I take axe and saw and cut a certain amount
of logwood. My hearth will take logs of just four feet in length, and
I feed it royally. The wood costs nothing; when burning it is highly
aromatic, and I like to be profuse with it; I who can recall an
interminable London winter, in a garret full of leaks and draught
holes, in which the only warming apparatus, besides the poor lamp that
lighted my writing-table, was a miserable oil-stove, which I could not
afford to keep alight except for the brief intervals during which it
boiled my kettle for me.

Yes, I know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and
it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a
rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log--one of the little
fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose--is
enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of
comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think
of giving up my hermitage and returning to England, because of Punch
and my ever-glowing hearth; even if there were no other reasons, as of
course there are.

For, whilst the comparative zestfulness of the first months, when I
worked with Isaiah Fetch to improve my rough-hewn little hermitage,
may not have endured, yet are there many obvious and substantial
advantages for me in the life I lead here, in this little bush
back-water, where the few human creatures who know of my existence regard
me as a poor, harmless kind of crank, and no one ever disturbs the
current of my circling thoughts. Never was a life more free from
interruptions from without. And if disturbance ever emanates from
within, why, clearly the fault must be my own, and should serve as a
reminder of how vastly uneasy my life would surely be in more
civilised surroundings, where interruptions descend upon one from
without, thick as smuts through the window of a London garret--save
where the garreteer cares to do without air. Here I sit with a noble
fire leaping at one end of my unlined, wooden room, and wide open
doors and windows all about me. As regards climate, in New South Wales
a man may come as near as may be to eating his cake and having it too.

And, for that long-sought mental restfulness, content, peace, whatever
one may call it, is not my present task a long step towards its
attainment? A completed record of the fitful struggle one calls one's
life, calmly studied in the light of reason untrammelled by sentiment,
never interrupted by the call of affairs; surely that should bring the
full measure of self-comprehension upon which peace is based! To doubt
that contentment lies that way would be wretchedness indeed. But why
should I doubt what the world's greatest sages have shown? True, my
own experience of life has suggested that contentment is rather the
monopoly of the simplest souls, whose understanding is very limited
indeed. A stinging thought this, and apt to keep a man wakeful at
night, if indulged. But I think it should not be indulged. To doubt
the existence of a higher order of content than that of the blissfully
ignorant is to brush aside as worthless and meaningless the best that
classic literature has to offer us, and--such doubts are pernicious
things.

Living here in this clean, sweet air, so far removed from the external
influences which make for fret and stress, my bodily health, at all
events, has small excuse for failure one would suppose. And, indeed,
at first it did seem to me that I was acquiring a more normal kind of
hardihood and working efficiency in this respect. But I regret to say
the supposition was not long-lived. Four or five months after my
arrival here I took to my bed for a fortnight, as the result of one of
the severest attacks I have ever had; and in the fifteen months which
have elapsed since then, my general health has been very much what it
was during the years before I left London, while the acute bouts of
neuritis and gastric trouble, when they have come, have been worse, I
think, than those of earlier years.

But, none the less, without feeling it as yet, I may be building up a
better general condition in this quiet life; and the bitterly sharp
attacks that seize me may represent no more than a working off of
arrears of penalties. I hope it may be so, for persistent ill-health
is a dismal thing. But, as against that, I think I am sufficiently
philosophic--how often that blessed word is abused by disgruntled
mankind--to avoid hopes and desires of too extravagant a sort, and, by
that token, to be safeguarded from the sharper forms of
disappointment.

Contentment depends, I apprehend, not upon obtaining possession of
this or that, but upon the wise schooling of one's desires and
requirements. My aims and desires in life--behind the achievement of
which I have always fancied I discerned Contentment sitting as a
goddess, from whose beneficent hands come all rewards--have naturally
varied with the passing years. In youth, I suppose, first place was
given to Position. Later, Art stood highest; later, again, Intellect;
then Morality; and, finally. Peace, Tranquillity--surely the most
modest, and therefore practical and hopeful of all these goals.


VII


The portion of my days here in the bush which I like best (when no
bodily ill plagues me) is the very early morning. Directly daylight
comes, while yet the sun's Australian throne is vacant--all hung about
in cool, pearly draperies--I slip a waterproof over my pyjamas, having
first rolled up the legs of these garments and thrust my feet into
rubber half-boots, and wander out across the verandah, down through
the garden patch, over the road, with its three-inch coating of sandy
dust, and into the bush beyond, where every tiny leaf and twig and
blade of grass holds treasure trove and nutriment, in the form of
glistening dewdrops.

The early morning in the coastal belt of New South Wales is rapture
made visible and responsive to one's faculties of touch, and smell,
and hearing. And yet---no. I believe I have used the wrong word. It
would be rapture, belike, in a Devon coomb, or on a Hampshire hill-top.
Here it is hardly articulate or sprightly enough for rapture.
Rather, I should say, it is the perfection of pellucid serenity. It
lacks the full-throated eternal youthfulness of dawn in the English
countryside; but, for calmly exquisite serenity, it is matchless. To
my mind it is grateful as cold water is to a heated, tired body. It
smooths out the creases of the mind, and is wonderfully calming. Yet
it has none of the intimate, heart-stirring kindliness of England's
rural scenery. No untamed land has that. Nature may be grand,
inspiring, bracing, terrifying, what you will. She is never simply
kind and loving--whatever the armchair poets may say. A countryside
must be humanised, and that through many successive generations,
before it can lay hold upon your heart by its loving-kindness, and
draw moisture from your eyes. It is not the emotionless power of
Nature, but man's long-suffering patient toil in Nature's realm that
gives our English country-side this quality.

But my rugged, unkempt bush here is nobly serene and splendidly calm
in the dawn hours. It makes me feel rather like an ant, but a well-doing
and unworried ant. And I enjoy it greatly. As I stride among the
drenching scrub, and over ancient logs which, before I was born, stood
erect and challenged all the winds that blow, I listen for the sound
of his bell, and then call to my friend Punch:

'Choop! Choop! Choop, Punch! Come away, boy! Come away! Choop! Choop!'

But not too loudly, and not at all peremptorily. For I do not really
want him to come, or, at least, not too hurriedly. That would cut my
morning pleasure short. No; I prefer to find Punch half a mile from
home, and I think the rascal knows it. For sometimes I catch glimpses
of him between the tree-trunks--we have myriads of cabbage-tree palms,
tree-ferns, and bangalow palms, among the eucalypti hereabouts--and
always, if we are less than a quarter of a mile or so from home, it is
his rounded haunches that I see, and he is walking slowly away from
me, listening to my call, and doubtless grinning as he chews his
cud--a great ruminator is my Punch.

At other times, when it chances that dawn has found him a full half
mile from home, he does not walk away from me, but stands behind the
bole of a great tree, looking round its side, listening, waiting, and
studiously refraining from the slightest move in my direction, until I
am within twenty paces of him. Then, with a loud whinny, rather like a
child's 'Peep-bo!' in intent, I think, he will walk quickly up to me,
wishing me the top of the morning, and holding out his head for the
halter which I always carry on these occasions.

In the first months of our acquaintance I used to clamber on to his
back forthwith, and ride home. He knows I cannot quite manage that
now, and so walks with me, rubbing at my shoulders the while with his
grass-stained, dewy lips, till we see a suitable stump or log, from
which I can conveniently mount him. Then, with occasional thrusts
round of his head to nuzzle one of my ankles, or to snatch a tempting
bit of greenery, he carries me home, and together--for he superintends
this operation with the most close and anxious care, his foreparts
well inside the feed-house--we mix his breakfast, first in an old
four-gallon oil-can, and then in the manger, and I sit beside him and
smoke a cigarette till the meal is well under weigh.

I have made Punch something of a gourmand, and each meal has to
contain, besides its foundation of wheaten chaff and its _pièce de
résistance_ of cracked maize, a flavouring of oats--say, three double
handfuls--and a thorough sprinkling, well rubbed in, of bran. If the
proportions are wrong, or any of the constituents of the meal lacking,
Punch snorts, whinnies, turns his rump to the manger, and demands my
instant attention. I was intensely amused one day when, sitting in the
slab and bark stable, through whose crevices seeing and hearing are
easy, to overhear the mail-man telling Mrs. Blades that, upon his Sam,
I was for all the world like an old maid with her canary in the way I
dry-nursed that blessed horse; by ghost, I was! He was particularly
struck, was this good man, by my insane practice of sometimes taking
Punch for a walk in the bush, as though he were a dog, and without
ever mounting him.

Punch provided for, my own ablutions are performed in the wood-shed,
where I have learned to bathe with the aid of a sponge and a bucket of
water, and have a shower worked by a cord connected with a perforated
nail-can. By this time my billy-can is probably spluttering over the
hearth, and I make tea and toast, after possibly eating an orange. And
so the day is fairly started, and I am free to think, to read, to
write, or to enjoy idleness, after a further chat with Punch when
turning him out to graze. My wood-chopping I do either before
breakfast or towards the close of the day; the latter, I think, more
often than the former. It makes a not unpleasant salve for the
conscience of a mainly idle man, after the super-fatted luxury of
afternoon tea and a biscuit or scone.

An Australian bushman would call my tea no more than water bewitched,
and my small pinch of China leaves in an infuser spoon but a mean
mockery of his own generous handful of black Indian leaves, well
stewed in a billy to a strength suited for hide-tanning. Of this inky
mixture he will cheerfully consume (several times a day) a quart, as
an aid to the digestion of a pound or two of corned beef, with pickles
and other deadly things, none of which seem to do him much harm. And
if they should, the result rather amuses and interests him than
otherwise; for, of all amateur doctors (and lawyers), he is the most
enthusiastic and ingenuous. He will tell you (with the emphatic winks,
nods, and gestures of a man of research who has made a wonderful
discovery, and, out of the goodness of his heart, means to let you
into the secret) of some patent medicine which is already advertised,
generally offensively, in every newspaper in the land; and, having
explained how it made a new man of him, will very likely insist with
kindly tyranny upon buying you a flagon of the costly rubbish.

'I assure you, Mr. Freydon, you won't know yourself after takin' a
bottle or two of Simpkins's Red Marvel.' I agree cordially, well
assured that in such a case I should not care to know myself. 'Why,
there was a chap down Sydney way, Newtown I think it was he lived in,
or it mighter bin Balmain. Crooil bad he was till they put him on to
the Red Marvel. Fairly puzzled the doctors, he did, an' all et up with
sores, somethin' horrible. Well, I tell you, I wouldn't be without a
bottle in my camp. Sooner go without 'baccy. An', not only that, but
it's such comfortin' stuff is the Red Marvel. Every night o' my life I
takes a double dose of it now; sick or sorry, well or ill--an' look at
me! I useter to swear by Blick's Backache Pills; but now, I wouldn't
have them on me mind. They're no class at all, be this stuff. Give me
Simpkins's Red Marvel, every time, an' I don't care if it snows! You
try it, Mr. Freydon. I was worsen you afore I struck it; an' now, why,
I wouldn't care to call the Queen me aunt!' (His father before him, in
Queen Victoria's reign, had no doubt used this quaint phrase, and it
was not for him to alter it because of any such trifling episodes as
the accession of other sovereigns.)


VIII


I gladly abide by my word of yesterday. The portion of my days here in
the bush which I like best is the dawn time. But the nights have their
good, and--well--and their less good times, too. My evening meal is
apt to be sketchy. There is a special vein of laziness in me which
makes me shirk the setting out of plates and cutlery, and, even more,
their removal when used; despite the fact that I have had, perhaps,
rather more experience than most men of catering for myself. Hence,
the evening meal is apt to be sketchy; a furtive and far from
creditable performance, with the vessels of the midday meal for its
background.

Then, with a sense of relief, I shut the door upon that episode, and
the evidences thereof, and betake me to the room which is really mine;
where the big hearth is, and the camp-bed, and the writing-table, the
books, and the big Ceylon-made lounge-chair. The first evening pipe is
nearly always good; the second may be flavoured with melancholy, but
yet is seldom unpleasing. The third--there are decent intervals
between--bears me company in bed, with whatever book may be occupying
me at the time. The first hour in the big chair and the first hour in
bed are both exceedingly good when I am anything like well. I would
not say which is the better of the two, lest I provoke a Nemesis. Both
are excellent in their different ways.

Nine times out of ten I can be asleep within half an hour of dousing
the candle, and it is seldom I wake before three hours have passed.
After that come hours of which it is not worth while to say much. They
are far from being one's best hours. And then, more often than not,
will come another blessed two hours, or even more, of unconsciousness,
before the first purple grey forecasts of a new day call me out into
the bush for my morning lesson in serenity: Nature's astringent
message to egoists and all the sedentary, introspective tribe, that
bids us note our own infinite insignificance, our utter and
microscopical unimportance in her great scheme of things, and her
sublime indifference to our individual lives; to say nothing of our
insectile hopes, fears, imaginings, despairs, joys, and other forms of
mental and emotional travail.

It may or may not be evidence of mental exhaustion or indolence, but I
notice that I have experienced here no inclination to read anything
that is new to me. I have read a good deal under this roof, including
a quite surprising amount of fiction; but nothing, I think, that I had
not read before. During bouts of illness here, I have indulged in such
debauches as the rereading of the whole of Hardy, Meredith, Stevenson,
W. E. Henley's poems, and the novels of George Gissing, Joseph Conrad,
and H. G. Wells. Some of the better examples of modern fiction have
always had a special topographical appeal to me. I greatly enjoy the
work of a writer who has set himself to treat a given countryside
exhaustively. This, more even than his masterly irony, his philosophy,
his remarkable fullness of mind and opulent allusiveness, has been at
the root of the immense appeal Hardy's work makes to me. ('Q,' in a
different measure, of course, makes a similar appeal.) Let the Wessex
master forsake his countryside, or leave his peasants for gentlefolk,
and immediately my interest wanes, his wonderful appeal fails.

Since I have been here in the bush I have understood, as never before,
the great and far-reaching popularity of Thomas Hardy's work among
Americans. He gives so much which not all the wealth, nor all the
genius of that inventive race, can possibly evolve out of their New
World. But, upon the whole, I ought not to have brought my fine, tall
rank of Hardy's here, still less to have pored over them as I have.
There is that second edition of _Far From the Madding Crowd_ now, with
its delicious woodcuts by H. Paterson. It is dated 1874--I was a boy
then, newly arrived in this antipodean land--and the frontispiece
shows Gabriel Oak soliciting Bathsheba: 'Do you happen to want a
shepherd, ma'am?' No, I cannot say my readings of Hardy have been good
for me here. There is _Jude the Obscure_ now, a masterpiece of
heart-bowing tragedy that. And, especially insidious in my case, there
are passages like this from that other tragedy in the idyllic vein,
_The Woodlanders_:

_Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is
tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain
conditions; but these are not the conditions which attach to the life
of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere
accident.... They are old association--an almost exhaustive
biographical or historical acquaintance with every object, animate and
inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all about those
invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the
fields which look so grey from his windows; recall whose creaking
plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted
the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and
hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that
particular brake; what bygone domestic dramas of love, jealousy,
revenge, or disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the
mansions, the street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty,
grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will
ultimately pall upon him who settles there without opportunity of
intercourse with his kind._

No, that was not discreet reading for a dyspeptic man of letters,
alone in a two-roomed gunyah in the midst of virgin bush, in a land
where the respectably old dates back a score of years, the historic,
say, fifty years, and 'the mists of antiquity' a bare century. One
recollection inevitably aroused by such a passage brought to mind
words comparatively recent, spoken by Mrs. Oldcastle:

'In the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top,
there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the
buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities
of the New World have to offer.'

Quite apart from its grimly ironic philosophy, the topography, the
earthy quality--'take of English earth as much as either hand may
rightly clutch'--of the Wessex master's work makes it indigestible
reading for an exile of more than thirty or forty; unless, of course,
he is of the fine and robust type, whose minds and constitutions
function with the steadiness of a good chronometer, warranted for all
climes and circumstances.

But this mention of Hardy reminds me of a curious literary coincidence
which I stumbled upon a few months ago. For me, at all events, it was
a discovery. I was reading, quite idly, the story which should long
since have been dramatised for the stage, _The Trumpet Major_,
written, if I mistake not, in the early 'nineties. I came to chapter
xxiii., which opens in this wise:

_Christmas had passed. Dreary winter with dark evenings had given
place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Rapid thaws had ended
in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the season
of pink dawns and white sunsets...._

This reading was part of my Hardy debauch. A week or two earlier I had
been reading what I think was his first book, written a quarter of a
century before _The Trumpet Major_. I refer to _Desperate Remedies_;
with all its faults, an extraordinarily full and finished production
for a first book. Now, with curiosity in my very finger-tips, I turned
over the pages of this volume, reread no more than a week previously.
I came presently upon chapter xii., and, following upon its first
sentence, read these words:

_Christmas had passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given
place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in
rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the period of
pink dawns and white sunsets...._

That (with a quarter of a century, the writing of many books, and the
building up of a justly great and world-wide reputation between the
two writings) strikes me as a singular, and, in a way, pleasing
literary coincidence; singular, as a freak of subconscious memory for
words, pleasing, as a verification in mature life of the writer's
comparatively youthful observations of natural phenomena. I wonder if
the author, or any others among his almost innumerable readers, have
chanced to light upon this particular coincidence!

Another writer of fiction, whose bent of mind, if sombre, was far from
devoid of ironical humour, has occupied a deal of my leisure here--George
Gissing. I rank him very high among the Victorian novelists.
His work deserves a higher place than it is usually accorded by the
critics. He was a fine story-teller, and for me (though their
topographical appeal is not, perhaps, very obvious) his books are very
closely packed with living human interest. But again, for such an one
as myself, so situated, I would not say that a course of Gissing
formed particularly wholesome or digestible reading. Here, for
example, is a passage associated in my recollection with a night which
was among the worst I have spent in this place:

_He thought of the wretched millions of mankind to whom life is so
barren that they must needs believe in a recompense beyond the grave.
For that he neither looked nor longed. The bitterness of his lot was
that this world might be a sufficing Paradise to him, if only he could
clutch a poor little share of current coin...._

No, for such folk as I, that was not good reading. But--and let this
be my tribute to an author who won my very sincere esteem and
respect--when morning had come, after a bad night, and I had had my dawn
lesson from Nature, and my converse with Punch, I turned me to another
volume of Gissing, and with a quieter mind read this:

_Below me, but far off, is the summer sea, still, silent, its ever
changing blue and green dimmed at the long limit with luminous noon-tide
mist. Inland spreads the undulant vastness of the sheep-spotted
downs; beyond them the tillage and the woods of Sussex weald, coloured
like to the pure sky above them, but in deeper tint. Near by, all but
hidden among trees in yon lovely hollow, lies an old, old hamlet, its
brown roofs decked with golden lichen; I see the low church tower, and
the little graveyard about it. Meanwhile, high in the heaven, a lark
is singing. It descends, it drops to its nest, and I could dream that
half the happiness of its exultant song was love of England...._

That is his little picture of a recollection of summer. And then,
returning to his realities of the moment, this miscalled 'savage'
pessimist and 'pitiless realist' continues thus:

_It is all but dark. For a quarter of an hour I must have been writing
by a glow of firelight reflected on my desk; it seemed to me the sun
of summer. Snow is still falling. I can see its ghostly glimmer
against the vanishing sky. To-morrow it will be thick upon my garden,
and perchance for several days. But when it melts, when it melts, it
will leave the snow-drop. The crocus, too, is waiting, down there
under the white mantle which warms the earth._

But I would not say that even this was well-chosen reading for me--here
in my bush hermitage--any more than is that masterpiece of
Kipling's later concentration, _An Habitation Enforced_, followed by
its inimitable _Recall_:

  _I am the land of their fathers,
    In me the virtue stays;
  I will bring back my children
    After certain days.

  * * * * *

  Till I make plain the meaning
    Of all my thousand years--
  Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
    While I fill their eyes with tears._

No, nor yet, despite its healing potency in its own place, the same
master craftsman's counsel to the whole restless, uneasy, sedentary
brood among his countrymen:

  _Take of English earth as much
  As either hand may rightly clutch,
  In the taking of it breathe
  Prayer for all who lie beneath--
  Lay that earth upon your heart,
  And your sickness shall depart!
  It shall mightily restrain
  Over busy hand and brain,
  Till thyself restored shall prove
  By what grace the heavens do move._

None of these good things are wholly good for me, here and now,
because--because, for example, they recall a prophecy of Mrs.
Oldcastle's, and the grounds upon which she based it.

Who should know better than I, that if my life-long mental
restlessness chances, when I am less well than usual, or darkness is
upon me, to take the form of nostalgia, with clinging, pulling
thoughts of England--never of the London I knew so well, but always of
the rural England I knew so little, from actual personal experience,
yet loved so well--who should know better than I (sinning against the
light in the writing of this unpardonably involved sentence) that such
restlessness, such nostalgia, are no more based upon reason than is a
bilious headache. The philosopher should, and does, scorn such an itch
of the mind, well knowing that were he foolish enough to let it affect
his actions or guide his conduct he would straightway cease to be a
philosopher, and become instead a sort of human shuttlecock, for ever
tossing here and there, from pillar to post, under the unreasoning
blows of that battledore which had been his mind. Nay, rather the
strappado for me, at any time, than abandonment to foolishness so
crass as this would be.

Over and above all this I deliberately chose my 'way out,' and it is
good. I am assured the life of this my hermitage is one better suited
to the man I am to-day than any other life I could hope to lead
elsewhere. The mere thought of such a fate as a return to the
maelstrom of London journalism--is it not a terror to me, and a thing
to chill the heart like ice? Here is peace all about me, at all
events, and never a semblance of pretence or sham. And if I, my inner
self, cannot find peace here, where peace so clearly is, what should
it profit me to go seeking it where peace is not visible at all, and
where all that is visible is turmoil, hurry, and fret?

Australia is a good land. Its bush is beautiful; its men and women are
sterling and kindly, and its children more blessed (even though,
perhaps, rather more indulged) than the children of most other lands.
For the wage-earner who earns his living by his hands, and purposes
always to do so, I deliberately think this is probably the best
country in all the world. It is his own country. He rules it in every
sense of the word; and there is no class, institution, or individual
exercising any mastery over him. Millionaires are scarce here, and so
perhaps are men brilliant in any direction. But really poor folk,
hungry folk, folk who must fight for bare sustenance, are not merely
scarce--they are unknown in this land.

That is a great thing to be able to say for any country, and surely
one which should materially affect the peace of mind of every thinking
creature in it. Whilst very human, and hence by no means perfect, the
people of this country have about them a pervasive kindliness, which
is something finer than simple good nature and hospitality. The people
as a whole are sincerely possessed by guiding ideals of kindness and
justice. The means by which they endeavour to bring about realisation
of their ideals are, I believe, fundamentally wrong and mistaken in a
number of cases. Their 'ruling' class is naturally new to the task of
ruling, recruited as it is from trade union ranks. But they truly
desire, as a people, that every person in their midst should be given
a fair, sporting chance in life. 'A fair thing!' In three words one
has the national ideal, and who shall say that it is not an admirable
one, remembering that its foundation and mainspring are kindness, and
if not justice, then desire for justice?

'All this is very worthy, no doubt, but deadly dull. Does it not make
for desperate attenuation on the artistic and intellectual side?
Beautifully level and even, I dare say; like a paving stone, and about
as interesting.'

Thus, my old friend Heron in a recent letter. The dear fellow would
smile if I told him he was a member of England's privileged classes.
But it is true, of course. Well, Australia has no privileged classes--and
no submerged class. I admit that the highest artistic and
intellectual levels of the New World are greatly lower than the
highest artistic and intellectual levels of the Old World. But what of
the average level, speaking of the populace as a whole? How infinitely
higher are Australia's lowest levels than the depths, the ultimate pit
in Merry England!

I am an uneasy, restless creature, mentally and bodily. I have not
quite finished as yet the task, deliberation upon which, when it is
completed, is to bring me rest and self-understanding. Vague hungers
by the way are incidents of no more permanent importance than one's
periodical colds in the head. To complain of intellectual barrenness
in any given environment must surely be to confess intellectual
barrenness in the complainant. I am well placed here in my bush
hermitage. And, in short, _Je suis, je reste!_


IX


It is just thirteen days since I sat down before these papers, pen in
hand; thirteen days since I wrote a word. A few months ago I suppose
such delay would have worried me a good deal. To-day, for some reason,
the fact seems quite unimportant, and does not distress me in the
least. Have I then advanced so far towards self-comprehension as to
have attained content of mind? Or is this merely the mental lethargy
which follows bodily weakness and exhaustion? I do not know.

I have been ill again. It is a nuisance having to send for a doctor,
because his fees are extremely high, and he has to come a good long
way. Also, I do not think the good man's visits are of the slightest
service to me. I have been living for twelve days exclusively upon
milk; a healing diet, I dare say, but I have come to weary of the
taste and sight of it, and its effect upon me is the reverse of
stimulation. But I am in no wise inclined to cavil, for I am entirely
free from pain at the moment; the weather is perfectly glorious, and
my neighbours, Blades and his wife, are in their homely fashion
extremely kind to me.

My one source of embarrassment is that Ash, the timber-getter in the
camp across the creek, is continually bringing me expensive bottles of
Simpkins's Red Marvel, his genuine kindness necessitating not only
elaborate pretences of regularly consuming his pernicious specific for
every human ill, from consumption and 'bad legs' to snake-bites, but
also periodical discussions with him of all my confounded symptoms--a
topic which wearies me almost to tears. Indeed, I prefer the symptoms
of Ash's friend in Newtown--or was it Balmain?--who was 'all et up
with sores, something horrible.'

Notwithstanding the brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies of this
month, the weather has been exquisitely fresh and cool, and my log
fire has never once been allowed to go out, Blades, with the kindness
of a man who can respect another's fads, having kept me richly
supplied with logs. Mrs. Blades has been feeding Punch for me, and at
least twice each day that genial rascal has neighed long and loudly at
the slip-rails by the stable, as I believe in friendly greeting to me.
I shall, no doubt, presently feel strong enough to walk out and have a
talk with Punch.

My last letter from Mrs. Oldcastle, written no more than a month ago--the
mail service to Australia is improving--tells me that the park in
London is looking lovely, all gay with spring foliage and blooms. She
says that unless I intend being rude enough to falsify her prophecy, I
must now be preparing to pack my bags and book my passage home. Home!
Well, Ash, whose father like himself was born here, calls England
'Home,' I find. This is one of the most lovable habits of the children
of our race all over the world.

But obviously it would be a foolish and stultifying thing for me to
think of leaving my hermitage. I am not rich enough to indulge in what
folk here call 'A trip Home.' And as for finally withdrawing from my
'way out,' and returning to settle in England, how could such a step
possibly be justified upon practical grounds? The circumstances which
led me to leave England are fundamentally as they were. Mrs.
Oldcastle-- But all that was thoroughly thought out before she left
the _Oronta_ at Adelaide; and to-day I am less--less able, shall I
say, than I was then?

It is singular that these few days in bed should have stolen so much
of my strength. The mere exertion, if that it may be called, of
writing these few lines leaves me curiously exhausted; yet they have
been written extraordinarily slowly for me. My London life made me a
quick writer. I wonder if leisure and ease of mind would have made me
a good one!

I shall lay these papers aside for another day. Perhaps even for two
or three days. Blades has kindly moved my bed for me to the side of
the best window, which faces north-east; in the Antipodes, a very
pleasant aspect. I shall not actually 'go to bed' again in the day-time,
but I think I will lie on the bed beside that open window.
Sitting upright at the table here I feel, not pain, but a kind of
aching weakness which I escape when lying down.

And yet, though not worried about it, I am rather sorry still farther to
neglect this desultory task of mine, even for a day or two. The tree-tops
are tossing bravely in the westerly wind this morning, and it is well
that my banana clump has all the shelter of the gunyah, or its graceful
leaves would suffer. The big cabbage palm outside the verandah makes a
curious, dry, parchment-like crackling in the wind. But the three
silver tree-ferns have a cool, swishing note, very pleasing to the
ear; while for the bush trees beyond, theirs is the steady music of
the sea on a sandy beach. I fancy this wind must be a shade too
boisterous to be good for Blades's orange orchard. At all events it
brings a strong citrus scent this way, after bustling across the side
of Blades's hill.

There can be no doubt about it that this mine hermitage is very
beautifully situated. Any man of discernment should be well content
here to bide. The air about me is full of a nimble sweetness, and as
utterly free from impurity as the air one breathes in mid-ocean. More,
it is impregnated by the tonic perfumes of all the myriad aromatic
growths that surround my cottage. Men say the Australian bush is
singularly soulless; starkly devoid of the elements of interest and
romance which so strongly endear to the hearts of those dwelling there
the countryside in such Old World lands as the England of my birth.
Maybe. Yet I have met men, both native-born and alien-born, who have
dearly loved Australia; loved the land so well as to return to it,
even after many days.

England! Of all the place names, the names of countries that the world
has known, was ever one so simply magic as this--England? Surely not.
How the tongue caresses it! In the past it has always seemed to me
that the question of a man's place of birth was infinitely more
significant and important than the mere matter of where he died, of
where his bones were laid. And yet, even that matter of the
resting-place for a man's bones.... Undoubtedly, there is magic in
English earth. England! Thank God I was born in England!




EDITOR'S NOTE


Here the written record of my friend's life ends, though it clearly
was not part of his design that this should be its end. Thanks to Mrs.
Blades, I have a record of the date of Freydon's last writing. It came
two days before his own end. He died alone, and, by the estimate of
the doctor from Peterborough, at about daybreak. The doctor thought it
likely that he passed away in his sleep; of all ends, the one he would
have chosen.

So far as my own observation informs me, the death of Nicholas Freydon
was noted by no more than three English journals: two of the oldest
morning newspapers in London, and that literary weekly which, despite
the commercial fret and fume of our time, has so far preserved itself
from the indignity of any attempted blending of books with
haberdashery or 'fancy goods.' Had Freydon died in England, I
apprehend that a somewhat larger circle of newspaper readers might
have been advertised of the fact. But I would not willingly be
understood to suggest any kind of reproach in this.

It would probably be correct to say that the writings of Nicholas
Freydon never have reached the many-headed public, whose favour gives
an author's name weight in circulating libraries and among the
gentlemen of 'The Trade.' He had no illusions on this point, and of
late years at all events cherished no dreams of fame or immortality.
But it is equally correct to say that he was genuinely a man of
letters, and there is a circle of more or less fastidious readers who
are aware that everything published under Freydon's name was, from the
literary standpoint, worth while.

For me the news of Freydon's end had something more than literary
significance. There was a period during which we shared an office
room, and I recall with peculiar satisfaction the fact that it was no
kind of friction or difficulty between us which brought an end to that
working companionship. The much longer period over which our
friendship extended was marred by no quarrel, nor even by any lapse
into mutual indifference. And it may be admitted, in all affectionate
respect, that Freydon was not exactly of those who are said to 'get on
with any one.'

In the matter of my own recent journey to Australia, the thing which I
looked forward to with keenest interest was the opportunity I thought
it would afford me of seeing and talking with Freydon, in his chosen
retreat in the Antipodes, and judging of his welfare there. And then,
on the eve of my departure, came the news that he was no more.

Under the modest roof which had sheltered him, on the coast of
northern New South Wales, I presently spent two quiet and thoughtful
weeks, given for the most part to the perusal of his papers, which,
along with his other personal effects, he had bequeathed to me. (His
remaining property was left to the friend whose name is given here as
Sidney Heron.)

Before I left that lonely, sunny spot, I had practically decided to
pass on to such members of the reading world as might be interested
therein what seemed to me the more salient and important of these
papers: the bulky document which forms a record of its writer's life.
Afterwards, as was inevitable, came much reflection, and at times some
hesitancy. But, when all is done, and the proof sheets lie before me,
my conviction is that I decided rightly out there in the bush; and
that something is inherent in these last writings of Nicholas
Freydon's which, properly understood, demands and deserves the test of
publication. Therefore, they are made available to the public, in the
belief that some may be the richer and the kindlier for reading them.

But, for revising, altering, dove-tailing, or shaping these papers,
with a view to the attainment of an orthodox form of literary
production, whether in the guise of autobiography, life-story,
dramatic fiction, or what not, I desire explicitly to disclaim all
thought of such a pretension. As I see it, that would have been an
impertinence. I cannot claim to know what Freydon's intentions may
have been regarding the ultimate disposition of these papers, having
literally no other information on the point than they themselves
furnish. Needless to say they would not be published now if I had any
kind of reason to believe, or to suspect, that my friend would have
resented such a course.

But I will say that, in the writing, I do not think Freydon had
considered the question of publication. I do not think that in these
last exercises of his pen he wrote consciously for the printer and the
public. As those who know his published work are aware, he was much
given to literary allusiveness and to quotation. In these papers such
characteristic pages did occur, it is true, but in practically every
case they had been scrawled over in pencil, and have been studiously
omitted by me in my preparation of the manuscript for the press. Here
and there it was clear that entire pages had been removed and
apparently destroyed by their writer.

Again, in this record, Freydon--always in his writings for the press,
literary and journalistic, meticulous in the matter of constructive
detail--clearly gave no thought to the arrangement of chapters or
other divisions. He wrote of his life, as he has said, to enable
himself to see it as a whole. For my part I have felt a natural
delicacy about intruding so far as to introduce chapter headings or
the like. It was easy for me to note the points at which the writer
had laid aside his pen, presumably at the day's end, for there a
portion of a sheet was left blank, and sometimes a zig-zag line was
drawn. At these points then, where the writer himself paused, I have
allowed the pause to appear. And this, in effect, represents the sum
of my small contribution to the volume; for I have altered nothing,
added nothing, and taken nothing away, beyond those previously
mentioned passages (literary rather than documentary) which the
author's own pencil had marked for deletion; the removal, where these
occurred, of references to myself; and the substitution, where that
seemed desirable, of imaginary proper names for the names of actual
places and living people as written by my friend.

Two other points, and the task which for me has certainly been a
labour of love, is done.

Nicholas Freydon was perfectly correct in his belief that he might
have wooed and won the lady who is referred to in these pages as Mrs.
Oldcastle. In this, as in other episodes of his life which happen to
be known to me, the motives behind his self-abnegation were in the
highest degree creditable to him. This I have been asked to say, and I
am glad to say it.

Among Freydon's papers was one which, for a time, greatly puzzled me.
Once I had learned precisely what this paper meant, it became for me
most deeply significant, knowing as I did that it must have been lying
where I found it, in a drawer of Freydon's work-table, while he wrote,
immediately before his last illness, the final sections of this work,
including its penultimate chapter; including, therefore, such passages
as these:

_Over and above all this I deliberately chose my 'way out,' and it is
good. I am assured the life of this my hermitage is one better suited
to the man I am to-day than any other life I could hope to lead
elsewhere.... And if I, my inner self, cannot find peace here, where
peace so clearly is, what should it profit me to go seeking it where
peace is not visible at all, and where all that is visible is turmoil,
hurry, and fret.... And, in short, _Je suis, je reste!_ ... England!
Of all the place names, the names of countries that the world has ever
known, was ever one so simply magic as this--England? ..._

This document was a certificate entitling Freydon to a passage to
England by an Orient line steamer. Upon inquiry at the offices of the
line in Sydney, I found that, twenty-eight days before his death, my
friend had booked and paid for a passage to London. At his request no
berth had been allotted, and no date fixed. But, by virtue of the
payment then made, he was assured of a passage home when he should
choose to claim it. To my mind this discovery was one of peculiar
interest, considered in the light of the concluding pages of that
record of Nicholas Freydon's thoughts and experiences which is
presented in this volume.





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