Title: Under Capricorn (1937)
Author: Helen Simpson
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Title: Under Capricorn (1937)
Author: Helen Simpson




BOOK I.

I have read that Capricornus, the heavenly Goat, being ascendant at
nativitie, denieth honour to persons of quality, and esteeme to the
Vulgar. Can a Starre do so by onlie shineing on a Woman in her pangs?
Shall Capricornus bind a poore man the world ouer, no part, no Land
undiscouered, where hee may shake free? I will not belieue it: nor that
Honour (not forfeit) can be for euer hidd by decree of this distemperate
Starre.

--_A Limbo For Ladies._




BOOK ONE



(i)


The year, eighteen hundred and thirty-one. The place, Sydney; a city
whose streets were first laid by men in chains for the easier progress of
the soldiers who guarded I them. This city, growing slowly about a
population of convicts and soldiers, had at that date no very penitential
air. The harbour water, lively with sun; the many windmills, leisurely
bestirring themselves; the ships at anchor, hung with marine laundry,
ensigns trailing; the smoke of domestic chimneys: all these things
contrived to lend Sydney an air of expectancy rather than despair. Maps
show where the habitations were gathered; they were not many, though
diarists and letter-writers of the period agree that they were tasteful,
and showed up cleanly against the dark universal background of trees.
"Not," says one lady, "that I should like it in a _picture_ so well as
our softer and more rounded perspective, but in a new place, where one
likes to see everything plainly, it is very pleasant."

So much for maps and for prose. Poetry of the place and period lacks, or
is not much to the purpose. Still, the Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge did, in the year 1823, announce Australia as the subject with
which his would-be medallists must concern themselves; and since one of
the unsuccessful competitors was William Charles Wentworth, born in the
new continent, his descriptions must be allowed to possess some
authority. After an account of Cook's discovery, with a digression upon
the fate of La Perouse, Mr. Wentworth proceeds:


Lo! thickly planted o'er the glassy bay,
Where Sydney loves her beauties to survey,
And ev'ry morn, delighted, sees the gleam
Of some fresh pennant dancing in her stream,
A masty forest, stranger vessels moor
Charg'd with the fruits of every foreign shore.
While landward--the thronged quay, the creaking crane,
The noisy workmen, and the loaded wain,
The lengthen'd street, wide square, and column'd front
Of stately mansions, and the gushing font,
The solemn church, the busy market throng,
And idle loungers saunt'ring slow among--
Shew that the mournful genius of the plain
Driv'n from his primal solitary reign,
Has backward fled, and fixed his drowsy throne
In untrod wilds, to muse and brood alone.


His account almost fills in the picture, which yet needs to complete it a
sense that this new country was no mere, copy of the old, but had already
taken on a character of its own, defiant, tough, indolent; as though the
idle loungers of Mr. Wentworth's poem were to be viewed with their hats
cocked, pulling in their belts upon hunger with a laugh, and having a
loaded pistol somewhere ready about them which they were prepared upon
slight occasion to use. There was freedom, derived as usual from slavery.
There was money, derived about equally from labour, land, and luck. There
were social gatherings, junketings, as there are upon a ship in
mid-ocean. And for the whole company of exiles, bond or free, there was
hope.

It will be seen that Sydney, in the year 1831, may very well serve as
setting for a highly-coloured, improbable, and yet simple story.



(ii)


At about five o'clock in the afternoon of December 3rd of that year, a
ball hoisted upon the south yard-arm of the flagstaff at the entrance to
Port Jackson showed that a sail had been sighted, approaching from a
southerly direction. Later, a flag with St. George's Cross was run up,
signifying that the sail in question belonged to a Government ship,
full-rigged at that. Almost immediately after, down came this flag, and
was replaced by a Jack.

Excitement became evident among the boats in the Pilot's anchorage. At
South Head the semaphore began to function, reporting, in a series of
jerks and flickers:

A Government vessel. Between 2 and 3 leagues S.E. of the Head.

To which Fort Phillip, above Sydney Cove, responded in the same lingo:

Report all movements of vessel signalized. Is there much sea between the
Heads? State all particulars.

South Head:

This is the vessel expected. Vessel has signalized probable arrival
before nightfall. Correct: previous signal should read, vessel does not
expect to anchor before morning, owing to lack of wind.

Fort Phillip:

Confirm. Repeat.

South Head:

Vessel does not expect to anchor before morning, owing to lack of wind.

Fort Phillip:

Be more attentive.

Despite this rebuke Fort Phillip was not displeased to have twelve hours'
respite. In twelve hours buttons might be polished, arms burnished, the
fear of God be put into a guard already drilled to unthinking unanimity.
In twelve hours some sort of a reception could be arranged, with flags
and bunting, down by the Quay; the citizens' enthusiasm was more likely
to show itself freely at the beginning of a hot December day than at a
similar day's end. There were speeches to be memorized, beavers to be
brushed, children's locks to be put in paper; fin all this twelve hours
was by no means as much time as could be desired, but it would have to
serve. The Commandant sent off runners into the town, to the Colonial
Secretary, to the President of the Legislative Council, and the Principal
Superintendent of Convicts, then sat down, hooking up his close military
stock, to an evening meal with his officers, which ended with the health,
drunk in Madeira that had taken a six months' roll round the Horn, of the
newly-arrived Governor, Sir Richard Bourke--

"And may he not be another of these prigs that we have to foot out of the
Turf Club," said the Commandant as he set down his glass.

The Governor at this moment, in a costume by no means conventional, was
lying full length on the deck of that interesting vessel from the south,
Foxhound, about which the air clung, never stirring. He said to the young
man at his side:

"The climate's giving us a warm welcome, anyway."

"It's an omen," the young man returned, "don't build on it. They threw
out Bligh, they threw out Darling. For a Governor that's tired of life,
I'd say this was a delightful appointment."

"Did you ever hear how they shifted Darling? It was at a Turf Club
dinner. They drank his health, all very civil; but when it came to the
Jolly Good Fellow that should have followed, the band broke out with
'Over the Hills and Far Away.' Darling looked like a sick hen, one of the
soldiers told me that was there; sent in his resignation from the Club,
and got out of the country soon after. By God, if they'd done that to me
I'd have known what answer to make."

"You'd have whistled, Will ye no come back again,' all on your own."

"I might, if I'd thought of it. It will take more than a couple of
fiddlers to get rid of me."

"There's some of this Irish boasting we hear so much about. You'll change
your tune when it comes to making a nation out of the scum of England."

"I know plenty about the scum of England. If you can make an army of it
good enough to beat Boney, you can make a nation."

"Well, be quick about it. I don't want to be half a century out here
making my fortune."

The Governor laughed; and looking at the stars, which kept their places
upon the chequer board made by spars and rigging, observed:

"I never can get the lie of these upside-down planets into my head, after
all these years."

"My idea," the young man went on, following his thought, "is to benefit
by corruption. I can't make my fortune any other way; not by fighting,
it's too late for that; not by inheritance, I haven't a relative left
that's solvent. As for work--true, you can make money working, but it
spoils you for the enjoyment of it. And I won't marry an heiress, the
pick of them's gone, the only ones left weigh twenty stone or grow
beards. I like reading poetry with my feet on the hob, but it takes
money, that kind of innocent life. So all that remains for me is to be
the Governor of New South Wales's sixth cousin."

"Why can't you write poetry for a living? Lord Byron, I believe, did very
handsomely out of his books. You were always a scribbler."

"True," answered the young man with a bitterness which made the Governor
turn his head, surprised. "I was always a scribbler."

"I had no notion of being offensive, Charles."

"The truth is never offensive; distasteful, perhaps. I am a good enough
poet to write little stuff for the keepsakes. That is the best I can do,
though I sweat blood. Therefore, my dear sir and cousin, I won't do it.
And therefore, my dear sir and cousin, I propose instead to batten on
you."

"I'll disown you once I'm installed."

"I'll lead a faction if you do. I'll invade Government House and rout you
out from under the bed covered in fluff, like Bligh." The Governor did
not heed him, still staring up, hands locked under head. "Stars! What
good are stars to a Lieutenant-General, except to remind him of his damn
decorations? Stars are poetical stuff. I'm going below. Are you staying
here on deck all night?"

"I am."

"Where's your sense of discipline? Do you think the sailors will think
much of a Governor when they can see he has less hair on his chest than
themselves?"

"Go to your cabin, young fellow-my-lad, and get some sleep if you can. We
have a long day to-morrow."

"Pleasant dreams to your Excellency. Mine, I hope, will be about
shameless great bribes."

"I don't have dreams. Good night."

The stars moved steadily as a clock's hands; steadily the water reflected
their lights, which wavered now and then and were lost in shining
furrows, a shark's fin breaking the surface. The lantern on South Head
stared, never blinking. His Excellency regarded all these things in turn
as the ship swung about, and fell asleep thinking of Spain, where he had
served, and where the nights had something of this quality. His last
conscious thought was dredged up out of memories he did not know himself
to have acquired; the Spanish word _guardaamigo_, which, as he
recollected, meant the prop set under a criminal's chin while he takes
his flogging.



(iii)


Towards morning a breeze came up from the south which caught the waiting
ship broadside. The captain had been waiting for this, and his Excellency
woke to a sound of bare running feet on deck and the shouts of the second
mate ordering men aloft. It was almost dawn. As the canvas was set it
took shape against the lightening sky, squares, triangles of darkness,
soon to be turned a triumphant white by the sun. They began to move
forward; the chirrup of water sounded again under the figurehead; and the
brown rocky coast, in which as yet there appeared no opening, began to
march beside them like a guard of honour. His Excellency stretched,
regarded his dominion through a glass for some few moments, then went
below as bugles sounded in the soldiers' quarters.

He disappeared as a civilian none too particular in matters of dress. He
came on deck a soldier, magnificent in red, with a plumed hat and a
sword-belt golden as Orion's, while stars more gaudy than distant
Arcturus were disposed about his left breast. His staff in a lesser
degree glittered round him, buttons winking their tale of hours of
labour, gold-lace only a trifle dimmed by weeks of sea air. Only the
young gentleman, Mr. Adare, His Excellency's sixth cousin, appeared at a
disadvantage in sober bottle-green, with the paltry chink of seals for
accompaniment as he moved, in lieu of a sounding jangle of spurs. But he
was not abashed; he criticized the popinjays with his head on one side,
and ridiculed the delicate care with which they avoided maritime contacts
for their white trousers. They for their part eyed him with the
traditional disdain of the military for free agents, and put on formal
brisk voices, reporting to the Governor, as though he had been blind, the
topography and incidents of Port Jackson:

"Pilot coming aboard, sir. Quarantine station, sir, on the right. Passing
the lighthouse and signal station, sir. Shark Island, sir. The fort known
as--h'm--Pinchgut, sir."

All this information the Governor acknowledged with nods, as though he
were not as capable as these gentlemen of reading the chart unrolled in
front of him. His eyes were taking in other things; a foreshore which
reminded him of coasts in the South of France; the many bays, deep water
evidently, by the sheer slope of their rocks; the situation of the
distant town, not clearly seen as yet; the green of the foliage, uniform
and dull as a rifleman's jacket.

"A number of small boats, sir, coming out to welcome you, I imagine."

The staff officer's observation was not at fault. Small boats were all
about the Governor's ship as she moved into Sydney Cove, their occupants
evidently out for a spree; young men managed the sails, long brown
youngsters, watched by their womenfolk from under bonnets trimmed with
English flowers--artificial daisies, roses, violets. The boats very
skilfully accompanied His Excellency's ship, and from time to time one of
their occupants would raise a hand, or a woman would lift a child's brown
pud and wave it in greeting. There was no cheering.

"Well, I don't know," said His Excellency to an officer who commented on
this fact; "they can't tell yet what they're in for. The Duke used to say
he valued the cheers he got after a battle, but didn't give a rap for any
that went before."

At the landing-stage, however, things were more formal. Persons could he
seen there, grouped, and shifting from foot to foot as the December sun
bore down upon their trappings, which glinted in an official manner and
showed in outline all the authentic terror and exaggeration of the
warrior's dress. Those shakos, tall feathered stove-pipes, had for
ancestor the brazen casque of Paris, whose plume most horribly did dance.
Those epaulettes, jutting from the shoulders, were contrived to awe
innocent naked savages accepting them as earnest of the gigantic deltoids
below. Those chains, studs, spikes of metal terrified by their very
irrelevance, their threat of dreadful purposes not understood. Yet
shakos, epaulettes and the rest of the costume were comfortable to the
eyes of His Excellency's staff, who saw in them only the norm, and found
reassurance in shining thus familiarly upon a foreign strand.

A naval cutter came out to meet the ship as she anchored. Into this His
Excellency stepped with his party, and was rowed ashore to receive
salutes, cheers, and a speech of welcome delivered by some civilian
dignitary. A regimental band played "Blue Bonnets." Against this the
Governor heard, behind his shoulder among the crowd, an echo of "Over the
Hills and Far Away." The whistling ceased as he turned. With a tightened
lip and hands folded quietly upon his sword-hilt he waited for silence,
then spoke. His voice, clear of any parade-ground quality, yet made
itself heard beyond misapprehension.

"Gentlemen: I am new to your country, and therefore, at this stage, I say
nothing of my intentions concerning it. I say only that I am sent by the
Government at home to guide you to prosperity as far as the judgment of
one man may do so. Your problems are to be my particular study, and your
well-being my particular care. I am not unaware that there have been
clashes in the past between governed and governors, nor shall that
knowledge weigh with me. I am here to perform my duty; which, as I see
it, is to promote the order, good feeling, and increased wealth of this
Colony. I rely upon your co-operation to attain these ends. I am prepared
to work with any man, whatever his station, who will help me to attain
them, and to punish any man, whatever his station, who by his conduct
imperils them. Gentlemen, I have nothing further to say at this moment,
only that I am greatly obliged to you for your welcome."

Mr. Adare was impressed. It was the first time he had heard his relative
speak as one who had seen men and cities, served in epic wars, and borne
rule in the continents of Africa and America. Other listeners too found
this kind of talk to their taste, and the civic dignitary, walking beside
the Governor towards the carriage in which they were to ride, made
approving comment on it:

"That's the kind of thing we never heard from Governor Darling. Always
roundabout; never took responsibility where he could dodge it--"

"I don't care, sir, to discuss my predecessor."

"Oh!" said the civic dignitary, taken aback but not daunted. "Certainly.
The less said of him the better. Well; and what do you think of our
harbour?"



(iv)


Next morning, having unpacked and distributed his staff (rather a tight
fit) among the rooms of Government House, His Excellency said to his
cousin, whose decorative idleness he found irritating:

"There is something to be done that you may as well do. Go to the offices
of the Bank of New South Wales; introduce yourself as coming from me, and
deliver this letter to the Secretary, or one of the Directors. It only
concerns me, in so far as I promised Lord Goderich I would deliver it.
Talk to the Secretary, and invite him in my name to dine. These fellows
know more than Government men about conditions in a country. You might
ask him for a little advice on your own account; prospects for
investment, and so on."

"I don't view with any gratification the prospect of earning money by
work in this heat. His Excellency's cousin may use his nose, I suppose,
to find out what sinecures there are?"

"His nose; not my name."

"Sea-green Incorruptible! Or shall we say in deference to the climate,
lobster-red? Adieu, adieu. Remember me!"

Mr. Adare put the Colonial Secretary's letter into his tail-pocket and
sauntered out into the sunlight. Sydney Cove was on his right, quick with
shipping; on his left the trees of the Government Domain proffered a thin
shade. He kept to the left, not for this reason only, but in order to
beat the marches of the city, of which Macquarie Street formed, at this
point, the boundary. His eyes, alert as the infernal brickish dust of
passing vehicles would allow, considered houses and people
dispassionately, the horses with unaffected interest. They were worth a
hunting man's attention. Their unkempt appearance, shaggy legs and manes,
could not cheat an Irish judge accustomed to pierce such disguises. Mr.
Adare, having seen in the course of ten minutes' walking almost as many
rideable horses, began to have a better opinion of the Colony.

As for the streets themselves--he had turned at right angles and was
surveying King Street--they were unpaved and damn dirty. They were full
of masterless dogs. They offered no picturesque black men, such as Cape
Town afforded, no woolly heads adorned with branching horns, or strings
of beads, or trophies not easily identified. They resembled, in their
undisciplined dusty straight lines, the streets of a manufacturing city
at home, save for the depth of the shadows that fell across them, and the
height of the Cornstalks who marched along them, trees walking. No
colour. No signs of wealth. No signs of pioneering and danger. Why did
the place exist?

The answer to that question, at the very moment his mind asked it, came
round the corner of an intersecting street to its own odd musical
accompaniment. Against the regular beat of soldiers' feet sounded a
shuffling, and above the shuffling a chinking, not rhythmic, never
ceasing. Mr. Adare stood, and at his case reviewed a convict chain-gang
as it passed along. Their dress was uniform, spattered with a pattern of
arrows; only their caps varied from the fisherman's knitted jelly-bag to
beavers not yet wholly devoid of nap. These last perhaps had been worn in
London, where their owners exercised those arts for which thieves' jargon
found such enlivening terms; smashing of queer screens, shaking of skins,
ringing of castors, working the cat-and-kitten rig, or nibbling while
Oliver whiddled. Most of them held up their chains as they walked by
means of a string hitched to their belts; even so the dulled chinking
made itself heard. No man stepped out as a free man may, as the guards
did; the chains hobbled them too securely. All kept their heads down
against the sun, all shouldered their long-handled, small-headed
road-maker's hammers because that was the easiest way to carry them; and
the effect of this uniformity was a slavish, hopeless air such as might
hang about duppies, those dead men who labour for a witch's profit among
Jamaica canes.

Mr. Adare, impressionable, but fortunately volatile; wax to receive, but
water to retain; Mr. Adare did not care for the mixed feelings this
encounter had roused in him. Pity without the means to relieve is emotion
wasted; anger with the human race in general on account of the cruelty or
folly of particulars is not to be justified. So he told himself as he
walked on towards George Street, while the shuffling and chinking took
itself off in another direction. Nevertheless, the generosity in him was
uneasy at finding no outlet, and he stared offensively at passers-by who
took convicts in chains for granted. A quarrel would have quieted him
down by allowing him to translate emotion into action; a translation, in
which, as happens often enough, the original impulse might be lost. But
he went unsatisfied. No man took exception to his looks, no woman
observed him. In a mood still half-truculent, he found the turning for
George Street, and entered the premises of the Bank of New South Wales.

The Secretary, whose manner, whiskers, and excellent brown sherry were
not to be distinguished from similar attributes of Bank secretaries in
England, was glad to welcome His Excellency's sixth cousin. He took Lord
Goderich's letter with just the right bow, accepted Sir Richard Bourke's
invitation to dine with just such another, and seemed, having given this
faultless performance, to wish to take up his labours. But Mr. Adare was
disinclined to move out of a pleasant room into the strengthening sun. He
began earnestly to talk, to enquire, and the Secretary was obliged to
make answer.

"What openings should you say promise best for a young man--for myself,
let us say?"

"As to that, it is not easy for me to speak. If you could give me some
notion as to your interests, your capacities--"

"My capacities? Considerable in some directions; riding, drinking. As far
as intellects go, I won't boast."

"I referred to the question of money; money to invest. I believe that
land in the neighbourhood of this town, for instance, is bound to
appreciate. In twenty-five years, let us say, I can very well imagine a
capital increase of a hundred per cent in the value of land in certain
localities."

"That's a long time to wait."

"Not for such a considerable increase, Mr. Adare. A man does very well,
let me tell you, if he is able to double his fortune in that time."

"I haven't a shilling, though."

"Then," said the Secretary, losing that faint breath of enthusiasm which
had informed his voice at the thought of a hundred per cent, "it becomes
quite another matter."

"That's to say, I've got a hundred pounds."

"Well, Mr. Adare, it is not much, I tell you frankly. It is not much.
With a great deal of industry, and frugality, and foresight I don't say
it may not be made to do--"

"But I've no wish to work, my dear sir. That's not my intention at all."

A clerk knocked, thrust in his smooth head decorated at the ears with two
quills like those of a Secretary bird, and announced:

"Mr. Flusky to see you, sir."

"Pray ask him to wait a moment. Just a moment. Say that His Excellency's
cousin is with me just now."

"I won't detain you. Curious name, Flusky. Where have I heard it?"

"One of our most considerable citizens," said the official, rising.
"Rich; a landowner."

"No, it's not that. Something, somewhere--" Mr. Mare snapped his fingers
at the elusive memory and let it go. "Well; so you haven't any formula
for getting rich overnight?"

"The old one, Mr. Adare; only the old one, I fear."

"No good to me. Flusky! Now where the devil have I heard that remarkable
name?" He observed the Secretary looking a trifle nervously at the door,
which, however, his retiring clerk had shut safely. "Oho! He's a
what-d'ye-call-it, is he?"

"Emancipist. Yes."

"I like that. Emancipist--I must get used to it. What was his crime,
anything spectacular?"

"Mr. Mare, allow me to give you a warning. Out here we don't talk of the
past. The future, sir. This is a country of the future."

"Landowner and lag--yes, I like that very well. Introduce me, will you?
Come on, man," as the Secretary looked dubious, "I'll behave myself."

The Secretary, unwilling to keep his richest client waiting yet reluctant
to blend him even for an instant with the aristocracy, bowed helplessly
and held open the door. A figure in shapeless woollen clothes turned
towards them, and Mr. Adare was able to note a flabby bulk, a nose
pendant after the Jewish manner above a lip that might have lengthened in
Wicklow, and a pair of unwinking mild eyes before Mr. Samson Flusky was
formally introduced.

"Mr. Adare," said the Secretary with a nervous laugh, "has come out from
Ireland to make his fortune."

Mr. Flusky smiled without speaking and replaced a warm right hand on the
knob of his stick.

"I understand," said Mr. Adare, "there's something to be done in land;
but I don't want to wait for the money till my beard's as long as your
arm."

"Ireland," Flusky repeated, looking at the Secretary; then transferred
his gaze to the young man's face. He pronounced the word as no Englishman
ever does; his deep voice had a smooth easy quality. "Is that where you
come from? What part?"

"The West. D'you know it?"

"I might," Mr. Flusky answered without expression. "So you want to make
money. You're not the only one."

"And make it quick," said Mr. Adare briskly. "I don't feel any call to
stay long in this country. Not but it has a deal to say for itself, no
doubt; only it doesn't talk my language."

"You'll stay, surely, during His Excellency's time of office at least."
The Secretary spoke to Flusky: Mr. Adare is related to Sir Richard
Bourke; came out in his ship."

"Lagged yourself for fear the King should do it for you, eh?" said Mr.
Flusky disconcertingly. "How much have you? There's money in land, when
the Commissioners will let you buy."

"I told him so," the Secretary offered immediately. "Money needs time, as
I told him, to grow."

Mr. Flusky seemed to meditate, both hands upon his stick, under-lip
shooting out, eyes cast down. Mr. Adare in this moment attempted to sum
up the impression left upon him by his first encounter with an
emancipist, convict turned citizen. He found himself staring at the thick
unmoving fingers, trying them in this position or that; steady upon a
trigger, bunched about the haft of a knife, crooking to strangle. He
could not fit them to sly tricks with pockets, or skilful tricks with
pens. They proclaimed violence. And when, lifting his eyes, he met the
mild gaze of their owner he had a little shock, as though a naked man had
in the wink of an eye clothed himself. Flusky was saying:

"All the same, Mister, if you've time to listen there's something might
interest you."

"My office, gentlemen," the Secretary offered. "Quite at your disposal."

Flusky moved to it, not thanking him. He sat square in one of the chairs,
and rested his head upon the interesting hands which his stick supported.
He continued to wear his hat. Adare swung himself on to the Secretary's
desk to face him, but from perversity or perhaps curiosity, would not be
the first to speak; marvelling, not for the first time, at the power
which hedges the man who can hold his tongue, and determined to try his
own hand at the game.

Mr. Flusky seemed to have nothing immediate to say. He sat unthinking to
all appearance, challenging the younger man's patience. Mr. Adare began
to give himself away. He would not speak, but he could not keep still.
The manoeuvres of a pair of flies were a relief to his eyes, a sudden
itching of the nose afforded him a gesture. He became conscious that the
situation was a ridiculous one. The flabby fellow with a hat on, the
youngster point-device, both with tongues in their heads, and not a word
between them to throw at a dog--Mr. Flusky earned his gratitude by
releasing a sentence first.

"I don't know how my proposition'll strike you, Government House and all.
Maybe I better let it alone."

"Don't lump me with Excellency. He's not responsible for me."

"Well," Mr. Flusky considered. "But it might be awkward, all the same."

"I assure you I didn't come out here to wear gloves, Mr. Flusky." The
mild gaze surveyed his faultless tailoring. "These are all the clothes I
have, but if you feel you could talk more freely to a cabbage-tree hat
I'll step out and buy one."

"Do you know anything about land out here?"

That was a surprising question, coming as it did with no change of tone
or expression; Mr. Adare made frivolous answers as was his custom when
taken aback.

"They tie a string to a dog's tail, don't they, and hit him a kick, and
when he stops running that's a mile."

"You're thinking of Van Diemen's Land," Flusky said, not smiling. "The
man that could kick hardest got best measure. That's how it did ought to
be, in a new country."

He went back to his silence. Mr. Adare, amused and a trifle irritated,
began to guess.

"Your proposition has something to do with land."

"Well, you see," said Flusky irrelevantly, roused from meditation, "the
Regulations are made by Englishmen. You can't run three sheep to an acre
here. A sheep to three acres, more like. You got to have room to move
stock about."

"I suppose you can get as much room as you want, if you're prepared to
pay." Mr. Flusky shook his head, rolling it sideways upon his fingers
that were laced upon the stick's knob. "You can't? Why not?"

"No more grants. Land all to be sold at auction, and a Board to see one
man don't get more than his share. You come at a bad time for pickings,
Mister. August the first, that was the start of it."

"Wait a minute," Mr. Adare bade him. "This is interesting. I was always
good at drawing-room games. Don't tell me what you want me to do, let me
see if I can divine it--"

"I won't tell you," said Flusky briefly.

"Now wait a minute. Plenty of land available. Correct?" He looked at the
white face, took a blink for assent, and went on with his deductions.
"Land--but a Board to see a man doesn't get all he can pay for. What's
the answer to that? If a man were to get someone else to put in for the
land he wanted--am I getting warm?" He perceived the beginnings of a
smile. "I'm on to it, I believe. Aha! The drawing-room's no bad training
ground."

"A man that puts in for land has to go before the surveyor and show the
purchase-money in cash," Flusky said without expression.

"What of it? I've got a hundred pounds." A smile commented. "Not enough?
Well, damn it, I suppose I could borrow."

"You might."

"Perhaps from the man that wanted the land. I dare say he'd stump up
enough to show this surveyor."

"He might, then."

Mr. Flusky, setting his stick between his legs, leaned back to seek a
wallet. He pulled it out, and chose notes from it, cracking each one,
holding watermarks up to the light. Mr. Adare watched and reckoned the
total as he laid a bundle clown; a thousand pounds.

"Five bob an acre," said Flusky, "that's the Land Board price." He took
out another note. "No need to show this one to the surveyor."

"Fifty," said Mr. Adare, craning to look at it. "Fifty for a signature,
the first day of landing. No need to ask if this sort of transaction's
legal."

"It's not legal. I tell you that flat out."

"But it's the way to get things done?"

"I'm not saying nothing. I'm not asking you, Mister." The young man came
nearer, picked up the bundle, laughed.

"Why, good Lord, for all you know I might put it on a horse." Flusky was
silent. "Don't you want a receipt?" Flusky shook his head. Mr. Adare had
a qualm. "Are the notes bad 'uns?"

"There's a lot of coves out here haven't forgot their old trade, I'll
allow. But those is right 'uns."

"This is the maddest transaction I ever put a hand to, and I've been in a
queer rig or two. If I had a grain of caution--but I haven't, thank God.
It's a bargain, Mr. Flusky."

"There's nothing on paper, I'd remind you." "Well, but between Irishmen,"
said Mr. Adare impulsively, and held out his hand.

How much part in this impulsive decision was played by recollection of
the chain-gang, Adare was not able to determine; but he was aware, as he
struck hands with the emancipist, of a glow, a release of feeling which
might not improbably be traced to that source. The clasp over, he
laughed.

"Courtesy title of Honourablel" said Mr. Adare. Then, but to himself:
"What the deuce have I let myself in for?"

He was perfectly ignorant of the Colony. The man's statement concerning
land might be true or it might not. The bare facts were that he, a guest
in the Governor's house, was conspiring with a total stranger to do the
Government. He reassured himself; it was only in principle that the
Government would suffer, what could it matter to the Treasury whence came
the purchase-money for land; an ungenerous whisper reminded him that the
interview had been private, there were no witnesses, no documents--there
his thoughts checked sharply.

Mr. Flusky appeared to be troubled by no ironical questionings. He
reached out the knob of his stick and rapped on the open door with it.
After an interval for dignity, the Secretary answered this summons.

"Business concluded, gentlemen? Satisfactory, may I hope?"

"Mr. Adare wants a word with you."

"I am at Mr. Adare's service."

"He wants," said Flusky, interpreting the young man's quick glance, "to
deposit a thousand pounds." The Secretary bowed, looking from the square
flabby man to the thin rosy man. His glance was enquiring. He said,
however, nothing of that hundred pounds previously mentioned as the sole
fortune of his new client, who began nervously to talk:

"I take your advice, sir, as you see. I buy land. Well, I have seen two
foot by four of painted canvas change hands for a thousand pounds, to say
nothing of five foot two of womanhood. How far will it go in kangaroos,
do you think? By George, gentlemen, I hope landowners in your country
have a better standing than they do in mine. They shoot us from behind
hedges, like partridges. It is not the way a man of spirit would choose
to die, winged by a Whiteboy with his dirty coat inside out--"

Mr. Adare prattled on. He found the entire trust reposed in him by this
stranger oddly touching, and it was his form of self-defence to talk when
silence would have revealed emotion. The emancipist received this patter
with no change of expression and said nothing. The Secretary, making out
a receipt for the money Adare handed him, observed the numbers of one or
two of the notes, familiar owing to certain odd groupings of numerals. He
knew to whom he had paid them out. But he too said nothing, having
learned that discretion is the first recommendation of a banker, more
especially where his richer clients' interests are concerned.



(v)


Life in this newest of worlds was patterned in circles upon much the same
plan as life in the old. Outer darkness, the convicts, merged into a
twilight existence of emancipated men; traders could be dimly perceived,
country landowners took the air with a vague grandeur, becoming visible
at certain periods, like the remoter stars; but the innermost circle,
that which accepted the full light of His Excellency's countenance, wore
or had worn uniform. A red coat or a blue one, a wig and gown or the
beaver of banking, with an occasional pair of clerical gaiters--this
uniformity represented right thinking, and true dogma, and the power to
bind and loose. Uniformity prevailed, as might have been expected, at the
parties attended by uniforms and their moieties. There would be offerings
of wine from Portugal and France; cheeses brought by sea from cool
English dales; sugared fruits that had travelled half the world round.
These were consumed to an accompaniment of talk well suited to London
dining-rooms, but to which the warm Australian air and a pertinacious
humming of insects gave the lie. Proverbs turned head over heels in this
new uneasy country, and the gourmet's maxim, Tell me what you eat, that I
may know what you are, ran in Australia thus: Tell me first what you are;
thence I may deduce what you cat, what you wear, the matter of your talk,
and the shape of your wife's coiffure; besides making a tolerably
accurate guess at your past income, and a reasonable forecast of the
income which will be yours in future.

So much Mr. Adare had discovered in the course of a few weeks' sojourn.
He wore no uniform himself, but the glamour of the regulation dress was
all about him; he was distantly related to shako and sabretache,
vicarious spurs chinked upon his heels, and he was received with all the
interest and respect due to a bearer of such emblems. However, at the end
of a brief period he had begun to weary a little of the uniforms and
their wives, and said as much in His Excellency's hearing.

"You're a thankless pup," returned Sir Richard. "They do you well enough,
don't they?"

"Well enough. But I'm getting to know all the faces by heart--well, not
that; not by heart. By my liver."

"That's something you can't avoid in a small community. The officers in a
regimental mess get sick of the sight of each other's faces in peace
time. So they do in a man-of-war. It has to be put up with."

"But their smugness I can't endure. Twenty-five, thirty thousand people
in this town, and the same dozen self-satisfied phizes at every
dinner-table, like wooden nags on a roundabout."

"What else is to be done? You can't mix a society, it gives too much
offence. Consequence is all that many of these people get in exchange for
exile. Besides, no man cares to drink with the fellow that may have
picked his pocket in the old country."

"Would His Excellency's credit be involved, for example, if his
irresponsible cousin were to accept this?"

The Governor held out a hand for the letter his irresponsible cousin
offered. It was an invitation to dine with Mr. Flusky, signed not by but
for him; _per pro_. William Winter, secretary. The paper was good, the
writing copper-plate, the wording conventionally civil; only the
astonishing address--Minyago Yugilla, Woolloomooloo--betrayed the
letter's New World provenance.

"Who is this fellow?"

"Rich. A decent sort of an Irishman. Emancipist."

"What was his offence?"

"I can't find out." This was true. Adare's curiosity had uncovered as yet
nothing of his benefactor's past. He repeated the Bank secretary's
phrase: "Anyway, what's it matter? This is the country of the future. And
besides, damme, isn't there old Uncle Lawrence at home that we can't
trust with the spoons?"

"There seems no reason why you shouldn't go. We've got to mellow these
individuals somehow before we find ourselves sitting beside them on a
jury. Wait a moment. I remember something now about this man."

"So do I, but for the life of me I can't tell what."

"Something about his wife--" The Governor pondered, then dismissed the
puzzle. "My dear fellow, do as you please about this, so you don't
involve me. What d'you suppose those extraordinary words are?"

"It's where he lives, evidently."

"Yes, but the meaning." He looked up as a youngish civilian entered,
carrying a portfolio. "Banks, you know something of the aborigines'
tongue; can you tack any meaning to this?"

He underlined the curious address with his thumb-nail and handed the
paper over. The newcomer read, and ventured:

"I happen to know--this is the name of Mr. Flusky's house, is it not? The
meaning is, Why weepest thou? I have always wondered why Mr. Flusky
should choose it."

"The wife, perhaps. A romantic, Byronic, sort of a female might fancy
such a name."

The civilian made no comment, but his correctness of attitude, his
portfolio, recalled the Governor to a working frame of mind. He dismissed
his cousin abruptly, and settled down to consider the Colonists'
proposal, shortly to be submitted to the Parliament at home, for a
Legislative Assembly of their own.



(vi)


Mr. Adare, thus licensed to accept, accepted; having no least notion of
what he was about, or what forces he was setting to work. He was not
accustomed to look forward, or to calculate sequels; even had he
possessed the highest degree of prudence, he could hardly have read these
few polite written words as the warrant setting forth a new course of
existence for several people. First, the receipt of his letter produced a
remarkable effect in the pleasant capacious dwelling in Woolloomooloo,
which Mr. Samson Flusky had elected to call by so odd a name. (He had no
idea of the words' meaning; but hearing the house thus referred to by
blacks perpetually encamped in his garden, he had adopted their
outlandish phrase, the more readily that he had no wish to preserve, as
so many of the other exiles did, any memory of a home on the far side of
the world.) Mr. Adare's letter set half a dozen activities taking
direction. Miss Milly, a large woman in carpet slippers, upon whom the
domestic authority of the establishment devolved; Miss Milly, surname
forgotten long ago, who could slap up a dinner, kill a rat, or--as had
once been proved to the discomfiture of a visiting clergyman--deliver an
excellent impromptu prayer; Miss Milly was summoned, and bid look to her
staff, that they behaved themselves and were up to their work on
Wednesday week. This order she received with a sniff, and withdrew to
convey the sense of it to a mixed lot of female convicts, who, accustomed
as they were to fight bloodily, to drink rum when they could get it and
eau-de-Cologne when they could not, took philosophically her command to
"act ladylike for once." Then it was the turn of William Winter,
secretary, a gentlemanlike person doing time for the seduction of a
minor. He was new to his assignment; indeed the first task that had been
set him was the drawing up of a menu for Wednesday week. He demurred;
knew nothing of the resources of the country, what meats were
procurable--

"Don't trouble for that," said Flusky easily. "Anything you say, I can
get."

William Winter searched his memory. Meals in France; the delicate
ridiculous ices of the Palais Royal, wine-dark soup of snails; meals at
Oxford tables; meringues, a boar's head whose glass eyes stared from
buttered sockets, larks with a bay leaf on their breasts; meals less
clearly remembered, by reason of the ladies and wine that had accompanied
them. He conferred with Miss Milly, summoned from among her kitchen
furies to aid, and between them a programme of courses was assembled, to
which William Winter gave French names. When the plan was drawn out he
submitted it to Husky, who glanced at the paper, counted the courses with
a moving thumb, and asked:

"Is this a slap-up dinner?"

William Winter reassured him. Everything of the most expensive,
everything out of season or reason would appear upon the table, in order
serviceable as the bright-harnessed angels of Milton. Flusky nodded, and
turned away. Winter stood, wondered, risked a suggestion.

"Am I to show the menu to Madam?"

Flusky stood still.

"To who?"

William Winter knew that his employer must have heard, and did not repeat
his question. He was aware that somewhere in the large house there dwelt
Flusky's wife, though he had not seen her, and though Miss Milly brushed
aside questions. He waited therefore; but he had met his match at that.
Flusky took up the paper on which the list of dishes was written, put it
away in one of his sagging pockets, and sat down tranquilly to light a
cigar such as he smoked perpetually, throwing the butts away before half
the smoke was done: his one extravagance. When the cigar was going he
gazed wildly through the smoke at William Winter, and the gaze was a
challenge. The seducer (who had cut no very gallant figure when pursued
by angry brothers on horseback, flourishing long-tailed whips) did not
meet it. He busied himself mending a pen, and prepared, with every
appearance of earnest attention to business, to receive orders.

These took the form of a command to write out further invitations.
William Winter had not been long enough in the colony to understand how
improbable it was that any of them would be accepted, but he was inclined
to question his employer's insistence: "Say it's to sit down with the
Honourable Adare." Commissioners of this and that, elderly Colonels and
Judges, were not, in his experience, lured to dine by the promise of
meeting an Irish sprig, aged twenty, of no particular influence or
notoriety. But the solecism had to go down, repeated ten times, and a
servant was sent off on horseback with the notes, sealed and impressed by
the Secretary's own signet ring, a proud crest which he was perfectly
well entitled to use.

The dignitaries, unexpectedly enough, found themselves able, pleased,
delighted, free to wait on Mr. Samson Flusky at the time he named. Their
wives, however, with gospel unanimity, could not come. Flusky took the
news with only one comment, a slightly bewildered question to his
secretary:

"But don't they know I've got the Honourable Adare?"

They knew it. But they did not want him as sugar coating to the pill of
Mr. Flusky's wife, about whom nothing was known, and upon whose
respectability they were unwilling to stake that consequence which was
their all. William Winter, casting about for a formula which should
convey a hint of this to the giver of the feast, observed that individual
toss away his cigar, a gesture habitual with him to underline a decision,
and heard him declare, without heat:

"Well, but, damn them; she shall be there. Henrietta shall be there."

This was the first time William Winter had heard Mrs. Flusky's name. Its
prim ladylike quality puzzled him, for he had added to his vague
suspicions a fact or two; cries heard from her room sometimes at night,
and rich dresses, torn and soiled, coming downstairs over Miss Milly's
arm. The mistress of the house gave no orders, took no walks, ate alone,
living a life of her own, meaningless yet apparently content; the life of
a goddess without worshippers.

But she was to come to the dinner, and take her place at the foot of the
long table. William Winter, setting out in copper-plate on cards the
guests' names and titles, looked up at the sound of an order:

"My wife at the foot. I'll take the head. Write her name: Lady Henrietta
Flusky."

"But that's--excuse me, sir. That's what is called a courtesy title. It
is borne by daughters of nobility. The wives of--private gentlemen--can't
claim it."

"Write what I say."

William Winter shrugged, swallowing down further comment, but a little
sorry to see how his employer persisted in social error. To atone for the
various enormities Flusky had obliged him to commit, he took trouble in
composing the table, allowing precedence due, constructing harmonies upon
a figured bass of dignity as the Colony understood that word. The
Governor's Private Secretary he set at Mrs. Flusky's left hand. On her
right, as a newcomer and the guest of honour, was to sit the Honourable
Charles Adare.



(vii)


The night of the dinner was hot; nevertheless, most of the servants kept
sober. Miss Milly maintained them so. She raided all cupboards in the
morning, and locked up any liquor that might conceivably he employed as
stimulus or soporific; marching to the clank of keys at her waist as to a
solemn music, and with her own hand adding the final glorification of
sherry to the turtle soup. Her eye was an arrow, her tongue a flail. She
had all the attributes of deity, save omnipresence; she could not,
unhappily for the issue, be everywhere at once. Thus at an hour when the
hostess, dressed, curled and becomingly restless, should have been
awaiting her guests' arrival, only Flusky was in the withdrawing-room,
standing four-square, never shifting the cigar from under his drooping
nose, nor moving his hands from his pockets. William Winter's alertness
had perceived a kind of scurry among the maidservants at one period,
following the departure of Miss Milly upstairs, and read a kind of
satisfied thunder in that personage's brows when she returned, the
expression of one justified in an ominous prediction. But nothing more.
There was nobody to question. He had to make what he could of the fact
that Flusky stood waiting alone.

The dignitaries arrived. Flusky, correctly waistcoated and cravatted,
received them with an odd dignity of his own, and made his wife's
excuses:

"My wife isn't any too good, can't be with us. She hopes another time
you'll give her the pleasure."

The dignitaries eyed one another, and at once became more at ease, though
it might be supposed that one or two of the married men regretted they
would have nothing of interest to tell their wives. Mr. Adare even voiced
this regret, saying that a dinner without ladies was no better than a
board-meeting. There was laughter, and they went in to Miss Milly's
turtle soup.

Mr. Adare and Banks, the student of aboriginal tongues and Colonial
conditions, found themselves separated by the empty chair, the glasses
and knives and forks, that should have accommodated their hostess. Both
looked idly at the card, then quizzically at each other. As the first
glass of sherry went down and the noise of gentlemanly talk grew louder,
the Irishman said to the student:

"What is she, really?"

The student shook his head, and lifted an empty glass with significance.

"That way, is it? I meant the name, though."

Banks again shook his head, looked for a moment at his host, and
shrugged.

"I see," answered Mr. Adare; and felt a moment's compassion for the man
who could buy his wife, if she chose, diamonds for her garters, but not
keep her sober. He turned to his neighbour, a soldier, and they fell to a
discussion on the technique of flogging, and the scandal of Sudds and
Thompson, one of Sir Ralph Darling's legacies to the incoming Governor.

It was just as the dessert was being set on the table; (walnuts from
England; wine darkly glowing, that had rounded the Horn); at this moment,
when the meal had done its duty, and the gentlemanly voices at last were
loud and easy, their hostess appeared framed in the long window. She wore
the leaf-green skirt of a ball-dress, with a cambric bodice which did not
cover the rising points of her stays; red hair hung free on her
magnificent shoulders, and her bare feet were shod with ancient red cloth
slippers that flapped as she moved. She looked like a goddess careless of
human clothing, or some heroine of antiquity run nobly mad.

Flusky did not see her at first. As the heads turned and the talk ceased
he sprang up, with a face which Mr. Adare saw later in dreams, and put
out a hand to keep her back. She took the hand with a pretty readiness,
smiled, pressed it, and passed on to her place, the vacant chair at the
table's foot. There, leaning on the chair's back, she graciously bent her
head and spoke:

"Pray, gentlemen, excuse me. I was not aware of the hour. It is not too
late, I hope, to take a glass of wine with you."

Her speech was blurred, the syllables ran together as though written on
damp paper, but the quality of the voice was not to be mistaken. Mr.
Adare, for something to do, moved back the chair for her. She thanked
him, and sat rather suddenly. The guests still stood, glancing under
their brows at each other, until Flusky's voice loudly bade them sit
down, sit down. Uncomfortably the dignitaries took their chairs, but the
talk could not rise, it had been knocked on the head. A sentence or two,
and the chink of a decanter's lip against glass, was the best they could
do, while they directed their glances so as not to perceive the hostess's
bosom or the host's face. Thus every man in the room heard what was being
said at the foot of the table, where the red-haired woman was peering
into the face of Mr. Adare.

"You have a look of somebody I knew. Long ago. In Ireland, was it?
Somewhere--"

"I come from Ireland. Queen's County. Ballaloe. Adare is my name."

"Ballaloe. I remember. Have you not a sister named Alethea?"

She made two attempts at the name; her tongue was thick; for all that Mr.
Adare could recognize it and be astounded.

"You know her? You know Alethea?"

"Alethea Adare. We used to ride together. Riding--" She looked at Flusky,
and laughed. "Riding's dangerous. How did you leave them at Ballaloe? My
father--oh, but I was forgetting. My father died, not so very long
after."

At that Mr. Adare fairly jumped in his chair. With a glance at the card,
on which William Winter had so doubtfully set out the courtesy title not
borne by private gentlemen's wives, he said aghast and aloud:

"Lady Hattie; my God! Lady Hattie Considine, ran off with the groom!"

"Not Considine," said she correcting him, and kissed her hand, vaguely,
in the direction of Flusky's chair. "He married me, you know. Was it not
good of him? But he is such a good man. You mustn't believe the things
they say."

She rose suddenly and superbly from her chair, swaying a little with the
grace of a blown tree; filled a tumbler with port and drank it down, not
blinking; bowed one hand on the table for support, and made for the door.
Adare ran to open it. As she reached him she paused mysteriously, a hand
groping for his arm; the guests heard her whisper, after a backward look
of triumphant cunning:

"Are you any kind of shot with a pistol?" He nodded. "Pray come with me
upstairs. There's a something, I can't quite tell what, on my bed."

Three minutes later, as the uneasy gentlemen sent port round the table, a
shot was fired somewhere in the house. Each halted an instant the
movement which engaged his hand--lifting, pouring, stretching--and Flusky
made insufficient answer to the question thus mutely asked:

"Finish your wine."

Dubiously the gentlemen obeyed. Whatever their speculations may have
been, relief showed itself plainly when Mr. Adare reappeared in the
doorway, betraying no sign of a struggle in his demeanour or his dress.
He said with simplicity, and as though unaware that anything out of the
way had passed:

"She'll be all right now."

With that he sat down. The gentlemen longed to question; they waited for
his uprising as for a signal, that they might all depart together and
question him on the way home. But he sat on. At last the dignitaries,
labouring jokes, and reminding each other of business to be done in the
morning, gave up hope of Mr. Adare and departed, aware that the
unfinished story would earn them a wigging from their wives. The adieux
were cordial; the wine had been sound. At last they were gone, clop of
hooves softened by dust, voices rallying and dying abruptly as the
vehicles turned the hill.

On the shadowy verandah some blacks and their wives had gathered
unnoticed. When the door closed they ran forward, and began to stuff nuts
into their clothes, and, like so many monkeys, into the pouches of their
cheeks. They sampled the wine, spitting out claret, sour stuff, but
gulping brandy down. One of the gins drank from a little vase that
adorned the epergne, pulling out the flowers, and looking mystified to
find that these had imparted no sweet savour to their water. Another
bound up her head in a white napkin. They talked, with sudden bursts of
chatter that sounded angry, like monkeys. They were blissful; the
cigar-ends and brandy would have been enough to make them so, without the
added fun of plundering, which lent savour even to crumbled bread.

Suddenly their leader, a man wearing a brass half-disc engraved with the
name "Ketch," signalled for quiet. They listened; then, with a final
swig, a final fistful of raisins, scampered off, and were lost in the
night. Two men came into the deserted dining-room, and one looked askance
at the disorder.

"Never mind that," said Flusky, "it's the blacks. They'd steal your big
toe."

Mr. Adare sat down, choosing a chair not damp with spewed claret, and
asked his host point-blank:

"Is there anything we can do? Why don't you let her go back to Ireland?"
Flusky looked at him. He amended the question. "Make her go back, then."
Flusky did not answer, which troubled Mr. Adare. "I don't like this. This
isn't right at all. Coming into a roomful of men like that. And then
afterwards--I had a pistol on me. I shot her bogy." He pulled a little
weapon from his tail-pocket. "Get her away out of this, can't you? For
God's sake."

"Her old father cut her off, he's dead, her mother's nothing but an old
nanny-goat," said Flusky rapidly and suddenly, and he imitated a kind of
Irish country bleat. "Me-e! Me-el All the time. What for do you say send
Hattie back? What is there for her there? She can show her
marriage-lines; who cares for that? They'd respect her the more, they'd
take her back the sooner, if she'd none to show."

"What started her drinking?" asked Mr. Adare in the merest conversational
tone. "They don't get the horrors, women, till they're in pretty deep."

"I was assigned here in Sydney," Flusky answered, after a pause so long
that the young man had time to draw his handkerchief through the pistol's
dirty barrel. "I got into a piece of trouble once and they gave me up the
ladder and down--there's the marks on me yet. Hattie--she'd followed me
out. She went to the Superintendent, told him who she was. He made fun of
her. She never used her rightful name after that--it's years ago, now.
There was a bit of money from some old brooches she'd sold, bits of lace,
I don't know what. She lived on it; but the drink got her before I'd got
my ticket."

Mr. Adare looked at the flabby man, involuntarily picturing the scars
running ladderwise up his back.

"What did she say?" Flusky went on, with a jerk of the head towards the
stairs.

"Not much. I shot the bogy for her that sits on the bedpost. She gave me
a thank you, and started undressing for bed. It seemed to me time to be
leaving then."

Flusky nodded, and after a moment irrelevantly told him:

"I was their groom, ye know."

"I'd heard the story."

"It's her own people she misses. Not relations. Just the sort of women;
ladies. Since I've made the money I've taken care to have gentlemen about
the house. There's one now, my secretary, that was at some great school
in England. She won't look at him, though, squeals when he's mentioned.
She don't like the idea that he deceived some girl. Before him was a
clergyman, a very quiet man, a forger. He's got his ticket now. There's
always gentlemen getting into trouble; I can always be sure of a
gentleman, no one else will put in for them, they can't make themselves
useful, ye see; no offence. But you don't get ladies transported. So
there's no company for her, and she don't take to the others."

Mr. Adare was silent, unable to reconcile the simplicity of this recital
with the reputation of his host as a man cunning, mysterious, and blunt
to rudeness. As he sat puzzling, he was aware, as before in the hank
secretary's office, of some compulsion being put upon him. Before he
could recognize whence it came, and draw back to resist it, the words
were out of his mouth:

"Let me have a word with her. Let me try."

"Done," answered Flusky at once, "why not? You're welcome."

He stretched out his hand across the table. Mr. Adare for the second time
took it, and once again felt a fleeting wonder at himself. Flusky got up
to look for a clean glass, with some liquid in which to drink the
partnership's success. But the blacks had been thorough, every drop of
liquor was either drunk or spilled. Flusky, surveying the table, found an
unbroken horseshoe of bread, and held it out to the other man.

"What's this?" said Mr. Adare, not understanding.

Flusky smiled, spat on the baked horseshoe, and tossed it over his
shoulder out of the window behind him.

"For luck," said he.



(viii)


Next morning, before Mr. Adare had well recovered from his night's sleep,
which was apt to lie about him, like mists in a valley, till the sun rose
high, a servant knocked to say that His Excellency would be obliged by a
word with him. The message had a kind of official peremptory ring to it.
Why summon a man to an interview at break of day, whom you can converse
with over a meal or a cigar at any more civil time you please? Mr.
Adare's mind gave forth tremors. His conscience was not uneasy, but he
had fears for his comfort, vague disquiets, blank misgivings. He
presented himself, looking neat, within twenty minutes of the message
arriving.

His Excellency was in his study, not standing or marching about, as was
his custom, but sitting at a big table on which packets of papers lay. He
looked up at once, and Mr. Adare heard something resembling, had he known
it, his cousin's orderly-room voice:

"Sit down. There's something I'd like you to explain."

He did not add, If you can. But his gesture as he handed over a small
paper, half-printed, half-written, allowed those words to be understood.
Mr. Adare took, and in an instant recognized, the document.

To the Surveyor-General.

Application of _Donough Charles Adare of Government House, Sydney_, for
permission to purchase land. Dated, December, 1831.

Sir,

Being desirous to purchase the following sections of land, I request you
will obtain the Governor's authority that they may be put up to sale at
the minimum price determined by the Government, agreeable to the
Regulations of the 1st August 1831, viz.:

_200 acres in the County of Cumberland, district of Newcastle, sections
numbered 17 to 217._

I am free, and arrived in the Colony by the ship _Foxhound_ from London
in the month of December 1831. I have the honor to be, sir,

Your obedient humble servant,

D. C. ADARE.

"Is that your signature?"

"It is, yes. Let me explain this matter, there's nothing to be concerned
about--"

"But it is not your writing in the body of the form?"

"No. I can explain that. You see, I am acting on advice. This land will
appreciate in value. I shall make money by it if I wait. I can explain
the whole affair. It's really a very simple matter."

The Governor suddenly sat back in his chair.

"Very good. Let me hear."

Mr. Adare was still a little drowsy. He had not yet quite understood that
here was danger, nor had he, when signing and presenting it, studied the
document at all closely. Flusky had assured him it was the merest matter
of form.

"I've been talking--you recommended that I should do so--to men of
experience. They all have the one thing to say; one must get land. The
more acreage the better. This is not like England; small holdings, they
tell me, will not do here; one must put in for a considerable acreage, to
allow, don't you see, for accidents such as drought or any other kind of
bad season. Two hundred acres; it is equal, in fact, to a farm of fifty
acres at home. It is all a question of degree. As you know, I have no
ideas of grandeur. As Tom Moore says, 'The pride of former days, and
glory's thrill is o'er.'" He had done; and humming the tune that
accompanies those words, waited more or less indifferently for the
Governor to bid him take himself off. His Excellency, however, pondered,
tapping the document.

"A farm," repeated the Governor. "Well, I won't insult you more than I'm
obliged to, but you are a liar, Mr. Donough Charles Adare. Don't make
matters worse, don't make a fool of yourself." (The young man had given
an angry start.) "Did you look at the map, down there at the Surveyor's
office? You did not, or you wouldn't have offered me that nonsense about
acreage and droughts. What you have put in for is town land, valuable
land. The price set by the Board runs to five pounds an acre and more.
That's a thousand pounds' worth; it's land with the obligation to build,
what's more, if your application should be granted. Don't humiliate
yourself or me by any more explanations, as you call them. The truth, if
you please."

Not easy; for truth was in itself so improbable. Mr. Adare put together
something resembling a review of the facts, which included the meeting in
the Bank and the loan; but insisted that he had followed his own judgment
in the selection of land to buy--"one of these fellows said it was a
coming-along district, and I backed the numbers, the two seventeens--"

"But the money; you must have had money to show the Surveyor."

"He lent it me--this same fellow--just for the day."

"What security did you give?"

"He asked none, sir."

"I see. Did you make use of my name, then?"

"I did not."

"I'm serious, this is a serious matter. What did you promise the man in
exchange for this money? I must know how you stand."

"I repeat, nothing at all, whatsoever, of any kind, nothing."

"Come; you're this man's bonnet, aren't you? Buying in his name land he
wouldn't be likely to get on his own application?"

"I am not, sir."

The Governor rose at last, and looked at Adare steadily. The young man
cocked his chin and stared back. The Governor gave a kind of quick sigh,
then spoke with firmness.

"Your application is refused."

Adare bowed as jauntily as he dared.

"Furthermore, I must make other arrangements for your domicile while you
stay in the Colony. This is the sort of transaction--" he flicked the
document--"that I can't have carried on from Government House."

"I'll arrange at once, sir. Don't put yourself to any trouble."

"I make no further comment on your conduct. You have a good deal to learn
in the way of worldly wisdom; but don't buy your experience at the cost
of honour. That's no sort of bargain. I shall be happy to know from time
to time how you do. Moreover, some sort of allowance is due to you, in
money, I mean. Your parents contemplated your being my guest in the
Colony--"

"Excuse me. I shall do very well."

"As you please. I am at your service, should you change your mind."

"Mr. Flusky, I believe, will be good enough to house me until I can
settle my affairs."

The Governor at that put off his orderly-room manner altogether and
disturbingly. He came round his big desk, took the still young man above
the elbow and walked him about as he talked.

"You remember I had something in my mind about this man. So had you; we
couldn't hang it on to any peg, either of us. I've got the facts at
present."

"So have I, sir."

"All? You know he ran off with one of the Considine girls? And the rest
of the circumstances? Why he's out here?" The young man was silent, and
Sir Richard halted their march a moment. "The bad part of the business,
you see, was this. He shot James Considine dead, that went after them.
Shot her brother. They gave him the benefit of the doubt; said James
pulled first. That's how Flusky comes to be a rich man instead of a dead
one. But it's not a story to associate with; a nasty, bloody, derogatory
story. Keep away from it, Charles." The young man stood mulishly; Sir
Richard shook his arm with a trifle of impatience. "No chivalry, now. No
wild-goose chasing. He's a murderer, and she's all to pieces, by what I
can learn. You owe the fellow no debt, and you've done what you could.
Give him his money back, and start fresh."

But Mr. Adare was in the grip of that obstinacy which comes from the
sense of having behaved like a fool; an obstinacy not peculiar to the
young, but more common in them, since their dignity is a new and precious
pedestal. This obstinacy did not reveal itself as such to the individual
possessed by it. Hastily, it put on the trappings of generosity, and
displayed Mr. Adare to his own gaze as a noble figure forsaking the
fleshpots, a Quixote. He burst out now with something of all this, much
garbled; a new country, old scores should be forgotten, hands of
friendship, and so on. Sir Richard listened and lost patience. He too had
his dignity; it was not for him to persuade. Two sentences ended the
matter.

"Yes, yes, that would sound all very well in a story, my young friend,
but we can't afford posturing in a real situation."

"I won't trouble your Excellency with my postures any longer."

A bend of the young man's shoulders. A lift of the Governor's shoulders.
The sound of a door impetuously closed.



(ix)


"'--I think I can picture you, not working in any way, for that is
against your avowed principles, but most pertinaciously and tirelessly
watching others do so. Since there has not been time as yet for any
letter to arrive, I amuse myself very comfortably, seeing you in this
situation or that, without any danger of imagination stumbling over
truth. Have you seen any black men? Do they make anything of interest
that you could send home? It is tiresome having to abide the bragging of
Mrs. Synnott, with a trumpery ensign nephew out in the East, who sends
shawls and ivory elephants.

"'When will this scrawl arrive, I wonder? Perhaps it may not reach you at
all. The ship may go down, or be taken by pirates, who will light their
smelly pipes with the best I can do in the way of literary composition.
It is not very well worth while writing beautifully for pirates, you will
agree, and so I wander about over the paper, on which you may find, I
shall be surprised if you do not, the print of a dog's paw here and
there. They, Bess and Punch, will come in, and they scramble about so,
there is no keeping them in their places. Bess has had a litter since you
went away, two dog-puppies and three others. There was the usual talk of
drowning, but it ended as usual, with Bess enthroned under the kitchen
dresser, and everyone coming to pay respects to the full number of
puppies.

"'What else? Three or four of the women in the village are praying for
you, and there was talk of a candle being set up by old Philo Regan. I
told her it would do a Protestant no good, she had better keep it for St.
Anthony, to find her calf that strayed away. She said, whether a creature
went straying to Australia or only into the next parish, it was all one
in God's eye, so you may share the petition of the candle between you.

"'Dear brother, dear Charles, to be serious for a moment, you are indeed
very far away from us, and I can't always think with composure of the
many months that must pass before you are home again here. Please write.
It is not that which you do most easily, I know it, but say to yourself
that two poor silly women are fond of you, and will not be easy until
they have assurance that you are safe and happy. I will say it again, in
red ink if I can find any. Please write. And again, WRITE, in capitals,
so that you, who once complained of my "feathery fist," cannot but make
that one word out.'"

Mr. Adare paused a moment in his reading.

"And then she signs her name and her love. And that's the end."

"Thank you," said the red-haired woman. She did not ask to see the
letter, but Mr. Adare caught her looking at it, not inquisitively, and
gave it into her hand. She weighed it between her fingers as though quite
unused to handling such things, read the superscription, smiled, and
dropped her hands above it in her lap, where embroidery silks, much
faded, lay heaped.

"And so, have you written to your sister?"

"Not yet. The ship is only now in, I've not had the letter an hour."

"When you do answer--I have no right to ask this, no right to conjecture
what you may do, or forbid it--I hope you will not speak of me."

"Not--? But it is the only thing that will interest her, my one good
reason for writing. Why do you forbid it?"

Lady Henrietta did not answer, but began again to load her blunted needle
and draw the silk in and out, making knots for the fleeces of a canvas
flock. She spoke away from the previous matter, looking sideways at her
knot as it flattened:

"This is all I remember of all my old governess taught me. Shakespeare,
the History of England by Question and Answer--all gone, except this."

"Your sheep will thrive," said Mr. Adare, following the needle and the
cue. "Milton fed his, you recollect, on knot-grass dew-besprent, and they
did well, or so he says. But listen to me; why mustn't I write about you
to Alethea?"

She said in a low voice:

"The night you first came to this house, how long ago? Ten days only?
That night--I don't clearly recollect it. But I know, because of that
night, and because of certain other things, other happenings--"

She stopped. Adare said, sympathetically and easily:

"You mean, because you were drunk."

She stood up at that; the silks and scissors slipped from her knee. The
young man unconsciously took a step back, afraid lest she had been
wounded by his bluntness, but she followed, putting out her hands to
him.

"Do you know that's the first open word that's been said? He never
speaks. He won't let them speak, or look, not even Milly. I get the
bottles. When they're empty I hide them until there's a pile, and then,
one day, they're gone. Nobody speaks of them. I do something outrageous,
come down half-naked, scream--nobody speaks." She gripped his hands more
tightly. "That night, how did I appear? Was I--was I decent?"

"You were covered," Adare answered. "Don't trouble for that. Only you
were not quite, we'll say, the glass of fashion."

"Thank God for it. And for you, that gives me the words of comfort I've
needed. 'You were drunk.' My dear, you'll never know how I've longed to
hear a human creature's voice just saying that."

They stood together. Suddenly Adare began to laugh. She followed the lead
a moment later, rocking, half-weeping. Flusky came out on to the verandah
from his room astonished at the sound, and stood in the long window of
the drawing-room wondering at the laughers, who confronted each other
helplessly, their feet upon the fallen silks, and regarded by the round
eyes of a scissors that had dropped point downwards to stick upright out
of the floor. His wife saw him first, and still catching her breath came
towards and past him. As she reached his side she held his arm for an
instant and leaned her cheek against it; then went out, swiftly and
majestically striding, towards the shades of the garden. Adare remained.
Without self-consciousness he wiped his damp eyes, and set about picking
up the silks.

"What's funny?" Flusky asked him.

"I don't know," said Adare; for with all his impudence he could hardly
confide to this man, who himself never referred to it, the subject of the
jest. "Just something or other made the pair of us laugh."

Flusky said nothing, noting the embroidery, which for ten years he had
not seen in his wife's hands. He turned away.



(x)


"I've been talking with your husband--why didn't you dine with us, cruel
fair--as the poets say, the silly fools. How I hate poets! Why don't you
ever take a bite with us? We get on very well, but we're a little heavy
together, like brandy and cheese. Is it because you're sick of food by
the time you've ordered it? I've heard my mother say that."

"I seldom order it."

"I thought the stranger within your gates might have transformed you to a
model housewife. What a damnable thing--Venus into Dorcas! Still, you
know, it would give you something to do with your time."

Again she was silent.

"Oho! There's something in the way. Now what?" But he did not wait for
her answer. "Is there anyone I could kick for you?"

She laughed, and spoke at last.

"It does me good to have you here."

"I know that. I'm little Ferdinand of all the tracts come alive. 'O mamma,
pray put that ugly bottle down!' I take my duties seriously, it's
a mission I'm on; to restore you to that society, of which you ought to
be the jewel and ornament. Let's plan the campaign together."

"How about making your fortune? I thought that was what had brought you
here."

"I'll make yours instead, lend myself lustre that way. Where's pencil and
paper? Here we are. Now! Programme of Social Activities, (a) domestic,
(b) in social circles. Lord, lord, those social circles! How I pity you,
being obliged to shine in them. _Lux in tenebris_--and the darkness did
not comprehend it. All the same, it is your duty."

He looked up suddenly from his absurd task. She was seated in a chair
backed by sunset. The noble shape of her head could be seen against red
feathers of cloud, dark, calmly brooding. By strong daylight the skin
showed thickened and blotched, the whites of the eyes were not clear, and
the whole scheme of her beauty appeared half-spoiled, like a great
drawing sketched upon some spongy substance. Withdrawal of light gave
hack this beauty again by lending it mystery. Adare said impulsively:

"You arc the loveliest creature ever I saw in my life, I believe--except
a mare I once had that died of the strangles."

He laughed at his own conclusion. She did not, making almost passionate
answer.

"No, no. I know there's nothing left, nothing--"

"Don't you ever take a look in your glass?"

"There are no glasses here."

That was true. Nowhere in the house had he seen one, except the round
small mirror he shaved by, and he now perceived the reason; she could not
bear to be reminded of the passing of a beauty that had been sterile,
that would light no memories; of which, in this new country, no man would
say when she died, "Ah, but Henrietta Considine was the loveliest thing!"
Adare was touched with pity. He whipped off his dark green coat, and
holding it behind the French window within whose opening stood her chair,
made a mirror impromptu, in which as she turned she could see something
of her head's outline against the ghosts of cloud.

"Can you see yourself? Enough to convince? I tell you what we'll do,
we'll drive together into Sydney to-morrow, and cause a nice scandal, and
I'll buy you the biggest looking-glass I can find. It's to stand for your
conscience. Every day you must look in it, and say to yourself, Sister
Hattie, Sister Hattie, do you see anybody coming? And every day you must
answer, I see myself, myself, myself coming back hell-for-leather to make
me like I was when I was young."

He took away his coat, swung it on to his shoulders, and when he viewed
her again found her head sunk, and her hands at her eyes. She was crying;
indeed his own outburst had made a kind of clot come in his throat. He
took refuge from emotion in talk, and seizing the pencil again began to
make calculations aloud.

"We haven't got far with our plan yet. Activities Domestic; yes, those
must be considered first. What the devil does a woman find to do in a
house? I have it--back to the beginning of our conversation. One, you
must order the dinner yourself."

He set this down, neatly.

"Two, you must take up your needle. I disallow your knotted sheep.
Embroidery will not do, there is no reclaiming virtue in embroidery, it
is frivolous, old ladies in mouldy castles do miles of it, for which
nobody's the better. The new world demands something sterner. Socks! Not
flocks. I'll give you one of mine to start on, and your husband, I dare
say he'll wear out a pair or two to oblige you. Task domestic Number
Two."

He set it down.

"What shall Three be? I think I have it. To appear every evening at the
dinner you have ordered in the morning. Yes, and eat it, too. I know how
it is, you have no appetite, I know that. But that will come along. You
must dress for us; you must adorn our table, not leave us to munch
together like a pair of bullocks. And you must take a glass of wine with
us. How long since you've had a drink in public? Well, that's undoubtedly
Three."

She had recovered from her tears he saw, looking sideways at her, and as
he wrote she spoke:

"You are talking nonsense, but please go on."

"The first time anyone has ever paid me that tribute. I used to write
poetry once, did you know? Brought out--the impudence of me--a book. It
even got a critique from the Scotch Reviewers. They said what you said,
minus the last clause. Have I to come fifteen thousand miles to find my
market?"

"Charles--that is your sister's name for you, isn't it? I will call you
Charles, I think. You must believe that I am very grateful."

"My dear creature, I please myself by staying in this house--for I take
it that's what you refer to. Indeed, if I didn't stay in this house, I
should have nowhere to go. His Excellency the Governor has turned me out
into the storm. You are not to thank me for your own charity, taking in
an orphan."

"But your plans--you cannot be always talking to me. You have some
notion what you intend to do."

"None." He indicated the paper. "Unless it be this. I get the run of my
teeth, goddess dear, as Milton has it, in return for the privilege of
keeping you away from the bottle."

She said, speaking with difficulty, very low:

"Charles, it isn't only that. That came--because I had lost courage. It
is not the cause."

"Cause or effect, we'll get rid of them together. We'll present you to
the world, you'll burst upon it like Pygmalion's statue, and the world
shall rock, or I'll know the reason why. Lack of company, lack of women
to chatter and stitch with--there's your cause, I believe. But my dear,
my dear! They are a very deadly set of people, all the best ones."

"I don't want to go among them. Pray don't insist upon that; I have no
inclination to society."

"I do insist upon it. I insist upon your staggering all the wives of the
Chief Thises and Thats until they go home and beat their uninteresting
children."

"Perhaps--perhaps I have staggered them already."

"That dinner party? Pooh, it told them nothing they hadn't invented
beforehand. There must be more dinner parties. There must be races and
balls. I'll see to it. I am not _persona grata_ at Government House, but
I am personable, and a Lord's son, thank that same Lord!"

She was beginning to speak when Miss Milly came in bearing candles. (It
had grown dark while they spoke, like a curtain dropping.) The sallow
woman came in, peering, for the lights she carried blinded her, and gave
the pair at the window a look before she set the two silver branches
down. She said nothing, however; licked her finger and thumb to snuff
down one of the wicks that was flaming; withdrew.

"That's a nice sort of a family nurse, curse, worse to have about."

"She is kind to me."

"I wonder is she. I wonder does she."

"Does she--what?"

"I don't know." He had been looking intently at the door, but suddenly
let his eyes come back to his hostess. "I never could stomach plain
women. That's why I like you. The harp that once in Tara's halls might
have been strung with your hair. Or the bow of Diarmed. There's a word
for what you are."

"There is indeed. There is a word for what I am."

"Oh, not that side of you, not the drinking and the crying and the bogy
on the bed. Well, I'll change my time. There's a word for what you were
and still could be. Only I can't find it. Nobody's ever found it. There's
a young man, a poet, not long dead, and he said beauty was truth. And
there was another man asked once, what is truth; but he never got his
answer, not even though he asked God. Nobody knows what they are, truth
or beauty. Not even poets; not even lovers. And so that's why I can't
finish my little compliment."

"But you are not in love."

"No, thank God. And I'm not a poet."

There was sincerity in that answer. He had for the moment no more to say;
and with the unconcern of a young animal clenched his shoulders,
stretching, then walked past her chair out into the dark garden. She did
not look after him. She sat awhile watching insects that the candles
had drawn round them with their silent Ducdame, then stooped to pick up
the paper on which Adare had scribbled, idly, the list of her domestic
duties. She read it, smiled ruefully, and put it away in her dress.



(xi)


That large confused warm room, the kitchen of Flusky's house, was busy
after its fashion at eleven of a morning, with gardeners bringing in
vegetables, blacks coming to cadge bacon-rind or corks, and occasionally
men from the bay with unfamiliar-shaped fish strung on reeds. It was a
room drab enough to the eye, but vivid to the ear with women's talk and
the ejaculations of the stove. Miss Milly reigned there. Hers was the
pair of slippers, embroidered with life-sized sunflowers, that reposed by
the door. The nail beside the dresser was hers, on which she hung her
apron after carefully, and with a look which the women did not miss,
removing everything its pocket might contain. Her taste had directed the
embellishments--a string of paper roses in three colours, much blown by
flies, a print of Moses striking the rock, and a certificate of First
Communion in French, unintelligible, but admired by reason of its
illuminated border.

In this kitchen Miss Milly directed the preparation and conservation of
food, holding absolute sway. It was the house's first line of defence,
and she was entrenched in it. Hence, with a general's eye, she watched
and directed activities of all those who came and went about the house.
The house-women--one petty thief, one murderess (with extenuating
circumstances) and one aged female fence who gave herself airs and talked
ad nauseam about her former glories--these had friends among visiting
grooms and tradesmen, who, for a consideration, would procure them drink.
The blacks, too, and the fishermen were channels for the coming of drink
into the house. Miss Milly knew and successfully blocked all these
courses of supply, so far as her underlings were concerned; they raved at
her for incorruptibleness, and drank hartshorn or paraffin, making
themselves sick to spite her; but she observed their convulsions unmoved.
She obliged her assigned women to work, even taught them something of
house-pride and order; she trained motts and mollishers[*] to make the
kind of wives a rough-and-ready new world demanded. In the single
instance of her employer's wife her efficiency appeared to fail. Somehow,
into that upper room the bottles still found their way, and if the flow
of liquor sometimes dwindled, at other times it came in flood. Lack of
money could not settle the matter in a country where raw spirit was
bartered against a set of buttons, a weight of flour, or even female
virtue. Miss Milly, whose powers could baffle all the manoeuvres of the
assigned sots, was not able to discover a tactic which should be
effective against gentlewomen.

[*Motts, mollishers=prostitutes, thieves' women.]

Miss Milly, then, spying her ladyship's figure straying through the
garden still young with morning, went into the upper corridor and looked
about her. William Winter was coming upstairs. She beckoned him sharply.

"Give me a hand here. There'll be something to carry; I don't care to get
up one of the women."

From curiosity only he obeyed, and followed her into a bedroom whose door
he had often eyed, from which in the night sometimes came whimpers and
talking, endless talking, by one voice only. It was a pleasant room, with
a vast wooden bed. He noted that one of the upstanding pillars of this
bed was scored as though a bullet had whipped past it. The untidiness of
the place was fantastic. There were clothes spread about the chairs and
floor, enough for a dozen women's wearing; candles everywhere, one
guttering still in broad daylight; an ancient trunk open, all its
contents tumbled. Above the smell of scent was a sweetish pothouse reek
of spilled rum.

William Winter was shocked by this disorder. He did not choose to let his
eyes reckon it all, but observed instead the view from the window, which
looked east, towards spurs of land as yet uncleared shutting out a view
of the harbour's length. He could see, down in the bay, one or two craft
moving slowly upon the light morning breeze, and a dark fin travelling
fast like a tiny sail blown by some ill wind of its own. He did not look
at the unmade bed nor the stockings cast upon chairs; he preserved a
certain gallantry in his downfall, a corner of civility where he retired
when he wished to reassure himself that he was still a gentleman. Miss
Milly, too, did not gape about her, but told him sharply to look and find
if the madam was still in the garden. He saw the movement of a yellow
dress and reported it. Miss Milly, satisfied, proceeded to a cupboard
where she bade him attend her, stripping on her way a sheet from the bed.

The cupboard held unnumbered dresses; and among the dresses, hidden below
their skirts, wrapped sometimes in a petticoat or a shift, were bottles,
all shapes, all sizes.

"Hold this," said Miss Milly, gripping the four corners of the sheet so
that it might take a load; and she picked up the bottles quietly, one by
one, talking with affability:

"I have to do this while she's out of the way. Not under madam's nose,
dear no! That wouldn't do. 'How do they come there? What d'you mean,
storing rubbish among my things?' That sort never admits it. Well! Only
ten this week--that's having something to occupy her. Mostly there's a
couple of dozen. I'm sure I wouldn't have asked you, only I thought
there'd be a heavy lot."

"What am I to do with them?"

"Ketch the blackfellow is in the kitchen. He sells them to one of the men
in the bay. There's an idea--what do you say? He's making the whole of
one side of his house out of bottle bottoms. It's the only good use for
bottles ever I heard of. For mortar, he shaves his dog. You need hair for
good mortar. Why, one of the old governors, he used to shave the convicts
all over; said animals was too valuable. That's how the barracks was
built, against the direct command of God. 'Ye shall not round the corners
of your head, neither mar the corners of thy beard.' Well, better be
going. Madam's not dependable, what I call; may be on us any minute."

They went down together, the gentleman maneuvering his burden awkwardly
at the turn of the stairs, and along the passage which led kitchenwards.
Passing through a baize door the two simultaneously heard a voice,
unfamiliar in that place, speaking clear and high. Miss Milly checked
with one hand the steps of William Winter following behind her.

"And why not?" the voice was asking. "This is my house, I will not have
you argue with me. Which of you is the cook?"

A murmur answered. Miss Milly, tightening her mouth, came forward with no
uncertain step, and marched in upon the situation. Lady Henrietta stood
by the table, facing a pair of women, half-frightened, half-inclined to
giggle, who eyed her with most eager curiosity. She held a kitchen knife
by its point, rapping out upon the table a drummer's tune with the butt
of it. As Miss Milly entered she turned.

"What's the matter with these creatures? Why can't they give me an
answer?"

Miss Milly made oblique reply.

"The dinner's settled. It was all fixed last night. You go and take a bit
of a saunter in the garden."

Decision swelled in one voice as it fled from the other. Lady Henrietta
seemed to stoop, almost to be wheedling.

"Milly, in future pray consult me. It is for me to make the
arrangements."

One of the women set up a laugh, uneasy at witnessing an interchange of
which she could make nothing. Miss Milly turned on the noisy creature
with a gesture which silenced her.

"In future--we must make a plan, Milly, do you hear? We must order the
work between us. I've left too much on your shoulders, you arc not to
blame."

Miss Milly still stood mute.

"In future, I will come--no, that won't do--you shall come to me, in my
room, and bring a slate for the orders. Every morning. At nine o'clock.
That will do very well. Do you understand me? And we'll settle the dinner
between us."

Miss Milly answered at last.

"You'll give the orders, is that it?"

"And I had better--you'll let me have the keys."

They hung at Miss Milly's belt, a dozen of them, their steel rods shining
like daggers. She had laid open a convict woman's forehead once with a
knock from her bunch; as she walked they rang authoritatively, like
spurs.

"Oh, the keys?"

But she did not bring up her hand to unhook them. She went instead to the
door, and beckoned in William Winter. He came unwillingly, set down his
burden gently. It gave an unmistakable sound for all that, the chink of
glass. Lady Henrietta looked at it, and stopped the tune that she had
been playing with the haft of her knife on the table. She did not ask
what was in the sheet tied by its four corners, nor did Miss Milly make
any remark upon it. The convict women met each other's eyes, and one put
her hand over her mouth, from which an uncleanly noise came bursting.
This time Miss Milly did not rate her. She looked at the bundle, at her
silent mistress, and when she judged that the bundle had done its work,
with a gesture bade William Winter take it up and away. He obeyed, only
once raising his eyes; that single glance had showed him so grotesque a
flood of red colouring Lady Henrietta's throat that he could not bear to
look again. He heard, as he went out slowly under the humiliating weight
of empty bottles, the sound of her step retreating, and found it odious
that so much dignity and grace should march away at the threat, the empty
threat, he thought, making some sort of forlorn play upon words, of a
harridan. It had already caused him unhappiness that Flusky's wife never
spoke to him, and shrank aside as he passed her. He had almost forgotten
the uninteresting female minor whose reluctance had brought him to this
strait, but she was now, vicariously and unknowing, taking vengeance upon
him.



(xii)


The dinner that night was neither better nor other than usual. Flusky's
wife was not present; the two men found little to talk about. Adare had
ridden in to Sydney on one of his host's excellent horses, he had visited
the Club and acquired some small change of gossip which he was willing to
distribute; but Flusky's dead weight pulled the conversation down, time
and again, to silence. He listened, he answered, but it was with
questions of the kind which show the questioner to be indifferent. Is
that so, now? Did he indeed? Adare, as the walnuts came on, made a last
effort.

"Do you see there's an order out forbidding those heads from New Zealand?
Who the devil ever thought of importing the nasty things? Human heads
tattooed, in pickle. You have queer notions out here of the
_beaux-arts_."

"It does them no harm," Flusky answered, sipping water, "the blacks.
They're dead enough."

"Well, but," Adare persisted, glad to have struck even this spark, "you
wouldn't care for one yourself, would you, as a paper-weight?"

"Not as a paper-weight."

"D'you mean you've got one of the things?"

"Why not?"

Adare hesitated, laughed.

"Well--I don't know exactly why not. I shouldn't care for it."

"You might," said Flusky.

He got up with his usual deliberation, fumbling in one of his wide
pockets for keys; opened a cupboard of dark wood that must, in the old
country, have held china dogs, shepherdesses and cups; thence took out,
sans ceremony, an object which he set down casually by the side of his
guest's plate. It was a head, somewhat shrivelled and dwindled by the
process of preserving, which had turned the longish lank hair a streaky
yellow. On the skin geometrical patterns of tattooing stood out,
enclosing the mouth, circling upon the cheeks and forehead, dark indigo
blue weals upon brown. The eyes, mercifully, were shut.

Adare stared at it. The thing had a kind of helpless and horrid nobility;
the individual was undoubtedly dead, the practice of embalming one
approved by the ancients. For all that, the young man hurriedly emptied
his glass of wine and pushed his chair back. As he did so, he saw Flusky
looking at the head, nodding appreciation while he searched for a cigar.
This he lit; in the act paused uneasily, and blew out his spill with the
guilty expression of a child, offering an explanation that was an
apology.

"I forgot. The port's on the table."

And that troubles you, thought Adare. Pick out a human creature's skull
and dump it down among the biscuits and raisins; but don't smoke with the
port on any account. He was touched by the anomaly of this behaviour.
Trying to change himself, thought Adare for her sake, the poor devil.
Will she do as much for him? With this in his mind he spoke:

"Her ladyship doesn't honour us to-night." Flusky looked at him in
wonder, mildly.

"Oh, I know she don't as a rule. But to-night I thought possibly--where
is she, Mr. Flusky? Let's find her and make her sit down with us."

"I don't know about that."

"Why not? Put that thing away, she sees horrors enough, and I'll fetch
her out from wherever she's hiding."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

Flusky's eyes, lifted from contemplation of the blue whorls upon the dead
man's cheeks, met the live man's eyes for a moment with a stubborn
absence of expression. Adare nodded.

"But she was all right this morning. Seemed better. I thought she might
keep so. What's been the trouble, I wonder?"

Flusky would not answer. Both stood for an instant quite still, then the
young man flung his napkin to cover the Maori head, and went out on to
the verandah, quickly down stone steps to the garden. There was a moon
coming up. It seemed caught in the thin net of the pepper-trees' foliage,
so slowly did it move; on the harbour water, here and there where a gust
of air was dying, a star or two danced. Adare looked back into the room
he had just quitted, and saw the heavy man, his host, looking down at
that dark object from which he had twitched the covering away, the
unlighted cigar still in one hand. He had a feeling of hopelessness, of
meddling in affairs too big for him, travelling with a poor provision of
wits and goodwill through unknown country. Sadness of youth took hold of
him, the sadness compact of self-pity, which seeks a listener to whom
golden lads and lasses may complain of time's cruelty, secure in the
knowledge that the gold is with them still. He looked up at the window
which William Winter that morning had preferred to the litter of the
bedroom; and, though it was dark, smoothed the set of his curls (barbered
that morning by an indifferent and homesick felon) before he called to
the square of light:

"Heyo!"

A shadow moved within the room, but no figure showed against the light.
He called again:

"Are you there? What's your ladyship doing indoors a night like this?"

She did not answer. He saw Flusky move to open the French window of the
dining-room, obscuring the direct light of the candles with his heavy
shoulders, and threw a word back to him, confidently:

"I'll have her out of there." He spoke upwards again, hand on heart,
burlesquing: "Your promise, your promise--

"Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame,
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame--"

"D'you hear me? What are you at, Lady Hattie? Never mind, come down here,
I'm waiting, I've got things to tell you. Come o'er the moonlit sea.
That's it! A boat--will you? There is a moon, I've seen to that. Don't
miss the moon."

The shadow in the upper room stirred sideways, heaving itself wildly
about after the manner of shadows candle-cast, and he saw her come to the
window. Her hair was on her shoulders and she was huddling some sort of
garment over her breast. She swayed against the window's side, caught the
curtain with one hand, and so stood. She did not speak.

"Are you listening? What's the good of roaring to a statue up in a niche?
Come down, come down--"

She answered, then. Her voice now hurried, now checked; words were for a
moment almost shouted, then smothered; it had the confused quality of
shallow water running over stones; the voice of a gentlewoman drunk.

"Didn't order dinner."

"Who's talking about dinner? Who gives a damn for dinner? I won't excuse
you. What's become of your promise?"

She muttered something. Couldn't help, Not reasonable, Milly--"

"I can't hear what you say. Come into the garden, it will cool you down.
Bring a veil if you like, the mosquitoes are troublesome. I've something
to say to you." He saw her shake her head. Suddenly his eye caught the
trick of the shadows behind her. There was one, square-shouldered like a
man, which he now perceived to be that of a bottle standing on the table
near her candle. A little breeze, shifting the flame, caused the bottle's
shadowy shoulders to heave like those of a man laughing, and Adare was
enraged by that shrug precisely as though a man had mocked him.

"You won't, do you say? I won't take that. You can't diddle me that way."

Her dark outline changed its position, she was moving away from the
window. On the ceiling the bottle-shoulders jerked to the death of an
insect in flame.

"Are you dressed? Put something on. I'll give you two minutes, and then
I'm coming up the wall." A tree stood against that side of the house,
dark, thickly-leaved. Here and there closed white flowers showed upon it;
the scent was heady. Adare took out his watch--no mere gesture, for the
moon now rode clear, and lie could read the numerals--and with this in
his hand considered the possibilities of the tree. It was sturdy enough;
it was nailed to the wall and would bear him. While the two minutes
lagged by he became aware that Flusky still eyed him. He made a gay
little sign with the right hand--Up I go, I must deal with this
situation--and spoke towards him in a half-voice:

"Better stand by with the pistol again."

The two minutes were ended. Adare dropped his watch in his pocket, sprang
into the first branch of the tree, and made his way up it, rapidly all
things considered, to the window under which its main trunk parted.
Flusky moved. He went to the cupboard, his illegal trophy's coffin, and
took out of it the small pistol which Adare had left behind him on the
evening of the interrupted dinner. It was clean, as he discovered by
squinting down the barrel. He, however, made no move to load it, but
stood with it in his hands, listening to the cracks and ejaculations that
accompanied his guest's progress up the tree.

"Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear--you can't wonder at it. If my
tailor could see me now! Ah! Half-way. Why do I risk my neck? That's it,
I'm with you. Up and over. And now, madame, if you please--"



(xiii)


He sat straddling the sill, and reproached her.

"Now listen, now listen. I can't have it. What are you doing, making a
guy of yourself this way?"

She had drawn away towards the bed, against one of whose posts she clung,
pulling the mosquito netting over her face as if for a veil. He could
hear her breathing hard, great sobbing breaths. Mr. Adare went on,
savouring with a sudden little gush of amusement which knocked the
romanticalness clean out of him for the moment, his position as the
apostle of temperance; climbing into a room like a lunatic instead of
walking in by the door, having the chief of a bottle of port inside him
that had been drunk in company with a convicted murderer and a
paid-coloured human head.

"You were as good as gold yesterday. Have you forgotten what you promised
me? I know it's not easy. I know it gets a grip on your vitals. But why
won't you take it like a Christian, at the dinner-table? Decent wine,
instead of this rot-gut. What is it?" He peered at the humped black
bottle. Gin; empty. "Come here to me and let me talk to you. How can I
talk if you wrap yourself up like an Arabian, Lady Hester Stanhope in
Arabia Felix, Lady Hattie Flusky in Australia Felix? Come along, I won't
hurt you, I won't scold you. Bring me that bottle."

He held out his hand. She obeyed as if it drew her magically, came slowly
forward, her hair tumbling about her face. But Mr. Adare was determined
not to be defied by the hump-shouldered shadow any longer, and he made
her pause by the table to take up the bottle. This, when she came near
him, he took, and with a fling of his right arm sent it out into the
garden. The squawking of roosting birds showed that it had landed in a
tree.

"Where d'you get it from?" He took her hand as he spoke, holding her
steady on her feet; the hand was damp and very hot. "Henrietta, now tell
me. How did you get it?"

"Found it."

She spoke in bursts of sound.

"Found it; is that true?"

"Sometimes--" she made a wide gesture with her free hand which unbalanced
her, so that she swayed against him. "Sometimes find them. Never mind."

"Here, in this room? Outside in the garden? Where?"

She answered at random, loudly and suddenly:

"Couldn't order dinner. Sorry. Can't explain--"

At that she slipped out of his supporting arm to the floor, and began a
kind of windy crying. He considered for a moment; then pulled his left
leg in over the sill, and leaving her where she lay, took up the candle
to survey the room. He opened cupboards and trunks. He disturbed dresses.
No more bottles were to be seen. When he was certain of this, he returned
to her.

"Do you pay for the stuff? How? Who takes the money?"

She shook her head; or rather, swayed her whole body above the waist from
side to side. It was not a negation, but a kind of lamentation in
movement, a protest against ignominy. She was quite incoherent, and he
saw that it would not be possible to draw any answer out of her that
would make sense or truth in the morning. He spoke gently, therefore, in
another tone:

"We'll get you to bed. Who puts you to bed when you're like this? Milly,
is it? I'll ring for her. You'll take cold."

She caught his hand as he went past her and bowed herself to it, kissing
it through the mesh of her hair. He felt tears, and patted her head
awkwardly with the other hand, as though its red gold had been that of
his setter bitch. She let him go when he gently pulled away, and sank
against the window, her bare feet sticking out straight from her, green
dressing-gown tumbled, hair covering her face, without dignity, awkward
as a doll thrown down.

Adare rang the bell. So still was the night that now the sighing in the
room had stopped and the birds had settled down again in their tree, he
could hear the chinkle of the bell, tossing on its wire in the kitchen
fifty yards away, downstairs. He could hear, too, feet coming down the
stone steps, slowly, into the garden, and knew that to be Flusky.

It was perhaps two minutes before Miss Milly turned the handle of the
door--vainly, for it was locked. Adare went to it, and turned the key,
with a flash of self reproach--why?--that he had not thought to do so
while he waited. Only when she looked at him did he appreciate the odd
figure he cut, white trousers dirtied and torn by the tree, waistcoat
riding up, coat with a feather from one of the cloaks on its shoulder. He
said, however, as strongly as he could:

"You had better get Lady Henrietta to bed."

"I'm to put her to bed?"

"Isn't that your work? Send someone else, then."

"Looks more like it's your work." This was spoken very low.

"Oho!" said Mr. Adare, and caught the woman's thin arm. "What's that you
said? Say that again, will you?"

She did not obey; looked at the figure on the floor, and back at him.

"None of that, I won't have any of that sort of thing." She eyed him
without speaking. "Look here, now. Where does she get the stuff from?"

"How should I know?"

"That's what I'm asking."

"And I'm asking something else, young man. What are you doing here, and
her like she is?"

Miss Milly's voice issuing its vulgar challenge made him conscious of
squalor. What power had the light of the moon, how could pity itself
stand, when there were voices like that in the world, pondered Mr. Adare.
He said to the figure on the floor:

"Good night, Henrietta. We'll talk in the morning."

She moved her head from side to side, a sickening motion, abandoned,
weary. But she lifted her face a little, and her hair fell away from it.
The light showed it shining with teats, lids and lips swollen, cheeks
deadly white. From her came a warm reek of drink. Adare was seized by a
strong repugnance; but cancelling out, as was his habit, one emotion by
the show of its opposite, he stooped to the wet face and kissed its
forehead. Then he went out by the door.



(xiv)


Flusky'S room in which he sat for long periods smoking, or which he
paced, slowly straddling, following the pattern in the carpet, three
strides this way, two strides that, sideways, turn; this room was the
barest in the house. It had the look of an office. There were no books,
no flowers save when a branch of creeper, loosened by the wind, tapped on
the pane. There was a cabinet, beautifully made of native woods by a
carpenter who had been apprenticed to a man who learned his trade in
Robert Adam's workshop. This held documents--leases and other papers with
the red Government stamp; no private letters that any of his secretaries
had ever been able to discover, and no money. There were no pictures,
though on one wall hung a map, an outline of New South Wales as far as
the discoverers to date had carried it. This map resembled the old
cartographers' performances; rivers flowed and ceased abruptly, their
sources unknown; hills started up and sank to a mere line of printing;
whole tracts were indicated by words--Lofty Forest Ranges, Level Country
with Sandy Brushes, Flat Country, Wooded Country, Country Impassable.
Anywhere in the hinterland precious metals might be found, or new
pastures, hidden by the interminably folding ranges. The men who pierced
to the white spaces on the map might, like their forerunners in America
and Africa, seize natural riches, but never any covetable thing made and
used by man; no temple, no treasure. The blacks' tenements were frail and
airy as those of birds. They made nothing but their weapons. They had so
much of the wild in them that they could not even be enslaved and taught
to labour. They hunted to live, and when they could not hunt they died.
Their one spiritual possession, a pretty liquid language, the invaders
had borrowed here and there, but the map-makers grudged space to such
words as Warrawolong, Mandoorama, and preferred instead to acknowledge
new discoveries under English titles: Parker's Flats, Gammon Plains,
Brighton Flusky looked often at this map, observing how the English names
advanced upon it. He had no scruple about dispossessing the blacks; land
must belong to those willing to husband it. But though he had no scruple
he had pity, as a man may have pity for a useless dog turned out to roam;
thus, the aborigines' humpies were allowed to disfigure the foot of his
garden. He expected nothing, neither work nor gratitude, from the
wretches he harboured, they paid him no tribute, they disappeared and
returned to a rhythm of their own like the tides.

Flusky stood now, looking down upon the bark sheds outside which black
women sat smoking. Winter sat at a broad table. Miss Milly, nostrils
pinched and white, stood just within the door. She was respectably
dressed, her apron was spotless; below her meagre bosom two red hands
were folded in all decorum. She spoke:

"It's me to answer for it all. If people go behind my back--" She brought
her voice to a gentler level. "Now, you see here, Mister Flusky. It's no
good, this house won't stand two giving the orders in it. You can't
expect the women to put up with that. I know how to talk to them.
Madam--do you suppose she could talk to old Sarah, that don't know what
you say without you put it into flash language? She's a lady; well, let
her sit in her parlour the way ladies ought. I'll do the work, work my
hands to the bone for her. But I won't be interfered with, for all she
means it well."

Flusky did not interrupt her; walked slowly a few steps right, a few
steps left.

"So I'll thank you to tell Madam."

Flusky stopped his pacing as though confronted by a knot in the pattern
too intricate to be stepped, and stood, feet well apart, staring down.
His hands were behind his back, one holding a cigar. Its smoke trickled
up to coil and fan about the room, bringing to the secretary, with a pang
of nostalgia, two pictures clear to the least detail; a room at the Mitre
in Oxford, the top of a coach in autumn weather. William Winter sighed,
caught himself doing so, and bent to his work. The woman's voice
insisted, growing louder as though to pierce and end Flusky's continued
silence:

"I can't have it, that's flat. She makes work enough in other ways,
excuse me referring to it, without this on top. And I'll tell you another
thing." She waited; but Flusky asked no question, and she was obliged to
continue without that aid to revelation. "It won't do no harm for you to
keep an eye on some of her goings-on. I'm saying nothing more, I'm a
Christian woman. I give you fair warning."

Flusky looked up at that.

"I don't say anything without I know. I can hold my tongue." She resumed
her earlier quiet way of speech: "Do you want anything more with me? I've
got my dinner to see to."

The secretary turned from his table at the window. "Mr. Adare, sir, in
the garden. He is making signs, whether he may come in."

Flusky made an acquiescent gesture, which Winter, rising, interpreted
with a beckoning hand. The young man appeared in the French windows. Miss
Milly, whose expression had changed with his coming, stood her ground,
neglecting the claims of dinner.

"You're engaged," said Mr. Adare, his eyes on the woman. "I'll wait."

"No," said Flusky, and he too looked at the housekeeper.

"You'll speak to Madam, then," the woman reiterated, meeting Adare's
glance. "I'll do my work, but I won't have meddling. I won't stand that,
not from anybody. I've got this house to see to, there's plenty of it,
and I can't get through if there's meddlers about."

"What's all this?" Adare asked.

She ignored him, speaking to Flusky.

"So them as puts ideas into her head had better stop it, for everybody's
sake. You can whistle for your dinner, if she's to order it."

She had said her say, there was a righteous pink line along her
cheek-bones, the ensign of victory, and she was going at last. Adare said
suddenly, smoothly:

"Just one moment. If you please." She opened the door. "Of course, I'll
say it behind your back if you prefer."

She shut the door and stood with her back to it, hands flat against the
wood as though to press it more irrevocably shut. Her constant strife
with tough and insubordinate women had taught her never to let a
challenge pass.

"Very well," said Adare. "Mr. Flusky, I'm beginning to get some notion of
the situation here with regard to Lady Henrietta. Last night--"

Miss Milly could not resist that cue.

"Yes, last night, I could find something to say about last night if I
chose to!"

Adare went towards her quietly, and took her nose between his thumb and
finger. She scuffled with her hands to pull his grip loose. He pinched
the tighter, reasoning:

"Be quiet and I won't hurt you. It's you who are hurting yourself.
Quiet, now. That's better."

"Let her alone," Flusky ordered brusquely, advancing as though to come
between them. "Damn all this crosstalk. Say what you've got to, both of
you. Stash the row."

Adare let the woman go at once, took a handkerchief from his tail-pocket
and wiped his fingers.

"Well, you see, it's quite true (as Miss Milly so delicately suggests)
that I've been meddling in your affairs, Mr. Flusky. I hinted, for
instance, to your wife that she should find something to occupy her, even
if it was no more than to order your food. I believe she went yesterday
to the kitchen, and met some rudeness there. Last night something was
troubling her; the dinner, the dinner, she kept repeating. Now, what
could that have been, do you suppose? What do you think can have upset
her, to do with the dinner?"

Miss Milly did not offer any speculation. She said, beating a ruffle with
her fingers against the door to which she had once more retreated:

"He was there in her room last night, and the door locked. There's
something for you to put in your pipe. There he was, and her with her
clothes half off her. That's where she met some rudeness, as he calls it,
and a good name for it too."

Mr. Adare took no notice of this provocation, but repeated steadily:

"You had insulted her somehow. You did some offensive thing."

"I turned her out of my kitchen, and I'd a right to do it, I'd do the
same to you. It's none of your business. If she was at it again last
night you best know why--" She was whipping herself to anger, as
sometimes she whipped herself to prayer. "Yes, and so I tell Mr. Flusky,
I've got better things to do than butter my tongue when his wife comes
interfering, and I tell you too, Mister Nobody from Nowhere!"

"Excuse me." That was the tremulous secretary, on an impulse rising and
turning from his table. "Excuse me, I was present yesterday in the
kitchen when her ladyship came in. She did receive an affront." He
hesitated. "I don't know how to describe it, no words were spoken--"

Miss Milly caught him up, triumphantly seizing her chance.

"Yes, indeed, you was there, he was carrying a load of bottles, you know
where from, and in he came without waiting for a word and dumped them
down in front of her. Done up in one of her own sheets, too. She knew
what they was and where they come from, and she turned white like the
sheet itself and went out, and that's your affront for you, if you want a
grand word for a silly start."

The pale secretary caught his breath, turning to Adare with a cry:

"Sir, you're a gentleman."

It was Flusky who answered that, not moving, shouting from where he
stood.

"To hell with your talk of gentlemen! Get out of here, you. Milly, get
out. I'll settle this."

"Settle that young fellow first," the woman called, jutting her head
forward. "I'm a Christian woman, I don't stay in any house with
adulterers. You, young man! Don't cry when you burn in hell, like as you
haven't had warning." She began to pray, turning up her eyes, between
which her nose glowed, still red: "Oh Lord, pay down upon the nail, after
Thy manner, the wages of this man's sin. Let the fervent prayer of the
righteous prevail, oh Lord, let not the wicked prosper, nor flourish as
the bay tree and tree upon the wall. If Thou, oh Lord, wilt mark
iniquity, shall a decent woman endure it? The wicked shall burn, we have
Thy word for it, as we may take to our comfort--"

"Oh--" began Mr. Adare; but while he sought an expletive his sense of the
ridiculous caught up with him, and he laughed. Miss Milly stopped her
ranting, brought her eyes down to the level of his, took a great breath
or two to calm the quick pulsing of her blood; then said, in another
voice, the voice of the decent servant who has been put upon:

"I'm getting out of this house, Mr. Flusky. I'm free. This very night I
go. And you can keep what wages is due me. I'd sooner sweep the
Parramatta Factory than lend my face to iniquity."

That, too, tickled Mr. Adare, whose imagination readily played and made
pictures with words; Satan the Serpent trying on Miss Milly's face,
shaking his head over the fit of it. He sat down upon the secretary's
table, wiping his eyes. When he had recovered the secretary and the woman
both were gone. Flusky remained in his place, brooding down, and making
through his teeth a little sound that clearly indicated dismay.

"You're well rid," said Adare with a jerk of his head towards the door.

"We shan't get on without her any too well," Flusky muttered.

"No, but listen to me. She's been keeping Lady Hattie supplied." Flusky
looked up. "I do think so, indeed. A woman like that--do you suppose she
couldn't choke off the supply if she put her mind to it? Last night in
the room upstairs--" He was aware that any mention of that scene was
uncomfortable to his host; but the air had to be cleared. "It's true that
the door was locked. She'd shut herself in--you know what for. So it's as
well I went up by the tree, though I grant you at the time it looked a
silly thing to do. That woman Milly; you can see for yourself she hates
me. Now why? Because she thinks there are things I might be finding out.
Lady Hattie talks to me, you see." He pulled himself up, and sat back
upon the secretary's table. "So you see, it's a good riddance if that's
so. Of course, I've no proof."

"No," said Flusky. "No proof of anything."

He suddenly flung away the cigar, which all this while had been burning
in his hand. There was a scampering sound on the verandah outside; he
cocked his head at it.

"One of the gins. They eat tobacco, give them the chance. Wait hours for
a butt." His puzzled heavy expression returned. "I don't like losing
Milly. She's been here years."

"But, good God--"

"There's only your word against hers."

"You may accept mine, I think," said Adare dryly.

"What, because you're a gentleman? So's Winter a gentleman. You back each
other up. That's what you're taught to do, ain't it? In your schools.
Back each other up against outsiders."

He broke off, turned about. Adare watched him, and to check anger told
himself that the man had scars on his back, that the man was suffering
now, that the man was striking out like an animal, less to cause hurt
than to ease his own. He did not speak, and could not, from Flusky's
expression, make any guess at what plan of behaviour the man's movements
were weaving for him. Flusky stood once more.

"I'd be obliged if you'd overlook all this. It won't be too comfortable,
I daresay, with Milly gone. I'd be obliged if you'd stay on."

Adare, who had had no thought of leaving the house, nodded carelessly.

"We'll have Lady Hattie right in a month, once the house is her own. Up
with the lark, and to bed with the nightingale, or whatever bird you keep
in this country for an example to the slothful. Don't worry your head.
Take my word for it." His host's face still was heavy, and the young man,
alarmed by any emotion which did not swim to the surface, fired a
question, as guns are fired across water to make a drowned body rise.
"You don't take seriously what the woman said? It's so mad I didn't
trouble to deny it."

Flusky looked at him with eyes deliberately blank. He might not have
heard. Adare could not repeat what he had said; it sounded more
preposterous, put into words, than in the silence of his mind. He took a
half-crown from his pocket, spun it once or twice and tossed it,
resenting even as he did so the obligation which was on him to make
movements and speeches, to show himself a target for the emancipist's
weapon of stillness. Playing with this coin he managed without further
talk to escape into the garden, grateful for once to find himself
isolated there.



(xv)


Miss Milly departed, disdaining all assistance. Her gift for organization
had procured from Sydney a cart for the transport of her boxes; they were
light, quite certainly no heavier than when, years before, she had
arrived to take charge of the house so oddly named, Why are you weeping?
Opportunities for peculation, of a kind that the assigned women beheld in
dreams, she had been consistent in despising. The money she earned she
took; but the shining bunch of keys had been respected by her as the
soldier respects his sword, used only to defend the right and to defeat
barbarian onsets. She had prepared a final dinner, giving it pious
attention. She had scourged the women for the last time with her tongue,
so that each utensil shone, no shadow clouded tumbler or spoon. She paid
a visit of inspection to each room; checked in each cupboard the list of
contents that hung upon its door; detected a gin in an ill-timed foray
and routed her; and returning to the kitchen, removed, with the
sunflower-patterned slippers, the last emblem of her authority.

There was an interview with Flusky while the charged cart waited before
the door. She wore black, as was her custom, with a bonnet on top of such
jetted respectability that even the comment of the assigned women failed
at sight of it; she bore a reticule jetted to match upon her arm, and in
her right hand the keys.

"Here they are, Mr. Flusky. I hope you'll satisfy yourself that all's as
it should be."

The master of the house did not take the implements, but nodded that she
should lay them down. She did so with a ceremonial stooping of the
bonnet, and resumed:

"You won't find a ha'porth missing, whether it's stores or wine. It's my
prayer you'll be able to say as much in a year's time--a year! A month's
time. I done my duty, and there's no man nor woman nor counter-jumper--"
a glance at Winter's back--"dare say contrariwise. Now, Mr. Flusky,
there's the matter of my reference."

Flusky rapped on the table for Winter's attention. The secretary found a
paper, studied it a moment, and handed it to his employer, who took a pen
which he tested upon his thumb-nail, and scored a clumsy signature below
the thin elegant script. Miss Milly took the paper and read, her lips
moving.

"Very handsome, I will say." She paused; then, more harshly, proceeded:
"There's one thing you've left out that might be asked me. Cause of
leaving."

"Your own good pleasure. That's all you need tell 'em."

"I won't speak any word that's a lie. And it's a lie, Mr. Flusky, to say
I leave you for my own pleasure. I've been here now five years with you,
as agreeable as Christian woman could wish. It's no fault of yours, Mr.
Flusky. But I won't look on at shameful things, nor I won't be hampered
in my duty."

Flusky said suddenly and strongly:

"You don't go putting that about, do you hear? I'm turning you up
sweet,[*] sorry to see you go. None of your yarns."

[*To turn up sweet=to get rid of a person good-humouredly.]

"You wait and see if it's a yarn. What you want, Mr. Flusky, excuse my
saying it, but I've had it for years in mind--you want a woman about you
that will see to things. What good's her ladyship--" She spoke that word
mockingly, as a woman addresses a troublesome child: My lord.

She stopped as Flusky came towards her. His hands were behind his back,
those hands which Mr. Adare had once in imagination seen strangling, and
they were straining as though to escape from the invisible bond of his
will. She was frightened.

"Oh, very well, I'm sure, if it suits you to have a wife the way she is.
I'm not afraid of you nor anyone, the Lord's my guide, a