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VI

"All Brandy" was dead and buried with pomp, and Lady Berry looked very elegant in mourning. Some one told Mab so in a Launceston street, and that afternoon he went down on the brown marshes and shot duck until the blue twilight crept up, very cold and chill. Now it was his simple duty to offer marriage to Julia, and it surprised him to find how complex his feelings were. He had not been able to love another woman although he had tried, knowing himself naturally gregarious. Yet he could not look back with anything but pain and a kind of disgust on the last years of his connection with her, Perhaps now she would be changed, softened….

Hoping it, he went down to Hobart Town six months later. But at the very beginning of his clumsy protestations she looked at him with the resentment of one forced to witness the conjuring up of ghosts better forgotten. "Far better forgotten," she said, sitting very upright (she knew that she became podgy when she stooped) in her billowing skirt of crêpe, her crisp cap and bands.

Mab, taken aback, found himself still much more complex than he liked. Against a quite definite sensation of relief was a sudden agonized feeling of uprooting, of loneliness. Consciousness of her had so grown along with him for more than twenty years that the sudden notion of plucking her out staggered him. All that she had once been flooded back on him. She, the one light on his dark and stony road. She, the great desire which had glorified his manhood before she wrecked it. She, the tragedy he had so often waked to think of in the nights, guessing at her scar by the burning of his own.

Now, by Heaven, she was showing another side, and so he told her, flinging himself about among her bronzes and marbles, her cupboards with latticed fronts screening curios (she had an undirected passion for curios). The years that the locust had eaten, he said—and she the locust. The flax burned in the fire—and she the fire. The love that he had given, the love. Unexpectedly he felt that love rising in him again, like the last leap page 333of the lamp before it goes out. He found himself pleading with her, holding her hands.

"We're no longer young, Julia. We've both been through the mill, and perhaps we've learned something. But ever since we were boy and girl … It's so impossible to forget."

"One can do anything," she said primly, "by the help of prayer."

And then he laughed. And laughed. Dear Heaven, how he laughed! He could hear his voice going up and roaring on, a great strong human blast of laughter against all the shams, all the paltriness of the world. And she sat in her straight-backed chair, surprised, indignant, and knowing no more what it was all about than a canary. "Than a cana … cana …" He tried to say it and couldn't, and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes to look at Julia sitting there, the outward and visible form of sanctity, of the sanctity of her calling as the widow and mother of baronets. He stopped at last with spasms still shaking his great body and looked at her good-humouredly. Funny fat Julia with her bronzes and her hands and her not understanding any more than a canary.

"I think," said Julia, with trembling voice, "that you have always been mad. You had better go."

He went. Oh, so gladly he went, gulping breaths of pure air (there had been a hint of incense somewhere; burning joss-sticks to All Brandy's portrait, no doubt), marching with swinging shoulders up the street. There went the last of it, then: of his youth, his man's love, his wild and beautiful dreams which were to bear them both to the stars. My Lady Berry had had the best of him, picking, pecking him over like a canary. The word brought up another heave of mirth, and he turned into a hotel for a drink, which, he suddenly discovered, he very much needed.

Oliver was there, called to town on some matter of Julia's business (he was Berry's executor, with fat pickings, Mab guessed) and lazily at liberty to hear news. Mab had very little from Clent. William had the rheumatism and the Captain gout. They suffered much from bad attacks of each other, and Madam was less concerned to come between them than of old, being so occupied with old Louisa Sorley, who would scarcely see the New page 334Year in. William, said Mab, hirpling out while Jenny wrapped the Captain's feet in flannel, made alterations which the Captain, bellowing with rage, upset next time poor old Bill was laid by the heels. Susan, treading like a grenadier and timid as a mouse with the Captain, was a public danger in the sick-room, and Mary had all but brought on apoplexy by correcting the Captain's count at spadille.

Oliver said thoughtfully, "How long d'you think Jenny will stand it?" But Mab was not to be caught. What ever did Noll mean? Noll meant, it appeared, that old Sir Stuart was attracted; that Madam was encouraging him; that Jenny, who really should begin to show some sense, remained blind. Jenny, of course, had more of Madam's quality than any of them. You couldn't bounce la petite, but … well, what the devil has Brevis been doing? Mab couldn't say. (His poor dear maid! Was her sorrow not to be sacred either?) And Noll's dark-lashed blue eyes, Noll's smooth smile (dash it, the fellow never seemed to get any older) now seemed to say: All right, my buck. You know, but naturally one must lie for the ladies.

So they left it there, for Mab had to take the coach which ran through a windy night to Launceston, delivering him cramped, cross, and sleepy, in time for a hasty breakfast before hurrying down to the tannery. Through the wakeful night there had been a queer sense of freedom, of desolation, a kind of chastened comfort like that of a small dirty boy who had been scrubbed and put in a warm bed against his will. There had been queer tumult which had ended for all time (he'd swear it) in Down Julia, up Jenny. He'd make his name yet, by gad! Make a fortune. Send Brevis to find that tomfool somebody and choke the lies out of him. Rescue Jenny from Madam, delivering himself not as victim but as reinstated god. He could do it. His lungs full of sweet morning air, his heart of conquest, he knew that he could do it, clattering into the office where good old Gamaliel sat in shirtsleeves and broad hat. And how was old Gamaliel, eh? (tipping the hat over his eyes, smacking his soft shoulders). What mischief had he been up to with Mab away?

"Good morning, Mab. I hope you are quite well," said Gamaliel. Punctilious as Mark Antony, he paused for a reply. page 335Any sort suited old Gamaliel, who now pushed a paper across the desk for approval.

If Gamaliel knew business, Mab knew men. One learns 'em, going along. "Now this: Clarke's all right. You can take his note-of-hand for this…. Pshaw! Fiske! Now look here, Gammy, don't you trust Fiske further than you can kick him. What's his contract for? If he agrees for five load of bark you have some one there to watch when it comes in or the bottoms of the wagons will be full of sticks…. I see Hewett's contracted for black wattle only, but he has a whole gully of scrub wattle that he wants to get rid of. Think I'll ride out that way while they're stripping."

He felt lighter of heart, surer of himself than he had for years. And if he couldn't get back that lost thousand he could save money now for good Gamaliel, who never would learn to mistrust his fellow-men. Always Compensations if one knew where to look for them. Always compensations in this bewildered kindly old world.

Even Brevis became a compensation as time went on. Because Mab was his only outlet, his safeguard, Brevis was grateful, and life was not easy for him. Brevis, for all his aping of the cool, caustic superior, was a Jack-in-the-box of the emotions, winning his cases in the cold, quiet light of logic or in sudden impassioned flames that made every one giddy, and then—confound him—having hysteria or sick headaches afterward in his room. Made of subtler stuff than Jenny, who, all the same, distilled a far more undying quality of courage and fineness, Brevis, Mab thought, was something to pity, to be enraged with, almost to love in these days. He spent every penny he could spare on fruitless searches in Italy; he kept away from Clent when Mab could see the very soul of the poor devil torn with longing to go; he fastened like a tiger on his work, slowly climbing to that place where he had sworn he would be. Alternately in the mud and the skies, Brevis battled along in his private life with the world outside calling him cold.