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V

Later, over his soda-water, among the knots of black shoulders and white shoulders round the sandwich plates, William began to be reminiscent. In the old days matters had been very difficult.

"They're difficult now," said Richard, tossing off a whisky. "Now that Hobart has her civic rights and every government is trying how many taxes it can clap on before it goes out of power. They are wanting me to stand at the next election, but I don't know."

"When we first came here," said William, "we had to drink from a small lagoon with a dead horse in it, and I remember the water being boiled in a billy over a fire of fuchsia that made it taste of onions. Your father said it was quite good soup … or was it your grandfather?" He caught at the ribbons of a pretty child slipping past his chair. "Which was it, my dear? I get somewhat confused … so many of you."

"You are my grandfather," said slim Emily. She patted his arm and went out with the young Sir Almeric Berry who was Julia's grandson. Julia who had brought four grandchildren an hour ago, considered Almeric mad to dance again with Harry Comyn's Emily. She sat in Madam's chair with the scarlet cushions, mixing finance with religion, and scandal with coquetry. Her bustle and train were enormous, and her diamonds beat Lavinia's, for Charlotte had not got the best of Louisa Sorley's diamonds, any more than she was going to get Almeric for any of the Comyn girls. Julia intended to arrange Almeric's future, she thought, eagerly talking mining with Oliver.

Oliver said that Mount Bischoff had lately been declared by experts to be the only mountain of pure tin in the world, and Julia had been extraordinarily lucky to get in on velvet; and if ever a grateful country should honour a man, Tasmania should honour James Smith, who had wandered so many years in the wet trackless forests of the west coast before he discovered it. But Julia said that people had been too busy buying scrip, and raging because bullock-drays with the ore got bogged on the bad roads, to bother about that, and even though she had bought cheap years page 395before the Launceston furnaces started in 1884, Noll should not talk about luck.

"It's all prayer, Noll. I always believe, and so I know that it must be. Are they really playing euchre in the library? You must take me there at once."

Mab was there, and Julia demanded to sit in at his table.

"You always played for high stakes, Mab, although you didn't always win," she said, coquettishly reminiscent with her face deep-lined like a fox's mask.

Oliver left her arranging her bustle and went to talk to Jenny. Of all the Comyns he knew himself to be the only one who fully appreciated Jenny. Mab loved her, but that was a smaller thing. Jenny carried Clent on her shoulders, and no one knew it. She had carried Brevis Keyes until he found his feet, and no one knew it. She carried like a gay banner all her burdens, and no one knew it. No one, that is, except Oliver, who always felt a warm stimulus on coming near anything so gallant. But, egad, he was sorry for Julia, because, after all, what is woman when youth forsakes her unless she has a broad philosophy like Jenny's? Nothing broad about Julia except her hips, he thought.

"Did you speak, Uncle Noll?" asked Jenny, watching Brevis coming through the hall as though he were looking for something. His lost youth, she guessed, suspecting how youth had unconsciously cast him out from among them. Poor Brevis, who could only be a revered judge when he wanted so terribly to be the gay young spark he never had cared to be in his own youth. He saw her and half stopped, his thin guarded face almost wistful. Jenny smiled, waving her hand. He would never love her again, and so she would stiffen her back and let them be friends for an hour. Strange, oh, very strange it was, to be friends with one who had been her lover!

"With more sensuality," said Oliver to Brevis, "I might have enjoyed life more. But it takes a cool detachment to enjoy people." He meditated to Brevis on life, with a tolerant cynicism. Over his thin high-bred nose the skin stretched tight. There was about him, thought Jenny, the faint sweet aroma of dead things blossomed long ago. His cool sunken eyes turned this way and that. Like so many people who achieve nothing else, he had page 396achieved in essence the art of appraising others. Noll Comyn was, Jenny knew, considered a connoisseur in taste; one of the world's triumphs; decorative and useless to it as a butterfly; walking through it graciously, twirling a tasselled cane, a glove, dropping a sharp-edged jest or two, a compliment.

Uncle Noll, thought Jenny, had never been really of the world. Never crashing into the depths and climbing out with his mouth full of oaths and his eyes on the stars, like Uncle Mab; never earnestly slaving himself into stupidity, like Papa and Humphrey; never tilting with gallant cheers at every windmill, like the Captain nor taking the tide at the full and being resentful because it would not let him back into the shallows, like Brevis. (Time, standing by, purring over its victims, winked at Jenny. There seemed a suppleness, a fluid vision in the air…. Well, well, said Time, there you all go down the chute together, arms, legs, and puzzled heads together, and perhaps we'll make a better job of you all, next try.)

Oliver thought the rooms had a tousled look. Scraps of artificial flowers, of ribbons, of rosy tulle lay about. With all exits open young men passing still smelled of perspiration, and white collars had been discarded again and again until the dressing-room on the first floor was disgusting. And they would keep it up until daylight, all flames and confusions and languorous longings, and then pile out noisily to their carriages and saddle-horses and probably sing air the way home. "Too much noise, too much assertion. In fine, too much youth," he complained to Brevis. "It fore-shadows the decay of intelligence."

"What does that matter, so long as we have the intelligence of decay?" said Jenny cheerfully. "That's what you and I are achieving, Uncle Noll."

"A much less robust matter, my dear," said Oliver. But he looked pleased, and Brevis thought: She always says the right thing…. And then remembered what she had said to him just now, and walked away. But he was not so sure as he had been that Jenny hadn't said the right thing then. Perhaps if he had held on to that bright valiancy all these years success would have tasted less like ashes in the mouth.

The band turned a mazurka into "Myosotis," and in the salon page 397where lamps smoked and went out among the roses and the lilting feet that never tired young voices sang:

"Oh, love for a year, a week, a day.
But alas for the love that loves alway …"

and Nan, her yellow tulle all crumpled against Brian, knew that "Myosotis" was nonsense and only the Songs of Solomon real. And the painted faces on the wall looked down wondering: Why are we so soon forgotten? Is the day of life, then, done so soon?

When everyone was putting on cloaks and hats under the pink dawning Brevis spoke to Jenny on the stair. She had been at everyone's call throughout the night, and her little peaked face was white, but she showed no signs of flagging.

"Jenny," he said abruptly, "may I come again to Clent sometimes?"

"Clent never shut its doors to any but bush-rangers, Brevis. Come if you like," said Jenny, and passed on, her arms full o cloaks. But at the angle of the stair she stood a moment, shutting her eyes. Why hadn't she stopped him, he who was the greatest bush-ranger of them all? Ah, well; faut etre philosopher and she knew her own mind. She would rather have the little Brevis could give, and feel hourly pain at that little, than have nothing of him at all.

The girls crowded into the carriages, and the young men rode near the windows or raced in rollicking knots down the Main Road which had now become very respectable except for a few tramps. One sat under the raking hawthorn hedge in the sweet grass and the warmth and had her moment of sentiment as the riotous parties passed. A pipe and a full stomach—Jenny never sent one empty from Clent—had temporarily put old Mary among the beatitudes.

"Aw, bless 'em," she said. "May they never taste sorrer." Then suddenly she thought that they might know. These gentry so gay and so pretty might have seen him. She scrambled to her tottering feet. "Has anyone seed my man?" she cried into the impassive dust of fifty years.