INTRODUCTION.
Horace Gildea was the grandson of one of those self-reliant energetic men of the English upper Middle-class, who at an early period of life conceive a particular ambition, and devote themselves wholly to the successful achievement of it. Edward Gildea, the man in question, desired, or we may even say intended, to possess both wealth and position, and he was, as the expression goes, still young (between forty and fifty years of age, that is) when his intentions were fulfilled. A baronetcy was conferred on him by a grateful Conservative government: his marriage with the only daughter of Lord Mainwaring had already brought him a considerable amount of landed property; and now, having bought more, he retired from the troublous and busy world to the “easeful dignity” of the life of a rich and respected English country magnate. Our Aristocracy is adaptive (here, indeed, lies its strength, as compared, for instance, with that of France): it will enrol among its members of to-day an outgrowth of the Middle-class, upper and lower, professional or trading, with the same ready complacency with which it enrolled among its members of yesterday the offspring of some poor royal amour or other; and this is not surprising, when we perceive how little difference there is, intellectually speaking, between the three classes. The aristocratic ideal in England does not, or did not, soar much higher than grouse to shoot, land to shoot them on, and savoury cooking to eat them with; and the aristocratic ideal is, with slight modifications, the ideal of the country at large. In one generation the Gildeas were counted among, what is called, the best people. The two sons of Sir Edward were educated at public schools and Oxford and Cambridge, and passed, the one into parliament, the other into the Diplomatic-service, where neither distinguished themselves. Horace Gildea, too, an only child, was sent to a public school and Oxford, and with the same result. At Oxford, however, although he did nothing more, educationally, than take his degree, he did not spend his time in mere amusement. Thanks to the friendship of Sir James Gwatkin, the well-known æsthetic critic, Gildea learned to appreciate the delights of that wonderful modern production which we call Culture. He had sufficient knowledge of Greek and Latin to enter into the spirit of their art and poetry, and he learned French, German, and Italian in the pleasant sexual manner prescribed by Byron. He travelled more or less all over Europe, “living and loving largely,” but (unlike Byron) saved from that excess whose inevitable fruit is satiety, by the talisman with which Sir James had dowered him. Gildea had, too, what the Romans called curiositas. The merely physical ideal of the English viveur did not satisfy him: he used to say that, if he was to be a blackguard, he should like to be a fine blackguard, and how can you be a fine blackguard if you know nothing but what can be known by any fool that can pay for it?
Several years after the death of his father, Gildea, living a life of considerable enjoyment between the pleasures of the countries and the capitals of Europe, began to perceive that, after all, his talisman was not omnipotent: it could not lay, it could only distance, that ancient spectre which he now for the first time learned to face, if not to dread, Satiety. At this point, however, Fortune, whose child he seemed, came to the rescue: he fell in love. The best definition of love is, perhaps, the care of someone else more than yourself, and (the passionate would add) than anything. Gildea, then, did indeed fall in love; but as his care for himself or for anything was not very great, it cannot be said that he fell in love deeply. But Fortune, having given him a spell with which to once more distance the ancient spectre, now deserted him. The lady he loved did not love him in return: her friendship—and friendship from so sweet and passionate a nature as hers was of a somewhat intense character, partaking more of the warm sunlight than the clear moonlight—her friendship she eagerly gave to him, but her love was, past recall, given to someone else. On the day on which he first realized this, Gildea, who had hoped otherwise, left England in his little yacht the “Petrel,” alone. He had intended visiting the east with her, returning by Naples, Rome, and Paris, with many sweet years, nomadic or otherwise, in the radiant future. Now he was quite careless where he went: for the first time in his life he knew what it was to feel miserable. The loss of this woman was a loss from himself. He felt a void in his soul, in his future. “And yet,” he used to tell himself, “she was not ‘the twin soul that halved my own:’ we should not have made perfect lovers, passionate, deep, abiding! None the less do I—or did I—long for her. She is the most beautiful soul I have yet seen, or probably shall ever see. Who would not straightway go and sell all that he had to possess her?—and willingly chance the rest!”
A violent storm caught the “Petrel” as she was about halfway down the Bay of Biscay, and hurried her past Gibraltar. When Gildea perceived this, and was asked by his skipper if they should put back, he kept silence for a moment. Then, looking up with an amused smile, said:
“No, Barry. We’ll go straight on to Madeira for provisions—from thence to St. Helena, and then double the Cape and make for Australia.”
Gildea had not been to Australia: it was one of the few places in the world to which he had not been. He might, he thought now, as well go there as anywhere. Several things in Australia interested him, and this was enough reason to make him, in his present state, care to go.
One bright, showery november afternoon, then, the “Petrel” passed Port Phillip Heads: was piloted up the harbour to Port Melbourne pier, and Gildea disembarked. He knew one person in Melbourne, and only one, Charles Maddock. Maddock, and his father before him, had been friends of the Gildea family. Maddock was some fifteen years older than Gildea, whom he had known well as a boy at Katharinasbury, he himself at that time being in the midst of his brilliant scholastic career at Cambridge. Almost immediately after his ordination, Maddock came out to a high ecclesiastical position in Australia. It had been the wish of his life to work in one of the Pacific Colonies, and now his wish was fulfilled. The appointment of one so young to the post he had at first held, had caused a little murmuring both at home and in the Colony, it being known that he was possessed of the highest influence; but the murmuring had soon passed into pleasant greeting, and was now swelled to a regular chorus of applause from friends, foes, and indifferent alike. Maddock had great charm of manner: he was a more or less refined scholar, yet was not lacking in that spiritual robustness which goes so far to make up what is called a personality. It would not be too much to say that he was the most popular man in the colony. Society delighted in the gentleman: the outer world in the man, and both were right, for (here was the secret!) he sympathized with both.
Gildea on his arrival took up his abode at an hotel until he saw rooms that pleased him, and began, after his fashion, to examine the city and its inhabitants. He went everywhere and saw everything, happy to find that his curiositas was not after all dead in him. Pleasure, in the sense of living, is in Melbourne but, what Tennyson says of the pleasure of London, “gross mud-honey,” and had not much attraction to one who had been through the best specimens thereof in London, Paris, New York, and Vienna. Gildea, however, if he did not go through it here, mingled with it as an amused half-spectator half-actor, seeking out its meaning as regards this dawning civilization which was interesting him just at present. He fell in with Sydney Medwin, a squatter’s son and ex-Cambridge undergraduate, whom he had known by repute as an inter-university runner and would-be rake, and they spent some pleasant days together. Medwin’s father wished him to take to station work, but Medwin, having tasted the “gross mud-honey” of London, Paris, and the Continent generally, was doggedly determined to do no such thing.
“Damn it all,” he said once in his half-acute way to Gildea, “there’s quite enough money made already in the family, and now it’s time to spend it. If my governor had wanted me to look after sheep, he shouldn’t have sent me to Europe.”
Europe was to Medwin—to Medwin held down by his inexorable “governor” to an allowance and a place in the home establishment—a sort of far-off beautiful dream which had once to a certain extent been his and, he feared, would never be his again. His life was reckless: he was knowingly doing his best to spoil a fine constitution by his excesses, and looked forward to death within ten or fifteen years with stupid stoicism.
After a little Gildea thought that he would like to see something of colonial society, social and intellectual, and presented himself to Maddock. Maddock knew the Medwins well, and even Sydney Medwin who, in his unreflective way, had a great respect for him.
“The governor,” Medwin said once to Gildea, “the governor has ruined my life! I had an ambition—I was ambitious; yes, I was ambitious! But I had to keep it dark! I can’t argue about it, you know: I haven’t thought for years, and now I can’t. But if Christianity’s good enough for Maddock, it’s good enough for me. I believe in Maddock.”
Accordingly, whenever Maddock was to be met at the Medwins’, Sydney Medwin was to be seen listening attentively to everything the Doctor said, trying to think, trying to understand, the look of intelligence varying on his face with the look of puzzlement.
“A fuddled intelligence,” said Gildea once, smiling and laughing; “now he’ll be off and get drunk with one of his girls at Dicks’.” (Dicks’ was a private hotel where “the set,” as Medwin and his friends called themselves, often met for the purposes of recreation.)
Maddock was very pleased to meet Gildea again, and during the next month they saw much of each other. Gildea mingled with the Colonial society as he had mingled with the outer world, but with less interest. The Colonial outer world is at any rate original: it does not imitate, it is. Colonial society, on the other hand, imitates and imitates badly. It is a case of the new wine in the old bottles. The young people wish to break away from all the old social convenances and bien-séances: they have almost a contempt for the old people; but the old people rule, and their rule is as yet too strong to be openly disobeyed. The young people, therefore, lack social self-reliance: they have no distinctive “style” of their own as in America. “Indeed,” as Medwin used to say, “no one has any style out here, except the people at Government House.—And they,” he would add, admiringly, “look down upon us all as louts.” The young people, then, feel their ideas of happiness to be frail, immature: pleasure is not, as in the European capitals, provided for them; they must provide it for themselves. Pleasure, however, is their aim, and pleasure, so soon as they rule in their turn, they will have. The question is whether this pleasure is to be “mud-honey”—“mud-honey” with its grossness drained somewhat, but still “mud-honey”—or whether that wonderful modern production which we call Culture is going to intervene and complicate matters.
Gildea soon wearied of a society in such a painful state of transition. Having arrived at these conclusions on its tendencies, or what he took to be its tendencies, the painfulness of it began to afflict him. At the same time his interest in the problem of this small social hot-house did not, somewhat to his surprise, show signs of leaving him.
One evening, at a large ball, he had been dancing and talking with a singularly bright and intelligent girl, who had pleased him by herself expressing her consciousness of this state of social transition of theirs, and ascribing the true reasons for it. They sat out several dances together, he enjoying her talk as that of a clever child, she with her woman’s vanity pleased to be monopolizing the most distinguished man in the room, and also glad of his mental appreciation of her. He half lay in a low chair beside her, looking at her with smiling eyes and smiling lips, amused. She was a little excited, just enough to give extra brilliance to her words and acts. She was not speaking to him alone: she was aware of the audience of guests, all of whom, she felt, were noticing her, and some catching parts of the conversation. He, who read her soul as if it were transparent, became more and more amused as she proceeded, and by an occasional movement helped her out with the impression he saw she wished to give her friends, namely, that he was more or less entranced by her. The thought of taking her to Paris and introducing her to its society, of watching her intense capacities of social pleasure expanding there in their natural atmosphere, occurred to him and pleased him. He had arrived at that spiritual state when much of our pleasure is in watching the pleasure of other people.
“Well,” he said at last, “and do you not find yourself lonely here, with all these wonderful ideas of yours, Miss Shepherd? All the other Melbourne young ladies do not, surely, participate in them?”
She was not quite sure for a moment whether he was mocking at her or not; but, looking at his face, decided in the negative.
“Yes,” she said, “I am lonely—rather. The other girls want to see things. They want to go to Europe—London, Paris, and all that. But they say it’s such a bother, and they’ve no memory. They don’t know what they want: they only know that they don’t want what they’ve got.—But I—,” she added, turning to him, and catching her lower lip lightly with her pretty visible teeth, one hand on her knee closing slightly.
“But you?”
“I want to—live!”
A pause.
“Ah,” he said, “that means that some day you will want to die.”
“I daresay! But I shall have lived first!—This Melbourne is just waking up. I wish, O I wish I had not come into it till it was awake!”
“You would like to go to Paris, then?”
“Paris!” (She stopped breathing.)—“O that,” she said, looking at him again, “is simply heaven!”
“How do you know that, Miss Shepherd?”
“Oh, I have read it! I have read all Alphonse Daudet’s novels, and a lot of Balzac’s.”
As Gildea strolled through the warm night streets, smoking a cigar, he thought of her again for a moment, and laughed to himself.
“The one Parisienne I have met out of Paris,” he said to himself, “She is of the tribe of the fine steel-pearl mangeuses who rend life with their dear little white teeth for the pleasure of rending. She should have been born in a concierge’s lodge, with a future in ermine—and the Morgue. And yet she is better than the mere mangeuse: she has intelligence. She has to thank Australia for that. For a month, or even two, she would be supportable—but the “Petrel” would take three to get her to Naples, perhaps, and it would be more trouble to loose her and let her go then than now.”
He had been strolling about the streets for more than an hour. He was not quite sure where he was. He stopped for a moment to look about him. A short well-moulded figure in a close dress and a poke bonnet passed him and turned down a narrow street ten or twelve yards ahead. He threw away his cigar.
“Janet,” he said to himself, “sweet child! And she recognized me and went on.”
Janet, a Salvation Army “lass,” going down into the Little Bourke Street slums had indeed recognised him. The figure of a man, in a light overcoat open in front showing that he was in evening dress, was remarkable enough, to have attracted anyone’s attention there. She had looked up for a moment: caught a glimpse of his face and, with a wild throbbing heart and quivering lips, hurried by, and on, and away. Gildea’s investigations into the social condition of the place had made him many unexpected friends. Here was one who was something more than a friend, a lover, and he knew it.
“I am sick of it,” he said to himself, almost bitterly, “I will go away. I want change.”
At about five o’clock that morning Sir Horace Gildea was rowed aboard of the “Petrel,” which passed out of the Heads a little after one, and turned to the east, making for Sydney.