"You have your salary—two thousand a year," argued Bramham. He did not know what a ménage-à-deux was, but he could guess.
"So I have, by Jove! and I need it. If you think I play John the Baptist when I take to the wilderness, Bram, you're mistaken. I do myself remarkably well to make up for the lack of society. If the soul is neglected, the carcase isn't. You come up and visit me some time, old man. You'll find all the blessings of civilisation with me, except woman."
"You're a nice sort of pioneer!" Bramham said; but he knew what Carson meant. The best kit, the best guns, and saddlery, and horses, cost money everywhere, and when it comes to transporting them over a few thousand miles of unbroken roads—why, of course, it is expensive!
"I know all about that, Carson—all the same, I think it would be a good thing if——"
Carson interrupted him. "You're beginning to be a nuisance, Bram. But I'll be patient with you, and tell you the truth. I don't want a wife, but the wife, and I haven't met her yet—the woman who could stand the test of five years of wattle-and-daub, and boot-and-saddle, and sleeping under the stars for a change when one gets tired of the wattle-and-daub; with nothing much to contemplate by day but the unlimited horizon and nothing much to hear by night but the dirge of the jackals, and the sound of the wind in forest trees, or the rush of a river. We know that these things are fine, Bram—the best you can get in a passable world. But would they be fine with the wrong woman?—with any woman but the one who——"
He stopped abruptly, got up, and began to walk about the room. In the doorway he stood for a moment looking seawards through the black night. A cool wind was stirring every paper and drapery in the room now, for the tide was full, swirling and rustling on the sands not a hundred yards away with nothing to be seen in the blackness but a skirl of white foam.
"—Who—what?" asked Bramham stolidly in the room behind him. Carson came back and sat on the table with his hands in his pockets. The old discontent was on his face.
"Who can never materialise because she's mostly made up of dreams."
Bramham laughed. "Mrs. Portal once said to me, 'The most wonderful woman in the world could not pass the standard of a romantic Irishman: or come near the perfection of the dream-woman whom every Irishman has secretly enshrined in his heart.' It appears that she was right."
Carson laughed, too: but his face softened.