“Did yer pay me?”
The question was put briskly, good-humouredly, with a touch even of tenderness. The young man pointed to the money. The driver glanced round and saw it.
“Oh! Right you are! Right-O!”
A faint little smile of almost tender understanding, and the young man turned again. And the driver bustled to carry out some goods. The way he stooped to pick up the heavy wooden box in his arms; so willing to stoop to burdens. So long, of course, as his Rights of Man were fully recognised. You musn’t try any superior tricks with him.
Well, it was really awfully nice. It was touching. And it made life so easy, so easy.
Of course these were not government servants. Government servants have another sort of feeling. They feel their office, even in N.S.W.—even a railway-clerk. Oh, yes.
So nice, so nice, so gentle. The strange, bright-eyed gentleness. Of course, really rub him the wrong way, and you’ve got a Tartar. But not before you’ve asked for one. Gentle as a Kangaroo, or a wallaby, with that wide-eyed, bright-eyed, alert, responsible gentleness Somers had never known in Europe. It had a great beauty. And at the same time it made his spirits sink.
It made him feel so sad underneath, or uneasy, like an impending disaster. Such a charm. He was so tempted to commit himself to this strange continent and its strange people. It was so fascinating. It seemed so free, an absence of any form of stress whatsoever. No strain in any way, once you could accept it.
He was so tempted, save for a sense of impending disaster at the bottom of his soul. And there a voice kept saying: “No, no. No, no. It won’t do. You’ve got to have a reversion. You can’t carry this mode any further. You’ve got to have a recognition of the innate, sacred separateness.”
So when they were walking home in a whirl of the coldest, most flat-edged wind they had ever known, he stopped in front of her to remark: