A gulf there was between them, really, between the Somers and the Callcotts. And yet the easy way Callcott flung a flimsy rope of intimacy across the gulf, and was embracing the pair of his neighbours in mid-air, as it were, without a grain of common foothold. And Somers let himself be embraced. So he sat pale and silent and mortified in the kitchen that evening thinking of it all, and wishing himself far away, in Europe.
“Oh, how I detest this treacly democratic Australia,” he said. “It swamps one with a sort of common emotion like treacle, and before one knows where one is, one is caught like a fly on a flypaper, in one mess with all the other buzzers. How I hate it! I want to go away.”
“It isn’t Australia,” said Harriet. “Australia’s lonely. It’s just the people. And it isn’t even the people—if you would only keep your proper distance, and not make yourself cheap to them and get into messes.”
“No, it’s the country. It’s in the air, I want to leave it.”
But he was not very emphatic. Harriet wanted to go down to the South Coast, of which she had heard from Victoria.
“Think,” she said, “it must be lovely there—with the mountain behind, and steep hills, and blackberries, and lovely little bays with sand.”
“There’ll be no blackberries. It’s end of June—which is their mid-winter.”
“But there’ll be the other things. Let’s do that, and never mind the beastly money for this pokey Torestin.”
“They’ve asked us to go with them to Mullumbimby in a fortnight. Shall we wait till then and look?”
Harriet sat in silence for some moments.