But Johnson grew stouter and prospered in spite of his wife—for a year or so. New schools were being built in the district and the town was practically re-built. Johnson took contracts for brickwork, plumbing and house-painting, as well as carpentering, and had at one time as many as ten men in his employ. He was making money.
I was working at my trade then, house-painting, and worked for Johnson. I lodged at his cottage for a while, but soon got tired of hearing about London, and Mrs Johnson’s mother and sisters, and the house they lived in, and the street it was in, and the parks where they used to take their babies, and the shopping on Saturday afternoon. That woman was terrible. She was at Johnson all the time about taking her home. “We’ll surely be able to go home this year, Will.” “You promised to take me home by the end of the year.” “Mother says in her last letter, that Jack says there’s more building going on about London than ever.” “You’ll do just as well in London as you’ll do here.” “What chance have the children got in a hole like this?” And the rest of it—every night. When he took a new contract, it would be, “What did you want to take that new contract for, Will, when we’re going home? You know you promised me you wouldn’t take any more contracts.” First he’d try to cheer her, then he’d argue; but she’d only sit with the knit in her forehead deep, looking as obstinate as a mule. Then she’d sit down to a little harmonium he’d bought her and play and sing “Barney, take me Home again,” and “The Old Folks at Home,” and “Swannie Ribber,” till I felt like hanging myself—and I wasn’t an exile. Sometimes Johnson would flare up and there’d be a row and he’d go to the pub. Gentle persuasion, argument, or swearing, it was all the same with her.
Bosses and men were different towards each other in Solong to what they are in London; besides, when I wasn’t Johnson’s sub-contractor I was his foreman—so we often had a few drinks together; and one night over a beer (and after a breeze at home, I think) he said to me:
“I can’t make it out, Harry; there was nothing but struggle and worry and misery for us in England, and London was smothering me, my chest was bad and the wife was always in ill-health; but I suppose I’ll have to take her home in the end or else she’ll go melancholy mad!” And he drew a breath that was more like a gasp than a sigh.
“Why not send her home for a trip, or a year or so, boss?” I asked. “As likely as not she’ll be just as eager to get back; and that will be the end of it.”
“I couldn’t do that, Harry,” said Johnson. “I couldn’t stay here and work alone. It would be like beginning life again; I’ve started twice and couldn’t start the third time. You’ll understand when you’re married, Harry.”
Well, in the end, she wore Johnson out—or wore into him rather. He drank more, and once or twice I saw him drinking alone. Sometimes he’d “round on us” at work for nothing at all, and at other times he’d take no interest in the jobs—he’d let the work go on anyhow. Some thought that Johnson was getting too big for his boots, that’s how men are misjudged. He grew moody and melancholy and thin again. Johnson was homesick himself. No doubt it was the misery of his domestic life in Australia that made him so.
Towards the end of the third or fourth year Johnson threw up a couple of contracts he had on hand, sacrificed a piece of land which he had bought and on which he had built a cottage in the short time he had been in Solong, and, one lovely day in June, when the skies were their fairest, the hills their bluest, the river its widest and clearest, and the grass was waving waist high after rain—one blue and green and golden day the Johnsons left Solong, with the trunks they had brought out with them, for Sydney, en route for smoky London.
Mrs Johnson was a woman transformed—she was happy and looked it. The last few weeks she had seemed in every way the opposite of the woman we had known: cheerful, kind to neighbours in sickness and trouble, even generous; she made many small presents in the way of mantelshelf ornaments, pictures, and house-linen. But then it was Johnson who had to pay for that in the end.
He looked worn and worried at the railway station—more like himself as he was when he first came to Solong—and as the train moved off I thought he looked—well, frightened.