Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/171

 green ripples of the broken swell were enough to catch him by the scruff of the neck and tumble him rudely up the beach, in a pell-mell. But even the blow did one good, as the sea struck one heavily on the back, if one were fleeing; full on the chest, if one were advancing.

It was raining quite heavily as he walked out, and the skies hung low over the sea, dark over the green and white vigour of the ocean. The shore was so foam-white it almost suggested sun. The rain felt almost warm.

Harriet came walking across the grass with a towel.

"What a good idea!" she said. "If I'd known I'd have come. I wish I had."

But he ignored the towel, and went into the little washplace and under the shower, to wash off the sticky, strong Pacific. Harriet came along with the towel, and he put his hand to her face and nodded to her. She knew what he meant, and went wondering, and when he had rubbed the wet off himself he came to her.

To the end she was more wondering than anything. But when it was the end, and the night was falling outside, she laughed and said to him:

"That was done in style. That was chic. Straight from the sea, like another creature."

Style and chic seemed to him somewhat ill suited to the occasion, but he brought her a bowl of warm water and went and made the tea. The wind was getting noisier, and the sea was shut out but still calling outside the house. They had tea and toast and quince jam, and one of the seven brown teapots with a bit off the spout shone quite nicely and brightly at a corner of the little red-and-white check tea-cloth, which itself occupied a corner of the big, polished jarrah table. But, thank God, he felt cool and fresh and detached, not cosy and domestic. He was so thankful not to be feeling cosy and "homely." The room felt as penetrable to the outside influence as if it were a sea-shell lying on the beach, cool with the freshness and insistence of the sea, not a snug, cosy box to be secured inside.

And Jack Callcott's rebuke stuck in his throat. Perhaps after all he was just a Pommy, prescribing things with overmuch emphasis, and wanting to feel God-Almighty in the face of unborn events. A Pommy is a newcomer in Australia, from the Old Country.