Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/409

 And they came out at last at the bottom, to the lost, flickering little township, at nightfall.

At home, with all the house full of blossom, but fluffy gold wattle-bloom, they sat at tea in the pleasant room, the bright fire burning, eating boiled eggs and toast. And they looked at one another—and Richard uttered the unspoken thought:

"Do you wish you were staying?"

"I-I," stammered Harriet, "if I had three lives, I'd wish to stay. It's the loveliest thing I've ever known."

"I know," he answered, laughing. "If one could live a hundred years. But since one has only a short time—"

They were both silent. The flowers there in the room were like angel-presences, something out of heaven. The bush! The wonderful Australia.

Yet the day came to go: to give up the keys, and leave the lonely, bare Coo-ee to the next comers. Even the sea had gone flowery again at last. And everybody was so simple, so kindly, at the departure. Harriet felt she would leave behind her forever something of herself, in that Coo-ee home. And he knew that one of his souls would stand forever out on those rocks beyond the jetty, towards Bulli, advanced into the sea, with the dark magic of the tor standing just inland.

The journey to Sydney was so spring-warm and beautiful, in the fresh morning. The bush now and then glowed gold, and there were almond and apricot trees near the little wooden bungalows, and by the railway unknown flowers, magenta and yellow and white, among the rocks. The frail, wonderful Australian spring, coming out of all the gummy hardness and sombreness of the bush.

Sydney, and the warm harbour. They crossed over once more in the blue afternoon. Kangaroo dead. Sydney lying on its many-lobed blue harbour, in the Australian spring. The many people, all seeming dissolved in the blue air. Revolution—nothingnesses. Nothing could ever matter.

On the last morning Victoria and Jaz's wife came to see the Somers off. The ship sailed at ten. The sky was all sun, the boat reared her green paint and red funnel to the sun. Down below in the dark shadow of the wharf stood all those who were to be left behind, saying good-bye, standing down in the shadow under the ship and the wharf, their