Page:Letters from America, Brooke, 1916.djvu/165

Rh disconnected voices in the void and darkness, lonely and chance companions in the back-blocks of Canada, the one who couldn't, and the one who didn't want to, understand. A little before dawn I woke again. That thin voice, in patient soliloquy, was discussing Female Suffrage, going very far down into the roots of the matter. I met its owner next morning. He was tall and dark and lachrymose, with bloodshot eyes, and breath that stank of gin. He had played scrum-half for —— College in '98; and had prepared for ordination. "You'll understand, old man," he said, "how out of place I am amongst this scum——we're not of the, are we?" It seemed nicer to agree. "Oh, I know Greek!"—he was too eagerly the gentleman—"—the last thing I learnt for ordination—this world of injustice—that's right, isn't it?" He laughed sickly. "I say as one 'Varsity man to another—we're not —could you lend me some money?"

We had to press on thirty miles up a 'light railway' to a power-station, a settlement by a waterfall in the wild. An engine and an ancient luggage-van conveyed us. The van held us, three crates, and some sacks, four