He had come down from his point of vantage, and they stood near together by the fence.
“In Europe I always like morning best — much best. I can’t say what it is I find so magical in the evening here.”
“No!” she replied, looking upwards round the sky. “It’s going to rain.”
“What makes you think so?” he asked.
“It looks like it — and it feels like it. I expect Jack will be here before it comes on.”
“He’s late to-night, is he?”
“Yes. He said he might be. Is it six o’clock?”
“No, it’s only a little after five.”
“Is it? I needn’t be expecting him yet, then. He won’t be home till quarter past six.” She was silent for a while. “We shall soon have the shortest day,” she said. “I am glad when it has gone. I always miss Jack so much when the evening comes, and he isn’t home. You see I was used to a big family, and it seems a bit lonely to me yet, all alone in the cottage. That’s why we’re so glad to have you and Mrs. Somers next door. We get on so well, don’t we? Yes, it’s surprising. I always felt nervous of English people before. But I love Mrs. Somers. I think she’s lovely.”
“You haven’t been married long?” asked Somers.
“Not quite a year. It seems a long time in some ways. I wouldn’t be without Jack, not for anything. But I do miss my family. We were six of us all at home together, and it makes such a difference, being all alone.”
“Was your home in Sydney?”
“No, on the South Coast — dairy-farming. No, my father was a surveyor, so was his father before him. Both in New South Wales. Then he gave it up and started this farm down south. Oh yes, I liked it — I love home. I love going down home. I’ve got a cottage down there that father gave me when I got married. You must come down with us some time when the people that are in it go. It’s right on the sea. Do you think you and Mrs. Somers would like it?”
“I’m sure we should.”
“And will you come with us for a week-end? The people in it are leaving next week. We let it furnished.”
“We should like to very much indeed,” said Somers, being polite over it because he felt a little unsure still, whether he wanted to be so intimate. But Victoria seemed so wistful.
“We feel so ourselves with you and Mrs. Somers,” said Victoria. “And yet you’re so different from us, and yet we feel so much ourselves with you.”
“But we’re not different,” he protested.
“Yes, you are — coming from home. It’s mother who always called England home. She was English. She always spoke so prettily. She came from Somerset. Yes, she died about five years ago. Then I was mother of the family. Yes, I am the eldest, except Alfred. Yes, they’re all at home. Alfred is a mining engineer — there are coal mines down the South Coast. He was with Jack in the war, on the same job. Jack was a Captain and Alfred was a Lieutenant. But they drop all the army names now. That’s how I came to know Jack: through Alfred. Jack always calls him Fred.”
“You didn’t know him before the war?”
“No, not till he came home. Alfred used to talk about him in his letters, but I never thought then I should marry him. They are great friends yet, the two of them.”
The rain that she had prophesied now began to fall — big straight drops, that resounded on the tin roofs of the houses.
“Won’t you come in and sit with us till Jack comes?” asked Somers. “You’ll feel dreary, I know.”
“Oh, don’t think I said it for that,” said Victoria.
“Come round, though,” said Somers. And they both ran indoors out of the rain. Lightning had started to stab in the south-western sky, and clouds were shoving slowly up.
Victoria came round and sat talking, telling of her home on the south coast. It was only about fifty miles from Sydney, but it seemed another world to her. She was so quiet and simple, now, that both the Somers felt drawn to her, and glad that she was sitting with them.
They were talking still of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, England, Paris — the wonderworld to Victoria, who had never been out of New South Wales in her life, in spite of her name — which name her father had given her to annoy all his neighbours, because he said the State of Victoria was run like a paradise compared to New South Wales — although he too never went a yard out of his home state, if he could help it; they were talking still of Europe when they heard Jack’s voice calling from the opposite yard.
“Hello,” cried Victoria, running out. “Are you there, Jack? I was listening for the motor-bike. I remember now, you went by tram.”
Sometimes she seemed a little afraid of him — physically afraid — though he was always perfectly good-humoured with her. And this evening she sounded like that — as if she feared his coming home, and wanted the Somers to shelter her.
“You’ve found a second home over there, apparently,” said Jack, advancing towards the fence. “Well, how’s things?”
It was dark, so they could not see his face. But he sounded different. There was something queer, unknown about him.
“I’ll come over for a game of chess to-night, old man, if you’ll say the word,” he said to Somers. “And the ladies can punish the piano again meanwhile, if they feel like it. I bought something to sweeten the melodies with, and give us a sort of breathing-space now and then: sort of little ear-rest, you know.”
“That means a pound of chocolates,” said Victoria, like a greedy child. “And Mrs. Somers will come and help me to eat them. Good!” And she ran in home. Somers thought of a picture advertisement in the Bulletin.
“Madge: I can’t think what you see in Jack. He is so unintellectual.”
“Gladys: Oh, but he always brings a pound of Billyer’s chocolates.”
Or else: “Sweets to the Sweet. Give her Billyer’s chocolates”; or else: “Billyer’s chocolates sweeten the home.”
The game of chess was a very quiet one. Jack was pale and subdued, silent, tired, thought Somers, after his long day and short night. Somers too played without any zest. And yet they were satisfied, just sitting there together, a curious peaceful ease in being together. Somers wondered at it, the rich, full peace that there seemed to be between him and the other man. It was something he was not used to. As if one blood ran warm and rich between them. “Then shall thy peace be as a river.”
“There was nothing wrong at the Trewhellas’, was there, that made William James come so late?” asked Somers.
Jack looked up with a tinge of inquiry in his dark eyes at this question: as if he suspected something behind it. Somers flushed slightly.
“No, nothing wrong,” said Jack.
“I beg your pardon for asking,” said Somers hastily. “I heard a whistle when I’d just done setting the rat-traps, and I looked out, and heard you speak to him. That’s how I knew who it was. I only wondered if anything was wrong.”
“No, nothing wrong,” repeated Jack laconically.
“That’s all right,” said Somers. “It’s your move. Mind your queen.”
“Mind my queen, eh? She takes some minding, that lady does. I feel I need a special eye at the end of my nose, to keep track of her. Come out of it, old lady. I’m not very bright at handling royalty, that’s a fact.”
Somers was now silent. He felt he had made a faux pas, and was rebuffed. They played for some time, Jack talking to himself mostly in that facetious strain which one just had to get used to in him, though