“No, no innovation is possible, not until property is abolished. No, we must conform or die out. That’s Darwinian. It is not for me, it is not for you, it is not for others—perhaps someone will break through.”
“I can break through.”
He shook his head. “You are brave, you see, but it is easy for a woman. No one expects her to make a career. That’s right, isn’t it? Don’t your parents just tell you to get married?”
“I have no parents, exactly, in that sense. I mean—”
“I mean, just marry. Do you want to get married?”
She hesitated.
“Do you? We were talking about it up at the class, some said you were too free for that. I said you were not a bluestocking, you’d get married.”
She stared at him: “I’m a bluestocking?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
The reticence taught to her since birth made it difficult for her to answer this question, but she said at last: “Of course.”
“Any man, eh?”
She flushed and shook her head, her eyes sparkled with anger. He smiled and continued: “I mean a man without much of a chance—a poor beggar. But you believe in love, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you marry a chap in my position, I mean without anything, and who didn’t believe in love, without anything, like my brother Eddie? I’m taking him because he’s like me, absolutely without talents or future, and I’ve stopped him getting married twice because I’ve just felt that the girls were getting a meal ticket. But perhaps they love him.”
She did not answer but looked at him suspiciously. He laughed idly, dug a hole in the ground and went on: “Well, we all have our means of escape, delirium tremens and God and love, I suppose.” He looked at her darkly, raising his lids.
“You stopped his marriage?”
“You bet.”
‘Why?”
“Mum wanted it, and he was getting himself into a trap. I went and told the girl. I called for her at her father’s house, she was pleased. Thought I’d come to bring greetings. I told her she was robbing my mother. I told her what my mother had done for us. I told her we all opposed it and none of us would see her if she did it. He doesn’t want it. He’s only doing it because he’s afraid. He’s given his word. She tried to get her hooks into me. Ah! I sent her to the right-about. The next day, she broke the engagement.” He rolled over and looked up at her, laughing in an abandoned, charming way.
“Does your mother know?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t for her, though I said it was. It was for Eddie. I can’t see a poor man stick his head in the noose. I’ve seen enough of it in my particular back street, the bottomless pit of horror and filth and the vile, what they call marriage in the slums, vice on eight feet, two rowing parents and two squalling children. Do I want me and mine in that? Never while I can stop it! Don’t you see what’s the trouble with us? The rich take their time, the rich marry late so that property will be divided little and late, while the poor rush to marry and to divide the little pay that one gets. Do they fool you like they fool other women? I can’t believe it.” He looked into her face sarcastically. “Sink-or-swim wives, that’s my name for them. He can marry after I sail, if he’s donkey enough, not while I’m here to stop him.”
“He puts up with you doing that?”
He was firm. “He knows darn well that if he marries that girl Flora, I’ll never speak to him again.”
There was a long silence. Both were stirred. At last he rolled himself round, sat up, and grinned friendly at her.
“How I gab! But you were going to tell me something about the sun.”
“Only what is written in the Book of the Dead. ‘Oh—Oh, Thou who wanderest across the watery abyss,’ that is Ra rising! I was going to tell you about Ra rising. I was going to wonder if we wouldn’t be different from all other races but the Egyptians perhaps, because of the sun, the desert, the sea—but our sea is different—each Australian is a Ulysses—‘Where did you come from, O stranger, from what ship in the harbour, for I am sure you did not get here on foot?’ “But these particles were not what she had prepared.
“Well—” he tugged at her hand and pulled her up. “Well, it’s getting late, you ought to get some breakfast before you go to work and I’m going out on a jaunt all day on a picnic. You work, I shirk, eh? It’ll be a grand day if it doesn’t blow, no swimming now, but a bush walk, I suppose, then a picnic in this girl’s house, Elaine’s, you know her, and I don’t know what—movies, necking, I suppose.” He finished with an off-hand air: “There’s a lot of that, you know, they can’t get enough of it. Not for me!”
They walked along the flower beds, passing some fine flowers. “Yes, it is beautiful,” he said, pointing enthusiastically at the flower beds. “Wonderful colours, striped too, you’re quite right. It’s worth doing. If I could appreciate beauty I would be happy but all I can do is read up on aesthetic theory!” He laughed affectionately, taking her hand. “Well, thanks for the outing! So long!” At the outer gate he lifted his hat with a jolly smile and put on his glasses. He turned down towards the Quay and Teresa uptown towards her hat factory, which was beyond the Central Station.
20
The Infernal Compact with Herself
Teresa had been obliged to join the Teachers’ Union, and for her money had received a little badge in red and silver which she had refused to wear, supposing that she would be ridiculous in the streets, that people would know at once she belonged to the legion of condemned bachelor women and would shy off from her. In the office now, she refused to join the office workers’ union, feeling that if she entered their lonely ranks, she was equally condemning herself to servitude. She said to them, believing that women who joined trade unions were hopeless, desperate women who had no husbands, and if she joined them she would be marked off, beyond chance: “I’ll be here such a short time that it doesn’t matter.” She gave them the impression of being friendly, unassuming, and intelligent, so this caused great surprise. This was all based on another superstition, that if she bound herself to them, she would never get abroad.
At the same time, she supported all strikes, detested blacklegs, in general accepted prevalent socialist ideas and gladly walked to work when the ferries struck; if the factory or office had gone on strike, she too would have gone on strike; but she did not think logically, all other things were secondary to the need to leave the lonely state that galled and humiliated her as woman and freeman. It was an accident, perhaps some early song, some tale of Britain, that made her think she could escape by sea. It was perhaps the first visions printed on her mind as a child of the sailors who, from de Quiros to Cook, had sailed all the seas and discovered Australia, and England’s sea history, and the voice of the sea behind the language. She loved the sea with a first and last love, had no fear of it, would have liked to sail it for two years without seeing land; she had the heart of a sailor. How could she be satisfied on the dull shore? It seemed the haunt of street nuisances. She wanted to get married but had never formed any idea of the marriage ceremony or the suburban home she might occupy, for she only wanted to marry in order to have love, and if she had any vague idea of a home at all, it was in some coast town overseas, in some mysterious unseen spot where perhaps they spoke a foreign language.
She was ashamed of her timidity and aimlessness, she knew she was not a brave woman. Her twentieth birthday was approaching, she felt old, dull, abandoned, a failure because she had no man. Lance and Jonathan said in effect: “Women are cowardly, women only want to tie a man down, women won’t make a move themselves, women only want a man to involve himself, women won’t take a chance.” She felt that this was true and she asked herself: “What would men do in my situation? Men are brave. A man would tell a woman he loved her and take the consequences. He would take the plunge.”
She cast about for a man to love; the nearest man was Jonathan, but she ran over the others. Dr Smith, a man resembling Crow in the office, the
medical student on the boat. She went to and fro to work for two days, thinking over what she must do. She must put herself to the test, could she write to poor Jonathan telling him she loved him? Am I afraid, she asked herself. Yes? Then I must. This is the proof. If I haven’t the courage for this, I’ll fail everywhere. I’ll never get anything done.
At about eleven o’clock at night, she wrote the fateful letter. She got up at six o’clock and walked round the Bay, meeting the milkmen and their yellow-and-red-varnished carts. The letter was in her bag. She posted the letter in the red box just outside the ferry, on a cold, dusty morning. She had to put down her paper satchel to unfasten her bag and get out the letter. She slipped the letter in the red pillar-box. Bending to pick up her lunch-case, she stuck her left leg out. Why not?
An engaged youth and girl from the ferry passed her and laughed aloud, at her antics, she thought. She was pale with fright at what she had done. She heard the voices of others, very loud, and saw the fluttering of their clothes, their shoes brightly shining—hers were dusty. The winter sun struck her dry flesh, she was dry as an old maid. She walked to work with a vacant mind, and she arrived at work late. Life, that is to say, indecision, had stopped. She believed that no woman had ever done this bitter, shameful, brave thing before. If people knew of it they would think she was pushed to it by fear, as she was. If it were known, her family would insult her, people on the boat would vomit jokes as she passed. They were safe, closed up with their fiancés, and their marriages to come. She was in the howling wilderness. It was like a crime, she felt, in her terror, and she was a lost woman. It was at the hour she committed this crime and for some time after, till Jonathan sailed and so relieved her of the dread, that she went about with all the feelings of a young anarchist preparing to overthrow authority in secret, for strangely enough she now hated the accepted world, and triumphed over it too. She had undone it all. The deeds of the moral inventor are always criminal and their most evil effect is that when done secretly they cut the doer off from society; put around, they attract adherents. But she was too much ashamed ever to tell it.
This day, walking to the office, a terrible thought came upon her, the only thought during the whole walk; it was, “Once I was interested in everything, in Latin, in going to the university, in the childhood of Goethe, in the apprenticeship of Dürer, even in going to Harper’s Ferry. I wanted to know everything, go everywhere by myself, alone. Now I am forcing myself to think only of Jonathan. In the morning, as I raise my head off the pillow, I force myself to think of Jonathan. Everything has changed since I knew him, is he good or bad? Good, good! But if there were waters of Nepenthe I would drink them and forget him and my whole life up till now.”
She was like a madwoman, sulky, monosyllabic, torn to pieces by the fear of her solitary deed. At times she trembled and did not dare to look at the black mantelpiece where his letters always stood beside the clock. Sitting alone on the boat, avoiding Martha and Elsie, shivering in the cold winds, she thought: “It’s like being in jail, why can’t I forget? I don’t want this. It isn’t that half-starved, half-grown man I want. It’s passion, but there’s no such thing, that I see. Shall I die hungry?”
Then she superstitiously came to think that if she gave up this boy, she would lose him and all other men, it was a symbol; this or a life without men, a body without children. If she won him, she would succeed, and in some mysterious way conquer her life and time. He did not answer for two days. Each evening, she wanted to beat herself nearly to death so that she would fall into bed and sleep a brutal sleep, remembering neither the infernal compact with herself, nor the disgrace of having failed. There was no way open ahead.
In three days, she received an answer to her letter. The young man wrote:
I have carried your letter about for three or four days trying to understand the real meaning of it. It is too much for me. I feel humble when you say that you love me, because I know I have not those qualities you see in me and I have nothing equal to give in exchange. You are better than me and this shows it. Believe me I will always be your friend.
Sincerely,
Jonathan S. Crow.
She did not like this letter much and she understood suddenly that she wanted him to write something else;I love you. But he let her down lightly; she admired the simple honesty with which he wrote. Then she thought she must try to understand him. She studied each sentence, and then each word. What did he really mean? At some times during those days she had been afraid that he would write an angry or cold answer. But she felt there was something behind this mild and sweet answer too. She cudgelled the meaning for a warm answer. In order to compare the two notes, two styles, and two sentiments, she copied out from memory the words of her own letter and then put the two pieces of paper side by side.
First, she forced herself to read her own, which she still could scarce read from shame:
DEAR JOHNNY,
I have loved you for a long time and now I am writing it to you because we are going to be separated by our fates and distance, perhaps for ever. In writing to you I do formally renounce real love and it is not of that I am thinking. But I hope you will think of me and remain a friend of mine. I will be able to keep on struggling if I know that you are watching me from a distance.
Yours,
TERESA HAWKINS.
The first phrase held her up. She had not loved him for a long time. It was a lie. She had played with his emotions merely to help herself out. Then it was a cowardly letter; she prostrated herself before him and at the same time declared it all meant nothing, it was a ritual act. She blushed as she read on. She read hurriedly, thus tearing to pieces every word. Not one seemed true; it had a bad odour, it was hypocritical. What had made her write it? She detested Jonathan Crow, a stupid, carping youth. He could do nothing for her. She became angry. She had given him an immense power over her. She would never see him or write to him again. And then suddenly she thought, but what was she to do? Where could she turn? A surge of hope and confidence rose again and the meekness of his note charmed her. She began instead to worry over each phrase of his letter. “Three or four days” he had carried it about—then had he shown it to his friends? Undoubtedly. Of course it was all over the university. She would never go there, then. She would forget the whole episode, that or death from shame.
At the end she thought he must realize that she was very far from trying to trap him into marriage. In this she was close to his idea, and from there she began to hope again that he might come to love her. She would improve herself so much that she would be lovable. She made up her mind to work harder and she thought of some way to show herself so that her talents would be recognized. Her prospects were worse than ever before, but she had more hope, soon she would be no longer miserable, neglected, and poor. She sat apart always now from Martha and Elsie and all other acquaintances, and avoided the strange young doctor, with his slobber-snouted, mobile face. She did not notice how her bones were showing, nor was ashamed of her threadbare clothes; she appeared to others an ill-kempt sallow woman five years older than she was. She burned with internal flame, her hope and desperate energy, the hope that she would be loved, and at times she thought that her affair with Jonathan was only a step to the unknown man; she would use him for that. She laughed contemptuously at her father, who, seeing how she faded, declared that she would never marry and that someone would stay at home with him in his old age; and at her brother Lance, who drew back at the sight of her and told her she was ugly, hideous, dirty. She said nothing to either of them; both she and Lance spoke to no one at the table.
Jonathan had passed a week in considerable excitement and some happiness. From time to time, he had heard of men who had received declarations and looked upon these men as Launcelots. He showed the girl’s letter to his best friends and received their advice, without taking it. He could see himself go up in their estimation. He had begun to be bored and disappointed with her, now he saw her charm, she was brave and disinterested. Whe
n, by accident, on one of their Saturday outings, one of the women said something cutting about her, he defended her. What they laughed at in her, he said, was poverty and the lack of property or status. He was pleased when he saw how this remark quietened the women; he began to use her discreetly as a weapon with them. After a few days, he needed to meet her, look at her, think what kind of human being it was who had written this letter to him. He wrote her a note asking her to meet him when he came to town one night. They would look for a room, if she still wished to leave home; he recalled, he said, the other day, that they had never done that.
After work, he met her outside the teashop in George Street West where she had a bite to eat and they set out along the streets of Ultimo, inhabited by so many college and university students, the best for her he thought. Miss Haviland had once lived there and many other of their friends. Teresa said she had given up a free lecture at the university to do this. She looked him over in the dark of the winter evening, careful not to meet his eye in the lamplight. He looked at her in the light. She was poor and shabby and he would have felt ashamed not to help her. What a miserable thing life is! She had written to him because she was desperate. Fated to a solitary and hopeless life, she clung to him. He was sorry for her. While he was still on this continent, he could be friendly to her. What could a woman do in this world who was not beautiful enough to cadge jewels and lunches?—for women had to be cadgers, he saw that. He felt a responsibility towards her; but now that he saw her again, even worse dressed than before, and much plainer, with her straight hair, colourless lips and cheeks, he felt the hopelessness of the young life of them both. He wished he were sailing right away; the room, which was just a pretext for their walk—he knew what it would be like. His mother let such rooms. They took their way down the main street leading into the Glebe, a dark old street with some trees and old houses mostly divided up among families and with rooms let out. A street lamp stood between two old-fashioned houses with iron railings and stone steps. He said: “I was thinking about you last night.”
For Love Alone Page 27
