Chapter XX

I have no idea what made me fix upon the particular sum of two hundred pounds as the amount of capital required for my migration oversea to England; but that was the figure I had in mind. At the time it seemed that the decision to go home--England is still regularly spoken of as 'home' by tens of thousands of British subjects who never have set eyes upon its shores, and are not acquainted with any living soul in the British Isles--came to me after that eventful afternoon at Potts Point. And as a definite decision, with anything like a date in view, perhaps it did not come till then. But the tendency in that direction had been present for a long while.

It would seem, however, that at every period of my life I have always been feeding upon some one predominant plan, desire, or objective. For many months prior to that afternoon at Potts Point, my adoration of Mabel Foster had overshadowed all else, and made me most unusually careless of other interests. This preoccupation having come to an abrupt end was succeeded almost immediately by the fixed determination to go to England as soon as I could acquire the sum of two hundred pounds. Into the pursuit then of this sum of money I now plunged with considerable vehemence.

As a matter of fact, I suppose the task of putting together a couple of hundred pounds, in London say, would be a pretty considerable one for a youngster without family or influence. It was not a hard one for me, in Sydney. I might probably have possessed the amount at this very time, but for my single period of extravagance--the time of devotion to Miss Foster. Putting aside the vagaries of that period, I saved money automatically. Mere living and journeying to and from the office cost me less than a pound each week. My pleasures cost less than half that amount all told; and as one outcome of my year's extravagance, I was now handsomely provided for in the matter of clothes.

But I will not pretend that hoarding for the great adventure of going to England did not involve some small sacrifices. It did. To take one trifle now. I had formed a habit of dropping into a restaurant, Quong Tart's by name, for a cup of afternoon tea each day; in the first place because I had heard Mabel Foster speak of going there for the same purpose with her friend Hester Prinsep. Abstention from this dissipation now added a few weekly shillings to the great adventure fund. To the same end I gave up cigarettes, confining myself to the one foul old briar pipe. And there were other such minor abstinences, all designed to increase the weight of the envelope I handed across the bank counter each week.

The disadvantages of the habit of making life a consecutive series of absorbing preoccupations are numerous. The practice narrows the sphere of one's interests and activities, tends to introspective egoism, and robs the present of much of its savour. But, now and again, it has its compensations. Save for a single week-end of rather pensive moping, the end of my love affair changed the colour of my outlook but very little indeed. Its place was promptly filled, or very nearly filled, by the other preoccupation. And, keen though I was about this, I did not in any sense become an ascetic youth held down by stern resolves. I think I rather enjoyed the small sacrifices and the steady saving; and I know I very much enjoyed applying for and obtaining another small increase of salary, after completing a trumpery series of sketches of pleasure resorts near Sydney, the publication of which brought substantial profit to the _Chronicle_.

One thing that did rather hurt me at this time was a comment made upon myself, and accidentally overheard by me in the reporters' room at the office. This was a remark made by an American newspaper man, who, having been a month or two on the staff, was dismissed for drunkenness. He spoke in a penetrating nasal tone as I approached the open door of the room, and what he said to his unknown companion came as such a buffet in the face to me that I turned and walked away. The words I heard were:

'Freydon? Oh yes; clever, in his ten cent way. I allow the chap's honest, mind, but, sakes alive, he's only what a N'York thief would call a "sure thing grafter."'

The phrase was perfectly unfamiliar to me, but intuitively I knew exactly what it meant, and I suppose it hurt because I felt its applicability. A 'sure thing grafter' was a criminal who took no chances, I felt; an adventurer who played for petty stakes only, because he would face no risks. Even the American pressman knew I was no criminal. He probably would have despised me less if he thought I stole. But--there it was. The chance shaft went home. And it hurt.

I dare say there was considerable pettiness about the way in which I saved my earnings instead of squandering them with glad youthfulness, as did most of my colleagues. There was something of the huckster's instinct, no doubt, in many of the trivial journalistic ideas I evolved, took to my chief, and pleased my employers by carrying out successfully. I suppose these were the petty ways by which I managed somehow to clamber out of the position in which my father's death had left me. They are set down here because they certainly were a part of my life. I am not ashamed of them, but I do wonder at them rather as a part of my life; not at all as something beneath me, but as something suggesting the possession of a kind of commercial gift for 'getting on,' of which my after life gave little or no indication. In all my youth there was undoubtedly a marked absence of the care-free jollity, the irresponsible joyousness, which is supposed to belong naturally to youth. This was not due, I think, to the mere fact of my being left alone in the world as a child. We have all met urchins joyous in the most abject destitution. I attribute it to two causes: inherited temperamental tendencies, and the particular circumstances in which I happened to be left alone in the world. Had I been born in a slum, and subsequently left an orphan there; or had my father's death occurred half a dozen years earlier than it did; in either case my circumstances would, I apprehend, have influenced me far less.

As things were with me when I found myself in the ranks of the friendless and penniless, I had formed certain definite tastes and associations, the influence of which was such as to make me earnestly anxious to get away from that strata of the community which my companions at St. Peter's Orphanage, for example, accepted unquestioningly as their own. Now when a youngster in his early teens is possessed by an earnest desire of that sort, I suppose it is not likely to stimulate irresponsible gaiety and carelessness in him.

But, withal, I enjoyed those Sydney years; yes, I savoured the life of that period with unfailing zest. But, incidents of the type which dear old Mrs. Gabbitas called 'Awful warnings,' were for me more real, more impressive, than they are to youths who live in comfortably luxurious homes, and know the care of mother and sisters. The normal youth is naturally not often moved to the vein of--'There, but for the grace of God, goes ---- etc.' But I was, inevitably.

For instance, there was the American journalist who so heartily despised my bourgeois prudence and progress. As I walked through the Domain one evening, not many months after I had heard myself compared with a 'sure thing grafter,' I saw a piece of human wreckage curled up under a tree in the moonlight. It was not a very infrequent sight of course, even in prosperous Sydney, This particular wreck, as he lay sleeping there, exposed the fact that he wore neither shirt nor socks. He was dreadfully filthy, and his stertorous breathing gave a clue to the cause of his degradation. As I drew level with him, the moon shone full on his stubble-grown face. He was the American reporter.

Here was a chance to return good for evil. I might have done several quite picturesque things, and did think of leaving a coin beside the poor wretch. Then I pictured its inevitable destination, and impatiently asked myself why sentimentality should carry money of mine into public-house tills. So I passed on. Finally, after walking a hundred yards, I retraced my steps and slid half a crown under the man's grimy hand, where it lay limply on the grass.