Only the earth endured — this broad terrific earth that had no ghosts to haunt it.
Stogged in the desert, half-broken and overthrown, among the columns of lost temples strewn, there was no ruined image of Menkaura, there was no alabaster head of Akhnaton.
Nothing had been done in stone.
Only this earth endured, upon whose lonely breast he read Euripides.
Within its hills he had been held a prisoner; upon its plain he walked, alone, a stranger.
O God!
O God!
We have been an exile in another land and a stranger in our own.
The mountains were our masters: they went home to our eye and our heart before we came to five.
Whatever we can do or say must be forever hillbound.
Our senses have been fed by our terrific land; our blood has learned to run to the imperial pulse of America which, leaving, we can never lose and never forget.
We walked along a road in Cumberland, and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough.
And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near.
And the old hunger returned — the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and that makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Eliza visited Helen in Sydney in the Spring.
The girl was quieter, sadder, more thoughtful than she had ever been.
She was subdued by the new life: chastened by her obscurity.
She missed Gant more than she would confess.
She missed the mountain town.
“What do you have to pay for this place?” said Eliza, looking around critically.
“Fifty dollars a month,” said Helen.
“Furnished?”
“No, we had to buy furniture.”
“I tell you what, that’s pretty high,” said Eliza, “just for down stairs.
I believe rents are lower at home.”
“Yes, I know it’s high,” said Helen.
“But good heavens, mama!
Do you realize that this is the best neighborhood in town?
We’re only two blocks from the Governor’s Mansion, you know.
Mrs. Mathews is no common boarding-house keeper, I can assure you!
No sir!” she exclaimed, laughing.
“She’s a real swell — goes to all the big functions and gets in the papers all the time.
You know Hugh and I have got to try to keep up appearances.
He’s a young man just starting out here.”
“Yes. I know,” Eliza agreed thoughtfully.
“How’s he been doing?”
“O’Toole says he’s the best agent he’s got,” said Helen.
“Hugh’s all right.
We could get along together anywhere, as long as there’s no damned family about.
It makes me furious at times to see him slaving to feather O’Toole’s pockets.
He works like a dog.
You know, O’Toole gets a commission on every sale he makes.
And Mrs. O’T. and those two girls ride around in a big car and never turn their hands over.
They’re Catholics, you know, but they get to go everywhere.”
“I tell you what,” said Eliza with a timid half-serious smile, “it might not be a bad idea if Hugh became his own boss.
There’s no use doing it all for the other fellow.
Say, child!” she exclaimed, “why wouldn’t it be a good idea if he tried to get the Altamont agency?
I don’t believe that fellow they’ve got is much account.
He could get it without trying.”
There was a pause.