“Perhaps not to pull out money plums. But to be bossy. To be a Captain once more, feeling his feet and being a boss over something.”
“Why shouldn’t he be?”
“Why not? I don’t care if he bosses all Australia and New Zealand and all the lot. But I don’t see why you should call it disinterested. Because it isn’t.”
He paused, struck.
“Am I disinterested?” he asked.
“Not”—she hesitated—“not when you want just power.”
“But I don’t want just power. I only see that somebody must have power, so those should have it who don’t want it selfishly, and who have some natural gift for it, and some reverence for the sacredness of it.”
“Ha!—power! power! What does it all mean, after all! And especially in people like Jack Callcott. Where does he see any sacredness. He’s a sentimentalist, and as you say yourself, nothing is sacred then.”
This discussion ended in a draw. Harriet had struck home once or twice, and she knew it. That appeased her for the moment. But he stuck to his essential position, though he was not so sure of the circumstantial standing.
Harriet loved Coo-ee, and was determined to be happy there. She had at last gradually realised that Lovat was no longer lover to her or anybody, or even anything: and amidst the chagrin was a real relief. Because he was her husband, that was undeniable. And if, as her husband, he had to go on to other things, outside of marriage: well, that was his affair. It only angered her when he thought these other things—revolutions or governments or whatnot—higher than their essential marriage. But then he would come to himself and acknowledge that his marriage was the centre of his life, the core, the root, however he liked to put it: and this other business was the inevitable excursion into his future, into the unknown, onwards, which man by his nature was condemned to make, even if he lost his life a dozen times in it. Well, so be it. Let him make the excursion: even without her. But she was not, if she could help it, going to have him setting off on a trip that led nowhere. No, if he was to excurse ahead, it must be ahead, and her instinct must be convinced as the needle of a mariner’s compass is convinced. And regarding this Australian business of Callcott’s, she had her doubts.