Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch

When he came to this part of his story Cabell used to lay great stress on the terrible year it was--the rats, the ants, the snakes, the sweeping fires in the thistle before the rain broke, painting a harrowing picture of his discomfort and loneliness. Yes, he told us, he might easily have sold out and gone back to England then. He often thought of it secretly. He seemed anxious to make us understand that he was not altogether to blame for what followed-- his treatment of Gursey, for instance, and the Black Year.

There was a moment after he returned from that bullock journey and faced the work of pioneering again when his overworked will began to tire. He had come to think of England as a place of fresh and perennial beauty, where life was richer and gayer, where the land burst spontaneously into gardens and existence moved to a gentle rhythm and people were kindly and wise and good. On the other hand, this country: hard work, uncertainty, prickling annoyances, exile from all graces; the companionship of old convicts, daft shepherds, men who had renounced everything but the momentary and immediate in the struggle with the country, whose only talk was of dogs, cattle, sheep, scab and rain; and the very galling sight of Curry and Carney and Flanagan and Dennis growing rich twice as fast as he. He had to defend himself against the tug of that alluring dream by tying himself down. (Did he not admit afterwards that he KNEW from the first moment he saw her?) But why? One of the unanswerable questions. Only the dark demon could have answered it--that secret, stubborn will which defeated all his efforts to get back into the happy land of his day-dream.