Kanga Creek : An australian idyll / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Kanga Creek : An australian idyll / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    master slowly wandered with his hook. Suddenly he was brought up by a large black snake almost at his feet. He stood still for a moment in admiration of the strong and lovely curves of its body, the perfect poise of its flattened and wedge-shaped head. Then he walked on slowly, keeping his eyes on the ground. When he next lifted them he saw, fifty yards to the side, a woman who lay on the ground. She was lying stretched beneath the slight shadow of a gum-tree, resting on her elbows, a broad straw hat on her head. It was a manna-gum, for now and again she slowly picked up and ate the small sweet fragments around. Involuntarily he turned and looked towards her; she saw him and swiftly jumping up walked away, upright and very deliberately. A moment after he came upon an open book; he took it up; it was a well-worn anthology of French poetry. He felt already a curious attraction to this woman; now he had an excuse for speaking to her. He came up to her and said with a shy glance, “I think this is your book.” “Thank you,” she said, “I left it by the tree.” Her eyes were brown; her complexion was of the common creamy brown Australian sort, faintly freckled and mottled; there were large buttons all the way down her plain and pre¬ dominantly blue dress; at the breast a button was undone or gone, and there was a glimpse of white, as though she had grown out of her dress, but she was older than himself. So much he noticed, and not being able to thinkof anything more tosay he was about to go away. He hesitated a moment; he could not at once cut the first link that had by chance connected him with this inter¬ esting intruder on his domain, and at the moment that he was finally about to lift his hand to his hat he interrupted himself awkwardly, and caught at the last conversational straw. “Do—do you read French?” “I am learning to.” These questions and responses were rather colourless. He looked round for an instant, again about to go yet trying to find something else tosay. But she had now taken in the situation, and when he glanced at her he sawa smile in her brown eyes and