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He saw Chisley on a plane far below him, a sink of ignorance, and judged it like a god or a boy. Whatever Chisley respected he found excellent occasion to despise; whatever it revered he discovered to be false and contemptible. His sense of superiority was magnificent; it gave him a glorious exultation.
But ere this, and long before Jim Done was again conscious of the world about him, poor Mike Burton had been buried with the rest of the slain insurgents in a common grave. Fever supervened on Jim Done's injuries, and December passed as he lay helpless in Mary Kyley's tent, babbling of Chisley, of life on the Francis Cadman, and of Diamond Gully and Boobyalla.
'You must tell me of your life, he said the life in Chisley after my supposed hanging. No, no; not now. Go to your tent and sleep. 'Sleep! I shall not sleep. 'Think over what I have told you. 'There is more behind? 'There may be. 'You think I will join you? 'In my present career? No. For the time being, let us say no more. I need not ask you to be silent.
He found in the girl's words a reflection of the beliefs of his native village, and perhaps justification of them, and saw her for the moment as the embodiment of the respectability, the piety, and all the narrowness of Chisley. The thought revived his habitual reserve. He meditated an escape, already regretting that he had permitted himself to drift into this extraordinary position. MRs.
After all, this girl stood for everything he had learned to despise and hate. To her the conventions behind which society shields itself, its shams and its bunkum, were sacred. He was convinced that had she known the whole truth as Chisley knew it, she must have ranged herself with his enemies.
But Jim derives little satisfaction from his triumph; Chisley conquered him by stupid submission. His physical superiority won him nothing but immunity from open insult; the young men and their elders were careful to give him no reasonable opportunity of asserting the rights of man in their teeth with a dexterous left, and Jim was now beyond disputing with children.
When the news of the discovery of fabulous gold deposits in far Australia reached Chisley, Jim had thoughts of a new life in a new land: he craved for a wide field and a wild life; nothing withheld him but pride, the egotism that would not permit of his abandoning a struggle even with men so contemptible as these ignorant villagers.
He found in time that the feats of arms he had mastered with the idea of impressing his enemies in Chisley were his most valuable accomplishments in Australia. Next day the mates carted their belongings to their claim, and the morning was spent in erecting the tent, rigging bunks, and making things shipshape.
'We were always enemies, Dick Done and I enemies as boys at school at Chisley, fighting over everything, picking at each other from morn till night. As young chaps we remained enemies. It seemed as if God or the devil had sent us to plague each other. Our enmity grew with us. In manhood we were as bitter as death. Then the woman came. We both wanted her.
He chose to live on as he had lived, accepting no concessions, disguising nothing, and Chisley quite conscientiously discovered in his sullen exclusiveness and his vicious dislike of worthy men the workings of homicidal blood, and accepted him as an enemy of society.
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