The thrashing sail must be
mastered; the tackle creaking with the strain must be hauled in. Perhaps,
that's the charm of it for some of us whose lives are pretty smooth--it
takes one back, as I said, to the beginning."
"But haven't human progress and machines made life more smooth for
everybody?"
Vane laughed somewhat grimly.
"Oh, no; I think that can never be done. So far, somebody pays for the
others' ease. At sea, in the mine and in the bush man still grapples with
a rugged, naked world."
The girl was pleased. She had drawn him out, and she thought that in
speaking he had kept a fair balance between too crude a mode of
colloquial expression and poetic elaboration. There was, she knew, a vein
of poetic conception in him, and the struggle he had hinted at could be
described fittingly only in heroic language. It was in one sense a pity
that those who had the gift of it and cultivated imagination had, for the
most part, never been forced into the fight; but that was, perhaps, not a
matter of much importance. There were plenty of men, such as her
companion, endowed with steadfast endurance who, if they seldom gave
their thoughts free rein, rejoiced in the struggle; and by them the
world's sternest work was clone.
"After all," she went on, "we have the mountains in civilized England."
Vane did not respond with the same freedom this time.
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