Lantana Lane (27 page)

Therefore (but strictly in communion with our own hearts), we admit uneasiness. Perhaps a few gossamer-threads of primitive belief in man's identity with his place still drift about the world—tenuous, but oddly strong; too frail to be grasped, but obstinately clinging. At all events, we pick at teasing doubts in our minds, as we might pick at cobwebs blown across our faces.

Oh, we shall gain much from The Deviation; no argument about it. And if you ask us what we shall lose, how are we to answer? Are we to say that we fear Nelson will not like it? Are we to voice an apprehension that it will spell doom to Kelly—that tough old battler who surely can survive only if the odds are all against him? What will he have to be game about when the bitumen passes his door? Are we to protest on behalf of Aunt Isabelle? Was it for this that she crossed the world in search of the pioneering life? Are we to babble of a little boy with dancing step, whose faint, Arcadian piping once told so clearly all those things about the Lane which we, with clumsy words, have so miserably failed to tell? . . .

Heaven forbid! We confess to some slight taint of anachronism, but such absurd and mystical flapdoodle we utterly reject. We may think—and even say—that the Lane will seem quite different. We may admit that imagination baulks at the picture of it nakedly exposed on its high ridge, bereft of its lantana, bounded by stiff posts, and straining wires; not only recognisable at a glance as a trafficable road, but marked on all maps, and known to all Tourist Bureaux as a through highway; perpetually infested by passing strangers whose cars confound our ears with unfamiliar horns; so wide, so smoothly surfaced, that in our own comings and goings we shall be travelling too fast to call a greeting, or even wave a hand. We may mention to each other with a half-apologetic shrug that it will be queer when the green ute no longer stands embowered at the corner; when no kids trundle their billy-carts at leisure past our gates, and no cows surprise us in the Long Paddock; when the Bump is gone, and the Dip drained, and no vestige of the Tree remains at the foot of Hawkins' hill to remind us of the morning when we celebrated our deliverance from Celestine. But we shall not ask each other what compensation we may claim for all this—for who could pay it, and in what coin?

The shade of St. Chrysostom perhaps observes us sympathetically—for did he not recommend withdrawal from the highway, pointing out that it is hard for a tree growing by the wayside to keep its fruit till it be ripe. We have lived round the corner from the world, with not even a signpost to betray our whereabouts; we have ripened a few fruits besides our oranges and pineapples; and if the treasure we have accumulated makes no show upon our bank statements, neither is it subject to income tax. Thus, with our wealth safely invested, we need not repine too much when the highway catches up with us. The world and his wife will come whizzing past our doors, but we shall know, if they do not, that this mile-long strip of glassy bitumen was once Lantana Lane.

THE END