saw that his face had become pale under its sunburn. He looked from
the ruin to me. `You're not joking with me?' he said thickly. I
assured him that I was not. I assured him that this was indeed the
club to which he had asked to be directed. `But,' he stammered, `but--
but--' `You were a member?' I suggested. `I am a member,' he cried.
`And what's more, I'm going to write to the Committee.' I suggested
that there was one fatal objection to such a course. I spoke to him
calmly, soothed him with words of reason, elicited from him, little by
little, his sad story. It appeared that he had been a member of the
club for ten years, but had never (except once, as a guest) been
inside it. He had been elected on the very day on which (by compulsion
of his father) he set sail for Australia. He was a mere boy at the
time. Bitterly he hated leaving old England; nor did he ever find the
life of a squatter congenial. The one thing which enabled him to
endure those ten years of unpleasant exile was the knowledge that he
was a member of a London club. Year by year, it was a keen pleasure to
him to send his annual subscription. It kept him in touch with
civilisation, in touch with Home. He loved to know that when, at
length, he found himself once again in the city of his birth he would
have a firm foothold on sociability. The friends of his youth might
die, or might forget him. But, as member of a club, he would find
substitutes for them in less than no time. Herding bullocks, all day
long, on the arid plains of Central Australia, he used to keep up his
spirits by thinking of that first whisky-and-soda which he would order
from a respectful waiter as he entered his club. All night long,
wrapped in his blanket beneath the stars, he used to dream of that
drink to come, that first symbol of an unlost grip on civilisation...
He had arrived in London this very afternoon. Depositing his luggage
at an hotel, he had come straight to his club. `And now...' He filled
up his aposiopesis with an uncouth gesture, signifying `I may as well