Michael (Mike) Fitzhubert Character Analysis

If Albert was right and they were only schoolgirls about the same age as his sisters in England, how was it they were allowed to set out alone, at the end of a summer afternoon? He reminded himself that he was in Australia now: Australia, where anything might happen. In England everything had been done before: quite often by one’s own ancestors, over and over again. He sat down on a fallen log, heard Albert calling him through the trees, and knew that this was the country where he, Michael Fitzhubert, was going to live.

For three consecutive mornings the Australian public had been devouring, along with its bacon and eggs, the luscious details of the College Mystery as it was now known to the Press. Although no further information had been unearthed and nothing resembling a clue, […] the public must be fed. To this end, some additional spice had been added to Wednesday’s columns’ photographs of the Hon. Michael’s ances­tral home, Haddingham Hall […] and of course Irma Leopold’s beauty and reputed millions on coming of age.

“All my life I’ve been doing things because other people said they were the right things to do. This time I’m going to do something because I say so —even if you and everyone else thinks I’m mad.”

The road wound its charming leisurely way between sleeping gardens still heavy with dew and shadowed by the upper moun­tain slopes. Swathes of virgin forest ran right down to an immaculate tennis lawn, an orchard, a row of raspberry canes. […] Mike was enchanted by this strangely favoured country where palms, delphiniums and raspberry canes grew side by side.

He laid his head on a stone and fell instantly into the thin ragged sleep of exhaustion, waking with a sudden stab of pain over one eye. A trickle of blood was oozing on to the pillow. The pillow was as hard and sharp as a stone under his burning head. […] At first he thought it was the sound of birds in the oak tree outside his window. […] It seemed to be coming from all round him —a low word­less murmur, almost like the murmur of distant voices, with now and then a sort of trilling that might have been little spurts of laughter.

If Albert was right and they were only schoolgirls about the same age as his sisters in England, how was it they were allowed to set out alone, at the end of a summer afternoon? He reminded himself that he was in Australia now: Australia, where anything might happen. In England everything had been done before: quite often by one’s own ancestors, over and over again. He sat down on a fallen log, heard Albert calling him through the trees, and knew that this was the country where he, Michael Fitzhubert, was going to live.

For three consecutive mornings the Australian public had been devouring, along with its bacon and eggs, the luscious details of the College Mystery as it was now known to the Press. Although no further information had been unearthed and nothing resembling a clue, […] the public must be fed. To this end, some additional spice had been added to Wednesday’s columns’ photographs of the Hon. Michael’s ances­tral home, Haddingham Hall […] and of course Irma Leopold’s beauty and reputed millions on coming of age.

“All my life I’ve been doing things because other people said they were the right things to do. This time I’m going to do something because I say so —even if you and everyone else thinks I’m mad.”

The road wound its charming leisurely way between sleeping gardens still heavy with dew and shadowed by the upper moun­tain slopes. Swathes of virgin forest ran right down to an immaculate tennis lawn, an orchard, a row of raspberry canes. […] Mike was enchanted by this strangely favoured country where palms, delphiniums and raspberry canes grew side by side.

He laid his head on a stone and fell instantly into the thin ragged sleep of exhaustion, waking with a sudden stab of pain over one eye. A trickle of blood was oozing on to the pillow. The pillow was as hard and sharp as a stone under his burning head. […] At first he thought it was the sound of birds in the oak tree outside his window. […] It seemed to be coming from all round him —a low word­less murmur, almost like the murmur of distant voices, with now and then a sort of trilling that might have been little spurts of laughter.