Title: The Boy in the Bush
Author: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), Skinner, Mary Louisa
Language: English
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THE BOY
IN THE BUSH

BY

D. H. LAWRENCE

AND

M. L. SKINNER

NEW YORK

THOMAS SELTZER

1924



CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. Jack Arrives in Australia
CHAPTER II. The Twin Lambs
CHAPTER III. Driving to Wandoo
CHAPTER IV. Wandoo
CHAPTER V. The Lambs Come Home
CHAPTER VI. In the Yard
CHAPTER VII. Out Back and Some Letters
CHAPTER VIII. Home for Christmas
CHAPTER IX. New Year's Eve
CHAPTER X. Shadows Before
CHAPTER XI. Blows
CHAPTER XII. The Great Passing
CHAPTER XIII. Tom and Jack Ride Together
CHAPTER XIV. Jamboree
CHAPTER XV. Uncle John Grant
CHAPTER XVI. On the Road
CHAPTER XVII. After Two Years
CHAPTER XVIII. The Governor's Dance
CHAPTER XIX. The Welcome at Wandoo
CHAPTER XX. The Last of Easu
CHAPTER XXI. Lost
CHAPTER XXII. The Find
CHAPTER XXIII. Gold
CHAPTER XXIV. The Offer to Mary
CHAPTER XXV. Trot, Trot Back Again
CHAPTER XXVI. The Rider on the Red Horse



THE BOY IN THE BUSH



CHAPTER I

JACK ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA


I


He stepped ashore, looking like a lamb. Far be it from me to say he was
the lamb he looked. Else why should he have been sent out of England?
But a good-looking boy he was, with dark blue eyes and the complexion of
a girl and a bearing just a little too lamb-like to be convincing.

He stepped ashore in the newest of new colonies, glancing quickly
around, but preserving his lamb-like quietness. Down came his elegant
kit, and was dumped on the wharf: a kit that included a brand-new
pigskin saddle and bridle, nailed up in a box straight from a smart shop
in London. He kept his eye on that also, the tail of his well-bred eye.

Behind him was the wool ship that had brought him from England. This
nondescript port was Fremantle, in West Australia; might have been
anywhere or nowhere. In his pocket he had a letter of introduction to a
well-known colonial lawyer, in which, as he was aware, was folded also a
draft on a West Australian bank. In his purse he had a five-pound note.
In his head were a few irritating memories. In his heart he felt a
certain excited flutter at being in a real new land, where a man could
be _really_ free. Though what he meant by "free" he never stopped to
define. He left everything suitably vague.

Meanwhile, he waited for events to develop, as if it were none of his
business.

This was forty years ago, when it was still a long, long way to
Australia, and the land was still full of the lure of promise. There
were gold and pearl findings, bush and bush-ranging, the back of beyond
and everything desirable. Much misery, too, ignored by all except the
miserable.

And Jack was not quite eighteen, so he ignored a great deal. He didn't
pay much attention even to his surroundings, yet from the end of the
wharf he saw pure sky above, the pure, unknown, unsullied sea to
westward; the ruffled, tumbled sand glistened like fine silver, the air
was the air of a new world, unbreathed by man.

The only prize Jack had ever won at school was for Scripture. The Bible
language exerted a certain fascination over him, and in the background
of his consciousness the Bible images always hovered. When he was moved,
it was Scripture that came to his aid. So now he stood, silent with the
shyness of youth, thinking over and over: "There shall be a new heaven
and a new earth."

Not far off among the sand near the harbour mouth lay the township, a
place of strong, ugly, oblong houses of white stone with unshuttered
bottle-glass windows and a low white-washed wall going round, like a
sort of compound; that there was a huge stone prison with a high
whitewashed wall. Nearer the harbour, a few new tall warehouse
buildings, and sheds, long sheds, and a little wooden railway station.
Further out again, windmills for milling flour, the mill-sails turning
in the transparent breeze from the sea. Right in the middle of the
township was a stolid new Victorian church with a turret: and this was
the one thing he knew he disliked in the view.

On the wharf everything was busy. The old wool steamer lay important in
dock, people were crowding on deck and crowding the wharf in a very
informal manner, porters were running with baggage, a chain was
clanking, and little groups of emigrants stood forlorn, looking for
their wooden chests, swinging their odd bundles done up in coloured
kerchiefs. The uttermost ends of the earth! All so lost, and yet so
familiar. So familiar, and so lost. The people like provincial people at
home. The railway running through the sand hills. And the feeling of
remote unreality.

This was his mother's country. She had been born and raised here, and
she had told him about it, many a time, like a fable. And this was what
it was like! How could she feel she actually _belonged_ to it? Nobody
could belong to it.

Himself, he belonged to Bedford, England. And Bedford College. But his
mind turned away from this in repugnance. Suddenly he turned desirously
to the unreality of place.

Jack was waiting for Mr. George, the lawyer to whom his letter of
introduction was addressed. Mr. George had shaken hands with him on
deck: a stout and breezy gentleman, who had been carried away again on
the gusts of his own breeze, among the steamer crowd, and had forgotten
his young charge. Jack patiently waited. Adult and responsible people
with stout waistcoats had a habit, he knew, of being needed elsewhere.

Mr. George! And all his mother's humorous stories about him! This
notable character of the Western lonely colony, this rumbustical old
gentleman who had a "terrific memory," who was "full of quotations" and
who "never forgot a face"--Jack waited the more calmly, sure of being
recognised again by him--was to be seen in the distance with his thumbs
hooked in his waistcoat armholes, passively surveying the scene with a
quiet, shrewd eye, before hailing another acquaintance and delivering
another sally. He had a "tongue like a razor" and frightened the women
to death. Seeing him there on the wharf, elderly, stout and decidedly
old-fashioned, Jack had a little difficulty in reconciling him with the
hearty colonial hero of his mother's stories.

How he had missed a seat on the bench, for example. He was to become a
judge. But while acting on probation, or whatever it is called, a man
came up before him charged with wife-beating, and serious maltreatment
of his better half. A verdict of "not guilty" was returned. "Two years
hard labour," said Mr. George, who didn't like the looks of the fellow.
There was a protest. "Verdict stands!" said Mr. George. "Two years hard
labour. Give it him for _not_ beating her and breaking her head. He
should have done. He should have done. 'Twas fairly proved!"

So Mr. George had remained a lawyer, instead of becoming a judge. A
stout, shabby, provincial-looking old man with baggy trousers that
seemed as if they were slipping down. Jack had still to get used to that
sort of trousers. One of his mother's heroes!

But the whole scene was still outside the boy's vague, almost trancelike
state. The commotion of unloading went on--people stood in groups, the
lumpers were already at work with the winches, bringing bales and boxes
from the hold. The Jewish gentleman standing just there had a red nose.
He swung his cane uneasily. He must be well-off, to judge by his links
and watch-chain. But then why did his trousers hang so low and baggy,
and why was his waistcoat of yellow cloth--that cloth cost a guinea a
yard, Jack knew it from his horsey acquaintances--so dirty and frayed?

Western Australia in the year 1882. Jack had read all about it in the
official report on the steamer. The colony had three years before
celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Many people still remembered the
fiasco of the first attempt at the Swan River Settlement. Captain
Stirling brought the first boatload of prospective settlers. The
Government promised not to defile the land with convicts. But the
promise was broken. The convicts had come: and that stone
prison-building must have been the convict station. He knew from his
mother's stories. But he also knew that the convicts were now gone
again. The "Establishment" had been closed down already for ten years or
more.

A land must have its ups and downs. And the first thing the old world
had to ship to the new world was its sins, and the first shipments were
of sinners. That was what his mother said. Jack felt a certain sympathy.
He felt a sympathy with the empty "Establishment" and the departed
convicts. He himself was mysteriously a "sinner." He felt he was born
such: just as he was born with his deceptive handsome look of innocence.
He was a sinner, a Cain. Not that he was aware of having committed
anything that seemed to himself particularly sinful. No, he was not
aware of having "sinned." He was not aware that he ever would "sin."

But that wasn't the point. Curiously enough, that wasn't the point. The
men who commit sins and who know they commit sins usually get on quite
well with the world. Jack knew he would never get on well with the
world. He was a sinner. He knew that as far as the world went, he was a
sinner, born condemned. Perhaps it had come to him from his mother's
careless, rich, uncanny Australian blood. Perhaps it was a recoil from
his father's military-gentleman nature. His father was an officer in Her
Majesty's Army. An officer in Her Majesty's Army. For some reason, there
was always a touch of the fantastic and ridiculous, to Jack, in being an
officer in Her Majesty's Army. Quite a high and responsible officer,
usually stationed in command in one or other of Her Britannic Majesty's
Colonies.

Why did Jack find his father slightly fantastic? Why was that gentleman
in uniform who appeared occasionally, very resplendent and somehow very
"good," why was he always unreal and fantastic to the little boy left at
home in England? Why was he even more fantastic when he wore a black
coat and genteel grey trousers? He was handsome and pleasant, and
indisputably "good." Then why, oh, why should he have appeared fantastic
to his own little boy, who was so much like him in appearance?

"The spitten image!" one of his nurses had said. And Jack never forgave
it. He thought it meant a spat-upon image, or an image in spit. This he
resented and repudiated absolutely, though it remained vague.

"Oh, you little sinner!" said the same nurse, half caressingly. And this
the boy had accepted as his natural appellation. He was a little sinner.
As he grew older, he was a young sinner. Now, as he approached manhood,
he was a sinner without modification.

Not, we repeat, that he was ever able to understand wherein his
sinfulness lay. He knew his father was a "good man."--"The colonel, your
father, is such a _good man_, so you must be a _good little boy_ and
grow up like him."--"There is no better example of an English gentleman
than your father, the general. All you have to do is to grow up like
him."

Jack knew from the start that he wouldn't. And therein lay the sin,
presumably. Or the root of the sin.

He did not dislike his father. The general was kind and simple and
amiable. How could anyone dislike him? But to the boy he was always just
a little fantastic, like the policeman in a Punch-and-Judy show.

Jack loved his mother with a love that could not but be intermittent,
for sometimes she stayed in England and "lived" with him, and more often
she left him and went off with his father to Jamaica or some such
place--or to India or Khartoum, names that were in his blood--leaving
the boy in the charge of a paternal Aunt. He didn't think much of the
Aunt.

But he liked the warm, flushed, rather muddled delight of his mother.
She was a handsome, ripe Australian woman with warm colouring and soft
flesh, absolutely kindly in a humorous, off-hand fashion, warm with a
jolly sensuousness, and good in a wicked sort of way. She sat in the sun
and laughed and refused to quarrel, refused also to weep. When she had
to leave her little boy a spasm would contract her face and make her
look ugly, so the child was glad if she went quickly. But she was in
love with her husband, who was still more in love with her, so off she
went laughing sensuously across seven seas, quarrelling with nobody,
pitching her camp in true colonial fashion wherever she found herself,
yet always with a touch of sensuous luxury, Persian rugs and silk
cushions and dresses of rich material. She was the despair of the true
English wives, for you couldn't disapprove of her, she was the dearest
thing imaginable, and yet she introduced a pleasant, semi-luxurious
sense of--of what? Why, almost of sin. Not positive sin. She was really
the dearest thing imaginable. But the feeling that there was no fence
between sin and virtue. As if sin were, so to speak, the unreclaimed
bush, and goodness were only the claims that the settlers had managed to
fence in. And there was so much more bush than settlement. And the one
was as good as the other, save that they served different ends. And that
you always had the wild and endless bush all round your little claim,
and coming and going was always through the wild and innocent, but
non-moral bush. Which non-moral bush had a devil in it. Oh, yes! But a
wild and comprehensible devil, like bush-rangers who did brutal and
lawless things. Whereas the tame devil of the settlement, drunkenness
and greediness and foolish pride, he was more scaring.

"My dear, there's tame innocence and wild innocence, and tame devils and
wild devils, and tame morality and wild morality. Let's camp in the bush
and be good." That was her attitude, always. "Let's camp in the bush and
be good." She was an Australian from a wild Australian homestead. And
she was like a wild sweet animal. Always the sense of space and lack of
restrictions, and it didn't matter _what_ you did, so long as you were
good inside yourself.

Her husband was in love with her, completely. To him it mattered very
much what you did. So perhaps her easy indifference to English
rail-fences satisfied in him the iconoclast that lies at the bottom of
all men.

She was not well-bred. There was a certain "cottage" geniality about
her. But also a sense of great, unfenced spaces, that put the ordinary
ladylikeness rather at a loss. A real colonial, from the newest,
wildest, remotest colony.

She loved her little boy. But also she loved her husband, and she loved
the army life. She preferred, really, to be with her husband. And you
can't trail a child about. And she lived in all the world, and she
couldn't bear to be poked in a village in England. Not for long. And she
was used to having men about her. Mostly men. Jolly men.

So her heart smarted for her little boy. But she had to leave him. And
he loved her, but did not dream of depending on her. He knew it as a
tiny child. He would never have to depend on anybody. His father would
pay money for him. But his father was rather jealous of him. Jealous
even of his beauty as a tiny child, in spite of the fact that the child
was the "spitten" image of the father: dark blue eyes, curly hair,
peach-bloom skin. Only the child had the easy way of accommodating
himself to life and circumstances, like his mother, and a certain
readiness to laugh, even when he was by himself. The easy laugh that
made his nurse say "You little sinner!"

He knew he was a little sinner. It rather amused him.

Jack's mind jolted awake as he made a grab at his hat, nearly knocking
it off, realizing that he was being introduced to two men: or that two
men were being introduced to him. They shook hands very casually,
giggling at the same time to one another in a suppressed manner. Jack
blushed furiously, embarrassed, not knowing what they were laughing at.

Just beside him, the Jewish gentleman was effusively greeting another
Jewish gentleman. In fact, they were kissing: which made Jack curl with
disgust. But he couldn't move away, because there were bales behind him,
people on two sides, and a big dog was dancing and barking in front of
him, at something which it saw away below through a crack in the wharf
timbers. The dog seemed to be a mixture of wolf and greyhound. Queer
specimen! Later, he knew it was called a kangaroo dog.

"Mr. A. Bell and Mr. Swallow. Mr. Jack Grant from England." This was Mr.
George introducing him to the two men, and going on without any change,
with a queer puffing of the lips: "Prh! Bah! Wolf and Hider! Wolf and
Hider!"

This left Jack, completely mystified. And why were Mr. Bell and Mr.
Swallow laughing so convulsedly? Was it the dog?

"You remember his father, Bell, out here in '59.--Captain Grant. Married
Surgeon-Captain Reid's youngest daughter, from Woolamooloo Station."

The gentleman said: "Pleased to make your acquaintance," which was a
phrase that embarrassed Jack because he didn't know what to answer.
Should one say, "Thank you!"--or "The pleasure is mine!" or "So am I to
make yours!" He mumbled: "How do you do!"

However, it didn't matter, for the two men kept the laugh between
themselves, while Mr. George took on a colonial _distrait_ look, then
blew out his cheeks and ejaculated: "Mercy and truth have met together:
righteousness and peace have kissed each other." This was said in a
matter-of-fact way. Jack knew it was a quotation from the Psalms, but
not what it was aimed at. The two men were laughing more openly at the
joke.

Was the joke against himself? Was it his own righteousness that was
funny? He blushed furiously once more.



II


But Mr. George ignored the boy's evident embarrassment, and strolled off
with one of the gentlemen--whether Bell or Swallow, Jack did not
know--towards the train.

The remaining gentleman--either Bell or Swallow--clapped the
uncomfortable youth comfortably on the shoulder.

"New chum, eh?--Not in the know? I'll tell you."--They set off after the
other two.

"By gad, 's a funny thing! You've got to laugh if old George is about,
though he never moves a muscle. Dry as a ship's biscuit. D'y'see the
Jews kissing? They've been at law for two years, those two blossoms.
One's name is Wolf and the other's Hider, and Mr. George is Wolf's
attorney. Never able to do anything, because you couldn't get Hider into
the open.--See the joke? Hider! Sneak Hider! Hider under the rafters!
Hider hidden! And the Wolf couldn't unearth him. Though George showed up
Wolf for what he is: a mean, grasping, contentious mongrel of a man. Now
they meet to kiss. See them? The suit ended in a mush. But that dog
there hunting a rat right under their feet--wasn't that beautiful? Old
George couldn't miss it.--'Mercy and truth have met together,' ha! ha!
However he finds his text for everything, beats me--"

Jack laughed, and walked in a daze beside his new acquaintance. He felt
he had fallen overhead into Australia, instead of arriving naturally.

The wood-eating little engine was gasping in front of a little train of
open carriages. Jack remarked on her tender piled high with chunks of
wood.

"Yes, we stoke 'er with timber. We carry all we can. And if we're going
a long way, to York, when she's burned up all she can carry she stops in
the bush and we all get down, passengers and all, to chop a new supply.
See the axe there? She carries half a dozen on a long trip."

The three men, all wearing old-fashioned whiskers, pulled out tobacco
pouches the moment they were seated, and started their pipes. They were
all stout, and their clothes were slack, and they behaved with such
absolute unconcern that it made Jack self-conscious.

He sat rather stiffly, remembering the things his mother had told him.
Her father, Surgeon-Captain Reid, had arrived at the Swan River on a
man-of-war, on his very first voyage. He had landed with Captain
Fremantle from H. M. S. "Challenger," when that officer took formal
possession of the country in the name of His Majesty King George IV. He
had seen the first transport, the "Parmelia," prevented by heavy gales
from landing her goods and passengers on the mainland, disembark all on
Garden Island, where the men of the "Challenger" were busy clearing
ground and erecting temporary houses. That was in midwinter, June 1827:
and Jack's grandfather! Now it was midwinter, June 1882: and mere Jack.

Midwinter! A pure blue sky and a warm, crystal air. The brush outside
green, rather dull green, the sandy country dry. It was like English
June, English midsummer. Why call it midwinter? Except for a certain
dull look of the bushes.

They were passing the convict station. The "Establishment" had not
lasted long; from about 1850 to 1870. Not like New South Wales, which
had a purely convict origin. Western Australia was more respectable.

He remembered his mother always praised the convicts, said they had been
a blessing to the colony. Western Australia had been too big and barren
a mouthful for the first pioneers to chew, even though they were
gentlemen of pluck and education and bit off their claims bravely. Came
the rush that followed occupation, a rush of estimable and highly
respectable British workmen. But even these were unprepared for the
hardships that awaited them in Western Australia. The country was too
much for them.

It needed the convicts to make a real impression: the convicts with
their law, and discipline, and all their governmental outfit: and their
forced labour. Soldiers, doctors, lawyers, spiritual pastors and earthly
masters . . . and the convicts condemned to obey. This was the beginning
of the colony.

Thought speaks! Mr. Swallow, identified as the gentleman with the long,
lean ruddy face and large nose and vague brown eye, leaned forward and
jerked his pipe stem towards the open window.

"See that beautiful road running through the sand, sir? That road
extends to Perth and over the Causeway and away up country, branching in
all directions, like the arteries of the human body. Built by the
sappers and miners with _convict labour_, sir. Yes with _convict_
labour. Also the bridge over which we are crossing."

Jack looked out at the road, but was much more enchanted by the full,
soft river of heavenly blue water, on whose surface he looked eagerly
for the black swans. He didn't see any.

"Oh yes! Oh yes! You'll find 'em wild in their native state a little way
up," said Mr. Swallow.

Beyond the river were sheets of sand again, white sand, stretching
around on every side.

"It must have been here that the Carpenter wept--" Jack said in his
unexpected young voice that was still slightly hoarse, as he poked his
face out of the window.

The three gentlemen were silent in passive consternation, till Mr.
George swelled his cheeks and continued:

"Like anything to see such quantities of sand." Then he snorted and blew
his nose.

Mr. Bell at once recognized the Westralian joke, which had been handed
on to Jack by his mother.

"Hit it, my son!" he cried, clapping his hands on his knees. "In the
first five minutes. Useless! Useless! A gentleman of discernment, that's
what you are. Just the sort we want in this colony--a gentleman of
discernment. A gentleman without it planted us here, fifty years ago in
the blank, blank sand. What's the consequence? Clogged, cloyed, cramped,
sand-smothered, that's what we are."

"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Swallow.

"Sorrow, Sin, and Sand," repeated Mr. Bell.

Jack was puzzled and amused by their free and easy, confidential way,
which was still a little ceremonious. Slightly ceremonious, and in their
shirt-sleeves, so to speak. The same with their curious, Cockney
pronunciation, their accurate grammar and their slight pomposity. They
never said "you," merely "y'"--"That's what y'are." And their drawling,
almost sneering manner was very odd, contrasting with the shirtsleeves
familiarity, the shabby clothes and the pleasant way they had of nodding
at you when they talked to you.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Grant," continued Mr. Bell, while Jack wished he wouldn't
Mister him--"A gentleman without discernment induced certain politicians
in the British Cabinet to invest in these vast areas. This same
gentleman got himself created King of Groperland, and came out here with
a small number of fool followers. These fool followers, for every three
quid's worth of goods they brought with them, were given forty acres of
land apiece--"

"Of sand," said Mr. George.

"--and a million acres of fine promises," continued Mr. Bell unmoved.
"Therefore the fool followers, mostly younger sons of good family,
anxious to own property--"

"In parties of five females to one male--Prrrh!" snorted Mr. George.

"--came. They were informed that the soil was well adapted to the
cultivation of tobacco! Of cotton! Of sugar! Of flax! And that cattle
could be raised to supply His Majesty's ships with salt beef--and horses
could be reared to supply the army in India--"

"With Kangaroos and Wallabies."

"--the cavalry, that is. So they came and were landed in the sand--"

"And told to stick their head in it, so they shouldn't see death staring
at 'em."

"--along with the goods they had brought."

"A harp!" cried Mr. George. "My mother brought a harp and a Paisley
shawl and got five hundred acres for 'em--estimated value of harp being
twenty guineas. She'd better have gone straight to heaven with it."

"Yes, sir!" continued Mr. Bell, unheeding.

"No, sir!" broke in Mr. George. "Do you wish me unborn?"

Mr. Bell paused to smile, then continued:

"Mr. Grant, sir, these gentle ladies and gentlemen were dumped in the
sand along with their goods. Well, there were a few cattle and sheep and
horses. But what else? Harps. Paisley shawls. Ornamental glass cases of
wax fruit, for the mantelpiece; family Bibles and a family coach, sir.
For that family coach, sir, the bringer got a thousand acres of land.
And it ended its days where they landed it, on the beach, for there
wasn't an inch of road to drive it over, nor anywhere to drive it to.
They took off its wheels and there it lay. I myself have sat in it."

"Ridden in his coach," smiled Mr. George.

"My mother," continued Mr. Bell, "was a clergyman's daughter. I myself
was born in a bush humpy, and my mother died shortly after--"

"Of chagrin! Of chagrin!" muttered Mr. George.

"We will draw a veil over the sufferings of those years--"

"Oh, but we made good! We made good!" put in Mr. Swallow comfortably.
"What are you grousing about? We made good. There you sit, Bell, made of
money, and grousing, anybody would think you wanted a loan of two bob."

"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down--" said Mr. George.

"Did we! No we didn't. We rowed up the Swan River. That's what my father
did. A sturdy British yeoman, Mr. Grant."

"Where did he get the boat from?" asked Mr. Bell.

"An old ship. I was a baby, sir, in a tartan frock. Remember it to this
day, sitting in my mother's lap. My father got that boat off a whaler.
It had been stove in, and wasn't fit for the sea. But he made it fit for
the river, and they rowed up the Swan--my father and a couple of
'indented' servants, as we called them. We landed in the Upper Swan
valley. I remember that camp fire, sir, as well as I remember anything."

"Better than most things," put in Mr. George.

"We cleared off the scrub, we lifted the stones into heaps, we planted
corn and wheat--"

"The babe in the tartan frock steering the plough."

"Yes, sir, later on.--Our flocks prospered, our land bore fruit, our
family flourished--"

"On milk and honey--"

"Oh, cry off, Swallow!" ejaculated Mr. Bell. "Your father fought flood
and drought for forty odd years. The floods of '62 broke his heart, and
the floods in '72 ruined you. And this is '82, so don't talk too loud."

"Ruined! When was I ever ruined?" cried Mr. Swallow. "Sheep
one-hundred-and-ten per cent--for some herds, as you know, gentlemen,
throw twins and triplets. Cattle ninety per cent, horses fifty: and a
ready market for 'em all."

"Pests," Mr. Bell was saying, "one million per cent. Rust destroys
fourteen thousand acres of wheat crop, just as the country is getting on
its feet. Dingoes breed 135 per cent, and kill sheep to match. Cattle
run wild and are no more seen. Horses cost the eyes out of your head
before you can catch 'em, break 'em, train 'em and ship 'em to the
Indian market."

"Moth and rust! Moth and rust!" murmured Mr. George absently.



III


Jack, with the uncomfortable philosophy of youth, sat still and let the
verbal waters rage. Until he was startled by a question from Mr. George.

"Well, sir, what were you sent out for?"

This was a colonial little joke at the "Establishment" identity's
expense. But unfortunately it hit Jack too. He had been sent gut,
really, because he was too tiresome to keep at home. Too fond of "low"
company. Too often a frequenter of the stables. Too indifferent to the
higher claims of society. They feared a waster in the bud. So they
shipped the bud to the antipodes, to let it blossom there upside down.

But Jack was not going to give himself away.

"To go on the land, sir," he replied. Which was true.--But what had his
father said in the letter? He flushed and looked angry, his dark blue
eyes going very dark, "I was expelled from school," he added calmly.
"And I was sent down from the Agricultural College. That's why I have
come out a year before my time. But I was coming--to go on the
land--anyway--"

He ended in a stammer. He rather hated adults: he definitely hated them
in tribunal.

Mr. George held up his hand deprecatingly.

"Say nothing! Say nothing! Your father made no mention of anything. Tell
us when you know us, if y'like. But you aren't called on to indict
yourself.--That was a silly joke of mine. Forget it.--You came to go on
the land, as your father informs me.--I knew your father, long before
you were born. But I knew your mother better."

"So did I," said Mr. Swallow. "And grieved the day that ever a military
gentleman carried her away from Western Australia. She was one of our
home-grown flowers, was Katie Reid, and I never saw a Rose of England
that could touch her."

Jack now flushed deeper than ever.

"Though," said Mr. George slyly, "if you've got a prank up y'r sleeve,
that you can tell us about--come on with it, my son. We've none of us
forgotten being shipped to England for a schooling."

"Oh well!" said Jack. He always said "Oh well!" when he didn't know what
to say. "You mean at the Agricultural College? Oh well!--Well, I was the
youngest there, stableboy and harness-cleaner and all that. Oh well! You
see there'd been a chivoo the night before. The lads had a grudge
against the council, because they gave us bread and cheese, and
no butter, for supper, and cocoa with no milk. And we weren't
just little nippers. We were--Oh well! Most of the chaps were men,
really--eighteen--nineteen--twenty. As much as twenty-three. I was the
youngest. I didn't care. But the chaps were different. There were many
who had failed at the big entrance exams for the Indian Civil, or the
Naval or Military, and they were big, hungry chaps, you can bet--"

"I should say so," nodded Mr. George approvingly.

"Well, there was a chivoo. They held me on their shoulders and I smashed
the Principal's windows."

You could see by Jack's face how he had enjoyed breaking those windows.

"What with?" asked Mr. George.

"With a wooden gym club."

"Wanton destruction of property. Prrrh!"

"The boss was frightened. But he raised Old Harry and said he'd go up to
town and report us to the council. So he ordered the trap right away, to
catch the nine o'clock train. And I had to take the trap round to the
front door--"

Here Jack paused. He didn't want to go further.

"And so--" said Mr. George.

"And so, when I stepped away from the horse's head, the Principal jerked
the reins in the nasty way he had and the horse bolted."

"Couldn't the fellow pull her up? Man in a position like that ought to
know how to drive a horse."

Jack watched their faces closely. On his own face was that subtle look
of innocence, which veiled a look of life-and-death defiance.

"The reins weren't buckled into the bit, sir. No man could drive that
horse," he said quietly.

A look of amusement tinged with misgiving spread over Mr. George's face.
But he was a true colonial. He had to hear the end of a story against
powers-that-be.

"And how did it end?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," said Jack. "He broke his leg in the accident."

The three Australians burst into a laugh. Chiefly because when Jack
said, "I'm sorry," he really meant it. He was really sorry for the hurt
man. But for the hurt Principal he wasn't sorry. As soon as the
Principal was on the ground with a broken leg, Jack saw only the hurt
man, and none of the office. And his heart was troubled for the hurt
man.

But if the mischief was to do again, he would probably do it. He
couldn't repent. And yet his feelings were genuinely touched. Which made
him comical.

"You're a corker!" said Mr. George, shaking his head with new misgiving.

"So you were sent down," said Mr. Bell. "And y'r father thought he'd
better ship you straight out here, eh? Best thing for you, I'll be
bound. I'll bet you never learned a ha'porth at that place."

"Oh well! I think I learned a lot."

"When to sow and when to reap and a latin motto attached!"

"No, sir, not that. I learned to vet."

"Vet?"

"Well sir, you see, the head groom was a gentleman veterinary surgeon
and he had a weakness, as he called it. So when he was strong he taught
me to vet, and when he had his attacks, I'd go out with the cart and
collect him at a pub and bring him home under the straw, in return for
kindness shown."

"A nice sort of school! Prrrh! Bahl" snorted Mr. George.

"Oh, that wasn't on the curriculum, sir. My mother says there'll be
rascals in heaven, if you look for them."

"And you keep on looking, eh?--Well--I wouldn't, if I were you.
Especially in this country, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go vetting any more
for any drunken groom in the world, if I were you. Nor breaking windows,
nor leaving reins unbuckled either. And I'll tell you for why. It
becomes a habit. You get a habit of going with rascals, and then you're
done. Because in this country you'll find plenty of scamps, and plenty
of wasters. And the sight of them is enough--nasty, low-down lot.--This
is a great big country, where an honest man can go his own way into the
back of beyond, if he likes. But the minute he begins to go crooked, or
slack, the country breaks him. It breaks him, and he's neither fit for
God nor man any more. You beware of this country, my boy, and don't try
to play larks with it. It's all right playing a prank on an old fool of
a fossil out there in England. They need a few pranks played on them,
they do. But out here--no! Keep all your strength and all your wits to
fight the bush. It's a great big country, and it needs men, _men_, not
wasters. It's a great big country, and it wants men. You can go your way
and do what you want: take up land, go on a sheep station, lumber, or
try the goldfields. But whatever you do, live up to your fate like a
man. And keep square with yourself. Never mind other people. But keep
square with _yourself._"

Jack, staring out of the window, saw miles of dull dark-green scrub
spreading away on every side to a bright sky-line. He could hear his
mother's voice:

"Earn a good opinion of yourself and never mind the world's opinion. You
know when there's the right glow inside you. That's the spirit of God
inside you."

But this "right glow" business puzzled him a little. He was inclined to
believe he felt it while he was smashing the Principal's window-glass,
and while he was "vetting" with the drunken groom. Yet the words
fascinated him: "The right glow inside you--the spirit of God inside
you."

He sat motionless on his seat, while the Australians kept on talking
about the colony.--"Have y'patience? Perseverance? Have ye that?--She
wants y' and y' offspring. And the bones y'll leave behind y'. All of y'
interests, y' hopes, y' life, and the same of y' sons and sons' sons.
An' she doesn't care if y' go nor stay, neither. Makes no difference to
her. She's waiting, drowsy. No hurry. Wants millions of yer. But she's
waited endless ages and can wait endless more. Only she must have
_men_--understand? If they're lazy derelicts and ne'er-do-wells, she'll
eat 'em up. But she's waiting for real men--British to the bone--"

"The lad's no more than a boy, yet, George. Dry up a bit with your
_men--British to the bone._"

"Don't toll at _me_, Bell.--I've been here since '31, so let me speak.
Came in old sailing-ship, 'Rockingham'--wrecked on coast--left nothing
but her name, township of Rockingham. Nice place to fish.--Was sent back
to London to school, '41--in another sailing-vessel and wasn't wrecked
this time. 'Shepherd,' laden colonial produce.--The first steam vessel
didn't come till '45--the 'Driver.' Wonderful advancement.--Wonderful
advancement in the colony too, when I came back. Came back a
notary.--Couple of churches, Mill Street Jetty, Grammar School opened,
Causeway built, lot of exploration done. Eyre had legged it from
Adelaide--all in my time, all in my time--"



IV


Jack felt it might go on forever. He was becoming stupefied. Mercifully,
the train jerked to a standstill beside a wooden platform, that was
separated from a sandy space by a picket fence. A porter put his hand to
his mouth and yelled, "Perth," just for the look of the thing--because
where else could it be? They all burst out of the train. The town stood
up in the sand: wooden houses with wooden platforms blown over with
sand.

And Mr. George was still at it.--"Yes, Bell, wait for the salty sand to
mature. Wait for a few of _us_ to die--and decay! Mature--manure, that's
what's wanted. Dead men in the sand, dead men's bones in the gravel.
That's what'll mature this country. The people you bury in it. Only good
fertilizer. Dead men are like seed in the ground. When a few more like
you and me, Bell, are worked in--"



CHAPTER II

THE TWIN LAMBS


I


Jack was tired and a little land-sick, after the long voyage. He felt
dazed and rather unhappy, and saw as through a glass, darkly. For he
could not yet get used to the fixed land under his feet, after the long
weeks on the steamer. And these people went on as if they were wound up,
curiously oblivious of him and his feelings. A dream world, with a dark
glass between his eyes and it. An uneasy dream.

He waited on the platform. Mr. George had again disappeared somewhere.
The train was already backing away.

It was evening, and the setting sun from the west, where the great empty
sea spread unseen, cast a radiance in the etherealized air, melting the
brick shops and the wooden houses and the sandy places in a sort of
amethyst glow. And again Jack saw the magic clarity of this new world,
as through a glass, darkly. He felt the cool snap of night in the air,
coming strange and crude out of the jewel sky. And it seemed to him he
was looking through the wrong end of a field-glass, at a far, far
country.

Where was Mr. George? Had he gone off to read the letter again, or to
inquire about the draft on the bank? Everyone had left the station, the
wagonette cabs had driven away. What was to be done? Ought he to have
mentioned an hotel? He'd better say something. He'd better say--

But here was Mr. George, with a serious face, coming straight up to say
something.

"That vet," he said, "did he think you had a natural gift for veterinary
work?"

"He said so, sir. My mother's father was a naval surgeon--if that has
anything to do with it."

"Nothing at all.--I knew the old gentleman--and another silly old fossil
he was, too.--But he's dead, so well make the best of him.--No, it was
your character I wanted to get at.--Your father wants you to go on a
farm or station for twelve months, and sends a pound a week for your
board. Suppose you know--?"

"Yes--I hope it's enough."

"Oh, it's enough, if you're all right yourself--I was thinking of Ellis'
place. I've got the twins here now. They're kinsmen of yours, the
Ellises--and of mine, too. We're all related, in clans and cliques and
gangs, out here in this colony. Your mother belongs to the Ellis
clan.--Well, now. Ellis' place is a fine home farm, and not too far.
Only he's got a family of fine young lambs, my step-sister's children
into the bargain. And y'see, if y're a wolf in sheep's clothing--for you
look mild enough--why, I oughtn't be sending you among them. Young
lasses and boys bred and reared out there in the bush, why--. Come now,
son--y' father protected you by silence.--But you're not in court, and
you needn't heed me. Tell me straight out what you were expelled from
your Bedford school for."

Jack was silent for a moment, rather pale about the nose. "I was
nabbed," he said in a colourless voice, "at a fight with fists for a
purse of sovereigns, laid either side. Plenty of others were there. But
they got away, and the police nabbed me for the school colours on my
cap. My father was just back from Ceylon, and he stood by me. But the
Head said for the sake of example and for the name of the school I'd
better be chucked out. They were talking about the school in the
newspapers. The Head said he was sorry to expel me."

Mr. George blew his nose into a large yellow red-spotted handkerchief,
and looked for a few moments into the distance.

"Seems to me you let yourself be made a bit of a cat's paw of," he said
dubiously.

"I suppose it's because I don't care," said Jack.

"But you ought to care.--Why don't y'?"

There was no answer.

"You'll have to care some day or other," the old man continued.

"Do you know, sir, which hotel I shall go to?" asked Jack.

"You'll go to no hotel. You'll come home with me.--But mind y'. I've got
my two young nieces, Ellis' twins, couple of girls, Ellis' daughters,
where I'm going to send you. They're at my house. And there's my other
niece, Mary, who I'm very fond of. She's not an Ellis, she's a Rath, and
an orphan, lives with her Aunt Matilda, my sister. They don't live with
me. None of 'em live with me. I live alone, except for a good, plain
cook, since my wife died.--But I tell you, they're visiting me. And I
shall look to you to behave yourself, now: both here and at Wandoo,
which is Ellis' station. I'll take you there in the morning.--But y'see
now where I'm taking you: among a pack of innocent sheep that's probably
never seen a goat to say Boh! to--or Baa! if you like--makes no
difference. We don't raise goats in Western Australia, as I'm aware
of.--But I'm telling you, if you're a wolf in sheep's clothing--. No,
you needn't say anything. You probably don't know what you are, anyhow.
So come on. I'll tell somebody to bring your bags--looks a rare jorum to
me--and we'll walk."



II


They walked off the timber platform into the sand, and Jack had his
first experience of "sand-groping." The sand was thick and fine and
soft, so he was glad to reach the oyster-shell path running up
Wellington Street, in front of the shops. They passed along the street
of brick cottages and two-storied houses, to Barrack Street, where Jack
looked with some surprise on the pretentious buildings that stood up in
the dusk: the handsome square red brick tower of the Town Hall, and on
the sandy hill to the left, the fine white edifice of the Roman Catholic
Church, which building was already older than Jack himself. Beyond the
Town Hall was the Church of England. "See it!" said Mr. George. "That's
where your father and mother were married. Slap-dash, military wedding,
more muslin and red jackets than would stock a shop."

Mr. George spoke to everybody he met, ladies and gentlemen alike. The
ladies seemed a bit old-fashioned, the gentlemen all wore nether
garments at least four sizes too large for them. Jack was much piqued by
this pioneering habit. And they all seemed very friendly and easy-going,
like men in a pub at home.

"What did the Bedford Headmaster say he was sorry to lose you for? Smart
at your books, were you?"

"I was good at Scripture and Shakespeare, but not at the other
things.--I expect he was sorry to lose me from the football eleven. I
was the cock there."

Mr. George blew his nose loudly, gasped, prrrhed, and said:

"You'd better say _rooster_, my son, here in Australia--especially in
polite society. We're a trifle more particular than they are in England,
I suppose.--Well, and what else have you got to crow about?"

If Jack had been the sulky sort, he would now have begun to get sulky.
As it was, he was tired of being continually pulled up. But he fell back
on his own peculiar callous indifference.

"I was captain of the first football eleven," he said in his indifferent
voice, "and not bad in front of the sticks. And I took the long distance
running cup a year under age. I tell you because you ask me."

Then Mr. George astonished Jack again by turning and planting himself in
front of him like Balaam's ass, in the middle of the path, standing with
feet apart in his big elephant trousers, snorting behind a walrus
moustache, glaring and extending a large and powerful hand. He shook
hands vigorously, saying, "You'll do, my son. You'll do for me."

Then he resumed his walk.



III


"Yes, sir, you'll do for me," resumed the old man. "For I can see you're
a gentleman."

Jack was rather taken aback. He had come to Australia to be a man, a
wild, bushy man among men. His father was a gentleman.

"I think I'd rather be a man than a gentleman," he said.

Mr. George stood still, feet apart, as if he had been shot.

"What's the difference?" he cried in a falsetto, sarcastic tone. "What's
the difference? Can't be a man unless you are a gentleman. Take that
from me. You might say I'm not a gentleman. Sense of the ridiculous runs
away with me, for one thing. But, in order to be the best man I could,
I've tried to be all the gentleman I could. No hanky-pankying about
it.--You're a gentleman born.--I'm not, not _altogether._ Don't you go
trying to upset what you are. But whether you're a bush-whacker or a
lumper you can be a gentleman. A gentleman's a man who never laughs to
wound, who's honest with himself and his own judge in the sight of the
Almighty.--That's the Government House down there among the trees, river
just beyond.--That's my house, there, see. I'm going to hand you over to
the girls, once we get there. So I shan't see you again, not to talk to.
I want to tell you then, that I put my confidence in you, and you're
going to play up like a gentleman. And I want you to know, as between
gentlemen, not merely between an old man and a boy: but as between
gentlemen, if you ever need any help, or a word of advice come to me.
Come to me, and I'll do my best."

He once more shook hands, this time in a conclusive manner.

Jack had looked to left and right as they walked, half listening to the
endless old man. He saw sandy blocks of land beside the road, and
scattered, ugly buildings, most of them new. He made out the turrets and
gables of the Government House, in the dusk among trees, and he imagined
the wide clear river below those trees.

Turning down an unmade road, they approached a two-storied brick house
with narrow verandahs, whose wooden supports rested nakedly on the sand
below. There was no garden, fence, or anything: just an oyster-shell
path across the sand, a pipe-clayed doorstep, a brass knocker, a narrow
wooden verandah, a few flower-pots.

Mr. George opened the door and showed the boy into the narrow wooden
hall. There was a delicious smell of cooking. Jack climbed the thin,
flimsy stairs, and was shown into his bedroom. A four-poster bed with a
crochet quilt and frilled pillows, a mahogany chest of drawers with
swivel looking-glass, a washstand with china set complete. England all
over again.--Even his bag was there, and his brushes were set out for
him.

He had landed!



IV


As he made his toilet, he heard a certain fluttering outside his door.
He waited for it to subside, and when all seemed still, opened to go
downstairs. There stood two girls, giggling and blushing, waiting arm in
arm to pounce on him.

"Oh, isn't he _beau!_" exclaimed one of the girls, in a sort of aside.
And the other broke into a high laugh.

Jack remained dumbfounded, reddening to the roots of his hair. But his
dark-blue eyes lingered for a moment on the two girlish faces. They were
evidently the twins. They had the same thin, soft, slightly-tanned,
warm-looking faces, a little wild, and the same marked features. But the
brows of one were level, and her fair hair, darkish fair, was all crisp,
curly round her temples, and she looked up at you from under her level
brows with queer yellow-grey eyes, shy, wild, and yet with a queer
effrontery, like a wild-cat under a bush. The other had blue eyes and a
bigger nose, and it was she who said, "Oh, isn't he _beau!_"

The one with the yellow eyes stuck out her slim hand awkwardly, gazing
at him and saying:

"I suppose you're cousin Jack, Beau."

He shook hands first with one, then with the other, and could not find a
word to say. The one with the yellow eyes was evidently the leader of
the two.

"Tea is ready," she said, "if you're coming down."

She spoke this over her shoulder. There was the same colour in her tawny
eyes as in her crisp tawny hair, but her brows were darker. She had a
forehead, Jack decided, like the plaster-cast of Minerva. And she had
the queerest way of looking at you under her brows, and over her
shoulder. Funny pair of lambs, these.

The two girls went downstairs arm in arm, at a run. This is quite a
feat, but evidently they were used to it.

Jack looked on life, social life inside a house, as something to be
borne in silence. These two girls were certainly a desperate addition.
He heard them burst into the parlour, the other one repeating:

"He's coming. Here comes Beau."

"I thought his name was Jack. _Bow_ is it!" exclaimed a voice.

He entered the parlour with his elbows at his sides, his starched collar
feeling very stiff. He was aware of the usual hideous room, rather barer
than at home: plush cushions on a horse-hair sofa, and a green carpet: a
large stout woman with reddish hair in a silk frock and gold chains, and
Mr. George introducing her as Mrs. Watson, otherwise Aunt Matilda. She
put diamond-ringed hands on Jack's shoulders and looked into his face,
which he thought a repellent procedure.

"So like your father, dear boy; how's your dear mother?"

And in spite of his inward fury of resistance, she kissed him. For she
was but a woman of forty-two.

"Quite well, thank you," said Jack: though considering he had been at
sea for six weeks, he knew as little about his mother's health as did
Aunt Matilda herself.

"Did y' blow y' candle out?" asked Mr. George.

"No he didn't," answered the tawny girl. "_I'll_ go and do it."

And she flashed away upstairs like a panther.

"I suppose the twins introduced themselves," said Mr. George.

"No they didn't," said the other one.

"Only christened you Bow.--You'll be somebody or other's beau before
very long, I'll warrant.--This is Grace, Grace Ellis, you know, where
you're going to live. And her sister who's gone upstairs to blow your
candle out, is Monica.--Can't be too careful of fire in these dry
places.--Most folks say they can't tell 'em apart, but I call it
nonsense."

"Ancien, beau, bon, cher, adjectives which precede," said the one called
Monica, jerking herself into the room, after blowing out the candle.

"There's your father," said Mr. George. And Aunt Matilda fluttered into
the hall, while the twins betrayed no interest at all. The tawny one
stared at Jack and kept slinking about like a lean young panther to get
a different view of him. For all the world as if she was going to pounce
on him, like a cat on a bird. He, permanently flushed, kept his
self-possession in a boyish and rather handsome, if stiff, manner.

Mr. Ellis was stout, clean-shaven, red-faced, and shabby and baggy, and
good-natured in appearance.

"This is the young gentleman--Mr. Grant--called in Westralia Bow, so
named by Miss Monica Ellis."

"By Miss Grace, if you please," snapped Monica.

"Tea's ready. Tea's ready."

They trooped into the dining room where a large table was spread. Aunt
Matilda seated herself behind the tea-kettle, Mr. George sat at the
other end, before the pile of plates and the carvers, and the others
took their places where they would. Jack modestly sat on Aunt Matilda's
left hand, so the tawny Monica at once pounced on the chair opposite.

Entered the Good Plain Cook with a dish covered with a pewter cover, and
followed by a small, dark, ugly, quiet girl carrying the vegetable
dishes.

"That's my niece Mary, Jack. Lives with Aunt Matilda here, who won't
spare her or I'd have her to live here with me. Now you know everybody.
What's for tea?"

He was dangerously clashing the knife on the steel. Then lifting the
cover, he disclosed a young pig roasted in all its glory of gravy. Mary
meanwhile had nodded her head at Jack and looked at him with her big,
queer, very black eyes. You might have thought she had native blood. She
sat down to serve the vegetables.

"Grace, there's a fly in the milk," said Aunt Matilda, who was already
pouring large cups of tea. Grace seized the milk jug and jerked from the
room.

"Do you take milk and sugar, as your dear father used to, John?" asked
Aunt Matilda of the youth on her left.

"Call him Bow. Bow's his name out here--John's too stiff and Jack's too
common!" exclaimed Mr. George, elbows deep in carving.

"Bow'll do for me," put in Mrs. Ellis, who said little.

"Mary, is there any mustard?" said Aunt Matilda.

Jack rose vaguely to go and get it, but Aunt Matilda seized him by the
arm and pushed him back.

"Sit still. She knows where it is."

"Monica, come and carry the cups, there's a good girl."

"Now which end of the pig do you like, Jack?" asked Mr. George.
"Matilda, will this do for you?" He held up a piece on the fork. Mary
arrived with a ponderous gyrating cruet-stand, which she made place for
in the middle of the table.

"What about bread?" said Aunt Matilda. "I'm sure John eats bread with
his meat. Fetch some bread, Grace, for your cousin John."

"Everybody did it," thought Jack in despair, as he tried to eat amid the
hustle. "No servants, nothing ever still. On the go all the time."

"Girls going to the concert tonight?" asked Mr. George.

"If anybody will go with us," replied Monica, with a tawny look at Jack.

"There's Bow," said Mr. George, "Bow'll like to go."

Under the she-lion peering of Monica, Jack was incapable of answer.

"Let the poor boy rest," said Aunt Matilda. "Just landed after a six
thousand mile voyage, and you rush him out next minute to a concert. Let
him stop at home quietly with me, and have a quiet chat about the dear
ones he's left behind.--Aren't _you_ going to the concert with the
girls, Jacob?"

This was addressed to Mr. Ellis, who took a gulp of tea and shook his
head mutely.

"I'd rather go to the concert, I think," said Jack under the queer
yellow glower of Monica's eyes, and the full black moons of Mary's.

"Good for you, my boy," said Mr. George. "Bow by name and Bow by nature.
And well set up, with three strings to his Bow already."

Monica once more peered tawnily, and Mary glanced a black, furtive
glance. Aunt Matilda looked down on him and Grace, at his side, peered
up.

For the first time since childhood, Jack found himself in a really
female setting. Instinctively he avoided women: but particularly he
avoided girls. With girls and women he felt exposed to some sort of
danger--as if something were going to seize him by the neck, from
behind, when he wasn't looking. He relied on men for safety. But
curiously enough, these two elderly men gave him no shelter whatever.
They seemed to throw him a victim to these frightful "lambs." In
England, there was an _esprit de corps_ among men. Man for man was a
tower of strength against the females. Here in this place men deserted
one another as soon as the women put in an appearance. They left the
field entirely to the females.

In the first half-hour Jack realised he was thrown a victim to these
tawny and black young cats. And there was nothing to do but bear up.

"Have you got an evening suit?" asked Grace, who was always the one to
ponder things out.

"Yes--a sort of a one," said Jack.

"Oh, good! Oh, put it on! Do put it on."

"Leave the lad alone," said Mr. George. "Let him go as he is."

"No," said Aunt Matilda. "He has his father's handsome presence. Let him
make the best of himself. I think I'll go to the concert after all."

After dinner there was a bustle. Monica flew up to light his candle for
him, and stood there peering behind the flame when he came upstairs.

"You haven't much time," she said, as if she were going to spear him.

"All right," he answered, in his hoarse young voice. And he stood in
torment till she left his room.

He was just tying his tie when there came a flutter and a tapping. Aunt
Matilda's voice saying: "Nearly time. Are you almost ready?"

"Half a minute!" he crowed hoarsely, like an unhappy young cock.

But the door stealthily opened, and Aunt Matilda peeped in.

"Oh, tying his tie!" she said, satisfactorily, when she perceived that
he was dressed as far as discretion demanded. And she entered in full
blow. Behind her hovered Grace--then Monica--and in the doorway Mary. It
seemed to Jack that Aunt Matilda was the most objectionable of the lot,
Monica the brazenest, Grace the most ill-mannered, and Mary the most
repulsive, with her dark face. He struggled in discomfort with his tie.

"Let Mary do it," said Aunt Matilda.

"No, no!" he barked. "I can do it."

"Come on, Mary. Come and tie John's tie."

Mary came quietly forward.

"Let me do it for you, Bow," she said in her quiet, insinuating voice,
looking at him with her inky eyes and standing in front of him till his
knees felt weak and his throat strangled. He was purple in the face,
struggling with his tie in the presence of the lambs.

"He'll never get it done," said Monica, from behind the yellow glare.

"Let me do it," said Mary, and lifting her hands decisively she took the
two ends of the tie from him.

He held his breath and lifted his eyes to the ceiling and felt as if the
front of his body were being roasted. Mary, the devil-puss, seemed
endless ages fastening the tie. Then she twitched it at his throat and
it was done, just as he was on the point of suffocation.

"Are those your best braces?" said Grace. "They're awfully pretty with
rose-buds." And she fingered the band.

"I suppose you put on evening dress for the last dinner on board," said
Aunt Matilda. "Nothing makes me cry like _Auld Lang Syne_, that last
night, before you land next day. But it's fifteen years since I went
over to England."

"I don't suppose we shall any of us ever go," said Grace longingly.

"Unless you marry Bow," said Monica abruptly.

"I can't marry him unless he asks me," said Grace.

"He'll ask nobody for a good many years to come," said Aunt Matilda with
satisfaction.

"Hasn't he got lovely eyelashes?" said Grace impersonally.

"He'd almost do for a girl," said Monica.

"Not if you look at his ears," said Mary, with odd decision. He felt
that Mary was bent on saving his manhood.

He breathed as if the air around him were red-hot. He would have to get
out, or die. He plunged into his coat, pulling down his shirt-cuffs with
a jerk.

"What funny green cuff-links," said Grace. "Are they pot?"

"Malachite," said Jack.

"What's malachite?"

There was no answer. He put a white silk muffler round his neck to
protect his collar.

"Oh, look at his initials in lavender silk!"

At last he was in his overcoat, and in the street with the bevy.

"Leave your overcoat open, so it shows your shirt-front as you walk,"
said Grace, forcibly unbuttoning the said coat. "I think that looks so
lovely. Doesn't he look lovely, Monica? Everybody will be asking who he
is."

"Tell them he's the son of General Grant," said Aunt Matilda, with
complete satisfaction, as she sailed at his side.

Life is principally a matter of endurance. This was the sum of Jack's
philosophy. He put it into practice this evening.

It was a benefit concert in the Town Hall, with the Episcopalian Choir
singing, "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," and a violinist from Germany
playing violin solos, and a lady vocalist from Melbourne singing "home"
solos, while local stars variously coruscated. Aunt Matilda filled up
the end of the seat--like a massive book-end: and the others like
slender volumes of romance were squeezed in between her and another
stout book-end. Jack had the heaving warmth of Aunt Matilda on his
right, the electric wriggle of Monica on his left, and he continued to
breathe red-hot air.

The concert was a ludicrous continuation of shameful and ridiculous
noise to him. Each item seemed inordinately long and he hoped for the
next, which when it came, seemed worse than the last. The people who
performed seemed to him in a ghastly humiliating position. One stout
mother-of-thousands leaned forward and simply gurgled about riding over
the brow of a hill and seeing a fair city beyond, and a young knight in
silver armour riding toward her with shining face, to greet her on the
spot as his lady fair and lady dear. Jack looked at her in pained
amazement. And yet when the songs-tress from Melbourne, in a rich
contralto, began to moan in a Scotch accent:


"And it's o-o-oh! that I'm longing for my ain folk,
Though the-e-ey be but lowly, puir and plain folk--
I am far across the sea
But my heart will ever be-e-e-e-e
At home in dear old Scotland with my ain folk,"


Jack suddenly wanted to howl. He had never been to Scotland and his
father, General Grant, with his mother, was at present in Malta. And he
hadn't got any "ain folk," and he didn't want any. Yet it was all he
could do to keep the tears from showing in his eyes, as his heart fairly
broke in him. And Aunt Matilda crowded him a little more suffocatingly
on the right, and Monica wriggled more hatefully than ever on the left,
and that beastly Mary leaned forward to glance appreciatively at him,
with her low-down black eyes. And he felt as if the front of his body
was scorched. And a smouldering desire for revenge awoke deep down in
him.

People were always trying to "do things" to you. Why couldn't they leave
you done? Dirty cads to sing "My Ain Folk," and then stare in your face
to see how it got you.

But life was a matter of endurance, with possible revenge later on.

When at last he got home and could go to bed, he felt he had gained a
brief respite. There was no lock to the door--so he put the arm-chair
against it, for a barricade.

And he felt he had been once more sold. He had thought he was coming to
a wild and woolly world. But all the way out he had been forced to play
the gentlemanly son of his father. And here it was hell on earth, with
these women let loose all over you, and these ghastly concerts, and
these hideous meals, and these awful flimsy, choky houses. Far better
the Agricultural College. Far better England.

He was sick with homesickness as he flung himself into bed. And it
seemed to him he was always homesick for some place which he had never
known and perhaps never would know. He was always homesick for somewhere
else. He always hated where he was, silently but deeply.

Different people. The place would be all right, but for the people.

He hated women. He hated the kind of nausea he felt after they had
crowded on him. The yellow cat-eyes of that deadly Monica! The inky eyes
of that low-down Mary! The big nose of that Grace: she was the most
tolerable. And the indecency of the red-haired Aunt Matilda, with her
gold chains.

He flung his trousers in one direction, and the loathsome starched shirt
in another, and his underwear in another. When he was quite clear of all
his clothing he clenched his fists and reached them up, and stretched
hard, hard as if to stretch himself clear of it all. Then he did a few
thoughtless exercises, to shake off the world. He wanted the muscles of
his body to move, to shake off the contact of the world. As a dog coming
out of the water shakes himself, so Jack stood there slowly, intensely
going through his exercises, slowly sloughing the contact of the world
from his young, resistant white body. And his hair fell loose into curl,
and the alert defiance came into his eyes as he threw apart his arms and
opened his young chest. Anything, anything to forget the world and to
throw the contact of people off his limbs and his chest. Keen and savage
as a Greek gymnast, he struck the air with his arms, with his legs.

Till at last he felt he had broken through the mesh. His blood was
running free, he had shattered the film that other people put over him,
as if snails had crawled over him. His skin was free and alive. He
glowered at the door, and made the barricade more safe.

Then he dived into his nightshirt, and felt the world was his own again.
At least in his own immediate vicinity. Which was all he cared about for
the moment.



CHAPTER III

DRIVING TO WANDOO


I


Jack started before dawn next morning, for Wandoo. Mr. George had
business which took him south, so he decided to carry the boy along on
the coach. Mr. Ellis also was returning home in the coach, but the
twins, those lambs, were staying behind. In the chilly dark, Jack
climbed the front of the buggy to sit on the seat beside the driver. He
was huddled in his overcoat, the happiest boy alive. For now at last he
was "getting away," as he always wanted to "get away." From what, he
didn't stop to consider, and still less did he realise _towards_ what.
Because however far you may get away from one thing, by so much do you
draw near to another.

And this is the Fata Morgana of Liberty, or Freedom. She may lead you
very definitely away from to-day's prison. But she also very definitely
leads you towards some other prison. Liberty is a changing of prisons,
to people who seek _only_ liberty.

Away went the buggy at a spanking trot, the driver pointing out the
phosphoric glow of the river, as they descended to the Causeway. Stars
still shone overhead, but the sky was beginning to open inland. The
buggy ran softly over the damp sand, the two horses were full of life.
There was an aroma of damp sand, and a fresh breeze from the river as
they crossed.

Jack didn't want to talk. But the driver couldn't miss the opportunity.

"I drives this coach backards and forrards to Albany week in week out,
years without end amen, and a good two hundred miles o' land to cover,
taking six days clear with two 'osses, and them in relays fifteen or
twenty miles, sometimes over, as on the outland reach past Wagin."

"Ever get held up?"

"No sir, can't say as I do. Who'd there be to hold me up in Western
Australia? And if there was, the mounted police'd soon settle 'em.
There's nobody to hold me up but my old woman, and she drives the coach
for me up Middle Swan way."

"Can she drive?"

"You back your life she can. Bred and born to it. Drive an' swear at the
'osses like a trooper, when she's a mind. Swear! I'd never ha' thought
it of 'er, when I rode behind 'er as a groom."

"How?"

"Oh, she took me in, she did, pretty. But after all, what's a lady but a
woman! Though far be it from me to say: 'What's a woman but a lady!' If
I'd gone down on my hands an' knees to her, in them days, I should have
expected her to kick me. And what does she do? Rode out of the park
gates and stopped. So she did. Turns to me. 'Grey,' she says, 'here's
money. You go to London and buy yourself clothes like what a grocer
would buy. Avoid looking like a butler or a groom. And when you've got
an outfit, dress and make yourself look like a grocer,' she said, though
I never had any connections with grocery in my life--'and go to the
office in Victoria Street and take two passages to Australia.' That was
what she said. Just Australia. When the man in the office asked me,
where to in Australia, I didn't know what to say. 'Oh, we'll go in at
the first gate,' I said. And so it was Fremantle. 'Yes,' she said,
'we're going to elope. Nice thing for me,' thinks I. But I says, 'All
right, Miss.' She was a pearl beyond price, was Miss Ethel. So she
seemed to me then. Now she's a termagant as ever was: in double 'arness,
collar-proud."

The coachman flicked the horses. Jack looked at him in amazement. He was
a man with a whitish-looking beard, in the dim light.

"And did she have any children?"

"She's got five."

"And does she regret it?"

"At times, I suppose. But as I say to her, if anybody was took in, it
was me. I always thought her a perfect lady. So when she lets fly at me:
'Call yourself a man?' I just say to her: 'Call yourself a lady?' And
she comes round all right."

Jack's consciousness began to go dim. He was aware of a strange dim
booming almost like guns in the distance, and the driver's voice saying,
"Frogs, sir. Way back in the days before ever a British ship came here,
they say the Dutchmen came, and was frightened off by the croaking of
the bull frogs: Couldn't make it out a-nohow!"--The horses' hoofs were
echoing on the boarded Causeway, and from the little islands alongside
came the amazing croaking, barking, booing and booming of the frogs.



II


When Jack looked round again it was day. And the driver's beard was
black. He was a man with a thin red face and black beard and queer grey
eyes that had a mocking sort of secret in them.

"I thought your beard was white," said Jack.

"Ay, with rime. With frost. Not with anything else."

"I didn't expect hoar-frost here."

"Well--it's not so very common. Not like the Old Country."

Jack realised they always spoke patronisingly of the Old Country, poor
old place, as if it couldn't help being what it was.

The man's grey eyes with the amused secret glanced quickly at Jack.

"Not quite awake yet?" he said.

"Oh, yes," said Jack.

"Coming out to settle, I hope," said the driver. "We can do with a few
spruce young lads. I've got five daughters to contend with. Why there's
six A1 families in Perth, maybe you've heard, and six in the country,
and possibly six round Fremantle, and nary one of 'em but's got seven
daughters. Seven daughters----"

Jack did not hear. He seemed to be saying, in reply to some question,
"I'm Jack Hector Grant."

"Contrairy," the servants had called him, and "naughty little boy," his
Aunts. Insubordinate, untrustworthy. Such things they said of him. His
soul pricked from all the things, but he guessed they were not far
wrong.

What did his mother think of him? And his father? He didn't know them
very well. They only came home sometimes, and then they seemed to him
reasonable and delightful people. The Wandering Grants, Lady Bewley had
called them.

Was he a liar? When they called him a liar, was it true? It was. And yet
he never really _felt_ a liar. "Don't ask, and you'll get no lies told
you." It was a phrase from his nurse, and he always wanted to use it to
his hateful Aunts. "Say you're sorry! Say you're sorry!" Wasn't that
forcing him to tell lies, when he _wasn't_ sorry? His Aunts always
seemed to him despicable liars. He himself was just an ordinary liar. He
lied because he _didn't_ want them to know what he'd done, even when
he'd done right.

So they threatened him with that loathsome "policeman." Or they dropped
him over the garden fence into the field beyond. There he sat in a sort
of Crusoe solitary confinement. A vast row of back fences, and a vast,
vast field. Himself squatting immovable, and an Aunt coming to demand
sharply through the fence: "Say you're sorry. Say you want to be a good
little boy. Say it, or you won't come in to dinner. You'll stay there
all night."

He wasn't sorry, he didn't want to be a good little boy, therefore he
wouldn't "say it"; so he got a piece of bread and butter pushed through
the fence. And then he faced the emptiness of the field and set off, to
find himself somehow in the kitchen-garden of the manor-house. A servant
had seen him, and brought him before her ladyship, who was herself
walking in the garden.

"Who are you, little boy?"

"I'm Jack Hector Grant"--a pause. "Who are you?"

"I'm Lady Bewley."

They eyed one another.

"And where were you wandering to, in my garden?"

"I wasn't wand'rin'. I was walkin'."

"Were you? Come, then, and walk with me, will you?"

She took his hand and led him along a path. He didn't quite know if he
was a prisoner. But her hand was gentle, and she seemed a quiet, sad
lady. She stepped with him through wide-open window-doors. He looked
uneasily round the drawing-room, then at the quiet lady.

"Where was _you_ born?" he asked her.

"Why, you funny boy, I was born in this house."

"My mother wasn't. She was born in Australia. And my father was born in
India. And I can't remember where I was born."

A servant had brought in the tea-tray. The child was sitting on a
foot-stool. The lady seemed not to be listening. There was a dark cake.

"My mother said I wasn't never to ask for cake, but if somebody was to
offer me some, I needn't say No fank you."

"Yes, you shall have some cake," said the lady. "So you are one of the
Wandering Grants, and you don't know where you were born?"

"But I think I was born in my mother's bed."

"I suppose you were.--And how old are you?"

"I'm four. How old are you?"

"A great deal older than that.--But tell me, what were you doing in my
garden."

"I don't know. Well, I corned by mistake."

"How was that?"

"'Cause I wouldn't say I was sorry I told a lie. Well, I wasn't sorry.
But I wasn't wandrin' in your garden. I was only walkin'. I was walkin'
out of the meadow where they put me----"

----"And I says, she may have been born in a 'all, but she'll die in a
wooden shack."

"Who? Who will?"

"I was tellin' you about my old woman.--Look! There's a joey runnin'
there along the track."

Jack looked, and saw a funny little animal half leaping, half running
along.

"We call them baby 'roos, joeys, you understand, and they make the
cutest little pets you ever did imagine."

They were still in sandy country, on a good road not far from the river,
and Jack saw the little chap jump to cover. The tall gum trees with
their brownish pale smooth stems and loose strips of bark stood tall and
straight and still, scattered like a thin forest that spread unending,
rising from a low, heath-like undergrowth. It seemed open, and yet
weird, enclosing you in its vast emptiness. This bush, that he had heard
so much of! The sun had climbed out of the mist, and was becoming gold
and powerful in a limpid sky. The leaves of the gum trees hung like
heavy narrow blades, inert and colourless, in a weight of silence. Save
when they came to a more open place, and a flock of green parrots flew
shrieking, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!" At least that was what the
driver said they cried.--The lower air was still somewhat chilly from
the mist. A number of black-and-white handsome birds, that they call
magpies, flew alongside in the bush, keeping pace for a time with the
buggy. And once a wallaby ran alongside for a while on the path, a
bigger 'roo than the joey, and very funny, leaping persistently
alongside with his little hands dangling.

It was a new country after all. It was different. A small exultance grew
inside the youth. After all, he _had_ got away, into a country that men
had not yet clutched into their grip. Where you could do as you liked,
without being stifled by people. He still had a secret intention of
doing as he liked, though what it was he would do when he could do as he
liked, he did not know. Nothing very definite. And yet something stirred
in his bowels as he saw the endless bush, and the noisy green parrots
and the queer, tame kangaroos: and no man.

"It's dingy country down here," the coachman was saying. "Not good for
much. No good for nothing except cemetery, though Mr. George says he
believes in it. And there's nothing you can do with it, seeing as how
many gents what come in the first place has gone away for ever, lock
stock and barrel, leaving nothing but their 'claims' on the land itself,
so nobody else can touch it." Here he shook the reins on the horses'
backs. "But I hopes you settles, and makes good, and marries and has
children, like me and my old woman, sir. She've put five daughters into
the total, born in a shack, though their mother was born in Pontesbeach
Hall----"

But Jack's mind drifted away from the driver. He was in that third
state, not uncommon to youth, which seems to intervene between reality
and dream. The bush, the coach, the wallabies, the coachdriver were not
very real to him. Neither was his own self and his own past very real to
him. There seemed to him to be another mute core to himself. Apart from
the known Jack Grant, and apart from the world as he had known it. Even
apart from this Australia which was so unknown to him.

As a matter of fact, he had not yet come-to in Australia. He had not yet
extricated himself from England and the ship. Half of himself was left
behind, and the other half was gone ahead. So there he sat, mute and
stupid.

He only knew he wanted something, and he resented something. He resented
having been so much found fault with. They had hated him because he
preferred to make friends among "good-for-nothings." But as he saw it,
"good-for-nothings" were the only ones that had any daring. Not
altogether tamed. He loathed the thought of harness. He hated tameness,
hated it, hated it. The thought of it made his innocent face take on a
really devilish look. And because of his hatred of harness, he hated
answering the questions that people put to him. Neither did he ask many,
for his own part. But now one popped out.

"There _are_ policemen here, are there?"

"Yes, sir, a good force of mounted police, a smart body of men. And
they're needed. Western Australia is full of old prisoners, black
fellers, and white ones too. The whites, born here, is called 'gropers,'
if you take me, sir. Sand-gropers. And they all need protection one from
the other. And there's half-pay officers, civil and military, and
clergy, scattered through the bush----"

"Need protecting from one another, and yet he says there's nobody to
hold up the coach," thought Jack to himself, cynically.

The bush had alternated with patches of wild scrub. But now came
clearings: a little wooden house, and an orchard of trees planted in
rows, with a grazing field beyond. Then more flat meadows, and ploughed
spaces, and a humpy or a shack here and there: children playing around,
and hens: then a regular homestead, with a verandah on either side, and
creepers climbing up, and fences about.

"The soil is red!" said Jack.

"Clay! That's clay! No more sand, except in patches, all the way to
Albany. This is Guildford where the roses grow."

They clattered across a narrow wooden bridge with a white railing, and
up to a wooden inn where the horses were to be changed. Jack got down in
the road, and saw Mr. George and Mr. Ellis both sleepily emerge and pass
without a word into the place marked BAR.

"I think I'll walk on a bit," said Jack, "if you'll pick me up."

But at that moment a fleecy white head peering out of the back of the
coach cried:

"Oh, Mr. Gwey! Oh, Mr. Gwey! They've frowed away a perfectly good cat."

The driver went over with Jack to where the chubby arm was pointing, and
saw the body of a cat stretched by the trodden grass. It was quite dead.
They stood looking at it, Grey explaining that it was a good skin and it
certainly was a pity to waste it, and he hoped someone would find it who
would tan it before it went too far, for as for him, he could not take
it along in the coach, the passengers might object before they reached
Albany, though the weather was cooling up a bit.

Jack laughed and went back to the coach to throw off his overcoat. He
loved the crazy inconsequence of everything. He stepped along the road
feeling his legs thrilling with new life. The thrill and exultance of
new life. And yet somewhere in his breast and throat tears were heaving.
Why? Why? He didn't know. Only he wanted to cry till he died. And at the
same time, he felt such a strength and a new power of life in his legs
as he strode the Australian way, that he threw back his head in a sort
of exultance.

Let the exultance conquer. Let the tears go to blazes.

When the coach came alongside, there was the old danger-look in his
eyes, a defiance, and something of the cat-look of a young lion. He did
not mount, but walked on up the hill. They were climbing the steep
Darling Ranges, and soon he had a wonderful view. There was the
wonderful clean new country spread out below him, so big, so soft, so
ancient in its virginity. And far beyond, the gleam of that strange
empty sea. He saw the grey-green bush ribboned with blue rivers, winding
to an unknown sea. And in his heart he was _determining_ to get what he
wanted. Even though he did not know what it was he wanted. In his heart
he clinched his determination to get it. To get it out of this ancient
country's virginity.

He waited at the top of the hill. The horses came clop-clopping up.
Morning was warm and full of sun. They had rolled up the flaps of the
wagonette, and there was the beaming face of Mr. George, and the purple
face of Mr. Ellis, and the back of the head of the floss-haired child.

Jack looked back again, when he had climbed to his seat and the horses
were breathing, to where the foot of the grey-bush hills rested in a
valley ribboned with rivers and patched with cultivation, all frail and
delicate in a dim ethereal light.

"A land of promise! A land of promise," said Mr. George. "When I was
young I bid £1080 for 2,700 acres of it. But Hammersley bid twenty
pounds more, and got it.--Take up land, Jack Grant, take up land. Buy,
beg, borrow or steal land, but get it, sir, get it."

"Hell have to go farther back to find it," said Mr. Ellis, from his blue
face. "He'll get none of what he sees there."

"Oh, if he means to stay, he can jump it.--The law is always bendin' and
breakin', bendin' and breakin'."

"Well, if he's going to live with me, Mr. George, don't put him on to
land-snatching," said Mr. Ellis. And the two men fell to a discussion of
Land Acts, Grants, Holdings, Claims, and Jack soon ceased to listen. He
thought the land looked lovely. But he had no desire to own any of it.
He never felt the possibility of "owning" land. There the land was, for
eternity. How could he own it?--Anyhow, it made no appeal to him along
those lines.

But Mr. Ellis loved "timber" and broke the spell by pointing and saying:

"See them trees, Jack my boy? Jarrah! Hills run one into the other way
to the Blackwood River. Hundreds of miles of beautiful jarrah timber.
The trees like this barren iron-stone formation. It's well they do, for
nothing else does."

"There's one o' the mud-brick buildings the convicts lived in, while
they were building the road," said the driver, not to be done out of his
say. "One of the convicts broke and got away. Mostly when they went off
they was driven in by the bush. But this one never. They say he's
wanderin' yet. I say, dead."

Mr. George was explaining the landscape.

"Down there, Darlington. Governor Darling went down and never came back.
Went home the quick way.--Boya, native word for rock. Mahogany Creek
just above there. They'll see us coming. Kids watch from the rise, run
back and holloa. Pa catches rooster, black girl blows fire, Ma mixes
paste, yardman peels spuds,--dinner when we get there."

"And, sir, Sam has a good brew, none better. Also, sir, though it looks
lonesome, he's mostly got company."

"How's that?"

"Well, sir, everyone comes for miles round to hear his missus play the
harmonium. Got it out from England, and if it doesn't break your heart
to hear it! The voice of the past! You'd love to hear it, Mr. Grant,
being new from home."

"I'm sure I should," said Jack, thinking of the concert.

The dinner at Mahogany Creek was as Mr. George had said. Afterwards, on
again through the bush.

Towards the end of the afternoon the coach pulled up at a little
by-road, where stood a basket-work shay, and a tall young fellow in very
old clothes lounging with loose legs.

"'Ere y'are!" said Grey, and walking the horses to the side of the road,
he scrambled down to pull water from a well. "Here we are!" said Mr.
Ellis from the back of the coach, where the tall youth was just
receiving the floss-haired baby between his big red hands. Fat Mr. Ellis
got down. The youth began pulling out Jack's bags and boxes, and Jack
hurried round to help him.

"This is Tom," said Mr. Ellis.

"Pleased to meet you," said Tom, holding out a big hand and clasping
Jack's hand hard for a moment. Then they went on piling the luggage on
the wicker shay.

"That's the lot!" called Mr. Ellis.

"Good-bye, Jack!" said Mr. George, leaning his grey head out of the
coach. "Be good and you'll be happy."

Over which speech Jack puzzled mutely. But the floss-haired baby girl
was embracing his trouser legs.

"I never knew you were an Ellis," he said to her.

"Ay, she's another of 'em," said Mr. Ellis.

The coach was going. Jack went over awkwardly and offered the driver a
two-shilling piece.

"Put it back in y'r pocket, lad, y'll want it more than I shall," said
Grey unceremoniously. "The best o' luck to you, an' I mean it."

They all packed into the shay, Jack sitting with his back to the horses,
the little girl tied in beside him, his smaller luggage bundled where it
could be stowed; and in absolute silence they drove through the silence
of the standing, motionless gum trees. Jack had never felt such silence.
At last they pulled up. Tom jumped down and drew a slip-rail, and they
passed a log fence, inside which there were many sheep, though it was
still bush. Tom got in again and they drove through bush, with
occasional sheep. Then Tom got down again--Jack could not see for what
purpose. The youth fetched an axe out of the cart and started chopping.
A tree was across the road: he was chopping at the broken part. There
came a sweet scent.

"Raspberry jam!" said Mr. Ellis. "That's _acacia acuminata_, a beautiful
wood, good for fences, posts, pipes, walking-sticks. And they're burning
it off by the million acres."

Tom pulled the trunk aside, and drove on again till he came to another
gate. Then they saw ahead a great clearing in the bush, and in the midst
of the clearing a "ginger-bread" house, made of wood slabs, with a
shingle roof running low all round to the verandahs. A woman in dark
homespun cloth with an apron and sunbonnet, and a young bearded man in
moleskins and blue shirt, came out with a cheery shout.

"You get along inside and have some tea," said the young bearded man.
"I'll change the horses."

The woman lifted down the baby, after having untied her.

There was a door in the front of the house, a window on each side. But
they all went round under the eaves to the mud-brick kitchen behind, and
had tea. The woman hardly spoke, but she smiled and passed the tea and
nursed Ellie. When the young bearded man came in, he smiled and said:

"I've got the mail out of the shay, Mr. Ellis."

"That's all right," said Mr. Ellis.

After which no one spoke again.

When they set off once more, there was a splendid pair of greys on
either side the pole.

"Bill and Lil," said Mr. Ellis. "My own breed. Angus lends us his for
the twenty miles to the cross roads. We've just changed them and got our
own. There's another twenty miles yet."

It now began to rain, and gradually grew dark and cold. The bush was
dree, the dreest thing Jack had ever known. Rugs and mackintoshes were
fetched out, the baby was fastened snug in a corner out of the wet, and
the horses kept up a steady pace. And then, as Nature went to roost, Mr.
Ellis woke up and pulled out his pipe, to begin a conversation.

"How's Ma?"

"Great!"

"How's Gran?"

"Same."

"All well?"

"Yes."

"He's come twenty miles," thought Jack, "and he only asks now!"

"See the doctor in town, Dad?" asked Tom.

"I did."

"What'd he say?"

"Oh, heart's wrong all right, just what Rackett said. But might live to
be older than he is. So I might too, lad."

"So you will an' all, Dad."

And then Mr. Ellis, as if desperate to change the conversation, pulling
hard at his pipe:

"Jersey cow calved?"

"Yes."

"Bull again?"

"No, heifer. Beauty."

They both smiled silently. Then Tom's tongue suddenly was loose.

"Little beauty, she is. And the Berkshire has farrowed nine little
prize-winners. Cowslip came on with 'er butter since she come on to the
barley. I cot them twins Og an' Magog peltin' the dogs with eggs, an'
them so scarce, so I wopped 'em both. That black spaniel bitch, I had to
kill her for she worried one o' the last batch o' sucking pigs, though I
don't know how she come to do such a thing. I've finished fallowin' in
the bottom meadow, an' I'm glad you're back to tell us what to get on
wif."

"How's clearing in th' Long Mile Paddock?"

"Only bin down there once. Sam's doin' all right."

"Hear anything of the Gum Tree Gully clearing gang?"

"Message from Spencer, an' y' t'go down some time--as soon's y' can."

"Well, I want the land reclaimed this year, an' I want it gone on with.
Never know what'll happen, Tom. I'd like for you to go down there, Tom.
You c'n take th' young feller behind here with you, soon's the girls
come home."

"What's he like?"

"Seems a likely enough young chap. Old George put in a good word for'm."

"Bit of a toff."

"Never you mind, s' long's his head's not toffy."

"Know anything?"

"Shouldn't say so."

"Some fool?"

"Don't know. You find out for y'self."

Silence.

Jack heard it all. But if he hadn't heard it, he could easily have
imagined it.

"Yes, you find out," he thought to himself, going dazed with fatigue and
indifference as he huddled under the blanket, hearing the horses' hoofs
clop-clop! and the rain splash on his shoulders. Sometimes the horses
pulled slow and hard in the dark, sometimes they bowled along. He could
see nothing. Sometimes there was a snort and jangle of harness, and the
wheels resounding hollow. "Bridging something," thought Jack. And he
wondered how they found their way in the utter dark, for there were no
lamps. The trees dripped heavily.

And then, at the end of all things, Tom jumped down and opened a gate.
Hope! But on and on and on. Stop!--hope!--another gate. On and on. Same
again. And so interminably.

Till at last some intuition seemed to communicate to Jack the presence
of home.--The rain had stopped, the moon was out. Ghostly and weird the
bush, with white trunks spreading like skeletons. There opened a
clearing, and a dog barked. A horse neighed near at hand. There were no
trees, a herd of animals was moving in the dusk. And then a dark house
loomed ahead, unlighted. The shay drove on, and round to the back. A
door opened, a woman's figure stood in the candle-light and firelight.

"All right, Ma!" called Tom.

"All right, dear!" called Mr. Ellis.

"All right!" shrilled a little voice----

Well, here they were, in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellis was a brown-haired
woman with a tired look in her eyes. She looked a long time at Jack,
holding his hand in her one hand and feeling his wet coat with the
other.

"You're wet. But you can go to bed when you've had your supper. I hope
you'll be all right. Tom'll look after you."

She was hoping that he would only bring good with him. She was all
mother: and mother of her own children first. She felt kindly towards
him. But he was another woman's son.

When they had eaten, Tom led the newcomer away out of the house, across
a little yard, threw open a door in the dark, and lit a candle stuck in
the neck of a bottle. Jack looked round at the mud floor, the windowless
window, the unlined wooden walls, the calico ceiling, and he was glad.
He was to share this cubby hole, as they called it, with the other Ellis
boys. His truckle bed was fresh and clean. He was content. It wasn't
stuffy, it was rough and remote.

When he opened his portmanteau to get out his nightshirt he asked Tom
where he was to put his clothes. For there was no cupboard or chest of
drawers or anything.

"On your back or under your bed," said Tom. "Or I might find y' an old
packing case, if y're decent.--But say, ol' bloke, lemme give y'a hint.
Don't y' get sidey or nosey up here, puttin' on jam an suchlike, f'r if
y'do y'll shame me in front of strangers, an' I won't stand it."

"Jam, did you say?"

"Yes, jam, macaroni, cockadoodle. We're plain people out here-aways, not
mantel ornaments nor dickey-toffs, an' we want no flash sparks round,
see?"

"_I'm_ no flash spark," said Jack. "Not enough for 'em at home. It's too
much fist and too little toff, that's the matter with me."

"C'n y' use y'r fists?"

"Like to try me?"

Jack shaped up to him.

"Oh for the love o' Mike," laughed Tom, "stow the haw-haw gab! You'll do
me though, I think."

"I'll try to oblige," said Jack, rolling into bed.

"Here!" said Tom sharply. "Out y' get an' say y' prayers."

"What sortta example for them kids of ours, gettin' into bed an'
forgettin' y'r prayers?"

Jack eyed the youth.

"You say yours?" he asked.

"Should say I do. Gran is on ter me right cruel if I don't see to it,
_whoever_ sleeps in this cubby. They has ter say their prayers, see?"

"All right!" said Jack laconically.

And he obediently got up, kneeled on the mud floor, and gabbled through
his quota. Somewhere in his heart he was touched by the simple honesty
of the boy. And somewhere else he was writhing with slow, contemptuous
repugnance at the vulgar tyranny.

But he called again to his aid that natural indifference of his,
grounded on contempt. And also a natural boyish tolerance, because he
saw that Tom had a naive, if rather vulgar, good-will.

He gabbled through his prayers wearily, but scrupulously to the last
Amen. Then rolled again into bed to sleep till morning, and forget,
forget, forget! He depended on his power of absolute forgetting.



CHAPTER IV

WANDOO


I


Two things struggled in Jack's mind when he awoke in the morning. The
first was the brave idea that he had left everything behind, that he had
done with his boyhood and was going to enter into his own. The second
was a noise of somebody quoting Latin and clicking wooden dumb-bells.

Jack opened his eyes. There were four beds in the cubby hole. Between
two beds stood a thin boy of about thirteen, swinging dumb-bells, and
facing two small urchins who were faithfully imitating him, except that
they did not repeat the Latin tags. They were all dressed in short
breeches loosely held up by braces, and under-vests.

_Veni!_ up went their arms smartly,--_vidi!_ down came the dubs to
horizontal,--_vici!_ the clubs were down by their sides.

Jack smiled to himself and dozed again. It was scarcely dawn. He was
dimly aware of the rain pattering on the shingle roof.

"Ain't ye gettin' up this morning?"

It was Tom standing contemplating him. The children had run out barefoot
and bare-armed in the rain.

"Is it morning?" asked Jack, stretching.

"Not half. We've fed th' osses. Come on."

"Where do I wash?"

"At the pump. Look slippy and get your clothes on. Our men live over at
Red's, we have to look sharp in the morning."

Jack looked slippy, and went out to wash in the tin dish by the pump.
The rain was abating, but it seemed a damp performance.

By the time he was really awake, the day had come clear. It was a fine
morning, the air fresh with the smell of flowering shrubs: silver
wattle, spirea, daphne and syringa which Ellis grew in his garden.
Already the sun was coming warm.

The house was a low stone building with a few trees round it. But all
the life went on here at the back, here where the pump was, and the
various yards and wooden out-buildings. There was a vista of open
clearing, and a few huge gum-trees. The sky was already blue, a certain
mist lay below the great isolated trees.

In the yard a score of motherless lambs were penned, bleating, their
silly faces looking up at Jack confidently, expecting the milk bottle.
He walked with his hands in the pockets of his old English tweeds,
feeling over-dressed and a bit out of place. Cows were tethered to posts
or standing loose about the fenced yard, and the half-caste Tim, and
Lennie, the dumb-bell boy, and a girl, were silently milking. The heavy,
pure silence of the Australian morning.

Jack stood at a little distance. A cat whisked across the yard and ran
up a queer-looking pine-tree, a dissipated old cow moved about at
random. "Hey you!" shouted Tom impatiently, "Take hoult of that cart
toss nosin' his way inter th' chaff-house, and bring him here. An' see
to that grey's ropes: she's chewin' 'em free. Look slippy, make yourself
useful."

There was a tone of amiability and intimacy mixed with this bossy
shouting. Jack ran to the cart toss. He couldn't help liking Tom and the
rest. They were so queer and naive, and they seemed oddly forlorn, like
waifs lost in this new country. Jack had always had a leaning towards
waifs and lost people. They were the only people whose bossing he didn't
mind.

The children at their various tasks were singing in shrill, clear
voices, with a sort of street-arab abandon. Lennie, the boy, would break
the shrilling of the twin urchins with a sudden musical yell, from the
side of the cow he was milking. And they seemed to sing anything, songs,
poetry, nonsense, anything that came into their heads, like birds
singing variously and at random.


"The blue, the fresh, the ever free
I am where I would ever be
With the blue above, and the blue below--"


Then a yell from Lennie by the cows:


"And wherever thus in childhood's _our_--"


The twins:


"I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more--"


Again a sudden and commanding yell from Lennie.

"I never loved a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But, when it came to know me well
And love me--"


Here the twins, as if hypnotized, howled out--


"--it was sure to die."


They kept up this ragged yelling in the new, soft morning, like lost
wild things. Jack laughed to himself. But they were quite serious. The
elders were dumb-silent. Only the youngsters made all this noise. Was it
a sort of protest against the great silence of the country? Was it their
young, lost effort in the noiseless antipodes, whose noiselessness seems
like a doom at last? They yelled away like wild little lost things, with
an uncanny abandon. It pleased Jack.



II


They had all gone silent again, and collected under the peppermint tree
at the back door, where Ma ladled out tea into mugs for everybody. Ma
was Mrs. Ellis. She still had the tired, distant look in her eyes, and a
tired bearing, and she seemed to take no notice of anybody, either when
she was in the kitchen or when she came out with pie to the group
squatting under the tree. When anyone said: "Some more tea, Ma!" she
silently ladled out the brew. Jack was not a very intent observer. But
he was-struck by Mrs. Ellis' silence and her "drawn" look.

Tom came and hitched himself up against the trunk of the tree. Lennie
was sitting opposite on a log, holding his tin mug and eyeing the
stranger in silence. On another log sat the two urchins, sturdy, wild
little brats, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed, as Jack had first
seen them, their dress still consisting of a little pair of pants and a
cotton undervest: and a pair of braces. The last seemed by far the most
important garment. Lennie was clothed, or unclothed, the same, while Tom
had added a pair of boots. The bare arms out of the cotton vests were
brown and smooth, and they gave the boys and the youth a curiously naked
look. A girl of about twelve, in a dark-blue spotted pinafore and a rag
of red hair-ribbon, sat on a little stump near the twins. She was silent
like her mother--but not yet "drawn."

"What d'ye think of Og an' Magog?" said Tom, pointing with his mug at
the twins. "Called for giants 'cos they're so small."

Jack did not know what to think. He tried to smile benevolently.

"An' that's Katie," continued Tom, indicating the girl, who at once
looked foolish. "She's younger'n Lennie, but she's pretty near his size.
He's another little 'un. Little an' cheeky, that's what he is. Too much
cheek for his age--which is fourteen. You'll have to keep him in his
place, I tell you straight."

"Ef ye _ken!_" murmured Len with a sour face.

Then, chirping up with a real street-arab pertness, he seemed to ignore
Jack as he asked brightly of Tom:

"An' who's My Lord Duke of Early Risin', if I might be told?--For before
Gosh he sports a tidy raiment."

"Now, Len, none o' yer lingo!" warned Tom.

"Who is he, anyway, as you should go tellin' him to keep me in my
place?"

"No offence intended, I'm sure," said Jack pleasantly.

"_Taken_ though!" said Lennie, with such a black look that Jack's colour
rose in spite of himself.

"You keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll punch it for you," he
said. He and Lennie stared each other in the eye.

Lennie had a beautiful little face, with an odd pathos like some lovely
girl, and grey eyes that could change to black. Jack felt a certain pang
of love for him, and in the same instant remembered that she-lioness cub
of a Monica. Perhaps she too had the same odd, lovely pathos, like a
young animal that runs alert and alone in the wood. Why did these
children seem so motherless and fatherless, so much on their own?--It
was very much how Jack felt himself. Yet he was not pathetic.

Lennie suddenly smiled whimsically, and Jack knew he was let into the
boy's heart. Queer! Up till now they had all kept a door shut against
him. Now Len had opened the door. Jack saw the winsomeness and pathos of
the boy vividly, and loved him, too. But it was still remote. And still
mixed up in it was the long stare of that Monica.

"That's right, you tell 'im," said Tom. "What I say here--no back chat,
an' no tales told. That's what's the motto on this station."

"_Obey an' please my Lord Tom Noddy_,"

"_So God shall love and angels aid ye_----" said Lennie, standing
tip-toe on his log and balancing his bare feet, and repeating his rhyme
with an abstract impudence, as if the fiends of air could hear him.

"Aw, shut up, you!" said Tom. "You've got ter get them 'osses down to
Red's. Take Jack an' show him."

"I'll show him," said Len, munching a large piece of pie as he set off.

"Ken ye ride, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer, because his riding didn't amount to much.



III


Len unhitched four heavy horses, led them into the yard, and put the
ropes into Jack's hands. The child marched so confidently under the
noses of the great creatures, as they planted their shaggy feet. And he
was such a midget, and with his brown bare arms and bare legs and feet,
and his vivid face, he looked so "tender." Jack's heart moved with
tenderness.

"Don't you ever wear boots?" he asked.

"Not if I k'n help it. Them kids now, they won't neither, 'n I don't
blame 'em. Last boots Ma sent for was found all over the manure heap, so
the old man said he'd buy no more boots, an' a good job too. The only
thing as scares me is double-gees: spikes all roads and Satan's face on
three sides. Ever see double-gees?"

Len was leading three ponderous horses. He started peering on the road,
the horses marching just behind his quick little figure. Then he found a
burr with three queer sides and a sort of face on each side with
sticking-out hair.

He was a funny kid, with his scraps of Latin and tags of poetry. Jack
wondered that he wasn't self-conscious and ashamed to quote poetry. But
he wasn't. He chirped them off, the bits of verse, as if they were a
natural form of expression.

They had led the horses to another stable. Len again gave the ropes to
Jack, disappeared, and returned leading a saddled stock-horse. Holding
the reins of the saddle-horse, the boy scrambled up the neck of one of
the big draft-horses like a monkey.

"Which are you goin' to ride?" he asked Jack from the height. "I'm
taking three an' leading Lucy. You take the other three."

So he received the three halter ropes.

"I think I'll walk," said Jack.

"Please y'self. You k'n open the gates easy walkin'; and comin' back
I'll do it, 'n you k'n ride Lucy an I'll ride behind pinion so's I can
slip down easy."

Yes, Lennie was a joy. On the return journey, when Jack was in the
saddle riding Lucy, Len flew up behind him and stood on the horse's
crupper, his hands on Jack's shoulders, crying: "Let 'er go!" At the
first gate, he slid down like a drop of water, then up again, this time
sitting back to back with Jack, facing the horse's tail, and whistling
briskly. Suddenly he stopped whistling, and said:

"Y've seen everybody but Gran an' Doc. Rackett, haven' you? He teaches
me--a rum sortta dock he is, too, never there when he's wanted. But he's
a real doctor all right: signs death certificates an' no questions
asked. Y' c'd do a murder, 'n if you was on the right side of him, y'd
never be hung. He'd say the corpse died of natural causes."

"I didn't know a corpse died," said Jack laughing.

"Didn't yer? Well yer know now!--Gran's as good as a corpse, an' she
don't want her die. She put on Granfer's grave: 'Left desolate, but not
without hope.' So they all thought she'd get married again. But she
never.--Did y' go to one of them English schools?"

"Yes."

"Ever wear a bell-topper?"

"Once or twice."

"Gosh!--May I never go to school, God help me. I should die of shame and
disgrace. Arrayed like a little black pea in a pod, learnin' to be
useless. Look at Rackett. School, an' Cambridge, an' comes inter money.
Wastes it. Wastes his life. Now he's teachin' me, an' th' only useful
thing he ever did."

After a pause, Jack ventured.

"Who is Dr. Rackett?"

"A waster. Down and out waster. He's got a sin. I don't know what it is,
but it's wastin' his soul away."



IV


It was no use Jack's trying to thread it all together. It was a
bewilderment, so he let it remain so. It seemed to him, that right at
the very core of all of them was the same bewildered vagueness: Mr.
Ellis, Mrs. Ellis, Tom, the men--they all had that empty bewildered
vagueness at the middle of them. Perhaps Lennie was most on the spot.
The others just could attend to their jobs, no more.

Jack still had no acquaintance with anyone but Tom and Len. He never got
an answer from Og and Magog. They just grinned and wriggled. Then there
was Katie. Then Harry, a fat, blue-eyed small boy. And then that
floss-haired Ellie who had come from Perth. And smaller than her, the
baby. All very confusing.

The second morning, when they were at the proper breakfast, Dad suddenly
said:

"Ma! D'ye know where the new narcissus bulbs are gone? I was waiting to
plant 'em till I got back."

"I've not seen them since ye put them in the shed at the end of the
verandah, dear."

"Well, they're gone."

Dead silence.

"Is 'em like onions?" asked Og, pricking up intelligently.

"Yes. They are! Have you seen them?" asked Dad sternly.

"I see Baby eatin' 'em, Dad," replied Og calmly.

"What, my bulbs, as I got out from England! Why, what the dickens, Ma,
d'you let that mischievous monkey loose for? My precious narcissus
bulbs, the first I've ever had. An' besides--Ma! I'm not sure but what
they're poison."

The parents looked at one another, then at the gay baby. There is a
general consternation. Ma gets the long, evil blue bottle of castor oil
and forcibly administers a spoonful to the screaming baby. Dad hurries
away, unable to look on the torture of the baby--the last of his name.
He goes to hunt for the bulbs in the verandah shed. Tom says, "By Gosh!"
and sits stupefied. Katie jumps up and smacks Og for telling tales, and
Magog flies at Katie for touching Og. Jack, as a visitor, unused to
family life, is a little puzzled.

Lennie meanwhile calmly continues to eat his large mutton chop. The
floss-haired Ellie toddles off talking to herself. She comes back just
as intent, wriggles on her chair on her stomach, manages to mount, and
puts her two fists on the table, clutching various nibbled, onion-like
roots.

"Vem's vem, ain't they, Dad? She never ate 'em. She got 'em out vis
mornin' and was suckin' 'em, so I took 'em from her an' hid 'em for
you."

"Should Dad have said Narcissi or Narcissuses?" asked Len from over his
coffee mug, in the hollow voice of one who speaks out of his cups.

Nobody answered. The baby was shining with castor oil. Jack sat in a
kind of stupefaction. Everybody ate mutton chops in noisy silence,
oppressively, and chewed huge doorsteps of bread.

Then there entered a melancholy, well-dressed young fellow who looked
like a daguerreotype of a melancholy young gentleman. He sauntered in in
silence, and pulling out his chair, sat down at table without a word.
Katie ran to bring his breakfast, which was on a plate on the hearth,
keeping warm. Then she sat down again. The meal was even more
oppressive. Everybody was eating quickly, to get away.

And then Gran opened the door leading from the parlour, and stood there
like the portrait of an old, old lady, stood there immovable, just
looking on, like some ghost. Jack's blood ran cold. The boys, pushing
back their empty plates, went quietly out to the verandah, to the air.
Jack followed, clutching his cap, that he had held all the time on his
knee.

Len was pulling off his shirt. The boys had to wear shirts at meal
times.

This was the wild new country! Jack's sense of bewilderment deepened.
Also he felt a sort of passionate love for the family--as a savage must
feel for his tribe. He felt he would never leave the family. He must
always be near them, always in close physical contact with them. And yet
he was just a trifle horrified by it all.



CHAPTER V

THE LAMBS COME HOME


I


A month later Tom and Lennie went off with the greys, Bill and Lil, to
fetch the girls. It had been wet, so Jack had spent most of his day in
the sheds mending corn sacks. He was dressed now in thick cotton
trousers, coloured shirt, and grey woollen socks, and copper-toed boots.
When he went ploughing, by Tom's advice he wore "lasting" socks--none.

His tweed coat hung on a nail on the wall of the cubby, his good
trousers and vest were under the mattress of his bed. The only useful
garment he had brought had been the old riding breeches of the
Agricultural College days.

On the back of his Tom-clipped hair was an ant-heap of an old felt hat,
and so he sat, hour after hour, sewing the sacks with a big needle. He
was certainly not unhappy. He had a sort of passion for the family. The
family was almost his vice. He felt he must be there with the family,
and then nothing else mattered. Dad and Ma were the silent, unobtrusive
pillars of the house. Tom was the important young person. Lennie was the
soul of the place. Og and Magog were the mischievous life. Then there
was Harry, whom Jack didn't like, and the little girls, to be looked
after. Dr. Rackett hovered round like an uneasy ghost, and Gran was
there in her room. Now the girls were coming home.

Jack felt he had sunk into the family, merged his individuality, and he
would never get out. His own father and mother, England, or the future,
meant nothing to him. He loved this family. He loved Tom, and Lennie,
and he wanted always to be with all of them. This was how it had taken
him: as a real passion.

He loved, too, the ugly stone house, especially the south side, the
shady side, which was the back where the peppermint tree stood. If you
entered the front door--which nobody did--you were in a tiny passage
from which opened the parlour on one side, and the dying room on the
other. Tom called it the dying room because it had never been used for
any other purpose by the family. Old Mr. Ellis had been carried down
there to die. So had his brother Willie. As Tom explained: "The
staircase is too narrow to handle a coffin."

Through the passage you dropped a step into the living room. On the
right from this you stepped up a step into the kitchen, and on the left,
up a step into Gran's room. Gran's room had once been the whole house:
the rest had been added on. It is often so in Australia.

From the sitting room you went straight on to the back verandah, and
there were the four trees, and a fenced-in garden, and the yards. The
garden had gay flowers, because Mr. Ellis loved them, and a round,
stone-walled well. Alongside was the yard, marked off by the four trees
into a square: a mulberry one side the kitchen door, a pepper the other,
a photosphorum with a seat under it a little way off, and across, a
Norfolk pine and half a fir tree.

Tom would talk to Jack about the family: a terrible tangle, they both
thought. Why, there was Gran, endless years old! Dad was fifty, and he
and Uncle Easu (dead) were her twins and her only sons. However, she had
seven daughters and, it seemed to Jack, hundreds of grandchildren, most
of them grown up with more children of their own.

"I could never remember all their names," he declared.

"I don't try," said Tom. "Neither does Gran. And I don't believe she
cares a tuppenny for 'em--for any of 'em, except Dad and us."

Gran was a delicate old lady with a lace cap, and white curly hair, and
an ivory face. She made a great impression on Jack, as if she were the
presiding deity of the family. Over her head as she sat by the sitting
room fire an old clock tick-tocked. That impressed Jack, too. There was
something weird in her age, her pallor, her white hair and white cap,
her remoteness. She was very important in the house, but mostly
invisible.

Lennie, Katie, Og and Magog, Harry, Ellie with the floss-hair and the
baby: these counted as "the children." Tom, who had had another mother,
not Ma, was different. And now the other twins, Monica and Grace, were
coming. These were the lambs. Jack, as he sat mending the sacks,
passionately in love with the family and happy doing any sort of work
there, thought of himself as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and laughed.

He wondered why he didn't like Harry. Harry was six, rather fat and
handsome, and strong as a baby bull. But he was always tormenting Baby.
Or was it Baby tormenting Harry?

Harry had got a picture book, and was finding out letters. Baby crawled
over and fell on the book. Harry snatched it away. Baby began to scream.
Ma interfered.

"Let Baby have it, dear."

"She'll tear it, Ma."

"Let her, dear. I'll get you another."

"When?"

"Some day, Harry. When I go to Perth."

"Ya.--Some day! Will ye get it Monday?"

"Oh, Harry, do be quiet, do----"

Then Baby and Harry tore the book between them in their shrieking
struggles, while Harry battered the cover on the baby's head. And a hot,
dangerous, bullying look would come into his eyes, the look of a bully.
Jack knew that look already. He would know it better before he had done
with Australia.

And yet Baby adored Harry. He was her one god.

Jack always marvelled over that baby. To him it was a little monster. It
had not lived twelve months, yet God alone knew the things it knew. The
ecstacy with which it smacked its red lips and showed its toothless gums
over sweet, sloppy food. The diabolic screams if it was thwarted. The
way it spat out "lumps" from the porridge! How on earth, at that age,
had it come to have such a mortal hatred for lumps in porridge? The way
its nose had to be held when it was given castor oil! And again, though
it protested so violently against lumps in porridge, how it loved such
abominations as plaster, earth, or the scrapings of the pig's bucket.

When you found it cramming dirt into its mouth, and scolded it, it would
hold up its hands wistfully to have them cleaned. And it didn't mind a
bit, then, if you swabbed its mouth out with a lump of rag.

It was a girl. It loved having a new clean frock on. Would sit gurgling
and patting its stomach, in a new smart frock, so pleased with itself.
Astounding!

It loved bulls and stallions and great pigs, running between their legs.
And yet it yelled in unholy terror if fowls or dogs came near. Went into
convulsions over the friendly old dog, or a quiet hen pecking near its
feet.

It was always trying to scuttle into the stable, where the horses stood.
And it had an imbecile desire to put its hand in the fire. And it adored
that blue-eyed bully of a Harry, and didn't care a straw for the mother
that slaved for it. Harry, who treated it with scorn and hate, pinching
it, cuffing it, shoving it out of its favorite positions--off the grass
patch, off the hearth-rug, off the sofa-end. But it knew exactly the
moment to retaliate, to claw his cap from his head and clutch his fair
curls, or to sweep his bread and jam on to the floor, into the dust, if
possible ....

To Jack it was all just incredible.



II


But it was part of the family, and so he loved it.

He dearly loved the cheeky Len.

"What d'y' want ter say 'feece' for? Why can't yer say 'fyce' like any
other bloke?--and why d'y' wash y'fyce before y'wash y'hands?"

"I like the water clean for my face."

"What about your dirty hands, smarmin' them over it?"

"You use a flannel or a sponge."

"If y've got one! Y'don't find 'em growin' in th' bush. Why can't y'
learn offa me now, an' be proper. Ye'll be such an awful sukey when
y'goes out campin', y'll shame y'self. Y'should wash y'hands first. Frow
away th' water if y'not short, but y' will be. Then when y've got
y'hands all soapy, sop y' fyce up an' down, not round an' round like a
cat does. Then pop y' nut under th' pump an' wring it dry. Don't never
waste y' huckaback on it. Y'll want that f' somefin' else."

"What else shall I want my towel for?"

"Wroppin' up things in, meat an' damper, an't'lay down for y'meal,
against th' ants, or to put over it against th' insex."

Then from Tom.

"Hey, nipper knowall, dry up! I've taught you the way you should behave,
haven't I? Well, I can teach Jack Grant, without any help from you.
Skedaddle!"

"Hope y' can! Sorry for y', havin' to try," said Len as he skedaddled.

Tom was the head of the clan, and the others gave him leal obedience and
a genuine, if impudent homage.

"What a funny kid!" said Jack. "He's different from the rest of you, and
his lingo's rotten."

"He's not dif!" said Tom. "'Xactly same. Same's all of us--same's all
the nips round here. He went t' same school as Monica and Grace an' me,
to Aunt's school in th' settlement, till Dr. Rackett came. If he's any
different, he got it from _him_: he's English."

Jack noticed they always spoke of Dr. Rackett as if he were a species of
rattlesnake that they kept tame about the place.

"But Ma got Dad to get the Doc, 'cos she can't bear to part with Len
even for a day--to give'm lessons at home.--I suppose he's her eldest
son.--Doc needn't, he's well-to-do. But he likes it, when he's here.
When he's not, Lennie slopes off and reads what he pleases. But it makes
no difference to Len, he's real clever. And--" Tom added grinning--"he
wouldn't speak like you do neither, not for all the tin in a cow's
bucket."

To Jack, fresh from an English Public school, Len was amazing. If he
hurt himself sharply, he sat and cried for a minute or two. Tears came
straight out, as if smitten from a rock. If he read a piece of sorrowful
poetry, he just sat and cried, wiping his eyes on his arm without
heeding anybody. He was greedy, and when he wanted to, he ate
enormously, in front of grown-up people. And yet you never minded. He
talked poetry, or raggy bits of Latin, with great sententiousness and in
the most awful accent, and without a qualm. Everything he did was right
in his own eyes. Perfectly right in his own eyes.

His mother was fascinated by him.

Three things he did well: he rode, bare-back, standing up, lying down,
anyhow. He rode like a circus rider. Also he boasted--heavens high. And
thirdly, he could laugh. There was something so sudden, so blithe, so
impish, so daring, and so wistful in his lit-up face when he laughed,
that your heart melted in you like a drop of water.

Jack loved him passionately: as one of the family.

And yet even to Lennie, Tom was the hero. Tom, the slow Tom, the rather
stupid Tom. To Lennie Tom's very stupidity was manly. Tom was so
dependable, so manly, such a capable director. He never gave trouble to
anyone, he was so complacent and self-reliant. Lennie was the
love-child, the elf. But Tom was the good, ordinary Man, and therefore
the hero.

Jack also loved Tom. But he did not accept his manliness so absolutely.
And it hurt him a little, that the strange sensitive Len should put
himself so absolutely in obedience and second place to the good plain
fellow. But it was so. Tom was the chief. Even to Jack.



III


When Tom was away, Jack felt as if the pivot of all activity was
missing. Mr. Ellis was not the real pivot. It was the plain, red-faced
Tom.

Tom had talked a good deal, in snatches, to Jack. It was the family that
bothered him, as usual. He always talked the family.

"My grandfather came out here in the early days. He was a merchant and
lost all his money in some East India business. He married Gran in
Melbourne, then they came out here. They had a bit of a struggle, but
they made good. Then Grampa died without leaving a will: which
complicated things for Gran. Dad and Easu was twins, but Dad was the
oldest. But Dad had wandered: he was gone for years and no one knows
what he did all the time.

"But Gran liked him best, and he was the eldest son, so she had this
place all fixed up for him when he came back. She'd a deal of trouble
getting the Reds out. All the A'nts were on their side--on the Red's
side. We always call Uncle Easu's family the Reds. And Aunt Emmie says
she's sure Uncle Easu was born first, and not Dad. And that Gran took a
fancy to Dad from the first, so she said he was the eldest. Anyhow it's
neither here nor there.--I hope to goodness I never get twins.--It runs
in the family, and of all the awful things! Though the Easu's have got
no twins. Seven sons and no girls, and no twins. Uncle Easu's dead, so
young Red runs their place.

"Uncle Easu was a nasty scrub, anyway. He married the servant girl, and
a servant girl no better than she should be, they say.

"He didn't make no will, either. Making no wills runs in the family, as
well as twins. Dad won't. His Dad wouldn't, and he won't neither."

Which meant, Jack knew, that by the law of the colony the property would
come to Tom.

"Oh. Gran's crafty all right! She never got herself talked about,
turning the Reds out! She saved up a stocking--Gran always has a
stocking. And she saved up an' bought 'em out. She persuaded them that
the land beyond this was better'n this. She worked in with 'em while Dad
was away, like the fingers on your hand: and bought that old barn of a
place over yonder for 'em, and bounced 'em into it. Gran's crafty, when
it's anyone she cares about. Now it's Len.

"Anyhow there it was when Dad came back, Wandoo all ready for him. He
brought me wrapped in a blanket. Old Tim, our half-caste man, was his
servant and there was my old nurse. That's all there is we know about
me. I know no more, neither who I am nor where I sprung from. And Dad
never lets on.

"He came back with a bit of money, and Gran made him marry Ma to mind
me. She said I was such a squalling little grub, and she wanted me
brought up decent. So Ma did it. But Gran never quite fancied me.

"It's a funny thing, seeing how I come, that I should be so steady and
ordinary, and Len should be so clever and unsteady. You'd ha' thought I
should be Len and him me.

"Who was my mother? That's what I want to know. Who was she? And Dad
won't never say.

"Anyhow she wasn't black, so what does it matter, anyhow?

"But it _does_ matter!"--Tom brought his fist down with a smack in the
palm of his other hand. "Nobody is ordinary to their mother, and I'm
ordinary to everybody, and I wish I wasn't."

Funny of Tom. Everybody depended on him so, he was the hero of the
establishment, because he was so steady and ordinary and dependable. And
now even he was wishing himself different. You never knew how folks
would take themselves.



IV


As for the Reds, Jack had been over to their place once or twice. They
were a rough crowd of men and youths, father and mother both dead. A
bachelor establishment. When there was any extra work to be done, the
Wandoos went over there to help. And the Reds came over to Wandoo the
same. In fact they came more often to Wandoo than the Ellises went to
them.

Jack felt the Reds didn't like him. So he didn't care for them. Red
Ellis, the eldest son, was about thirty years old, a tall, sinewy,
red-faced man with reddish hair and reddish beard and staring blue eyes.
One morning when Tom and Mr. Ellis were out mustering and tallying, Jack
was sent over to the Red house. This was during Jack's first fortnight
at Wandoo.

Red the eldest met him in the yard.

"Where's y'oss?"

"I haven't one. Mr. Ellis said you'd lend me one."

"Can y' ride?"

"More or less."

"What d'ye want wearin' that Hyde Park costume out here for?"

"I've nothing else to ride in," said Jack, who was in his old riding
breeches.

"Can't y' ride in trousers?"

"Can't keep 'em over my knees, yet."

"Better learn then, smart 'n'lively. Keep them down, 'n' y'socks up.
Come on then, blast ye, an' I'll see about a horse."

They went to the stockyard, an immense place. But it was an empty desert
now, save for a couple of black-boys holding a wild-looking bay. Red
called out to them:

"Caught Stampede, have y'? Well, let 'im go again afore y' break y'
necks. Y'r not to ride him, d'y hear?--What's in the stables, Ned?"

"Your mare, master. Waiting for you."

"What y' got besides, ye grinning jackasses? Find something for Mr.
Grant here, an' look slippy."

"Oh, master, no horse in, no knowin' stranger come."

Red turned to Jack. Easu was a coarse, swivel-eyed, loose-jointed tall
fellow.

"Y' hear that. Th' only thing left in this yard is Stampede. Ye k'n take
him or leave him, if y'r frightened of him. I'm goin' tallyin' sheep,
an' goin' now. If ye stop around idlin' all day, y'needn't tell Uncle
'twas my fault."

Jack hesitated. From a colonial point of view, he couldn't ride well,
and he knew it. Yet he hated Easu's insulting way. Easu went grinning to
the stable to fetch his mare, pleased with himself. He didn't want the
young Jackeroo planted on _him_, to teach any blankey thing to.

Jack went slowly over to the quivering Stampede, and asked the blacks if
they had ever ridden him. One answered:

"Me only fella ride 'im some time master not tomorrow. Me an' Ned catch
him in mob longa time--Try break him--no good. He come back paddock one
day. Ned wantta break him. No good. Master tell 'im let 'im go now."

Red Easu came walking out of the stable, chewing a stalk.

"Put the saddle on him," said Jack to the blacks. "Ill try."

The boys grinned and scuffled round. They rather liked the job. By being
very quick and light, Jack got into the saddle, and gripped. The boys
stood back, the horse stood up, and then whirled around on his hind
legs, and round and down. Then up and away like a squib round the yard.
The boys scattered, so did Easu, but Jack, because it was natural for
his legs to grip and stick, stuck on. His bones rattled, his hat flew
off, his heart beat high. But unless the horse came down backwards on
top of him, he could stay on. And he was not really afraid. He thought:
"If he doesn't go down backwards on top of me, I shall be all right."
And to the boys he called: "Open the gate!" Meanwhile he tried to quiet
the horse. "Steady now, steady!" he said, in a low, intimate voice.
"Steady boy!" And all the time he held on with his thighs and knees,
like iron.

He did not believe in the innate viciousness of the horse. He never
believed in the innate viciousness of anything, except a man. And he did
not want to fight the horse for simple mastery. He wanted just to hold
it hard with his legs until it soothed down a little, and he and it
could come to an understanding. But he must never relax the hold of his
hard legs, or he was dead.

Stampede was not ready for the gate. He sprang fiercely at it as if it
had been guarded by fire. Once in the open, he ran, and bucked, and
bucked, and ran, and kicked, and bucked, and ran. Jack stuck on with the
lower half of his body like a vise, feeling as if his head would be
jerked off his shoulders. It was becoming hard work. But he knew, unless
he stuck on, he was a dead man.

Then he was aware that Stampede was bolting, and Easu was coming along
on a grey mare.

Now they reached the far gate, and a miracle happened. Stampede stood
still while Red came up and opened the gate. Jack was conscious of a
body of live muscle and palpitating fire between his legs, of a furious
head tossing hair like hot wire, and bits of white foam. Also he was
aware of the trembling in his own thighs, and the sensual exertion of
gripping that hot wild body in the power of his own legs. Gripping the
hot horse in a grip of sensual mastery that made him tremble strangely
with a curious quivering. Yet he dared not relax.

"Go!" said Red. And away they went. Stampede bolted like the wind, and
Jack held on with his knees and by balance. He was thrilled, really:
frightened externally, but internally keyed up. And never for a moment
did he relax his mind's attention, nor the attention of his own tossed
body. The worst was the corkscrew bucks, when he nearly went over the
brute's head. And the moments of vindictive hate, when he would kill the
beast and be killed a thousand times, rather than be beaten. Up he went,
off the saddle, and down he came again, with a shattering jerk, down on
the front of the saddle. The balance he kept was a mystery even to
himself, his body was so flung about, by the volcano of furious life
beneath him. He felt himself shaken to pieces, his bones rattled all out
of socket. But they got there, out to the sheep paddock where a group of
Reds and black-boys stood staring in silence.

Jack jumped off, though his knees were weak and his hands trembling. The
horse stood dark with sweat. Quickly he unbuckled the saddle and bridle
and pulled them off, and gave the horse a clap on its wet neck. Away it
went, wild again, and free.

Jack glanced at the Reds, and then at Easu. Red Easu met his eyes, and
the two stared at one another. It was the defiance of the hostile
colonial, brutal and retrogressive, against the old mastery of the old
country. Jack was barely conscious. Yet he was not afraid, inside
himself, of the swivel-eyed brute of a fellow. He knew that Easu was not
a better man than himself, though he was bigger, older, and on his own
ground. But Jack had the pride of his own, old, well-bred country behind
him, and he would never go back on his breeding. He was not going to
yield in manliness before the colonial way of life: the brutishness, the
commonness. Inwardly he would not give in to it. But the best of it, the
colonial honesty and simplicity, that he loved.

There are two sides to colonials, as to everything. One side he loved.
The other he refused and defied.

These decisions are not mental, but they are critical in the soul of a
boy of eighteen. And the destiny of nations hangs on such silent, almost
unconscious decisions.

Esau--they called him Easu, but the name was Esau--turned to a black,
and bellowed:

"Give master your horse, and carry that bally saddle home."

Then silently they all turned to the sheep-tallying.



V


Jack was still sewing sacks. It was afternoon. He listened for the sound
of the shay, though he did not expect it until nightfall at least.

His ear, training to the Australian alertness, began to detect unusual
sounds. Or perhaps it was not his ear. The old bushman seems to have
developed a further faculty, a psychic faculty of "sensing" some unusual
disturbance in the atmosphere, and reading it. Jack was a very new
Australian. Yet he had become aware of this faculty in Tom, and he
wanted it for himself. He wanted to be able to hear the inaudible, like
a sort of clair-audience.

All he could hear was the audible: and all he could see was the visible.
The children were playing in the yard: he could see them in the dust.
Mrs. Ellis was still at the wash-tub: he saw the steam. Katie was
upstairs: he had seen her catching a hornet in the window. The men were
out ploughing, the horses were away. The pigs were walking round
grunting, the cows and poultry were all in the paddock. Gran never made
a sound, unless she suddenly appeared on the scene like the Lord in
Judgment. And Dr. Rackett was always quiet: often uncannily so.

It was still rainy season, but a warm, mellow, sleepy afternoon, with no
real sound at all. He got up and stood on the threshold to stretch
himself. And there, coming by the grain-shed, he saw a little cortege in
which the first individual he distinguished was Red Easu.

"Go in," shouted Red, "and tell A'nt as Herberts had an accident, and
we're bringin' him in."

Sure enough, they were carrying a man on a gate.

Mrs. Ellis clicked:

"Tt-tt-tt-tt-tt! They run to us when they're in trouble." But she went
at once to the linen closet, and on into the living room.

Gran was sitting in a corner by a little fire.

"Who's hurt?" she inquired testily. "Not one of the family, I hope and
pray."

"Jack says it's Red Herbert," replied Mrs. Ellis.

"Put him in the cubby with the boys, then."

But Mrs. Ellis thought of her beloved boys, and hesitated.

"Do you think it's much, Jack?" she asked.

"They're carrying him on a gate," said Jack. "It looks bad."

"Dear o'me!" snapped Gran, in her brittle fashion. "Why couldn't you say
so?--Well then--if you don't want to put him in the cubby, there's a bed
in my room. Put him there. But I should have thought he could have had
Tom's bed, and Tom could have slept here on the sofa."

"Poor Tom," thought Jack.

"Don't"--Gran banged her stick on the floor--"stand there like a pair of
sawneys! Get to work! Get to work!"

Jack was staring at the ground and twirling his hat. Gran hobbled
forward. He noticed to his surprise that she had a wooden leg. And she
stamped it at him:

"Go and fetch that rascal of a doctor!" she cried, in a startling loud
voice.

Jack went. Dr. Rackett was not in his room, for Jack halloed and knocked
at every door. He peeped into the rooms, whose doors were slightly
opened. This must be the girls' room--two beds, neat white quilts, blue
bow at the window. When would they be home? Here was the family bed,
with two cots in the room as well. He came to a shut door. This must be
it. He knocked and halloed again. No sound. Jack felt as if he were
bound to come upon a Bluebeard's chamber. He hated looking in these
bedrooms.

He knocked again, and opened the door. A queer smell, like chemicals. A
dark room, with the blind down: a few books, a feeling of dark
dreariness. But no Doctor. "So that's that!" thought Jack.

In spite of himself his boots clattered going down, and made him
nervous. Why did the inside of the house, where he never went, seem so
secret, and rather horrible? He peeped into the dismal little drawing
room. Not there of course! Opposite was the dying room, the door wide
open. Nobody ever was there.

Rackett was not in the house, that was certain. Jack slunk out, went to
the paddock, caught Lucy the saddle-horse; saddled her and cantered
aimlessly round, within hearing of the homestead. The afternoon was
passing. Not a soul was in sight. The gum-trees hung their sharp leaves
like obvious ghosts, with the hateful motionlessness of gum-trees. And
though flowers were out, they were queer, scentless, unspeaking sort of
flowers, even the red ones that were ragged like fire. Nothing spoke.
The distances were clear and mellow and beautiful, but soulless, and
nobody alive in the world. The silent, lonely gruesomeness of Australia
gave Jack the blues.

It surely was milking time. Jack returned quietly to the yard. Still
nobody alive in the world. As if everyone had died. Yes, there was the
half-caste Tim in the distance, bringing up the slow, unwilling cows,
slowly, like slow dreams.

And there was Dad coming out of the back door, in his shirt sleeves:
bluer and puffier than ever, with his usual serene expression, and his
look of boss, which came from his waistcoat and watchchain. Dad always
wore his waistcoat and watchchain, and seemed almost over-dressed in it.

Came Og and Magog running with quick little steps, and Len slinking
round the doorpost, and Harry marching alone, and Katie dragging her
feet, and Baby crawling. Jack was glad to see them. They had all been
indoors to look at the accident. And it had been a dull, dead, empty
afternoon, with all the life emptied out of it. Even now the family, the
beloved family, seemed a trifle gruesome to Jack.

He helped to milk: a job he was not good at. Dad even took a stool and
milked also. As usual Dad did nothing but supervise. It was a good thing
to have a real large family that made supervising worth while. So Tom
said, "It's a good thing to have nine children, you can clear some work
with 'em, if you're their Dad." That's why Jack was by no means one too
many. Dad supervised him too.

They got the milking done somehow. Jack changed his boots, washed
himself, and put on his coat. He nearly trod on the baby as he walked
across to the kitchen in the dying light. He lifted her and carried her
in.

Usually "tea"--which meant mutton chops and eggs and steaks as well--was
ready when they came in from milking. Today Mr. Ellis was putting
eucalyptus sticks under the kettle, making the eternally familiar scent
of the kitchen, and Mrs. Ellis was setting the table there. Usually,
they lived in the living room from breakfast on. But today, tea was to
be in the kitchen, with a silence and a cloud in the air like a funeral.
But there was plenty of noise coming from Gran's room.

Jack had to have Baby beside him for the meal. And she put sticky hands
in his hair and leaned over and chewed and sputtered crumbs, wet crumbs
in his ear. Then she tried to wriggle down, but the evening was chill
and her hands and feet were cold and Mrs. Ellis said to keep her up.
Jack felt he couldn't stand it any longer, when suddenly she fell
asleep, the most unexpected thing in the world, and Mrs. Ellis carried
off her and Harry, to bed.

Ah, the family! The family! Jack still loved it. It seemed to fill the
whole of life for him. He did not want to be alone, save at moments. And
yet, on an afternoon like today, he somehow realised that even the
family wouldn't last forever. What then? What then?

He couldn't bear the thought of getting married to one woman and coming
home to a house with only himself and this one woman in it. Then the
slow and lonely process of babies coming. The thought of such a future
was dreadful to him. He didn't want it. He didn't want his own children.
He wanted this family: always this family. And yet there was something
gruesome to him about the empty bedrooms and the uncanny privacies even
of this family. He didn't want to think of their privacies.



VI


Three of the Reds trooped out through the sitting room, lean, red-faced,
hairy, heavy-footed, uncouth figures, for their tea. The Wandoo Ellises
were aristocratic in comparison. They asked Jack to go and help hold
Herbert down, because he was fractious. "He's that fractious!"

Jack didn't in the least want to have to handle any of the Reds, but he
had to go. He found himself taking the two steps down into the dark
living room, and the two steps up into Gran's room beyond.

Why need the family be so quiet in the kitchen, when there was such a
hubbub in here? Alan Ellis was holding one leg of the injured party, and
Ross Ellis the other, and they both addressed the recumbent figure as if
it were an injured horse with a _Whoa there! Steady on, now! Steady,
boy, steady!_ Whilst Easu, bending terribly over the prostrate figure,
clutched both its arms in a vice, and cursed Jack for not coming sooner
to take one arm.

Herbert had hurt his head, and turned fractious. Jack took the one arm.
Easu was on the other side of the bed, his reddish fair beard glowing.
There was a queer power in Easu, which fascinated Jack a little. Beyond,
Gran was sitting up in bed, among many white pillows, like Red Riding
Hood's grandmother. A bright fire of wood logs was burning in the open
hearth, and four or five tallow candles smoked duskily. But a screen was
put between Gran's four-poster and Herbert's bed, a screen made of a
wooden clothes-horse covered with sheets. Jack, however, from his
position by Herbert's pillow, could see beyond the screen to Gran's
section.

His attention was drawn by the patient. Herbert's movements were sudden
and convulsive, and always in a sudden jerking towards the right side of
the bed. Easu had given Jack the left arm to hold, and as soon as
Herbert became violent, Jack couldn't hold him. The left arm, lean and
hard as iron, broke free, and Easu jumped up and cursed Jack.

Here was a pretty scene! With Gran mumbling to herself on the other side
the hideous sheeted screen!

There was nothing for it but to use cool intelligence--a thing the Reds
did not possess. Jack had lost his hold again, and Easu like a reddish,
glistening demon was gripping the sick man's two arms and arching over
him. Jack called up his old veterinary experience and proceeded to
detach himself.

He noticed first: that Herbert was far less fierce when they didn't
resist him. Second, that he stopped groaning when his eyes fell away
from the men around him. Third, that all the convulsive jerky movements,
which had thrown him out of the bed several times, were towards the
right side of the bed.

Then why not bind him to the left?

The left arm had again escaped his grasp, and Easu's exasperated fury
was only held in check by Gran's presence. Jack went out of the room and
found Katie.

"Hunt me out an old sheet," he said.

"What for?" she asked, but went off to do his bidding.

When she came back she said:

"Mother says they don't want to bandage Herbert, do they?"

"I'm going to try and bind him. I shan't hurt him," he replied.

"Oh Jack, don't let them send for me to sit with him--I hate sickness."

"You give us a hand then with this sheet."

Between them they prepared strong bands. Jack noosed one with sailor's
knots round Katie's hands, and fastened it to the table leg.

"Pull!" he ordered. "Pull as hard as you can." And as she pulled, "Does
it hint, now?"

"Not a bit," she said.

Jack went back to the sick room. Herbert was quiet, the three brothers
were sulky and silent. They wanted above all things to get out, to get
away. You could see that. Easu glanced at Jack's hand. There was
something tense and alert about Easu, like a great, wiry bird with
enormous power in its lean, red neck and its lean limbs.

"I thought we'd best bind him so as not to hurt him," said Jack. "I know
how to do it, I think."

The brothers said not a word, but let him go ahead. And Jack bound the
left arm and the left leg, and put a band round the body of the patient.
They looked on, rather distantly interested. Easu released the
convulsive left arm of his brother. Jack took the sick man's hand
soothingly, held it soothingly, then slipped his hand up the hairy
fore-arm and got the band attached just above the elbow. Then he
fastened the ends to the bed-head. He felt quite certain he was doing
right. While he was busy Mrs. Ellis came in. She watched in silence,
too. When it was done, Jack looked at her.

"I believe it'll do," she said with a nod of approval. And then, to the
cowed, hulking brothers, "You might as well go and get your tea."

They bumped into one another trying to get through the door. Jack
noticed they were in their stocking feet. They stooped outside the door
to pick up their boots.

"Good idea!" he thought. And he took off his own boots. It made him feel
more on the job.

Mrs. Ellis went round the white bed-sheet screen to sit with Gran. Jack
went blowing out the reeking candles on the sick man's side of the same
screen. Then he sat on a hard chair facing the staring, grimacing
patient. He felt sorry for him, but repelled by him. Yet as Herbert
tossed his wiry, hairy free arm and jerked his hairy, sharp-featured
face, Jack wanted to help him.

He remembered the vet's advice: "Get the creatures' confidence, lad, and
you can do anything with 'em. Horse or man, cat or canary, get the
creature's confidence, and if anything can be done, you can do it."

Jack wanted now to proceed to get the creature's confidence. He knew it
was a matter of will: of holding the other creature's will with his own
will. But gently, and in a kindly spirit.

He held Herbert's hard fingers softly in his own hand, and said softly:
"Keep quiet, old man, keep quiet. I'm here. I'll take care of you. You
rest. You go to sleep. I won't leave you. I'll take care of you."

Herbert lay still as if listening. His muscles relaxed. He seemed
dreadfully tired--Jack could feel it. He was dreadfully, dreadfully
tired. Perhaps the womanless, brutal life of the Reds had made him so
tired. He seemed to go to sleep. Then he jerked awake, and the
convulsive struggling began again, with the frightful rolling of the
eyes.

But the steady bonds that held him seemed to comfort him, and Jack
quietly took the clutching fingers again. And the sick man's eyes, in
their rolling, rested on the quiet, abstract face of the youth, with
strange watching. Jack did not move. And again Herbert's tension seemed
to relax. He seemed in an agony of desire to sleep, but the agony of
desire was so great, that the very fear of it jerked the sick man into
horrible wakefulness.

Jack was saying silently, with his will: "Don't worry! Don't worry, old
man! Don't worry! You go to sleep. I'll look after you."

And as he sat in dead silence, saying these things, he felt as if the
fluid of his life ran out of his fingers into the fingers of the hurt
man. He was left weak and limp. And Herbert began to go to sleep, really
to sleep.

Jack sat in a daze, with the virtue gone out of him. And Herbert's
fingers were soft and childlike again in their relaxation.

The boy started a little, feeling someone pat him on the shoulder. It
was Mrs. Ellis, patting him in commendation, because the patient was
sunk deep in sleep. Then she went out.

Following her with his eyes, Jack saw another figure in the doorway. It
was Red Easu, like a wolf out of the shadow, looking in. And Jack
quietly let slip the heavy, sleeping fingers of the sick man. But he did
not move his posture. Then he was aware that Easu had gone again.



VII


It was late, and the noise of rain outside, and weird wind blowing. Mrs.
Ellis had been in and whispered that Dr. Rackett was not home yet--that
he had probably waited somewhere for the shay. And that she had told the
Reds to keep away.

There was dead silence save for the weather outside, and a noise of the
fire. The candles were all blown out.

He was startled by hearing Gran's voice:

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings--"

"She's reading," thought Jack, though there was no light to read by. And
he wondered why the old lady wasn't asleep.

"I knew y'r mother's father, Jack Grant," came the thin, petulant voice.
"He cut off my leg. Devil of a fella wouldn't let me die when I wanted
to. Cut it off without a murmur, and no chloroform."

The thin voice was so devilishly awake, in the darkness of the night,
like a voice out of the past piercing the inert present.

"What did he care! What did he care! Not a bit," Gran went on. "And y're
another. You take after him. You're such another. You're a throw-back,
to your mother's father. I was wondering what I was going to do with
those great galoots in my room all night. I'm glad it's you."

Jack thought: "Lord, have I got to sit here all night!"

"You've got the night before you," said Gran's demonishly wakeful voice,
uncanny in its thin alertness, in the deep night. "So come round here to
the fireside an' make y'self comfortable."

Jack rose obediently and went round the screen. After all, an arm-chair
would be welcome.

"Well, say something," said Gran.

The boy peered at her in the dusk, in a kind of fear.

"Then light me a candle, for the land's sake," she said pettishly.

He took a tin candle-stick with a tallow candle, blew the fire and made
a yellow light. She looked like a carved ivory Chinese figure, almost
grotesque, among her pillows.

"Yes, y'r like y'r grandfather: a stocky, stubborn man as didn't say
much, but dare do anything. And never had a son.--Hard as nails the man
was."

"More family!" thought Jack wearily, disapproving of Gran's language
thoroughly.

"Had two daughters though, and disowned the eldest. Your mother was the
youngest. The eldest got herself into trouble and he turned her out.
Regular obstinate fool, and no bowels of compassion. That's how men are
when y' let 'em. You're the same."

Jack was so sleepy, so sleepy, and the words of the old woman seemed
like something pricking him.

"I'd have stood by her--but I was her age, and what could I do? I'd have
married her father if I could, for he was a widower. But he married
another woman for his second, and I went by ship to Melbourne, and then
I took poor old Ellis."

What on earth made her say these things, he didn't know, for he was dead
sleepy, and if he'd been wide awake he wouldn't have wanted her to
unload this sort of stuff on him. But she went on, like the old demon
she was:

"Men are fools, and women make 'em what they are. I followed your Aunt
Lizzie up, years after. She married a man in the mounted police, and he
sent the boy off. The boy was a bit weak-minded, and the man wouldn't
have him. So the lad disappeared into the bush. They say he was canny
enough about business and farming, but a bit off about people. Anyway he
was Mary's half-brother: you met Mary in Perth. Her scamp of a father
was father of that illegitimate boy. But she's an orphan now, poor
child: like that illegitimate half-brother of hers."

Jack looked up pathetically. He didn't want to hear. And Gran suddenly
laughed at him, with the sudden daring, winsome laugh, like Lennie.

"Y're a bundle of conventions, like y'r grandfather," she said tenderly.
"But y've got a kinder heart. I suppose that's from y'r English father.
Folks are tough in Australia: tough as whit-leather.--Y'll be tempted to
sin, but y'wont be tempted to condemn. And never you mind. Trust
yourself, Jack Grant. _Earn a good opinion of yourself_, and never mind
other folks. You've only got to live once. You know when you're spirit
glows--trust that. That's _you!_ That's the spirit of God in you. Trust
in that, and you'll never grow old. If you knuckle under, you'll grow
old."

She paused for a time.

"Though I don't know that I've much room to talk," she ruminated on.
"There was my son Esau, he never knuckled under, and though he's dead,
I've not much good to say of him. But then he never had a kind heart:
never. Never a woman loved Esau, though some feared him. I was not among
'em. Not I. I feared no man, not even your grand-father: except a
little. But look at Dad here now. He's got a kind heart: as kind a heart
as ever beat. And he's gone old. And he's got heart disease. And he
knuckled under. Ay, he knuckled under to me, he did, poor lad. And he'll
go off sudden, when his heart gives way. That's how it is with
kind-hearted men. They knuckle under, and they die young. Like Dad here.
He'll never make old bones. Poor lad!"

She mused again in silence.

"There's nothing to win in life, when all's said and done, but a good
opinion of yourself. I've watched and I know. God is y'rself. Or put it
the other way if you like: y'rself is God. So win a good opinion of
yourself, and watch the glow inside you."

Queer, thought Jack, that this should be an old woman's philosophy.
Yourself is God! Partly he believed it, partly he didn't. He didn't know
what he believed.--Watch the glow inside you. That he understood.

He liked Gran. She was so alone in life, amid all her children. He
himself was a lone wolf too: among the lambs of the family. And perhaps
Red Easu was a lone wolf.

"But what was I telling you?" Gran resumed. "About your illegitimate
cousin. I followed him up too. He went back beyond Atherton, and took up
land. He's got a tidy place now, and he's never married. He's wrong in
his head about people, but all right about the farm. I'm hoping that
place'll come to Mary one day, for the child's got nothing. She's a good
child--a good child. Her mother was a niece of mine."

She seemed to be going to sleep. But like Herbert, she roused again.

"Y'd better marry Mary. Make up your mind to it," she said.

And instantly he rebelled against the thought. Never.

"Perhaps I'd ought to have said: 'The best in yourself is God,'" she
mused. "Perhaps that's more it. The best in yourself is God. But then
who's going to say what is the best in yourself. A kind man knuckles
under, and thinks it's the best in himself. And a hard man holds out,
and thinks that's the best in himself. And its not good for a kind man
to knuckle under, and it's not good for a hard-hearted man to hold out.
What's to be done, deary-me, what's to be done. And no matter what we
say, people will be as they are.--You can but watch the glow."

She really did doze off. And Jack stole away to the other side of the
screen to escape her, leaving the candle burning.



VIII


He sat down thankfully on the hard chair by Herbert's side, glad to get
away from women. Glad to be with men, if it was only Herbert. Glad to
doze and feel alone: to feel alone.

He awoke with a jerk and a cramped neck, and there was Tom peeping in.
Tom? They must be back. Jack's chair creaked as he made a movement to
get up. But Tom only waved his hand and disappeared. Mean of Tom.

They must be back. The twins must be back. The family was replenished.
He stared with sleepy eyes, and a heavy, sleepy, sleepy head.

And the next thing he heard was a soft, alert voice saying: "Hello,
Bow!" Queer how it echoed in his dark consciousness as he slept, this
soft "Hello, Bow!"

There they were, both laughing, fresh with the wind and rain. Grace
standing just behind Monica, Monica's hair all tight crisp with rain,
blond at the temples, darker on the head, and her fresh face laughing,
and her yellow eyes looking with that long, meaningful look that had no
meaning, peering into his sleepy eyes. He felt something stir inside
him.

"Hello, Bow!" she said again, putting her fingers on his sleeve, "We've
got back." And still in his sleep-stupor he stared without answering a
word.

"You aren't awake!" she whispered, putting her cold hand suddenly on his
face, and laughing as he started back. A new look came into his eyes as
he stared startled at her, and she bent her head, turning aside.

"Poo! Smells of stinking candles in here!" whispered Grace.

Someone else was there. It was Red Easu in the doorway, saying in a
hoarse voice:

"Want me to take a spell with Herbert?"

Monica glanced back at him with a strange look. He loomed weird and
tall, with his rather long, red neck and glistening beard and quick blue
eyes. A certain sense of power came with him.

"Hello, girls, got back!" he added to the twins, who watched him without
speaking.

"Who's there?" said Gran's voice from the other side of the screen. "Is
it the girls back? Has Mary come with you?"

As if in answer to the summons, Mary appeared in the doorway, wearing a
white apron. She glanced first at Jack, with her black eyes, and then at
Gran. Monica was watching her with a sideways lynx look, and Grace was
looking at everybody with big blue eyes, while Easu looked down from his
uncouth, ostrich height.

"Hello, Gran!" said Mary, going to the other side of the screen to kiss
the old lady. The twins followed suit.

"Want me to take a spell in here?" said Easu, jerking his thumb at the
sleeping Herbert. Easu wore black trousers hitched up high with braces
over a dark-grey flannel shirt, and leather leggings, but no boots. His
shirt-sleeves were rolled up from his sinewy brown arms. His reddish
fair hair was thick and rather long. He spoke in a deep gruff voice,
that he made as quiet as possible, and he seemed to show a gruff sort of
submissiveness to Jack, at the moment.

"No, Easu," replied Gran, "I can't do with you, Jack Grant will manage."

The sick man was sleeping through it all like the dead.

"I can take a turn," said Mary's soft, low, insidious voice.

"No, not you either, Mary. You go to 'sleep after that drive. Go, all of
you, go to bed. I can't do with you all in here. Has Dr. Rackett come?"

"No," said Easu.

"Then go away, all of you. I can't do with you," said Gran.

Mary came round the screen and shook hands with Jack, looking him full
in the eyes with her black eyes, so that he was uncomfortable. She made
him more uncomfortable than Monica did. Monica had slunk also round the
screen, and was standing with one foot trailing, watching. She watched
just as closely when Mary shook hands with the embarrassed Easu.

They all retreated silently to the door. Grace went first. And with her
big, dark-blue eyes she glanced back inquisitively at Jack. Mary went
next--she too turning in the door to give him a look and an intimate,
furtive-seeming smile. Then came Monica, and like a wolf she lingered in
the door looking back with a long, meaningful, meaningless sidelong look
before she took her departure. Then on her heels went Easu, and he did
not look back. He seemed to loom over the girls.

"Blow the light out," said Gran.

He went round to blow out the candle. Gran lay there like an old angel.
Queer old soul--framed by pillow frills.

"Yourself is God!"

Jack thought of that with a certain exultance.

He went over and made up the fire. Then he sat in the arm-chair. Herbert
was moving. He went over to soothe him. The sick man moaned steadily for
some time, for a long time, then went still again. Jack slept in the
hard chair.

He woke up cramped and cold, and went round to the arm-chair by the
fire. Gran was sleeping like an inert bit of ivory. He softly attended
to the fire and sat down in the arm-chair.

He was riding a horse a long, long way, on a journey that would never
end. He couldn't stop the horse till it stopped of itself. And it would
never stop. A voice said: What has he done? And a voice answered:
Conquered the world.--But the horse did not stop. And he woke and saw
shadows on the wall, and slept again. Things had all turned to
dough--his hands were heavy with dough. He woke and looked at his hands
to see if it were so. How loudly and fiercely the clock ticked!

Not dough, but boxing gloves. He was fighting inside a ring, fighting
with somebody who was and who wasn't Easu. He could beat Easu--he
couldn't beat Easu. Easu had knocked him down; he was lying writhing
with pain and couldn't rise, while they were counting him out. In three
more seconds he would be counted out! Horror!

He woke, it was midnight and Herbert was writhing.

"Did I sleep a minute, Herbert?" he whispered.

"My head! My head! It jerks so!"

"Does it, old man? Never mind."

And the next thought was: "There must have been gun-powder in that piece
of wood, in the fire."



IX


It was half-past one, and Mary unexpectedly appeared with tray and
lighted candle, and cocoa-milk for Jack and arrowroot for Herbert. She
fed Herbert with a spoon, and he swallowed, but made no sign that he
understood.

"How did he get the accident?" Jack whispered.

"His horse threw him against a tree."

"Wish Rackett would come," whispered Jack.

Mary shook her head and they were silent.

"How old are you, Mary?" Jack asked.

"Nineteen."

"I'm eighteen at the end of this month."

"I know.--But I'm much older than you."

Jack looked at her queer dark muzzle. She seemed to have a queer, humble
complacency of her own.

"She"--Jack nodded his head towards Gran--"says that knuckling under
makes you old."

Mary laughed suddenly.

"Then I'm a thousand," she said.

"What do you knuckle under for?" he asked.

She looked up at him slowly, and again something quick and hot stirred
in him, from her dark, queer, humble, yet assured face.

"It's my way," she said, with an odd smile.

"Funny way to have," he replied, and suddenly he was embarrassed. And he
thought of Monica's dare-devil way.

He felt embarrassed.

"I must have my own way," said Mary, with another odd, beseeching, and
yet darkly confident smile.

"Yourself is God," thought Jack.--But he said nothing, because he felt
uncomfortable.

And Mary went away with the tray and the light, and he was glad when she
was gone.



X


The worst part of the night. Nothing happened--and that was perhaps the
worst part of it. Fortified by the powers of darkness, the slightest
sounds took on momentous importance, but nothing happened. He expected
something--but nothing came.

Gran asleep there, in all the fixed motionlessness of her years, a queer
white clot. And young Herbert asleep or unconscious, sending wild
vibrations from his brain.

The thought of Monica seemed to flutter subjectively in Jack's soul, the
thought of Mary objectively. That is, Monica was somehow inside him, in
his blood, like a sister. And Mary was outside him, like a black-boy.
Both of them engaging his soul. And yet he was alone, all alone in the
universe. These two only beset him. Or did he beset them?

The oppossums made a furious bombilation as they ran up and down, back
and forth between the roof and ceiling, like an army moving. And
suddenly, shatteringly a nut would come down on the old shingle roof
from the Moreton Bay fig outside, with a crash like a gun, while the
branches dangled and clanked against the timber walls. An immense,
uncanny strider! And him alone in the lonely, uncanny, timeless core of
the night.

Slowly the night went by. And weird things awoke in the boy's soul,
things he could never quite put to sleep again. He felt as if this night
he had entered into a dense, impenetrable thicket. As if he would never
get out. He knew he would never get out.

He awoke again with a start. Was it the first light? Herbert was
stirring. Jack went quickly to him.

Herbert opened dazed eyes, and mutely looked at Jack. A look of
intelligence came, and as quickly passed. He groaned, and the torment
came over him once more. Whatever was the matter with him? He writhed
and struggled, groaning--then relapsed into a cold, inert silence. It
was as if he were dying. As if he, or something in him, had decided to
die.

Jack was terribly startled. In terror, he mixed a little brandy and
milk, and tried to pour spoonfuls down the unresisting throat. He
quickly fetched a hot stone from the fire, wrapped it in a piece of
blanket, and put it in the bed.

Then he sat down and took the young man's hand softly in his own and
whispered intensely: "Come back, Herbert! Come back! Come back!"

With all his will he summoned the inert spirit. He was terribly afraid
the other would die. He sat and watched with a fixed, intent will. And
Herbert relaxed again, the life came round his eyes again.

"Oh, God!" thought Jack. "I shall die. I shall die myself. What sort of
a life have I got to live before I die? Oh, God, what sort of a life
have I got between me and when I die?"

And it all seemed a mystery to him. The God he called on was a dark,
almost fearful mystery. The life he had to live was a kind of doom. The
choice he had was no choice. "Yourself is God." It wasn't true. There
was a terrible God somewhere else. And nothing else than this.

Because, inside himself, he was alone, without father or mother or place
or people. Just a separate living thing. And he could not choose his
doom of living nor his dying. Somewhere outside himself was a terrible
God who decreed.

He was afraid of the thicket of life, in which he found himself like a
solitary, strange animal. He would have to find his way through: all the
way to death. But what sort of way? What sort of life? What sort of life
between him and death?

He didn't know. He only knew that something must be. That he was in a
strange bush, and by himself. And that he must find his way through.



CHAPTER VI

IN THE YARD


I


Ah, good to be out in the open air again! Beyond all telling good! Those
indoor rooms were like coffins. To be dead, and to writhe unreleased in
the coffin, that was what those indoor rooms were like.

"God, when I die, let me pass right away," prayed Jack. "Lord, I promise
to live my life right out, so that when I die I pass over and don't lie
wriggling in the coffin!"

Mary had come as soon as it was light, and found Herbert asleep and Jack
staring at him in a stupor.

"You go to sleep now, Bow," said Mary softly, laying her hand on his
arm.

He looked at her in a kind of horror, as if she were part of the dark
interior. He didn't want to go to sleep. He wanted to wake. He stood in
the yard and stared around stupefied at the early morning. Then he went
and hauled Lennie and the twins out of their bunks. Tom was already up.
Then he went, stripped to the waist, to the pump.

"Pump over my nut, Lennie," he shouted, holding his head at the pump
spout. Oh, 'twas so good to shout at somebody. He must shout.

And Lennie pumped away like a little imp.

When Jack looked out of the towel at the day, he saw the sky fresh with
yellow light, and some red still on the horizon above the grey
gum-trees. It all seemed crisp and snappy. It was life.

"Ain't yer goin' ter do any of yer monkey trickin' this morning?"
shouted Lennie at him.

Jack shook his head, and rubbed his white young shoulders with the
towel. Lennie, standing by the wash-tin in his little undervest and
loose little breeches, was watching closely.

"Can you answer me a riddle, Lennie?" asked Jack.

"Til try," said Len briskly, and Og and Magog jumped up in gay
expectation.

"What is God, anyhow?" asked Jack.

"Y'd better let my father hear y'," replied Lennie, with a dangerous nod
of the head.

"No, but I mean it. Suppose Herbert had died. I want to know what God
is."

Jack still had the inner darkness of that room in his eyes.

"I'll tell y'," said Len briskly. "God is a Higher Law than the
Constitution."

Jack thought about it. A higher law than the law of the land.
Maybe!--The answer left him cold.

"And what is self?" he asked.

"Crikey! Stop up another night! It 'ud make ye sawney.--But I'll tell y'
what self is."


"Self is a wilderness of sweets. And selves
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy."


Len was pleased with this. But Jack heard only words.

"Ask _me_ one, Jack! Ask _me_ one!" pleaded Og.

"All right. What's success, Og? asked Jack, smiling.

"Success! Success! Why, success--"

"Success is t'grow a big bingy like a bloke from town, 'n a watch-chain
acrost it with a gold dial in y' fob, and ter be allowed ter spout as
much gab as y've got bref left over from y' indigest," cut in Lennie,
with delight.

"That was _my_ riddle," yelled Og, rushing at him.

"Ask me one! Ask me one, Jack! Ask me one," yelled Magog.

"What's failure?" asked Jack, laughing.

"T' be down on y' uppers an' hev no visible means of supportin' y'r
pants up whilst y' slog t' the' nearest pub t'cadge a beer spot," crowed
Lennie in delight, while he fenced off Og.

Both twins made an assault and battery upon him.

"D'ye know y'r own answers?" yelled Len at Jack.

"No."

The brazenness of the admission flabbergasted the twins. They stalked
off. Len drew up a three-legged stool, and sat down to milk, explaining
impatiently that success comes to those that work and don't drink.

"But"--he reverted to his original thought--"ye've gotta work, not go
wastin' y'r feme as you generally do of a morning-boundin' about makin'
a kangaroo of y'self; tippin' y' elbows and holdin' back y' nut as if y'
had a woppin' fine drink in both hands, and gone screwed with joy afore
you drained it; lyin' flat on y' hands an' toes, an' heavin' up an'
down, up an' down, like a race-horse iguana frightened by a cat; an'
stalkin' an' stoopin' as if y'wanted ter catch a bird round a corner; or
roundin' up on imaginary things, makin' out t'hit 'em slap-bang-whizz on
the mitts they ain't got; whippin' round an' bobbin' like a cornered
billy-goat; skippin' up an' down like sis wif a rope, an' makin' a
general high falutin' ass of y'self."

"I see you and the twins with clubs," said Jack.

"Oh, that! That's more for music an' one-two-three-four," said Len.

"You see I'm in training," said Jack.

"What for? Want ter teach the old sows to start dancin' on th' corn-bin
floor?"

"No, I want to keep in training, for if I ever have a big fight."

"Who with?"

"Oh, I don't know. But I love a round with the fists. I'll teach you."

"All right. But why don't y' chuck farmin' an' go in f' prize fightin'?"

"I wish I could. But my father said no. An' perhaps he's right. But the
best thing I know is to fight a fair round. I'll teach you, Len."

"Huh! What's the sense! If y' want exercise, y' c'n rub that horse down
a bit cleaner than y' are doin'."

"Stop y' sauce, nipper, or I'll be after y' with a strap!" called Tom.
"Come on, Jack. Tea! Timothy's bangin' the billy-can. And just you land
that nipper a clout."

"Let him 'it me! Garn, let him!" cried Len, scooting up with his
milk-stool and pail and looking like David skirmishing before Goliath.
He wasn't laughing. There was a demonish little street-arab hostility in
his face.

"Don't you like me, Len?" Jack asked, a bit soft this morning. Len's
face at once suffused with a delightful roguishness.

"Aw, yes--if y' like!--I'll be dressin' up in Katie's skirts n' spoonin'
y' one of these bright nights."

He whipped away with his milk-pail, like a young lizard.



II


"Look at Bow, he looks like an owl," said Grace at breakfast.

"What d'y call 'im Bow for?" asked Len.

"Like a girl, with his eyes double size," said Monica.

"You'd better go to sleep, Jack," said Mrs. Ellis.

"Take a nap, lad," said Mr. Ellis. "There's nothin' for y' to do this
morning."

Jack was going stupefied again, as the sun grew warm. He didn't hear
half that was said. But the girls were very attentive to him. Mary was
not there: she was sitting with Herbert. But Monica and Grace waited on
him as if he had been their lord. It was a new experience for him:
Monica jumping up and whipping away his cup with her slim hand, to bring
it back filled, and Grace insisting on opening a special jar of jam for
him. Drowsy as he was, their attention made his blood stir. It was so
new to him.

Mary came in from the sitting room: they were still in the kitchen.

"Herbert is awake," she said. "He wants to be untied. Bow, do you think
he ought to?"

Jack rose in silence and went through to Gran's room. Herbert lay quite
still, but he was himself. Only shattered and wordless. He looked at
Jack and murmured:

"Can't y' untie me?"

Jack went at once to unfasten the linen bands. The twins, Monica and
Grace, stood watching from the doorway. Mary was at his side to help.

"Don't let 'em come in," said Herbert, looking into Jack's face.

Jack nodded and went to the door.

"He wants to be left alone," he said.

"Mustn't we come, Bow?" said Monica, making queer yellow eyes at him.

"Best not," he said. "Don't let anybody come. He wants absolute quiet."

"All right." She looked at him with a heavy look of obedience, as if
making an offering. They were not going to question his authority. She
drew Grace away: both the girls humble. Jack slowly and unconsciously
flushed. Then he went back to the bed.

"I want something," murmured Herbert wanly. "Send that other away."

"Go away, Mary. He wants a man to attend to him," said Jack.

Mary looked a long, dark look at Jack. Then she, too, submitted.

"All right," she said, turning darkly away.

And it came into his mind, with utter absurdity, that he ought to kiss
her for this submission. And he hated the thought.

Herbert was a boy of nineteen, uncouth, and savagely shy. Jack had to do
the menial offices for him.

The sick man went to sleep again almost immediately, and Jack returned
to the kitchen. He heard voices from outside.

Ma and Grace were washing up at the slab. Dad was sitting under the
photosphorum tree, with Effie on one knee, cutting up tobacco in the
palm of his hand. Tom was leaning against the tree, the children sat
about. Lennie skipped up and offered a seat on a stump.

"Sit yourself down, Bow," he said, using the nickname. "I'd be a knot
instead of a bow if I had to nurse Red Herbert."

Monica came slinking up from the shade, and stood with her skirt
touching Jack's arm. Mary was carrying away the dishes.

"I've been telling Tom," said Mr. Ellis, "that he can take the clearing
gang over to his A'nt Greenlow's for the shearing, an' then get back an'
clear for all he's worth, till Christmas. Y'might as well go along with
him, Jack. We can get along all right here without y', now th' girls are
back. Till Christmas, that is. We s'll want y' back for the harvest."

There was a dead silence. Jack didn't want to go.

"Then y' can go back to the clearing, and burn off. I need that land
reclaimed, over against the little chaps grows up and wants to be
farmers. Besides"--and he looked round at Ma--"we're a bit overstocked
in' the house just now, an' we'll be glad of the cubby for Herbert, if
he's on the mend."

Dad resumed cutting up his tobacco in the palm of his hand.

"Jack can't leave Herbert, Uncle," said Mary quietly, "he won't let
anybody else do for him."

"Eh?" said Mr. Ellis, looking up.

"Herbert won't let me do for him," said Mary. "He'll only let Bow."

Mr. Ellis dropped his head in silence.

"In that case," he said slowly, "in that case, we must wait a
bit.--Where's that darned Rackett put himself? This is his job."

There was still silence.

"Somebody had best go an', look for him," said Tom.

"Ay," said Mr. Ellis.

There was more silence. Monica, standing close to Jack, seemed to be
fiercely sheltering him from this eviction. And Mary, at a distance, was
like Moses' sister watching over events. It made Jack feel queer and
thrilled, the girls all concentrating on him. It was as if it put power
in his chest, and made a man of him.

Someone was riding up. It was Red Easu. He slung himself off his horse,
and stalked slowly up.

"Herbert dead?" he asked humorously.

"Doing nicely," said Dad, very brief.

"I'll go an' have a look at 'm," said Easu, sitting on the step and
pulling off his boots.

"Don't wake him if he's asleep. Don't frighten him, whatever you do,"
said Jack, anxious for his charge.

Easu looked at Jack with an insolent stare: a curious stare.

"Frighten him?" he said. "What with?"

"Jack's been up with him all night," put in Monica fiercely.

"He nearly died in the night," said Jack.

There was dead silence. Easu stared, poised like some menacing bird.
Then he went indoors in his stocking feet.

"Did he nearly die, Jack?" asked Tom.

Jack nodded. His soul was feeling bleached.

"If Dr. Rackett isn't coming--see if you can trail him up, Tom. And Len,
can you go on Lucy and fetch Dr. Mallett?"

"'Course I can," said Len, jumping up.

"You go and get a nap in the cubby, son," said Mr. Ellis.

They were now all in motion. Jack followed vaguely into the kitchen.
Lennie was the centre of excitement for the moment.

"Well, Ma, I has no socks fitta wear. If y'll fix me some, I'll go." For
he was determined to go to York in decent raiment, as he said.

"Find me a decent shirt, Ma; _decent!_ None o' your creases down th'
front for me. 'N a starch collar, real starch."

And so on. He was late. Lennie was always late.

"Ma, weer's my tie--th' blue one wif gold horseshoes? Grace--there's an
angel--me boots. Clean 'em up a bit, go on--Monica! Oh, Monica! there
y'are! Fix this collar on for me, proper, do! Y're a bloke at it, so
y'are, an' I'm no good.--Gitt outta th' way, you nips--how k'n I get
dressed with you buzzin' round me feet!--Ma! Ma! come an' brush me 'air
with that dinkey nice-smellin' stuff.--There, Ma, don't your Lennie look
a dream now?--Ooha, Ma, don't kiss me, Ma, I 'ate it."

"Lennie love, don't drop your aitches."

"I never, Ma. I said I 'ate it. Y' kissed me, did y' or didn't y'? Well,
I '_ate_ it."

He was gone on Lucy, like a little demon. Jack, sitting stupid on a
chair, felt part of his soul go with him.

"Come on, Bow!" said Monica, taking him by the arm, "Come and go to
sleep. Mary will wake you if Herbert wants you."

And she led him off to the door of the cubby, while he submitted and
Easu stood in his stocking feet on the verandah watching.

"He saved Herbert's life," said Monica, looking up at Easu with a kind
of defiance, when she came back.

"Who asked him," said Easu.



III


Tom and Jack were to leave the next day. The girls brought out a lot of
stores from the cupboard, and blankets and billies and a lantern. They
packed the sacks standing there.

"Get y' swag f'y'selves," said Dad. "The men have everything for
themselves. Take an axe an' a gun apiece."

"Gun! Gee! K'n I go, Dad?"

"Shut up, Len. Destroy all the dingoes y' can. I'll give y' sixpence a
head, an' the Government gives another. Haven't y' a saddle, Jack Grant,
somewhere in a box? Because I'd be short of one off the place, if you
took one from here."

"It must be somewhere," said Jack.

"Get it unpacked. An' you can have Lucy to put it across. It's forty
mile from here to virgin forest: real forest. If you get strayed, ever,
all you have to do is to drop th' reins on Lucy's neck, 'n shell bring
y' in."

The saddle came out of the dusty box. All were there in a circle to look
on. Jack expected deep admiration. But he was hurt to feel Monica
laughing derisively. Everybody was laughing, but he minded Monica most.
She could jeer cruelly.

"Jolly good saddle," said Jack.

"Mighty little of it," said Len.

"What's wrong with it, Tom?" said Jack.

"Slithery. No knee-pads, saddle bags, strap holder, scooped seat, or any
sortta comfort. It's a whale, on the wrong side."

Lennie closely examined the London ticket. The unpacking continued in
silence, under Tom's majestic eye. Whip, yellow horse-rug, bridle,
leathers, a heavy bar bit with double rings and curb, saddle cloths,
reins, extra special blue-and-gold girths wrapped in tissue paper,
nickel cross rowell jockey spurs, and glittering steel stirrup-irons.
Cord breeches, Assam silk coat, white water-proof linen stocks, leather
gaiters, and a pair of leather gauntlets completed the amazing
disclosure. It was all a mighty gift from one of the unforgiven Aunts.

Half way through the unpacking Tom gave a groan and walked away; but
walked back. Og and Magog stole the saddle, slung it across a bar, and
slid off and on rapturously. Monica was laughing at him disagreeably:
strange and brutal, as if she hated him: rather like Easu. And Lennie
was tittering with joy.

"Oh, Og! Here! Y're missin' it. Leave that hog's back saddle, No. 1
Grade--picked material--hand forged--tree mounted, guaranteed--a topper
off; see this princess palfrey bridle for you, rosettes ornamented,
periwinkle an' all. An' oh, look you! a canary belly-band f'r Dada
t'strap round th' heifer's neck when she gets first prize at the Royal
York show. Look at that crush-bone cage to put round Stampede's mouth
when the niggers catches him again. Oh, Lor' oh my----"

"Shut up!" said Tom abruptly, catching the boy by the back of his pants
and tossing him out of the barn. "Now roll up y'r bluey"--meaning the
new rug, which was yellow. "Fix them stirrup leathers, take the bridle
off that bit an' we'll find you something decent to put the reins on.
An' kick th' rest t'gether. What a gear. Glad it's you, not me, as has
got to ride that leather, me boy. But ride on't y'll have to, for
there's nought else. Now, Monica, close down that mirth of yours. You're
not asked for it."

"Let brotherly love continue," said Monica spitefully. "Wonder if it
will, even unto camp."

She went, leaving Jack feeling suddenly tired.



CHAPTER VII

OUT BACK AND SOME LETTERS


I


Jack was absolutely happy, in camp with Tom. Perhaps the most completely
happy time in his life. He had escaped the strange, new complications
that life was weaving round him. Yet he had not left the beloved family.
He was with Tom: who, after all, was the one that mattered most. Tom was
the growing trunk of the tree.

All real living hurts as well as fulfils. Happiness comes when we have
lived and have a respite for sheer forgetting. Happiness, in the vulgar
sense, is just a holiday experience. The lifelong happiness lies in
being used by life; hurt by life, driven and goaded by life, replenished
and overjoyed with life, fighting for life's sake. That is real
happiness. In the undergoing, a large part of it is pain. But the end is
like Jack's camping expedition, a time of real happiness.

Perhaps death, after a life of real courage, is like a happy camping
expedition in the unknown, before a new start.

It was spring in Western Australia, and a wonder of delicate blueness,
of frail, unearthly beauty. The earth was full of weird flowers,
star-shaped, needle-pointed, fringed, scarlet, white, blue, a whole
world of strange flowers. Like being in a new Paradise from which man
had not been cast out.

The trees in the dawn, so ghostly still. The scent of blossoming
eucalyptus trees: the scent of burning eucalyptus leaves and sticks, in
the camp fire. Trailing blossoms wet with dew; the scrub after the rain;
the bitter-sweet fragrance of fresh-cut timber.

And the sounds! Magpies calling, parrots chattering, strange birds
flitting in the renewed stillness. Then kangaroos calling to one another
out of the frail, paradisal distance. And the birr! of crickets in the
heat of the day. And the sound of axes, the voices of men, the crash of
falling timber. The strange slobbering talk of the blacks! The
mysterious night coming round the camp fire.

Red gum everywhere! Fringed leaves dappling, the glowing new sun coming
through, the large, feathery, honey-sweet blossoms flowering in clumps,
the hard, rough-marked, red-bronze trunks rising like pillars of burnt
copper, or lying sadly felled, giving up the ghost. Everywhere scattered
the red gum, making leaves and herbage underneath seem bestrewed with
blood.

And it was spring: the short, swift, fierce, flower-strange spring of
Western Australia, in the month of August.

Then evening came, and the small aromatic fire was binning amid the
felled trees. Tom stood hands on hips, giving directions, while the
blackened billy-can hung suspended from a cross-bar over the fire. The
water bubbling, a handful of tea is thrown in. It sinks. It rises.
"Bring it off!" yells Tom. Jack balances the cross-stick, holding the
wobbling can, until it rests safely on the ground. Then snatching the
handle, holds the can aloft. Tea is made.

The clearing gang had a hut with one side for the horses, the other for
the men's sleeping place. Inside were stakes driven into the ground,
bearing cross-bars with sacks fastened across, for beds. On the
partition-poles hung the wardrobes, and in a couple of boxes lay the
treasures, in the shape of watches, knives, razors, looking-glasses,
etc., safe from the stray thief. But the men were always tormenting one
another, hiding away a razor, or a strop, or a beloved watch.

Just in front of this shelter the camp oven had been built, for baking
damper and roasting meat, and to one side was the well, a very important
necessity, built by contract, timbered, and provided with winch, rope
and bucket.

All around the bush was dense like a forest, much denser than usual. The
slim-girthed trees grew in silent array, all alike and all asleep, with
undergrowth of scrub and fern and flowers, banksia short and sturdy with
its cone-shaped red-yellow flowers like fairy lamps, and here and there
a perfect wattle, or mimosa tree, with its pale gold flowers like little
balls of sun-dust, and here and there sandal-wood trees. Jack never
forgot the beauty of the first bushes and trees of mimosa, in a damp
place in the wild bush. Occasionally there was still an immense karri
tree, or a jarrah slightly smaller, though this was not the region for
these giants.

And far away, unending, upslope and downslope and rock-face one far
unending dimness of these changeless trees, going on and on without
variation, open enough to let one see ahead and all around, yet dense
enough to form a monotony and a sense of helplessness in the mind, a
sense of timelessness. Strongly the gang impressed on Jack that he must
not go even for five minutes' walk out of sight of the clearing. The
weird silent timelessness of the bush impressed him as nothing else ever
did, in its motionless aloofness. "What would my father mean, out here?"
he said to himself. And it seemed as if his father and his father's
world and his father's gods withered and went to dust at the thought of
this bush. And when he saw one of the men on a red sorrel horse
galloping like a phantom away through the dim, red-trunked, silent
trees, followed by another man on a black horse: and when he heard their
far, far-off yelping "Coo-ee!" or a shot as they fired at a dingo or a
kangaroo, he felt as if the old world had given him up from the womb,
and put him into a new weird grey-blue paradise, where man has to begin
all over again. That was his feeling: that the human way of life was all
to be begun over again.

The home that he and Tom made for themselves seemed to be a matter of
forked sticks. If you wanted an upright of any sort, drive a forked
stick into the ground, or dig it in, fork-end up. If you wanted a
cross-bar, lay a stick or a pole across two forks. Down the sides of
your house you wove brushwood. For the roof you plaited the long,
stringy strips of gum-bark. With a couple of axes and a jack-knife they
built a house fit for a savage king. Then they went out and made a
kitchen, with pegs hammered into the bole of a tree, for the frying
pans, the sawn surface of a large stump for a table, and logs to lie
back against.

North of the clearing lay the nucleus of a settlement, with pub,
saw-mill, store, one or two homes, and a farm or two outlying. And as
they cleared the land, the teamsters carried the best of the timber on
jinkers, or dragged it with chains hitched to bullock or horse teams, to
the mill. But milling was expensive, and most of the wood was
hand-split. Jack learned to cut palings and poles, and then to split
slabs that would serve to build slab houses, or sheds. In the spare time
they would have little hunts of wallabies or bandicoots or bungarras, or
blood-rats; or they would snare opossums or stalk dingoes.

But because he was really away in the wild, Jack felt he must write
letters home. So it is. The letters from home hardly interested him at
all. The thin sheets with their interminable writing were almost
repulsive to him. He would stow them in the barn and leave them for days
without reading them: he was "busy." And sometimes the mice nibbled
them, and in that way read them for him. He was a little ashamed of this
indifference. But he noticed other men were the same. When they got
these endless thin sheets from home, covered with ink of words, they
stowed them away in a kind of nausea, without reading more than a few
lines. And the people at home had such a pitying admonishing tone: like
the young naval lieutenant who made friends with the black aborigines by
promptly shaving them. And then letters were not profitable. A stamp
home cost sixpence, and a letter took about two months on the way. It
was always four months before you got an answer. And after you'd written
to your mother about something really important--like money--and waited
impatiently several months for the answer, when it came it never
mentioned the money, and made a mountain of a cold in your head which
you couldn't remember having had. What was the good of people at home
writing: "We are having true November weather, very cold, with fog and
sleet," when you were grilling under a fierce sun and the rush of the
intense antipodal summer. What was the good of it all? All dull as
ditchwater, and no use to anybody. He had promised his mother he would
write once a week. And his mother was his mother, he wanted to keep his
promise. Which he did for a month. But in camp, he didn't even know what
day it was, hardly what month: though the mail did come once a
fortnight, via the saw-mill.--Ho took out his mother's letter.


"You said in your letter from Colombo that you were sneezing. Do take
care in Australia in the rainy season. Ask not to be sent out in the
rain. I recollect the climate, always sunny and bright between showers.
That is what we miss so much now we are back in England, the sunny
skies. Of course, I do not want you to be a mollycoddle, but I know the
climate of Western Australia, it is very trying, particularly so in the
rainy season. I do hope and pray you are on a good station with a good
woman who will see you are not out getting drenched in those cold
downpours----"


Jack groaned aloud, astonished that his mother had got so far from her
own early days. How in the name of heaven had he come to mention
sneezing? Never again. He would not even say he was camping.


"Dear Mother:

"I am quite well and like farming out here all right. Old Mrs. Ellis
knew your father. She says he cut off her leg. I hope Father has got rid
of his Liver, you said he was taking variolettes for it. I hope they
have done him good. Mr. Ellis says a cockles pill and a ten-mile walk
will cure anything. He says it would cure a pig's liver. But when old
Tim, the half-caste, tried to swallow the pill it came out of the gap
where his front tooth used to be, so Mrs. Ellis gave him a teaspoonful
of sulphur, which he said would make him blow up. But it didn't. I think
I was more likely to blow up because she gave me a big teaspoon of
parafin which they call kerosene out here. She is a fine doctor, far
better than the medical man who lodges here, whose name is Rackett.

"I hope you are quite well. Give my love to all my aunts and sister and
father. I hope they are all quite well----"


Jack hurried this letter in confusion into its envelope, and spent
sixpence on it, knowing perfectly well it was all nonsense.



II


There was a pause in the clearing work, after the early hot spell, and
word from Lennie that there was to be a kangaroo hunt, and they were to
come down. An Old Man kangaroo, a king of boomers, had been seen around,
hoof-marks and paw-pad trails near the pool.

They met at dawn, by the well: Easu with two kangaroo hounds, like
greyhounds on leash; Lennie peacocking on an enormous hairy-heeled
roadster; a "superior" young Queenslander who had been sent west because
his father found him unmanageable and who wasn't a bad sort, though his
nickname was Pink-eye Percy; Lennie's "Comseed" friend, Joe Low; Alec
Rice, the young fellow who was courting Grace; Ross Ellis, and Herbert,
who was well again, then Tom on a grey stallion, and Jack, in riding
breeches and gaiters and clean shirt, astride the famous Lucy.

Easu was born in the saddle, he rode easy on his big roan. He waved his
hat excitedly at the group, and led off into the scrub, through the
slender, white-barked trees of the open bush. The others rode fast in
ragged order, among the thin, open trees. Jack let Lucy pick her way,
sometimes ahead, sometimes in sight of the others. They rode in silence.

Then they came out unexpectedly into low, grey-green scrub without
trees, and crisp grey-white soil that crumbled under the hoofs of the
horses. There they were, all out in the blue and gold light, with
billows of blue-green scrub running away to right and left, towards a
rise in front.

"Hold hard there!" sang out Easu, holding up the whip in his right hand.
He held the reins loosely in his left, and with the reins, the leash on
which the dogs were pulling. Dogs and horse he held in that left hand.

"I want y' t' divide. Tom, y' lead on a zigzag course down north. Ross,
you work south.--And this--this fox-hunting gentleman----" He paused,
and Jack felt himself going scarlet.

"Says thank ye, an' hopes he's a gentleman, since y've mentioned it,"
put in Lennie, in his mild, inconsequential way.

There was a laugh against Red: for there was no mistaking him for a
gentleman, in any sense of the word. However, he was too much excited by
the hunt to persevere.

The fellows were stowing away their pipes in their pockets, and
buttoning their coats, ready for the dash. Easu, thrilled by his own
unquestioned leadership, gave the orders. All listened closely.

"Call up! Call up! Follow my leader and find the trail. Biggest boomer
ever ye----"

"Come!" cried Tom.

"And I'm here!" cried Lennie.

Away they went into the gully and through the scrub, riding light but
swift, in different directions.

"Let go th' mare's head," yelled Tom over his shoulder. "We're coming to
timber, an' she'd best pilot herself."

"Right!" cried Jack.

"Don't ye kill Lucy," shrieked Lennie. "Because me heart's set on her.
Keep y' hands an' y' heels off y' horse, an' y' head on y' shoulders."

The bolt of horsemen through the bush sent parrots screaming savagely
over the feathery tree-tops. Jack let Lucy have her way. She was light
and swift and sure-footed, old steeplechaser that she was. The slim
straight trees slipped past, the motion of the horse surging her own way
was exhilarating to a degree.

But Tom had heard something: not the parrots, not the soft thud of the
following horses. He must have heard with his sixth sense: perhaps the
warning call of the boomer. With face set and eyes burning he swung and
urged his horse in a new direction. And like men coming in to supper
from different directions, the handful of horsemen came swish-swish
through the scrub, toward a centre.

Lucy pricked one ear. Perhaps she too had heard something. Then she
gathers herself together and goes like the wind after the twinkling grey
quarters of Tom's stallion. Her excitement mounts to Jack's head, and he
rides like a catapult on the wind.

Again Tom was reining in, pulling his horse almost on to its haunches.
And Jack must hold like a vice with his knees, for Lucy was pawing the
air, frantic at being held up.

"Coo-ee!" came Tom's clear tenor, ringing through the bush. "Coo-ee!
Coo-ee! Coo-ee!" A marvellous sound, and Lucy pawing and dancing among
the scrub.

"Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!"

It seemed to Jack, this sound in the bush was like God. Like the call of
the heroic soul seeking its body. Like the call of the bodiless soul,
sounding through the immense dead spaces of the dim, open bush, strange
and heroic and inhuman. The deep long "coo," mastering the silence, the
high summons of the long "eee." The "coo" rising more imperious, and
then the "eee!" thrilling and holding aloft. Then the swift lift and
fall: "Coo-eee! Coo-eee! Coo-eee!" till the air rocks with the fierce
pulse, as if a new heart were in motion, and the shriek and scream of
the "eee!" rips in strange flashes into the far-off, far-off
consciousness.

Much stranger than the weird yelp of the Red Indians' war-cry was this
rocking, ripping noise in the vast grey bush.

The others were coming in from right to left, like silent phantoms
through the sunny evanescence of the bush, riding hard. Tom is displaced
by Red. A few quick words given and taken. Easu has unleashed the dogs,
slashed the long lash with a resounding crack in the air. The long lean
dogs stretch out--uncannily long, from tip to tip. Tom lets go and away.
Jack lets go and away, and unconsciously his hand goes down for the bow
of the slippery saddle.

Lucy had the situation well in hand, which was more than Jack had.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud! Up, fly! _Crash!_--Hello?--All right. A
beauty! A dream of a jumper, this Lucy. But Jack wished his seat weren't
so slippery.

They were turning into bigger timber: trees further apart, but much
bigger, and with hanging limbs. "Look out! Look out f' y' head!" Jack
kept all his eyes open, till he knew by second sight when to duck. He
watched the twinkling hind quarters of Tom's grey, among the trees.

There was a short yapping of the dogs. Lucy was going like the wind,
Jack was riding light, but she was beginning to breathe heavily. No
longer so young as she was. How hot the sun was, in the almost shadeless
bush. And what was leading, where was the 'roo? Jack strained his eyes
almost out of his head, but could see nothing.

They were on the edge of the hills, and the country changed continually.
No sooner were you used to scrub, than it was thin trees. No sooner did
you know that Lucy could manipulate thin trees, than you were among big
timber, with more space and dangerous boughs. Then it was salty
paper-bark country--and back to forest again: close trees, fallen logs,
blood-rat holes and sudden outcropping of dark-brown, ancient-looking
rocks with little flat crags, to be avoided. But the other men were
going full speed, and full speed you must follow, watching with all your
eyes, and riding light, and swept along in the rim.

Up! That was over an elephant log, and down went a man at Tom's heels.
It was Grace's young man. No matter. Jack was going to look over his
shoulder when Tom again shouted "Up!" and Jack and Lennie followed over
the fallen timber.

Suddenly they were in a great black blanket of burnt country, clear of
undergrowth or scrubs, with skeletons of black, charred trees standing
gruesome. And there, right under their noses, leapt three kangaroos,
swerving across. The baby one, Joey, was first, lithe, light, apparently
not a bit afraid, but wildly excited; then the mother doe, all out,
panting, anxious-eyed, stiffly jumping; and behind, a long way, with the
dogs like needles coming after, ran the Old Man boomer; a great big chap
making mighty springs and in varying directions. Yes, he was making a
rear-guard action for the safety of his mate and spawn. Leaping with
great leaps, as if to the end of the world, leaning forward, his little
hands curled in, his immense massive tail straight out behind him like
some immense living rudder. And seeming perfectly calm, almost
indifferent. With steady, easy, enormous springs he went this way, that
way, detouring, but making for the same ridge his doe and Joey had
passed.

The charred ground proved treacherous, holes, smouldering trunks of
trees, smouldering hollows where trunks had been. Soon two horses were
running loose, with men limping after them. But on went the rest. Thud
and crackle went the hoofs of the galloping horses in the charcoal, as
after the dogs, after the 'roos they followed, kicking up clouds of grey
ash-mounds and red-burnt earth, jumping suddenly over the still-glowing
logs.

The chase paused on the ridge, for the drop was sudden and steep, with
rocks and boulders cropping out. Down slid the dogs in a cloud, yelping
hard, making Easu at all costs turn to try the right, Tom to try the
left.

They dropped awkwardly and joltingly down, between rocks, in loose
charcoal powder and loose earth.

"Ain't that ole mare a marvel, Jack!" said Tom. "This nag is rode stiff,
all-under my knees."

Jack's face was full of wild joy. The stones rattled, the men stood back
from the stirrups, the horses seemed to be diving. But Lucy was light
and sure.

Down they jolted into the gully. Easu came up swearing--lost the quarry
and dogs, Jack pulled Lucy over a boulder to get out of Easu's way: a
thing he shouldn't have done. Crack! went his head against a branch, and
Jack was bruising himself on the ground before he knew where he was.

But he was on his feet again, intently chasing Lucy.

"Here y'are!" It was Herbert who leaned down, picked up the reins of the
scampering mare, and threw them to Jack. Jack's face was bleeding.
Lennie came up and opened his mouth in dismay. But somebody coo-eed, and
the chase was too good to lose. They are all gone.

Jack stiffly mounted, to find himself blinded by trickling blood. Lucy
once more was stirring between his knees, stretching herself out, and he
had to let her go, fumbling meanwhile for a handkerchief which he pushed
under his hat-brim, and pulled down the old felt firmly. Wiping his eyes
with his sleeve, he found the wound staunched by the impromptu dressing.

The scene had completely changed. Lucy was whisking him around the side
of a huge dark boulder. They were in the dry bed of the gully, on
stones.

Lucy stopped dead, practically on her haunches, but her impetus carried
her over, and she was slithering down into a loose gravelly hole. Jack
jumped off, to find himself face to face with the biggest boomer
kangaroo he had ever imagined. It was the Old Man, sitting there at the
bottom of the gravel-hole, in the hollow of a barren she-oak, his absurd
paws drooping dejectedly before him and his silly dribbling under-jaw
working miserably.

"He's trying to get the wind up for another fly," thought Jack, standing
there as dazed as the 'roo itself, and feeling himself very much in the
same condition. Then he wondered where the doe and Joey were, and where
all the other hunters. He hoped they wouldn't come. Lucy stood by, as
calm as a cucumber.

Jack took a step nearer the Old Man 'roo, and instantly brought up his
fists as the animal doubled its queer front paws and hit out wildly at
him. He wanted to hit back.

"Mind the claws!" called somebody, with a quiet chuckle, from above.

Jack looked round, and there was Lennie and the heavy horse, the horse
head-down, tail up, feet spread, like a salamander lizard on a wall,
slithering down the grade into the hole, Lennie erect in the stirrups.
Jack gave a loud laugh.

And the Old Man, either possessed of a sense of humour or terrified to
death, seized the nearest thing at hand--which happened to be Jack;
grabbed him, gripped him, hugged him in desperate fury, and tried to get
up his huge, flail-like hind leg, to rip up the enemy with the toe claw.
One stroke of that claw, and Jack was done.

In terror, anger, surprise, Jack jumped at the kangaroo's throat, as far
as the animal's grip would let him. The 'roo, trying all the time to use
his hind legs, upset, so that the two went rolling on the gravel
together. Jack was in horrid proximity to the weird grey fur, clutched
by the weird-smelling, violent animal, in a sort of living earthquake,
as the kangaroo writhed and bounced to use his great, oar-like hind
legs, and Jack clung close and hit at the creature's body, hit, hit,
hit. It was like hitting living wire bands. Somebody was roaring, or
else it was his own consciousness shouting: "Don't let the hind claw get
to work."--How horrible a wild thing was, when you were mixed up with
it! The terrible nausea of its powerful, furry, violent-blooded contact.
Its unnatural, almost obscene power! Its different consciousness! Its
overpowering smell!

The others were coming back up the stream-bed, jumping the rocks,
towards this place where Jack had fallen and Lennie had come down after
him. Easu was calling off the dogs, ferociously. Tom rushed in and got
the 'too by the head.

Lennie was lying on the gravel laughing so hard he couldn't stand on his
legs.



III


Jack wrote a letter to his old friend, the vet with the "weakness," in
England.


"We are out at a place back of beyond, at a place called Gum Tree
Valley, so I take up my pen to write as I have time.--Tom Ellis is here
bossing the clearing gang, and he has a lot of Aunts, whom he rightly
calls ants. One of them has a place near here, and we go to dinner on
Sundays, and to help when wanted. We stayed all last week and helped
muster in the sheep for the shearing. We rode all round their paddock
boundaries and rounded in the sheep that had strayed and got lost. They
had run off from the main--about a score of flocks--and were feeding in
little herds and groups miles apart. It's a grand sight to see them all
running before you, their woolly backs bobbing up and down like brown
water. I can tell you I know now the meaning of the Lost Sheep, and the
sort of joy you have in cursing him when you find him.

"You told me to let you know if I heard any first hand news of gold
finding. Well, I haven't heard much. But a man rode into
Greenlow's--that's Tom's Aunt--place on Sunday, and he said to Tom: 'Are
those the Stirling Ranges?' Tom said: 'No, they're not. They're the
Darling Ranges.' He said: 'Are you sure?'"--and got very excited. The
black-fellows came and stood by and they were vastly amused, grinning
and looking away. He got out a compass and said: 'You are wrong, Mr.
Ellis, they are the Stirling Ranges.' Tom said: 'Call 'em what you
choose, chum. We call 'em Darling--and them others forty mile southwest
we call the Stirling.' The man groaned. Minnie Greenlow called us to
come in to tea, and he came along as well. His manners were awful. He
fidgetted and pushed his hat back on his head and leant forward and spat
in the fire at a long shot, and tipped his cup so that his tea swobbed
in his saucer, then drank it out of the saucer. Then he pushed the cake
back when handed to him, and leaned his head on his arms on the table
and groaned. You'd have thought he was drunk, but he wasn't, because he
said to Tom, 'Are ye sure them's not the Stirling Ranges? I can't drink
my tea for thinkin' about it.' And Tom said: 'Sure.' and then he seemed
more distracted than ever, and blew through his teeth and mopped his
head, and was upset to a degree.

"When we had finished tea and we all went outside he said: 'Well, I
think I'll get back now. It's no use when the compass turns you down.
I'll never find it." We didn't know what he was talking about, but when
he'd got into his buggy and drove away the blacks told us: 'Master
lookin' for big lump yellow dirt--He think that very big fish, an' he
bury him long time. Cornin' back no finda him.'--While the boys were
talking who should shout to have the slip rail let down but this same
stranger and he drove right past us and away down the long paddock. When
he got to the gate there he turned round and came back and drew up by us
muttering, and said: 'Where did you tell me the Stirling Ranges
were?'--Tom pointed it out, and he said, 'So long!' and drove off. We
didn't see him again. We didn't want to. But Tom is almost sure he found
a lump of gold some time back and buried it for safety's sake and now
can't find it.

"That's all the gold I've heard about out here.

"Now for news. One day I went out with tucker to old Jack Moss. He's
keeping a bit of land warm for the Greenlows, shepherds sheep down
there, about forty miles from everywhere. He talked and talked, and when
he didn't talk he didn't listen to me. He looked away over the scrub and
sucked his cutty. They say he's hoarded wealth but I didn't see any
signs. He was in tatters and wore rags round his feet for boots, which
were like a gorilla's. Another day we had a kangaroo hunt. We all chased
an Old Man for miles and at last he tinned and faced us. I was so close
I had no time to think and was on him before I had time to pull up. I
jumped to the ground and grappled, and we rolled over and over down the
gully. They couldn't shoot him because of me, but they fought him off
and killed him. And then we saw his mate standing near among the stones,
on her hind legs, with her front paws hanging like a helpless woman.
Then Tom, who was tying up my cuts, called out: 'Look at her pouch! It's
plum full of little nippers!' and so it was. You never saw such a trick.
So we let her go. But we got the Old Man.

"Another day we rode round the surveyed area here, which Mr. Ellis is
taking up for the twins Og and Magog. I asked Tom a lot of questions
about taking up land. I think I should like to try. Perhaps if I do you
will come out. You would like the horses. There are quite a lot wild. We
hunt them in and pick out the best and use them. That's how lots of
people raise their horse-flesh. They are called brumbies. Excuse me for
not ending properly, the mailman is coming along, he comes once a
fortnight. We are lucky.


Jack."



IV


To his friend, the pugilist, he wrote:


"Dear Pug:

"You ask me what I think about sending Ned out here. Well, there's no
opening that I can see for a gym. But work, that's another question,
there's more than enough. I am at work at a place called Gum Tree
Valley, clearing, but we came up to Tom's Aunt's place last week, to
help, and we've been shearing. At least I haven't. I've been the chap
who tars. You splash tar on like paint when the shearers make a misfire
and gash the poor brutes and curse you. Lord, don't they curse, if the
boss isn't round. He's got a grey beard and dribbles on it, and the
flies get caught in it and buzz as if it was a spider's web. He makes
everyone work from mom till night like the Devil. Gosh, if it wasn't
that it is only for a short spell, I'd get. Don't you worry, up-country
folk know how to get your tucker's worth out of you all right Today the
Sabbath we had a rest.--I don't think! We washed our clothes. Talk about
a goodly pile! Only a rumour. For the old man fetched along his vests
and pants, and greasy overalls and aprons, his socks, his slimy hanks
and night-shirt Imagine our horror. He's Tom's Aunt's husband, and has
no sons only herds of daughters, so we had to do it. We scrubbed 'em
with horse-brushes on the stones. Jinks, but I rubbed some holes in 'em!

"But cheer up. I'm not grumbling. I like getting experience as it is
called.

"I mean to take up land and have a place of my own some day, then you
and Ned could visit me and we could have some fun with the gloves.
Lennie says I'm like a kangaroo shaping and punching at nothing, so I
got a cow's bladder and blew it up and tied it to a branch, and I batter
on it. Must have something to hit. You know kangaroos shape up and make
a punch. They are pretty doing that. We have a baby one, Joey, and it
takes a cup in its little hands and drinks. Honest to God it's got
hands, you never saw such a thing.

"Kindest regards to your old woman and Ned. Lord only knows how I've
missed you, and pray that some day I will be fortunate enough to meet
you again. Until then.

"Farewell.

"A Merry Xmas and a Glad New Year, by the time you get this. Think of me
in the broiling heat battling with sheep, their Boss, and the flies, and
you'll think of me true.

"Ever your sincere friend

Jack."



V


As the time for returning from camp drew near, Jack dwelt more and more
on this question of the future--of taking up land. He wished so often
that life could always be a matter of camping, land-clearing, kangaroo
hunting, shearing, and generally messing about. But deep underneath
himself he knew it couldn't: not for him at least. Plenty of fellows
lived all their life messing from camp to camp and station to station.
But himself--sooner or later he would have to bite on to something. He'd
have to plunge in to that cold water of responsible living, some time or
other.

He asked Tom about it.

"You must make up y' mind what you want to go in for, cattle, sheep,
horses, wheat, or mixed farming like us," said Tom. "Then you can go out
to select. But it's no good before you know what you want."

Jack was surprised to find how little information he got from the men he
mixed with. They knew their jobs: teamsters knew about teams, and jobs
on the mill; the timber workers knew hauling and sawing; township people
knew trading; the general hands knew about hunting and bush-craft and
axe handling; and farmers knew what was under their nose, but nothing of
the laws of the land, or how he himself was to get a start.

At last he found a small holder who went out as a hired man after he had
put in the seed on his own land. And this, apparently, was how Jack
would have to start. The man brought out various grubby Government
papers, and handed them over.

Jack had a bad time with them: Government reports, blue books,
narratives of operations. But he swotted grimly. And he made out so
'much:


1. Any reputable immigrant over 21 years could procure 50 acres of
unimproved rural Crown land open for selection; if between the ages of
14 and 21, 25 acres.

2. Such land must be held by "occupation certificate," deemed
transferable only in case of death, etc.

3. The occupation certificate would be exchanged for a grant at the end
of five years, or before that time, providing the land had been enclosed
with a substantial fence and at least a quarter cultivated. But if at
the end of the five years the above conditions, or any of them, had not
been observed, the lots should revert to the Crown.

4. Country land was sub-divided into agricultural and pastoral, either
purchasable at the sum of 10/- an acre, or leased: the former for eight
years at the nominal sum of 1/- an acre, with the right of purchase, the
latter for one year at annual rental of 2/- per hundred acres, with
presumptive renewal; or five pounds per 1000 acres with rights.


Jack got all this into his mind, and at once loathed it. He loathed the
thought of an "occupation certificate." He loathed the thought of being
responsible to the Government for a piece of land. He almost loathed the
thought of being tied to land at all. He didn't want to own things;
especially land, that is like a grave to you as soon as you do own it.
He didn't want to own anything. He simply couldn't bear the thought of
being tied down. Even his own unpacked luggage he had detested.

But he started in with this taking-up land business, so he thought he'd
try an easy way to get through with it.


"Dear Father,

"I could take up land on my own account now if you sent a few hundred
pounds for that purpose per Mr. George. He would pay the deposit and
arrange it for me. I have my eye on one or two improved farms falling
idle shortly down this Gum Valley district, which is very flourishing.
When they fall vacant on account of settlers dropping them, they can be
picked up very cheap.

"I hope you are quite well, as I am at present

"Your affec. son

Jack."


Jack spent his sixpence on this important document, and forgot all about
it. And in the dead end of the hot summer, just in the nick of time, he
got his answer:


Sea View Terrace,
Bournemouth.
2. 2. '83,

Dear Jack:

"Thank you for your most comprehensive letter of 30/11/82. It is quite
impossible for me to raise several hundreds of pounds, or for the matter
of that, one hundred pounds, in this offhand manner. I don't want to be
hard on you, but we want you to be independent as soon as possible. We
have so many expenses, and I have no intention of sinking funds in the
virgin Australian wild, at any rate until I see a way clear to getting
some return for my money, in some form of safe interest accruing to you
at my death.--You must not expect to run before you can walk. Stay where
you are and learn what you can till your year is up, and then we will
see about a jackeroo's job, at which your mother tells me you will earn
£1. a week, instead of our having to pay it for you.

"We all send felicitations

Your affectionate father

G. B. Grant."


But this is running ahead.--It is not yet Christmas, 1882.



CHAPTER VIII

HOME FOR CHRISTMAS


I


It was a red hot Christmas that year--'ot, 'ot, 'ot, all day long. Good
Lord, how hot it was!--till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings
in its trail. After six o'clock you would sense the breeze coming from
the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was.
Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one's life.

It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit
down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one's bed. To
have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a
big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a
sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It
lifted you up.

Mr. Ellis had taken Gran away for the time, so the place seemed freer,
noisier. There was nothing to keep quiet for. It was holiday--_pinkie_,
the natives called it; the fierce midsummer Christmas. Everybody was
allowed to "spell" a great deal.

Tom and Jack were roasted like Red Indians, rather uncouth, and more
manly. At first they seemed rather bumptious, thinking themselves very
much men. Jack could now ride his slippery saddle in fine style, and
handle a rope or an axe, and shoot straight. He knew jarrah, karri,
eucalyptus, sandal, wattle, peppermint, banksia, she-oaks, pines,
paper-back and gum trees; he had learned to tan a kangaroo hide, pegging
it on to a tree; he had looked far into the wilderness, and seen the
beyond, and been seized with a desire to explore it; he had made
excursions over "likely places," with hammer and pick, looking for gold.
He had hunted and brought home meat, had trapped and destroyed many
native cats and dingoes. He had lain awake at night and listened to the
more-porks, and in the early morning had heard with delight the warbling
of the timeline and thickhead thrushes that abounded round the camp,
mingled with the noises of magpies, tits, and wrens. He had watched the
manoeuvres of willy-wagtails, and of a brilliant variety of birds:
weavers, finches, parrots, honeyeaters, and pigeons. But the banded
wrens and blue-birds were his favourites in the bush world.

Well, on such a hero as this, the young home-hussies Monica and Grace
had better not look too lightly. He was so grand they could hardly reach
him with a long pole.

"An' how many emus did y' see?" asked Og. For lately at Wandoo they had
had a plague of emus, which got into the paddocks and ate down the
sheeps' food-stuffs, and then got out again by running at the fences and
bashing a way through.

Jack had never seen one.

"Never seen an emu!"--Even little Ellie shrilled in derisive amazement.
"Monica, he's _never seen an emu!_"

Already they had snipped the tip off the high feather he had in his cap.

But he was still a hero, and Lennie followed him round like a satellite,
while the girls were obviously _thrilled_ at having Tom and him back
again. They would giggle and whisper behind Bow's back, and wherever he
was, they were always sauntering out to stand not far off from him. So
that, of course, their thrill entered also into Jack's veins, he felt a
cocky young lord, a young life-master. This suited him very well.

But there was no love-making, of course. They all laughed and joked
together over the milking and pail-carrying and feeding and
butter-making and cheese-making and everything, and life was a happy
delirium.

They had waited for Tom to come home, to rob the bees. Tom hated the
bees and they hated him, but he was staunch. Veils, bonnets, gloves,
gaiters were produced, and off they all set, in great joy at their own
appearance, with gong, fire, and endless laughter. Tom was to direct
from a distance: he stood afar, "Smoking them off." Grace and Monica
worked merrily among the hives, manipulating the boxes which held the
comb, lifting them on to the milk pans to save the honey, and handing
the pans to the boys to carry in.

"Oooh!" yelled Tom suddenly, "Oooh!"

A cloud of angry bees was round his head. Down went his
fire-protector--a tin full of smouldering chips--down went flappers and
bellows as with a shriek he beat the air. The more he beat the darker
the venomous cloud. Crippled with terror, he ran on shaking legs. The
girls and youngsters were paralysed with joy. They swarmed after him
shrieking with laughter. His head was completely hidden by bees, but his
arms like windmills waved wildly to and fro. He dashed into the cubby,
but the bees went with him. He appeared at the window for a moment,
showing a demented face, then he jumped out, and the bees with him.
Leaping the drain gap and yelling in terror, he made for the house. The
bees swung with him and the children after. Jack and the girls stood
speechless, looking at one another. Monica had on man's trousers with an
old uniform buttoned close to her neck, workmen's socks over her shoes
and trouser-ends, and a Chinaman's hat with a veil over it, netted round
her head like a meat-safe. Jack noticed that she was funny. Suddenly,
somehow, she looked mysterious to him, and not just the ordinary image
of a girl. Suddenly a new cavern seemed to open before his eyes: the
mysterious, fascinating cavern of the female unknown. He was not
definitely conscious of this. But seeing Monica there in the long white
flannel trousers and the Chinaman's-hat meat-safe over her face,
something else awoke in him, a new awareness of a new wonder. He had but
lately stood on the inward ranges and looked inland into the blue, vast
mystery of the Australian interior. And now with another opposite vision
he saw an opposite mystery opposing him: the mystery of the female, the
young female there in her grotesque garb.

A new awareness of Monica began to trouble him.

"Oooh! Oooh! Ma! Ma! Ma!" Out rushed Tom straight from the kitchen door,
the bees still with him. Straight he dashed to the garden, and to the
well in the middle. He loosed the windlass and stood on the coping
screaming while the bucket clanged and clashed to the bottom. Then Tom
seized the rope, and turning his legs round it, slid silently into the
hidden, cool dark depths.

The children shrieked with bliss, Jack and the girls rocked with
helpless laughter, convulsed by this last exit.

The bees were puzzled. They poised buzzbee fashion above the well-head,
explored the mouth of the shaft, and rose again and hovered. Then they
began to straggle away. They melted into the hot air.

And now the girls and Jack drew up from the well a raging and soaking
Tom. Drew him up uncertainly, wobblingly, a terrible weight on the
straining, creaking windlass. Ma and Ellie took him in hand and daubed
him a sublime blue: like an ancient Briton, Grace said. Then they gave
him bread and jam and a cup of tea.

Then occurred another honey-bee tragedy. Ellie, who had done nothing at
all to the bees, suddenly shrieked loudly and ran pelting round,
screaming: "I've got a bee in my head! I've got a bee in my head!"
Monica caught and held her, while Jack took the bee, a big drone, out of
the silky meshes of her honey hair. And as he lifted his eyes he met the
yellow eyes of Monica. And the two exchanged a moment's look of intimacy
and communication and secret shame, so that they both went away avoiding
one another.



II


On New Year's Eve there was always a foregathering of the settlers at
the Wandoo homestead. They must foregather somewhere, and Wandoo was the
oldest and most flourishing place. It occupied the banks of the
so-called Avon River, which was mostly just a great dry bed of stones.
But it had plenty of fresh water in the soaks and wells, among the
scorched rocks, and these wells were fed by underground springs, not
brackish, as is so often the case. Wandoo was therefore a favoured
place.

"What am I to wear?" said Jack, aghast, when he heard of the affair.

"Anything," said Tom.

"Nothing," said Len.

"Your new riding suit," said Monica, who had begun to assume airs of
proprietorship over him.--"And you needn't say anything, young Len," she
continued venomously. "Because you've got to wear that new holland suit
Ma got you from England, and boots and socks as well."

"It's awful. Oo-er! It's awful!" groaned Lennie.

It was. A tight-fitting brown holland suit with pants halfway down the
shin and many pearl-buttons across the stomach, the coat with a stiff
stand-up collar and rigid seams. Harry had a similar rig, but the twins
out--did Solomon in sailor suits with gold braid and floppy legs. At
least they started in glory.

Tom, in his father's old tennis-flannels and a neat linen jacket, looked
quite handsome. But when he saw Jack in his real pukka riding rig, he
exclaimed.

"God Almighty, but you've got the goods!"

"A bit too dashing?" asked Jack anxiously.

"Not on your life! You'll do fine. Reds all go in for riding breeks and
coats as near sporting dog's yank as they k'n get'm. There's a couple o'
white washing suits o' Dad's as he's grown out of, as I'll plank up in
the loft to change into tonight. We can't come in this here cubby again.
Once we leave it, it'll be jumped by all the women and children from
round the country to put their things in."

"Won't they go into the house?"

"Hallelujah no! Only relations go upstairs. Quality into the dyin' room.
Yahoos anywhere, and the ladies always bag our cubby!"

"Lor!"

But it had to be so. For the New Year's chivoo the settlers all saved
up, and they all dressed up. By ten o'clock the place was like a fair
ground. Horses of all sorts nosing their feed-bags; conveyances of all
sorts unhitched; girls all muslin and ribbon; boys with bats on at an
angle, and boots on; men in clean shirts and brilliant ties, mothers in
frill and furbelow, with stiffly-starched little children half hidden
under sunbonnets; old dames and ancient patriarchs, young bearded
farmers, and shaven civilians ridden over from York. Children rushing
relentlessly in the heat, amid paper bags, orange peel,
concertina-playing, baskets of victuals and fruit, canvas, rubbish and
nuts all over the scorched grass. Christmas!

Tom had asked Jack to organise a cricket eleven to play against the
Reds. The Reds were dangerous opponents, and the dandies of the day. In
riding breeches made India fashion, with cotton gaiters, and
rubber-soled shoes, white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats, they looked a
handsome colonial set. And they had a complete eleven.

Tom was sitting on a bat bemoaning his fate. He had only five reliable
men.

"Aw, shut up!" said Lennie. "Somebody'll turn up.--Who's comin' in at
the gate now? Ain't it the parson from York, and five gents what can
handle a bat. Hell!--ain't my name cockadoodle!"

In top hats and white linen suits these gentlemen had ridden their
twenty-five miles for a game. What price the Reds now!

Tom's side was in first, Easu and Ross Ellis bowling, Easu, big, loose,
easy, looked strange and _native_, as if he belonged to the natural salt
of the earth there. He seemed at home, like an emu or a yellow mimosa
tree. He was a bowler of repute. But somehow Jack could not bear to see
him palm the ball before he bowled: could not bear to watch it. Whereas
fat Ross Ellis, the other bowler, spitting on his hand and rolling the
ball in elation after getting the wicket of the best man from York, Jack
didn't mind him.--But unable to watch Easu, he walked away across the
paddock, among the squatting mothers whose terror was the flying leather
ball.

"Your turn at the wickets, Mr. Grant," called the excited, red-faced
parson, who, Lennie declared, "Couldn't preach less or act more."

"We're eight men out for twenty-six rounds, so smack at 'em. If ye can
get the loose end on Ross, do it. I'll be in t'other end next and stop
'em off Easu. I come in right there as th' useful block."

Jack was excited. And when he was excited, phrases always came up in his
mind. He had the sun in his eyes, but the bat felt good.

"If a gentleman sees bad, he ignores it. He----"

Here comes the ball from that devil Easu!

How's that!

"Finds good and fans it to flame--fans it to----"

Joe Low, that stripling, had the other wicket.

Smack! Jack scored the first rim off Easu, running for his life.

"You can be a gentleman even if you are a bush-whacker."

Nine wickets had fallen to Easu for twenty-seven runs, and Easu was
elated. Then the parson came forth and stood opposite Jack. He at once
whacked Ross' ball successfully, for three. Jack hitched his belt after
the run, and hit out for another.

Smack! no need to run that time. It was a boundary.

Lennie's voice outside yelling admiration roused his soul, as did Easu's
yelling agrily to Ross: "You give that ball to Sam, this over. You
blanky idjut!"

Ross picked up the returning leather, and sent down a sulky grubber
which Jack naturally skied. Herbert, placed at a point in the shade,
came out to catch it, and missed.

Somehow the parson had steadied Jack's spirit. And when, in a crisis,
Jack got his spirit steadied, it seemed to him he could get a
semi-magical grip over a situation. Almost as if he could alter the
swerve of the ball by his pure, clairvoyant will. So it seemed. And
keyed up against the weird, handsome, native Easu, as if by a magic of
will Jack held the wicket and got the runs. It was one of those subtle
battles which are beyond our understanding. And Jack won.

But Easu got him out in the end. In the first innings, a terrific full
pitch came down crash over his head on to the middle wicket, when he had
made his first half century; that was Easu; and Easu stumped him out in
the second innings, for twenty.

Nevertheless, the Reds were beaten by a margin of sixteen runs before
the parson and the gentlemen in top hats set off for their long and
dusty ride to York.



III


Jack hated the Reds with all the wholesale hatred of eighteen. There
they were, all of them, swaggering round as if the place belonged to
them, taking everything and giving nothing. Their peculiar air of
assertion was particularly maddening, in contrast with the complete lack
of assumption on the part of the other Australians. It was as if the
Reds had made up their minds, all of them, to leave a bruise on
everything they touched. They were all big men, and older than Jack.
Easu must have been over thirty, and unmarried, with a bad reputation
among the women of the colony. Yet, apparently, he could always find a
girl. That slow, laconic assurance of his, his peculiar, meaning smile
as he drifted up loose-jointed to a girl, seemed nearly always to get
through. The women watched him out of the corner of their eye. They
didn't like him. But they felt his power. And that was perhaps even more
effective.

For he had power. And this was what Jack felt lacking in himself. Jack
had quick, intuitive understanding, and a quick facility. But he had not
Easu's power. Sometimes Easu could look really handsome, strolling
slowly across to some girl with a peculiar rolling gait that
distinguished him, and smiling that little, meaningful, evil smile. Then
he looked handsome, and as if he belonged to another race of men, men
who were like small-headed demons out to destroy the world.

"I'm fighting him," thought Jack. "I wouldn't have a good opinion of
myself if I didn't."

For he saw in Easu a malevolent principle, a kind of venom.

Ross Ellis, the youngest of the Reds, was old enough to be joining the
mounted police force in a few days, and Mr. Ellis had sent up a strong
chestnut mount for him, from the coast. Easu, tall, broad, sinewy, with
sinewy powerful legs and small buttocks, was sitting close on the
prancing chestnut, showing off, his malevolence seeming to smile under
his blond beard, and his blue, rivet eyes taking in everything. All the
time he went fooling the simple farmers who had come to the sports,
raising a laugh where he could, and always a laugh of derision.

"Tom," said Jack at last, "couldn't you boss it a bit over those Reds?
It's your place, it's _your_ house, not theirs. Go on, put them down a
bit, do."

"Aw," said Tom. "They're older'n me, and the place by rights belongs to
them: leastways they think so. And they are crack sportsmen."

"Why, they're not! Look at Easu parading on that police horse your
father sent up from the coast! And look at all the other cockeys getting
ready to compete against him in the riding events. They haven't a
chance, and he knows it."

"He won't risk taking that police horse over the jumps, don't you fret."

"No, but he has the pick of your stable, and he'll beat all the others
while you stand idling by. Why should he be cock of the walk?"

"Why," cried Lennie breaking in, "I could beat anyfin' on Lucy. But Tom
won't let me go in against the other chaps, will you, Tom?"

Tom smiled. He had a plain brick-red face, patient and unchanging, with
white teeth, and brown, sensitive eyes. When he smiled he had a great
charm. But he did not often smile, and his mouth was marred by the look
so many men develop in Australia, facing the bush: that lipless look,
which Jack, as he grew more used to it, came to call the suffering look.
As if they had bitten and been bitten hard, perhaps too hard.

"Well, Nipper," he said after a moment's hesitation; "if you finds them
Waybacks has it between 'em, you stand out. But y'c'n have Lucy if you
like, an' if y' beat the _Reds_--y'c'n beat 'em."

"That's what I mean all right!" cried Lennie, capering. "I savvy O. K.
I'll give 'em googlies and sneaks an' leg-breaks, y' see if I don't, an'
even up for 'em."



IV


Monica came up and took Jack's arm with sudden impulsive affection, on
this very public day. Drawing him away, she said:

"Come and sit down a bit under the Bay Fig, Jack. I want to rest. All
these people tearing us in two from morning till night."

Jack found himself thrilling to the girl's touch, to his own surprise
and disgust. He flushed slowly, and went on stiff legs, hoping nobody
was looking at him. Nobody was looking specially, of course. But Monica
kept hold of his arm, with her light, tense girlish hand, and he found
it difficult to walk naturally. And again the queer electric thrills
went through him, from that light blade of her hand.

She was very lovely to-day, with a sort of winsomeness, a sort of fierce
appeal. As a matter of fact, she had been flirting dangerously with Red
Easu, till she was a bit scared. And she had been laughing and fooling
with Hal Stockley--otherwise Pink-eye Percy--whom all the girls were mad
about, but who didn't affect her seriously. Easu affected her, though.
And she didn't really like him. That was why she had come for Jack, whom
she liked very much indeed. She felt so safe and happy with him. And she
loved his delicate, English, virgin quality, his shyness and natural
purity. He was purer than she was. So she wanted to make him in love
with her. She was sure he was in love with her. But it was such a shy,
unwilling love, she was half annoyed.

So she leaned forward to him, with her fierce young face and her queer,
yellow, glowering eyes, not far from his, and she seemed to yearn to him
with a yearning like a young leopard. Sometimes she touched his hand,
and sometimes, laughing and showing her small, pointed teeth winsomely,
she would look straight into his eyes, as if searching for something.
And he flushed with a dazed sort of delight, unwilling to be overpowered
by the new delight, yet dazed by it, even to the point of forgetting the
other people and the party, and Easu on the chestnut horse.

But he made no move. When she touched his hand, though his eyes shone
with a queer suffused light, he would not take her hand in his. He would
not touch her. He would not make any definite response. To all she said,
he answered in simple monosyllables. And there he sat, suffused with
delight, yet making no move whatsoever.

Till at last Monica, who was used to defending herself, was niffed. She
thought him a muff. So she suddenly rose and left him. Went right away.
And he was very much surprised and chagrined, feeling that somehow it
wasn't possible, and feeling as if the sun had gone out of the sky.



V


The sun really was low in the heavens. The breeze came at last from the
sea and freshened the air and lifted the sweet crushed scent of the
trampled dry grass. It was time for the last events of the sports.
Everybody was eager, revived by the approach of evening, and Jack felt
the drunkenness of new delight upon him. He was still vague, however,
and unwilling even to think of Monica, much less seek her out.

The black-boys' event, with unbroken buckjumpers, was finishing down by
the river. Joe Low, with a serious face but sparkling eyes, went riding
by on a brumby colt he had caught and broken himself. Jack sat alone
under a tree, waiting for the flat race, in which he was entered, and
feeling sure of himself.

Easu came dancing up on the raw chestnut that had been sent up from the
coast along with the police horse. He wore spurs, and had a long
parrot-feather in his hat.

"Here you young Pommy Grant," he said to Jack. "Ketch hold of me bit
while I fix me girths a bit tighter, and then you c'n hold your breath
while I show them Cornseeds what."

He had a peculiarly insolent manner towards Jack. The latter
nevertheless held the frothy chestnut while Easu swung out of the saddle
and hitched up the girth. As he bent there beside the horse, Jack
noticed his broad shoulders and narrow waist and small hard, tense hips.
Yes, he was a man. But ugh! what an objectionable one! Especially the
slight hateful smile of derision on the red face and in the light-blue,
small-pupilled eyes.

But he dipped into the saddle again, and once more it was impossible not
to admire his seat, his close, fine, clean, small seat in the saddle.
There was no spread about him there. And the power of the long, muscular
thighs. Then once more he dismounted, leaving Jack to hold the bridle of
the chestnut whilst he himself strolled away.

The other farmers were waiting on their horses, so serious and quiet: in
their patience and unobtrusiveness, so gentlemanly, Jack thought. So
unlike the assertive, jeering Easu.

Lennie came up and whipped the pin out of Jack's favour. It was a
rosette of yellow ribbon, shiny as a buttercup, that Monica had made
him.

"Here, what're you doing!" he cried.

"Aw, shut it. Keep still!" said Lennie.

And slipping round, he pushed the pin, point downward, into the back
saddle-pad of the chestnut Jack was holding. That wasn't fair. But Jack
let be.

The judge called his warning, the Cornseeds lined up, along with Joe Low
and a young yellow-faced dairyman and a slender skin-hunter, and a
woolly old stockman. Easu came and took his chafing horse, but did not
mount.

"One!" Easu swung up, standing in his stirrups, scarce touching the
saddle-seat.

"Two! Three!" and the sharp crack of a pistol.

Away went the scraggy brumby and Joe, and like a torrent, the dairyman
and the skin-hunter and the stockman. But the chestnut had never heard a
pistol shot before, and was jumping round wildly.

"Blood and pace, mark you;" said the judge, waving towards the chestnut.
"Them cockeys does their best on what they got, but watch that chestnut
under Red Ellis. It's a pleasure to see good horse-flesh like them
Ellises brings up to these parts."

Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on
to the track at that minute, and sat down.

The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped
madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody
was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the
running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.

"Oh, Gawd my fathers!" murmured Tom in Jack's ear. "Think of Easu
getting a toss! Easu letting any horse get the soft side of him! Oh, my
Gawd, if I'm not sorry for Easu when that crowd o' Reds sets on to him
with their tongues to-morrow."

"I'm jolly glad," said Jack complacently.

"So am I," said Lennie. "An' I did it, an' I wish it had killed him. I
put a pin under the saddle-crease, Tom. Don't look at me, y'needn't.
I've had one up again 'im for a long time, for Jack's sake. D'y' know
what he did? He put Jack on that Stampede stallion, when Jack hadn't
been on our place a fortnight. So he did. An' if Jack had been killed,
who'd ha' called him a murderer? Zah, one of the blacks, told me. And
nobody durst tell you, cos they durstn't."

"On Stampede!" exclaimed Tom, going yellow, and hell coming into his
brown eyes. "An' a new chum my father trusted to him to show him round."

"Oh well," said Jack.

"The sod!" said Tom: and that was final.

Then after a moment:

"If the Reds is going over the jumps, you go and get Lucy, Len."

"I likes your sperrit, Tom. I was goin' to anyway, case they get that
dark 'oss." Lennie threw off his coat, hat, and tie, then sat on the
trodden brown grass to take off his boots and stockings. Thus stripped,
he stood up and hitched his braces looser, remarking:

"Jack Grant said he'd bash Easu's head for 'im if he said anything to me
after I beat 'im over the jumps, so I was goin' to risk it anyway."

Jack had said no such thing, but was prepared to take the hint.

The chestnut had been caught and tied up. Down the field they could see
Easu persuading Sept to ride a smart piebald filly that had been brought
in. Sept was the thinnest of the Reds. The jumping events continued away
on the left, the sun was almost setting.

"Hurry up there for the final!" called the judge.

Sept came up on the delicate piebald filly which they had brought over
from their own place. She was dark chestnut, and with flames of pure
white, she seemed dazzling.

"That's the dark 'oss I mentioned!" said Len. "Gosh, but me heart is
beatin'! It'll be a real match between me and him, for that there filly
can jump like a 'roo, I've watched 'er."

Joe Low rode up to the jumping yard, and lifted his brumby over. The
filly danced down and followed. Lennie was in the saddle like a cat and
Lucy went over the rail without effort.

When the rail was at five feet two, Joe Low's brumby was done. Lucy
clipped the rail and the filly cleared it. Sept brought his creature
round to the judge, with raised eyebrows.

"No y' don't," yelled Lennie, riding down the track hell for leather,
and Lucy went over like a swallow. Sept laughed, and came down to the
rail that was raised an inch. The filly sailed it, but hit the bar. Lucy
baulked. Len swung her round and came again. A perfect over.

Next! The filly, snorting and frothing, tore down, jibbed, and was sworn
at loudly by Easu standing near. Sept whipped and spurred her over.

But at that rail, raised to five feet nine, she would not be persuaded,
though Lucy cleared it with a curious casual ease. The filly would not
take it.

"Say, Mister!" called Lennie when he knew he was winner. "Raise that
barrier five inches and see us bound it."

He made his detour, brought Lucy along on twinkling feet, and cleared it
prettily.

The roar of delight from the crowd sent Easu mad. Jack kept an eye on
him, in case he meant mischief. But Easu only went away to where the
niggers were still trying out the buck jumpers. Taking hold of a huge
rogue of a mare, he sprang on her back and came bucking all along the
track, apparently to give a specimen of horsemanship. The crowd watched
the queer massive pulsing up and down of the man and the powerful
bucking horse, all in a whirl of long hair, like some queer fountain of
life. And there was Monica watching Easu's cruel, changeless face, that
seemed to have something fixed and eternal in it, amid all that heaving.

Jack felt he had a volcano inside him. He knew that Stampede had been
caught again, and was being led about down there, securely roped, as
part of the show. Down there among the outlaws.

Away ran Jack. Anything rather than be beaten by Easu. But as he ran, he
kept inside him that queer little flame of white-hot calm which was his
invincibility.

He patted Stampede's arching neck, and told Sam to saddle him. Sam
showed the whites of his eyes, but obeyed, and Stampede took it. Jack
stood by, intense in his own cool calmness. He didn't care what happened
to him. If he was to be killed he would be killed. But at the same time,
he was not reckless. He watched the horse with mystical closeness, and
glanced over the saddle and bridle to see if they were all right.

Then, swift and light, he mounted and knew the joy of being a horseman,
the thrill of being a real horseman. He had the gift, and he knew it. If
not the gift of sheer power, like Easu, who seemed to overpower his
horse as he rode it; Jack had the gift of adjustment. He adjusted
himself to his horse. Intuitively, he yielded to Stampede, up to a
certain point. Beyond that certain flexible point, there would be no
yielding, none, and never.

Jack came bucking along in Easu's wake, on a much wilder horse. But
though Stampede was wild and wicked, he never exerted his last efforts.
He bucked like the devil. But he never let himself altogether go. And
Jack seemed to be listening with an inward ear to the animal, listening
to its passion. After all it was a live creature, to be mastered, but
not to be overborne. Intuitively, the boy gave way to it as much as
possible. But he never for one moment doubted his own mastery over it.
In his mastery there must be a living tolerance. This his instinct told
him. And the stallion, bucking and sitting up, seemed somehow to accept
it.

For after all, if the horse had gone really wicked, absolutely wicked,
it would have been too much for Master Jack. What he depended on was the
bit of response the animal was capable of. And this he knew.

He found he could sit the stallion with much greater ease than before.
And that strange, powerful life beneath him and between his thighs,
heaving and breaking like some enormous alive wave, exhilarated him with
great exultance, the exultance in the power of life.

Monica's eyes turned from the red, fixed, overbearing face of Easu, to
the queer, abstract, radiant male face of Jack, and a great pang went
through her heart, and a cloud came over her brow. The boy balanced on
the trembling, spurting stallion, looking down at it with dark-blue,
wide, dark-looking eyes, and thinking of nothing, yet feeling so much;
his face looking soft and warm with a certain masterfulness that was
more animal than human, like a centaur, as if he were one blood with the
horse, and had the centaur's superlative horse-sense, its non-human
power, and wisdom of hot blood-knowledge. She watched the boy, and her
brow darkened and her face was fretted as if she were denied something.
She wanted to look again at Easu, with his fixed hard will that excited
her. But she couldn't. The queer soft power of the boy was too much for
her, she could not save herself.

So they rode, the two men, and all the people watched them, as the sun
went down in the wild empty sea westward from hot Australia.



CHAPTER IX

NEW YEAR'S EVE


I


New Year's Eve was celebrated Scotch style, at Wandoo. It was already
night, and Jack and Tom had been round seeing if the visitors had
everything they wanted. Ma and a few select guests were still in the
kitchen. The cold collation in the parlour still waited majestically.
The twins and Harry were no longer visible: they had subsided on their
stomachs by the wood-pile, in the hot evening, and found refuge in
sleep; for all the world like sailors sunk dilapidated and demoralised
after a high old spree. But Ellie and Baby were at their zenith. Having
been kept out of the ruck most carefully upstairs, they were now
produced at their best. Mr. Ellis was again away in Perth, seeing the
doctor.

Tom and Jack went into the loft and changed into clean white duck. They
came forth like new men, jerking their arms in the stiff starched
sleeves. And they proceeded to light the many Chinese lanterns hung in
the barn, till the great place was mellow with soft light. Already in
the forenoon they had scraped candle ends on the floor, and rubbed them
in. Now they rubbed in the wax a little more, to get the proper
slipperiness.

The light brought the people, like moths. Of course the Reds were there,
brazen as brass. They too had changed into white suits, tight round the
calf and hollow at the waist, and, for the moment, with high collars
rising to their ears above the black cravats. Also they sported
elastic-sided boots of patent leather, whereas most of the other fellows
were in their heavy hob-nailed boots, nicely blacked, indeed, but
destitute of grace. With their hair brushed down in a curl over their
foreheads, and their beards brushed apart, their strong sinewy bodies
filling out the white duck, they felt absolutely invincible, and almost
they looked it. For Jack was growing blind to the rustic absurdities,
blinded by the animal force of these Australians.

Jack sat down by Herbert, who was pleasant and mild after his illness,
always a little shy with the English boy. But the other Reds had taken
possession of the place. Their bounce and brass were astounding. Jack
watched them in wonder at their aggressive self-assertion. They were
real bounders, more crude and more bouncy than ever the Old Country
could produce. But that was Australian. The bulk of the people, perhaps,
were dumb and unassuming. But there was always a proportion of real
brassy bounders, ready to walk over you and jump in your stomach, if
you'd let them.

Easu had constituted himself Master of the Ceremonies, and we know what
an important post that is, in a country bean-feast. Wherever he was, he
must be in the front, bossing and hectoring other people. He had
appointed his brothers "stewards." The Reds were to run the show. There
was to be but one will: the will of the big, loose-jointed, domineering
Easu, with his reddish blonde beard brushed apart and his keen eyes
spying everything with a slight jeer.

Most of the guests, of course, were as they had been all day, in their
Sunday suits or new dungarees. Joe Low, trim in a clean cotton jacket,
sat by the great open doors very seriously blowing notes out of an old
brass cornet, that had belonged to his father, a retired sergeant of the
Foot. Near him, a half-caste Huck was sliding a bow up and down a
yellow-looking fiddle, while other musicians stood with their
instruments under their arms. Outside in the warm night bearded farmers
smoked and talked. Mamas sat on the forms round the barn, and the girls,
most of them fresh and gay in billowy cotton frocks, clustered around in
excitement. It was the great day of all the year.

For the rest, most of the young men were leaning holding up the big
timber supports of the barn, or framing the great opening of the sliding
doors, which showed the enormous dark gap of the naked night.

Fire-eating Easu waved energetically to Joe, who blew a blast on the
cornet. This done, the strong but "common" Australian voice of Easu,
shouted effectively:

"Take partners. Get ready for the Grand March."

For of course he plumed himself on doing everything in "style,"
everything grand and correct, this Australian who so despised the effete
Old Country. The rest of the Reds straightaway marched to the sheepish
and awkward fellows who stood propped up against any available prop,
seized them by the arm, and rushed them up to some equally sheepish
maiden. And instead of resenting it, the poor clowns were glad at being
forced into company. They grinned and blushed, and the girls giggled and
bridled, as they coupled and arranged themselves, two by two, close
behind one another.

A blast of music. Easu seized Monica, who was self-consciously waiting
on the arm of another young fellow. He just flung his arm round her
waist and heaved her to the head of the column. Then the procession set
off, Easu in front with his arm round Monica's waist, he shining with
his own brass and self-esteem, she looking falsely demure. After them
came the other couples, self-conscious but extremely pleased with
themselves, slowly marching round the barn.

Jack, who had precipitated himself into the night rather than be hauled
into action by one of the Red stewards, stood and looked on from afar,
feeling out of it. He felt out in the cold. He hated Easu's common,
gloating self-satisfaction, there at the head with Monica. Red cared
nothing about Monica, really. Only she was the star of the evening, the
chief girl, so he had got her. She was the chief girl for miles around.
And that was enough for Easu. He was determined to leave his mark on
her.

After the March, the girls went back to their Mamas, the youths to their
shoulder-supports; and following a pause, Easu again came into the
middle of the floor, and began bellowing instructions. He was so pleased
with the sound of his own voice, when it was lifted in authority.
Everybody listened with all their ears, afraid of disobeying Easu.

When the ovation was over, the boldest of the young men made a bee-line
for the prettiest girls, and there was a hubbub. In a twinkling any girl
whom Jack would have deigned to dance with, was monopolised, only the
poorest remained. Meanwhile the stewards were busy sorting the couples
into groups.

Jack could not dance. He had not intended to dance. But he didn't at all
like being left out entirely, in oblivion as if he did not exist. Not at
all. So he drifted towards the group of youths in the doorway. But he
slid away again as Ross Ellis plunged in, seized whom he could by the
arm, and led them off to the crude and unprepossessing maidens left
still unchosen. He felt he would resent intensely being grabbed by the
arm and hustled into a partner by one of the Reds.

What was to be done? He seemed to be marooned in his own isolation like
some shipwrecked mariner: and he was becoming aware of the size of his
own hands and feet. He looked for Tom. Tom was steering a stout but
willing mother into the swim, and Lennie, like a faithful little tug,
was following in his wake with a gentle but squint-eyed girl.

Jack became desperate. He looked round quickly. Mrs. Ellis was sitting
alone on a packing case. At the same moment he saw Ross Ellis bearing
down on him with sardonic satisfaction.

Action was quicker than thought. Jack stood bowing awkwardly before his
hostess.

"Won't you do me the honour, Mrs. Ellis?"

"Oh, dear me! Oh dear, Jack Grant! But I believe I will. I never thought
of such a thing. But why not? Yes, I will, it will give me great
pleasure. We shall have to lead off, you know. And I was supposed to
lead with Easu, seeing my husband isn't here. But never mind, we'll lead
off, you and I, just as well."

She rose to her feet briskly, seeming young again. Lately Jack thought
she seemed always to have some trouble on her mind. For the moment she
shook it off.

As for him, he was panic-stricken. He wished he could ascend into
heaven; or at least as high as the loft.

"You'll help me through, marm, won't you?" he said. 'This dance is new
to me.'

And he bowed to her, and she bowed to him, and it was horrible. The
horrible things people did for enjoyment!

"This dance is new to him," Mrs. Ellis passed over his shoulder to a
pretty girl in pink. "Help him through, Alice."

Feeling a fool, Jack turned and met a wide smile and a nod. He bowed
confusedly.

"I'm your corner," said the girl. "I'll pass it on to Monica, she'll be
your vis-à-vis."

"Pick up partners," Easu was yelling with his domineering voice. "All in
place, please! One more couple! One more couple!" He was at the other
end of the barn, coming forward now, looking around like a general. He
was coming for his Aunt.

"Ah!" he said, when he saw Mrs. Ellis and Jack. "You're dancing with
Jack Grant, Aunt Jane? Thought he couldn't dance."

And he straightway turned his back on them, looking for Monica. Monica
was standing with a young man from York.

"Monica, I want you," said Easu. "You can find a girl there," he said,
nodding from the young fellow to a half-caste girl with fuzzy hair. The
young fellow went white. But Monica crossed over to Easu, for she was a
wicked little thing, and this evening she was hating Jack Grant, the
booby.

"One more couple not needed," howled Easu. "Top centre. Where are you,
Aunt Jane? Couple from here, lower centre, go to third set on left."

Easu was standing near the top. He stepped backward, and down came his
heel on Jack's foot. Jack got away, but an angry light came into his
eyes. His face, however, still kept that cherubic expression
characteristic of it, and so ill-fitting his feelings. Easu was staring
over the room, and never even looked round.

"All in place? Music!" cried the M. C.

The music started with a crash and a bang, Mrs. Ellis had seized Jack's
arm and was leading him into the middle of the set.

"Catch hands, Monica," she said.

He loved Monica's thin, nervous, impulsive hands. His heart went hot as
he held them. But Monica wouldn't look at him. She looked demurely
sideways. But he felt the electric thrill that came to him from her
hands, and he didn't want to let go.

She loosed his grasp and pushed him from her.

"Get back to Ma," she whispered. "Corner with Alice."

"Oh, Lor!" thought Jack. For he was cornered and grabbed and twisted by
the girl with the wide smile, before he was let go to fall into place
beside Ma, panting with a sort of exasperation.

So it continued, grabbing and twisting and twirling, all perfectly
ridiculous and undignified. Why, oh, why did human beings do it! Yet it
was better than being left out. He was half-pleased with himself.

Something hard and vicious dug him in the ribs. It was the elbow of
Easu, who passed skipping like a goat.

Was Easu making a dead set at him? The devil's own anger began to rise
in the boy's heart, bringing up with it all the sullen dare-devil that
was in him. When he was roused, he cared for nothing in earth or heaven.
But his face remained cherubic.

"Follow!" said a gentle voice. Perhaps it was all a mistake. He found
himself back by Mrs. Ellis, watching other folks prance. There he stood
and mopped his brow, in the hot, hot night. He was wet with sweat all
over. But before he could wipe his face the pink Alice had caught and
twirled him, taking him unawares. He waited alert. Nothing happened.
Actually peace for a few seconds.

The music stopped. Perhaps it was over. Oh, enjoyment! Why did people do
such things to enjoy themselves? Only he would have liked to hold
Monica's thin, keen hands again. The thin, keen, wild, wistful Monica.
He would like to be near her.

Easu was bawling something. Figure Number Two. He could not listen to
instructions in Easu's voice.

They were dancing again, and he knew no more than at first what he was
doing. All a maze. A natural diffidence and a dislike of being touched
by any casual stranger made dancing unpleasant to him. But he kept up.
And suddenly he found himself with Monica folded in his arms, and she
clinging to him with sudden fierce young abandon. His heart stood still,
as he realised that not only did he want to hold her hands--he had
thought it was just that; but he wanted to hold her altogether in his
arms. Terrible and embarrassing thought! He wished himself on the moon,
to escape his new emotions. At the same time there was the instantaneous
pang of disappointment as she broke away from him. Why could she not
have stayed! And why, oh, why were they both doing this beastly dancing!

He received a clean dear kick on the shin as he passed Easu. Dazed with
a confusion of feelings, keenest among which perhaps was anger, he
pulled up again beside Ma. And there was Monica suddenly in his arms
again.

"You always go again," he said in a vague murmur.

"What did you say?" she asked archly, as she floated from him, just at
the moment when Easu jolted him roughly. Across the little distance she
was watching the hot anger in the boy's confused, dark-blue eyes.

Another pause. More beastly instructions. Different music. Different
evolutions.

"Steady, now!" he said to himself, trying to make his way in the new
figure. But what work it was! He tried to keep his brain steady. But Ma
on his arm was heavy as lead.

And then, with great ease and perfect abandon, in spite of her years, Ma
threw herself on his left bosom and reclined in peace there. He was
overcome. She seemed absolutely to like resting on his bosom.

"Throw out your right hand, dear boy," she whispered, and before he knew
he had done it, Easu had seized his hand in a big, brutal, bullying
grasp, and was grinding his knuckles. And then sixteen people began to
spin.

The startled agony of it made a different man of him. For Ma was heavy
as a log on his left side, clinging to him as if she liked to cling to
his body. He never quite forgave her. And Easu had his unprotected right
hand gripped in a vice and was torturing him on purpose with the weight
and the grind. Jack's hands were naturally small, and Easu's were big.
And to be gripped by that great malicious paw was horrible. Oh, the
tension, the pain and rage of that giddy-go-rounding, first forward,
then abruptly backwards. It broke some of his innocence forever.

But although paralytic with rage when released, Jack's face still looked
innocent and cherubic. He had that sort of face, and that diabolic sort
of stoicism. Mrs. Ellis thought: "What a nice kind boy! but late waking
up to the facts of life!" She thought he had not even noticed Easu's
behaviour. And again she thought to herself, her husband would be
jealous if he saw her. Poor old Jacob! Aloud she said:

"The next is the last figure. You're doing very well, Jack. You go off
round the ring now, handing the ladies first your right and then your
left hand."

He felt no desire to hand anybody his hand. But in the middle of the
ring he met Monica, and her slim grasp took his hurt right hand, and
seemed to heal it for a moment.

Easu grabbed his arm, and he saw three others, suffering fools gladly,
locked arm in arm, playing soldiers, as they called it. Oh, God! Easu,
much taller than Jack, was twisting his arm abominably, almost pulling
it out of the socket. And Jack was saving up his anger.

It was over. "That was very kind of you, my dear boy," Mrs. Ellis was
saying. "I haven't enjoyed a dance so much for years."

Enjoyed! That ghastly word! Why would people insist on enjoying
themselves in these awful ways! Why "enjoy" oneself at all? He didn't
see it. He decided he didn't care for enjoyment, it wasn't natural to
him. Too humiliating, for one thing.

Twenty steps involved in the black skirts of Mrs. Ellis, and he was
politely rid of her. She was very nice. And by some mystery she had
really enjoyed herself in this awful mêlée. He gave it up. She was too
distant in years and experience for him to try to understand her. Did
these people never have living anger, like a bright black snake with
unclosing eyes, at the bottom of their souls? Apparently not.



II


There was an interval in the dancing, and they were having games. Red
was of course still bawling out instructions and directions, being the
colonel of the feast. He was in his element, playing top sawyer.

The next game was to be "Modern Proposals." It sounded rotten to Jack.
Each young man was to make an original proposal to an appointed girl.
Great giggling and squirming even at the mention of it.

Easu still held the middle of the floor. Jack thought it was time to
butt in. With his hands in his pockets he walked coolly into the middle
of the room.

"You people don't know me, and I don't know you," he found himself
announcing in his clear English voice. "Supposing I call this game."

Carried unanimously!

The young men lined up, and Easu, after standing loose on his legs for
some time just behind Jack, went and sat down somewhat discomfited.

Jack pushed Tom on to his knees before the prettiest girl in the
room--the prettiest strange girl, anyhow. Tom, furiously embarrassed on
his knees, stammered:

"I say! There's a considerable pile o' socks wantin' darning in my ol'
camp. I'd go so far as to face the parson, if you'd do 'em for me."

It was beautifully non-committal. For all the Bushies were at heart
terrified lest they might by accident contract a Scotch marriage, and be
held accountable for it.

Jack was amused by the odd, humorous expression of the young
bush-farmers. Joe Low, scratching his head funnily, said: "I'll put the
pot on, if you'll cook the stew." But the most approved proposal was
that of a well-to-do young farmer who is now a J. P. and head of a
prosperous family.

"Me ol' dad an' me ol' lady, they never had no daughters. They gettin'
on well in years, and they kind o' fancy one. I've gotter get 'em one,
quick an' lively. I've fifteen head o' cattle an' seventy-six sheep,
eighteen pigs an' a fallowin' sow. I've got one hundred an' ninety-nine
acres o' cleared land, and ten improved with fruit trees. I've got forty
ducks an' hens an' a flock o' geese an' no one home to feed 'em. Meet me
Sunday mornin' eight-forty sharp at the cross roads, an' I'll be there
in me old sulky to drive y'out an' show y'."

And the girl in pink with the wide smile, answered seriously:

"I will if Mother'll let me, Mr. Burton."

The next girl had been looming up like a big coal-barge. She was a
half-caste, of course named Lily, and she sat aggressively forwards, her
long elbows and wrists much in evidence, and her pleasant swarthy face
alight and eager with anticipation. Oh, these Missioner half-castes!

Jack ordered Easu forward.

But Easu was not to be baited. He strode over, put his hand on the fuzzy
head, and said in his strong voice:

"Hump y'r bluey and come home."

The laugh was with him, he had won again.



III


They went down to the cold collation. There Jack found other arrivals.
Mary had come in via York with Gran's spinster daughters. Also the
Greenlow girls from away back, and they made a great fuss of him. The
doctor too turned up. He had been missing all day, but now he strolled
back and forth, chatting politely first to one and then another, but
vague and washed-out to a degree.

Jack's anger coiled to rest at the supper, for Monica was very attentive
to him. She sat next to him, found him the best pieces, and shared her
glass with him, in her quick, dangerous, generous fashion, looking up at
him with strange wide looks of offering, so that he felt very manly and
very shy at the same time. But very glad to be near her. He felt that it
was his spell that was upon her, after all, and though he didn't really
like flirting with her there in the public supper room, he loved her
hand finding his under the cover of her sash, and her fingers twining
into his as if she were entering into his body. Safely under the cover
of her silk sash. He would have liked to hold her again, close, close;
her agile, live body, quick as a cat's. She was mysterious to him as
some cat-goddess, and she excited him in a queer electric fashion.

But soon she was gone again, elusive as a cat. And of course she was in
great request. So Jack found himself talking to the little elderly Mary,
with her dark animal's _museau._ Mary was like another kind of cat: not
the panther sort, but the quiet, dark, knowing sort. She was comfortable
to talk to, also soft and stimulating.

Jack and Mary sat on the edge of the barn, in the hot night, looking at
the trees against the strange, ragged southern sky, hearing the frogs
occasionally, and fighting the mosquitoes. Mrs. Ellis also sat on the
ledge not far off. And presently Jack and Mary were joined by the
doctor. Then came Grace and Alec Rice, sitting a little further down,
and talking in low tones. The night seemed full of low, half-mysterious
talking, in a starry darkness that seemed pregnant with the scent and
presence of the black people. Jack often wondered why, in the night, the
country still seemed to belong to the black people, with their strange,
big, liquid eyes.

Where was Easu? Was he talking to Monica? Or to the black half-caste
Lily? It might as well be the one as the other. The odd way he had
placed his hand on Lily's black fuzzy head, as if he were master, and
she a sort of concubine. She would give him all the submission he
wanted.

But then, why Monica? Monica in her white, full-skirted frock with its
moulded bodice, her slender, golden-white arms and throat! Why Monica in
the same class with the half-caste Lily?

Anger against Easu was sharpening Jack's wits, and curiously detaching
him from his surroundings. He listened to the Australian voices and the
Australian accent around him. The careless, slovenly speech in the
uncontrolled, slack, caressive voices. At first he had thought the
accent awful. And it was awful. But gradually, as he got into the rhythm
of the people, he began even to sympathise with "Kytie" instead of
"Katie." There was an abandon in it all--an abandon of restrictions and
confining control. Why have control? Why have authority? Why not let
everybody do as they liked? Why not?

That was what Australia was for, a careless freedom. An easy,
unrestricted freedom. At least out in the bush. Every man to do as he
liked. Easu to run round with Monica, or with the black Lily, or to kick
Jack's shins in the dance.

Yes, even this. But Jack had scored it up. He was going to have his own
back on Easu. He thought of Easu with his hand on the black girl's fuzzy
head. That would be just like Easu. And afterwards to want Monica. And
Monica wouldn't really mind about the black girl. Since Easu was Easu.

Sitting there on the barn ledge, Jack in a vague way understood it all.
And in a vague way tolerated it all. But with a dim yet fecund germ of
revenge in his heart. He was not morally shocked. But he was going to be
revenged. He did not mind Easu's running with a black girl, and
afterwards Monica. Morally he did not mind it. But physically--perhaps
pride of race--he minded. Physically he could never go so far as to lay
his hand on the darky's fuzzy head. His pride of blood was too intense.

He had no objection at all to Lily, until it came to actual physical
contact. And then his blood recoiled with old haughtiness and pride of
race. It was bad enough to have to come into contact with a woman of his
own race: to have to give himself away even so far. The other was
impossible.

And yet he wanted Monica. But he knew she was fooling round with Easu.
So deep in his soul formed the motive of revenge.

There are times when a flood of realisation and purpose sweeps through a
man. This was one of Jack's times. He was not definitely conscious of
what he realised and of what he purposed. Yet, there it was, resolved in
him.

He was trying not to hear Dr. Rackett's voice talking to Mary. Even Dr.
Rackett was losing his Oxford drawl, and taking on some of the
Australian ding-dong. But Rackett, like Jack, was absolutely fixed in
his pride of race, no matter what extraneous vice he might have. Jack
had a vague idea it was opium. Some chemical stuff.

". . . free run of old George's books? I should say it was a doubtful
privilege for a young lady. But you hardly seem to belong to West
Australia. I think England is really your place. Do you actually want to
belong, may I ask?"

"To Western Australia? To the _country_, yes, very much. I love the
land, the country life, Dr. Rackett. I don't care for the social life of
a town like Perth. But I should like to live all my life on a farm--in
the bush."

"Would you now!" said Rackett. "I wonder where you get that idea from.
You are the granddaughter of an earl."

"Oh, my grandfather is farther away from me than the moon. You would
never know _how_ far!" laughed Mary. "No, I am colonial born and bred.
Though of course there is a fascination about the English. But I hardly
knew Papa. He was a tenth child, so there wasn't much of the earldom
left to him. And then he was a busy A.D.C. to the Governor-General. And
he married quite late in life. And then Mother died when I was little,
and I got passed on to Aunt Matilda. Mother was Australian born. I don't
think there is much English in me."

Mary said it in a queer complacent way, as if there were some peculiar,
subtle antagonism between England and the colonial, and she was ranged
on the colonial side. As if she were a subtle enemy of the father, the
English father in her.

"Queer! Queer thing to me!" said Rackett, as if he half felt the
antagonism. For he would never be colonial, not if he lived another
hundred years in Australia. "I suppose," he added, pointing his pipe
stem upwards, "it comes from those unnatural stars up there. I always
feel they are doing something to me."

"I don't think it's the stars," laughed Mary. "I am just Australian, in
the biggest part of me, that's all."

Jack could feel in the statement some of the antagonism that burned in
his own heart, against his own country, his own father, his own empty
fate at home.

"If I'd been born in this country, I'd stick to it," he broke in.

"But since you weren't born in it, what will you do, Grant?" asked the
doctor ironically.

"Stick to myself," said Jack stubbornly, rather sulkily.

"You won't stick to Old England then?" asked Rackett.

"Seems I'm a misfit in Old England," said Jack. "And I'm not going to
squeeze my feet into tight boots."

Rackett laughed.

"Rather go barefoot like Lennie?" he laughed.

Jack relapsed into silence, and turned a deaf ear, looking into the
alien night of the southern hemisphere. And having turned a deaf ear to
Rackett and Mary, he heard, as if by divination, the low voice of Alec
Rice proposing in real earnest to Grace: proposing in a low, urgent
voice that sounded like a conspiracy.

He rose to go away. But Mary laid a detaining hand on his arm, as if she
wished to include him in the conversation, and did not wish to be left
alone with Dr. Rackett.

"Don't you sympathise with me, Jack, for wishing I had been a boy, to
make my own way in the world, and have my own friends, and size things
up for myself?"

"Seems to me you do size things up for yourself," said Jack rather
crossly. "A great deal more than most _men_ do."

"Yes, but I can't do things as I could if I were a man."

"What _can_ a man do, then, more than a woman--that's worth doing?"
asked Rackett.

"He can see the world, and love as he wishes to love, and work."

"No man can love as he wishes to love," said Rackett. "He's nearly
always stumped, in the love game."

"But he can _choose!_" persisted Mary.

And Jack with his other ear was hearing Alec Rice's low voice
persisting.

"Go on, Grace, you're not too young. You're just right. You're just the
ticket now. Go on, let's be engaged and tell your Dad and fix it up.
We're meant for one another, you know we are. Don't you think we're
meant for one another?"

"I never thought about it that way, truly."

"But don't you think so now? Yes, you do."

Silence--the sort that gives consent. And the silence of a young,
spontaneous embrace.

Jack was on tenterhooks. He wanted to be gone. But Mary was persisting,
in her obstinate voice--he wished she'd shut up too.

"I wanted to be a sailor at ten, and an explorer at twelve. At nineteen
I wanted to become a painter of wonderful pictures." Jack wished she
wouldn't say all this. "And then I had' a streak of humility, and wanted
to be a gardener. Yet----" she laughed, "not a sort of gardener such as
Aunt Matilda hires. I wanted to grow things and see them come up out of
the earth. And see baby chicks hatched, and calves and lambs born."

She had lifted her hand from Jack's sleeve, to his relief.

"And marry a farmer like Tom," he said roughly. Mary received this with
dead silence.

"And drudge your soul away like Mrs. Ellis," said Rackett. "Worn out
before your time, between babies and heavy housework. Groping on the
earth all your life, grinding yourself into ugliness at work which some
animal of a servant-lass would do with half the effort. Don't you think
of it, Miss Mary. Let the servant-lasses marry the farmers. You've got
too much in you. Don't go and have what you've got in you trampled out
of you by marrying some cocky farmer. Tom's as good as gold, but he
wants a brawny lass of his own sort for a wife. You be careful, Miss
Mary. Women can find themselves in ugly harness, out here in these
god-forsaken colonies. Worse harness than any you've ever kicked
against."

Monica seemed to have scented the tense atmosphere under the barn, for
she appeared like a young witch, in a whirlwind.

"Hullo, Mary! Hullo, Dr. Rackett! It's just on midnight." And she
flitted over to Grace. "Just on midnight, Grace and Alec. Are you
coming? You seem as if you were fixed here."

"We're not fixed on the spot, but we're fixed up all right, otherwise,"
said Alec, in a slight tone of resentment, as he rose from Grace's side.

"Oh, have you and Grace fixed it up!" exclaimed Monica, with a false
vagueness and innocence. "I'm awfully glad. I'm awfully glad, Grace."

"I am," said Grace, with a faint touch of resentment, and she rose and
took Alec's arm.

They were already like a married couple armed against that witch. Had
she been flirting with Alec, and then pushed him over on to Grace? Jack
sensed it with the sixth sense which divines these matters.

Monica appeared at his side.

"It's just twelve. Come and hold my hand in the ring. Mary can hold your
other hand. Come on! Come on, Alec, as well. I don't want any strangers
next to me to-night."

Jack smiled sardonically to himself as she impulsively caught hold of
his hand. Monica was "a circumstance over which we have no control,"
Lennie said. Jack felt that he had a certain control.

They all took hands as she directed, and moved into the barn to link up
with the rest of the chain. There in the soft light of the big chamber,
Easu suddenly appeared, without collar or cravat, his hair ruffled, his
white suit considerably creased. But he lurched up in his usual
aggressive way, with his assertive good humour, demanding to break in
between Jack and Monica. Jack held on, and Monica said:

"You mustn't break in, you know it makes enemies."

"Does it!" grinned Easu. And with sardonic good humour he lurched away
to an unjoined part of the ring. He carried about with him a sense of
hostile power. But Jack was learning to keep within himself another sort
of power, small and concentrated and fixed like a stone, the sort of
power that ultimately would break through the bulk of Easu's
domineering.

The ring complete at last, they all began to sing: "Cheer, Boys, Cheer!"
and "God Bless the Prince of Wales, John Brown's Body," and "Britons,
Never, Never, Never."

Then Easu bawled: "Midnight!" There was a moment's frightened pause. Joe
Low blasted on the cornet, his toe beating time madly all the while.
Fiddles, whistles, concertinas, Jew's harps raggedly began to try out
the tune. The clasped hands began to rock, and taking Easu's shouting
lead, they all began to sing, in the ring:


"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
An' never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?

"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne."


They all sang heartily and with feeling. There was a queer Scottish tang
in the colony, that made the Scottish emotion dominant. Jack disliked
it. There was no auld acquaintance, or auld lang syne, at least for him.
And he didn't care for these particular cups of kindness, in one ring
with Easu, black Lily, Dr. Rackett and Monica, and all. He didn't like
the chain of emotion and supposed pathetic clanship. It was worse here
even than on shipboard.

Why start the New Year like this? As a matter of fact he wanted to
forget most of his own Auld Acquaintance, and start something a little
different. And any rate, the emotion was spurious, the chain was
artificial, the flow was false.

Monica seemed to take a wicked pleasure in it, and sang more emotionally
than anybody, in a sweet but smallish voice. And poor little Mary, with
her half-audible murmur, had her eyes full of tears and seemed so moved.

Auld lang syne!

Old Long Since.

Why not put it in plain English?



IV


The celebration did not end with Auld Lang Syne. By half-past two most
of the ladies had retired, though some ardent dancers still footed the
floor, and a chaperone or two, like crumpled rag-bags, slept on their
boxes. A good number of young men and boys were asleep with Herbert on
the sacks, handkerchiefs knotted round their throats in place of
collars. The concertina, the cornet, the fiddles and the rest of the
band had gone down to demolish the remains of the cold collation, whilst
Tom, Ross, and Ned sat on the barn step singing as uproariously as they
could, though a little hoarse, for the last dancers to dance to. Someone
was whistling very sweetly.

Where was Easu? Jack wondered as he wandered aimlessly out into the
night. Where was Easu? For Jack had it on his mind that he ought to
fight him. Felt he would be a coward if he didn't tackle him this very
night.

But it was three o'clock, the night was very still and rich, still warm,
rather close, but not oppressive. The strange heaviness of the hot
summer night, with the stars thick in clouds and clusters overhead, the
moon being gone. Jack strayed aimlessly through the motionless, dark,
warm air, till he came to the paddock gate, and there he leaned with his
chin on his arms, half asleep. It seemed to be growing cooler, and a
dampness was bringing out the scent of the scorched grass, the essence
of the earth, like incense. There was a half-wild bush with a few pale
pink roses near the gate. He could just get their fragrance. If it were
as it should be, Monica would be here, in one of her wistful, her
fiercely wistful moments! When she looked at him with her yellow eyes
and her fierce, naive look of yearning, he was ready to give all his
blood to her. If things were as they should be, she would be clinging to
him now like that, and nestling against his breast. If things were as
they should be!

He didn't want to go to sleep. He wanted what he wanted. He wanted the
night, the young, changeable, yearning Monica, and an answer to his own
awake young blood. He insisted on it. He would not go to sleep, he would
insist on an answer. And he wanted to fight Easu. He ought to fight
Easu. His manhood depended on it.

He could hear the cattle stirring down the meadow. Soon it would begin
to be day. What was it now? It was night, dark night towards morning,
with a faint breathing of air from the sea. And where was he? He was in
Australia, leaning on the paddock gate and seeing the stars and the dim
shape of the gum-tree. There was a faint scent of eucalyptus in the
night. His mother was far away. England was far away. He was alone there
leaning on the paddock gate, in Australia.

After all, perhaps the very best thing was to be alone. Better even than
having Monica or fighting Easu. Because where you are alone you are at
one with your own God. The spirit in you is God in you. And when you are
alone you are one with the spirit of God inside you. Other people are
chiefly an interruption.

And moreover, he could never say he was lonely while he was at Wandoo,
while there were Tom and Lennie, and Monica, and all the rest. He hoped
he would have them all his life. He hoped he would never, in all his
life, say good-bye to them.

No, he would take up land as near this homestead as possible and build a
brick house on it. And he would have a number of fine horses, better
than anyone else's, and some sheep that would pay, and a few cows.
Always milk and butter with the wheat-meal damper.

What was that? Only a more-pork. He laid his head on his arms again, on
the gate. He wanted a place of his own, now. He would have it now if he
had any money. And marry Monica. Would he marry Monica? Would he marry
anybody? He much preferred the whole family. But he wanted a place of
his own. If he could hurry up his father. And old Mr. George. He might
persuade Mr. George to be on his side. Why was there never any money? No
money! A father ought to have some money for a son.

What was that? He saw a dim white figure stealing across the near
distance. Pah! must have been a girl sitting out under the photosphorum
tree. When he had thought he was quite alone.

The thought upset him. And he ought to find Easu. Obstinately he
insisted to himself that he ought to find Easu.

He drifted towards the shed near the cubby, where Mr. Ellis kept the
tools. Somebody unknown and unauthorised had put a barrel of beer inside
the shed. Men were there drinking, as he knew they would be.

"Have a pot, youngster?"

"Thanks."

He sat down on a case beside the door, and drank the rather warm beer.
His head began to drop. He knew he was almost asleep.

Easu loomed up from the dark, coatless, hatless, with his shirt front
open, asking for a drink. He was thirsty. Easu was thirsty. How could
you be angry with a thirsty man! And he wasn't so bad after all. No,
Easu wasn't so bad after all! What did it matter! What did it all
matter, anyhow?

Jack slipped to the ground and lay there fast asleep.



CHAPTER X

SHADOWS BEFORE


I


But in the morning memory was back, and the unquenched smouldering of
passion. Easu had insulted him. Easu had insulted him, and that should
never be forgiven. And he had this new, half painful, more than half
painful desire to see Monica, to be near her, to touch her hand; a sort
of necessity upon him all the while which he was not used to. It made
him restless, uneasy, and for the first time in his life, a little
melancholy. He was used to feeling angry: a steady, almost blithe sort
of anger. And beyond that he had always been able to summon up an
indifference to things, cover them with oblivion: to retreat upon
himself and insulate himself from contact.

Now he could no longer do this, and it fretted him, made him accessible
to melancholy. The hot, hot January days, all dry flaming heat, and
flies, and mosquitoes, passed over him leaving him strange even to
himself. There was work, the drudging work of the farm, all the while.
And one just sweated. He learned to submit to it, to the sweating all
the time during the day, and the mosquitoes at night. It was like a
narcotic. The old, English alertness grew darker and darker. He seemed
to be moving, a dim consciousness and an unyielding will, in a dark
cloud of heat, in a perspiring, dissolving body. He could feel his body,
the English cool body of his being, slowly melting down and being
invaded by a new tropical quality. Sometimes, he said to himself, he was
sweating his soul away. That was how it felt: as if he were sweating his
soul away. And he let his soul go, let it slowly melt away out of his
wet, hot body.

Any man who has been in the tropics, unless he has kept all his mind and
his consciousness focussed homewards, fixed towards the old people of
home, will know how this feels. Now Jack did not turn homewards, back to
England. He never wanted to go back. There was in him a slow, abiding
anger against this same "home." Therefore he let himself go down the
dark tide of the heat. He did not cling on to his old English soul, the
soul of an English gentleman. He let that dissolve out of him, leaving
what residuum of a man it might leave. But out of very obstinacy he hung
on to his own integrity: a small, dark, obscure integrity.

Usually he was too busy perspiring, panting, and working to think about
anything. His mind also seemed dissolving away in perspiration and in
the curious eucalyptus solvent of the Australian air. He was too busy
and too much heat-oppressed even to think of Monica or of Easu, though
Monica was a live wire in his body. Only on Sundays he seemed to come
half out of his trance. And then everything went queer and strange, a
little uncanny.

Dad was back again for the harvest, but his heart was no better, and a
queer frightening cloud seemed over him. And Gran, they said, was
failing. Somehow Gran was the presiding deity of the house. Her queer
spirit controlled, even now. And she was failing. She adored Lennie, but
he was afraid of her.

"Gran's the limit," he asserted. "She's that wilful. Always the same
with them women when they gets well on in years. I clear out from her if
I can, she's that obstropulous--tells y't'wipe y'nose, pull up y'pants,
brush y'teeth, not sniff: golly, I can't stand it!"

Sunday was the day when you really came into contact with the family.
The rule was, that each one took it in turns to get up and make
breakfast, while everybody else stayed on in bed, for a much-needed
rest. If it was your turn, you rolled out of bed at dawn when Timothy
banged on the wall, you slipped on your shirt and pants and went to the
"everlasting" fire. Raking the ashes together with a handful of sticks,
you blew a blaze and once more smelt the burning eucalyptus leaves. You
filled the black iron kettle at the pump, and set it over the flame.
Then you washed yourself. After which you carved bread and butter: tiny
bits for Gran, moderate pieces for upstairs, and doorsteps for the
cubby. After which you made the tea, and _holloa'd!_ while you poured it
out. One of the girls, with a coat over her nighty and her hair in a
chignon, would come barefoot to carry the trays, to Gran and to the
upstairs. This was just the preliminary breakfast: the Sunday morning
luxury. Just tea in bed.

Later the boys were shouting for clean shirts and towels, and the women
were up. Proceeded the hair-cutting, nail-paring, button-sewing, and
general murmur, all under the supervision of Ma. Then down to the
sand-bagged pool for a dip. After which, clean and in clean raiment, you
went to the parlour to hear Dad read the lessons.

The family Bible was carefully kept warm in the parlour, dining the
week, under a woollen crochet mat. A crochet mat above, and a crochet
mat below. Nothing must ever stand on that book, nothing whatever. The
children were quite superstitious about it.

Lennie, the Benjamin of his father Jacob, each Sunday went importantly
into the drawing-room, in a semi-religious silence, and fetched the
ponderous brass-bound book. He put it on the table in front of Dad. Gran
came in with her stick and her lace cap, and sat in the arm-chair near
the window. Mrs. Ellis and the children folded their hands like saints.
Mr. Ellis wiped his spectacles, cleared his throat, looked again at the
little church calendar of the lessons, found the place, and proceeded in
a droning voice. Nobody looked at him, except Mrs. Ellis. Everybody
looked another way. Gran usually gazed sideways at the floor. Tick,
tock! went the clock. It was a little eternity.

Jack knew the Bible pretty well, as a well-brought-up nephew of his
Aunts. He had no objection to the Bible. On the contrary it supplied his
imagination with a chief stock of images, his ear with the greatest
solemn pleasure of words, and his soul with a queer heterogeneous ethic.
He never really connected the Bible with Christianity proper, the
Christianity of Aunts and clergymen. He had no use for Christianity
proper: just dismissed it. But the Bible was perhaps the foundation of
his consciousness. Do what seems good to you in the sight of the Lord.
This was the moral he always drew from Bible lore. And since the Lord,
for him, was always the Lord Almighty, Almighty God, Maker of Heaven and
Earth, Jesus being only a side-issue; since the Lord was always Jehovah
the great and dark, for him, one might do as David did, in the sight of
the Lord, or as Jacob, or as Abraham or Moses or Joshua or Isaiah, in
the sight of the Lord. The sight of the Lord was a vast strange scope of
vision, in the semi-dark.

Gran always listened the same, leaning on her stick and looking sideways
to the ground, as if she did not quite see the stout and purple-faced
Jacob, her son, as the mouthpiece of the Word. As a matter of fact, the
way he read Scripture irritated her. She wished Lennie could have read
the lessons. But Dad was head of the house, and she was fond of him,
poor old Jacob.

And Jack always furtively watched Gran. She frightened him, and he had a
little horror of her: but she fascinated him too. She was like Monica,
at the great distance of her years. Her lace cap was snowy white, with
little lavender ribbons. Her face was pure ivory, with fine-shaped
features, that subtly arched nose, like Monica's. Her silver hair came
over her dead-looking ears. And her dry, shiny, blue-veined hand
remained fixed over the pommel of her black stick. How awful, how
unspeakably awful, Jack felt, to be so old! No longer human. And she
seemed so little inside her clothes. And one never knew what she was
thinking. But surely some strange, uncanny, dim non-human thoughts.

Sunday was full of strange, half-painful impressions of death and of
life. After lessons the boys would escape to the yards, and the stables,
and lounge about. Or they would try the horses, or take a gun into the
uncleared bush. Then came the enormous Sunday dinner, when everyone ate
himself stupid.

In the afternoon Tom and Jack wandered to the loft, to the old
concertina. Up there among the hay, they squeezed and pulled the old
instrument, till at last, after much practice, they could draw forth
tortured hymnal sounds from its protesting internals.


"Ha-a-appy Ho-ome! Ha-appy Ho-ome!
Oh Haa-py Ho-me! Oh Haa-py Ho-me!
In Paradise with thee!"


Over and over again the same tune, till Tom would drop off to sleep, and
Jack would have a go at it. And this yearning sort of hymn always sent a
chill to his bowels. They were like Gran, on the brink of the grave. In
fact the word Paradise made him shudder worse than the word coffin. Yet
he would grind away at the tune. Till he too fell asleep.

And then they would wake in the heat to the silence of the suspended,
fiercely hot afternoon. Only to feel their own sweat trickling, and to
hear the horses, the draft-horses which were in stable for the day,
chop-chopping underneath. So, in spite of sweat and heat, another go at
the fascinating concertina.



II


One Sunday Jack strolled in an hour early for tea. He had made a
mistake, as one does sometimes when one sleeps in the afternoon. Gran
was sitting by a little fire in the dark living room. She had to have a
little fire to look at. It was like life to her.

"Come here, Jack Grant," she said in her thin, imperious voice. He went
on reluctant feet, for he had a dread of her years and her strange
femaleness. What did she want of him?

"Did y'hear Mr. George get my son to promise to make a will, when y'were
in Perth?"

"No, marm," said Jack promptly.

"Well, take it from me, if he promised, he hasn't done it. He never
signed a paper in his life, unless it was his marriage register. And but
for my driving, he'd never have signed that. Sit down!"

Jack sat on the edge of a chair, his heart in his boots.

"I told you before I'd ha' married your grandfather, if he hadn't been
married already. I wonder where you'd ha' been then! Just as well I
didn't, for he wouldn't look at me after he took my leg off. Just come
here a minute."

Jack got up and went to her side. She put her soft, dry, dead old hand
on his face and stroked it, pressing on the cheekbones.

"Ay," she said. "I suppose those are his bones again. And my bones are
in Monica. Don't stand up, lad, take your seat."

Jack sat down in extreme discomfort.

"Well," she resumed, "I was very well off with old Ellis, so I won't
complain. But you've got your English father's eyes. You'd have been
better with mine. Those bones, those beautiful bones, and my sort of
eyes."

Gran's eyes were queer and remote now. But they had been perhaps like
Monica's, only a darker grey, and with a darker, subtler cat look in
them.

"I suppose it will be in the children's children," she resumed, her eyes
going out like a candle. "For I married old Ellis, though to this day I
never quite believe it. And one thing I do know. I won't die in the
dying room of his house. I won't do it, not if it was the custom of a
hundred families. Not if he was here himself to see me do it. I
wouldn't. Though he was kindness itself. But not if he was here himself,
and had the satisfaction of seeing me do it. A dreadful room! I'd be
frightened to death to die in it. I like me sheets sun-kissed, heat or
no heat, and no sun ever gets into that room. But it's better for a
woman to marry, even if she marries the wrong man. I allus said so. An
old maid, especially a decayed gentlewoman, is a blight on the face of
the earth."

"Why?" said Jack suddenly. The old woman was too authoritative.

"That's why! What do you know about it," she said contemptuously.

"I knew a nice old lady in England, who'd never been married," he said,
thinking of a really beautiful, gentle woman, Who had kept all her
perfume and her charm, in spite of her fifty-odd years of single
blessedness. But then she had a naturally deep and religious nature, not
like this pagan old cat of a Gran.

"_Did_ you!" said Gran, eying him severely. "What do _you_ know at your
age? I've got three unmarried daughters, and I'm ashamed of them. If I'd
married your grandfather I never should have had them. Self-centred, and
old as old boots, they are. I'd rather they'd gone wrong and died in the
bush, like your Aunt who had a child by Mary's father."

Jack made round, English eyes of amazement at this speech. He
disapproved thoroughly.

"You've got too much of your English father in you," she said, "and not
enough of your hard-hearted grandfather. Look at Lennie, what a
beautiful boy he is."

There was a pause. Jack sat in a torment while she baited him. He was
full of antagonism towards her and her years.

"But I tell you, you never realise you're old till you see your friends
slipping away. One by one they go--over the border. _That's_ what makes
you feel old. I tell you. Nothing else. Annie Brockman died the other
day. I was at school with her. She wasn't old, though _you'd_ have
thought so."

The way Gran said this was quite spiteful. And Jack thought to himself:
"What nonsense, she was old if she was at school with Gran. If she was
as old as Gran, she was awfully old."

"No, she wasn't old--school girls and fellows laughing in the ball room,
or breathing fast after a hard ride. You didn't know Sydney in those
days. And men grown old behind their beards for want of understanding;
because they're too dense to understand what living means. Men are
dense. Are ye listening?"

The question came with such queer aged force that Jack started almost
out of his chair.

"Yes, marm," he said.

"'Yes marm!' he says!" she repeated, with a queer little grin of
amusement. "Listen to this grandfather's chit saying 'Yes marm!' to me!
Well, they'll have their way. My friends are nearly all gone, so I
suppose I shall soon be going. Not but what there's plenty of amusement
here."

She looked round in an odd way, as if she saw ghosts. Jack would have
given his skin to escape her.

"Listen," she said with sudden secrecy. "I want ye to do something for
me. You love Lennie, don't ye?"

Jack nodded.

"So do I! I'm going to help him." Her voice became sharp with secrecy.
"I've put by a stocking for him," she hissed. "At least it's not a
stocking, it's a tin box, but it's the same thing. It's up there!" She
pointed with her stick at the wide black chimney. "D'ye understand?"

She eyed Jack with aged keenness, and he nodded, though his
understanding was rather vague. Truth to tell, nothing she said seemed
to him quite real. As if, poor Gran, her age put her outside of reason.

"That stocking is for Lennie. Tom's mother was nobody knows who, though
I'm not going to say Jacob never married her, if Jack says he did. But
Tom'll get everything. The same as Jacob did. That's how it hits back at
me. I wanted Jacob to have the place, and now it goes to Tom, and my
little Lennie gets nothing. Alice has been a good woman, and a good wife
to Jacob: better than he deserved. I'm going to stand by her. That
stocking in there is for Lennie because he's her eldest son. In a tin
box. Y'understand?"

And she pointed again at the chimney.

Jack nodded, though he didn't really take it in. He had a little horror
of Gran at all times; but when she took on this witch-like
portentousness, and whispered at him in a sharp, aged whisper, about
money, hidden money, it all seemed so abnormal to him that he refused to
take it for real. The queer, aged, female spirit that had schemed with
money for the menfolk she chose, scheming to oust those she had not
elected, was so strange and half-ghoulish, that he merely shrank from
taking it in. When she pointed with her white-headed stick at the wide
black mouth of the chimney, he glanced and looked quickly away again. He
did not want to think of a hoard of sovereigns in a stocking--or a tin
box--secreted in there. He did not want to think of the subtle,
scheming, vindictive old woman reaching up into the soot, to add more
gold to the hoard. It was all unnatural to him and to his generation.

But Gran despised him and his generation. It was as unreal to her as
hers to him.

"Old George couldn't even persuade that Jacob of mine to sign a marriage
settlement," she continued. "And I wasn't going to force him. Would you
believe a man could be such an obstinate fool?"

"Yes, marm," said Jack automatically.

And Gran stamped her stick at him in sudden vicious rage.

The stamping of the stick brought Grace, and he fled.



III


That evening they were all sitting in the garden. The drawing room was
thrown open, as usual on Sunday, but nobody even went in except to strum
the piano. Monica was strumming hymns now. Grace came along calling
Mary. Mary was staying on at Wandoo.

"Mary, Gran wants you. She feels faint. Come and see to her, will you?"

Ellie came and slipped her fat little hand into Jack's, hanging on to
him. Katie and Lennie sat surreptitiously playing cats'-cradle, on the
steps: forbidden act, on the Sabbath. The twin boys wriggled their backs
against the gate-posts and their toes into the earth, asking each other
riddles. Harry as usual aimed stones at birds. It was a close evening,
the wind had not come. And they all were uneasy, with that uncanny
uneasiness that attacks families, because Gran was not well.

Harry was singing profanely, profaning the Sabbath.


"A blue jay sat on a hickory limb,
He wink at me, I wink at him.
I up with a stone, an' hit him on the shin.
Says he, Little Nigger, don' do that agin!
Clar de kitchen, ol' folk, young folk!
Oar de kitchen, ol' folk, young folk!
An' let us dance till dawn O."


Harry shouted out these wicked words half loud to a tune of his own that
was no tune.

Jack did not speak. The sense of evening, Sunday evening, far away from
any church or bell, was strong upon him. The sun was slow in the sky,
and the light intensely strong, all fine gold. He went out to look. The
sunlight flooded the dry, dry earth till it glowed again, and the
gum-trees that stood up hung tresses of liquid shadow from trunks of
gold, and the buildings seemed to melt blue in the vision of light.
Someone was riding in from westward, and a cloud of pure gold-dust rose
fuming from the earth about the horse and the horseman, with a vast,
overwhelming gold glow of the void heavens above. The whole west was so
powerful with pure gold light, coming from immense space and the sea,
that it seemed like a transfiguration, and another horseman rode fuming
in a dust of light as if he were coming, small and Daniel-like, out of
the vast furnace-mouth of creation. Jack looked west, into the welter of
yellow light, in fear. He knew again, as he had known before, that his
day was not the day of all the world, there was a huger sunset than the
sunset of his race. There were vaster, more unspeakable gods than the
gods of his fathers. The god in this yellow fire was huger than the
white men could understand, and seemed to proclaim their doom.

Out of this immense power of the glory seemed to come a proclamation of
doom. Lesser glories must crumble to powder in this greater glow, as the
horsemen rode trotting in the glorified cloud of the earth, spuming a
glory all round them. They seemed like messengers out of the great West,
coming with a proclamation of doom, the small, trotting, aureoled
figures kicking tip dust like sun-dust, and gradually growing larger,
hardening out of the sea of light. Like sun-arrivals.

Though after all it was only Alec Rice and Tom. But they were gilded
men, dusty and sun-luminous, as they came into the yard, with their
brown faces strangely vague in shadow, unreal.

The sun was setting, huge and liquid, and sliding down at immense speed
behind the far-off molten, wavering, long ridge towards the coast.
Fearsome the great liquid sun was, stooping fiercely down like an enemy
stooping to hide his glory, leaving the sky hovering and pulsing above,
with a sense of wings, and a sense of proclamation, and of doom. It
seemed to say to Jack: I and my race are doomed. But even the doom is a
splendour.

Shadow lay very thin on the earth, pale as day, though the sun was gone.
Jack turned back to the house. The tiny twins were staggering home to
find their supper, their hands in the pockets of their Sunday breeches.
The pockets of everyday breeches were, for some mysterious reason,
always sewn up, so Sunday alone knew this swagger. Harry was being
called in to bed. And Len and Katie, rarely far off at meal times, were
converging towards supper too.

Monica was still drumming listlessly on the piano, and singing in a
little voice. She had a very sweet voice, but she usually sang "small."
She was not singing a hymn, Jack became aware of this. She was singing,
rather nervously, or irritably, and with her own queer yearning pathos:


"Oh Jane, Oh Jane, my pretty Jane, Oh Jane,
Ah never, never look so shy.
But meet me, meet me in the moonlight,
When the dew is on the rye."


Someone had lighted the piano candles, and she sat there strumming and
singing in a little voice, and looking queer and lonely. His heart went
hot in his breast, and then started pounding. He crossed silently, and
stood just behind her. For some moments she would not notice him, but
went on singing the same. And he stood perfectly still close behind her.
Then at last she glanced upward at him, and his heart stood still again
with the same sense of doom the sun had given him. She still went on
singing for a few moments. Then she stopped abruptly, and jerked her
hand from the piano.

"Don't you want to sing?" she asked sharply.

"Not particularly."

"What do you want then?"

"Let us go out."

She looked at him strangely, then rose in her abrupt fashion. She
followed him across the yard in silence, while he felt the curious sense
of doom settling down on him.

He sat down on the step of the back-door of the barn, outside, looking
southward into the vast, rapidly darkening country, and glanced up at
her. She, rather petulantly, sat down beside him. He felt for her cool
slip of a hand, and she let it lie in his hot one. But she averted her
face.

"Why don't you like me?" she asked petulantly.

"But I love you," he said thickly, with shame and the sense of doom
piercing his heart.

She turned swiftly and stared him in the face with a brilliant, oddly
triumphant look.

"Sure?" she said.

His heart seemed to go black with doom. But he turned away his face from
her glowing eyes, and put his arm round her waist, and drew her to him.
His whole body was trembling like a taut string, and she could feel the
painful plunging of his heart as he pressed her fast against him,
pressed the breath out of her.

"Monica!" he murmured blindly, in pain, like a man who is in the dark.

"What?" she said softly.

He hid his face against her shoulder, in the shame and anguish of
desire. He would have given anything, if this need never have come upon
him. But the strange fine quivering of his body thrilled her. She put
her cheek down caressingly against his hair. She could be very tender,
very, very tender and caressing. And he grew quieter.

He looked up at the night again, hot with pain and doom and necessity.
It had grown quite dark, the stars were out.

"I suppose we shall have to be married," he said in a dismal voice.

"Why?" she laughed. It seemed a very sudden and long stride to her. He
had not even kissed her.

But he did not answer, did not even hear her question. She watched his
fine young face in the dark, looking sullen and doomed at the stars.

"Kiss me!" she whispered, in the most secret whisper he had ever heard.
"Kiss me!"

He turned, in the same battle of unwillingness. But as if magnetised he
put forward his face and kissed her on the mouth: the first kiss of his
life. And she seemed to hold him. And the fierce, fiery pain of pleasure
which came with that kiss sent his soul rebelling in torment to hell. He
had never wanted to be given up, to be broken by the black hands of this
doom. But broken he was, and his soul seemed to be leaving him, in the
pain and obsession of this desire, against which he struggled so
fiercely.

She seemed to be pleased, to be laughing. And she was exquisitely sweet
to him. How could he be otherwise than caught, and broken.

After an hour of this love-making she blackened him again, by saying
they must go in to supper. But she meant it, so in he had to go.

Only when he was alone again in the cubby did he resume the fight to
recover himself from her again. To be free as he had been before. Not to
be under the torment of the spell of this desire. To preserve himself
intact. To preserve himself from her.

He lay awake in his bed in the cubby and thanked God he was away from
her. Thanked God he was alone, with a sufficient space of loneliness
around him. Thanked God he was immune from her, that he could sleep in
the sanctity of his own isolation. He didn't want even to think about
her.



IV


Gran did not leave her room that week, and Tom talked of fetching the
relations.

"What for?" asked Jack.

"They'd like to be present," said Tom.

Jack felt incredulous.

Lennie came out of her room, sniffing and wiping his eyes with his
knuckles.

"Poor ol' girl!" he sniffed. "She do look frail. She's almost like a
little girl again."

"You don't think she's dying, do you, Len?" asked Jack.

"I don't _think_, I knows," replied Len, with utmost scorn. "Sooner, or
later she's bound to go hence and be no more seen. But she'll be missed,
for many a day, she will."

"But Tom," said Jack. "Do you think Gran will like to have all the
relations sniffling round her when she gets worse?"

"I should think so," replied Tom. "Anyway, _I_ should like to die
respectable, whether you would or not."

Jack gave it up. Some things were beyond him, and dying respectable was
one of them.

"Like they do in books," said Len, seeing that Jack disapproved, and
trying to justify Tom's position. "Even ol' Nelson died proper. 'Kiss
me, 'Ardy,' he said, an' 'Ardy kissed him, grubby and filthy as he was.
He could do no less, though it was beastly."

Still the boys were not sent for the relations until the following
Sunday, which was a rest day. Jack went to the Gum Valley Homestead,
because he knew the way. He set off before dawn. The terrific heat of
the New Year had already passed, and the dawn came fresh and lovely. He
was happy on that ride, Gran or no Gran. And that's what he thought
would be the happiest: always to ride on at dawn, in a nearly virgin
country. Always to be riding away.

The Greenlows seemed to expect him. They had been "warned." After he had
been refreshed with a good breakfast, they were ready to start, in the
buggy. Jack rode in the buggy with them, his saddle under his seat and
the neck-rope of the horse in his hand. The hack ran behind, and nearly
jerked Jack's arms out of their sockets, with its halts and its
disinclination to trot. Almost it hauled him out of the buggy sometimes.
He would much rather have ridden the animal, but he had been requested
to take the buggy, to spare it.

Mr. and Mrs. Greenlow scarcely spoke on the journey; it would not have
been "showing sorrow." But Jack felt they were enjoying themselves
immensely, driving in this morning air instead of being cooped up in the
house, she cooking and he with the Holy Book. The sun grew furiously
hot. But Gum Valley Croft was seven miles nearer to Wandoo than the
Ellis' Gum Tree Selection, so they drove into the yard, wet with
perspiration, just before the mid-day meal was put on to the table. Mrs.
Ellis, aproned and bare-armed, greeted them as they drove up, calling
out that they should go right in, and Jack should take the horses out of
the buggy.

Quite a number of strange hacks were tethered here and there in the
yard, near odd, empty vehicles, sulkies dejectedly leaning forward on
empty shafts, or buggies and wagonettes sturdily important on four
wheels. Yet the place seemed strangely quiet.

Jack came back to the narrow verandah outside the parlour door, where
Mrs. Ellis had her fuchsias, ferns, cyclamens and musk growing in pots.
A table had been set there, and dinner was in progress, the girls coming
round from the kitchen with the dishes. Grace saw Jack hesitate, so she
nodded to him. He went to the kitchen and asked doubtfully:

"How is she?"

"Oh, bad! Poor old dear. They're all in there to say goodbye."

Lennie, who was sitting on the floor under the kitchen window, put his
head down on his arms and sobbed from a sort of nervousness, wailing:

"Oh, my poor ol' Gran! Oh, poor ol' dear!"

Jack, though upset, almost grinned. Poor Gran indeed, with that ghastly
swarm of relations. He sat there on a chair, his nerves all on edge,
noticing little things acutely, as he always did when he was strung up:
the flies standing motionless on the chopping-block just outside the
window, the smooth-tramped gravel walk, the curious surface of the mud
floor in the kitchen, the smoky rafters overhead, the oven set in brick
below the "everlasting" fire, the blackness of the pots and kettles
above the horizontal bars ...

"Do you mind sitting in the parlour, Jack, in case they want anything?"
Mrs. Ellis asked him.

Jack minded, but he went and sat in the parlour, like a chief lackey, or
a buffer between all the relations and the outer world.

The house had become more quiet. Monica had gone over to the Reds with
clean overalls for the little boys, who had been bundled off there. Jack
got this piece of news from Grace, who was constantly washing more
dishes and serving more relations. A certain anger burned in him as he
heard, but he took no notice. Mary was lying down upstairs: she had been
up all night with Gran. Tom was attending to the horses. Katie and Mrs.
Ellis had gone upstairs with Baby and Ellie, and Mr. Ellis was also
upstairs. Lennie had slipped away again. So Jack had track of all the
family. He was always like that, wanting to know where they all were.

Mrs. Greenlow came in from Gran's inner room.

"Mary? Where's Mary?" she asked hurriedly.

Jack shook his head, and she passed on. She had left the door of Gran's
room open, so Jack could see in. All the relations were there, horrible,
the women weeping and perspiring, and wiping tears and perspiration away
together, the men in their waistcoats and shirt-sleeves, perspiring and
looking ugly. A Methodist parson son-in-law was saying prayers in an
important monotone.

At last Mary came, looking anxious.

"Yes, Gran? Did you want me?" Jack heard her voice, and saw her by the
bed.

"I felt so overcome with all these people," said Gran, in a curiously
strong, yet frightened voice. "What do they all want?"

"They've come to see you. Come--" Mary hesitated "--to see if they can
do anything for you."

"To frighten the bit of life out of me that I've got. But they're not
going to. Get me some beef tea, Mary, and don't leave me alone with
them."

Mary went out for the beef tea. Then Jack saw Gran's white hand feebly
beckon.

"Ruth!" she said. "Ruth!"

The eldest daughter went over and took the hand, mopping her eyes. She
was the parson's wife.

"Well, Ruth, how are you!" said Gran's high, quavering voice in a
conversational tone.

"_I'm_ well, Mother. It's how are you?" replied Ruth dismally.

But Gran was again totally oblivious of her. So at length Ruth dropped
away embarrassed from the bedside, shaking her head.

Again Gran lifted her head on the pillow.

"Where's Jacob?"

"Upstairs, mother."

"The only one that has the decency to leave me alone." And she subsided
again. Then after a while she asked, without lifting her head from the
pillow, in a distant voice:

"And are the foolish virgins here?"

"Who, mother?"

"The foolish virgins. You know who I mean."

Gran lay with her eyes shut as she spoke.

There was an agitation among the family. It was the brothers-in-law who
pushed the three Miss Ellises forward. They, the poor things, wept
audibly.

Gran opened her eyes at the sound, and said, with a ghost of a smile on
her yellow, transparent old face:

"I hope virginity is its own reward."

Then she remained unmoved until Mary came with the soup, which she took
and slowly sipped, as Mary administered it in a spoon. It seemed to
revive her.

"Where's Lennie and his mother?" she asked, in a firmer tone.

These also were sent for. Mrs. Ellis sat by the bed and gently patted
Gran's arm; but Lennie, "skeered stiff," shivered at the door. His
mother held out her hand to him, and he came in, inch by inch, watching
the fragile old Gran, who looked transparent and absolutely unreal, with
a fascination of horror.

"Kiss me, Lennie," said Gran grimly: exactly like Nelson.

Lennie shrank away. Then, yielding to his mother's pressure he laid his
dark, smooth head and his brown face on the pillow next to Gran's face,
but he did not kiss her.

"There's my precious!" said Gran softly, with all the soft, cajoling
gentleness that had made her so lovely, at moments, to her men.

"Alice, you've been good to my Jacob," she said, as if remembering
something. "There's the stocking. It's for you and Lennie." She still
managed to say the last words with a caress, though she was fading from
consciousness again.

Lennie drew away and hid behind his mother. Gran lay still, exactly as
if dead. But the laces of her eternal cap still stirred softly, to show
she breathed. The silence was almost unbearable.

To break it, the Methodist son-in-law sank to his knees, the others
followed his example, and he prayed in a low, solemn, extinguished
voice. When he had said Amen the others whispered it and rose from their
knees. And by one consent they glided from the room. They had had enough
deathbed for the moment.

Mary closed the inner door when they had gone, and remained alone in the
room with Gran.



V


The sons-in-law all melted through the parlour and out on to the
verandah, where they helped themselves from the decanter on the table,
filling up from the canvas water-bag that swung in the draught to keep
cool. The daughters sat down by the table and wept, lugubriously and
rather angrily. The sons-in-law drank and looked afflicted. Jack
remained on duty in the parlour, though he would dearly have liked to
decamp.

But he was now interested in the relations. They began to weep less, and
to talk in low, suppressed, vehement voices. He could only catch
bits.--"It's a question if he ever married Tom's mother. I doubt if
Tom's legitimate. I don't even doubt it, I'm sure. We've suffered from
that before. Where's the stocking? Stocking! Stocking--saved up--bought
Easu out. Mother should know better. If she's made a will--Jacob's first
marriage--children to educate and provide for. Unmarried
daughters--first claim--stocking--" And then quite plainly from Ruth:
"It's hard on our husbands if they have to support mother's unmarried
daughters." This said with dignity.

Jack glanced at the three Miss Ellises, to see if they minded, and
inwardly he vowed that if he ever married Monica, for example, and Grace
was an unmarried sister, he'd find some suitable way of supporting her,
without making her feel ashamed. But the three Miss Ellises did not seem
to mind. They were busy diving into secret pockets among their clothing,
and fetching out secret little packages. Someone dropped the glass
stopper out of a bottle of smelling salts, and spilled the contents on
the floor. The pungent odour penetrated throughout the house. Jack never
again smelt lavender salts without having a foreboding of death, and
seeing mysterious little packets. The three Miss Ellises were
surreptitiously laying out bits and tags of black braid, crape, beading,
black doth, black lace; all black, wickedly black, on the table edge.
Smoothing them out. For as a matter of fact they kept a little shop. And
everybody was looking with interest. Jack felt quite nauseated at the
sight of these black blotches, the row of black patches.

Mary came out of Gran's room, going to the kitchen with the cup. She did
not pass the verandah, so nobody noticed her. They were all intent on
the muttering gloom of their investigation of those scraps of mourning
patterns.

Jack felt the door of Gran's room slowly open. Mary had left it just
ajar. He looked round and his hair rose on his head. There stood Gran,
all white save for her eyes, like a yellow figure of aged female Time,
standing with her hand on the door, looking across the parlour at the
afternoon and the preoccupied party on the verandah. Her face was
absolutely expressionless, timeless and awful. It frightened him very
much. The inexorable female! He uttered an exclamation, and they all
looked up, caught.



CHAPTER XI

BLOWS


I


Jack managed to escape. When the rooks were fluttered by the sight of
that ghostly white starling, he just ran. He ran in disgust from the
smell of lavender salts, the tags of mourning patterns, respectable
dying, and these awful people. Surely there was something rotten at the
bottom of people, he thought, to make them behave as they did. And again
came over him the feeling he had often had, that he was a changeling,
that he didn't belong to the so-called "normal" human race. Nor, by
Jupiter, did he want to. The "normal" human race filled him with
unspeakable repulsion. And he knew they would kill him if they found out
what he was. Hence that unconscious dissembling of his innocent face.

He ran, glad to get into a sweat, glad to sweat it all out of himself.
Glad to feel the sun hot on his damp hands, and then the afternoon
breeze, just starting, cool on his wet skin. When he reached the
sand-bagged pool, he took off his clothes and spread them in the sun,
while he wallowed in the lukewarm water. Ay! if one could wash off one's
associations! If one could but be alone in the world.

After bathing he sat in the sun awhile to dry, then dressed and walked
off to look at the lower dam pump. Tom had said it needed attending to.
And anyway it led him away from the house.

The pump was all right. There had been a March shower that had put water
in the dam. So after looking round at the sheep, he turned away.

Which way? Not back home. Not yet.

The land breeze had lifted and the sea breeze had come, clearing the hot
dry atmosphere as if by magic, and replacing the furnace breath by
tender air. Which way?

At the back of his mind was the thought of Monica not home yet from the
Reds' place, and evening coming on, another of the full golden evenings
when the light seemed fierce with declaration of another eternity, a
different eternity from ours.

Last Sunday, on such an evening, he had kissed her. And much as he
wanted to avoid her, the desire to kiss her again drove him as if the
great yellowing light were a wind that blew him, as a butterfly is blown
twinkling out to sea. He drifted towards the trail from the Reds' place.
He walked slowly, listening to the queer evening noise of the magpies,
and the more distant screeching of flying parrots. Someone had disturbed
the parrots beyond the Black Barn gums. So as if by intuition he walked
that way, slightly off the trail.

And suddenly he heard the sound his spirit expected to hear: Monica
crying out in expostulation, anger, and fear. It was the fear in her
voice that made his face set. His first instinct was not to intrude on
their privacy. Then again came the queer, magpie noise of Monica, this
time with an edge of real hatred to her fear. Jack pushed through the
bushes. He could smell the warm horses already.

Yes, there was Lucy standing by a tree. And Monica, in a long skirt of
pink-sprigged cotton, with a frill at the bottom, trying to get up into
the side-saddle. While Easu, in his Sunday black reach-me-downs and
white shirt and white rubber-soled cricketing boots, every time she set
her foot in the stirrup, put his hand round her waist and spread his
fingers on her body, and lifted her down again, lifted her on one hand
in a childish and ridiculous fashion, and held her in a moment's
embrace. She, in her long cotton riding-dress with the close-fitting
bodice, did indeed look absurd, hung like a child on Easu's hand, as he
lifted her down and held her struggling against him, then let her go
once more, to mount her horse. Lucy was shifting uneasily, and Easu's
big black horse, tethered to a tree, was jerking its head with a jingle
of the bit. The girth hung loose. Easu had evidently dismounted to
adjust it.

Monica was becoming really angry, really afraid, and really blind with
dismay, feeling for the first time her absolute powerlessness. To be
powerless drove her mad, and she would have killed Easu if she could,
without a qualm. But her hate seemed to rouse the big Easu to a passion
of desire for her. He put his two big hands round her slender body and
compassed her entirely. She gave a loud, strange, uncanny scream. And
Jack came out of the bushes, making the black horse plunge. Easu glanced
round at the horse, and saw Jack. And at the same time our hero planted
a straight, vicious blow on the bearded chin. Easu, unprepared,
staggered up against Lucy, who began to jump, while Monica, tangled in
her long skirt, fell to her knees on the ground.

Quite a picture! Jack said it himself. Even he saw himself standing
there, like Jack the Giant-killer. And of course he saw Monica on her
knees, with tumbled hair and scarlet cheeks, unspeakably furious at
being caught, angrily hitching herself out of her long cotton
riding-skirt and pressing her cheeks to make them less red. She was
silent, with averted face, and she seemed small. He saw Easu in the
Sunday white shirt and rather tight Sunday breeches, facing round in
unspeakable disgust and fury. He saw himself in a ready-made cotton suit
and cheap brown canvas shoes, bought at the local store, standing
awaiting an onslaught.

The onslaught did not come. Instead, Easu said, in a tone of unutterable
contempt:

"Why, what's up with you, you little sod!"

Jack turned to Monica. She had got on to her feet, and was pushing her
hair under her hat.

"Monica," he said, "you'd better get home. Gran's dying."

She looked at him, and a slow, wicked smile of amusement came over her
face. Then she broke into a queer, hollow laugh, at the bottom of which
was rage and frustration. Then her laugh rose higher.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" she laughed. "Ah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ha-ha-ha! Ah! !
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ha-ha-ha! Ah! ! ! ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah! ha-ha! Ha!
Ah! Gran's dying! Ha-ha-ha! Is she really? Oh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! No, I
don't mean it. But it seems so funny! Ah! ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah! ha-ha-ha!"

She smothered herself into a confused bubbling. The two men stood
aghast, shuddering at the strange, hysterical woman's laughter that went
shrilling through the bush. They were horrified lest someone else should
hear.

Monica, in her cotton frock and long sweeping skirt, stood pushing her
handkerchief in her mouth, and trying in vain to stifle the hysterical
laughter that still shook her slender body. Occasionally a strange peal,
like mad bells, would break out. And then she ended with a passionate
sobbing.

"I know! I know!" she sobbed, like a child. "Gran's dying, and you won't
let me go home."

"You can go home," Jack said. "You can go home. But don't go with your
face all puffed up with crying."

She gradually gained control of herself, and turned away to her horse.
Jack went to help her mount. She got into the saddle, and he gave her
the reins. She kept her face averted, and Lucy began to move away
slowly, towards the home track.

Easu still stood there, planted with his feet apart, his head a little
dropped, and a furious, contemptuous, revengeful hate of the other two
in his light blue eyes. He had his head down, ready for an attack. Jack
saw this, and waited.

"Going to take your punishment?" said Easu, in a nasty voice.

"Ready when you are," said Jack.

Ugh! How he hated Easu's ugly, jeering, evil eyes, how he would love to
smash them out of his head. In the long run, hate was an even keener
ecstasy than love, and the battle of hate, the fight with blood in the
eyes, an orgasm of deadly gratification keener than any passionate
orgasm of love.

Easu slowly threw his hat on the ground. Jack did the same, and started
to pull off his coat. Easu glanced round to see if Monica was going. She
was. Her back was already turned, and Lucy was stepping gingerly through
the bushes. He lifted his chin, unknotted his tie, and threw it in his
hat. Then he unbuttoned his shirt-cuffs, and pulled off his shirt, and
hitched his belt. He was now naked to the waist. He had a very white
skin with reddish hair at the breast, and an angular kind of force. His
reddish-haired brawny arms were burnt brown-red, as was his neck. For
the rest his skin was pure white, with the dazzle of absolute health.
Yet he was ugly rather than beautiful. The queer angularity of his
brawn, the sense of hostile mechanical power. The sense of the mechanism
of power in him made him like some devil fallen into a lower grade.

Jack's torso was rather absurdly marked by the sun-burnt scallops of his
vest-lines, for he worked a good deal in a vest. Easu always wore a
shirt and no vest. And Jack, in spite of the thinness of youth, seemed
to have softer lines and a more human proportion, more grace. And there
was a warmth in his white skin, making it much less conspicuous than the
really dazzling brilliance of Easu. Easu was a good deal bigger, but
Jack was more concentrated, and a born fighter. He fought with all his
soul.

He shaped up to Easu, and Easu made ready, when they were interrupted by
a cry from Monica, in a high, hysterical voice. They looked up. She had
reined in her horse among the bushes, and was looking round at them with
a queer sharp, terrified face, from the distance. Her shrill voice
cried:

"Don't forget he saved Herbert's life."

Both men faced round and looked at her as if she had committed an
indecency. She quailed in her saddle. Easu, with a queer jerk of the
head, motioned to her to go. She sank a little forward in her saddle,
and hurriedly urged her horse through the bush, out of sight, without
ever looking round, leaving the men, as she knew, to their heart's
desire.

They waited for a while. Then they lifted their fists again, and drew
near. Jack began the light, subtle, harmonious dancing which preceded
his attack. He always attacked, no matter whom he fought. He could not
fight unless he took the initiative. So now he danced warily, subtly
before Easu, and Easu stood ready to side-step. Easu was bigger, harder,
much more powerful than Jack, and built in hard mechanical lines: the
kind that is difficult to knock out, if you have not much weight behind
your blow.

"Are y' insured?" sneered Easu.

But Jack did not listen. He had always fought with people bigger and
older than himself. But he had never before had this strange lust
dancing in his blood, the lust of rage dancing for its consummation in
blows. He had known it before, as a sort of game. But now the lust bit
into his very soul, and he was quivering with accumulated desire, the
desire to hit Easu hard, hit him till he knocked him out. He wanted to
hit him till he knocked him out.

And he knew himself deficient in brute power. So he must make up in
quickness and skill and concentration. When he did strike it must be a
fine keen blow that went deep. He had confidence in his power to do it.
Only--and this was the disturbing element--he knew there was not much
_time._ And he would rather be knocked out himself than have the fight
spoiled in the middle.

He moved lightly and led Easu on, ducked, bobbed up again, and began to
be consummately happy. Easu could not get at him.

"Come on!" said Easu thickly.

So suddenly he came on, and bang! bang! went his knuckles against that
insulting chin. And he felt joy spring in his bowels.

But he did not escape without punishment. Pat!--butt! Pat!--butt! went
Easu's swinging blows down over his back. But Jack got in two more:
Bang! Bang! He knew by the exquisite pain of his knuckles that he had
struck deep, pierced the marrow of the other with pain of defeat.

Pat--butt! Pat--butt! came the punishment.

But Jack was out again, dancing softly, electric joy in his bowels. Then
suddenly he sprang back at Easu, his arms swinging in strange,
vindictive sideways swoops. Ping! Pong! Ping! Pong! rapid as lightning.
Easu fell back a little dazed before this sudden rain of white blows,
but Jack followed, followed, followed, nimbly, warily, but with deadly,
flickering intent.

Crash! Easu went down, but caught Jack a heavy smash in the face with
his right as he fell. Jack reeled away.

And then, posed, waiting, watching, with blood running from bruised cuts
on his swelling face, one eye rapidly closing, he stood well forward,
fists in true boxing trim, and a deep gratification of joy in his dark
belly.

Easu rose slowly, foaming at the mouth; then getting to his feet rushed
head down, in a convulsion, at his adversary. Jack stepped aside, but
not quite quick enough. He caught Easu a blow with his left under the
ear, but not in time to stop the impact. Easu's head butted right where
he wanted it to--into his enemy's stomach; though not full in the pit.
Jack fell back winded, and Red also fell again, giving Jack time to
throw back his head and whoop for a few mouthfuls of air. So that when
Red rushed in again, he was able feebly to fence and stall him off,
stepping aside and hitting again, but wofully clipping, smacking only...

"Foul! He's winded! Foul!" yelled someone from the bushes. "Time!"

"Not for mine," roared Easu.

He sprang and dashed at his gasping, gulping adversary, whirling his
arms like iron piston-rods. Jack dodged the propelled whirl, but
stumbled over one of the big feet stuck out to trip him. Easu hit as he
fell, and swung a crashing left-right about the sinking, unprotected
head. And when Jack was down, kicked the prostrate body in an orgasm of
fury.

"Foul, you swine!" screamed Rackett, springing in like a tiger. Easu,
absolutely blind with rage and hate, stared hellish and unseeing. Jack
lay crumpled on the floor. Dr. Rackett stooped down to him, as Tom and
Lennie and Alec Rice ran in. Easu went and dropped on a fallen log,
sitting blowing to get his wind and his consciousness back. He was
unconscious with fury, like some awful Thing, not like a man.

"My God, Easu!" screamed Rackett, who had lifted the dead head of Jack
on to his knees. "If you've done for him I'll have you indicted."

And Easu, slowly, heavily coming back to consciousness, lifted his head,
and the blue pupils of his red eyes went ugly with evil fear, his
bruised face seemed to have dropped with fear. He waited, vacant, empty
with fear.

At length Jack stirred. There was life in him. And at once the bully
Easu began to talk wide.

"Bloody little sod came at me bashing me jaw, when I'd never touched
him. Had to fight to defend myself. Bloody little sod!"

Jack opened his eyes and struggled to rise.

"Anybody counting?" he said stupidly. But he could not get up.

"It was a foul," said Rackett.

"Foul be blithered!" shouted Easu. "It was a free fight and no blasted
umpires asked for. If that bloody bastard wants some more, let him get
up. I'm goin' to teach him to come crowin' from England, crowin' over an
Australian."

But Jack was on his unsteady feet. He would fight now if he died for it.

"Teach me!" he said vaguely, and sprang like a cat out of a bag on the
astonished and rather frightened Easu.

But something was very wrong. When his left fist rang home, it caused
such an agony that a sheer scream of pain tore from him, clearing the
mists from his brain in a strange white light. He was now fully
conscious again, super-conscious. He knew he must hit with his right,
and hit hard. He heard nothing, and saw nothing. But with a kind of
trance vision he was super-awake.

Man is like this. He has various levels of consciousness. When he is
broken, killed at one level of consciousness, his very death leaves him
on a higher level. And this is the soul in its entirety, being
conscious, super-conscious, far beyond mentality. It hardly needs eyes
or ears. It is clairvoyant and clair-audient. And man's divinity, and
his ultimate power, is in this super-consciousness of the whole soul.
Not in brute force, not in skill or intelligence alone. But in the
soul's extreme power of knowing and then willing. On this alone hangs
the destiny of all mankind.

Jack, uncertain on his feet, incorporate, wounded to horrible pain in
his left hand, was now in the second state of consciousness and power.
Meanwhile the doctor was warning Easu to play fair. Jack heard
absolutely without hearing. But Easu was bothered by it.

He was flustered by Jack's unexpected uprising. He was weary and
wavering, the paroxysm of his ungovernable fury had left him, and he had
a desire to escape. His rage was dull and sullen.

Jack was softly swaying. Easu shaped up and waited. And suddenly Jack
sprang, with all the weight of his nine stone behind him, and all the
mystery of his soul's deadly will, and planted a blow on Easu's
astonished chin with his granite right fist. Before there was any
recovery he got in a second blow, and it was a knockout. Easu crashed,
and Jack crashed after him, and both lay still.

Dr. Rackett, watch in hand, counted. Easu stared at the darkening blue,
and sat up. An oath came out of his disfigured mouth. Dr. Rackett put
the watch in his pocket as Easu got to his feet. But Jack did not move.
He lay in a dead faint.

Lennie, the emotional, began to cry when he saw Jack's bruised,
greenish-looking face. Dr. Rackett was feeling the pulse and the heart.

"Take the horse, and fetch some whiskey and some water, Tom," he said.

Tom turned to Easu, who stood with his head down and his mouth all cut,
watching, waiting to depart, undecided.

"I'll borrow your horse a minute, Easu," he said. And Easu did not
answer. He was getting into his shirt again, and for the moment none of
him was visible save the belt of white skin round the waist. Tom pulled
up the girth of the black horse, and jumped into the saddle. Lennie
slipped up behind him, his face still wet with tears. Easu's face
emerged, disfigured, out of his white shirt, and watched them go.
Rackett attended to Jack, who still gave no signs of life. Alec Rice
stood beside the kneeling doctor, silent and impassive.

Easu slowly buttoned his shirt cuffs and shirt-collar, with numb
fingers. The pain was just beginning to come out, and he made queer
slight grimaces with his distorted face. Slowly he got his black tie,
and holding up his chin, fastened it round his throat, clumsily. He was
not the same Easu that had set off so huge and assertive, with Monica.

Lennie came running with a tin of water. He had slipped off the horse at
the lower dam, and found the tin which he kept secreted there. Dr.
Rackett put a wet handkerchief on Jack's still, dead face. Under the
livid skin the bruises and the blood showed terrifying, one eye already
swollen up. The queer mask of a face looked as if the soul, or the life,
had retreated from it in weariness or disgust. It looked like somebody
else's altogether.

"He ain't dead, is he?" whimpered Lennie, terrified most of all because
Jack, with his swollen face and puffed eye, looked like somebody else.

"No! But I wish Tom would come with that whiskey."

As he spoke, they heard the crashing sound of the horse through the
bushes, and Tom's red, anxious face appeared. He swung out of the saddle
and dropped the reins on the ground.

Dr. Rackett pressed the bruised chin, pressed the mouth open, and poured
a little liquor down Jack's throat. There was no response. He poured a
little more whiskey. There came a slight choking sound, and then the one
dark-blue eye opened vacant. It stared in vacancy for some moments,
while everybody stood with held breath. Then the whiskey began to have
effect. Life seemed to give a movement of itself, in the boy's body, and
the wide-open eye took a conscious direction. It stared straight into
the eyes of Easu, who stood there looking down, detached, in
humiliation, derision, and uneasiness. It stared with a queer, natural
recognition, and a faint jeering, uneasy grin was the reflex on Easu's
disfigured mask.

"Guess he's had enough for once," said Easu, and turning, he picked up
his horse's reins, dropped into the saddle, and rode straight away.

"Feel bad?" Dr. Rackett asked.

"Rotten!" said Jack.

And at last Lennie recognised the voice. He could not recognise the
face, especially with that bunged-up eye peering gruesomely through a
gradually diminished slit, Hun-like.

Dr. Rackett smiled slightly.

"Where's your pain?" he asked.

Jack thought about it. Then he looked into Rackett's eyes without
answering.

"Think you can stand?" said Rackett.

"Try me."

They got him to his feet. Everything began to swim again. Rackett's arm
came round him.

"Did he knock me out?" Jack asked. The question came from his
half-consciousness: from a feeling that the battle with Easu was not yet
finished.

"No, you knocked him out. Let's get your coat on."

But as he shoved his arm into his coat he knew he was fainting again,
and he almost wept, feeling his consciousness and his control going. He
thought it was just his stiff, swollen, unnatural face that caused it.

"Can y' walk?" asked Tom anxiously.

"Don't walk on my face, do I?" came the words. But as they came, so did
the reeling, nauseous oblivion. He fainted again, and was carried home
like a sack over Tom's back.

When he came to, he was on his bed, Lennie was feverishly pulling off
his shoes, and Dr. Rackett was feeling him all over. Dr. Rackett smelt
of drugs. But now Rackett's face was earnest and attentive, he looked a
nice man, only weak.

Jack thought at once of Gran.

"How's Gran?" he asked.

"She's picked up again. The relations put her in a wax, so she came to
life again."

"You're the one now, you look an awful sight," said Len.

"Did anybody see me?" asked Jack, dim and anxious.

"Only Grace so far."

Rackett, who was busy bandaging, saw the fever of anxiety coming into
the one live eye.

"Don't talk," he said. "Len, he mustn't talk at all. He's got to go to
sleep."

After they had got his nightshirt on, they gave him something to drink,
and he went to sleep.



II


When he awoke, it was dark. His head felt enormous. It was getting
bigger and bigger, till soon it would fill the room. Soon his head would
be so big, it would fill all the room, and the room would be too small
for it. Oh, horror! He was so frightened, he cried out.

"What's amiss?" a quick voice was asking.

"Make a light! Make a light!" cried Jack.

Lennie quickly lit a candle, and to Jack's agonized relief, there was
the cubby, the bed, the walls, all of natural dimensions, and Tom and
Lennie in their nightshirts standing by his bed.

"What's a-matter, ol' dear?" Lennie asked caressively.

"My head! I thought it was getting so big the room wouldn't hold it."

"Aw! go on now!" said Lennie. "Y' face is a bit puffy, but y' head's
same as ever it was."

Jack couldn't believe it. He was so sensually convinced that his head
had grown enormous, enormous, enormous.

He stared at Lennie and Tom in dismay. Lennie stroked his hair softly.

"There's y' ol' nut!" he said. "Tain't no bigger 'n it ever was. Just
exactly same life-size."

Gradually Jack let himself be convinced. And at last he let them blow
the candle out. He went to sleep.

He woke again with a frenzy working in him. He had pain, too. But far
worse than the pain was the tearing of the raging discomfort, the frenzy
of dislocation. And in his stiff swollen head, there was something he
remembered but could not drag into light. What was it? What was it? In
the frenzy of struggle to know, he went vague.

Then it came to him, words as plain as knives.


"And when I die
In hell I shall lie
With fire and chains
And awful pains."


The Aunts had repeated this to him, as a child, when he was naughty. And
it had always struck a vague terror into his soul. He had forgotten it.
Now it came again.


"In hell I shall lie
With fire and chains
And awful pains."


He had a vivid realisation of this hell. That was where he lay at that
very moment.

"You must be a good, loving little boy."

He had never wanted to be a good, loving little boy. Something in his
bowels revolted from being a good, loving little boy, revolted in
nausea. "But if you're not a good, loving little boy."


Then when you die
In hell you will lie'--etc.


"Let me lie in hell, then," the bad and unloving little boy had
answered, to the shocked horror of the Aunts. And the answer had scared
even himself.

And now the hell was on him. And still he was not a good, loving little
boy.

He remembered his lessons: Love your enemies.

"Do I love Easu?" he asked himself. And he writhed over in bed in
disgust. He loathed Easu. If he could crush him absolutely to powder, he
would crush him to powder. Make him extinct.

"Lord, Lord!" he groaned. "I loathe Easu. I loathe him."

What was amiss with him? Did he want to leave off loathing Easu? Was
that the root of his sickness and fever?

But when he thought of Easu's figure and face, he knew he didn't want to
leave off loathing him. He _did_ loathe him, whether he wanted to or
not, and the fact to him was sacred. It went right through the core of
him.

"Lord! Lord!" he groaned, writhing in fever. "Lord, help me to loathe
him properly. Lord, I'll kill him if you want me to; and if you don't
want me to, I won't. I'll kill him if you want me to. But if you don't
want me to, I won't care any more."

The pledge seemed to soothe him. At the back of Jack's consciousness was
always this mysterious Lord, to whom he cried in the night. And this
Lord put commands upon him, but so darkly, Jack couldn't easily find out
what the commands were. The Aunts had always said, the command was to be
a good, loving little boy. But when he tried being a good, loving little
boy, his soul seemed to lose his Lord, and turn wicked. That was what
made him fear hell. When he seemed to lose connection with his great,
mysterious Lord, with whom he communed absolutely alone, he became aware
of hell. And he couldn't share with his Aunts that Jesus whom they
always commended. At the Sacrament, something in his soul stood cold,
and he knew this was no Sacrament to him.

He had his own Lord. And when he could get into communication or
communion, with his own Lord, he always felt well and right again.

Now, in his pain and battered fever, he was fighting for his Lord again.

"Lord, I don't love Easu, and I'll kill him if you want me to. But if
you don't want me to, I won't, I won't, I won't bother any more."

This pledge and this submission soothed him strangely. He felt he was
coming back to his own Lord. It was a pledge, and he would keep it. He
gave no pledge to love Easu. Only not to kill him, if the Lord didn't
want it; and to kill him, if the Lord did.

"Lord, I don't love Monica. I don't love her. But if she'd give up to
me, I'd love her if you wanted me to."

He thought about this. Somewhere, his soul burned against Monica. And
somewhere, his soul burned for her.

But she must give up to him. She must give herself up. He demanded this
submission, as if it were a submission to his mysterious Lord. She would
never submit to the mysterious Lord direct. Like that old demon of a
Gran, who knew the Lord, and played with Him, spited Him even. Monica
would have first to submit to himself, Jack, in person, before she would
really yield before the immense Lord. And yield before the immense Lord
she must. Through him.

"Lord!" he said, invoking the supreme power, "I love Lennie and Tom, and
I want always to love them, and I want you to back them."

The prickles of pain entered his soul again.

"Lord, I don't love my father, but I don't want to hurt him. Only, I
don't love him, Lord. And it's not my fault, though he's a good man,
because I wasn't born with love for him in me."

This had been a thorn in his consciousness since he was a child. Best
get it out now. Because the fear of not loving his father had almost
made him hate him. If he ought to love him, and he couldn't love him,
then there was nothing to do but hate him, because of the hopeless
obligation. But if he needn't love him, then he needn't hate him, and
they could both be in peace. He would leave it to his Lord.

"Perhaps I ought to love Mary," he continued. "But I don't _really_ love
her, because she doesn't realise about the Lord. She doesn't realise
there is any Lord. She thinks there's only me, and herself. But there is
the Lord. And Monica knows. But Monica is spiteful against the Lord.
Lord! Lord!"

He ended on the old human cry of invocation: a cry which is answered,
when it comes from the extreme, passionate soul. The strange, dark
comfort and power came back to him again, and he could go to sleep once
more, with his Lord.

When he woke in the morning, the fever had left him. Lennie was there at
dawn, to see if he wanted anything. The quick little Lennie, who always
came straight from the Lord, unless his emotions of pity got the better
of him. Then he lost his connections, and became maudlin.

Jack wanted the family not to know. But the twins saw his disfigured
face, with horror. And Monica knew: it was she who had sent Dr. Rackett
and Tom and Alec. And Grace knew. And soon Ma came, and said: "Dear o'
me, Jack Grant, what d'y'mean by going and getting messed up like this!"
And Dad came slow and heavy, and said nothing, but looked dark and
angry. They all knew.

But Jack wanted to be left alone. He told Tom and Dr. Rackett, and Tom
and Dr. Rackett ordered the family to leave him alone.

It was Grace who brought his meals. Poor old Grace, with her big eyes
and rather big nose, she had a gentle heart, and more real sense than
that Monica. Jack only got to know her while he was sick, and she really
touched his heart. She was so kind, and thought so little of herself,
and had such a sad wisdom at the bottom of her. Who would have thought
it, of the pert, cheeky, nosy Grace?

Monica slipped in, and stood staring down at him with her queer,
brooding eyes, that shone with widened pupils. Heaven knows what she was
thinking about.

"I was awfully afraid he'd kill you," she said. "I was so frightened,
that's what made me laugh."

"Why should I let him kill me?" said Jack.

"How could you help it! He's much stronger and crueller than you."

"He may be stronger, but I can match him in other ways."

She looked at him incredulously. She did not believe him. He could see
she did not believe in that other, inward power of his, upon which he
himself depended. She thought him in every way weaker, frailer than
Easu. Only, of course, nicer. This made Jack very angry.

"I think I punished him as much as he punished me," he said.

"_He's_ not laid up in bed," she replied.

Then, with her quivering, exquisite gentleness, she touched his bandaged
hand.

"I'm awfully sorry he hurt you so," she said. "I know you'll hate _me_
for it."

"Why should I?" he replied coldly.

She took up his bandaged hand and kissed it quickly, then she looked him
long and beseechingly in the eyes: or the one eye. Somehow she didn't
seem to see his caricature of a face.

"Don't hate me for it," she pleaded, still watching him with that
strange, pleading, watchful look.

The flame leapt in his bowels, and came into his eyes. And another flame
as she, catching the change in his eyes, softened her look and smiled
subtly, suddenly taking his wrist in a passionate, secret grasp. He felt
the hot blood suffusing him like new life.

"Good-bye!" she said, looking back at him as she disappeared.

And when she had gone, he remembered the watchfulness in her eyes, the
cat-like watchfulness at the back of all her winsome tenderness. There
it was, like the devil. And he turned his face to the wall, to his Lord,
and two smarting tears came under his eyes as if they were acid.

The next day Mary came bringing his pap. She was not going to be kept
away any longer. And she would come as a ministering angel.

He saw on her face that she was startled, shocked, and a little repelled
by his appearance. She hardly knew him. But she overcame her repulsion
at once, and became the more protective.

"Why, how awful it must be for you!" she said.

"Not so bad now," he said, manfully swallowing his pap.

He could see she longed for him to have his own good-looking face again.
She could not bear this strange horror. She refused to believe this was
he.

"I shall never forgive that cruel Easu!" she said, and the colour came
to her dark cheek. "I hope I never have to speak to him again."

"Oh, I began it. It was my fault."

"How could it be!" cried Mary. "That great hulking brute. How dare he
lay a finger on you!"

Jack couldn't smile, his face was of the fixed sort. But his one good
eye had a gleam. "He dare, you see," he answered. But she turned away in
smarting indignation.

"It makes one understand why such creatures had their hands cut off in
the old days," she said, with cold fierceness.

"How dare he disfigure your beautiful face! How dare he!" And tears of
anger came to her eyes.

A strangled grin caused considerable pain to Jack's beautiful face.

"I suppose he didn't rightly appreciate my sort of looks," he said.

"The jealous brute," said Mary. "But I hope he'll pay for it. I hope he
will. I do hope he hasn't really disfigured you," she ended on a note of
agitation.

"No, no! Besides that doesn't matter all the world."

"It matters all the world," she cried, with strange fierceness, "to me."



CHAPTER XII

THE GREAT PASSING


I


Jack soon got better. Soon he was sitting in the old armchair by the
parlour fire. There was a little fire, against the damp. This was Gran's
place. But Gran did not leave her bed.

He had been in to see her, and she frightened him. The grey, dusky skin
round the sunken mouth and sharpened nose, the eyes that were mostly
shut, and never really open, the harsh breathing, the hands lying like
old translucent stone on the bed-cover: it frightened him, and gave him
a horror of dissolution and decay. He wanted terribly to be out again
with the healthy Tom, among the horses. But not yet--he must wait yet
awhile. So he took his turn sitting by Gran, to relieve Mary, who got
little rest. And he became nervous, fanciful, frightened as he had never
been before in his life. The family seemed to abandon him as they
abandoned Gran. The cold isolation and horror of death.

The first rains had set in. All night the water had thundered down on
the slab roof of the cubby, as if the bottom had fallen out of some well
above. Outside was cloudy still, and a little chill. A wind was
hush-sh-shing round the house. Mary was sitting with Gran, and he was in
the parlour, listening to that clock--Tick-tock! Tick-tock! He sat in
the armchair with a shawl over his shoulders, trying to read. Curiously
enough, in Australia he could not read. The words somehow meant nothing
to him.

It was Sunday afternoon, and the smell of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding,
cabbage, apple pie and cinnamon custard still seemed to taint the house.
Jack had come to loathe Sunday dinners. They seemed to him degrading.
They hung so heavy afterwards. And now he was sick, it seemed to him
particularly repulsive. The peculiar Sundayness of it. The one thing
that took him in revulsion back to England: Sunday dinner. The England
he didn't want to be taken back to. But it had been a quiet meal. Monica
and Grace and the little boy twins had all been invited to York, by Alec
Rice's parents, and they had gone away from the shadowed house, leaving
a great emptiness. It seemed to Jack they should all have stayed, so
that their young life could have united against this slow dissolution.

Everything felt very strange. Tom and Lennie were out, Mrs. Ellis and
the children were upstairs, Mr. Ellis had gone to look at some sheep
that had got into trouble in the rain. There seemed a darkness, a chill,
a deathliness in the air. It is like that in Australia: usually so sunny
and absolutely forgetful. Then comes a dark day, and the place seems
like an immemorial grave. More gruesome than ever England was, on her
dark days. Mankind forever entombed in dissolution, in an endless grave.


"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord; or who shall stand
in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart,
Who hath not yielded up himself unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."


Jack was thinking over the words Mr. Ellis had read in the morning, as
near as he remembered them. He looked at his own hands: already they
seemed pale and soft and very clean. What had the Lord intended hands
for? So many things hands must do, and still they remain clean. Clean
hands! His left was still discoloured and out of shape. Was it unclean?

No, it was not unclean. Not unclean like the great paw of Easu's hiking
Monica out of the saddle.

Clean hands and a pure heart! A pure heart! Jack thought of his own,
with two heavy new desires in it: the sudden, shattering desire for
Monica, that would rip through him sometimes like a flame. And the slow,
smouldering desire to kill Easu. He had to be responsible for them both.

And he was not going to try to pluck them out. They both belonged to his
heart, they were sacred even while they were shocking in his blood.
Only, driven back on himself, he gave the old pledge: _Lord, if you
don't want me to have Monica and kill Easu, I won't. But if you want me
to, I will._ Somewhere he was inclined to cry out to be delivered from
the cup. But that would be cowardice towards his own blood. It would be
yielding himself up to vanity, if fee pretended he hadn't got the
desires. And if he swore to eradicate them, it would be swearing
deceitfully. Sometimes the hands must move in the darkest acts, if they
are to remain really clean, not deathly like Gran's now. And the heart
must beat hard in the storm of darkest desires, if it is to keep pure,
and not go pale-corrupt.

But always subject to the will of the Lord.


"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord; or who shall stand in His
holy place."


The Seraphim and the Cherubim knew strange, awful secrets of the Lord.
That was why they covered their faces with their wings, for the wings of
glory also had a dark side.

The fire was burning low. Jack stooped to put on more wood. Then he blew
the red coals to make the wood catch. A yellow flame came, and he was
glad.


"Forsake me not, Oh God, in mine old age; when I am grey-headed; until I
have sown my strength to this generation, and Thy power to all them that
are yet to come."


Jack was always afraid of those times when the mysterious sayings of the
Bible invaded him. He seemed to have no power against them. And his soul
was always a little afraid, as if the walls of life grew thin, and he
could hear the great everlasting wind of the mysterious going of the
Lord, on the other side.


"Forsake me not, Oh, God, in mine old age; when I am grey-headed."


Jack wished Gran would say this, so that the Lord would stay with her,
and she would not look so awful. How could Mary _stand_ it, sitting with
her day after day.


"Until I have shown my strength to this generation, and Thy power to all
them that are yet to come."


And again his stubborn strength of life arose. What was he for, but to
show his strength to the generation, and a sign of the power of the Lord
for all them that were yet to come.

The clock was ticking steadily in the room. But the yellow flames were
bunching up in the grate. He wondered where Gran's "stocking" really
was? But the thought of stockings, of concealed money, of people
hankering for money, always made him feel sick.


"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon and
another glory of the stars. . . . There is a natural body and a
spiritual body. . . ."

"There is one glory of the sun----"


But men don't all realise the same glory. In England the sun had seemed
to him to move with a domestic familiarity. It wasn't till he was out
here that he had been struck to the soul with the immense assertive
vigour and sacred handsomeness of the sun. He knew it now: the wild,
immense, fierce, untamed sun, fiercer than a glowing-eyed lion with a
vast mane of fire, crouching on the western horizon, staring at the
earth as if to pounce on it, the mouse-like earth. He had seen this
immense sun, fierce and powerful beyond all human considerations,
glaring across the southern sea, as all men may see it if they go there.



"There is one glory of the sun----"


And it is a glory vast and fierce, of a Lord who is more than our small
lives.


"And another glory of the moon----"


That too he knew. And he had not known, till the full moon had followed
him through the empty bush, in Australia, in the night. The immense,
liquid gleam of the far-south moon, following, following with a great,
miraculous, liquid smile. That vast, white, liquid smile, so vindictive!
And himself, hurrying back to camp on Lucy, had known a terrible fear.
The fear that the broad, liquid fire of the cold moon would capture him,
capture him and destroy him, like some white demon that slowly and
coldly tastes and devours its prey. The moon had that power, he knew, to
dissolve him, tissue, heart, body and soul, dissolve him away. The
immense, gleaming, liquid, lusting white moon, following inexorably, and
the bush like white charred moon-embers.


"There is another glory of the moon----"


And he was afraid of it. "The sun is thy right hand, and the moon is thy
left hand." The two gleaming, immense living orbs, moving like weapons
in the two hands of the Lord.


"And there is another glory of the stars----"


The strange stars of the southern night, all in unfamiliar crowds and
tufts and drooping clusters, with strange black wells in the sky. He
never got used to the southern stars. Whenever he stood and looked up at
them, he felt as if his soul were leaving him, as if he belonged to
another species of life, not to man as he knew man. As if there were a
metamorphosis, a terrible metamorphosis to take place.

"There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." This phrase
had haunted his mind from the earliest days. And he had always had a
sort of hatred of the thing his Aunts, and the parson, and the poets,
called The Spirit, with a capital S. It had always, with him, been
connected with his Sunday clothes, and best behaviour, and a certain
exalted falseness. Part of his natural naughtiness had arisen from his
vindictive dislike and contempt of The Spirit, and things of The Spirit.

Now it began to seem different to him. He knew, he always had known,
that the Bible really meant something absolutely different from what the
Aunts, and the parson, and even the poets meant by the Spirit, or the
spiritual body.

Since he had seen the Great God in the roaring of the yellow sun, and
the frightening vast smile in the gleaming full-moon following him, the
new moon like a delicate weapon-thrust in the western sky, and the stars
in disarray, like a scattered flock of sheep bunching and communing
together in a strange bush, in the vast heavens, he had gradually come
to know the difference between the natural body and the spiritual body.
The natural body was like in England, where the sun rises naturally to
make day, and passes naturally at sunset, owing to the earth's
revolving; where the moon "raises her lamp above," on a dear night, and
the stars are "candles" in heaven. That is the natural body: all the
cosmos just a natural fact. And a man loves a woman so that they can
propagate their species. The natural body.

And the spiritual body is supposed to be something thin and immaterial,
that can float through a brick wall and subsist on mere thought. Jack
had always hated this thin, wafting object. He preferred his body solid.
He loved the beautiful weight and transfigured solidity of living limbs.
He had no use whatsoever for the gossamer stuff of the supposed
"ethereal," or "pure," spirit: like evaporated alcohol. He had a natural
dislike of Shelley, and vegetarians, and socialists, and all advocates
of "spirit." He hated Blake's pictures, with people waving like the
wrong kind of sea-weed, in the sky, instead of under water.

Hated it all. Till hating it had almost made him wicked.

Now he had a new understanding. He had always _known_ that the Old
Testament never meant any of this Shelley stuff, this Hindu Nirvana
business. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." And
his natural body got up in the morning to eat food, and tend sheep, and
earn money, and prepare for having a family; to see the sun usefully
making day and setting, owing to the earth's revolution: the new moon so
shapen because the earth's shadow fell on her; the stars being other
worlds, other lumps in space, shining according to their various
distances, coloured according to their chemical composition. Well and
good.

That is man very cleverly finding out all about it, like a little boy
pulling his toy to pieces.

But, willy-nilly, in this country he had another sun and another moon.
He had seen the glory of the sun and the glory of the moon, and both
these glories had had a powerful sensual effect on him. There had been a
great passional reaction in himself, in his own body. And as the strange
new passion of fear, and the sense of gloriousness burned through him,
like a new intoxication, he knew that this was his real spiritual body.
This glowing, intoxicated body, drunk with the sun and the moon, drunk
from the cup in the hand of the Lord, _this_ was his spiritual body.

And when the flame came up in him, tearing from his bowels, in the
sudden new desire for Monica, this was his spiritual body, the body
transfigured with fire. And that steady dark vibration which made him
want to kill Easu--Easu seemed to him like the Antichrist--that was his
own spiritual body. And when he had hit Easu with his broken left hand,
and the white sheet of flame going through him had made him scream
aloud, leaving him strange and distant, but super-conscious and
powerful, this too was his spiritual body. The sun in his right hand and
the moon in his left hand. When he drank from the burning right hand of
the Lord, and wanted Monica in the same fire, it was his body spiritual
burning from the right hand of the Lord. And when he knew he must
destroy Easu, in the sheet of white pain, it was his body spiritual
transfigured from the left hand of the Lord. And when he ate and drank,
and the food tasted good, it was the dark cup of life he was drinking,
drinking the life of the dead ox from the meat. And this was the body
spiritual communing with the sacrificed body of natural life: like a
tiger glowing at evening and lapping blood. And when he rode after the
sheep through the bush, and the horse between his knees went quick and
delicate, it was the Lord tossing him in his spiritual body down the
maze of living.

But when Easu ground down his horse and shoved it after the sheep, it
was the natural body fiendishly subjugating the spiritual body. For the
horse too is a spiritual body and a natural body, and may be ridden as
the one or as the other. And when Easu wanted Monica, it was the natural
body malignantly degrading the spiritual body. Monica also half wanted
it.

For Easu knew the spiritual body. And like a fallen angel, he hated it,
he wanted always to overthrow it more, in this day when it is so
abjectly overthrown. Monica too knew the spiritual body: the body of
straight fire. And she too seemed to have a grudge against it. It
thwarted her "natural" will; which "natural" will is the barren devil of
to-day.

Gran, that old witch, she also knew the spiritual body. But she loved
spiting it. And she was dying like clay.

Mary, who was so spiritual and so self-sacrificing, she didn't know the
body of straight fire at all. Her spirit was all natural. She was so
"good," and so heavily "natural," she would put out any fire of the
glory of the burning Lord. She was more "natural" even than Easu.

And Jack's father was the same. So good! So nice! So kind! So absolutely
well-meaning! And he would bank out the fire of the burning Lord with
shovelfuls of kindness.

They would, none of them, none of them, let the fire bum straight. None
of them. There were no people at all who dared have the fire of the
Lord, and drink from the cup of the fierce glory of the Lord, the sun in
one hand and the moon in the other.

Only this strange, wild, ash-coloured country with its undiminished sun
and its unblemished moon, would allow it. There was a great death
between the two hands of the Lord; between the sun and the moon. But let
there be a great death. Jack gave himself to it.

He was almost asleep, in the half-trance of inner consciousness, when
Dad came in. Jack opened his eyes and made to rise, but Dad waved him to
sit still, while he took the chair on the other side of the fire, and
sat down inert. He seemed queer. Dad seemed queer. The same dusky look
over his face as over Gran's. And a queer, pinched, far-away look. Jack
wondered over it. And he could see Dad didn't want to be spoken to. The
clock tick-tocked. Jack went into a kind of sleep.

He opened his eyes. Dad was very slowly, very slowly fingering the bowl
of his pipe. How quiet it was!

Jack dozed again, and wakened to a queer noise. It was Dad's breathing:
and perhaps the falling of his pipe. He had dropped his pipe. And his
body had dropped over sideways, very heavy and uncomfortable, and he was
breathing hoarsely, unnaturally in his sleep. Save for the breathing, it
was dreadfully quiet. Jack picked up the pipe and sat down again. He
felt tired: awfully tired, for no reason at all.

He woke with a start. The afternoon was passing, there was a shower, the
room seemed dark. The firelight flickered on Mr. Ellis' watchguard. He
wore his unbuttoned waistcoat as ever, with the gold watchchain showing.
He was very stout, and very still. Terribly still and sagging sideways,
the hoarse breathing had ceased. Jack would have liked to wake him from
that queer position.

How quiet it was. Upstairs someone had dragged a chair, and that had
made him realise! Far away, very far away, he could hear Harry and Ellie
and Baby, playing. "There's a quiet of the sun, and another quiet of the
moon, and another quiet of the stars; for one star differs from another
in quiet. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a natural
body; it is raised a spiritual body."

Was that Scripture? or wasn't it? There is a quiet of the sun. This was
the quiet of the sun. He was sitting in the cold, dead quiet of the sun.
For one star differs from another in quiet. The sun had abstained from
radiating, this was the quiet of the sun, and the strange, shadowy
crowding of the stars' differing quietness seemed to infest the weak
daylight.

It is sown a natural body! Oh, bother the words! He didn't want them. He
wanted the sun to shine, and everything to be normal. If he didn't feel
so weak, and if it weren't raining, he'd go out to the stable to the
horses. To the hotblooded animals.

Mr. Ellis' head hung sagging on his chest. Jack wished he would wake up
and change his position, it looked horrible.

The inner door suddenly opened, and Mary came swiftly out. She started,
seeing Mr. Ellis asleep in the chair. Then she went to Jack's side and
took his arm, and leaned whispering in his ear.

"Jack! She's gone! I think she's gone. I think she passed in her sleep.
We shall have to wake uncle."

Jack stood up trembling. There was a queer smell in the room. He walked
across and touched the sleeping man on the sleeve.

"Dad!" he said. "Dad! Mr. Ellis."

There was no response. They both waited. Then Jack shook the arm more
vigorously. It felt very inert. Mary came across, and put her hand on
her uncle's sunken forehead, to lift his head. She gave a little scream.

"Something's the matter with him," she said, whimpering.



II


Thank goodness, Dr. Rackett was upstairs. They fetched him, and Timothy
and Tom, and carried Mr. Ellis into the dying room.

"Better leave me alone with him now," said Rackett.

After ten minutes he came out of the dying room and closed the door
behind him. Tom was standing there. He looked at Rackett enquiringly.
Rackett shook his head.

"Dad's not dead?" said Tom.

Rackett nodded.

Tom's face went to pieces for a moment. Then he composed it, and that
Australian mouth of his, almost like a scar, shut close. He went into
the dying room.

Someone had to fetch the Methodist son-in-law from York. Jack went in
the sulky. Better die in the cart than stop in that house. And he could
drive the sulky quietly.

The Methodist son-in-law, though he was stout and wore black, and Jack
objected to him on principle, wasn't really so bad, in his own home. His
wife Ruth of course burst into tears and ran upstairs. Her husband kept
his face straight, brought out the whiskey tantalus, and poured some for
Jack and himself. This they both drank with befitting gravity.

"I must be in chapel in fifteen minutes; that will be five minutes
late," said the parson. "But they can't complain, under the
circumstances. Mrs. Blogg of course will stay at home. Er--is anyone
making arrangements out at Wandoo?"

"What arrangements?"

"Oh, seeing to things ... the personal property, too."

"I was sent for you," said Jack. "I suppose they thought you'd see to
things."

"Yes! Certainly! Certainly! I'll be out with Mrs. Blogg directly after
Meeting. Let me see."

He went to a table and laboriously wrote two notes. Twisting them into
cocked hats, he handed them one after the other to Jack, saying:

"This is to the Church of England parson. Leave it at his house. I've
made it Toosday, Toosday at half-past ten. I suppose that'll do. And
this--this is to the joiner."

He looked at Jack meaningly, and Jack looked vague. "Joshua Jenkins, at
the joiner's shop. Third house from the end of the road. And you'll find
him in the loft over the stable, Sunday or not, if he isn't in the
house."

It was sunset, and the single bells of the church and chapel were
sounding their last ping! ping! ping-ping! as Jack drove slowly down the
straggling street of York. People were going to church, the women in
their best shawls and bonnets, hurrying a little along the muddy road,
where already the cows were lying down to sleep, and the loose horses
straggled uncomfortably. Occasionally a muddy buggy rattled up to the
brick Church of England, people passed shadow-shape into the wooden
Presbyterian Church, or waited outside the slab Meeting House of the
Methodists. The choir band was already scraping fiddles and tooting
cornets in the church. Lamps were lighted within and one feeble lamp at
the church gate. It was a cloudy evening. Odd horsemen went trotting
through the mud, going out into the country again as night fell, rather
forlorn.

Jack always felt queer, in York on Sundays. The attempt at Sunday seemed
to him like children's make-believe. The churches weren't real churches,
the parsons weren't real parsons, the people weren't real worshippers.
It was a sort of earnest make-believe, where people felt important like
actors. And the pub, with its extra number of lamps, seemed to feel
extra wicked. And the men riding home, often tipsy, seemed vague as to
what was real, this York acting Sunday, or their dark, rather dreary
farms away out, or some other third unknown thing. Was anything quite
real? That was what the shadows, the people, the buildings seemed all to
be asking. It was like children's games, real and not real, actual and
yet unsubstantial, and the people seemed to feel as children feel, very
earnest, very sure, very sure that they were very real, but having to
struggle all the time to keep up the conviction. If they didn't keep up
the conviction, the dark, strange Australian night might clear them and
their little town all away into some final cupboard, and leave the
aboriginal bush again.

Joshua Jenkins the godless, was in the loft with a chisel, working by
lantern light. He peered at the twisted note, and his face brightened.

"Two of 'em!" he exclaimed, with a certain gusto. "Well, think o' that,
think o' that! And I've not had a job o' this sort for over a month.
Well, I never, t'be sure! 'T never rains but it comes down cats and
dogs, seemingly. Toosday! Toosday! Toosday! Let's see--" and he
scratched his head behind the ear. "Pretty quick work that, pretty quick
work. But can be done, oh, yes, can be done. I's'll have t' send
somebody t' measure the Boss. How deep should you say he was in the
barrel? Never mind though, I'll send Sam over with the measure, come
morning. But I can start right away on the old lady. Let's see! Let's
see! Let's see! She wouldn't be-e-e--she wouldn't be over five foot two
or three now, would she?"

"I don't know," said Jack hoarsely. "Do you mean for her coffin?" He was
filled with horror.

"Well, I should say I do. I should say so. You don't see no
sewing-machine here, do you, for sewing her shroud. I suppose I do mean
her coffin, being joiner and carpenter, and J. P. and coroner as well
when required."

Jack fled, horrified. But as he lit his sulky candles, and set off at a
slow trot out of the town, he laughed a bit to himself. He felt it was
rather funny. Why shouldn't it be rather funny? He hoped it would be a
bit funny when he was dead too, to relieve matters. He sat in the easy
sulky driving slowly down the washed-out road, in the dark, alien night.
The night was dark and strange. An animal ran along the road in front of
him, just discernible, at the far edge of the dim yellow candle glow. It
was a wild grey thing, running ahead into the dark. On into the dark.

Why should one care? Beyond a certain point, one didn't care about
anything, life or death. One just felt it all. Up to a certain point,
one had to go through the mill, caring and feeling bad. One had to cry
out to the Lord, and fight the ugly brutes of life. And then for a time
it was over, and one didn't care, good or bad, Lord or no Lord. One paid
one's whack of caring and then one was let off for a time. When one was
dead, one didn't care any more. And that was death. But life too had its
own indifference, its own deep, strong indifference: as the ocean is
calm way down, under the most violent storm.

When he got home, Tom came out to the sulky. Tom's face was set with
that queer Australian look, as if he were caught in a trap, and it
wasn't any use complaining about it. He unharnessed the horse in a
rough, flinging fashion. Jack didn't know what to say to him, so he
thought he'd better keep quiet.

Lennie came riding in on Lucy. He slid to the ground and dragged the
mare's bridle roughly.

"Come on, yer blasted old idjut, can't ye!" he blubbed, dragging her to
the stable door. "Blasted idjut, my Uncle Joe!" he continued, between
the sniffs and gulps of his blub-bing. "Questions! Questions! How c'n I
answer questions when I don't know myself!" A loud blub as he dragged
the saddle down on top of himself, in his frenzy of untackling Lucy.
"Rackett says to me, Ten,' he says,"--blub and a loud sniff--"'y'
father's took bad and pore ol' Gran's gone,' he says"--blub! blub!
blub--"'Be off an' fetch y' Uncle Joe an' tell him to come at onst'--an'
he can go to _hell._" Lennie ended on a shout of defiance as he
staggered into the stable with the saddle. And from the dark his voice
came: "An' when I ask our Tom what's amiss wi'm' Dad," blub! blub!
"blasted idjut looks at me like a blasted owl--like a blasted owl!" And
Lennie sobbed before he sniffed and came out for the bridle.

"Don't y' cry, Lennie," said Jack, who was himself crying for all he was
worth, under the cover of the dark.

"I'm not crying, y' bloomin' fool, you!" shouted Len. "I'm gain' in to
see Ma, I am. Get some sense outta _her._"

He walked off towards the house, and then came back.

"Why don' you go in, Tom, an' see?" he cried. "What d'yer stan' there
like that for, what _do_ yer?"

There was a dead and horrible silence, outside the stable door in the
dark. A silence that went to the core of the night, having no word to
say.

The lights of a buggy were seen at the gate. The three waited. It was
the unmarried Aunts. One of them ran and took Len in her arms.

"Oh, you poor little lamb!" she cried. "Oh, your poor Ma! Your Ma! Your
poor Ma!"

"Ma's not bad! She's all right," yelped Len in a new fear. Then there
was a pause, and he became super-conscious. Then he drew away from the
Aunts.

"Is Dad dead?" he asked in a queer, quizzical little voice, looking from
Tom to Jack, in the dim buggy light. Tom stood as if paralysed.

Lennie at last gave a queer, animal "Whooo," like a dog dazed with pain,
and flung himself into Tom's arms. The only sounds in the night were
Tom's short, dry sobs, as he held Lennie, and the whimpering of the
Aunts.

"Come to your poor Mother, come to comfort her," said one of the Aunts
gently.

"Tom! Tom!" cried Lennie. "I'm skeered! I'm skeered, Tom, o' them two
corpses! I'm skeered of 'em, Tom." Tom, who was a little skeered too,
gave a short, dry bark of a sob.

"They won't hurt you, precious!" said the Aunt. "They won't hurt you.
Come to your poor Mother."

"No-o-o!" wailed Lennie in terror, and he flung away to Timothy's cabin,
where he slept all night.

When the horses were fixed up, Tom and Jack went to the cubby. Tom flung
himself on the bed without undressing, and lay there in silence. Jack
did the same. He didn't know what else to do. At last he managed to say:

"Don't take it too hard, Tom! Dad's lived his life, and he's got all you
children. We have to live. We all have to live. An' then we've got to
die."

There was unresponsive silence for a time.

"What's the blasted use of it all, anyhow?" said Tom.

"There's no such thing as _use_," said Jack. "Dad lived, and he had his
life. He had his life. You'll have yours. And I shall have mine. It's
just your life, and you live it."

"What's the _good_ of it?" persisted Tom heavily.

"Neither good nor bad. You live your life because it's your own, and
nobody can live it for you."

"What good is it to me?" said Tom dully, drearily. "I don't care if
people live their lives or not."

Jack felt for the figure on the bed.

"Shake hands, though, Tom," he said. "You are alive, and so am I. Shake
hands on it, then."

He found the hand and got a faint response, sulky, heavy. But for very
shame Tom could not withhold all response.

Tim came in the morning with tea and bread and butter, saying Tom was
wanted inside, and would Jack go with him to attend to the grave. Poor
Tim was very much upset, and wept and wailed unrestrainedly. Which
perhaps was good, because it spared the others the necessity to weep and
wail.

They hitched up the old buggy, and set off with a pick and a couple of
spades. Old black Timothy on the driving-box occasionally startled Jack
by breaking forth into a new sudden wail, like a dog suddenly
remembering again. It was a fine day. The earth had already dried up,
and a hot, dry, gritty wind was blowing from inland, from the east. They
drove out of the paddocks and along an overgrown trail, then they
crossed the river, heaving and floundering through the slough, for at
this season it was no more. The excitement of the driving here made
Timothy forget to wail.

Rounding a steep little bluff, they came to a lonely, forlorn little
enclosed graveyard, which Jack had never seen. Tim wailed, then asked
where the grave should be. The sun grew very hot. They nosed around the
little, lonely, parched acre.

Jack could not dig, so he unharnessed the outfit and put a box of chaff
before the horses. Tim flung his spade over against a little grey
headstone, and climbed in with the pick. Even then they weren't quite
sure how big to make the grave, so Jack lay on the ground while Tim
picked out a line around him. They got a straight line with a rope.

The soil was as hard as cement. Tim toiled and moiled, and forgot all
wailing. But he made little impression on the cement-like earth.

"What we goin' to do?" he asked, scratching his sweating head. "What 'n
hell's name we goin't' do, sir? Gotta bury 'm Toosday, gotta." And he
looked at the blazing sun. "Gotta dig him hole sevenfut deep grave,
gotta do 't."

He set to again. Then two of the Reds came, sent to help. But the work
was killing. The day became so hot, you forgot it, you passed into a
kind of spell. But that work was heart-breaking.

Jack went off for dynamite, and Rackett came along, with Lennie, who
would never miss a dynamiting show. Tim wrung his wet hair like a mop.
The Reds, in their vests, were scarlet, and the vests were wet and
grimy.

Much more fun with dynamite. Boom! Bang! Then somebody throwing out the
dirt. Somebody going for a ladder. Boom! Bang! The explosions seemed
enormous.

"Oh, for the love o' Mike!" cried the excited Lennie. "Yell blow me ol'
grandfather sky high, if y' don't mind. For the love of Mike, don't let
me see his bones."

But the grandfather Ellis was safe in the next grave. Rackett laid
another fuse. They all stood back. Bang! Boom! Pouf! went the dust.



III


Jack would have done anything to escape the funeral, but Timothy, for
some reason, kept hold of him. He wanted him to help replace the turf:
moral support rather than physical assistance.

The two of them hid behind the pinch. At last they saw the cortege
approaching. Easu Ellis held the reins of the first team, and chewed the
end of the whip. Beside him sat Joshua Jenkins, as a mute, fearful in
black and like a scarecrow with loose danglings of crape. In the buggy
behind them, on the floor-boards, was Gran's coffin, shaking wofully,
covered with a black cloth. Joe Low drove the second buggy, which was
the second hearse, and he looked strained and anxious as the heavy
coffin bumped when the buggy dropped into holes on the track. Then came
the family shay with the chief male mourners. Then a little crowd on
foot.

The horses were behaving badly, not liking the road. It was hot, the
vile east wind was blowing. Easu's horse jibbed at the slough of the
stream: would not take it. He was afraid the horses would jump, and toss
the coffin out of the buggy. He had to get bearers to carry Gran's poor
remains across the mud and up the pinch to their last house. The bearers
sunk almost to their knees in mud. The whole cortege was at a
standstill.

Joe Low's horses, mortally frightened, were jumping round till they were
almost facing the horses in the mourners' shay. Easu ran to their heads.
More bearers, strong men, came forward to lift out Dad's heavy coffin.
Everybody watched in terror as they staggered through the slough of the
stream with that unnatural burden. Was it going to fall?

No, they were through. Men were putting branches and big stones for the
foot-mourners to cross, everybody sweating and sweltering. The sporting
parson, his white surplice waving in the hateful, gritty hot wind, came
strinding over, holding his book. Then Tom, with a wooden, stupid face.
Then Lennie, cracking nuts between his teeth and spitting out the
shells, in an agony of nervousness. Then the other mourners, some
carrying a few late, weird bush-flowers, picking their way over like a
train of gruesome fowls, staggering and clutching on the stones and
boughs, landing safe on the other bank. Jack watched from a safe
distance above.

There were two coffins, one on either side of the grave. Some of the
uncles had top hats with dangling crape. Nearly everybody was black.
Poor Len, what a black little crow he looked! The sporting parson read
the service manfully. Then he announced hymn number 225.

Jack could feel the hollow place below, with the black mourners, simmer
with panic, when the parson in cold blood asked them to sing a hymn. But
he read the first verse solemnly, like an overture:


"Oh sweet and blessed country
The home of God's elect!
Oh sweet and blessed country
That eager hearts expect . . ."


There was a deadly pause. There was going to be no answer from the
uncomfortable congregation, under that hot sun.

But Uncle Blogg was not to be daunted. He struck up in a rather fat,
wheezy, Methodist voice, and Aunt Ruth piped feebly. The maiden Aunts,
who had insisted on following their mother, though women were not
expected to attend, listened to this for an awful minute or two, then
they waveringly "tried" to join in. It was really only funny. And Tom in
all his misery, suddenly started to laugh. Lennie looked up at him with
wide eyes, but Tom's shoulders shook, shook harder, especially when Aunt
Minnie "tried" to sing alto. That alto he could not bear.

The Reds were beginning to grin sheepishly and to turn their heads over
their shoulders, as if the open country would not object to their grins.
It was becoming a scandal.

Lennie saved the situation. His voice came clear and pure, like a
chorister's, rising above the melancholy "trying" of the relations, a
clear, pure singing, that seemed to dominate the whole wild bush.


"Oh sweet and blessed country
That eager hearts expect.

Jesu in mercy bring us
To that dear land of rest;
Who art with God the Father,
And Spirit ever blessed."


At the sound of Lennie's voice, Tom turned white as a sheet, and looked
as if he were going to die too. But the boy's voice soared on, with that
pure quality of innocence that was sheer agony to the elder brother.



IV


Jack, who was looking sick again, was sent away to the Greenlows' next
day. And he was glad to go, thankful to be out of it. He loathed death,
he loathed death, and Wandoo had suddenly become full of death.

The first cool days of the year, golden and blue, were at hand. The
Greenlow girls made much of him. He rode with them after sheep,
inspecting fences, examining far-off wells. They were not bad girls at
all. They taught him to play solitaire at evening, to hold worsted, even
to spin. Real companionable girls, thankful to have a young man in the
house, spoiling him completely. Pa was home after the first day, and
acted as a sort of hairy chimpanzee chaperone, but looking over his
spectacles and hissing through his teeth was his severest form of
reproof. He didn't set Jack to wash that Sunday, but even gave him
tit-bits from the joint, so that our young hero almost knew what it was
to have a prospective father-in-law.

Jack left Gum Tree Croft with regret. For he knew his life at Wandoo was
over. Now Dad was dead, everything was going to break up. This was
bitter to him, for it was the first place he had ever loved, ever wanted
to stay in, for ever and ever. He loved the family. He couldn't bear to
go away from them.

"Never mind!" he said to himself. "I shall always have them in some way
or other, all my life."

Things seemed different when he got back. There wasn't much real
difference, except a bit of raking and clearing up had been done for the
funeral. But Wandoo itself seemed to have died. For the meantime, the
homestead was as if dead.

Grace and Monica looked unnatural in black frocks. They felt unnatural.

Jack was told that Mr. George was having a conclave in the parlour, and
that he was to go in.

Tom, Mrs. Ellis, and Mr. George and Dr. Rackett were there, seated round
the table, on which were some papers. Jack shook hands, and sat uneasily
in an empty chair on Dr. Rackett's side of the table. Mr. George was
explaining things simply.

Mr. Ellis left no will. But the first marriage certificate had been
found. Tom was to inherit Wandoo, but not till he came legally of age,
in a year and a half's time. Meanwhile Mrs. Ellis could continue on the
place, and carry on as best she might, on behalf of herself and all the
children. For a year and a half.

She heard in silence. After a year and a half she would be homeless: or
at least dependent on Tom, who was not her son. She sat silent in her
black dress.

Tom cleared his throat and stared at the table. Then he looked up at
Jack, and, scarlet in the face, said:

"I've been thinking, Ma, I don't want the place. You have it, for Len. I
don't want it. You have it, for Len an' the kids. I'd rather go away.
Best if that certificate hadn't never been found, if you're going to
feel you're turned out."

He dropped his head in confusion. Mr. George held up his hand.

"No more of that heroic talk," he said. "When Jacob Ellis stored up that
marriage certificate at the bottom of that box, he showed what he meant.
And you may feel as you say to-day, but two years hence you might repent
it."

Tom looked up angrily.

"I don't believe Tom would ever regret it," put in Mrs. Ellis. "But I
couldn't think of it. Len wouldn't let me, even if I wanted to."

"Of course not," said Mr. George. "We've got to be sensible, and the
law's the law. You _can't_ alter it yet, my boy, even if you want to.
You're not of age yet.

"So you listen to me. My plan is for you and Jack to go out into the
colony and get some experience. Sow your wild oats if you've any to sow,
or else pick up a bit of good oat-seed. One or the other.

"My idea is for you and Jack to go up for a year to Lang's Well station,
out Roeburne way. Lang'll give you your keep and a pound a week each,
and your fare refunded if you stay a year.

"The 'Rob Roy' sails from Geraldton about a month from now; you can get
passages on her. And I thought it would be just as well, Tom, if you and
Jack rode up through that midland country. You've a hundred connections
to; see, who'll change y'r horses for y'. And you'll see the country.
And y'll be men of travel. We want men of experience, men of a wide
outlook. Somebody's got to be the head-piece of this colony, when men
like me and the rest of us are gone. It'll be a three hundred mile ride,
but ye've nigh on a month to do it.

"Now, what do you say, my boy? Your mother will stop on here with the
children. I'll see she gets a good man to run the place. And meanwhile
she'll be able to fix something up for herself. Oh, we shall settle all
right. I'll see your mother through all right. No fear of that. And no
fear of any deterioration to the place. I'll watch that. You bet I
will."

Tom twisted his fingers, white at the gills, and mumbled his thanks
vaguely.

"Jack," said Mr. George. "I know you're game. And you will look after
Tom."

Dr. Rackett said he thought it a wise plan, and further, that if Mrs.
Ellis would consent, he would like to bear the expenses of sending
Lennie to school in England for the next three years.

Mrs. Ellis woke from her dream to say quickly:

"Although I thank you kindly, Dr. Rackett, I think you'll understand if
I say No."

Her decision startled everybody.

"Prrh! Bah!" snorted Mr. George. "There's one thing. I doubt if we could
make Lennie go. But, with your permission, Alice, well ask him. Jack,
find Lennie for us."

"I'll not say a word," said Mrs. Ellis, nervously clutching the edge of
the table. "I won't influence him. But if he goes it'll be the death of
me. Poor old Lennie! Poor old Lennie!"

"Prrh! Bahl That's nonsense! Nonsense!" said Mr. George angrily. "Give
the boy his chance, leave your fool emotions out, d'ye hear, Alice
Ellis."

Mrs. Ellis sat like a martyr stubborn at the stake. Jack brought the
mistrustful Len, who stood like a prisoner at the bar. Mr. George put
the case as attractively as possible.

Len slowly shook his head, with a grimace of distaste.

"No, I _don't_ think!" he remarked. "Not fer mine, you bet! I stays
alongside my pore ol' Ma, here in Western Austrylia."

Mr. George adjusted his eyeglasses severely.

"Your mother is neither poor nor old," he said coldly.

"I never!" broke out Lennie.

"And this country, thank God, is called Australia, not Austrylia. When
you open your mouth you give proof enough of your need for education. I
should like to hear different language in your mouth, my son, and see
different ideas working in your head."

Lennie, rather pale and nervous, stared with wide eyes at him.

"You never--" he said. "You never ketch me talkin' like Jack Grant, not
if y' skin me alive." And he shifted from one foot to the other.

"I wouldn't take the trouble to skin you, alive or dead. Your skin
wouldn't be worth it. But come. You're an intelligent boy. You need
education. You _need_ it. Your nature needs it, child. Your mother ought
to see that. Your nature needs you to be educated, well-educated. You'll
be wasted afterwards--you will. And you'll repent it. Mark me, you'll
repent it, when you're older, and your spirit, which should be trained
and equipped, is as clumsy and half-baked as any other cornseed's.
You'll be a fretful, uneasy, wasted man, you will. Your mother ought to
see that. You'll be a half-baked, quarter-educated bush-whacker, instead
of a well-equipped man."

Len looked wonderingly at his mother. But she still sat like an
obstinate martyr at the stake, and gave him no sign.

"Don't _he_ educate me?" asked Len, pointing to Rackett.

"As much as you'll let him," said Mr. George. "But--"

Lennie's face crumpled up with irritation.

"Oh, what for do you want me to be educated?" he cried testily. "I don'
want to be like Uncle Blogg. I don' wantter be like Dr. Rackett even."
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "'N I don' wantter be like Jack Grant
neither. I don' wantta. I don' wantta, I tell y' I don' wantta."

"Do you think they would want to be like you?" asked Mr. George.

Lennie looked from him to Rackett, and then to Jack.

"Jack's not so very diff'rent," he said slowly. And he shook his head.
"But can't y' believe me," he cried. "I don' wantta go to England. I
don' wantta talk fine and be like them. Can't ye see I don't? I don'
wantta. What's the good! What's the mortal use of it, anyhow? Aren't I
right as I am?"

"What _do_ you want to do?"

"I wants to work. I wants to milk an' feed, and plough, and reap and lay
out irrigation, like Dad. An' I wants to look after Ma an' the kids. An'
then I'll get married and be on a place of me own with kids of me own,
an' die, like Dad, an' be done for. That's what I wants. It is."

He looked desperately at his mother.

Mr. George slowly shook his head, staring at the keen, beautiful, but
reluctant boy.

"I suppose that's what we've come to," said Rackett.

"Didn't you learn me!" cried Lennie defiantly. And striking a little
attitude, like a naive earnest actor, he repeated:


"'Here rests, his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth of fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.

"'Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send.
He gave to misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend."


"There," he continued. "That's me! An' I've got a friend already."

"You're a little fool," said Mr. George. "Much mark of melancholy there
is on you! And do you think misery is going to thank you for your
idiotic tear? As for your friend, he's going away. And you're a fool,
putting up a headstone to yourself while you're alive still. Damn you,
you little fool, and be damned to you."

Mr. George was really cross. He flounced his spectacles off his nose.
Len was frightened. Then he said, rather waveringly, turning to his
mother:

"We're all right, Ma, ain't we?"

Mrs. Ellis looked at him with her subtlest, tenderest smile. And in
Lennie's eyes burned a light of youthful indignation against these old
men.



CHAPTER XIII

TOM AND JACK RIDE TOGETHER


These days Monica was fascinating to Jack's eyes. She wore a black
dress, and her slimness, her impulsive girlishness under this cloud were
wistful, exquisite. He would have liked to love her, soothingly,
protectively, passionately. He would have liked to cherish her, with
passion. Always he looked to her for a glance of intimacy, looked to see
if she wouldn't accept his passion and his cherishing. He wanted to
touch her, to kiss her, to feel the eternal lightning of her slim body
through the cloud of that black dress. He wanted to declare to her that
he loved her, as Alec Rice had declared to Grace; and he wanted to ask
her to marry him. To ask her to marry him at once.

But mostly he wanted to touch her and hold her in his arms. He watched
her all the time, hoping to get one of the old, long looks from her
yellow eyes, from under her bended brows. Her long, deep, enigmatic
looks, that used to worry him so. Now he longed for her to look at him
like that.

Or better still if she would let him see her trouble and her grief, and
love her so, with a passionate cherishing.

But she would do neither. She kept her grief and her provocation both
out of sight, as if neither existed. Her little face remained mute and
closed, like a shut-up bud. She only spoke to him with a vague distant
voice, and she never really looked at him. Or if she did glance at him,
it was in a kind of anger, and pain, as if she did not want to be
interfered with; didn't want to be pulled down.

He was completely puzzled. Her present state was quite incomprehensible
to him. She had nothing to reproach him with, surely. And if she had
loved him, even a little, she could surely love him that little still.
If she had so often taken his hand and clutched it, surely she could now
let him take _her_ hand, in real sympathy.

It was if she were angry with _him_ because Dad had died. Jack hadn't
wanted Dad to die. Indeed no. He was cut up by it as if he had been one
of the family. And it was as bad a blow to his destiny as to hers. He
was as sore and sorry as anybody. Yet she kept her face shut against
him, and avoided him, as if he were to blame.

Completely puzzled, Jack went on with his preparations for departure. He
had no choice. He was under orders from Mr. George, and with Mrs. Ellis'
approval, to quit Wandoo, to ride with Tom up to Geraldton, and to spend
at least a year on the sheep station up north. It had to be. It was the
wheel of fate. So let it be.

And as the last day drew near, the strange volcano of anger which
slumbered at the bottom of his soul--a queer, quiescent crater of anger
which churned its deep hot lava invisible--threw up jets of silver rage,
which hardened rapidly into a black, rocky indifference. And this was
characteristic of him: an indifference which was really congealed anger,
and which gave him a kind of innocent, remote, childlike quietness.

This was his nature. He was himself vaguely aware of the unplumbed
crater of silent anger which lay at the bottom of his soul. It was not
anger against any particular thing, or because of anything in
particular. It was just generic, inherent in him. It was himself. It did
not make him hate people, individually, unless they were hateful. It did
not make him hard or cruel. Indeed he was too yielding rather than
otherwise, too gentle and mindful of horses and cattle, for example,
unmindful of himself. Tom often laughed at him for it. If Lucy had a
will of her own, and a caprice she wanted to execute, he always let her
go ahead, take her way, as far as was reasonable. If she exceeded her
limits, his anger roused and there was no doing any more with him. But
he very rarely, very rarely got really angry. Only then in the long,
slow accumulation of hostility, as with Easu.

But anger! A deep, fathomless well-head of slowly-moving, invisible
fire. Somewhere in his consciousness he was aware of it, and in this
awareness it was as if he belonged to a race apart. He never felt
identified with the great humanity. He belonged to a race apart, like
the race of Cain. This he had always known.

Sometimes he met eyes that were eyes of his own outcast race. As a tiny
boy it had been so. Fairs had always fascinated him, because at the
fairs in England he met the eyes of gipsies who, in a glance, understood
him. His own people _could_ not understand. But in the black eyes of a
gipsy woman he had seen the answer, even as a boy of ten. And he had
thought: I ought to go away with her, rim away with her.

It was the anger, the deep, burning _life-anger_ which was the kinship.
Not a deathly, pale, nervous anger. But an anger of the old blood. And
it was this which had attracted him to grooms, horsey surroundings, and
to pugilists. In them was some of this same deep, generous anger of the
blood. And now in Australia too, he saw it like a secret away at the
bottom of the black, full, strangely shining eyes of the aborigines.
There it lay, the secret, like an eternal, brilliant snake. And it
established at once a kind of free-masonry between him and the blacks.
They were curiously aware of him, when he came: aware of his coming,
aware of his going. As if in him were the same great Serpent of their
anger. And they were downcast now he was going away, as if their
strength were being taken from them. Old Tim, who had taken a great
fancy to Jack, relapsed into a sort of glumness as if he too, now, were
preparing to die.

Since Jack had come back from the Greenlows' farm, Monica had withdrawn
to a distance, a kind of luminous distance, and put a chasm between
herself and Jack. She moved mute and remote on the shining side of the
chasm. He stood on the dark side, looking across the blackness of the
gulf at her as if she were some kind of star. Surely the gulf would
close up. Surely they both would be on natural ground again.

But no! always that incomprehensible little face with fringed lashes,
and mouth that opened with a little smile, a vulnerable little smile, as
if asking them all to be kind to her, to be pitiful towards her, and not
try to touch her.

"Well, good-bye, Monica, for the present," he said, as he sat in the
saddle in the yard, and Tom started away riding towards the gate,
leading the bulky-looking pack-horse.

"Good-bye. Come back!" said Monica, looking up with a queer, hard little
question come into her eyes, but her face remote as ever.

Jack kicked his horse and started.

"I'll come back," he said over his shoulder. But he didn't look round at
her. His heart had gone hard and hot in his breast. He was glad to be
going.

Lennie had opened the gate. He stood there as Jack rode through.

"Why can't I never come?" he cried.

Jack laughed and rode on, after the faithful Tom. He was glad to go. He
was glad to leave Wandoo. He was glad to say no more good-byes, and to
feel no more pain. He was glad to be gone, since he was going, from the
unlucky place. He was glad to be gone from its doom. There was a doom
over it, a doom. And he was glad to be gone.

The morning was still orange and green. Winter had set in at last, the
rains had begun to be heavy. They might have trouble with drenchings and
hoggings, but that, Tom said, was better than drought and sunstrokes.
And anyhow the weather this morning was perfect.

The dark forest of karri that ran to the left of Wandoo away on the
distant horizon, cut a dark pattern on the egg-green sky. Good-bye!
Good-bye! to it. The sown fields they were riding through glittered with
tender blades of wheat. Good-bye! Good-bye! Somebody would reap it. The
bush was now full of sparks of the beautiful, uncanny flowers of Western
Australia, and bright birds started and flew. Sombre the bush was in
itself, but out of the heavy dullness came sharp scarlet, flame-spark
flowers, and flowers as lambent gold as sunset, and wan white flowers,
and flowers of a strange, darkish rich blue, like the vault of heaven
just after sundown. The scent of rain, of eucalyptus, and of the strange
brown-green shrubs of the bush!

They rode in silence, Tom ahead with the pack-horse, and they did not
draw near, but rode apart. They were travelling due west from York,
along a bush track toward Paddy's Crossing. And as they went they drew
nearer and nearer to the dark, low fringe of hills behind which, for the
last twelve months, Jack had seen the sun setting with its great golden
glow. Trees grew along the ridge of the hills, scroll-like and
mysterious. They had always seemed to Jack like the bar of heaven.

By noon the riders reached the ridge, and the bar of heaven was the huge
karri trees which went up aloft so magnificently. But the karri forest
ended here with a jerk. Beyond, the earth ran away down long, long
slopes, covered with scrub, down the greyness and undulation of
Australia, towards the great dimness where was the coast. The sun was
hot at noon. Jack was glad when Tom called a halt under the last trees,
facing the great, soft, open swaying of the land seaward, and they began
to make tea.

They had hardly sat down to drink their tea, when they heard a buggy
approaching. It was the mysterious Dr. Rackett, driven by the grinning
Sam. Rackett said nothing, just greeted the youths, pulled his tin mug
and tucker from under the buggy seat, and joined in, chatting casually
as if it had all been pre-arranged.

Tom was none too pleased, but he showed nothing. And when the tea was
finished, he made good by handing over the beast of a pack-horse to Sam.
Poor Sam sat in the back of the vehicle lugging the animal along,
jerking its reluctant neck. Rackett drove in lonely state on the driving
seat. Tom and Jack trotted quickly ahead, on the down-slope, and were
soon out of sight. They were thankful to ride free.

Over the ridge they felt Wandoo was left behind, and they were in the
open world again, away from care. Whenever man drives his tent-pegs
deep, to stay, he drives them into underlying water of sorrow. Best ride
tentless. So thought the boys.

They were going to a place called Paddy's Crossing, a settlement
new to Jack, but well known to Tom as the
place-where-men-went-when-they-wanted-a-private-jamboree. What a
jamboree was, Jack, being a gentleman, that is not a lady, would learn
in due course.

As the ground came to a rolling hollow, Tom set off at a good pace, and
away they went, galloping beautifully along the soft earth trail,
galloping, galloping, putting the miles between them and Wandoo and
women and care. They both rode in a kind of passion for riding, for
hurling themselves ahead down the new road. To be men out alone in the
world, away from the women and the dead stone of trouble.

They reached the river hours before Rackett's turn-out. Fording it they
rode into the mushroom settlement, a string of slab cabins with shingle
roofs and calico window-panes--or else shuttered-up windows. The stoves
were outside the chimney-less cabins, under brush shelters. One such
"kitchen," a fore-runner, had already a roof of flattened-out, rusty tin
cans.

But it was a cosy, canny nook, homely, nestling down in the golden
corner of the earth, the mimosa in bloom by the river. And it was
beautifully ephemeral. As transient, as casual as the bushes themselves.

Jack for the moment had a dread of solid houses of brick and stone and
permanence. There was always horror somewhere inside them.

He wanted the empty, timeless Australia, with nooks like this of flimsy
wooden cabins by a river with a wattle bush.

There was one older, white-washed cabin with vine trellises.

"That's Paddy's," said Tom. "He grows grapes, and makes wine out of the
little black ones. But the muscats is best. I'm not keen on wine,
anyhow. Something a drop more warming."

Jack was amazed at the good Tom. He had never known him to drink.

"There's nobody about," said Jack, as they rode up the incline between
the straggling cabins.

"All asleep," said Tom.

It was not so, however, because as they crested the slope and looked
into the little hollow beyond, they saw a central wooden building, hall
or mission or church, and people crowding like flies.

But Tom turned up to Paddy's white inn, up the side slope. He was
remorseful about having galloped the horses at the beginning of such a
long trip. The inn seemed deserted. Tom coo-eeed! but there was no
answer.

"All shut up!" he said. "What's that paper on the door?"

Jack got down and walked stiffly to the door, for the ride had been long
and hard and downhill, and his knees were hurting. "'Gone to the wedin
be ome soon P. O. T.'" he read. "What is P. O. T.?" he asked.

"What I stand in need of," said the amazing Tom.

They were just turning their horses towards the stable when, with a
racket and a canter, an urchin drove round from the yard in a
pitch-black wicker chaise, a bone-white, careworn horse slopping between
the shafts.

"You two blokes," yelled the urchin, "'d better get on th' trail for th'
church, else Father Prendy 'll be on y' tail, I tell y'."

"What's up?" shouted Tom.

"I'm just off fer th' bride. Ol' Nick 'ere 'eld me up runnin' away from
me in the paddock."

Tom grinned, the outfit swept past. Our heroes took their horses to the
stable and settled them down conscientiously. Then they set off, glad to
be on foot, down to the church.

The crowd was buzzing. It was half-past three. Father Prendy, the old
mission priest, who looked like a dusty old piece of furniture from a
loft, was peering up the road. The black wicker buggy still made no
appearance with the bride.

"Two o'clock's the legal limit for marriages," said Father Prendy. "But
praise God, we've half an hour yet."

And he showed his huge watch, which said half-past one, since he had
slipped away for a moment to put back the fingers.

The slab-building--hall, school, and church--was now a church, though
the oleographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort in Robes still glowed
on the walls, and a blackboard stood with its face to the wall, and one
of those wire things with coloured beads poked out from behind, and the
globe of the world could not be hidden entirely by the eucalyptus
boughs.

But it was a church. A table with a white cloth and a crucifix was the
altar. Crimson-flowering gum-blossom embowered the walls, the
blackboard, the windows, but left the Queen and Prince Consort in full
isolation. Forms were ranked on the mud floor, and these forms were
densely packed with settlers dressed in all kinds of clothes. It was not
only a church, it was a wedding. Just inside the door, like a figure at
Madame Tussaud's, sat an elderly creature in greenish evening suit with
white waistcoat, and copper-toed boots, waiting apparently for the Last
Trump. On the other side was a brown-whiskered man in frock-coat, a grey
bell-topper in his hand, leaning balanced on a stick. He was shod in
white socks and carpet slippers. Later on this gentleman explained to
Jack: "I suffer from corns, and shouldn't be happy in boots."

There was a great murmuring and staring, and shuffling and shifting as
Jack and Tom came up, as though one of them was the bride in disguise.
The wooden church buzzed like a cocoanut shell. A red-faced man seized
Tom's arm as if Tom were a long-lost brother, and Jack was being
introduced, shaking the damp, hot, trembling hand of the red-faced man,
who was called Paddy.

"It's fair come over me, so ut has!--praise be to the saints an' may the
devil run away with them two young termagants! Father Prendy makin' them
come to this pass all at onst! For mark my words, in his own mind he's
thinkin' the wrong they've done, neither of them speakin' to confess,
till he was driven to remark on the girl's unnatural figure. And not a
soul in the world, mark you, has seen 'em speak a word to one another
for the last year in or out. But she says it's he, an' Denny Mackinnon,
he payin', I'll be bound, that black priest of a Father Prendy to come
over me an' make me render up my poor innocent Pat to the hussy, in holy
matrimony. May the saints fly away with 'em."

He wiped away his sweat, speechless. And Denny Mackinnon, the hussy's
father--it could be no other than he--in moth-eaten scarlet coat and
overall trousers, and top-boots slashed for his bunions, and forage-cap
slashed for his increased head, stood bulging on the other side of the
door, compressed in his youthful uniform, and scarlet in the face with
the compression. He was a stout man with a black beard and a fixed,
fierce, solemn expression. Creator of this agitated occasion, he was
almost bursting with wrathful agitation as that hussy of a daughter of
his still failed to appear. By his side stood an ancient man, with a
long grey beard, anciently clad.

Patrick, the bridegroom to be, lurked near his father. He was a thin,
pale, freckled, small-faced youth with broad, brittle shoulders and
brittle limbs, who would no doubt, in time, fill out into a burly
fellow. As it was, he was agitated and unlovely in a new ready-made suit
and a black bomb of a hard hat that wouldn't stay on, and new boots that
stank to heaven of improperly dressed kangaroo hide: one of the
filthiest of stinks.

Poor Paddy, the father of the bridegroom, was a tall, thin, well set-up
man with trembling hands and a face like beetroot, garbed in a blue coat
with brass buttons, mole trousers, leggings, and a sideways-leaning top
hat. His tie was a flowing red with white spots. His eyes were light
blue and wickedly twinkling behind their slight wateriness.

"What's that yer sayin' about me?" said Father Prendy, coming up rubbing
his hands, bowing to the strangers, beaming with a cheerfulness that
could outlast any delay under the sun.

"'Twas black I was callin' ye, Father Prendy," said Paddy. "For the fine
pair of black eyes ye carry, why not? Isn't it a good drink ye'll be
havin' on me afore the day is out, eh? Isn't it a pretty penny ye're
costin' me, with your marrin' an' givin' in marriage? An' why isn't it
Danny what pays the wedding breakfast, eh?"

"Hold your peace, Paddy, my dear. I see a wagon comin', don't I?"

Sure enough the black wicker buggy rattling down hill, the white horse
seeming to swim, the urchin standing up, feet wide apart, elbows high
up, bending forward and urging the bone-white steed with curses
unnameable.

"What now! What now!" murmured the priest, feeling in his pocket for his
stole. "What now!"

"Where's Dad?" yelled the urchin, pulling the bone-white steed on its
bony haunches, in front of the church.

Dad had gone round the corner. But he came bustling and puffing and
bursting in his skin-tight scarlet coat, that almost cut his arms off,
his own ancient father, with a long grey beard, pushing him irritably,
propelling him towards the slippery boy. As if this family, generation
by generation, got more and more behindhand in its engagements.

"Gawd's sake!" blowed the scarlet Dad, as the old grey granddad shoved
him.

"Hold ye breath, Dad, 'n come 'ome!" said the urchin, subsiding
comfortably on to the seat, and speaking as if he enjoyed the utmost
privacy. "Sis can't get away. She's had a baby. An' Ma says I was to
tell Mr. O'Burk as it's a foine boy, an' would Father Prendy step up,
and Pat O'Burk can come 'n see with his own eyes."



CHAPTER XIV

JAMBOREE


"Let's get along," said Jack uncomfortably, in Tom's ear.

"Get! Not for mine! We're in luck's way, if ever we were."

"There's no fun under the circumstances."

"Oh, Lord my, ain't there! What's wrong? They're all packing into the
buggy. Father Prendy's putting his watch back a few more minutes. He'll
have 'em married before you can betcher life. It's a wedding, this is,
boy!"

The people now came crowding, nudging, whispering, giggling, stumbling
out of the church. The gentleman in the carpet slippers rakishly
adjusted his grey bell-topper over his left brow, and came swaggering
forward.

"Major Brownlee--Mr. Jack Grant," Tom introduced them.

"Retired and happy in the country," the Major explained, and he
continued garrulously to explain his circumstances, his history and his
family history. This continued all the way to the inn: a good half-hour,
for the Major walked insecurely on his tender feet.

When they arrived at Paddy's white, trellised house, all was in
festivity. Paddy had thrown open the doors, disclosing the banquet
spread in the bar parlour. Large joints of baked meat, ham, tongue,
fowls, cakes and bottles and bunches of grapes and piles of apples:
these Jack saw in splendid confusion.

"Come along in, come along in!" cried Paddy, as the Major and his young
companions hesitated under the vine-trellis. "I guess ye're the last.
Come along in--all welcome!--an' wet the baby's eye. Sure, she's a
clever girl to get a baby an' a man the same fine afternoon. A fine
child, let me tell you. Father Prendy named him for me, Paddy O'Burk
Tracy, on the spot, the minute the wedding was tied up. So yer can
please yerselves whether it's a christening ye're coming to, or a
wedding. I offer ye the choice. Come in."

"P. O. T." thought Jack. He still did not feel at ease. Perhaps Paddy
noticed it. He came over and slapped him on the back.

"It's yerself has brought good luck to the house, sir. Sit ye down an'
help y'self. Sit ye down an' make y'self at home."

Jack sat down along with the rest of the heterogeneous company. Paddy
went round pouring red wine into glasses.

"Gentlemen!" he announced from the head of the table. "We are all here,
for the table's full up. The first toast is: _The stranger within our
gates!_"

Everybody drank but Jack. He was uncomfortably uncertain whether the
baby was meant, or himself. At the last moment he hastily drank, to
transfer the honour to the baby.

Then came "The Bride!" then "The Groom!" then "The Priest! Father
Prendy, that black limb o' salvation!" Dozens of toasts, it didn't seem
to matter to whom. And everybody drank and laughed, and made clumsy
jokes. There were no women present, at least no women seated. Only the
women who went round the table, waiting. One! Two! Three! Four! Five!
Six! Seven! Westminster chimes from the Grandfather's clock behind Jack.
Seven o'clock! He had not even noticed them bring in the lights. Father
Prendy was on his feet blessing the bride: "at the moment absent on the
high mission of motherhood." He then blessed the bridegroom, at the
moment asleep with his head on the table.

The table had been cleared, save for bottles, fruit, and terrible
cigars. The air was dense with smoke, bitter in the eyes, thick in the
head. Everything seemed to be tinning thick and swimmy, and the people
seemed to move like living oysters in a natural, live liquor. A girl was
sitting on Jack's chair, putting her arm surreptitiously round his
waist, sipping out of his glass. But he pushed her a little aside,
because he wanted to watch four men who had started playing euchre.

"There's a bright moon, gentlemen. Let's go out and have a bit o'
sparrin'," said Paddy swimmingly, from the head of the table.

That pleased Jack a lot. He was beginning to feel shut in.

He rose, and the girl--he had never really looked at her--followed him
out. Why did she follow him? She ought to stay and clear away dishes.

The yard, it seemed to Jack, was clear as daylight: or clearer, with a
big, flat white moon. Someone was sizing up to a little square man with
long thick arms, and the little man was probing them off expertly.
Hello! Here was a master, in his way.

The girl was leaning up against Jack, with her hand on his shoulder.
This was a bore, but he supposed it was also a kind of tribute. He had
still never looked at her.

"That's Jake," she said. "He's champion of these parts. Oh my, if he
sees me leanin' on y' arm like this, hell be after ye!"

"Well, don't lean on me then," said Jack complacently.

"Go on, he won't see me. We're in the dark right here."

"I don't care if he sees you," said Jack.

"You _do_ contradict yourself," said the girl.

"Oh no, I don't!" said Jack.

And he watched the long-armed man, and never once looked at the girl. So
she leaned heavier on him. He disapproved, really, but felt rather manly
under the burden.

The little, square, long-armed man was oldish, with a grey beard. Jack
saw this as he danced round, like a queer old satyr, half gorilla, half
satyr, roaring, booing, fencing with a big yahoo of a young bushman,
holding him off with his unnatural long arms. Over went the big young
fellow sprawling on the ground, causing such a splother that everyone
shifted a bit out of his way. They all roared delightedly.

The long-armed man, looking round for his girl, saw her in the shadow,
leaning heavily and laughingly on Jack's young shoulder. Up he sprang,
snarling like a gorilla, his long hairy arms in front of him. The girl
retreated, and Jack, in a state of semi-intoxicated readiness, opened
his arms and locked them round the little gorilla of a man. Locked
together, they rolled and twirled round the yard under the moon,
scattering the delighted onlookers like a wild cow. Jack was laughing to
himself, because he had got the grip of the powerful long-armed old man.
And there was no real anger in the tussle. The gorilla was an old sport.

Jack was sitting in a chair under the vine, with his head in his hands
and his elbows on his knees, getting his wind. Paddy was fanning him
with a bunch of gum-leaves, and congratulating him heartily.

"First chap as ever laid out Long-armed Jake."

"What'd he jump on me for?" said Jack. "I said nothing to him."

"What y' sayin'?" ejaculated Paddy coaxingly. "Didn't ye take his girl,
now?"

"Take his girl? I? Not She leaned on _me_, I didn't take her."

"Arrah! Look at that now! The brazenness of it! Well, be it on ye! Take
another drink. Will ye come an' show the boys some o' ye tricks,
belike?"

Jack was in the yard again, shaking hands with Long-armed Jake.

"Good on y'! Good on y'!" cried old Jake. "Ye're a cock-bird in fine
feather! What's a wench between two gentlemen! Shake, my lad, shake! I'm
Long-armed Jake, I am, an' I set a cock-bird before any whure of a hen."

They rounded up, sparred, staved off, showed off like two amiable
fighting-cocks, before the admiring cockeys. Then they had good-natured
turns with the young farmers, and mild wrestling bouts with the old
veterans. Having another drink, playing, gassing, swaggering . . .

Tom came bawling as if he were deaf:

"What about them 'osses?"

"What about 'em?" said Jack.

"See to 'm!" said Tom. And he went back to where he came from.

"All right, Mister, we'll see to 'm!" yelled the admiring youngsters.
"Well water 'm an' feed 'm."

"Water?" said Jack.

"Yes.--Show us how to double up, Mister, will y'?"

"A' right!" said Jack, who was considerably tipsy. "When--when
I've--fed--th' 'osses."

He set off to the stables. The admiring youngsters ran yelling ahead.
They brought out the horses and led them down to the trough. Jack
followed, feeling the moon-lit earth sway a little.

He shoved his head in between the noses of the horses, into the cool
trough of water. When he lifted and wrung out the shower from his hair,
which curled when it was wet, he saw the girl standing near him.

"Y' need a towel, Mister," she said.

"I could do with one," said he.

"Come an' I'll get ye one," she said.

He followed meekly. She led him to an outside room, somewhere near the
stable. He stood in the doorway.

"Here y' are!" she said, from the darkness inside.

"Bring it me," he said from the moon outside.

"Come in an' I'll dry your hair for yer." Her voice sounded like the
voice of a 'wild creature in a black cave. He ventured, unseeing,
uncertain, into the den, half reluctant. But there was a certain coaxing
imperiousness in her wild-animal voice, out of the black darkness.

He walked straight into her arms. He started and stiffened as if
attacked. But her full, soft body was moulded against him. Still he drew
fiercely back. Then feeling her yield to draw away and leave him, the
old flame flew over him, and he drew her close again.

"Dearie!" she murmured. "Dearie!" and her hand went stroking the back of
his wet head.

"Come!" she said. "And let me dry your hair."

She led him and sat him on a pallet bed. Then she closed the door,
through which the moonlight was streaming. The room had no window. It
was pitch dark, and he was trapped. So he felt as he sat there on the
hard pallet. But she came instantly and sat by him and began softly,
caressingly to rub his hair with a towel. Softly, slowly, caressingly
she rubbed his hair with a towel. And in spite of himself, his arms,
alive with a power of their own, went out and clasped her, drew her to
him.

"I'm supposed to be in love with a girl," he said, really not speaking
to her.

"Are you, dearie?" she said softly. And she left off rubbing his hair
and softly put her mouth to his.

Later--he had no idea what time of the night it was--he went round
looking for Tom. The place was mostly dark. The inn was half dark . . .
Nobody seemed alive. But there was music somewhere. There was music.

As he went looking for it, he came face to face with Dr. Rackett.

"Where's Tom?" he asked.

"Best look in the barn."

The dim-lighted barn was a cloud of half-illuminated dust, in which
figures moved. But the music was still martial and British. Jack, always
tipsy, for he had drunk a good deal and it took effect slowly, deeply,
felt something in him stir to this music. They were dancing a jig or a
horn-pipe. The air was all old and dusty in the barn. There were four
crosses of wooden swords on the floor. Young Patrick, in his shirt and
trousers, had already left off dancing for Ireland, but the Scotchman,
in a red flannel shirt and a reddish kilt, was still lustily springing
and knocking his heels in a haze of dust. The Welshman was a little poor
fellow in old shirt and trousers. But the Englishman, in costermonger
outfit, black bell-bottom trousers and lots of pearl buttons, was going
well. He was thin and wiry and very neat about the feet. Then he left
off dancing, and stood to watch the last two.

Everybody was drunk, everybody was arguing, according to his
nationality, as to who danced best. The Englishman in the bell-bottom
trousers knew he danced best, but spent his last efforts deciding
between Sandy and Taffy. The music jigged on. But whether it was
_British Grenadiers or Campbells Are Coming_ Jack didn't know. Only he
suddenly felt intensely patriotic.

"I am an Englishman," he thought, with savage pride. "I am an
Englishman. That is the best on earth. Australian is English, English,
English, she'd collapse like a balloon but for the English in her.
British means English first. I'm a Britisher, but I am an Englishman!
God! I could crumple the universe in my fist, I could . . . I'm an
Englishman, and I could crush everything in my hand. And the women are
left behind. I'm an Englishman."

Voices had begun to snarl and roar, fists were lifted.

"Mussen quarrel!--my weddin'! Mussen quarrel!" Pat was drunkenly saying,
sitting on a box shaking his head.

Then suddenly he sprang to his feet, and quick and sharp as a stag,
rushed to the wooden swords and stood with arms uplifted, smartly
showing the steps. The fellow had spirit, a queer, staccato spirit.

Somebody laughed and cheered, and then they all began to laugh and
cheer, and Pat pranced faster, in a cloud of dust, and the quarrel was
forgotten.

Jack went to look for Tom. "I'm an Englishman," he thought. "I'd better
look after him."

He wasn't in the barn. Jack looked and looked.

He found Tom in the kitchen, sitting in a corner, a glass at his side,
quite drunk.

"It's time to go to bed, Tom."

"G'on, ol' duck. I'm waitin' for me girl."

"You won't get any girl tonight. Let's go to bed."

"Shan't I get--? Yes shal! Yes shal!"

"Where shall I find a bed?"

"Plenty 'r flore space."

And he staggered to his feet as a short, stout, red-faced, black-eyed,
untidy girl slipped across the kitchen and out of the door, casting a
black-eyed, meaningful look at the red-faced Tom, over her shoulder as
she disappeared. Tom swayed to his feet and sloped after her with
amazing quickness. Jack stood staring out of the open door, dazed. They
both seemed to have melted.

Himself, he wanted to sleep--only to sleep. "Plenty of floor space," Tom
had said. He looked at the floor. Cockroaches running by the dozen, in
all directions: those brown, barge-like cockroaches of the south, that
trail their huge bellies, and sheer off in automatic straight lines and
make a faint creaking noise, if you listen. Jack looked at the table: an
old man already lay on it. He opened a cupboard: babies sleeping there.

He swayed, drunk with sleep and alcohol, out of the kitchen in some
direction: pushed a swing door: the powerful smell of beer and sawdust
made him know it was the bar. He could sleep on the seat. He could sleep
in peace.

He lurched forward and touched cloth. Something snored, started, and
reared up.

"What y' at?"

Jack stood back breathless--the figure subsided--he could beat a
retreat.

Hopeless he looked in cm the remains of the breakfast. Table and every
bench occupied. He boldly opened another door. A small lamp burning, and
what looked like dozens of dishevelled elderly women's awful figures,
heaped crosswise on the hugest double bed he had ever seen.

He escaped into the open air. The moon was low. Someone was singing.



CHAPTER XV

UNCLE JOHN GRANT


It was day. The lie was hard. He didn't want to wake. He turned over and
was sleep again, though the lie was very hard.

Someone pushing him. Tom, with a red, blank face was saying:

"Wake up! Let's go before Rackett starts."

And the rough hands pushing him crudely. He hated it.

He sat up. He had been lying on the bottom of the buggy, with a sack
over him. No idea how he got there. It was full day.

"Old woman's got some tea made. If y' want t' change y' bags, hop over
'n take a dip in the pool. Down th' paddock there. Here's th' bag. I've
left soap n' comb on th' splash board, an' I've seen to th' 'osses. I'm
goin' f'r a drink while you get ready."

Tom had got a false dawn on him. He had wakened with that false energy
which sometimes follows a "drunk," and which fades all too quickly. For
he had hardly slept at all.

So when Jack was ready, Tom was not. His stupor was overcoming him. He
was cross--and half way through his second pewter mug of beer.

"I'm not coming," said Tom.

"You _are_," said Jack. For the first time he felt that old call of the
blood which made him master of Tom. Somewhere, in the night, the old
spirit of a master had aroused in him.

Tom finished his mug of beer slowly, sullenly. He put down the empty
pot.

"Get up!" said Jack. And Tom got slowly to his feet.

They set off, Jack leading the pack-horse. But the beer and the "night
before" had got Tom down. He rode like a sack in the saddle, sometimes
semi-conscious, sometimes really asleep. Jack followed just behind, with
the beast of a pack-horse dragging his arm out. And Tom ahead, like a
sot, with no life in him.

Jack himself felt hot inside, and dreary, and riding was a cruel effort,
and the pack-horse, dragging his arm from its socket, was hell. He
wished he had enough saddle-tree to turn the rope round: but he was in
his English saddle.

Nevertheless, he had decided something, in that jamboree. He belonged to
the blood of masters, not servants. He belonged to the class of those
that are sought, not those that seek. He was no seeker. He was not
desirous. He would never be desirous. Desire should not lead him humbly
by the nose. Not desire for anything. He was of the few that are
masters. He was to be desired. He was master. He was a real Englishman.

So he jogged along, in the hot, muggy day of early winter. Heavy clouds
hung over the sky, lightning flashed beyond the purple hills. His body
was a burden and a weariness to him, riding was a burden and a
weariness, the pack-horse was hell. And Tom, asleep on his nag, like a
dead thing, was hateful to have ahead. The road seemed endless.

Yet he had in him his new, half savage pride to keep him up, and an
isolate sort of resoluteness.

At mid-day they got down, drank water, camped, and slept without eating.
Thank God the rain hadn't come. Jack slept like the dead till four
o'clock.

He woke sharp, wondering where he was. The clouds looked threatening. He
got up. Yes, the horses were there. He still felt bruised, and hot and
dry inside, from the jamboree. Why in heaven did men want jamborees?

He made a fire, boiled the billy, prepared tea, and set out some food,
though he didn't want any.

"Get up there!" he shouted to Tom, who lay like a beast.

"Get up!" he shouted. But the beast slept.

"Get up, you beast!" he said, viciously kicking him. And he was
horrified because Tom got up, without any show of retaliation at all,
and obediently drank his tea.

They ate a little food, in silence. Saddled in silence, each finding the
thought of speech repulsive. Watched one another to see if they were
ready. Mounted, and rode in repulsive silence away. But Jack had left
the pack-horse to Tom this time. And it began to rain, softly, sleepily.

And Tom was cheering up. The rain seemed to revive him wonderfully. He
was one who was soon bowled over by a drink. Consequently he didn't
absorb much, and he recovered sooner. Jack absorbed more, and it acted
more slowly, deeply, and lastingly on him. On they went, in the rain.
Tom began to show signs of new life. He swore at the pack-horse. He
kicked his nag to a little trot, and the packs flap-flapped like shut
wings, on the rear pony. Presently he reined up, and sat quite still for
a minute. Then he broke into a laugh, lifting his face to the rain.

"Seems to me we're off the road," he said. "We haven't passed a fence
all day, have we?"

"No," said Jack. "But you were asleep all morning."

"We're off the road. Listen!"

The rain was seeping down on the bush; in the grey evening, the warm
horses smelt of their own steam. Jack could hear nothing except the wind
and the increasing rain.

"This track must lead somewhere. Let's get to shelter for the night,"
said Jack.

"Agreed!" replied Tom magnanimously. "We'll follow on, and see what we
shall see."

They walked slowly, pulling at the pack-horse, which was dragging at the
rope, tired with the burden that grew every minute heavier with the
rain.

Tom reined in suddenly.

"There is somebody behind," he said. "It's _not_ the wind."

They sat there on their horses in the rain, and waited. Twilight was
falling. Then Jack could distinguish the sound of a cart behind. It was
Rackett in the old shay rolling along in the lonely dusk and rain,
through the trees, approaching. Black Sam grinned mightily as he pulled
up.

"Thought I'd follow, though you are on the wrong road," said Rackett
from beneath his black waterproof. "Sam showed me the tinning two miles
back. You missed it. Anyhow we'd better camp in on these people ahead
here."

"Is there a place ahead?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied Rackett. "Even a sort of relation of yours, that I
promised Gran I would come and see. Hence my following on your heels."

"Didn't know I'd any relation hereabouts," said Tom sulkily. He couldn't
bear Rackett's interfering in the family in any way.

"You haven't. I meant Jack. But we'll get along, shall we?"

"We're a big flood," remarked Tom. "But if they'll give us the barn,
well manage. It's getting wet to sleep out."

They pressed ahead, the pack-horse trotting, but lifting up his head
like a venomous snake, in unwillingness. They had come into the open
fields. At last in the falling dark they saw a house and buildings. A
man hove in sight, but lurked away from them. Rackett hailed him. The
man seemed to oppose their coming further. He was a hairy, queer figure,
with his untrimmed beard.

"Master never takes no strangers," he said.

Rackett slipped a shilling in his hand, and would he ask his master if
they might camp in the barn, out of the rain.

"Y' ain't the police, now, by any manner of means?" asked the man.

"God love you, no," said Rackett.

"We're no police," said Tom. "I'm Tom Ellis, from Wandoo, over York
way."

"Ellis! I heared th' name. Well, master's sick, an' skeered to death o'
th' police. They're ready to drop in on the place, that they are, rot
'em, the minute he breathes his last. And he's skeered he's dyin' this
time. Oh, he's skeered o' t. So I have me doubts of all strangers. I
have me doubts, no matter what they be. Master he've sent a letter to
his only relation upon earth, to his nephew, which thank the Lord he's
writ for to come an' lay hold on the place, against he dies. If there's
no one to lay hold, the police steps in, without a word. That's how they
do it. They lets the places in grants like--lets a man have a grant--and
when the poor man dies, his place is locked up by the Government. They
takes it all."

"Gawd's sake!" murmured Tom aside. "The man's potty!"

"Bush mad," supplemented Rackett, who was sitting in the buggy with his
chin in his hand, intently listening to the queer, furtive, garrulous
individual.

"Say, friend," he added aloud. "Go and ask your master if we harmless
strangers can camp in the barn out of the wet."

"What might your names be, Mister?" asked the man.

"Mine's Dr. Rackett. This is Tom Ellis. And this is Jack Grant. And no
harm in any of us."

"D'y' say Jack Grant? Would that be Mr. John Grant?" asked the man,
galvanised by sudden excitement.

"None other!" said Rackett.

"Then he's come!" cried the man.

"He certainly has," replied Rackett.

"Oh, Glory, Glory! Why didn't ye say so afore? Come in. Come in all of
ye, come in! Come in, Mr. Grant! Come in!"

They got down, gave the reins to Sam, and were ready to follow the
bearded man, looking one another in the face in amazement, and shaking
their heads.

"Gawd Almighty, I'd rather keep out o' this!" murmured Tom, standing by
his horse and keeping the rope of the pack-horse.

"Case of mistaken identity," said Rackett coolly. "Hang on, boys. We'll
get a night's shelter."

A woman came out of the dilapidated stone house, clutching her hands in
distress and agitation.

"Missus! Missus! Here he is at last. God be praised!" cried the bearded
man. She ran up in sudden effusion of welcome, but he ordered her into
the house to brighten up the fire, while he waved the way to the
stables, knowing that horse comes before man, in the bush.

When they had shaken down in the stable, they left Sam to sleep there,
while the three went across to the house. Tom was most unwilling.

The man was at the door, to usher them in.

"I've broke the news to him, sir!" he said in a mysterious voice to
Jack, as he showed them into the parlour.

"What's your Master's name?" asked Rackett.

"Don't y' know y're at your destination?" whispered the man. "This is
Mr. John Grant's. This is the place ye're looking for."

A melancholy room! The calico ceiling drooped, the window and front door
were hermetically sealed, an ornate glass lamp shone in murky, lonely
splendour upon a wool mat on a ricketty round table. Six chairs stood
against the papered walls. Nothing more.

Tom wanted to beat it back to the kitchen, through which they had passed
to get to this sarcophagus, and where a fire was burning and a woman was
busy. But the man was tapping at another door, and listening anxiously
before entering.

He went into the dark room beyond, where a candle shone feebly, and they
heard him say:

"Your nephew's come, Mr. Grant, and brought a doctor and another
gentleman, the Lord be praised."

"The Lord don't need to be praised on my behalf, Amos," came a querulous
voice. "And I ain't got no nephew, if I _did_ send him a letter. I've
got nobody. And I want no doctor, because I died when I left my mother's
husband's house."

"They're in the parlour."

"Tell 'em to walk up."

The man appeared in the doorway. Rackett walked up, Jack followed, and
Tom hung nervously and disgustedly in the rear.

"Here they are! Here's the gentry," said Amos.

In the candle-light they saw a thin man in red flannel night-cap with a
blanket round his shoulders, sitting up in bed under an old green
cart-umbrella. He was not old, but his face was thin and wasted, and his
long colourless beard seemed papery. He had cunning, shifty eyes with
red rims, and looked as mad as his setting.

Rackett had shoved Jack forward. The sick man stared at him and seemed
suddenly pleased. He held out a thin hand. Rackett nudged Jack, and Jack
had to shake. The hand seemed wet and icy, and Jack shuddered.

"How d'you do!" he mumbled. "I'm sorry, you know; I'm not your nephew."

"I know ye're not. But are y' Jack Grant?"

"Yes," said Jack.

The man under the umbrella seemed hideously pleased.

Jack heard Tom's ill-suppressed, awful chuckle from behind.

The sick man peered irritably at the other two. Then he nodded slowly,
under the green baldachino of the old cart-umbrella.

"Jack Grant! Jack Grant! Jack Grant!" he murmured, to himself. He was
surely mad, obviously mad.

"I'm right glad you've come, Cousin," he said suddenly, looking again
very pleased. "I'm surely glad you've come in time. I've a nice tidy
place put together for you, Jack, a small proposition of three thousand
acres, five hundred cleared and cropped, fifty fenced--dog-leg fences,
broke MacCullen's back putting 'em up. But I'll willingly put in five
hundred more, for a gentleman like young master. Meaning old master will
soon be underground. Well, who cares, now young master's come to light,
and the place doesn't go out of the family! I am determined the place
shall not go out of the family, Cousin Jack. Aren't you pleased?"

"Very," said Jack soothingly.

"Call me Cousin John. Or Uncle John if you like. I'm more like your
uncle, I should think. Shake hands, and say, _Right you are, Uncle
John._ Call me Uncle John."

Jack shook hands once more, and dutifully, as to a crazy person, he
said:

"Right you are, Uncle John."

Tom, in the background, was going into convulsions. But Rackett remained
quite serious.

Uncle John closed his eyes muttering, and fell back under the
cart-umbrella.

"Mr. Grant," said Dr. Rackett, "I think Jack would like to eat something
after his ride."

"All right, let him go to the kitchen with yon buck wallaby as can't
keep a straight face. Stop with me a minute yourself, Mister, if you
will."

The two boys bundled away into the kitchen. The woman had a meal ready,
and they sat down at the table.

"I thank my stars," said Tom impressively, "he's not my Uncle John."

"Shut up," said Jack, because the woman was there.

They ate heartily, the effects of the jamboree having passed. After the
meal they strolled to the door to look out, away from that lugubrious
parlour and bedroom. They found a stiff wind blowing, the sky clear with
running clouds and vivid stars in the spaces.

"Let's get!" said Tom. It was his constant craving.

"We can't leave Rackett."

"We can. He pushed us in. Let's get. Why can't we?"

"Oh well, we can't," said Jack.

Rackett had entered the kitchen, and was eating his meal. He asked the
woman for ink.

"There's no ink," she said.

"Must be somewhere," said Amos, her husband. "Jack Grant's letter was
written in ink."

"I never got a letter," said Jack, turning.

"Eh, hark ye! How like old master over again! Ye've come, haven't ye?"

"By accident," said Jack. "I'm not Mr. Grant's nephew."

"Hark ye! Hark ye! It runs in the family, father to son, uncle to
nephew. All right! All right! Have it your own way," cried Amos. He had
been struggling with crazy contradictions too long.

Tom was in convulsions. Rackett put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "It's
all right," he said. "Don't worry him. Leave it to me." And to the woman
he said, if there was no ink she was to kill a fowl and bring it to him,
and he'd make ink with lamp-black and gall.

"You two boys had better be off to bed," he said. "You have to be off in
good time in the morning."

"Oh, not going, not going so soon, surely! The young master's not going
so soon! Surely! Surely! Master's so weak in the head and stomach, we
can't cope with him all by ourselves," cried the old man and woman.

"Perhaps I'll stay," said Rackett. "And Jack will come back one day,
don't you worry. Now let me make that ink."

The boys were shown into a large, low room--the fourth room of the
house--that opened off the kitchen. It contained a big bed with clean
sheets and white crochet quilt. Jack surmised it was the old couple's
bed, and wanted to go to the barn. But Tom said, since they offered it,
there was nothing to do but to take it.

Tom was soon snoring. Jack lay in the great feather bed feeling that
life was all going crazy. Tom was already snoring. He cared about
nothing. Out of sight, out of mind. But Jack had a fit of remembering.
His head was hot, and he could not sleep. The wind was blowing, it was
raining again. He could not sleep, he had to remember.

It was always so with him. He could go on careless and unheeding, like
Tom, for a while. Then came these fits of reckoning and remembering.
Life seemed unhinged in Australia. In England there was a strong central
pivot to all the living. But here the centre pin was gone, and the lives
seemed to spin in a weird confusion.

He felt that for himself. His life was all unhinged. What was he driving
at? What was he making for? Where was he going? What was his life,
anyhow?

In England, you knew. You had your purpose. You had your profession and
your family and your country. But out here you had no profession. You
didn't do anything for your country except boast of it to strangers, and
leave it to get along as best it might. And as for your family, you
cared for that, but in a queer, centreless fashion.

You didn't really care for anything. The old impetus of civilisation
kept you still going, but you were just rolling to rest. As Mr. Ellis
had rolled to rest, leaving everything stranded. There was no grip, no
hold.

And yet, what Jack had rebelled against in England was the tight grip,
the fixed hold over everything. He liked this looseness and carelessness
of Australia. Till it seemed to him crazy. And then it scared him.

Tonight everything seemed to him crazy. He didn't pay any serious
attention to Uncle John Grant: he was obviously out of his mind. But
then everything seemed crazy. Mr. Ellis' death, and Gran's death, and
Monica and Easu Ellis--it all seemed crazy as crazy. And the jamboree,
and that girl who called him Dearie! And the journey, and this mad house
in the rain. What did it all mean? What did it all stand for?

Everything seemed to be spinning to a darkness of death. Everybody
seemed to be dancing a crazy dance of death. He could understand that
the blacks painted themselves like white bone skeletons, and danced in
the night, light skeletons dancing, in their corrobees. That was how it
was. The night, dark and fleshly, and skeletons dancing a clicketty dry
dance m it.

Tom, so awfully upset at his father's death! And now as careless as a
lark, just spinning his way along the road, in a sort of weird dance,
dancing humorously to the black verge of oblivion. That was how it was.
To dance humorously to the black verge of oblivion. The children of
death. With a sort of horror of death around them. Wandoo suddenly grim
and grisly with the horror of death.

Death, the great end and goal. Death, the black, void, pulsating reality
which would swallow them all up, like a black lover finally possessing
them. The great black fleshliness of the end, the huge body of death
reeling to swallow them all. And for this they danced, and for this they
loved and reared families and made farms: to provide good meat and
white, pure bones for the black, avid horror of death.

Something of the black, aboriginal horror came over him. He realised, to
his amazement, the actuality of the great, grinning black demon of
death. The vast, infinite demon that eats our flesh and cracks our bones
in the last black potency of the end. And for this, for this demon one
seeks for a woman, to lie with her and get children for the Moloch.
Children for the Moloch! Lennie, Monica, the twins, Og and Magog!
Children for the Moloch.

One God or the other must take them at the end. Either the dim white god
of the heavenly infinite. Or else the great black Moloch of the living
death. Devoured and digested in the living death.

Satan, Moloch, Death itself, all had been unreal to him before. But now,
suddenly, he seemed to see the black Moloch grinning huge in the sky,
while human beings danced towards his grip, and he gripped and swallowed
them into the black belly of death. That was their end.

Dance! Dance! Death has its deep delights! And ever-recurring. Be
careless, ironical, stoical and reckless. And go your way to death with
a will. With a dark handsomeness, and a dark lustre of fatality, and a
splendour of recklessness. Oh, God, the Lords of Death! The big,
darkly-smiling, heroic men who are Lords of Death! And they too go on
splendidly towards death, the great goal of unutterable satisfaction,
and consummated fear.

"I am going my way the same," Jack thought to himself. "I am travelling
in a reckless, slow dance, darker and darker, into the black, hot belly
of death, where is my end. Oh, let me go gallantly, let me have the
black joy of the road. Let me go with courage, and a bit of splendour
and dark lustre, down to the great depths of death, that I am so
frightened of, but which I long for in the last consummation. Let death
take me in a last black embrace. Let me go on as the niggers go, with
the last convulsion into the last black embrace. Since I am travelling
the dark road, let me go in pride. Let me be a Lord of Death, since the
reign of the white Lords of Life, like my father, has become sterile and
a futility. Let me be a Lord of Death. Let me go that other great road,
that the blacks go."

The bed was soft and hot, and he stretched his arms fiercely. If he had
Monica! Oh, if he had Monica! If that girl last night had been Monica!

That girl last night! He didn't even know her name. She had stroked his
head--like--like--Mary! The association flashed into his mind. Yes, like
Mary. And Mary would be humble and caressive and protective like that.
So she would. And dark! It would be dark like that if one loved Mary.
And brief! Brief! But sharp and good in the briefness. Mary! Mary!

He realised with amazement it was Mary he was now wanting. Not Monica.
Or was it Monica? Her slim keen hand. Her slim body like a slim cat, so
full of life. Oh, it was Monica! First and foremost, most intensely, it
was Monica, because she was really his, and she was his destiny. He
dared not think of her.

He rolled in the bed in misery. Tom slept unmoving. Oh, why couldn't he
be like Tom, slow and untormented. Why couldn't he? Why was his body
tortured? Why was he travelling this road? Why wasn't Monica there like
a gipsy with him. Why wasn't Monica there?

Or Mary! Why wasn't Mary in the house? She would be so soft and
understanding, so yielding. Like the girl of the long-armed man. The
long-armed man didn't mind that he had taken his girl, for once.

Why was he himself rolling there in torment? Pug had advised him to
"punch the ball," when he was taken with ideas he wanted to get rid of.
There was no ball to punch. "Train the body hard, but train the mind
hard too." Yes, all very well. He could think, now for example, of
fighting Easu, or of building up a place and raising fine horses. But
the moment his mind relaxed for sleep, back came the other black flame.
The women! The women! The women! Even the girl of last night.

What was a man born for? To find a mate, a woman, isn't it? Then why try
to think of something else? To have a woman--to make a home for her--to
have children.--And other women in the background, down the long, dusky,
strange years towards death. So it seemed to him. And to fight the men
that stand in one's way. To fight them. Always a new one cropping up,
along the strange dusky road of the years, where you go with your head
up, and your eyes open, and your spine sharp and electric, ready to
fight your man and take your woman, on and on down the years, into the
last black embrace of death. Death that stands grinning with arms open
and black breast ready. Death, like the last woman you embrace. Death,
like the last man you die fighting with. And he beats you. But somehow
you are not beaten, if you are a Lord of Death.

Jack hoped he would die a violent death. He hoped he would live a
defiant, unsubmissive life, and die a violent death. A bullet, or a
knife piercing home. And the women he left behind--his women, enveloped
in him as in a dark net. And the children he left, laughing already at
death.

And himself! He hoped never to be downcast, never to be melancholy,
never to yield. Never to yield. To be a Lord of Death, and go on to the
black arms of death, still laughing. To laugh, and bide one's time, and
leap at the right moment.



CHAPTER XVI

ON THE ROAD


I


"My dear nephew, I haven't sent you a letter since the last one which I
never wrote, yet you have come in answer to the one you never got. I
wrote because I wanted you to come and receive the property, and I never
posted it because I didn't know your address, and you couldn't come if I
did, because you don't exist. Yet here you are and I think you look very
pleased to receive the property which you haven't got yet. I was so
afraid I should die sudden after this long lingering illness, but it's
you who has come suddenly and the illness hasn't begun yet. So here am I
speechless, but you are doing a lot of talking to your dear uncle who
never had a nephew. What does it matter to me if you are Jack Grant
because I am not, but took the name into the grant of land given me on
the land grant system at a shilling an acre. So like a bad shilling the
name turns up again on the register, so that the land goes back to the
grant and the Grant to the land. But a better-looking nephew I never
wish to see, being as much like me as an ape is like meat. So when I'm
dead I won't be alive to trouble you, and I'll trouble no further about
you since you might as well be dead for all I care."

In this vein Tom ranted on the next morning, when they had set out in
the glorious early dawn. Tom never wearied of the uncle under the
umbrella. He told the tale to everybody who would listen, and wore out
Jack's ears with these long and facile pleasantries.

They were both glad to get away from the crazy, lugubrious place. Jack
refused to give it a thought further, though he felt vaguely, at the
back of his mind, that he knew something about it already. Something
somebody had told him.

Rackett had stayed behind, so they made no very good pace, leading the
pack-horse. But they pushed on, being already overdue at the homestead
of one of Tom's Aunts, who was expecting them.

Once on horseback and in the open morning, Jack wished for nothing more.
Women, death, skeletons, the dance into the darkness, the future, the
past, love, home, and sorrow all disappeared in the bright well of the
daylight, as if they'd dropped into a pool. He wanted nothing more than
to ride, to jog along the track on the rather wet road, through bush and
scrub still wet with rain, in a pure Westralian air that was like a
clean beginning of everything, seeing the tiny bushman's flowers
sparking and gilding eerily in the dunness of the world.

By mid-day they reached the highway to Geraldton, via Gingin, and camped
at the Three-mile Government well in perfect good spirits. Everything
was gone, everything was forgotten except the insouciance of the moment.
They knew the uselessness of thinking and remembering and worrying. When
worry starts biting like mosquitoes, then, if it bites hard enough,
you've got to attend. But it's like illness, avoid it, beat it back if
you can.

They found the high-road merely a bush-track after all. If it was near a
settlement, or allotments or improved lands, it might run well for
miles. But for the most part, it was exceedingly bad, full of holes of
water, and beginning in places to be a bog.

Tom was now at his best, out in the bush again. All his bush lore came
back to him, and he was like an animal in its native surroundings. His
charm came back too, and his confidence. He went ahead looking keenly
about, like a travelling animal, pointing out to Jack first this thing
and then the other, initiating him into bush wisdom, teaching him the
big cipher-book of the bush. And Jack learned gladly. It was so good, so
good to be away from homesteads, and women, and money, watching the
trees and the land and the marks of wild life. And Tom, a talker once he
was wound up, told the histories of settlers, their failures and
successes, and their peculiarities. It seemed to Jack there was a
surplus of weird people out there. But then, Tom said, the weird ones
usually came first, and they got weirder in the wild.

They passed an enormous hollow tree, from which issued an old man with a
grey beard that came to his waist, dressed in rags. A grey-haired, very
ragged woman also came out, carrying a baby. Other children crawled
around. The travellers called Good-day! as they passed.

Tom said the woman's baby was the youngest of seventeen children. The
eldest son was already grown up, a prosperous young man trading in
sandal-wood. But Dad and Mum liked the bush, and would accept nothing
for their supposed welfare, either from their sons or anyone else.

In the middle of the afternoon they passed a sundowner trekking with a
cartful of produce down to Middle Swan. At four o'clock they camped for
half an hour, to drink a billy of tea. Before the water boiled they saw
two tramps coming down the road. The slouchers came straight up and
greeted the boys, eyeing them curiously up and down.

"Wot cheer, mate!" said one, a ruffianly mongrel.

"Good O! How's the goin' Gingin way?" asked Tom.

"Plenty grass an' water this time o' the year. But look out for the
settlers this side. They ain't over hopeful." He turned to stare at
Jack. Then he continued, to Tom: "How's it y' got y' baby out?"

"New chum," explained Tom. He spoke quietly, but his mouth had hardened.
"You blokes want anything of us?"

"Yessir," said the spokesman, coming in close. "We wants bacca."

"Do you?" said Tom pleasantly, and he pulled out his pouch. "I've only
got three plugs. That's one apiece for me an' the baby, an' you can have
the other to do as you likes with. But chum here doesn't keer much for
smokin', so he might give you his."

There was a tone of finality in Tom's voice.

"You've surely got more blasted cheek than most kids," said the fellow.
"What've ye got planted away in y' swags?" He glanced at his mate. "We
don't want to use no bally persuasion, does we, Bill?"

Bill was of villainous but not very imposing appearance. He had weak
eyes, a dirty hairy face, and a purple mouth showing unbecomingly
through his whiskers.

Tom calmly filled his pipe, and waving to the first tramp, gave him
sufficient to fill his cutty. The fellow took it, ignoring his mate, and
began to fill up eagerly. He sat down by the fire, and taking a hot
ember, lit up, puffing avidly.

"The other can have my share, if he wants it," said Jack.

"Thank you kindly," said the other with a sneer. And as he stuffed it in
his pipe: "It'll do for a start." But he was puffing almost before he
could finish his words.

They smoked in silence round the fire for some time. Then Tom rose and
went over to the pack, as if he were going to give in to the ruffians.
One swaggy rose and followed him.

The other tramp, taking not the slightest notice of the boy sitting
there, reached out his filthy hand and began to fill his pockets with
everything that lay near the fire: the packet of tea, a spoon, a knife.

He had got as far as the spoon when the astonished Jack said: "Drop it!"
as if he were speaking to a dog.

The man turned with a snarl, and made to cuff him. Jack seized his wrist
and twisted it cruelly, making him drop the spoon and shout with pain.
The other swaggy at once ran on Jack from the rear, and fell over him.
Tom rushed on the second swaggy and fell too. Over they all went in a
heap. Jack laughed aloud in the scrimmage, as he gripped the swaggy's
wrist with one hand and with the other emptied out the contents of the
pocket again. He brought out two knives, one of which didn't belong to
him. Dropping the lot for safety, he got to his feet. Tom and the second
swaggy were rolling and unlocking. That villain spied the open knife,
seized it and sprang to his feet, snarling and brandishing.

"Come on, ye pair of----"

Jack gave another twist to the wrist of the prisoner, who howled, and
then he kicked him three yards away. But his heart smote him, for the
kick was so bony, the tramp was thin and frail. Then, full of the black
joy of scattering such wastrels, he sprang unexpectedly on the other
tramp. The swaggy gave a yell, and fled. For a minute or two the couple
of ragged, wretched, despicable figures could be seen bolting like
running vermin down the trail. Then they were out of sight.

Tom and Jack sat by the fire and roared with laughter, roared and roared
till the bush was startled.

They were just packing up when someone else came down the road. It was a
young woman in a very wide skirt on a very small pony, riding as if she
were used to it. This was not the figure they expected to see.

"Why!" cried Tom, staring. "I do believe it's Ma's niece grown up."

It was. She was quite pleasant, but her hands were stub-fingered and
work-hardened, and her voice was common.

"Y' didn't come along yesterday, as Ma expected," she explained, "so I
just took Tubby to see if y' was coming today. How's the twins? How's
Monica and Grace? I do wish they'd come."

"They're all right," said Tom.

"We heard about your Dad and your Gran. Fancy! But I wish Monica had
come with you. She was such a little demon at school. I'm fair longing
to see her."

"She's not the only one of you that's a demon!" said Tom, in the correct
tone of banter, putting over his horse and drawing to the girl's side,
and becoming very manly for her benefit. "An' what's wrong with us, that
you aren't glad to see us?"

"Oh, you're all right," said the cousin. "But a girl of your own age is
more fun, you know."

"Well, I don't happen to be a girl of your own age," said Tom. "Just by
accident, I'm a man. But come on. There's some roughs about. We might
just as well get out of their way."

He trotted alongside the damsel, leaving Jack to bring the pack-horse.
Jack didn't mind.



II


So they went on, receiving a rough and generous hospitality from, one or
another of Tom's or Jack's relations, of whom there were astonishingly
many, along the grand bush track to Geraldton. If they weren't direct
relations, they were relations by marriage, and it served just as well.
There were the Brockmans, there were the Browns, and Gales, and Davises,
Edgars and Conollys, Burgesses, Cooks, Logues, Cradles, Morrises,
Fitzgeralds and Glasses. Families united by some fine-drawn connection
or other; and very often much more divided than united, by some very
plain-drawn feud. Their names like brooks trickled across the land, and
you crossed and re-crossed. You would lose a name entirely: like the
Brockman name. Then suddenly it reappeared as Brackman, and "Oh yes,
we're cousins!"

"Who isn't cousin!" thought Jack.

Some of them had huge tracts of land fenced in. Some had little bits of
poor farms. Sometimes there were deserted farms.

"And to think," said Tom, "that none of them is my own mother's
relations. All Dad's, or else Ma's. Mostly Ma's."

It was queer the way he hankered after his own real mother. Jack, for
his part, didn't care a straw who was his mother's relation and who
wasn't. But you would have thought Tom lived under a Matriarchy, and
derived everything from a lost mother.

It was not wet enough yet to be really boggy, though camping out was
damp. However, they mostly got a roof. If it wasn't a relation's, it was
a barn, or the "Bull and Horns" by Gingin. And to the boys, all that
mattered was whether they were on the right road: often a very puzzling
question; or if the heavy rain would hold off; if there was plenty of
grub; if the horses seemed tired or not quite fit; if they were going to
get through a boggy place all right; if the packs were fast; if they
made good going. The inns were "low" in every sense of the word,
including the low-pitched roof. And full of bugs, however new the
country. With red-nosed, grassy-whiskered landlords who thumbed the
glasses when there were any glasses to thumb. And there were always men
at these inns, almost always the same kind of brutal, empty roughs.

"Look here," said Jack, "wherever we go there are these roughs, and more
roughs, and more. Where the devil do they come from, and how do they
make a living? Apart from farm labourers, I mean."

"A lot of them are shearers," said Tom, "drifting from job to job,
according to climate. When shearing season's over here, they work on to
the south-west, where it's cooler. And then there are kangaroo and
'possum snarers. That young fellow we saw rooked of all his sugar last
night was a skin-hunter. They get half-a-crown apiece for good 'roo
skins, and it's quite a trade. The others last night were mostly
sandalwood getters. There's quite a lot of men make money collecting
bark for export, and manna-gum. That rowdy lot playing fifty-three were
a gang of well-sinkers. Then what with timber-workers, haulers,
teamsters, junkers--oh, there's all sorts. But they're mostly one sort,
swabs, rough and rowdy, an' can't keep their pants hitched up enough to
be decent. You've seen 'em. They're mostly like the dirty old braces
they wear. All the snap gone out of 'em, all the elastic perished. They
just work and booze and loaf, and work and booze. I hope I'll never get
so that I don't keep myself spruce. I hope I never will. But that's the
worst o' the life out here. Nobody hardly keeps spruce."

Jack kept this well in mind. He too hated a man slouching along with a
discoloured face, and trousers slopping down his insignificant legs. He
loathed that look which tramps and ne'er-do-wells usually have, as if
their legs weren't there, inside their beastly bags. Despicable about
the rear and the legs. The best of the farmers, on the contrary, had
strong, sinewy legs, full of life. Easu was like that, his powerful legs
holding his horse. And Tom had good, live legs. But poor Dad had not
been very alive, inside his pants.

"Whatever I do, I'll never go despicable and humiliated about the legs
and seat," said Jack to himself, as he pressed the stirrups with his
toes and felt the powerful elasticity of his thighs, holding the live
body of the horse between his muscles in permanent grip. And it seemed
as if the powerful animal life of the horse entered into him, through
his legs and seat, and made him strong.

"What's a junker, Tom?"

"A low, four-wheeled log hauler, with a long pole."

"I thought it was a man. A swab is a man?"

"Yes. He's any old drunk."

"But a swaggy is a tramp?"

"It is. It is one who humps it. If he's got a pack, it's his swag. If
he's only got a blanket and a billy, it's his bluey and his drum. And if
he's got nothing, it's Waltzing Matilda."

"I suppose so," said Jack. "And his money is his sugar?"

"Right-O! son!"

"And Chink is Chinaman?"

"No, sir. That's Chow. Chink means prison. An' a lag is a ticketer: one
who's out on lease. Now what more Child's Guide to Knowledge do you
want?"

"I'm only getting it straight. Jam and dog both mean 'side'?"

"Verily. Only dog is sometimes same as bully tinned meat."

"And what's _stosh?_"

"Landin' him one."

Jack rode on, thinking about it.

"What's a remittance man, really, Tom?"

"A waster. A useless bird shipped out here to be kept south o' the line,
because he's a disgrace to England. And his family soothes their
conscience by sending him so much a month, which they call his
remittance, 'stead o' letting him starve, or work. Like Rackett. Plenty
o' money sent out to him to stink on."

"Why don't you like Rackett?"

"I fairly despise him, an' his money. He's absolutely useless baggage,
rotting life away. I can't abear to see him about. Old George gave me
the tip he was leaving our place, else I'd never have gone and left him
loose there."

"He is no harm."

"How do you know? If be hasn't got a disease of the body, he's got a
disease of the soul."

"What disease?"

"Dunno."

"Does he take drugs?"

"I reckon that's about his figure. But he's an eyesore to me, loafin',
loafin'. An' he's an eyesore to Ma, save for the bit he teaches Lennie.
An' when he starts talkin' on the high fiddle, like he does to Mary the
minute she comes down, makes you want to walk on his face."

Poor Rackett! Jack marvelled that Tom had always been so civil.

The two jogged along very amicably together. Tom was
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. At the same time, he was in his own
estimation a gentleman, and a person of consideration. It was "thus far"
with him.

But whoever came along, they all drew up.

"Hello, mate! How's goin'? . . . Well, so long!"

One youth was walking to Fremantle to take a job offered by his uncle,
serving in a grocery shop. The lad was in tatters. His blanket was tied
with twine, his battered billy hung on to it. But he was jubilant. And
now he is one of Australia's leading lights. Even it is said of him that
he never forgot the kindness he received on the road.

But most of the trailers were sundowners, sloping along anyhow,
subsisting anyhow, but ready with the ingenious explanation that they
"chopped a bit," or "fenced a bit," or "trapped a bit." Perhaps they
never realised how much bigger was the bit they loafed.

They were not bad. The bad ones were the scoundrels down from the
Never-Never, emerging in their rags and moral degradation after years on
the sheep runs or cattle stations, years of earnings spent in drink and
squalid, beastly debauchery. Some were hoarding their cheques for
coast-town consumption, like the first two rogues, and cadging and
stealing their way.

But then there were families driving to the nearest settlement to do a
bit of shopping, or visit their relations, or fetch the doctor to "fix
up Teddy's little leg." Once there was a posse of mounted police, very
important and gallant, with horses champing and chains clinking. They
were out after a criminal supposed to have been landed on the coast by a
dago boat "from the other side." Then there was an occasional Minister
of the Gospel, on a pony, dressed in black. Jack's heart always sank
when he saw that black. He decided that priests should be white, or in
orange robes, like the Buddhist priests he had seen in Colombo, or in a
good blue, like some nuns.

Gradually the road became a home: more a home than any homestead.

"Let's get!" was Tom's perpetual cry, when they were fixed up in the
house of some relation, or in some inn. He only felt happy on the road.
Sometimes they went utterly lonely for many miles. Sometimes they passed
a deserted habitation. But there were always signs of life near a well.
And often there were milestones.

"Fifty-seven miles to where?"

"I don't know. We're leagues from Gingin. Certainly fifty-seven miles to
nowhere of any importance on the face of this earth."

"Wonder what Gingin means?"

"Better not ask. You never know what these natives'll be naming places
after. Usually something vile. But gin means a woman, whatever Gingin
is."

Gradually they got further and further, geographically, mentally, and
emotionally, from Wandoo and all permanent associations. Jack was glad.
He loved the earth, the wild country, the bush, the scent. He wanted to
go on forever. Beyond the settlements--beyond the ploughed land--beyond
all fences. That was it--beyond all fences. Beyond all fences, where a
man was alone with himself and the untouched earth.

Man escaping from Man! That's how it is all the time. The passion men
have to escape from mankind. What do they expect in the beyond? God?

They'll never find the same God! Never again. They are trying to escape
from the God men acknowledge, as well as from mankind, the acknowledger.

The land untouched by man. The call of the mysterious, vast, unoccupied
land. The strange inaudible calling, like the far-off call of a
kangaroo. The strange, still, pure air. The strange shadows. The strange
scent of wild, brown, aboriginal honey.

Being early for the boat, the boys camped for twenty-four hours in a
perfectly lonely place. And in the utterly lonely evening Jack began
craving again: for Monica, for a woman, for some object for his passion
to settle on. And he knew again, as he had always known, that nowhere is
free, so long as man is passionate, desirous, yearning. His only freedom
is to find the object of his passion, and fulfil his desires and satisfy
his yearning, as far as his life can succeed. Or else, which is more
difficult, to harden himself away from all desire and craving, to harden
himself into pride, and refer himself to that other god.

Yes, in the wild bush, God seemed another god. God seemed absolutely
another god, vaster, more calm and more deeply, sensually potent. And
this was a profound satisfaction. To find another, more terrible, but
also more deeply-fulfilling god stirring subtly in the uncontaminated
air about one. A dread god. But a great god, greater than any known. The
sense of greatness, vastness, and newness, in the air. And the strange,
dusky, gray eucalyptus-smelling sense of depth, strange depth in the
air, as of a great deep well of potency, which life had not yet tapped.
Something which lay in a man's blood as well--and in a woman's blood--in
Monica's--in Mary's--in the Australian blood. A strange, dusky,
gun-smelling depth of potency that had never been tapped by experience.
As if life still held great wells of reserve vitality, strange unknown
wells of secret life-source, dusky, of a strange, dim, aromatic sap
which had never stirred in the veins of man, to consciousness
and effect. And if he could take Monica and set the dusky, secret,
unknown sap flowing in himself and her, to some unopened life
consciousness--that was what he wanted. Dimly, uneasily, painfully he
realised it.

And then the bush began to frighten him, as if it would kill him, as it
had killed so much man-life before, killed it before the life in man had
had time to come to realisation.

He was glad when the road came down to the sea. There, the great,
pale-blue, strange, empty sea, on new shores with new strange sea-birds
flying, and strange rocks sticking up, and strange blue distances up the
bending coast. The sea that is always the same, always a relief, a
vastness and a soothing. Coming out of the bush, and being a little
afraid of the bush, he loved the sea with an English passion. It made
him feel at home in the same known infinite of space.

Especially on a windy day, when the track would curve down to a
greeny-grey opalescent sea that beat slowly on the red sands, like a
dying grey bird with white wing-feathers. And the reddish cliffs with
sage-green growth of herbs, stood almost like flesh.

Then the road went inland again, through a swamp, and to the bush. To
emerge next morning in the sun, upon a massive deep indigo ocean,
infinite, with pearl-clear horizon; and in the nearness, emerald-green
and white flashing unspeakably bright on a pinkish shore, perfectly
world-new.

They were nearing the journey's end. Nearing the little port, and the
ship, and the world of men.



CHAPTER XVII

AFTER TWO YEARS


I


A sky with clouds of white and grey, and patches of blue. A green sea
flecked with white, and shadowed golden brown. On the horizon, the sense
of a great open void, like an open valve, as if the bivalve oyster of
the world, sea and sky, were open away westward, open into another
infinity, and the people on land, inside the oyster of the world, could
look far out to the opening.

They could see the bulk of near islands. Further off, a tiny white sail
coming down fast on the fresh great sea-wind, emanating out of the
north-west. She seemed to be coming from the beyond, slipping into the
slightly-open, living oysters of our world.

The men on the wharf at Fremantle, watching her black hull emerge from
the flecked sea, as she sailed magically nearer, knew she would be a
cattle-boat coming in from the great Nor'-West. They watched her none
the less.

As she hesitated, turning to the harbour, she was recognised as the old
fore-and-aft schooner "Venus"; though if Venus ever smelled like that,
we pity her lovers. Smell or not, she balanced nicely, and with a bit of
manœuvring ebbed her delicate way up the wharf.

There they are! There they are, Tom and Jack, though their own mothers
wouldn't know them! Looking terribly like their fellow-passengers:
stubby beards, long hair, greasy dirty dungarees, and a general air of
disreputable outcasts. But, no doubt, with cheques of some sort in their
pockets.

Two years, nearer three years have gone by, since they set out from
Wandoo. It is more than three years since Jack landed fresh from
England, in this very Fremantle. And he is so changed, he doesn't even
trouble to remember.

They don't trouble to remember anything: not yet. Back in the
Never-Never, one by one the ties break, the emotional connections snap,
memory gives out, and you come undone. Then, when you have come undone
from the great past, you drift in an unkempt nonchalance here and there,
great distances across the great hinterland country, and there is
nothing but the moment, the instantaneous moment. If you are working
your guts out, you are working your guts out. If you are rolling across
for a drink, you are rolling across for a drink. If you are just getting
into a fight with some lump of a brute, you are just getting into a
fight with some lump of a brute. If you are going to sleep in some low
hole, you are going to sleep in some low hole. And if you wake feeling
dry and hot and hellish, why, you feel dry and hot and hellish till you
leave off feeling dry and hot and hellish. There's no more to it. The
same if you're sick. You're just sick, and stubborn as hell, till your
stubbornness gets the better of your sickness.

There are words like home, Wandoo, England, mother, father, sister, but
they don't carry very well. It's like a radio message that's so faint,
so far off, it makes no impression on you; even if you can hear it in a
shadowy way. Such a faint, unreal thing in the broadcast air.

You have moved outside the pale, the pale of civilisation, the pale of
the general human consciousness. The human consciousness is a definitely
limited thing, even on the face of the earth. You can move into regions
outside of it. As in Australia. The broadcasting of the vast human
consciousness can't get you. You are beyond. And since the call can't
get you, the answer begins to die down inside yourself, you don't
respond any more. You don't respond, and you don't correspond.

There is no past: or if there is, it is so remote and ineffectual it
can't work on you at all. And there is no future. Why saddle yourself
with such a spectre as the future? There is the moment. You sweat, you
rest, the bugs bite you, you thirst, you drink, you think you're going
to die, you don't care, and you know you won't die, because a certain
stubbornness inside you keeps the upper hand.

So you go on. If you've got no work, you either get a horse or you tramp
it off somewhere else. You keep your eyes open that you don't get lost,
or stranded for water. When you're damned, infernally and absolutely
sick of everything, you go to sleep. And then if the bugs bite you, you
are beyond that too.

But at the bottom of yourself, somewhere, like a tiny seed, lies the
knowledge that you're going back in a while. That all the unreal will
become real again, and this real will become unreal. That all that
stuff, home, mother, responsibility, family, duty, etc., it all will
loom up again into actuality, and this, this heat, this parchedness,
this dirt, this mutton, these dying sheep, these roving cattle that take
the flies by the million, these burning tin gold-camps--all this will
recede into the unreal, it will cease to be actual.

Some men decide never to go back, and they are the derelicts, the
scarecrows and the warning. "Going back" was a problem in Jack's soul.
He didn't really want to go back. All that which lay behind, society,
homes, families, he felt a deep hostility towards. He didn't want to go
back. He was like an enemy, lurking outside the great camp of
civilisation. And he didn't want to go into camp again.

Yet neither did he want to be a derelict. A mere derelict he would never
be, though temporary derelicts both he and Tom were. But he saw enough
of the real waster, the real out-and-out derelict, to know that this he
would never be.

No, in the end he would go back to civilisation. But the thought of
becoming a part of the civilised outfit was deeply repugnant to him.
Some other queer hard resolve had formed in his soul. Something
gradually went hard in the centre of him. He couldn't yield himself any
more. The hard core remained impregnable.

They had dutifully spent their year on the sheep-run Mr. George had sent
them to. But after that, it was shift for yourself. They had stuck at
nothing. Only they had stuck together.

They had cashed their cheques in many a well-known wooden "hotel" of the
far-away coast. Oh, those wooden hotels with their uneasy verandahs,
flies, flies, flies, flies, flies, their rum or whiskey, their dirty
glasses, their flimsy partitions, their foul language, their bugs and
dirt and desolation. The brutal foul-mouthed desolation of them, with
the horses switching their tails at the hitching posts, the riders
slowly soaking, staring at the blue heat and the silent world of dust,
too far gone even to speak. Gone under the heat, the drought, the
Never-Neverness of it, the unspeakable hot desolation. And evening
coming, with men already drunk, already ripe for brawling, obscenity,
and swindling gambling.

They had gone away chequeless, mourning their chequelessness, back on
their horses to the cable station. Then following the droves miles and
miles through the tropical, or semi-tropical bush, and over the open
country, camping by water for a week at a time, and going on.

Then they had chucked cattle, wasted their cheques, footed it for weary,
weary miles, like the swaggies they had so despised. Clothes in rags,
boots in holes, another job; away in out-back camps with horsemen
prospectors, with well-contractors; shepherding again, with utter
wastrels of shepherds camping along with them, chucking the job,
chucking the blasted rich aristocratic squatters, with all their
millions of acres and sheep and fence and blasted outfit, all so dead
bent on making money as quick as possible, all the machinery of
civilisation, as far as possible, starting to grind and squeak there in
the beyond. They had gone off with well-sinkers, and laboured like
navvies. Chucked that, taken the road, spent the night at mission
stations, watched the blacks being saved, and got to the mining camps.

Poor old Tom had got into deep waters. Even now he more than thought
that he was legally married to a barmaid, far away back in the sublimest
town you can imagine, back there in the blasting heat which so often
burns a man's soul away even before it burns up his body. It had burned
a hole in Tom's soul, in that town away back in the blasting heat, a
town consisting of a score or so of ready-made tin houses got up from
the coast in pieces, and put together by anybody that liked to try.
There they stood or staggered, the tin ovens that men and women lived
in; houses leaning like drunken men against stark tree-trunks, others
looking strange and forlorn with some of their parts missing, said parts
being under the seas, or elsewhere mislaid. But the absence of one
section of a wall did not spoil the house for habitation. It merely gave
you a better view of the inside happenings. Many of the tin shacks were
windowless, and even shutterless: square holes in the raw corrugated
erection. One was entirely wall-less, and this was the pub. It was just
a tin roof reared on saplings against an old tree, with a sacking screen
round the bar, through which sacking screen you saw the ghost of the
landlady and her clients, if you approached from the back. The front
view was open.

Here sat the motionless landlady, in her cooking hot shade, dispensing
her indispensable grog, while her boss or husband rolled the barrels in.
He had a team with which he hauled up the indispensable from the coast.

The nice-mannered Miss Snook took turn with her mama in this palace of
Circe. She was extremely "nice" in her manners, for the "boss" owned the
team, the pub, and the boarding-house at which you stayed so long as you
could pay the outrageous prices. So Miss Snook, never familiarised into
Lucy, for she wouldn't allow it, oscillated between the closed oven of
the boarding-house and the open oven of the pub.

Father--or the "boss"--had been a barber in Sydney. Now he cooked in the
boarding-house, and drove the team. "Mother" had been the high-born
daughter of a chemist; she had ruined all her prospects of continuing in
the eastern "swim" by running away with the barber, now called "boss."
However, she took her decline in the social scale with dignity, and
allowed no familiarities. Her previous station helped her to keep up her
prices.

"We're not, y'understand, Mr. Grant, a Provident concern, as some
foot-sloggers seem to think us. We're doing our best to provide for
Lucy, against she wants to get married, or in case she doesn't."

She and Lucy did the washing and cleaning between them, but their
efforts were nominal. Boss' cooking left everything to be desired. The
place was a perfect Paradise.

"We know a gentleman when we see one, Mr. Grant, and we're not going to
throw our only child away on a penniless waster."

Jack wanted loudly to proclaim himself a penniless waster. But Tom and
he had a pact, not to say anything about themselves, or where they came
from. They were just "looking round."

And in that heat, the plump, perspiring, cotton-clad Lucy thought that
Tom seemed more amenable than Jack. Poor Tom seemed to fall for it, and
Jack had to look on in silent disgust.

There was even a ghastly, gruesome wedding. Neither of the boys could
bear to think of it. Even in the stupefaction of that heat, when the
brain seems to melt, and the will degenerates, and nothing but the most
rudimentary functions of the organism called man, continue to function,
even then a sense of shame overpowered them. But Tom was in a trance,
pig-headed as any of Circe's swine. He continued in the trance for about
a week after his so-called marriage. Then he woke up from the welter of
perspiration, rum, and Lucy in an amazed horror, and the boys escaped.

The nightmare of this town--it was called "Honeysuckle"--was able to
penetrate Tom's most nonchalant mood, even when he was hundreds of
trackless miles away. The young men covered their tracks carefully. The
Snooks knew nothing but their names. But a name, alas, is a potent
entity in the wilds.

They covered their tracks and disappeared again. But even so, an ancient
letter from Wandoo followed them to a well-digging camp. It was from
Monica to Tom, but it didn't seem to mean much to either boy.

For almost a year Tom and Jack had never written home. There didn't seem
any reason. In his last letter Tom, suddenly having some sort of qualms,
had sent his cheque to his maiden Aunts in York, because he knew, now
Gran and Dad were gone, they'd be in shallow water. This off his
conscience, he let Wandoo go out of his mind and spirit.

But now wandered in a letter from Aunt Lucy--dreaded name! It was a
"thank you, my dear nephew," and went on to say that though she would be
the last to repeat things she hoped trouble was not hanging over Mrs.
Ellis' head.

Tom looked at Jack----

"We'd best go back," said Jack, reading his eyes.

"Seems like it."

So--the time had come. The "freedom" was over. They were going
back.--They caught the old ship "Venus," going south with cattle.

To come back in body is not always to come back in mind and spirit. When
Jack saw the white buildings of Fremantle he knew his soul was far from
Fremantle. But nothing to be done. The old ship bumped against the
wharf, and was tied up. Nothing to do but to step ashore.

They loafed off that ship with a gang of similar unkempt, unshaved,
greasy, scoundrelly returners.

"Come an' 'ave a spot!"

"What about it, Tom?"

"Y'know I haven't a bean above the couple o' dollars to take me to
Perth."

"Oh, dry it up," cried the mate. "What y'come ashore for? You're not
goin' without a spot. It's on me. My shout."

"Shout it back in Perth, then."

"Wot'll y'ave?"

And through the swing doors they went.

"Best an' bitter's mine."



II


Jack had not let himself be cleaned out entirely, as Tom had. Tom seemed
to want to be absolutely stumped. But Jack with deeper sense of the
world's enmity, and his own need to hold his own against it, had posted
a couple of cheques to Lennie to hold for him. Save for this he too was
cleaned out.

The same little engine of the same little train of four years ago
shrieked her whistle. The North-West crowd drifted noisily out of the
Hotel and down the platform, packing into the third class compartment,
in such positions as happily to negotiate the spittoons.

"Let's go forward," said Jack. "We might as well have cushions, if we're
not smoking."

And he drew Tom forward along the train. They were going to get into
another compartment, but seeing the looks of terror on the face of the
woman and little girl already there, they refrained and went further.

Aggressively they entered another smoking compartment. A couple of fat
tradesmen and a clergyman glowered at them. One of the tradesmen pulled
out a handkerchief, shook it, and pretended to wipe his nose. There was
perfume in the air.

"Oh my aunt!" said Tom, putting his hand on his stomach. "Turns me right
over."

"What?" asked Jack.

"All this smell o' scent."

Jack grinned to himself. But he was back in civilisation, and he
involuntarily stiffened.

"Hello! There's Sam Ellis!" Tom leaned out of the door. "Hello, Sam!
How's things, eh?"

The young fellow addressed looked at Tom, grinned sicklily, and turned
away. He didn't know Tom from Adam.

"Let's have another drink!" said Tom, flabbergasted, getting out of the
train.

Jack followed, and they started down the platform, when the train
jogged, jerked, and began to pull away. Instantly they ran for it,
caught the rail of the guard's van, and swung themselves in. The
interior was empty, so they sat down on the little boxes let in at the
side. Then the two eyed each other self-consciously, uncomfortably. They
felt uncomfortable and aware of themselves all at once.

"Of all the ol' sweeps!" said Tom. "Tell you what, you look like a
lumper, absolutely nothing but a lumper."

"And what do you think you look like, you distorted scavenger!"

Tom grinned uncomfortably.

They got out of the station at Perth without having paid any railway
fare.

The first place they went to was Mr. George's office. Jack pushed Tom
through the door, and stood himself in the doorway fingering his greasy
felt hat. Tom dropped his, picked it up, hit it against his knee.

Mr. George, neat in pale-grey suit and white waistcoat, glared at them
briefly.

"Now then, my men, what can I do f' ye?"

"Why----" began Tom, grinning sheepishly.

"Trouble about a mining right?--mate stolen half y' gold dust?--want
stake a claim on somebody else's reserve?--Come, out with it. What d'
you want me to do for ye, man?"

"Why----" Tom began, more foolishly grinning than ever. Mr. George
looked shrewdly at him, then at Jack. Then he sat back smiling.

"Well, if you're not a pair!" he said. "So it was mines for the last
outfit? How'd it go?"

"About as slow as it could," said Tom.

"So you've not come back millionaires?" said Mr. George, a little bit
disappointed.

"Come to ask for a fiver," said Tom.

"You outcast!" said Mr. George. "You had me, completely. But look here,
lads, I'll stand y' a fiver apiece if y'll stop around Perth like that
all morning, an' nobody spots ye."

"Easy!" said Tom.

"A bigger pair o' blackguards I've seldom set eyes on.--But you have
dinner with me at the club tonight, I'll hear all about y' then.
Six-thirty sharp. An' then I'll take ye to the Government House. Y' can
wear that evening suit in the closet at my house, Jack, that you've left
there all this time. See you six-thirty then."



III


Dismissed, they bundled into the street.

"Outcasts on the face value of us!" said Jack.

Tom stopped to roar with laughter, and bumped into a pedestrian.

"Hold hard! Keep a hand on the reins, can't yon?" exclaimed the
individual, pushing Tom off.

Tom looked at him. It was Jimmie Short, another sort of cousin.

"Stow it, Jimmie. Don't y' know me?"

Jimmie took him firmly by the coat lapels and pulled him into the
gutter.

"'f course I know ye," said Jimmie in a conciliatory tone, as to a
drunk. "Meet me in half an hour at the Miners' Refuge, eh? Three steps
and a lurch and there y' are!--Come, matey"--this to Jack--"take hold of
y' pal's arm. See ye later."

Tom was weak with laughter at Jimmie's benevolent attitude. They were
not recognised at all, as they lurched across the road.

They had a drink, and strolled down the long principal street of Perth,
looking in at the windows of all the shops, and in spite of the fact
that they had no money, buying each a silk handkerchief and a cake of
scented soap. The excitement of this over, they rolled away to the
riverside, to the ferry. Then again back into the town.

At the corner of the Freemason's Hotel they saw Aunt Matilda and Mary;
Aunt Matilda huge in a tight-fitting, ruched dress of dark purple stuff,
and Mary in a black-and-white striped dress with a tight bodice and
tight sleeves with a little puff at the top, and a long skirt very full
behind. She wore also a little black hat with a wing. And Jack, with a
wickedness brought with him out of the North-West, would have liked to
rip these stereotyped clothes and corsets off her, and make her walk
down Hay Street _in puris naturalibus._ She wait so trim and exact
behind the huge Mrs. Watson. It would have been good to unsheathe her.

"Hello!" cried Tom. "There's Aunt Matilda. We've struck it rich."

The two young blackguards followed slowly after the two women, close
behind them. Mary carried a book, and was evidently making for the
little bookshop that had a lending library of newish books.

"Well, Mary, while you go in there I'll go and see if the chemist can't
give me something for my breathing, for its awful!" said Mrs. Watson,
standing and puffing before the bookshop.

"Shall I come for you or you for me?" asked Mary.

"I'll sit and wait for you in Mr. Pusey's," panted Aunt Matilda, and she
sailed forward again, after having glanced suspiciously backward at the
two ne'er-do-wells who were hesitating a few yards away.

Mary, with her black hair in a huge bun, her hat with a wing held on by
steel pins, was gazing contemplatively into the window of the bookshop,
at the newest book. _The Book-lovers Latest!_ said a cardboard
announcement.

"Can you help a poor chap, Miss?" said Tom, dropping his head and edging
near.

Mary started, looked frightened, glanced at the first tramp and then at
the second, in agitation, began to fumble for her purse, and dropped her
book, spilling the loose leaves.

Jack at once began to gather up the scattered pages of the book: an
Anthony Trollope novel. Mary, with black kid-gloved fingers, was
fumbling in her purse for a penny. Tom peeped into the purse.

"Lend us the half-a-quid, Mary," he said.

She looked at his face, and a slow smile of amusement dawned in her
eyes.

"I should never have known you!" she said.

Then as Jack rose, shoving the leaves together in the book, she looked
into his blue eyes with her brown, queer shining eyes.

She held out her hand to him without saying a word, only looked into his
eyes with a look of shining meaning. Which made him grin sardonically
inside himself. He shook hands with her silently.

"You look something like you did after you'd been fighting with Easu
Ellis," she said. "When are you going to Wandoo?

"Tomorrow, I should think," said Tom. "Everybody O.K. down there?"

"Oh I think so!" said Mary nervously.

"What do you men want?" came a loud, panting voice. Aunt Matilda sailing
up, purple in the face.

"Lend us half-a-quid, Mary," murmured Tom, and hastily she handed it
over. Jack had already commenced to beat a retreat. Tom sloped away as
the large lady loomed near.

"Beggars!" she panted. "Are they begging?--How much--how much did you
give him? The disgraceful----!"

"He made me give him half-a-sovereign, Aunt."

Mrs. Watson had to stagger into the shop for a chair.

The boys had a drink, and set off to the warehouse to look up Jack's
box, in which were his white shirts and other forgotten garments.

Back in town, Jack felt a slow, sinister sense of oppression coming over
him, a sort of fear, as if he were not really free, as if something bad
were going to happen to him.

"How am I going to get dressed to dine with Old George tonight?"
grumbled the still-careless Tom, who was again becoming tipsy. "Wherever
am I goin' to get a suit to sport?"

"Oh, some of yer relations 'll fix you up."

Jack had an undefinable, uncomfortable feeling that he might suddenly
come upon Monica, and she might see him in this state. He wouldn't like
the way she'd look at him. No, he wouldn't be looked at like that, not
for a hundred ponies.

They turned their backs on the beautiful River, with its Mount Eliza
headland and wide sweeps and curves twinkling in the sun, and they
walked up William Street looking for an adventure.

A man whom they knew from the north, in filthy denims, came out of a
boot-shop and hailed them.

"Come an' stop one on me, maties."

"Righto! But where's Lukey? He stood us one this morning. Seen him?"

"Yes, I seen him.--But 'arf a mo'!"

Scottie turned into the pawnbroker's, under the three balls, and the
boys followed.

"If y' sees what y' didn't oughta see, keep y' mouth shut."

"As a dead crab," assented Jack.

"Now then, Unde! What'll y' advance on that pair o' bran new boots I've
just bought?"

"Two bob."

"Glory be. An' I just give twenty for 'em. Ne' mind, gimme th' ticket."

This transaction concluded, Jack wondered what he could pawn. He pulled
out a front tooth, beautifully set in a gold plate. It had been a
parting finish to his colonial outfit, the original tooth having been
lost in a football scrum.

"Father Abraham," he said, holding up the tooth, "I'm a gentleman
whether I look it or not. So is my friend this gentleman. He needs a
dress suit for tonight, though you wouldn't believe it. He needs a
first-class well-fitting dress suit for this evening."

"I have first-class latest fashion gents' clothes upstairs. But a suit
like that is worth five pound to me."

"Let me try the jacket on."

Abraham was doubtful. But at length Tom was hustled shamefacedly into a
rather large tail-coat. It looked awful, but Jack said it would do. The
man wouldn't take a cent less than two quid deposit: and ten bob for the
loan of the suit. The boys said they would call later.

"What'll you give me on this tooth?" asked Jack. "There's not a more
expensive tooth in Western Australia."

"I'll lend y' five bob on that, pecos y' amuth me."

"And well come in later for the dress suit. All right, Aaron. Hang on to
that tooth, it's irreplaceable. Treat it like a jewel. Give me the five
bob and the ticket."

In the Miners' Refuge Jack flung himself down on a bench beside an
individual who looked tidy but smelt strongly of rum, and asked:

"Say, mate, where can y' get a wash an' a brush-up for two?--local?"

The fellow got up and lurched surlily to the counter, refusing to
answer.

Jack sat on, while Tom drank beer, and a heavy depression crept over his
spirit. He had been hobnobbing with riff-raff so long, it had almost
become second nature. But now a sense of disgust and impending disaster
came over him. He would soon have to make an angry effort, and get out.
He was becoming angry with Tom, for sitting there so sloppily soaking
beer, when he knew his head was weak.

They began to eat sandwiches, hungrily standing at the bar. Another
slipshod waster, eyeing the denim man as if he were a fish, sidled over
to him and muttered.

"Sorry," said Scottie with a mournful expression, pulling out the
pawn-ticket, "I've just had to pawn me boots. Can't be done."

Jack grinned. The waster then came sloping over to him.

"Y' axed me mate a civil question just now, lad, an' I'd 'ave answered
it for 'im, but I just spotted a racin' pal o' mine an' was onter him
ter get a tip he'd promised--a dead cert f' Belmont tomorrer. Y' might
ha' seen him lettin' me inter th' know," he breathed. "Hev' a drink,
lad!"

"Thanks!" said Jack. "This is my mate.--I'll take the shout, an' one
back, an' then we must be off. Going up country tomorrer morning."

This seemed to push the man's mind on quicker.

"Just from up North, aren't ye? Easy place to knock up a cheque. How'd
y' like to double a fiver?"

"O.K.," said Tom.

"Well here's a dead cert. Take it from me, and don't let it past yer. I
got it from a racin' pal wot's in the know. Not straight for the
punters, maybe--but straight as a die f'r me 'n my pals. Double y'
money? Not 'arf! Multiply it by ten. 'S a dead cert."

"Name?"

"Not so quick. Not in 'ere. Come outside, 'n I'll whisper it to y'."

Jack paid for the drinks, and winking warningly to Tom, followed the man
outside.

"The name o' the 'oss," the fellow said--"But tell yer wot, I'll put ye
on the divvy with a book I know--or y' c'n come wi' me. He keeps a
paper-shop in Hay Street."

"We don't know the name of the horse yet."

"Comin' from up North you don't know the name o' none of 'em, do yer?
He's a rank outsider. Y' oughter get twenties on 'im."

"We've only got a quid atween us," said Tom.

"Well, that means a safe forty--after th' race."

"Bob on!" said Tom. "Where's the bookshop?"

"How can we go in an' back a boss without knowin' his name?" said Jack.

"Oh I'll tip it y' in 'ere."

They entered a small paper-shop, and the man said to the fellow behind
the counter:

"These two gents's pals o' mine.--How much did y' say y'd lay, mates?"

"Out with the name o' th' boss first," said Tom confidentially.

"This shop's changed hands lately," said the fat fellow behind the
counter. "I don't make books. Got no licence."

Didn't that look straight? But the boys were no greenhorns. They walked
out of the shop again.

In the road the stranger said:

"The name o' th' 'oss is Double Bee. If y'll give me th' money I'll run
upstairs 'ere t' old Josh--everyone knows him for a sound book."

"The name o' th' boss," said Jack, "is Boots-two-Bob. An' a more
cramblin' set o' lies I never heard. Get outter this, or I'll knock y'
head off."

The fellow went off with a yellow look.

"Gosh!" said Tom. "We're back home right enough, what?"

"Bon soir, as Frenchy used to say?"

Rolling a little drearily along, they saw Jimmie Short standing on the
pavement watching them.

"Hello, mates!" he said. "Still going strong?"

"Fireproof!" said Tom.

"Remember barging into me this morning? And my best girl was just coming
round the corner with her Ma! Had to mind my company, eh, boys. But come
an' have a drink now.--I seem to have seen you before to-day, haven't I?
Where was it?"

"Don't try and think," said Tom. "Y' might do us out of a pony."

"Righto! old golddust! Step over on to the Bar-parlour mat."

"I'm stepping," said Tom. "'N I'm not drunk."

"No, he's not," said Jack.

"You bet he's not," said Jimmie. He was eyeing them curiously as if his
memory pricked him.

"My name," said Tom, "is Ned Kelly. And if yours isn't Jimmie Miller,
what is it?"

"Why, it's Short.--Well, I give it up. I can't seem to lay my finger on
you, Kelly."

Tom roared with laughter.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Ten past twelve."

"We've won a pony off Old George!" said the delighted Tom. "I'm Tom
Ellis and he's Jack Grant. Now do you know us, Jimmie?"

Jack was glad to get washed and barbered and dressed. After all, he was
sick of wasters and roughs. They were stupider than respectable people,
and much more offensive physically and morally. To hell with them all.
He wouldn't care if some tyrant would up and extirpate the breed.

Anyhow he stepped clean out of their company.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE GOVERNOR'S DANCE


Three gentlemen in evening dress passing along by the low brick wall
skirting the Government House. One of the gentlemen portly and correct,
two of the gentlemen young, with burnt brown faces that showed a little
less tan below the shaving line, and limbs too strong and too rough to
fit the evening clothes. Jack's suit was on the small side, though he'd
scarcely grown in height. But it showed a big piece of white shirt-cuff
at the wrists, and seemed to reveal the muscles of his shoulders unduly.
As for Tom's quite good and quite expensive suit from the pawn-shop, it
was a little large for him. If he hadn't been so bursting with life it
would have been sloppy. But the crude animal life came so forcibly
through the black cloth, that you had to overlook the anomaly of the
clothes. Both boys wore socks of fine scarlet wool, and the new
handkerchiefs of magenta silk inside their waistcoats. The scarlet,
magenta, and red-brown of their faces made a gallant pizzicato of colour
against the black and white. Anyhow they fancied themselves, and walked
conceitedly.

Jack's face was a little amusing. It had the kind of innocence and
half-smile you can see on the face of a young fox, which will snap holes
in your hand if you touch it. He was annoyed by his father's letter to
him for his twenty-first birthday. The general had retired, and hadn't
saved a sou. How could he, given his happy, thriftless lady. So it was a
case of "My dear boy, I'm thankful you are at last twenty-one, because
now you must look out for yourself. I have bled myself to send you this
cheque for a hundred pounds, but I know you think I ought to send you
something, so take it, but don't expect any more, for you won't get it
if you do."

This was not really the text of the General's letter, but this was how
Jack read it. As for his mother, she sent him six terrible neckties and
awful silver-backed brushes which he hated the sight of, much love, a
few tears, a bit of absurd fond counsel, and a general wind-up of tender
doting.

He was annoyed, because he had expected some sort of real assistance in
setting out like a gentleman on his life's career, now he had attained
his majority. But the hundred quid was a substantial sop.

Mr. George had done them proud at the Weld Club, and got them
invitations to the ball from the Private Secretary. Oh yes, he was proud
of them, handsome upstanding young fellows. So they were proud of
themselves. It was a fine, hot evening, and nearly everybody was walking
to the function, showing off their splendour. For few people' possessed
private carriages, and the town boasted very few cabs indeed.

Mr. George waited in the porch of the Government House for Aunt Matilda
and Mary. They had not long to wait before they saw the ladies in their
shawls, carrying each a little holland bag with scarlet initials,
containing their dancing slippers, slowly and self-consciously mounting
the steps.

The boys braced themselves to face the introduction to the
Representation. They were uneasy. Also they wanted to grin. In Jack's
mind a picture of Honeysuckle, that tin town in the heat, danced as on
heat-waves, as he made his bows and his murmurs. He wanted to whisper to
Tom: "Ain't we in Honeysuckle?" But it would have been too cruel.

Clutching their programmes as drowning men clutch straw, they passed on.
The primary ordeal was over.

"Oh Lord, I'm sweating already," said Tom with a red-faced grin. "I'm
off to get me bill-head crammed."

"Take me with you, for the Lord's sake," said Jack.

"Y're such an owl of a dancer. An' y' have to do it proper here. You go
to Mr. George."

"Don't desert me, you swine."

"Go-on! Want me to take you back to Auntie?--Go-on! I'm goin' to dance
an' sit out an' hold their little white hands."

Tom pulled a droll face, as he took his place in the line of
glove-buttoning youths who made a queue on the Governor's left hand,
where his daughter stood booking up duty dances. Jack, galvanised by the
advent of the A.D.C., ducked through the crowd to Aunt Matilda's side.

He was always angry that he couldn't dance. The fact was, he would never
learn. He could never bring himself to go hugging promiscuous girls
round the waist and twiddling through dances with them. Underneath all
his carelessness and his appearance of "mixing," there was a savage
physical reserve which prevented his mixing at all. He could not bear
the least physical intimacy. Something inside him recoiled and stood
savagely at a distance, even from the prettiest girl, the moment she
seemed to be "coming on." To take the dear young things in his arms was
repugnant to him, it offended a certain aloof pride and a subtle
arrogance in him. Even with Tom, intimate though they were, he always
kept a certain unpassable space around him, a definite _noli me tangere_
distance which gave the limit to all approach. It would have been
difficult to define this reserve. Jack seemed absolutely the most open
and accessible individual in the world, a perfect child. He seemed to
lay himself far too open to anybody's approach. But those who knew him
better, like Mrs. Ellis or his mother, knew the cold inward reserve, the
savage unwillingness to be touched, which was central in him, as in a
wolf-cub. There was something reserved, fierce and untouched at the very
centre of him. Something, at the centre of all his openness and his
seeming softness, that was cold, overbearing, and a little angry. This
was the old overweening English blood in him, which would never really
yield to promiscuity, or to vulgar intimacy. He seemed to mix in with
everybody at random. But as a matter of fact he had never finally mixed
in with anybody, not even with his own father and mother, not even with
Tom. And certainly not with any casual girl. Essentially, he kept
himself a stranger to everybody.

Aunt Matilda was in green satin with a tiara of diamonds. "The devil you
know is better than the devil you don't know," was Jack's inward comment
as he approached her.

Aloud he said:

"Would it be right if I asked you to let me have the pleasure of taking
you in to supper later, Marm?"

"Oh, you dear boy!" simpered Aunt Matilda. "So like y' dear father. But
you see I'm engaged on these occasions. We have to go in in order of
rank and precedence. But you can take Mary. She says she has hint her
foot and can't dance much."

Mary took his arm, and they went out on to the terrace. There was clear
moonlight, and trees against a shadowy, grey-blue sky, and a dark
perfume of tropical flowers. Jack felt the beauty of it and it moved
him. He waited for his soul to melt. But his soul would never melt. It
was hard and clear as the moon itself.

"It is much better here," he said, looking at the sky.

"Oh, it's beautiful!" said Mary. "I wanted so much to sit quietly and
talk to you. It seems so long, and you looked so wild and different this
morning. I've been so frightened, reading so much about the natives
murdering people."

Mary was different too, but Jack didn't know wherein.

"I don't believe there's much more danger in one place than in another,"
he said, "so long as you keep yourself in hand. Shall we sit down and
have a real wongie?"

They found a seat under the overspreading tree, and sat listening to the
night-insects.

"You're not very glad to be back, are you?" asked Mary.

"Yes I am," he assented, without a great deal of vigour. "What has been
happening to you all this time, Mary?"

"The little things that are nothing," she said. "The only thing"--she
hesitated--"is that they want me to marry. And I lie awake at night
wondering about it."

"Marry who?" asked Jack, his mind running at once to Rackett.

They were sitting under a magnolia tree. Jack could make out the dark
shape of a great flower against the moon, among black leaves. And the
perfume was magnolia flowers.

"Do you want me to talk about it?" she said.

"I do."

Jack was glancing rather fiercely down the slope of the black-and-white
garden, that sloped its lawns to the river. Mary sat very still beside
him, in a cream lace dress.

"It's a Mr. Boyd Blessington. He is a widower with five children, but he
is an interesting man. He's got a black beard."

"Goodness!" said Jack. "Have you accepted him?"

"No. Not yet."

"Why do you think of marrying him? Do you like him?"

"For some things. He is a good man, and he wants me in a good way. He
has a beautiful library. And as he is a man of the world, there seems to
be a big world round him. Yes, he is quite somebody. And Aunt Matilda
says it is a wonderful opportunity for me. And I know it is."

Jack mused in silence.

"It may be," he said. "But I hardly fancy you kissing a widower of
fifty, with a black beard and five children. Lord!"

"He's only thirty-seven. And he's a man."

Jack thought about Monica. He wanted Monica. But he also couldn't bear
to let Mary go. This arrogance in him made him silent for some moments.
Then he turned to Mary, his head erect, and looked down sternly on her
small sinking figure in the pale lace dress.

"Do you want him?" he asked, in a subtle tone of authority and passion.

Mary was silent for some moments.

"No-o!" she faltered. "Not--not----"

Her hands lay inert in her lap. They were small, soft, dusky hands. The
flame went over him, over his will. By some curious destiny, she really
belonged to him. And Monica? He wanted Monica too. He wanted Monica
first. But Mary also was his. Hard and savage he accepted this fact.

He took her two hands and lifted them to his lips, and kissed them with
strange, blind passion. When the flame went over him, he was blind. Mary
gave a little cry, but did not withdraw her hands.

"I thought you cared for Rackett," he said suddenly, looking at her
closely. She shook her head, and he saw she was crying.

He put his arm round her and gathered her in her lace dress to his
breast. She was small, but strangely heavy. Not like that whip-wire of a
Monica. But he loved her heaviness too. The heaviness of a dark magnetic
stone. He wanted that too.

And in his mind he thought, "Why can't I have her too? She is naturally
mine."

His soul was hard and unbending. "She is naturally mine!" he said to
himself. And he kissed her softly, softly, kissed her face and her
tears. And all the while Mary knew about Monica. And he, his soul
fierce, would not yield in either direction. He wanted to marry her, and
he wanted to marry Monica. Something was in Mary that would never be
appeased unless he married her. And something in him would never be
appeased unless he married Monica. His young, clear instinct saw both
these facts. And the inward imperiousness of his nature rose to meet
it.--"Why can't I have both these women?" he asked himself. And his
soul, hard in its temper like a sword, answered him: "You can if you
will."

Yet he was wary enough to know he must go cautiously. Meanwhile,
determined that one day he would marry Monica and Mary both, he held the
girl soft and fast in his arms, kissing her, wanting her, but wanting
her with the slow knowledge that he must wait and travel a long way
before he could take her, yet take her he would. He wanted Monica first.
But he also wanted Mary. The soft, slow weight of her as she lay silent
and unmoving in his arms.

They could hear the music inside.

"I must go in for the next dance," she said in a muted tone. He kissed
her mouth and released her. Then he escorted her back to the ballroom.
She went across to Aunt Matilda, as the dance ended. And in her lace
dress, the small, heavy, dusky Mary was like a lode-stone passing among
flimsy people. She had a certain magnetic heaviness of her own, and a
certain stubborn, almost ugly kind of beauty which in its heavy
quietness, seemed like a darkish, perhaps bitter flower that rose from a
very deep root. You were sensible of a deep root going down into the
dark.

A tall, thin, rather hollow-chested man in a perfect evening suit and
with orders on his breast, was speaking to her. He too had a faint air
of proprietorship. He had a black beard and eyeglasses. But his face was
sensitive, and delicate in its desire. It was evident he loved her with
a real, though rather social, uneasy desirous love, as if he wanted all
her answer. He was really a nice man, a bit frail and sad. Jack could
see that. But he seemed to belong so entirely to the same world as the
General, Jack's father. He belonged to the social world, and saw nothing
really outside.

Mary too belonged almost entirely to the social world, her instinct was
strongly social. But there was a wild tang in her. And this Jack
depended on. Somewhere deep in himself he hated his father's social
world. He stood in die doorway and watched her dancing with Blessington.
And he knew that as Mrs. Blessington, with a thoughtful husband and a
good position in society, she would be well off. She would forfeit that
bit of a wild tang.

If Jack let her. And he wasn't going to let her. He was hard and cool
inside himself. He took his impetus from the wild sap that still flows
in most men's veins, though they mostly choose to act from the tame sap.
He hated his father's social sap. He wanted the wild nature in people,
the unfathomed nature, to break into leaf again. The real rebel, not the
mere reactionary.

He hated the element of convention and slight smugness which showed in
Mary's movements as she danced with the tall, thin reed of a man.
Anything can become a convention, even an unconventionality, even the
frenzied jazzing of the modern ballroom. And then the same element of
smugness, very repulsive, is evident, evident even in the most
scandalous jazzers. This is curious, that as soon as any movement
becomes accepted in the public consciousness, it becomes ugly and smug,
unless it be saved by a touch of the wild individuality.

And Mary dancing with Mr. Blessington was almost smug. Only the downcast
look on her face showed that she remembered Jack. Blessington himself
danced like a man neatly and efficiently performing his duty.

The dance ended. Aunt Matilda was fluttering her fan at him like a
ruffled cockatoo. There was a group: Mary, Blessington, Mr. George, Mr.
James Watson, Aunt Matilda's brother-in-law, and Aunt Matilda. Mr.
Blessington, with the quiet assurance of his class, managed to eclipse
Mr. George and Jim Watson entirely, though Jim Watson was a rich man.

Jack went over and was introduced. Blessington and he bowed at one
another. "Stay in your class, you monkey!" thought Jack with some of the
sensual arrogance he had brought with him from the North-West.

Mr. Blessington introduced him to a thin, nervous girl, his daughter.
She was evidently unhappy, and Jack was sorry for her. He took her out
for refreshments, and was kind to her. She made dark-grey startled round
eyes at him, and looked at him as if he were an incalculable animal that
might bite. And he, in manner, if not in actuality, laughed and caressed
the frail young thing to cajole some life into her.

Mary danced with Tom, and then with somebody else. Jack lounged about,
watching with a set face that still looked innocent and amiable, keeping
a corner of his eye on Mary, but chatting with various people. He
wouldn't make a fool of himself, trying to dance.

When Mary was free again--complaining of her foot--he said to her:

"Come outside a bit."

And obediently she came. They went and sat under the same magnolia tree.

"He's not a bad fellow, your Blessington," he said.

"He's not my Blessington," she replied, "Not yet anyhow. And he never
would be _really_ my Blessington."

"You never know. I suppose he's quite rich."

"Don't be horrid to me."

"Why not?--I wish I was rich. I'd do as I liked. But you'll never marry
him."

"Why shan't I?"

"You just won't."

"I shall if Aunt Matilda makes me. I'm absolutely dependent on her--and
do you think I don't feel it? I want to be free. I should be much freer
if I married Mr. Blessington. I'm tired of being as I am."

"What would you really like to do?"

She was silent for a time. Then she answered:

"I should like to live on a farm."

"Marry Tom," he said maliciously.

"Why are you so horrid?" she said, in hurt surprise.

He was silent for a time.

"Anyhow you won't marry Boyd Blessington."

"Why are you so sure? Aunt Matilda is going to England in April. And I
won't travel with her. Travel with her would be unspeakable. I want to
stay in Australia."

"Marry Tom," he said again, in malice.

"Why," she asked in amazement, "do you say that to me?" But he didn't
know himself.

"A farm--" he was beginning, when a figure sailed up in the moonlight.
It was Aunt Matilda. The two young people rose to their feet. Jack was
silent and rather angry. He wanted to curl his nose and say: "It isn't
done, Marm!" But he said nothing. Aunt Matilda did the talking.

"I thought it was your voices," she said coldly. "Why do you make
yourself conspicuous, Mary? Mr. Blessington is looking for you in all
the rooms."

Mary was led away. Jack followed. Aunt Matilda had no sooner seen Mary
led out by Mr. Blessington for the Lancers, than she came full sail upon
Jack, as he stood lounging in the doorway.

"Come for a little walk on the terrace, dear boy," she said.

"Can't I have the pleasure of piloting you through this set of lancers,
Marm?" he retorted.

She stood and smiled at him fixedly.

"I've heard of y'r dancing, dear boy," she said, "and your father was a
beautiful dancer. This Governor is very particular. He sent his A. D. C.
to stop Jimmie Short reversing, right at the beginning of the
evening."--She eyed him with a shrewd eye.

"Surely worse form to hurt a gentleman's feelings, than to reverse,
Marm!" retorted Jack.

"It wasn't bad form, it was bad temper. The Governor can't reverse
himself. Ha-ha-ha! Neither can I go through a set of Lancers with you.
So come and take me out a minute."

They went in silence down the terrace.

"Lovely evening! Not at all too hot," he said.

She burst into a sputter of laughter.

"Lor! m'dear. You are amusin'!" she said. "But you won't get out of it
like that, young man. What have y' t'say f' y'self, running off with
Mary like that _twice!_"

"You told me I could take her, Marm."

"I didn't ask you to keep her out and get her talked about, m'dear! I'm
not a fool, my dear boy, and I'm not going to let her lose the chance of
a life-time. You want her y'self for _one night!_" She slapped her fan
crossly. "_You_ leave well enough alone, we don't want another scandal
in the family. Mr. Blessington is a good man for Mary, a God-send. For
she's heavy, she's heavy, she's heavy for any man to take up with." Aunt
Matilda said this almost spitefully. "Mr. Blessington's the very man for
her, and a wonderful match. She's got her family. She's the
granddaughter of Lord Haworth. And he has position. Besides they're
suited for one another. It's the very finger of Heaven. Don't you dare
make another scandal in the family."

She stopped under a lamp, and was leaning forward peering at him. Her
large person exhaled a scent of artificial perfume. Jack hated perfume,
especially in the open air. And her face, with its powder and wrinkles,
in the mingled light of the lamp and the moon, made him think of a
lizard.

"D'you want Mary yourself," she snapped, like a great lizard. "It's out
of the question. You've got to make your way. She'd have to go on
waiting for years. And you'd compromise her."

"God forbid!" said Jack ironically.

"Then leave her alone," she said. "If you compromise her, _I'll_ do no
more for her, mind that."

"Just exactly what do you mean, compromise her?" he asked.

"Get her talked about--as you're trying to," she snapped.

He thought it over. He must anyhow appear to yield to circumstances.

"All right," he said. "I know what you mean."

"See you do," she retorted. "Now take me back to the ballroom."

They returned, in a silence that was safe, if not golden. He was
inwardly more set than ever. His appearance, however, was calm and
innocent. She was much more ruffled. She wondered if she had said too
much or too little, if he were merely stupid, or really dangerous.

He politely steered a way back to the reception room, placed her in a
chair and turned to disappear. One thing he could not stand, and that
was her proximity.

But as she sat down, she clutched his sleeve, cackling her unendurable
laugh.

"Sit down, then," she said. "We're friends now, aren't we?" And she
tapped his tanned cheek, that still had a bit of the peach-look, with
her feathery black fan.

"On the contrary, Marm," he said, bowing but not taking a seat.

"Lor', but you are an amusin' boy, m'dear!" she said, and she let go his
sleeve as she turned to survey the field.

In that instant he slipped away from her disagreeable presence.

He slipped behind a stout Judge from Melbourne, then past a plumed
woman, apparently of fashion, and was gone.

What he had to do was to reconnoitre his own position. He wanted Monica
first. That was his fixed determination. But he was not going to let go
of Mary either. Not in spite of battalions of Aunt Matildas, or correct
social individuals. It was a battle.

But he had to gauge Mary's disposition. He saw how much she was a social
thing: how much, even, she was Lord Haworth's granddaughter. And how
little she was that other thing.

But it was a battle, a long, slow subtle battle. And he loved a fight,
even a long, invisible one.

In the ballroom the A. D. C. pounced on him.

When he was free again, he looked round for Mary. It was the sixteenth
dance, and she was being well nursed. When the dance was over, he went
calmly and sat between her and Aunt Matilda on a red gilt sofa. Things
were a little stiff. Even Mary was stiff.

He looked at her programme. The next dance was a polka, and she was not
engaged.

"You are free for this dance?" he said.

"Yes, because of my foot," she said firmly. He could see she too was on
Aunt Matilda's side, for the moment.

"I can dance a polka. Come and dance it with me," he said.

"And my foot?"

He didn't answer, merely looked her in the face. And she rose.

They neither of them ever forgot that absurd, jogging little dance.

"I must speak to you, Mary," he said.

"What about?"

"Would you really like to live on a farm?"

"I think I should."

The conversation was rather jerky and breathless.

"In two years I can have a farm," he said.

She was silent for some time. Then she looked into his eyes, with her
queer, black, humble-seeming eyes. She was thinking of all the grandeur
of being Mrs. Boyd Blessington. It attracted her a great deal. At the
same time, something in her soul fell prostrate, when Jack looked
straight into her. Something fell prostrate, and she couldn't help it.
His eyes had a queer power in them.

"In two years I can have a farm--a good one," he said.

She only gazed into his eyes with her queer, black, fascinated gaze.

The dance was over. Aunt Matilda was tapping Jack's wrist with her fan
and saying:

"Yes, Mr. Blessington, do be so good as to take Mary down to supper."

Supper was over. It was the twentieth dance. Jack had been introduced to
a sporting girl in her late twenties. She treated him like a child, and
talked quite amusingly. Tom called her a "barrack hack."

Mr. Blessington went by with Mary on his arm.

"Mary," said Jack, "do you know Miss Brackley?"

Mary stopped and was smilingly introduced. Miss Brackley at once pounced
amusingly upon Mr. Blessington.

"I want to speak to you," Jack said once more to Mary. "Behind the
curtain of the third window."

He glanced at the red, ponderous plush curtain he meant. Mary looked
frightened into his eyes, then glanced too. Mr. Blessington, extricating
himself, walked on with Mary.

Jack looked round for Tom. That young man was having a drink, at the
supper extra. Jack left the Barrack Hack for a moment.

"Tom," he said. "Will you stand by me in anything I say or do?"

"I will," said the glistening, scarlet-faced Tom, who was away on the
gay high seas of exaltation.

"Get up a rubber of whist for Aunt Matilda. I know she'd like one. Will
you?"

"Before you c'n say Wiggins," replied Tom, laughing as he always did
when he was tipsy.

"And I say, Tom, you care for Mary, don't you? Would you provide a home
for her if she was wanting one?"

"I'd marry Mary if she'd 'ave me 'n I hadn't got a wife."

"Shut up!"

Tom broke into a laugh.

"Don't go back on me, Tom."

"Never, s'elp me bob."

"Get a move on then, and arrange that whist."

He sent him off with the Barrack Hack. And then he watched Mary. She
still was walking with Mr. Blessington. They were not dancing. She knew
Jack was watching her, and she was nervous. He watched her more closely.

And at the third window she fluttered, staggered a little, let go Mr.
Blessington's arm, and turned round to gather up her skirt behind. She
pretended she had torn a hem. She pretended she couldn't move without a
pin. She asked to be steered into the alcove. She sent Mr. Blessington
away into the ladies' dressing-room, for a pin.

And when he came back with it, she was gone.

Jack, outside in the night, was questioning her.

"Has Mr. Blessington proposed to you yet?"

"No."

"Don't let him. Would you really be happy on a farm,--even if it was
rather hard work?"

He had to look down on her very steadfastly as he asked this. And she
was slow in answering, and the tears came into her eyes before she
murmured:

"Yes."

He was touched, and the same dominating dark desire came over him again.
He held her fast in his arms, fast and silent. The desire was dark and
powerful and permanent in him.

"Can you wait for me, even two years?" he asked.

"Yes," she murmured faintly.

His will was steady and black. He knew he could wait.

"In two years I shall have a farm for you to live on," he said. And he
kissed her again, with the same dark, permanent passion.

Then he sent her off again.

He went and found Mr. George, in the card room. There was old Aunt
Matilda, playing for her life, her diamonds twinkling but her fan laid
aside.

"We're going to Wandoo to-morrow morning, Sir," said Jack.

"That's right, lad," said Mr. George.

"I say, Sir, won't you do Tom a kindness?" said Jack. "You're coming
down yourself one day this week, aren't you?"

"Yes, I shall be down on Wednesday or Thursday."

"Bring Mary down with you. Make her Aunt Matilda let her come. Tom's
awfully gone on her, and when he sees her with Boyd Blessington he
straightway goes for a drink. I don't think she's suited for Mr.
Blessington, do you, Sir? He's nearly old enough to be her father. And
Tom's the best fellow in the world, and Mary's the one he cares for. If
nothing puts him out and sends him wrong, there's not a better fellow in
the world."

Mr. George blew nose, prrhed! and bahed! and was in a funk. He feared
Aunt Matilda. He was very fond of Mary, might even have married her
himself, but for the ridicule. He liked Tom Ellis. He didn't care for
men like Blessington. And he was an emotional old Australian.

"That needs thinking about! That needs thought!" he said.

Not the next day, but the day following that, the boys drove away from
Perth in a new sulky, with a horse bought from Jimmie Short. And Mr.
George had promised to come on the coach the day after, with Mary.



CHAPTER XIX

THE WELCOME AT WANDOO


"Things change," said Jack, as he and Tom drove along in the sulky, "and
they never go back to what they were before."

"Seems like they don't," said Tom uneasily.

"And men change," continued Jack. "I have changed, and I shall never go
back to what I was before."

"Oh dry up," said the nervous Tom. "You're just the blanky same."

Both boys felt a load on their spirits, now they were actually on the
road home. They hated the load too.

"We're going to make some change at Wandoo," said Tom. "I wish I could
leave Ma on the place. But Mr. George says she absolutely refuses to
stay, and he says I've not got to try an' force her. He sortta winked at
me, and told me I should want to be settlin' down myself. I wondered
what 'n hell he meant. Y'aven't let on nothing about that Honeysuckle
trip, have y'? I don't mean to insult you by askin', but it seemed
kinder funny like."

"No," said Jack. "I've not breathed Honeysuckle to a soul, and never
will. You get it off your mind--it's nothing."

"Well, then, I dunno what he meant. I told him I hadn't made a bean
anyhow. An' I asked him what 'n hell Ma was goin' ter live on. He seemed
a bit down in the mouth about 'er himself, old George did. Fair gave me
the bally hump. Wisht I was still up north, strike me lucky I do.

"We've been gone over two years, yet I feel I've never been away, an'
yet I feel the biggest stranger in the world, comin' back to what's
supposed to be me own house. I hate havin' ter come, because o' the
bloomin' circumstances. Why 'n hell couldn't Ma have had the place for
while she lived, an' me be comin' back to her and the kids? Then I
shouldn't feel sortta sick about it. But as it is--it fair gets me beat.
Lennie'll resent me, an' Katie an' Monica'll hate havin' ter get inter a
smaller house, an' the twins an' Harry an' the little ones don' matter
so much, but I do worry over pore ol' Ma."

There he was with a blank face, driving the pony homewards. He hadn't
worried over pore ol' Ma till this very minute, on the principle "out of
sight, out of mind." Now he was all strung up.

"Y' know, Jack," he said, "I kinder don' want Wandoo. I kinder don' want
to be like Dad, settlin' down with a heap o' responsibilities an' kids
an' all that. I kinder don' want it."

"What do you want?" said Jack.

"I'd rather knock about with you for me mate, Jack, I'd a sight rather
do that."

"You can't knock about forever," said Jack.

"I don' know whether you can or you can't. I only know I never knew my
own mother. I only know she never lived at Wandoo. _She_ never raised me
there. I bet she lugged me through the bush. An' when all comes to all,
I'd rather do the same. I don' want Dad's property. I don' want that
Ellis property. Seems ter me bad luck. What d' yer think?"

"I should think it depends on you," said Jack.

"I should think it does. Anyhow shall you stop with me, an' go shares in
the blinkin' thing?"

"I don't know," said Jack.

He was thinking that soon he would see Monica. He was wondering how she
would be. He was wondering if she was ready for him, or if she would
have a thousand obstacles around her. He was wondering if she would want
him to plead and play the humble and say he wasn't good enough for her.
Because he wouldn't do it. Not if he never saw her again. All that
flummery of love he would not subscribe to. He would not say he adored
her, because he didn't adore her. He was not the adoring sort. He would
not make up to her, and play the humble to her, because it insulted his
pride. He didn't feel like that, and he never would feel like that, not
towards any woman on earth. Even Mary, once he had declared himself,
would fetch up her social tricks and try to bring him to his knees. And
he was not going down on his knees, not for half a second, not to any
woman on earth, nor to any man either. Enough of this kneeling flummery.

He stood fast and erect on his two feet, that had travelled many wild
miles. And fast and erect he would continue to stand. Almost he wished
he could be clad in iron armour, inaccessible. Because the thought of
women bringing him down and making him humble himself, before they would
give themselves to him, this turned his soul black.

Monica! He didn't love her. He didn't feel the slightest bit of
sentimental weakening towards her. Rather when he thought of her his
muscles went stiffer and his soul haughtier. It was not he who must bow
the head. It was she.

Because he wanted her. With a deep, arrowy desire, and a long, lasting
dark desire, he wanted her. He wanted to take her apart from all the
world, and put her under his own roof.

But he didn't want to plead with her, or weep before her, or adore her,
or humbly kiss her feet. The very thought of it made his blood curdle
and go black. Something had happened to him in the Never-Never. Before
he went over the border he might have been tricked into a surrender to
this soft and hideous thing they called love. But now, he would have
love in his own way, haughtily, passionately, and darkly, with dark,
arrowy desire, and a strange, arrowly-submissive woman: either this, or
he would not have love at all.

He thought of Monica and sometimes the thought of her sent him black
with anger. And sometimes, as he thought of her wild, delicate,
reckless, lonely little profile, a hot tenderness swept over him, and he
felt he would envelop her with a fierce and sheltering tenderness, like
a scarlet mantle.

So long as she would not fight against him, and strike back at him. Jeer
at him, play with Easu in order to insult him. Not that, my God, not
that.

As for Mary, a certain hate of her burned in him. The queer heavy stupid
conceit with which she had gone off to dance with Boyd Blessington,
because he was an important social figure. Mary, wanting to live on a
farm, but at the same time absolutely falling before the social glamour
of a Blessington, and becoming conceited on the strength of it. Inside
herself, Mary thought she was very important, thought that all sorts of
eternal destinies depended on her choice and her actions. Even Jack, was
nothing more than an instrument of her divine importance.

He had sensed this clearly enough. And it was this that made Aunt
Matilda a bit spiteful against her, when she said that Mary was "heavy"
and wouldn't easily get a man.

But there was also the queer black look in Mary's eyes, that was outside
her conceit and her social importance. The queer, almost animal dark
glisten, that was full of fear and wonder, and vulnerability. Like the
look in the eyes of a caught wild animal. Or the look in the shining
black eyes of one of the aborigines, especially the black woman looking
askance in a sort of terror at a white man, as if a white man was a sort
of devil that might possess her.

Where had Mary got that queer aboriginal look, she the granddaughter of
an English earl?

"Y're real lively to-day, aintcher, Jack? Got a hundred quid for your
birthday, and my, some talk!"

"Comes to that," said Jack, rousing himself with difficulty. "We've come
fifteen or twenty miles without you opening your mouth either."

Tom laughed shortly and relapsed into silence.

"Well," he said, "let's wake up now, there's the outlying paddock." He
pointed with his whip.--"And there's the house through the dip in the
valley!" Then suddenly in a queer tone: "Say, matey, don't it look
lovely from here, with all that afternoon sun falling over it like snow
. . . You think I've never seen snow: but I have, in my dream."

Jack's heart contracted as he jumped down to open the first gate. For
him too, the strange fulness of the yellow afternoon light was always
unearthly, at Wandoo. But the day was still early, just after
dinner-time, for they had stayed the night half way.

"Looks in good trim, eh?" said Jack.

"So it does! All" replied Tom. "Mr. George says Ma done wonders. Made it
pay hand over fist. Y'remember that fellow, Pink-eye Percy, what come
from Queensland, and had studied agriculture an' was supposed to be a
bad egg an' all that? At that 'roo hunt, you remember? Well, he bought
land next to Wandoo, off-side from the Reds. An' Ma sortta broke wi' the
Reds over something, an' went in wi' him, an't' seems they was able to
do wonders. Anyway Old George says Ma's been able to buy a little place
near her own old home in Beverley, to go to.--But seems to me--"

"What?"

"Funny how little anyone tells you, Jack."

"How?"

"I felt I couldn't get to th' bottom of what old George was tellin' me.
I took no notice then. But it seems funny now. An' I say--"

"What?"

"You'd 'a thought Monica or Katie might ha' driven to the Cross Roads
for us, like we used to in Dad's days."

"Yes, I thought one of them would have been there."

The boys drove on, in tense silence, through the various gates. They
could see the house ahead.

"There's Timothy," said Tom.

The old black was holding open the yard gate. He seemed to have almost
forgotten Jack, but the emotion in his black, glistening eyes was
strange, as he stared with strange adoration at the young master. He
caught Tom's hand in his two wrinkled dark hands, as if clinging to life
itself.

The twins ran out, waved, and ran back. Katie appeared, looking bigger,
heavier, more awkward than ever. Tom patted Timothy's hands again, then
went across and kissed Katie, who blushed with shyness.

"Where's Ma, Katie?"

"In the parlour."

Tom broke away, leaving Katie blushing in front of Jack. Jack was
thinking how queer and empty the house seemed. And he felt an outsider
again. He stayed outside, sat down on the bench.

A boy much bigger than Harry, but with the same blue eyes and curly
hair, appeared chewing a haystalk, and squatted on a stone near by. Then
Og and Magog, a bit taller, but no thinner, came and edged on to the
seat. Then Ellie, a long-legged little girl, came running to his knees.
And then what had been Baby, but was now a fat, toddling little girl,
came racing out, fearless and inconsequential as the twins had been.

"Where's Len?" said Jack.

"He's in the paddock seein' to th' sheep," said Harry.

There was a queer tense silence. The children seemed to cling round Jack
for male protection.

"We're goin' to' live nearer in to th' township now," said Harry, "in a
little wee sortta house."

He stared with bold blue eyes, unwinking and yet not easy, straight into
Jack's eyes.

"Well Harry," said Jack, "You've grown quite a man."

"I hev so!" said Harry: "Quite the tyke! I ken kill birds for Ma to put
in th' pot I ken skin a kangaroo. I ken--"

But Jack didn't hear what else, because Tom was calling him from the
doorway. He went slowly across.

"Say, mate," said Tom in a low tone. "Stand by me. Things is not all
right." Aloud he said: "Ma wants t' see ye, Jack."

Jack followed through the back premises, down the three steps into the
parlour. It all seemed forlorn.

Ma sat with her face buried in her hands. Jack knitted his brows. Tom
put his hand on her shoulder.

"What is it, Ma? What is it? I wouldn't be anything but good to yer, Ma,
ye know that. Here's Jack Grant."

"Ye were always a good boy, Tom. I'm real glad t' see ye back. And
Jack," said Ma through her hands.

Tom looked at Jack in dismay. Then he stooped and kissed her hair.

"You look to me," he said. "We'll fix everything all right, for Lennie
'n everybody."

But Ma still kept her face between her hands.

"There's nothing t' worry about, Ma, sure there isn't," persisted the
distracted Tom. "I want y't' have everything you want, I do, you an'
Lennie an' the kids."

Mrs. Ellis took her hands from her face. She looked pale and worn. She
would not turn to the boys, but kept her face averted.

"I know you're as good a boy as ever lived," she faltered. Then she
glanced quickly at Tom and Jack, the tears began to run down her face,
and she threw her apron over her head.

"God's love!" gasped the bursting Tom, sinking on a chair.

They all waited in silence. Mrs. Ellis suddenly wiped her face on her
apron and turned with a wan smile to the boys.

"I've saved enough to buy a little place near Beverley, which is where I
belong," she said. "So me and the children are all right. And I've got
my eye, at least Lennie's got his on a good selection east of here,
between this and my little house, for Lennie. But we want cash for that,
I'm afraid. Only it's not that. That's not it."

"Lennie's young yet to take up land, Ma!" Tom plunged in. "Why won't he
stop here and go shares with me?"

"He wants to get married," said the mother wanly.

"Get married! Len! Why he's only seventeen!"

At this very natural exclamation, Ma threw her apron over her head, and
began to cry once more.

"He's been so good," she sobbed. "He's been so good! And his Ruth is old
enough and sensible enough for two. Better anything--" with more
sobbing--"than another scandal in the family."

Tom rubbed his head. Gosh! It was no joke being the head of a family!

"Well, Ma, if you wish it, what's the odds? But I'm afraid it'll have to
wait a bit. Jack'll tell you I haven't any cash. Not a stiver, Ma! Blown
out! It takes it outter yer up North. We never struck it rich."

Mrs. Ellis, under her apron, wept softly.

"Poor little Lennie! Poor little Lennie! He's been so good, Tom, working
day and night. And never spending a shilling. All his learning gone for
nought, Tom, and him a little slave, at his years, old and wise enough
to be his father, Tom. And he wants to get married. If we could start
him out fair! The new place has only four rooms and an out-kitchen, and
there's not enough to keep him, much less a lady wife. She's a lady
earning her bread teaching. He could go to Grace's. Alec Rice would have
him. But--"

She had taken her apron off her face, and was staring averted at the
door leading into Gran's old room.

The two boys listened mystified and a little annoyed. Why all this about
Lennie? Jack was wondering where Monica was. Why didn't she come? Why
wasn't she mentioned? And why was Ma so absolutely downcast, on the
afternoon of Tom's home-coming? It wasn't fair on Tom.

"Where is Monica?" asked Jack shyly at last.

But Mrs. Ellis only shook her head faintly and was mute, staring across
at Gran's door.

"Lennie married!" Tom was brooding. "Y'll have to put it out of y'r mind
for a bit, Ma. Why, it wouldn't hardly be decent."

"Let him marry if he's set on it--an' the girl's a good girl," said Mrs.
Ellis, her eyes swamping with tears again, and her voice breaking as she
rocked herself again.

"Yes, if we could afford it," Tom hastily put in. And he raised his
stunned eyes to Jack. Jack shrugged, and looked in the empty fireplace,
and thought of the little fires Gran used to have.

Money! Money! Money! The moment you entered within four walls it was the
word money, and your mouth full of ashes.

And then again something hardened in his soul. All his life he had been
slipping away from the bugbear of money. It was no good. You had to turn
round and get a grip on the miserable stuff. There was nothing else for
it. Though money nauseated him, he now accepted the fact that he must
have control over money, and not try just to slip by.

He began to repent of having judged Gran. That little old witch of a
Gran, he had hated the way she had seemed to hoard money and gloat in
the secret possession of it. But perhaps she knew, _somebody_ must
control it, somebody must keep a hand over it. Like a deadly weapon.
Money! Property! Gran fighting for them, to bequeath them to the man she
loved.

Perhaps she too had really hated money. She wouldn't make a will.
Neither would Dad. Their secret repugnance for money and possessions.
But you had to have property, else you were down and out. The men you
loved had to have property, or they were down and out. Like Lennie!

Poor old plucky Gran, fighting for her man. It was all a terrible muddle
anyhow. But he began to understand her motive.

Yes, if Len had got a girl into trouble and wanted to marry her, the
best he could do would be to have money and buy himself a little place.
Otherwise, heaven knows what would happen to him. With their profound
indifference to the old values, these Australians seemed either to
exaggerate the brutal importance of money, or they wanted to waste money
altogether, and themselves along with it. This was what Gran feared:
that her best male heirs would go and waste themselves, as Jacob had
begun to waste himself. The generous ones would just waste themselves,
because of their profound mistrust of the old values.

Better rescue Lennie for the little while it was still possible to
rescue him. Jack's mind turned to his own money. And then, looking at
that inner door, he seemed to see Gran's vehement figure, pointing
almost viciously with her black stick. She had tried so hard to drive
the wedge of her meaning into Jack's consciousness. And she had failed.
He had refused to take her meaning.

But now with a sigh that was almost a groan, he took up the money
burden. The "stocking" she had talked about, and which he had left in
the realms of unreality, was an actuality. That witch Gran, with her
uncanny, hateful second sight, had put by a stocking for Lennie, and
entrusted the secret of it to Jack. And he had refused the secret. He
hated those affairs.

Now he must assume the mysterious responsibility for this money. He got
up and went to the chimney, and peered into the black opening. Then he
began to feel carefully along the side of the chimney-stack inside,
where there was a ledge. His hand went deep in soot and charcoal and
grey ash.

He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve.

"Gone off y'r bloomin' nut, Jack?" asked Tom, mystified.

"Gran told me she had put a stocking for Len in here," said Jack.

"Stocking be blowed!" said Tom testily. "We've heard that barm-stick
yarn before. Leave it alone, boy."

He was looking at Jack's bare, brown, sinewy arm. It reminded him of the
great North-West, and the heat, and the work, and the absolute
carelessness. This money and stocking business was like a mill-stone
round his neck. He felt he was gradually being drowned in soot, as Jack
continued to fumble up inside the chimney, and the soot poured down over
the naked arm.

"Oh, God's love, leave it alone, Jack!" he cried.

"Let him try," said Mrs. Ellis quietly. "If Gran told him. I wonder he
didn't speak before."

"I never really thought about it," said Jack.

"Don't think about it now!" shouted Tom.

Jack could feel nothing in the chimney. He looked contemplatively at the
fireplace. Something drew him to the place near Gran's arm-chair ... He
began feeling, while the other two watched him in a state of nervous
tension. Tom hated it.

"She pointed here with her stick," said Jack.

There was a piece of tin fastened over the side of the fireplace, and
black-leaded.

"Mind if we try behind this?" he asked.

"Leave it alone!" cried Tom.

But Jack pulled it out, and the ash and dirt and soot poured down over
the hearth. Behind the sheet of thin iron was the naked stone of the
chimney-piece. Various stones were loose: that was why Gran had had the
tin sheet put over.

He got out of the cavity behind the stones, where the loose mortar had
all crumbled, a little square dusty box that had apparently been an old
tea-caddy. It was very heavy for its size, and very dirty. He put it on
the table in front of Mrs. Ellis. Tom got up excitedly to look in. He
opened the lid. It was full to the brim of coins, gold coins and silver
coins and dust and dirt, and a sort of spider filament. He shook his
head over it.

"Isn't that old Gran to a T!" he exclaimed, and poured out the dust and
the money on the table.

Ma began eagerly to pick out the gold from the silver, saying:

"I remember when she made Dad put that iron plate up. She said insects
came out and worried her."

Ma only picked out the gold pieces, the sovereigns and half-sovereigns.
She left Tom to sort the silver crowns and half-crowns into little
piles. Jack watched in silence. There was a smell of soot and old
fire-dust, and everybody's hands were black.

Mrs. Ellis was putting the sovereigns in piles of ten. She had a queer
sort of satisfaction, but her gloom did not really lift. Jack stayed to
know how much it was. Mentally he counted the piles of gold she made:
the pale washy gold of Australia, most of it. She counted and counted
again.

"Two hundred and fourteen pounds!" she said in a low voice.

"And ten in silver," said Tom.

"Two hundred and twenty-four pounds," she said.

"It's not the world," said Tom, "but it's worth having. It's a start,
Ma. And you can't say that isn't Lennie's."

Jack went out and left them. He listened in all the rooms downstairs.
What he wanted to know about was Monica. He hated this family and family
money business, it smelled to him of death. Where was Monica? Probably,
to add to the disappointment, she was away, staying with Grace.

The house sounded silent. Upstairs all was silent. It felt as if nobody
was there.

He went out and across the yard to the stable. Lucy whinnied. Jack felt
she knew him. The nice, natural old thing: Tom would have to christen
her afresh. At least this Lucy wouldn't leave a stocking behind her when
she was dead. She was much too clean. Ah, so much nicer than that other
Lucy with her unpleasant perspiration, away in Honeysuckle.

Jack stood a long while with the sensitive old horse. Then he went round
the out-buildings, looking for Lennie. He drifted back to the house,
where Harry was chopping something with a small hatchet.

"Where's Monica, Harry?" he asked.

"She's not home," said Harry.

"Where's she gone?"

"Dunno."

And the resolute boy went on with his chopping.

Tom came out, calling. "I'm going over to have a word wi' th' Reds,
Jack. Cornin' with me?"

Tom didn't care for going anywhere alone, just now. Jack joined him.

"Where's Monica, Tom?" he asked.

"Ay, where is she?" said Tom, looking round as if he expected her to
appear from the thin air.

"She's not at home, anyhow," said Jack.

"She's gone off to Grace's, or to see somebody, I expect," said Tom, as
they walked across the yard. "And Len is out in the paddocks still. He
don't seem in no hurry to come an' meet us, neither. The little cuss!
Fancy that nipper wantin' to be spliced. Gosh, I'll bet he's old for his
age, the little old wallaby! An' that bloomin' teacher woman, Ruth, why
she's older'n me. She oughtta be ashamed of herself, kidnappin' that
nipper."

The two went side by side across the pasture, almost as if they were
free again. They came to a stile.

"Gosh!" said Tom. "They've blocked up this gate, 'n put a stile over,
see! Think o' that!"

They climbed the stile and continued their way.

"God's love, boy, didn't we land in it over our heads! Ever see Ma like
that? I never! Good for you, Jack, lad, findin' that tea-caddy. That's
how the Ellises are--ain't it the devil! 'Spect I take after my own
mother, f'r I'm not in the tea-caddyin' line. Ma's cheered up a bit.
She'll be able to start Lennie in a bit of a way, now, 'n the twins can
wait for a bit, thank goodness! My, but ain't families lively! Here I
come back to be boss of this bloomin' place, an' I feel as if I was
goin' to be shot. Say, boy, d'ye think I'm really spliced to that
water-snake in Honeysuckle? Because I s'll have to have somebody on this
outfit. Alone I will not face it. Say, matey, promise me you won't leave
me till I'm fixed up a bit. Give me your word you'll stand by me here
for a time, anyhow."

"I'll stay for a time," said Jack.

"Righto! an' then if I'm not copped by the Honeysuckle bird--'appen Mary
might have me, what d'you think? I shall have to have somebody. I simply
couldn't stand this place, all by my lonesome. What d'you think about
Mary? D'you think she'd like it, here?"

"Ask her," said Jack grimly.



CHAPTER XX

THE LAST OF EASU


I


They knew that Easu was married, but they were hardly prepared for the
dirty baby crawling on the verandah floor. Easu had seen them come
through the gate, and was striding across to meet them, after bawling
something in his bullying way to someone inside the house: presumably
his wife.

Outwardly, he was not much altered. Yet there was an undefinable change
for the worse. He was one of those men whom marriage seems to humiliate,
and to make ugly. As if he despised himself for being married.

Easu ignored the baby as if it were not there, striding past into the
house, leading the newcomers into the parlour. It was darkened in there,
to keep out the flies; but he pulled up the blind: "t'see their blanky
fisogs." And he called out to the missus to bring glasses.

The parlour was like most parlours. Enlarged photographs of Mr. and Mrs.
Ellis, the Red parents, in large pine frames, on the wall. A handsome
china clock under a glass case on the mantelpiece, with flanking vases
to match, on fawn-and-red woollen crochet mats. An oval, rather curvy
table in the middle of the room, with the family Bible, and the meat
under a fly-proof wire cover. The parlour was the coolest place for the
meat.

Easu shifted the red obnoxity, wire cover and all, to the top of a
cupboard where some cups and saucers were displayed, and drew forth a
demijohn of spirit from the back of the horse-hair sofa, in front of the
window.

Mrs. Easu came in with the glasses. She was a thin, pale-faced young
woman with big dark eyes and her hair in huge curling pins, and a
hostile bearing. She took no notice of the visitors: only let her big
what-do-_you_-want eye pass over them with distaste beneath her bald
forehead. It was her fixed belief that whoever came to the house came to
_get_ something, if they could. And they were not going to get it out of
_her._ She made an alliance with Easu so far. But her rather protruding
teeth and her vindictive mouth showed that Easu would get as many bites
as kisses.

She set the glasses from her hands on to the table, and looked down at
Easu under her pale lashes.

"What else d'ye want?" she asked rudely.

"Nothing. If I want anything I'll holloa."

They seemed to be on terms of mutual rudeness. She had been quite an
heiress: brought Easu a thousand pounds. But the way she said it--a
tharsand parnds!--as if it was something absolutely you couldn't get
beyond, made even Easu writhe. She was common, to put it commonly. She
spoke in a common way, she thought in a common way, and she acted in a
common way. But she had energy, and even a vulgar suffisance. She
thought herself as good as anybody, and a bit better, on the strength of
the tharsand parnds!

"'S not eddication as matters, it's munney!" she said blatantly to
Lennie. "At your age y'ought t'ave somethink in th' bank."

He of course hated the sight of her after that. She had looked at him
with a certain superciliousness and contempt in her conceited brown
eyes, because he had no money and was supposed to be clever. He never
forgave her.

But what did she care! She jerked up her sharp-toothed mouth, and sailed
away. She wasn't going to be put down by any penniless snobs. The
Ellises! Who were the Ellises? Yes, indeed! They thought themselves so
superior. Could they draw a tharsand parnd? Pah!

She felt a particularly spiteful, almost vindictive, scorn of Jack. He
was somebody, was he? Ha! What was he _worth?_ That was the point. How
much _munney_ did he reckon he'd got? "If yer want me ter think anythink
of yer, yer mun show me yer bank-book," she said.

Easu listened and grinned, and said nothing to all this. But she had a
fiery temper of her own, and they went for one another like two devils.
She wasn't going to be daunted, she wasn't. She had her virtues too. She
had no method, but she was dean. The place was forever in a muddle, but
she was always cleaning it, almost vindictively, as if the shine on the
door-knob reflected some of the tharsand parnd. Even the baby was turned
out and viciously cleaned once a day. But in the intervals it groped
where it would. As for herself, she was a sight this morning, with her
hair in huge iron waving-pins, and her forehead and her teeth both
sticking out. She looked a sight to shudder at. But wait. Wait till she
was dressed up and turning out in the buggy, in a coat and skirt of
thick brown cord silk with orange and black braiding, and a hugely
feathered hat, with huge floating ostrich feathers, an orange one and a
brown one. And her teeth sticking out and a huge brooch of a lump of
gold set with pearls and diamonds, and a great gold chain. And the baby,
in a silk cape with pink ribbons, and a frilled silk bonnet of alternate
pink and white ruches, mercilessly held against her chains and brooches!
Wait!

Therefore when Jack glanced at her from a strange distance, she tossed
her bald forehead with the curling-irons, and thought to herself: "You
can look, Master Jack Nobody. And you can look again, next Sunday, when
I've got my proper things on. _Then_ you'll see who's got the munney!"

She seemed to think that her Sunday gorgeousness absolutely obliterated
the grimness of her week of curling pins. "Six days shall thou labour in
thy curling-irons." She lived in them. They kept her hair out of the way
and saved her having to do it up all the time.

And it may be that Easu never really looked at her in her teeth and
pins. That was not the real Sarah Ann. The real Sarah Ann swayed with
ostrich feathers; brown silk, brown and orange feathers, reddish hair,
brown eyes, pale skin, and a stiff, militant, vulgar bearing that wasn't
going to let anybody put it over _her._ "They can't put me down, whoever
they are!" she asserted. "I consider myself equal to the best, and
perhaps a little better."

This Easu heard and saw with curious gratification. This was his Sarah
Ann.

None the less, he was no fool. He saw the baffled, surprised look Jack
turned upon this grisly young woman in curlers and teeth, as if he could
not quite enter her in the class of human beings. And Easu was enough of
an Ellis to know what that look meant. It was a silent "Good God!" And
no man, when his wife enters the room, cares to hear another man's
horrified ejaculation: "Good God!" at the sight of her.

Easu wanted his wife to be common. Nevertheless, with the anomalousness
of human beings, it humiliated him and put acid in his blood.

"Have a jorum!" said Easu to Tom.

"I s'd think you're not goin' to set down drinkin' at this time of day,"
she said, in her loud, common, interfering voice.

"What's the time of the day to you?" asked Easu acidly, as he filled
Tom's glass.

"We can't stop. Mall be expecting us back," said Tom.

Easu silently filled Jack's glass, and the wife went out, banging the
door. Immediately she fell upon the baby and began to vituperate the
little animal for its dirt. The men couldn't hear themselves speak.

But Easu lifted up his chin and poured the liquor down his throat. He
had shaved his beard, and had only three days of yellowish stubble. He
smacked his lips as he set down his glass, and looked at the two boys
with a sarcastic, gloating look.

"Find a few changes, eh?" he observed.

"Just a few."

"How's the place look?"

"All right."

"Make a pile up North?"

"No."

Easu grinned slowly.

"Thought you didn't need to, eh?" he asked maliciously.

"Didn't worry myself," said Tom.

"Jack Grant come in for a fortune?" Easu asked, looking at Jack.

"No," said Jack coldly. There was something about Easu's vulgar,
taunting eyes, which he couldn't stand.

"Oh, you 'aven't!" The pleased sneer was unbearable.

"How's Ma?" asked Easu.

"All right," said Tom, surprised.

"Don't see much of her now," said Easu.

"No, I saw the gate was blocked up," said Tom.

"Looks like she blocked the wrong gate up."

"How?"

"How? Well don't you think she'd better have blocked up the gate over to
Pink-eye Percy's place?"--Easu was smiling with thin, gloating lips.

"Why?"

"Why? Don't y' know?"

"What?"

"Don't ye know about Monica?"

Jack's blood stood still for a moment, and death entered his soul again,
to stay.

"No. What?"

"Didn't Old George say nothing to y' in Perth?"

"No!" said Tom, becoming sullen and dangerous.

"Well, that's funny now! And Aunt Alice said nothing?"

"No! What about?"

Easu was smiling gloatingly, in silence, as if he had something very
good.

"Well that's funny now! Think of your getting right here, and not having
heard a thing! I shouldn't have thought it possible."

Tom was going white under his tan.

"What's amiss, Red?" he said curtly.

"To think as you haven't heard! Why it was the talk of the place. Ross
heard all about it in Perth. Didn't you come across him there? He's been
in the Force quite a while now."

"No! What was it he heard about?"

"Why, about Monica."

"What about her?"

"D'y' mean to say you don't know?"

"I tell you I don't know."

"Well!" and Easu smiled with curious, poisonous satisfaction. "I don't
know as I want to be the one to tell you."

There was a moment's dead silence. The sun was setting.

"What have you got to say?" asked Tom, his face set and blank, and his
mouth taking on the lipless, Australian look.

"Funny thing nobody has told you. Why it happened six or seven months
since."

This was received in dead silence.

"She went off with Percy when the baby was a month old."

Again there was nothing but dead silence.

"Mean she married Pink-eye Percy?" asked Tom, in a muffled tone.

"I dunno about marryin' him. They say he's got a wife or two already:
legal and otherwise. All I know is they cleared out a month after the
baby was born, and went down south."

Still dead silence from the other two. The room was full of golden
light. Jack was looking at the fly-dirts and the lamp-black on the
ceiling. He was sitting in a horse-hair arm-chair, and the broken
springs were uncomfortable, and the horse-hair scratched his wrist.
Otherwise he felt vacant, and in a deathly way, remote.

"You're minding what you're saying?" came Tom's empty voice.

"Minding what I'm saying!" echoed Easu rejoicingly. "I didn't want to
tell you. It was you who asked me."

"Was the baby Percy's baby?" asked Jack.

"I should say so," Easu replied, stumbling. "I never asked her, myself.
They were all thick with Percy at that time, and I was married with a
family of my own. Why I've not been over to Wandoo for--for--for close
on two years, I should think."

"That's what was wrong with Ma!" Tom was saying, in a dull voice, to
himself.

"I wonder Old George or Mary didn't prepare ye," said Easu. "They both
came down before the baby came. But seemingly Old George couldn't do
nothing. Percy confessing he was married, and trying to say he wasn't to
blame. However, he's run off with Monica all right. Ma had a letter from
her from Albany, to say there was no need to worry, Percy was playin'
the gentleman."

"She never cared for him," Jack cried.

"I dunno about that. Seems she's been mad about him all the time. Maybe
she waited for you to come back. I dunno! I tell you, I've never been
over to Wandoo for nigh on two years."

Jack could not bear any more. The golden light had gone out of the room,
the sun was under the ridge--that ridge----

"Let's get, Tom!" said Jack rising to his feet.

They stumbled out of the house, and went home in silence, through the
dusk. Again the world had caved in, and they were walking through the
ruins.

Ma was upstairs when they got home, but Katie had got the tea on the
table, and Lennie was in. He was a tall, thin, silent, sensitive youth.

"Hullo, you two wanderin' Jews!" he said.

"Hello, Len!"

"Come an' 'ave y' teas."

Lennie was like the head of the house. They ate their meal in silence.



II


Tom and Jack and Lennie still slept in the cubby, but Og and Magog had
moved indoors. The three of them lay in the dark, without sleeping.

"Say, young Len," said Tom at length, "what was you after, letting
Monica get mixed up with that Pink-eye Percy?"

"Me? What was I after? How could I be after 'er every minute. She
snapped my 'ead off if I looked at 'er. What for did you an' Jack stop
away all that time, an' never write a word to nobody? Blame me, all
right! But you go 'avin' 'igh jinks in the Never-Never, and nobody says
a word to you. You never did nothing wrong, did you? An' _you_ kep' an
eye on the fam'ly, didn't you? An' it's only me to blame. 'F course!
'Twould be! But what about yourselves?"

This outburst was received in silence. Then a queer, sullen snake reared
its head haughtily in Jack's soul.

"I shouldn't have thought she'd have cared for Percy," said he.

"No more would nobody," replied Len. "You never know what women's up to.
Give me a steady woman, Lord, I pray. Because for the last year Monica
wasn't right in 'er mind, that's what I say. It wasn't Percy's fault. It
was she made 'im. She made 'im as soft as grease about 'er. Percy's not
bad, he's not. But women can make him as soft as grease. An' I knows
what that means myself. Either there shouldn't be no men an' women, or
they should be kept apart till they're pitched into the same pen, to
breed."

Tom, with Honeysuckle Lucy on his conscience, said never a word.

"Is it true that Percy's got a wife already out east?" asked Jack.

"He say he has. But he wrote to find out if she was dead. At first he
said he wasn't to blame. Then he said he was, but he couldn't marry her.
An' Monica like a wild cat at us all. She would let nobody write an'
tell you. She went over to Reds, but Easu had just got married, an'
Sarah Ann threatened to lay her out. Then she turned on Percy. I tell
you, she skeered me. The phosphorus came out of her eyes like a
wildcat's. She's bewitched or something. Or else possessed of a devil.
That's what I think she is. Though I needn't talk, for maybe I am
myself. Oh, mates, leave me alone, I'm sick of it all. Lemme go to
sleep."

"What did she go over to Easu's for?"

"God knows. She'd been nosing round with Easu, till Ma got mad and put a
stop to it. But that's a good while since. A good while afore Easu
married the lovely Sarah Ann, with her rows o' cartridges on her
forehead. Oh Cripes, _marriage!_ Leave m'alone, I tell you."

"Funny she should go to Easu's, if she was struck on Percy," said Jack.

"Don't make me think of it, sonny!" came Len's voice. "She went round
like a cat who's goin' t' have kittens, an' nobody knew what was amiss
with her. Oh Jehosaphat! Talk about bein' born in sin. I should think we
are. But say, Jack! Do you suppose the Lord gets awful upset, whether
Monica has a baby or not? I don't believe He does. An' I don't believe
Jesus either turns a hair. I don't believe. He turns half a hair. Yet we
get into all this stew. Tell you what, makes a chap sick of bein' a
humain bein'. Wish I grew feathers, an' was an emu."

"Don't you bother," said Jack.

"Not me," said Len. "I don't bother! Anyhow I know all about the parsley
bed, 'n I don't care, I'd rather know an' have done with it. 'S got to
come some time. I'm a collar-horse, I am, like ol' Rackett said. All
right, let me be one. Let me be one, an' pull me guts out. Might just as
well do that, as be a sick outlaw like Rackett, or a softy like Percy.
Leave m'alone! I've got the collar on, an' the load behind, an' I'll
pull it out if I pulls me guts out. That's the past, present an' future
of Lennie."

"Where is Rackett?"

"Hanged if I know. Don't matter where he is. He wanted to educate me an'
make a gentleman of me. Else I'd be nothing but a cart-'oss, he said.
Well, I am nothing but a cart-'oss. But if I enjoys pullin' me guts out,
let me. I enjoys it all right."

Tom lay in silence in the dark, and felt scared. He hated having to face
things. He hated taking a long view. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof, was his profound conviction. He hated even to look round the
next corner.

"Say, Jack," came Lennie's voice again. "You always turns up like a
silver lining. I got your cheques all right. Fifty-seven pound. That's
only a pair o' socks, that is, compared to Gran's store. I had to have a
laugh over that stockin', you're the angel that stood in Jacob's doorway
an' looked like a man, you are. I'd love it if you'd come an' live with
me an' Ruthie."

But Jack was thinking his own thoughts. It had come over him that it was
Easu who had betrayed Monica. The picture of her wandering across like a
cat that is going to have kittens, to the Red's place, and facing that
fearful, common Sarah Ann, and Easu grinning and looking on, made his
spirit turn to steel. Pink-eye Percy was not the father of that baby.
Percy was as soft as wax. Monica would never have fallen for him. She
had simply made use of him. The baby was Easu's.

"Was the baby a girl or a boy?" he asked.

"A girl."

"Did it look like Percy?"

"Not it. It didn't have any of Percy's goo-goo brown eyes or anything.
Ma said it was the spitten image of Harry when he was born."



III


Jack decided what he would do. In the morning he would take the new
horse and set off south, to Albany. He would see Monica and ask her.
Anyhow he would see her.

He was up at dawn, saddling his horse. He told Tom of his plan, and Tom
merely remarked:

"It's up to you, mate."

Tom was relapsing at once into the stiff-faced, rather taciturn
Australian he had been before. The settled life on the farm at once
pulled him to earth, the various calamities had brought him down with a
bump.

So Jack rode off almost unnoticed, with a blanket strapped behind his
saddle, and a flat water-bottle, a pistol in his belt, and a hatchet and
a little bag of food tied to the front saddle-strings. Something made
him turn his horse past the place where he had fought Easu, and along
the bush trail to the Reds' place.

The sun had come up hot out of a pink, dusty dawn. In an hour it would
be blazing like a fiend out of the bare blue heavens. Meanwhile it was
still cool, there was still a faint coolness on the parched dry earth,
whose very grass was turning into yellowish dust. Jack jogged along
slowly, at a slow morning jog-trot. He was glad to be in the saddle
again.

As he came down the track, he saw the blue smoke rising out of the
chimneys of Easu's house, and a dark movement away in one of the home
paddocks. He got down for the gates, then rode on, over to the paddock
fence, and sat there on his horse, watching Easu and Herbert and three
blacks, sorting out some steers from a bunch of about thirty cattle.
They were running the steers through a gate to a smaller enclosure.

There was a good deal of yelling and shouting and running and confusion,
as the bunch of young cattle, a mixed little mob of all colours, blacks
and black-and-white and red and red-and-white, tossed and swayed, the
young cows breaking away and running nimbly on light feet, excited by
the deep, powerful lowing of the stock bull, which had wandered up to
the outer corner of the fence under a group of ragged gum-trees, and
there stood bellowing at the excitement that was going on in the next
paddock.

Jack kept an eye on the bull, as he sat on his uneasy horse outside the
shut gate, watching. Near by, two more horses stood saddled and waiting.
One of them was Easu's big black mare with the two white forefeet. The
other was a thin roan, probably Herbert's horse.

Herbert was quite a man now: tall and thin and broad, with a rather
small red face and dull fairish hair that stood up straight from his
brow. He was the only one of the brothers left with Easu. He was patient
and didn't pay any attention to that scorpion of a Sarah Ann. Sam and
Ross had cleared out at the first sight of her.

It was Herbert who did most of the running. Easu, who stood with his
feet apart, did most of the bossing--he was never happy unless he was
bossing, and finding fault with somebody--and the blacks did most of the
halloaing. Easu didn't move much. He seemed to have gone heavier, and
where he stood, with his feet apart and his bare arm waving, he seemed
stuck, as if he were inert. This was unlike him. He was always stiffish,
but he used to be quick. Now he seemed slow and wooden in his movements,
his body had gone inert, the life had gone out of it, and he could only
shout and jeer. He used to have a certain flame of life, that made him
handsome, even if you hated him. A certain conceit and daring, inside
all his bullying. Now the flame had gone, the conceit and daring had
sunk, he was only ugly and defeated, common, and a little humiliated. He
was getting fat, and it didn't suit him at all.

He had glanced round, when Jack rode up, and it was evident that he
hated the intrusion. Herbert had waved his arm. Herbert still felt a
certain gratitude--and the blacks had all stopped for a moment to stare.
But Easu shouted them on.

At last the sorting out was done, and the bars put up. The bull went
bellowing along the far fence. Herbert came striding to the gate, his
smallish red face shining, and Jack got down to greet him. The two shook
hands, and Herbert said:

"Glad to see you back."

He was the first to say he was glad to see Jack back. Even Len had not
said it. The two men stood exchanging awkward sentences beside the
horse.

Easu too came through the gate. He looked grudgingly at Jack and at
Jack's horse. Jack thought how ugly he was, now his face had gone fatter
and his mouth with its thin, jeering line looked mean. The alert
bird-look had gone, he was heavy, and consumed with grudging. His very
healthiness looked heavy, a bit dead. His light blue eyes stared and
pretended to smile, but the smile was a grudging sneer.

"Where'd you get y' 'oss?"

"From Jimmie Short, in Perth."

"Bit long in the barrel. Making a trip, are y'?"

And Easu looked with his pale-blue eyes straight and sneering into
Jack's eyes, and smiled with his grudging, mean mouth. Jack noticed that
Easu had begun to belly, inside his slack black trousers. He was no
longer the spruce, straight fellow. Easu saw the glance, and was again
humiliated. He himself hated his growing belly. He looked a second time,
into Jack's eyes, furtively, before he said:

"Find out if it was right what I was tellin' y'?"

Jack was ready for the insult, and did not answer. He turned to Herbert
asking about Joe Low, who had been a pal of Herbert's. Joe Low also was
married, and had gone down Busselton way. Jack asked for his directions,
saying perhaps he might be able to call on him.

"What, are y' goin' south?" put in Easu.

Jack looked at him. It was impossible not to see the slack look of
defeat in Easu's face. Something had defeated him, leaving him all
sneering and add and heavy. Again Jack did not answer.

"What did you say?" Easu persisted, advancing a little insolently.

"What about?"

"I asked if y' was goin' south."

"That's my business, where I'm going."

"Of course it is," said Easu with a sneer and a grin. "You don't think
anyone wants to get ahead of you, do you?" He stood with a faint,
sneering smile on his face, malevolent with impotence. "You'll do Percy
a lot o' hurt, I'll bet. I wouldn't like to be Percy, when you turn up."
And he looked with a grin at Herbert. Herbert grinned faintly in echo.

"I should think, whatever Percy is, he wouldn't want to be you," said
Jack, going white at the gills with anger, but speaking with calm
superiority, because he knew that enraged Easu most.

"What's that?" cried Easu, the grin flying out of his face at once, and
leaving it stiff and dangerous.

"I should think Percy wouldn't want to be you, let him be what he may in
himself," said Jack, in the cold, dear, English voice which he knew
infuriated Easu unbearably.

Easu searched Jack's face intently with his pale-blue eyes.

"How's that?" he asked curtly.

Jack stared at the red, heavy face with the smallish eyes, and thought
to himself: "You pig! You intolerable white fat pig!" But aloud he said
nothing.

Easu smiled a defeated grin, and strode away heavily to his horse. He
unhitched, swung heavily into the saddle, and moved away, then at a
little distance reined in to hear what Jack and Herbert were talking
about. He couldn't go.

Herbert was giving Jack directions, how to find Joe Low down Busselton
way. Then he sent various items of news to his old pal. But he asked
Jack no questions, and was careful to avoid any kind of enquiry
concerning Jack's business.

Easu sat on his black horse a little way off, listening. He had a rope
and an axe tied to his saddle. Presumably he was going into the bush.
Herbert was asking questions about the North-West, about the cattle
stations and the new mines. He talked as if he would like to talk all
day. And Jack answered freely, laughing easily and making a joke of
everything. They spoke of Perth, and Jack told how Tom and he had been
at the Governor's ball a few nights ago, and what a change it was from
the North-West, and how Tom enjoyed himself. Herbert listened,
impressed.

"Gosh! That's something to rag old Tom about!" he said.

"_When you've done gassing there!_" called Easu.

Jack turned and looked at him.

"You don't have to wait," he said easily, as if to a servant.

There was really something about Easu now that suggested a servant. He
went suddenly yellow with anger.

"What's that?" he said, moving his horse a few paces forward.

And Jack, also white at the gills, but affecting the same ease, repeated
distinctly and easily, as if to a man-servant:

"We're talking, you don't have to wait."

There was no answer to this insult. Easu remained stock motionless on
his horse for a few moments. Was he going to have to swallow it?

Jack turned laughing to Herbert, saying:

"I've got several things to tell you about old Tom."

But he glanced up quickly. Easu was kicking his horse, and it was
dancing before it would take a direction. Herbert gave a loud,
inarticulate cry. Jack turned quickly to his own horse, to put his foot
in the stirrup. Just as quickly he refrained, swung round, drew his
pistol, and cocked it. Easu, once more a horseman, was kicking his
restive horse forward, holding the small axe in his right hand, the
reins in his left. His face was livid, and looked like the face of one
returning from the dead. He came bearing down on Jack and Herbert, like
Death returning from the dead, the axe held back at arm's length, ready
for the swing, half urging, half holding his horse, so that it danced
strangely nearer. Jack stood with the pistol ready, his back to his own
horse, that was tossing its head nervously.

"Look out!" cried Herbert, suddenly jumping at the bit of Jack's horse,
in terror, and making it start back, with a thudding of hoofs.

But Jack did not move. He stood with his pistol ready, his eyes on Easu.
Easu's horse was snaffling and jerking, twisting, trying to get round,
and Easu was forcing it slowly forward. He had on his death-face. He
held the axe at arm's length, backward, and with his pale-blue, fixed
death-eyes he watched Jack, who stood there on the ground. So he
advanced, waiting for the moment to swing the axe, fixing part of his
will on the curvetting horse, which he forced on.

Jack, in a sort of trance, fixed Easu's death-face in the middle of the
forehead. But he was watching with every pore of his body.

Suddenly he saw him begin to heave in the stirrups, and on that instant
he fired at the mystic place in Easu's forehead, under his old hat, at
the same time springing back. And in that self-same instant he saw two
things: part of Easu's forehead seemed to shift mystically open, and the
axe, followed by Easu's whole body, crashed at him as he sprang back. He
went down in the universal crash, and for a moment his consciousness was
dark and eternal. Then he wriggled to his feet, and ran, as Herbert was
running, to the black horse, which was dancing in an agony of terror,
Easu's right foot having caught in the stirrup, the body rolling
horribly on the ground.

He caught the horse, which was shying off from Herbert, and raised his
right hand to take the bridle. To his further horror and astonishment,
he saw his hand all blood, and his fore-finger gone. But he clutched the
bridle of the horse with his maimed hand, then changed to his left hand,
and stood looking in chagrin and horror at the bloody stump of his
finger, which was just beginning, in a distant sort of way, to hurt.

"My God, he's dead!" came the high, hysterical yell from Herbert, on the
other side of the horse, and Jack let go the bridle again, to look.

It was too obvious. The big, ugly, inert bulk of Easu lay crumpled on
the ground, part of the forehead shot away. Jack looked twice, then
looked away again. A black had caught his horse, and tied it to the
fence. Another black was running up. A dog came panting excitedly up,
sniffing and licking the blood. Herbert, beside himself, stood helpless,
repeating: "He's dead! He's dead! My God, he's dead! He is."

Then he gave a yell, and swooped at the dog, as it began to lick the
blood.

Jack, after once more looking round, walked away. He saw his pistol
lying on the ground, so he picked it up and put it in his belt, although
it was bloody, and had a cut where the axe had struck it. Then he walked
across to his horse, and unhitched the bridle from the fence. But before
he mounted, he took his handkerchief and tied it round his bleeding
hand, which was beginning to hurt with a big aching hurt. He knew it,
and yet he hardly heeded it. It was hardly noticeable.

He got into the saddle, and rode calmly away, going on his journey
southward just the same. The world about him seemed faint and
unimportant. Inside himself was the reality and the assurance. Easu was
dead. It was a good thing.

He had one definite feeling. He felt as if there had been something
damming life up, as a great clot of weeds will dam a stream and make the
water spread marshily and dead over the surrounding land. He felt he had
lifted this clod out of the stream, and the water was flowing on clear
again.

He felt he had done a good thing. Somewhere inside himself he felt he
had done a supremely good thing. Life could flow on to something beyond.
Why question further?

He rode on, down the track. The sun was very hot, and his body was
re-echoing with the pain from his hand. But he went on calmly,
monotonously, his horse travelling in a sort of sleep, easy in its
single-step. He didn't think where he was going, or why; he was just
going.



CHAPTER XXI

LOST


At evening he was still riding. But his horse lagged, and would not be
spurred forward. Darkness came with swift persistence. He was looking
anxiously for water, a burning thirst had made him empty his bottle.

As if directed by God, he felt the horse rousing up and pressing eagerly
forward. In a few minutes it stopped. Darkness had fallen. He found the
horse nosing a timber-lined Government well.

He got down and awkwardly drew water, for the well was low. He drank and
the horse drank. Then with some difficulty he unsaddled, tied the reins
round a sapling and removed the bit. The horse snorted, nosed round, and
began to crop in the dark. Jack sat on the ground and looked up at the
stars. Then he drank more water, and ate a piece of bread and dry
cheese.

Then he began to go to sleep. He saw Easu coming at him with the axe.
Ugh, how good it was Easu was dead. Dead, to go in the earth to manure
the soil. Hadn't Old George said it? The land wanted dead men dug into
it, to manure it. Men like Easu, dead and turned to manure. And men like
old Dad Ellis. Poor old Dad.

Jack thought of Monica, Monica with her little flower-face. All messed
up by that nasty dog of an Easu. He should be twice dead. Jack felt she
was a little repulsive too. To let herself be pawed over and made sticky
by that heavy dog of an Easu! Jack felt he could never follow where Easu
had been messing. Monica was no good now. She had taken on some of
Easu's repulsiveness.

Aunt Matilda had said, "Another scandal in the family!" Well, the death
of Easu should make a good scandal.

How lonely it was in the bush! How big and weapon-like the stars were.
One great star very flashing.

"I have dipped my hand in blood!" he thought to himself. And looking at
his own bloody, hurting hand, in the starlight, he didn't realise
whether it was Easu's blood or his own.

"I have dipped my hand in blood! So be it. Let it be my testament."

And he lifted up his hand to the great flashing star, his wounded hand,
saying aloud:

"Here! Here is my hand in blood! Take it then. There is blood between us
forever."

The blood was between him and his mysterious Lord, forever. Like a sort
of pledge, or baptism, or a sacrifice: a bond between them. He was
speaking to his mysterious Lord.

"There is blood between us forever," he said to the star.

But the sound of his own hoarse, rather deep voice, reminded him of his
surroundings. He looked round. He heard his horse, and called to it. It
nickered in the loneliness, still cropping. He started up to see if it
was all right, to stroke it and speak to it. The bush was very lonely.

"Hello, you!" he said to it. "In the midst of life we are in death.
There's death in the spaces between the stars. But somehow it seems all
right. I like it. I like to be lord of Death. Who do they call the lords
of Death? I am a lord of Death."

He patted the horse's neck as he talked.

"I can't bear to think of Monica messy with Easu," he said. "But I
suppose it's my destiny. I suppose it means I am a lord of death. I hope
if I have any children they'll have that look in their eyes, like
soldiers from the dark kingdom. I don't want children that aren't
warriors. I don't want little love children for my children. When I
beget children I want to sow dragon's teeth, and warriors will spring
up. Easu hadn't one grain nor spark of a warrior in him. He was
absolutely a groping civilian, a bully. That's why he wanted to spoil
Monica. She is the wife for a fighting man. So he wanted to spoil her....
Funny, my father isn't a fighting man at all. He's an absolute
civilian. So he became a general. And I'm not a civilian. I know the
spaces of death between the stars, like spaces in an Egyptian temple.
And at the end of life I see the big black door of death, and the
infinite black labyrinth beyond. I like to think of going in, and being
at home and one of the masters in the black halls of death, when I am
dead. I hope I die fighting, and go into the black halls of death as a
master: not as a scavenger servant, like Easu, or a sort of butler, like
my father. I don't want to be a servant in the black house of death. I
want to be a master."

He sat down again, with his back to the tree, looking at the sharp
stars, and the fume of stars, and the great black gulfs between the
stars. His hand and arm were aching and paining a great deal. But he
watched the gulfs between the stars.

"I suppose my Lord meant me to be like this," he said. "Think if I had
to be tied up and a gentleman, like that Blessington. Or a lawyer like
Old George. Or a politician dropping his aitches, like that Mr. Watson.
Or empty and important like that A. D. C. Or anything that's successful
and goes to church and sings hymns and has supper after church on the
best linen table cloth! What Lord is it that likes these people? What
God can it be that likes success and Sunday dinners? Oh God! It must be
a big, fat, rusty sort of God.

"My God is dark and you can't see him. You can't even see his eyes, they
are so dark. But he sits and bides his time and smiles, in the spaces
between the stars. And he doesn't know himself what he thinks. But
there's deep, powerful feelings inside him, and he's only waiting his
time to upset this pigsty full of white fat pigs. I like my Lord. I like
his dark face, that I can't see, and his dark eyes, that are so dark you
can't see them, and his dark hair that is blacker than the night on his
forehead, and the dark feelings he has, which nobody will ever be able
to explain. I like my Lord, my own Lord, who is not Lord of pigs."

He slept fitfully, feverishly, with dreams, and rose at daylight to
drink water, and dip his head in water. His horse came, he tended it and
with great difficulty got the saddle on. Then he left it standing, and
when he came again, it wasn't where he had left it.

He called, and it whinnied, so he went into the scrub for it. But it
wasn't where the sound of whinnying came from. He went a few more steps
forward, and called. The scrub wasn't so very thick either, yet you
couldn't see that horse. He was sure it was only a couple of yards away.
So he went forward, coaxing, calling. But nothing . . . Queer!

He looked round. The track wasn't there. The well wasn't there. Only the
silent, vindictive, scattered bush.

He couldn't be lost. That was impossible. The homestead wasn't more than
twenty miles away--and the settlement.

Yet, as he tramped on, through the brown, heath-like undergrowth, past
the ghost-like trunks of the scattered gum-trees, over the fallen,
burnt-out trunks of charred trees, past the bushes of young gum-trees,
he gradually realised he was lost. And yet it was impossible. He would
come upon a cabin, or pick up the track of a woodcutter, or a 'roo
hunter. He was so near to everywhere.

There is something mysterious about the Australian bush. It is so
absolutely still. And yet, in the near distance, it seems alive. It
seems alive, and as if it hovered round you to maze you and circumvent
you. There is a strange feeling, as if invisible, hostile things were
hovering round you and heading you off.

Jack stood still and coo-eed! long and loud. He fancied he heard an
answer, and he hurried forward. He felt light-headed. He wished he had
eaten something. He remembered he had no water. And he was walking very
fast, the sweat pouring down him. Silly this. He made himself go slower.
Then he stood still and looked around. Then he coo-eed! again, and was
afraid of the Tinging sound of his own cry.

The changeless bush, with scattered, slender tree-trunks everywhere. You
could see between them into the distance, to more open bush: a few brown
rocks: two great dead trees as white as bone: burnt trees with their
core charred out: and living trees hanging their motionless clusters of
brown, dagger-like leave. And the permanent soft blue of the sky
overhead.

Nothing was hidden. It was all open and fair. And yet it was haunted
with a malevolent mystery. You felt yourself so small, so tiny, so
absolutely insignificant, in the still, eternal glade. And this again is
the malevolence of the bush, that it reduces you to your own absolute
insignificance, go where you will.

Jack collected his wits and began to make a plan.

"First look at the sky, and get your bearing." Then he would go
somewhere straight west from the Reds. The sun had been in his eyes as
he rode last evening.

Or had he better go east, and get back? There were scores of empty
miles, uninhabited, west. It was settled, he would go east. Perhaps
someone would find his horse, and come to look for him.

He walked with the sun straight bang in his eyes. It was very hot, and
he was tired. He was thirsty, his arm hurt and throbbed. Why did he
imagine he was hungry? He was only thirsty. And so hot! He took off his
coat and threw it away. After a while his waistcoat followed. He felt a
little lighter. But he was an intolerable burden to himself.

He sat down under a bush and went fast asleep. How long he slept he did
not know. But he woke with a jerk, to find himself lying on the ground
in his shirt and trousers, the sun still hot in the heavens, and the
mysterious bush all around. The sun had come round and was burning his
legs. What was the matter? Fear, that was the first thing. The great,
resounding fear. Then, a second, he was terribly thirsty. For a third,
his arm was aching horribly. He took off his shirt and made a sling of
it, to carry his arm in.

For a fourth thing, he realised he had killed Easu, and something was
gnawing at his soul.

He heard himself sob, and this surprised him very much. It even brought
him to his senses.

"Well!" he thought. "I have killed Easu." It seemed years and years ago.
"And the bush has got me, Australia has got me, and now it will take my
life from me. Now I am going to die. Well, then, so be it. I will go out
and haunt the bush, like all the other lost dead. I shall wander in the
bush throughout eternity, with my bloody hand. Well, then, so be it. I
shall be a lord of death hovering in the bush, and let the people who
come beware."

But suddenly he started to his feet in terror and horror. The face of
death had really got him this time. It was as if a second wakening had
come upon him, and his life, which had been sinking, suddenly flared up
in a frenzy of struggle and fear. He coo-eeed! again and again, and once
more plunged forward in mad pursuit of an echo.

He might certainly rim into a 'roo hunter's camp, any minute. The place
was alive with them, great big boomers! Their silly faces! Their silly
complacency, almost asking to be shot. There were a lot of wallabies out
here too. You might make a fortune hunting skins.

Christ! how one could want water.

But no matter. On and on! His soul dropped to its own sullen level. If
he was to die, die he would. But he would hold out through it all.

On and on in a persistent dogged stupor. Why give in?

Then suddenly he dropped on a log, in weariness. Suddenly he had thought
of Monica. Why had she betrayed him? Why had they all betrayed him,
betrayed him and the thing he wanted from life. He leaned his head down
on his arms and wept hoarsely and dryly, and went silent again even as
he sat, realising the futility of weeping. His heart, the heart he wept
from, went utterly dark. He had no more heart of torn sympathy. That was
gone. Only a black, deep male volition. And this was all there was left
of him. He would carry the same in to death. Young or old, death sooner
or later, he would carry just this one thing into the further darkness,
his deep, black, undying male volition.

He must have slept. He was in great misery, his mouth like an open
sepulchre, his consciousness dull. He was hardly aware that it was late
afternoon, hot and motionless. The outside things were all so far away.
And the blackness of death and misery was thick, but transparent, over
his eyes.

He went on, still obstinately insisting that ahead there was something,
perhaps even water, though hope was dead in him. It was not hope, it was
heavy volition that insisted on water.

The sling dragged on his neck, he threw it away, and walked with his
hand against his breast. And his braces dragged on him. He didn't want
any burden at all, none at all. He stopped, took off his braces and
threw them away, then his sweat-soaked undervest. He didn't want these
things. He didn't want them. He walked on a bit.

He hesitated, then came for a moment to his senses. He was going to
throw away his trousers too. But it came to him: "Don't be a fool, and
throw away your clothes, man. You know men do it who are lost in the
bush, and then they are found naked, dead."

He looked vaguely round for the vest and braces he had just thrown away.
But it was half an hour since he had flung them down. His consciousness
tricked him, obliterating the interval. He could not believe his eye.
They had ghostlily disappeared.

So he rolled his trousers on his naked hips, and pressed his hurt hand
on his naked breast, and set off again in a sort of fear. His hat had
gone long ago. And all the time he had this strange desire to throw all
his clothes away, even his boots, and be absolutely naked, as when he
was born. And all the time something obstinate in him combated the
desire. He wanted to throw everything away, and go absolutely naked over
the border. And at the same time, something in him deeper than himself
obstinately withstood the desire. He wanted to go over the border. And
something deeper even than his consciousness, refused.

So he went on, scarcely conscious at all. He himself was in the middle
of a vacuum, and pressing round were visions and agonies. The vacuum was
perhaps the greatest agony, like a death-tension. But the other agonies
were pressing on its border: his dry, cardboard mouth, his aching body.
And the visions pressed on the border too. A great lake of ghostly white
water, such as lies in the valleys where the dead are. But he walked to
it, and it wasn't there. The moon was shining whitely.

And on the edge of the aching void of him, a wheel was spinning in his
brain like a prayer-wheel.


"Petition me no petitions, Sir, to-day;
Let other hours be set apart for business.
Today it is our pleasure to be drunk
And this our queen . . ."


Water! Water! Water! Was water only a visionary thing of memory,
something only achingly, wearyingly, thought and thought and thought,
and never substantiated?


"A Briton even in love should be
A subject not a slave . . ."


The wheel of words went round, the wheel of his brain, on the edge of
the vacuum. What did that mean? What was a Briton?


"A Briton even in love should be
A subject not a slave."


The words went round and round and were absolutely meaningless to him.

And then out of the dark another wheel was pressing and turning.


"How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land."


Away on the hard dark periphery of his consciousness, the wheel of these
words was turning and grinding.

His mind was turning helplessly, but his feet walked on. He realised in
a weird, mournful way that he was shut groping in a dark unfathomable
cave, and that the walls of the cave were his own aching body. And he
was going on and on in the cave, looking for the fountain, the water.
But his body was the aching, ghastly, jutting walls of the cave. And it
made this weary grind of words on the outside. And he had need to
struggle on and on.

In little flickers he tried to associate his dark cave-consciousness
with his grinding body. Was it night, was it day?

But before he had decided that it was night, the two things had gone
apart again, and he was groping and listening to the grind.


"But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.
Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things
Falling from us, vanishing."


He was so weary of the outward grind of words. He was stumbling as he
walked. And waiting for the walls of the cave to crash in and bury him
altogether. And the spring of water did not exist.

"Blank misgivings of a creator moving about in a world not realised."

This phrase almost united his two consciousnesses. He was going to crash
into this creator who moved about unrealised. Other people had gone, and
other things. Monica, Easu, Tom, Mary, Mother, Father, Lennie. They were
all like papery, fallen leaves blowing about outside in some street.
Inside here there were no people at all, none at all. Only the Creator
moving around unrealised. His Lord.

He stumbled and fell, and in the white flash of falling knew he hurt
himself again, and that he was falling forever.



CHAPTER XXII

THE FIND


I


The subconscious self woke first, roaring in distant wave-beats,
unintelligible, unmeaning, persistent, and growing in volume. It had
something to do with birth. And not having died. "I have not let my soul
run like water out of my mouth."

And as the roaring and beating of the waves increased in volume, tiny
little words emerged like flying-fish out of the black ocean of
consciousness. "Ye must be born again," in little silvery, twinkling
spurts like flying-fish which twinkle silver and spark into the utterly
dark sea again. They were gone and forgotten before they were realised.
They had merged deep in the sea again. And the roar of dark
consciousness was the roar of death. The kingdom of death. And the lords
of death.

"Ye must be born again." But the twinkling words had disappeared into
the lordly powerful darkness of death. And the baptism is the blackness
of death between the eyes, that never lifts, forever, neither in life
nor death. You may be born again. But when you emerge, this time you
emerge with the darkness of death between your eyes, as a lord of death.

The waves of dark consciousness surged in a huge billow, and broke. The
boy's eyes were wide open, and his voice was saying:

"Is that you, Tom!"

The sound of his voice paperily rustling these words was so surprising
to him that he instantly went dark again. He heard no answer.

But those surging dark waves pressed him again and again, and again his
eyes were open. They recognised nothing. Something was being done to him
on the outside of him. His own throat was moving. And life started again
with a sharp pain.

"What was it?"

The question sparked suddenly out of him. Someone was putting a metal
rim to his lips, there was liquid in his mouth. He put it out. He didn't
want to come back. His soul sank again like a dark stone.

And at the very bottom it took a command from the Lord of Death, and
rose slowly again.

Someone was tilting his head, and pouring a little water again. He
swallowed with a crackling noise and a crackling pain. One had to come
back. He recognised the command from his own Lord. His Lord was the Lord
of Death. And he, Jack, was dark-anointed and sent back. Returned with
the dark unction between his brows. So be it.

He saw green leaves hanging from a blue sky. It was still far off. And
the dark was still better. But the dark green leaves were also like a
triumphal banner. He tries to smile, but his face is stiff. The faintest
irony of a smile sets in its stiffness. He is forced to swallow again,
and know the pain and tearing. Ah! He suddenly realised the water was
good. He had not realised it the other times. He gulped suddenly,
everything forgotten. And his mind gave a sudden lurch towards
consciousness.

"Is that you, Tom?"

"Yes. Feel better?"

He saw the red mistiness of Tom's face near. Tom was faithful. And this
time his soul swayed, as if it too had drunk of the water of
faithfulness.

He drank the water from the metal cup, because he knew it came from
Tom's faithfulness.

Gradually Jack revived. But his burning bloodshot eyes were dilated with
fever, and he could not keep hold of his consciousness. He realised that
Tom was there, and Mary, and somebody he didn't for a long time
recognise as Lennie; and that there was a fire, and a smell of meat, and
night was again falling. Yes, he was sure night was falling. Or was it
his own consciousness going dark? He didn't know. Perhaps it was the
everlasting dark.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Sundown," said Tom. "Why?"

But he was gone again. It was no good trying to keep a hold on one's
consciousness. The ache, the nausea, the throbbing pain, the swollen
mouth, the strange feeling of cracks in his flesh, made him let go.

Tom was there and Mary. He would leave himself to Tom's faithfulness and
Mary's tenderness, and Lennie's watchful intuition. The mystery of death
was in that bit of deathless faithfulness which was in Tom. And Mary's
tenderness, and Lennie's intuitive care, both had a touch of the mystery
and stillness of the death that surrounds us darkly all the time.



II


They got Jack home, but he was very ill. His life would seem to come
back. Then it would sink away again like a stone, and they would think
he was going. The strange oscillation. Several times, Mary watched him
almost die. Then from the very brink of death, he would come back again,
with a strange, haunted look in his blood-shot eyes.

"What is it, Jack?" she would ask him. But the eyes only looked at her.

And Lennie, standing there silently watching, said:

"He's had about enough of life, that's what it is."

Mary, blanched with fear, went to find Tom.

"Tom," she said, "he's sinking again. Lennie says it's because he
doesn't want to live."

Tom silently threw down his tool, and walked with her into the house. It
was obvious he was sinking again.

"Jack!" said Tom in a queer voice, bending over him. "Mate! Mate!" He
seemed to be calling him into camp.

Jack's expressionless, fever-dilated, blood-shot eyes opened again. The
whites were almost scarlet.

"Y' aren't desertin' us, are y'?" said Tom, in a gloomy, reproachful
tone. "Are y' desertin' us, mate?"

It was the Australian, lost but unbroken on the edge of the wilderness,
looking with grim mouth into the void, and calling to his mate not to
leave him. Man for man, they were up against the great dilemma of white
men, on the edge of the white man's world, looking into the vaster,
alien world of the undawned era, and unable to enter, unable to leave
their own.

Jack looked at Tom and smiled faintly. In some subtle way, both men knew
the mysterious responsibilities of living. Tom was almost
fatalistic-reckless. Yet it was a recklessness which knew that the only
thing to do was to go ahead, meet death that way. He could see nothing
but meeting death ahead. But since he was a man, he would go ahead to
meet it, he would not sit and wait.

Jack smiled faintly, and the courage came back to him. He began to
rally.

The next morning, he turned to Mary and said:

"I still want Monica."

Mary dropped her head and did not answer. She recognised it as one of
the signs that he was going to live. And she recognised the unbending
obstinacy in his voice.

"I shall come for you too in time," he said to her, looking at her with
his terrible scarlet eyes.

She did not answer, but her hand trembled as she went for his medicine.
There was something prophetic and terrible in his sallow face and
burning, blood-shot eyes.

"Be still," she murmured to him. "Only be still."

"I shan't ever really drop you," he said to her. "But I want Monica
first. That's my way."

He seemed curiously victorious, making these assertions.



CHAPTER XXIII

GOLD


I


The boy Jack never rose from that fever. It was a man who got up again.
A man with all the boyishness cut away from him, all the childishness
gone, and a certain unbending recklessness in its place.

He was thin, and pale, and the cherubic look had left his face forever.
His cheeks were longer, leaner, and when he got back his brown-faced
strength again, he was handsome. Put it was not the handsomeness, any
more, that would make women like Aunt Matilda exclaim involuntarily:
"Dear boy!" They would look at him twice, but with misgiving, and a
slight recoil.

It was his eyes that had changed most. From being the warm, emotional
dark-blue eyes of a boy, they had become impenetrable, and had a certain
fixity. There was a touch of death in them, a little of the fixity and
changelessness of death. And with this, a peculiar power. As if he had
lost his softness in the otherworld of death, and brought back instead
some of the relentless power that belongs there. And the inevitable
touch of mockery.

As soon as he began to walk about, he was aware of the change. He walked
differently, he put his feet down differently, he carried himself
differently. The old drifting, diffident, careless bearing had left him.
He felt his uprightness hard, bony. Sometimes he was aware of the
skeleton of himself. He was a hard skeleton, built upon the solid bony
column of the back-bone, and pitched for balance on the great bones of
the hips. But the plumb-weight was in the cage of his chest. A skeleton!

But not the dead skeleton. The living bone, the living man of bone,
unyielding and imperishable. The bone of his forehead like iron against
the world, and the blade of his breast like an iron wedge held forward.
He was thin, and built of bone.

And inside this living, rigid man of bone, the dark heart heavy with its
wisdom and passions and emotions and its correspondences. It was living,
softly and intensely living. But heavy and dark, plumb to the earth's
center.

During his convalescence, he got used to this man of bone which he had
become, and accepted his own inevitable. His bones, his skeleton was
isolatedly itself. It had no contact. Except that it was forged in the
kingdom of death, to be durable and effectual. Some strange Lord had
forged his bones in the dark smithy where the dead and the unborn came
and went.

And this was his only permanent contact: the contact with the Lord who
had forged his bones, and put a dark heart in the midst.

But the other contacts, they ware alive and quivering in his flesh. His
passive but enduring affection for Tom and Lennie, and the strange
quiescent hold he held over Mary. Beyond these, the determined molten
stirring of his desire for Monica.

And the other desires. The desire in his heart for masterhood. Not
mastery. He didn't want to master anything. But to be the dark lord of
his own folk: that was a desire in his heart. And the concurrent
knowledge that, to achieve this, he must be master too of gold. Not gold
for the having's sake. Not for the spending's sake. Nor for the sake of
the power to hire services, which is the power of money. But the mastery
of gold, so that gold should no longer be like a yellow star to which
men hitched the wagon of their destinies. To be Master of Gold, in the
name of the dark Lord who had forged his bones neither of gold nor
silver nor iron, but of the white glisten of knife. Masterhood, as a man
forged by the Lord of Hosts, in the innermost fires of life and death.
Because, just as a red fire burning on the hearth is a fusion of death
into what was once live leaves, so the creation of man in the dark is a
fusion of life into death, with the life dominant.

The two are never separate, life and death. And in the vast dark kingdom
of afterwards, the Lord of Death is Lord of Life, and the God of life
and creation is Lord of Death.

But Jack knew his Lord as the Lord of Death. The rich, dark mystery of
death, which lies ahead, and the dark sumptuousness of the halls of
death. Unless Life moves on to the beauty of the darkness of death,
there is no life, there is only automatism. Unless we see the dark
splendour of death ahead, and travel to be lords of darkness at last,
peers in the realms of death, our life is nothing but a petulant,
pitiful backing, like a frightened horse, back, back to the stable, the
manger, the cradle. But onward ahead is the great porch of the entry
into death, with its columns of bone-ivory. And beyond the porch is the
heart of darkness, where the lords of death arrive home out of the
vulgarity of life, into their own dark and silent domains, lordly,
ruling the incipience of life.



II


At the trial Jack said, in absolute truth, he shot Easu in self-defence.
He had not the faintest thought of shooting him when he rode up to the
paddock: nor of shooting anybody. He had called in passing, just to say
good-day. And then he had fired at Easu because he knew the axe would
come down in his skull if he didn't.

Herbert gave the same deposition. The shot was entirely in self-defence.

So Jack was free again. There had been no further mention of Monica,
after Jack had said he was riding south to see her, because he had
always cared for her. No one hinted that Easu was the father of her
child, though Mrs. Ellis knew and Old George knew.

Afterwards Jack wondered why he had called at the Reds' place that
morning. Why had he taken the trail past where he and Easu had fought?
He had intended to see Easu, that was why. But for what unconscious
purpose, who shall say? The death was laid at the door of the old feud
between Jack and Red. Only Old George knew the whole, and he, subtle and
unafraid, pushed justice as it should go, according to his own sense of
justice, like a real Australian.

Meanwhile he had been corresponding with Monica and Percy. They were in
Albany, and on the point of sailing to Melbourne, where Percy would
enter some business or other, and the two would live as man and wife.
Monica was expecting another child. At this news, Mr. George wanted to
let them go, and be damned to them. But he talked to Mary, and Mary said
Jack would want Monica, no matter what happened.

"When he wants a thing really, he can't change," said Mary gloomily. "He
is like that."

"An obstinate young fool that's never had enough lickings," said Old
George. "Devil's blood of his mother's devil of an obstinate father. But
very well then, let him have her, with a couple of babies for a dowry.
Make himself the laughing stock of the colony."

So he wrote to Monica: "If you care about seeing Jack Grant again, you'd
better stop in this colony. He sticks to it he wants to see you, being
more of a fool than a knave, unlike many people in Western Australia."

She being obstinate like the rest, stayed on in Albany, though Percy,
angry and upset, sailed on to Melbourne. He said she could join him if
she liked. He stayed till her baby was born, then went because he didn't
want to face Jack.

Jack arrived by sea. He was still not strong enough to travel by land.
He got a vessel going to Adelaide, that touched at Albany.

Monica, thinner than ever, with a little baby in her arms, and her
flower-face like a chilled flower, was on the dock to meet him. He saw
her at once, and his heart gave a queer lurch.

As he came forward to meet her, their eyes met. Her yellow eyes looked
straight into his, with the same queer, panther-like scrutiny, and the
eternal question. She was a question, and she had got to be answered. It
made her fearless, almost shameless, whatever she did.

But with Percy, the fear had nipped her, the fear that she should go
forever unanswered, as if life had rejected her.

This nipped look and her strange yellow flare of question as she peered
at him under her brows, like a panther, made Jack's cheeks slowly
darken, and the life-blood flow into him stronger, heavier. He knew his
passion for her was the same. Thank God he met her at last.

"You're awfully thin," she said.

"So are you," he answered.

And she laughed her quick, queer, breathless little laugh, showing her
pointed teeth. She had seen the death-look in his eyes and it was her
answer, a bitter answer enough. She stopped to put straight the tiny
bonnet over her little baby's face, with a delicate, remote movement. He
watched her in silence.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked him, without looking at him.

"With you," he said.

Then she looked at him again, with the dry-eyed question. But she saw
the unapproachable death-look there in his eyes, at the back of their
dark-blue, dilated emotion and passion. And her heart gave up. She
looked down the pier, as if to walk away. He carried his own bag. They
set off side by side.

She lived in a tiny slab cottage in a side lane. But she called first at
a neighbour's house, for her other child. It was a tiny, toddling thing
with a defiant stare in its pale-blue eyes. Monica held her baby on one
arm, and led this tottering child by the other. Jack walked at her side
in silence.

The cottage had just two rooms, poorly furnished. But it was clean, and
had bright cotton curtains and a sofa-bed, and a pale-blue convolvulus
vine mingling with a passion vine over the window.

She laid the baby down in its cradle, and began to take off the bonnet
of the little girl. She had called it Jane.

Jack watched the little Jane as if fascinated. The infant had curly
reddish hair, of a lovely fine texture and a beautiful tint, something
like raw silk with threads of red. Her eyes were round and bright blue,
and rather defiant, and she had the delicate complexion of her kind. She
fingered her mother's brooch, like a little monkey touching a bit of
glittering gold, as Monica stooped to her.

"Daddy gone!" she said in her chirping, bird-like, quite emotionless
tone.

"Yes, Daddy gone!" replied Monica, as emotionlessly.

The child then glanced with unmoved curiosity at Jack. She kept on
looking and looking at him, sideways. And he watched her just as
sharply, her sharp, pale-blue eyes.

"Him more Daddy?" she asked.

"I don't know," replied Monica, who was suckling her baby.

"Yes," said Jack in a rather hard tone, smiling with a touch of mockery.
"I'm your new father."

The child smiled back at him a faint, mocking little grin, and put her
finger in her mouth.

The day passed slowly in the strange place, Monica busy all the time
with the children and the house. Poor Monica, she was already a drudge.
She was still careless and hasty in her methods, but clean, and
uncomplaining. She kept herself to herself, and did what she had to do.
And Jack watched, mostly silent.

At last the lamp was lighted, the children were both in bed. Monica
cooked a little supper over the fire.

Before he came to the fable, Jack asked:

"Is Jane Easu's child?"

"I thought you knew," she said.

"No one has told me. Is she?"

Monica turned and faced him, with the yellow flare in her eyes, as she
looked into his eyes, challenging.

"Yes," she said.

But his eyes did not change. The remoteness at the back of them did not
come any nearer.

"Shall you hate her?" she asked, rather breathlessly.

"I don't know," he said slowly.

"Don't!" she pleaded, in the same breathlessness. "Because I rather hate
her."

"She's too little to hate," said Jack.

"I know," said Monica rather doubtfully.

She put the food on the table. But she herself ate nothing.

"Aren't you well? You don't eat," he asked.

"I can't eat just now," she said.

"If you have a child to suckle, you should," he replied.

But she only became more silent, and her hands hung dead in her lap.
Then the baby began to cry, a thin, poor, frail noise, and she went to
soothe it.

When she came back, Jack had left the table and was sitting in Percy's
wooden arm-chair.

"Percy's child doesn't seem to have much life in it," he said.

"Not very much," she replied. And her hands trembled as she cleared away
the dishes.

When she had finished, she moved about, afraid to sit down. He called
her to him.

"Monica!" he said with a little jerk of his head, meaning she should
come to him.

She came rather slowly, her queer, pure-seeming face looking like a
hurt. She stood with her thin hands hanging in front of her apron.

"Monica!" he said, rising and taking her hands. "I should still want you
if you had a hundred children. So we won't say any more about that. And
you won't oppose me when there's anything I want to do, will you?"

She shook her head.

"No, I won't oppose you," she said, in a dead little voice.

"Let me come to you, then," he said. "I should have to come to you if
you went to Melbourne or all round the world.' And I should be glad to
come," he added whimsically, with the warmth of his old smile coming
into his eyes. "I suppose I should be glad to come, if it was in hell."

"But it isn't hell, is it?" she asked, wistfully and a little defiantly.

"Not a bit," he said. "You've got too much pluck in you to spoil. You're
as good to me as you were the first time I knew you. Only Easu might
have spoiled you."

"And you killed him," she said quickly, half in reproach.

"Would you rather he'd killed me?" he asked.

She looked a long time into his eyes, with that watchful, searching look
that used to hurt him. Now it hurt him no more.

She shook her head, saying:

"I'm glad you killed him. I couldn't bear to think of him living on, and
sneering--sneering!--I was always in love with you, really."

"Ah, Monica!" he exclaimed softly, teasingly, with a little smile. And
she flushed, and flashed with anger.

"If you never knew, it was your own fault!" she jerked out.

"_Really_," he said, quoting and echoing the word as she had said it,
and smiling with a touch of raillery at her, before he added:

"You always loved me really, but you loved the others as well,
unreally."

"Yes," she said, baffled, defiant.

"All right, that day is over. You've had your unreal loves. Now come and
have your real one."

In the next room Easu's child was sleeping in its odd little way, a
sleep that was neither innocent nor not innocent, queer and naively
"knowing," even in its sleep. Jack watched it as he took off his things:
this little inheritance he had from Easu. An odd little thing. With an
odd, loveless little spirit of its own, cut off and not daunted. He
wouldn't love it, because it wasn't lovable. But its odd little
dauntlessness and defiance amused him, he would see it had fair play.

And he took Monica in his arms, glad to get into grips with his own fate
again. And it was good. It was better, perhaps, than his passionate
desirings of earlier days had imagined. Because he didn't lose and
scatter himself. He gathered, like a reaper at harvest gathering.

And Monica, who woke for her baby, looked at him as he slept soundly and
she sat in bed suckling her child. She saw in him the eternal stranger.
There he was, the eternal stranger, lying in her bed sleeping at her
side. She rocked her baby slightly as she sat up in the night, still
rocking in the last throes of rebellion. The eternal stranger, whom she
feared, because she could never finally possess him, and never finally
know him! He would never _belong_ to her. This had made her rebel so
terribly against the thought of him. Because she would have to belong to
_him._ Now he had arrived again before her like a doom, a doom she still
fought against, but could no longer withstand. Because the emptiness of
the other men, Easu, Percy, all the men she knew, was worse than the
doom of this man who would never give her his ultimate intimacy, but who
would be able to hold her till the end of time. There was something
enduring and changeless in him. But she would never hold _him_ entirely.
Never! She would have to resign herself to this.

Well, so be it. At least it relieved her of the burden of responsibility
for life. It took away from her, her own strange and fascinating female
power, which she couldn't bear to part with. But at the same time she
felt saved, because her own power frightened her, having brought her to
a brink of nothingness that was like madness. The nothingness that
fronted her with Percy was worse than submitting to this man beside her.
After all, this man was magical.

She put her child in its cradle, and returning waked the man. He put out
his hand quickly for her, as if she were a new, blind discovery. She
quivered and thrilled, and left it to him. It was his mystery, since he
would have it so.



III


They were married in Albany, and stayed there another month waiting for
a ship. Then they sailed away, all the family, away to the North-West.
They did not go to Perth: they did not go to Wandoo. Only Jack saw Mr.
George in Fremantle, and waved to him Good-bye as the ship proceeded
North.

Then came two months of wandering, a pretty business with a baby and a
toddling infant. The second month, Percy's baby suddenly died in the
heat, and Monica hardly mourned for it. As Jack looked at its pinched
little dead face, he said: _You are better dead._ And that was true.

The little Jane, however, showed no signs of dying. The knocking about
seemed to suit her. Monica remained very thin. It was a sort of
hell-life to her, this struggling from place to place in the heat and
dust, no water to wash in, sleeping anywhere like a lost dog, eating the
food that came. Because she loved to be clean and good-looking and in
graceful surroundings. What fiend of hell had ordained that she must be
a sort of tramp-woman in the back of beyond?

She did not know, so it was no good asking. Jack seemed to know what he
wanted. And she was his woman, fated to him. There was no more to it.
Through the purgatory of discomfort she had to go. And he was good to
her, thoughtful for her, in material things. But at the centre of his
soul he was not thoughtful for her. He just possessed her, mysteriously
owned her, and went ahead with his own obsessions.

Sometimes she tried to rebel. Sometimes she wanted to refuse to go any
further, to refuse to be a party to his will. But then he suddenly
looked so angry, and so remote, looked at her with such far-off, cold,
haughty eyes, that she was frightened. She was afraid he would abandon
her, or ship her back to Perth, and put her out of his life forever.

Above all things, she didn't want to be shipped back to Perth. Here in
the wild she could have taken up with another man. She knew that. But
she knew that if she did, Jack would just put her out of his life
altogether. There would be no return. His passion for her would just
take the form of excluding her forever from his being. Because passion
can so reverse itself, and from being a great desire that draws the
beloved towards itself, it can become an eternal revulsion, excluding
the once-beloved forever from any contact at all.

Monica knew this. And whenever she tried to oppose him, and the deathly
anger rose in him, she was pierced with a fear so acute she had to hold
on to some support, to prevent herself sinking to the ground. It was a
strange fear, as if she were going to be cast out of the land of the
living, among the unliving that slink like pariahs outside.

Afterwards she was puzzled. Why had he got this power over her? Why
couldn't she be a free woman, to go where she chose, and be a complete
thing in herself?

She caught at the idea. But it was no good. When he went away
prospecting for a week or more at a time, she would struggle to regain
her woman's freedom. And it would seem to her as if she had got it: she
was free of him again. She was a free being, by herself.

But then, when he came back, tired, sunburnt, ragged, and still
unsuccessful: and when he looked at her with desire in his eyes, the
living desire for her; she was so glad, suddenly, as if she had
forgotten, or as if she had never known what his desire of her meant to
her. She was so glad, she was weak with gladness instead of fear. And
if, in perverseness, she still tried to oppose him, in the light of her
supposedly regained freedom; and she saw the strange glow of desire for
her go out of his eyes, and the strange loveliness, to her, of his
wanting to have her near, in the room, giving him his meal or sitting
near him outside in the shade of the evening; then, when his face
changed, and took on the curious look of aloofness, as if he glistened
with anger looking down on her from a long way off; then she felt all
her own world turn to smoke, and her own will mysteriously evaporated,
leaving her only wanting to be wanted again, back in his world. Her
freedom was worth less than nothing.

Still often, when he was gone, leaving her alone in the little cabin,
she was glad. She was free to spread her own woman's aura round her, she
was free to delight in her own woman's idleness and whimsicality, free
to amuse herself half teasing, half loving that little odd female of a
Jane. And sometimes she would go to the cabins of other women, and
gossip. And sometimes she would flirt with a young miner or prospector
who seemed handsome. And she would get back her young, gay liveliness
and freedom.

But when the man she flirted with wanted to kiss her, or put his arm
round her waist, she found it made her go cold and savagely hostile. It
was not as in the old days, when it gave her a thrill to be seized and
kissed, whether by Easu, by Percy or Jack, or whatever man it was she
was flirting with. Then, there had been a spark between her and many a
man. But now, alas, the spark wouldn't fly. The man might be ever so
good-looking and likeable, yet when he touched her, instead of the spark
flying from her to him, immediately all the spark went dead in her. And
this left her so angry, she could kill herself, or so wretched, she
couldn't even cry.

That little goggle-eyed imp of a Jane, in spite of her one solitary year
of age, seemed somehow to divine what was happening inside her mother's
breast, and she seemed to chuckle wickedly. Monica always felt that the
brat knew, and that she took Jack's side.

Jane always wanted Jack to come back. When he was away, she would toddle
about on her own little affairs, curiously complacent and impervious to
outer influences. But if she heard a horse coming up to the hut, she was
at the door in a flash. And Monica saw with a pang, how steadily intent
the brat was on the man's return. Somehow, from Jane, Monica knew that
Jack would go with other women. Because of the spark that flashed to him
from that brat of a baby of Easu's.

And at evening, Jane hated going to bed if Jack hadn't come home. She
would be a real little hell-monkey. It was as if she felt the house
wasn't safe, wasn't real, till he had come in.

Which annoyed Monica exceedingly. Why wasn't the mother enough for the
child?

But she wasn't. And when Jane was in bed, Monica would take up the
uneasiness of the manless house. She would sit like a cat shut up in a
strange room, unable to settle, unable really to rest, and hating the
night for having come and surprised her in her empty loneliness. Her
loneliness might be really enjoyable during the day. But after nightfall
it was empty, sterile, a mere oppression to her. She wished he would
come home, if only so that she could hate him.

And she felt a flash of joy when she heard his footstep on the stones
outside, even if the flash served only to kindle a great resentment
against him. And he would come in, with his burnt, half-seeing face,
unsuccessful, worn, silent, yet not uncheerful. And he spoke his few
rather low words, from his chest, asking her something. And she knew he
had come back to her. But where from, and what from, she would never
know entirely.

She had always known where Percy had been, and what he had been doing.
She felt she would always have known, with Easu. But with Jack she never
knew. And sometimes this infuriated her. But it was no good. He would
tell her anything she asked. And then she felt there was something she
couldn't ask about.

The months went by. He staked his claim, and worked like a navvy. He was
a navvy, nothing but a navvy. And she was a navvy's wife, in a hut of
one room, in a desert of heat and sand and grey-coloured bush, sleeping
on a piece of canvas stretched on a low trestle, eating on a tin plate,
eating sand by the mouthful when the wind blew. Percy's baby was dead
and buried in the sand: another sop to the avid country. And she herself
was with child again, and thin as a rat. But it was his child this time,
so she had a certain savage satisfaction in it.

He went on working at his claim. It was now more than a year he had
spent at this game of looking for gold, and he had hardly found a cent's
worth. They were very poor, in debt to the keeper of the store. But
everybody had a queer respect for Jack. They dared not be very familiar
with him, but they didn't resent him. He had a good aura. The other men
might jeer sometimes at his frank but unapproachable aloofness, his
subtle delicacy, and his simple sort of pride. Yet when he was spoken
to, his answer was so much in the spirit of the question, so frank, that
you couldn't resent him. In ordinary things he was gay and completely
one of themselves. The self that was beyond them he never let intrude.
Hence their curious respect for him.

Because there was something unordinary in him. The biggest part of
himself he kept entirely to himself, and a curious sombre steadfastness
inside him made shifty men uneasy with him. He could never completely
mix in, in the vulgar way, with men. He would take a drink with the
rest, and laugh and talk half an hour away. Even get a bit tipsy and
talk rather brilliantly. But always, always at the back of his eyes was
this sombre aloofness, that could never come forward and meet and
mingle, but held back, apart, waiting.

They called him, after his father, the General. But never was a General
with so small an army at his command. He was playing a lone hand. The
mate he was working with suddenly chucked up the job, and travelled
away, and the General went on alone. He moved about the camp at his
ease. When he sat in the bar drinking his beer with the other men, he
was really alone, and they knew it. But he had a good aura, so they felt
a certain real respect for his loneliness. And when he was there, they
talked and behaved as if in the aura of a certain blood-purity, although
he was in rags, for Monica hated sewing and couldn't bear, simply
couldn't bear, to mend his old shirts and trousers. And there was no
money to buy new.

He held on. He did not get depressed or melancholy. When he got
absolutely stumped, he went away and did hired work for a spell. Then he
came back to the goldfield. He was now nothing but a miner. The miner's
instinct had developed in him. He had to wait for his instinct to
perfect itself. He knew that. He knew he was not a man to be favoured by
blind luck. Whatever he won, he must win by mystic conquest.

If he wanted gold he must master it in the veins of the earth. He knew
this. And for this reason he gave way neither to melancholy nor to
impatience. "If I can't win," he said to himself, "it's because I'm not
master of the thing I'm up against."

"If I can't win, I'll die fighting," he said to himself. "But in the end
I will win."

There was nothing to do but to fight, and fight on. This was his creed.
And a fighter has no use for melancholy and impatience.

He saw the fight his boyhood had been, against his Aunts, and school and
college. He didn't want to be made _quite_ tame, and they had wanted to
tame him, like all the rest. His father was a good man and a good
soldier: but a tame one. He himself was not a soldier, nor even a good
man. But also he was not tame. Not a tame dog, like all the rest.

For this reason he had come to Australia, away from the welter of
vicious tameness. For tame dogs are far more vicious than wild ones.
Only they can be brought to heel.

In Australia, a new sort of fight. A fight with tame dogs that were
playing wild. Easu was a tame dog, playing the wolf in a mongrel,
back-biting way. Tame dogs escaped and became licentious. That was
Australia. He knew that.

But they were not all quite tame. Tom, the safe Tom, had salt of wild
savour still in his blood. And Lennie had his wild streak. So had
Monica. So, somewhere had the _à terre_ Mary. Some odd freakish
wildness of the splendid, powerful, wild old English blood.

Jack had escaped the tamers: they couldn't touch him now. He had escaped
the insidious tameness, the slight degeneracy, of Wandoo. He had learned
the tricks of the escaped tame dogs who played at licentiousness. And he
had mastered Monica, who had wanted to be a domestic bitch playing wild.
He had captured her wildness, to mate his own wildness.

It was no good playing wild. If he had any real wildness in him, it was
dark, and wary, and collected, self-responsible, and of unbreakable
steadfastness: like the wildness of a wolf or a fox, that knows it will
die if it is caught.

If you had a tang of the old wildness in you, you ran with the most
intense wariness, knowing that the good tame dogs are really turning
into licentious, vicious tame dogs. The vicious tame dogs, pretending to
be wild, hate the real clean wildness of an unbroken thing much more
than do the respectable tame people.

No, if you refuse to be tamed, you have to be most wary, most subtle, on
your guard all the time. You can't afford to be licentious. If you are,
you will die in the trap. For the world is a great trap set wide for the
unwary.

Jack had learned all these things. He refused to be tamed. He knew that
the dark kingdom of death ahead had no room for tame dogs. They merely
were put into the earth as carrion. Only the wild, untamed souls walked
on after death over the border into the porch of death, to be lords of
death and masters of the next living. This he knew. The tame dogs were
put into the earth as carrion, like Easu and Percy's poor little baby,
and Jacob Ellis. He often wondered if that courageous old witch-cat of a
Gran had slipped into the halls of death, to be one of the ladies of the
dark. The lords of death, and the ladies of the dark! He would take his
own Monica over the border when she died. She would sit unbroken, a
quiet, fearless bride in the dark chambers of the dead, the dead who
order the goings of the next living.

That was the goal of the afterwards, that he had at the back of his
eyes. But meanwhile here on earth he had to win. He had to make room
again on earth for those who are not unbroken, those who are not tamed
to carrion. Some place for those who know the dark mystery of being
royal in death (so that they can enact the shadow of their own royalty
on earth). Some place for the souls that are in themselves dark and have
some of the sumptuousness of proud death, no matter what their fathers
were. Jack's father was tame, as kings and dukes to-day are almost
mongrelly tame. But Jack was not tame. And Easu's weird baby was not
tame. She had some of the eternal fearlessness of the aristocrat whose
bones are pure. But a weird sort of aristocrat.

Jack wanted to make a place on earth for a few aristocrats-to-the-bone.
He wanted to conquer the world.

And first he must conquer gold. As things are, only the tame go out and
conquer gold, and make a lucrative tameness. The untamed forfeit their
gold.

"I must conquer gold!" said Jack to himself. "I must open the veins of
the earth and bleed the power of gold into my own veins, for the
fulfilling of the aristocrats-of-the-bone. I must bring the great stream
of gold flowing in another direction, away from the veins of the tame
ones, into the veins of the lords of death. I must start the river of
the wealth of the world rolling in a new course, down the sombre, quiet,
proud valleys of the lords of death and the ladies of the dark, the
aristocrats of the afterwards."

So he talked to himself, as he wandered alone in his search, or sat on
the bench with a pot of beer, or stepped into Monica's hot little hut.
And when he failed he knew it was because he had not fought intensely
enough, and subtly enough.

The bad food, the climate, the hard life gave him a sort of fever and an
eczema. But it was no matter. That was only the pulp of him paying the
penalty. The powerful skeleton he was, was powerful as ever. The pulp of
him, his belly, his heart, his muscle seemed not to be able to affect
his strength, or at least his power, for more than a short time.
Sometimes he broke down. Then he would think what he could do with
himself, do for himself, for his flesh and blood. And what he _could_
do, he would do. And when he could do no more, he would go and lie down
in the mine, or hide in some shade, lying on the earth, alone, away from
anything human. Till the earth itself gave him back his power. Till the
powerful living skeleton of him resumed its sway and serenity and fierce
power.

He knew he was winning, winning slowly, even in his fight with the
earth, his fight for gold. It was on the cards he might die before his
victory. Then it would be death, he would have to accept it. He would
have to go into death, and leave Monica and Jane and the coming baby to
fate.

Meanwhile he would fight, and fight on. The baby was near, there was no
money. He had to stay and watch Monica. She, poor thing, went to bed
with twins, two boys. There was nothing hardly left of her. He had to
give up everything, even his thoughts, and bend his whole life to her,
to help her through, and save her and the two quite healthy baby boys.
For a month he was doctor and nurse and housewife and husband, and he
gave himself absolutely to the work, without a moment's failing. Poor
Monica, when she couldn't bear herself, he held her hips together with
his arm, and she clung to his neck for life.

This time he almost gave up. He almost decided to go and hire himself
out to steady work, to keep her and the babies in peace and safety. To
be a hired workman for the rest of his days.

And as he sat with his eyes dark and unchanging, ready to accept this
fate, since this his fate must be, came a letter from Mr. George with an
enclosure from England, and a cheque for fifty pounds, a legacy from one
of the Aunts, who had so benevolently died at the right moment. He
decided his dark Lord did not intend him to go and hire himself out for
life, as a hired labourer. He decided Monica and the babies did not want
the peace and safety of a hired labourer's cottage. Perhaps better die
and be buried in the sand, and leave their skeletons like white
messengers in the ground of this Australia.

So he went back to his working. And three days later struck gold, so
that there was gold on his pick-point. He was alone, and he refused at
first to get excited. But his trained instinct knew that it was a rich
lode. He worked along the van, and felt the rich weight of the
yellow-streaked stuff he fetched out. The light-coloured softish stuff.
He sat looking at it in his hand, and the glint of it in the dark
earth-rock of the mine, in the light of the lamp. And his bowels leaped
in him, knowing that the white gods of tameness would wilt and perish as
the pale gold flowed out of their veins.

There would be a place on earth for the lords of death. His own Lord had
at last spoken.

Jack sent quickly for Lennie to come and work with him. For Lennie, with
a wife and a child, was struggling vary hard.

Lea and Tom both came. Jack had not expected Tom. But Tom lifted his
brown eyes to Jack and said:

"I sortta felt I couldn't stand even Len being mates with you, an' me
not there. I was your first mate. Jack. I've never been myself since I
parted with you."

"All right," laughed Jack. "You're my first mate."

"That's what I am. General," said Tom.

Jack had showed Monica some of the ore, and told her the mine seemed to
be turning out fairly. She was getting back her own strength, that those
two monstrous young twins had almost robbed from her entirely. Jack was
very careful of her. He wanted above all things that she should become
really strong again.

And she, with her rare vitality, soon began to bloom once more. And as
her strength came back she was very much taken up with her babies. These
were the first she had enjoyed. The other two she had never really
enjoyed. But with these she was as fussy as a young cat with her
kittens. She almost forgot Jack entirely. Left him to be busy with Tom
and Lennie and his mine. Even the gold failed to excite her.

And she had rather a triumph. She was able to be queenly again with Tom
and Lennie. As a girl, she had always been a bit queenly with the rest
of them at Wandoo. And she couldn't bear to be humiliated in their eyes.

Now she needn't. She had the General for her husband, she had his twins.
And he had gold in his mine. Hadn't she a perfect right to be queenly
with Tom and Lennie? She even got into the habit, right at the
beginning, of speaking of Jack as "the General" to them.

"Where's the General? Didn't he come down with you?" she would snap at
them, in her old sparky fashion.

"He's reviewing his troops," Lennie sarcastically answered.

Whereupon Jack appeared in the door, still in rags. And it was Lennie
who mended his shirt for him, when it was torn on the shoulder and
showed the smooth man underneath. Monica still couldn't bring herself to
these fiddling bothering jobs.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE OFFER TO MARY


I


They worked for months at the mine, and still it turned out richly.
Though they kept as quiet as possible, the fame spread. They had a
bonanza. They were all three going to be rich, and Jack was going to be
very rich. In the light of his luck, he was "the General" to everybody.

And in the midst of this flow of fortune, came another, rather comical
windfall. Again the news was forwarded by Mr. George, along with a word
of congratulation from that gentleman. The forwarded letter read:


"Dear Sir,

This come hopping to find you well as it leaves me at prisent thanks be
to almity God. You dear uncle Passed Away peaceful on Satterday nite And
though it be not my place to tell you of it I am Grateful to have the
oppertunity to offer my umble Respecs before the lord and Perlice I take
up my pen with pleashr to inform you that He passed without Pain and
even Drafts as he aloud the umberrela to be put down and the Book read.

The 24 salm and I kep the ink and paper by to rite of his sudden dismiss
but he lingered long years after the bote wint so was onable to Inform
you before he desist the doctor rote a butiful certicket of death saying
he did of sensible decay but I don no how he brote himself to rite it as
the pore master was wite as driven snow and no blemish. And being his
most umble and Dutiful servants we could not ave brout ourself to hever
ave rote as he was sensible Pecos god knows the pore sole was not. Be
that as it may we burned him proud under the prisent arrangements of
town councel the clerk who was prisent xpects the docters will he mad up
the nite you was hear in the cimetary and pending your Return Holds It
In Bond as Being rite for us we are Yor Respectable servants to Oblige
Hand Commend.

Emma and Amos Lewis."


Jack and Tom roared with laughter over this epistle, that brought back
so vividly the famous trip up North.

"Gloryanna, General, you've got your property at Coney Hatch all right,"
said Tom.

There was a letter from Mr. George saying that the defunct John Grant
was the son of Jack's mother's eldest sister, that he had been liable
all his life to bouts of temporary insanity, but that in a period of
sanity he had signed the will drawn up by Doctor Rackett, when the two
boys called at the place several years before, and that the will had
been approved. So that Jack, as legal heir and nearest male relative,
could now come down and take possession of the farm.

"I don't want that dismal place," said Jack. "Let it go to the Crown.
I've no need of it now."

"Don't be a silly cuckoo!" said Tom. "You saw it of a wet night with
Ally Sloper in bed under a green cart umbrella. Go an' look at it of a
fine day. An' then if you don't want it, sell it or lease it, but don't
let the Crown rake it in."

So in about a fortnight's time Jack rather reluctantly left the mine,
with its growing heaps of refuse, and departed from the mining
settlement which had become a sort of voluntary prison for him, and went
west to Perth. He was already a rich man and notorious in the colony. He
rode with two pistols in his belt, and that unchanging aloof look on his
face. But he carried himself with pride, rode a good horse, wore
well-made riding breeches and a fine bandanna handkerchief loose round
his neck, and looked, with a silver studded band round his broad felt
hat, a mixture of gold miner, a gentleman settler, and a bandit chief.
Perhaps he felt a mixture of them all.

Mr. George received him with a great welcome. And Jack was pleased to
see the old man. But he refused absolutely to go to the club or to the
Government House, or to meet any of the responsible people of the town.

"I don't want to see them, Mr. George. I don't want to see them."

And poor Old George, his nose a bit out of joint, had to submit to
leaving Jack alone.

Jack had his old room in Mr. George's house. The Good Plain Cook was
still going. And Aunt Matilda, rather older, stouter, with more lines in
her face, came to tea with Mary and Miss Blessington. Mary had not
married Mr. Blessington. But she had remained friends with the odd
daughter, who was now a self-contained young woman, shy, thin,
well-bred, and delicate. Mr. Blessington had not married again. In Aunt
Matilda's opinion, he was still waiting for Mary. And Mary had refused
Tom's rather doubtful offer. Tom was still nervous about Honeysuckle. So
there they all were.

When Jack shook hands with Mary, he had a slight shock. He had forgotten
her. She had gone out of his consciousness. But when she looked up at
him with her dark, clear, waiting eyes, as if she had been watching and
waiting for him afar off, his heart gave a queer dizzy lurch. He had
forgotten her. They say the heart has a short memory. But now, as a dark
hotness gathered in his heart, he realised that his blood had not
forgotten her. He had only forgotten her with his head. His blood, with
its strange submissiveness and its strange unawareness of time, had kept
her just the same.

The blood has an eternal memory. It neither forgets nor moves on ahead.
But it is quiescent and submits to the mind's oversway.

He had a certain blood-connection with Mary. He had utterly forgotten
it, in the stress and rage of other things. And now, the moment she
lifted her eyes to him, and he saw her dusky, quiet, heavy permanent
face, the dull heat started in his breast again, and he remembered how
he had told her he would come for her again.

Since his twins were born and he had been so busy with the mine, and he
had Monica, he had not given any thought to women. But the moment he saw
Mary and met her eyes, the dark thought struck home in him again: I want
Mary for my other woman. He didn't want to displace Monica. Monica was
Monica. But he wanted this other woman too.

Aunt Matilda dear-boyed him more than ever. But now he was not a dear
boy, he didn't feel a dear boy, and she was put out.

"Dear boy! and how does Monica stand that drying climate?"

"She is quite well again, Marm."

"Poor child! Poor child! I hope you will bring her into a suitable home
here in Perth, and have the children suitably brought up. It is so
fortunate for you your mine is so successful. Now you can build a home
here by the river, among us all, and be charming company for us, like
your dear father."

Mary was watching him with black eyes, and Miss Blessington with her
wide, quick, round, dark-grey eyes. There was a frail beauty about that
odd young woman; frail, highly-bred, sensitive, with an uncanny
intelligence.

"No, Marm," said Jack cheerfully. "I shall not come and live in Perth."

"Dear boy, of course you will! You won't forsake us and take your money
and your family and your attractive self far away to England? No, don't
do that. It is just what your dear father did. Robbed us of one of our
sweetest girls, and never came back."

"No, I shan't go to England either," smiled Jack.

"Then what will you do?"

"Stay at the mine for the time being."

"Oh, but the mine won't last forever. And dear boy, don't waste your
talents and your charm mining, when it is no longer necessary! Oh, do
come down to Perth, and bring your family. Mary is pining to see your
twins: and dear Monica. Of course we all are."

Jack smiled to himself. He would no longer give in a hair's breadth to
any of these dreary world-people.

"À la bonne heure!" he said, using one of his mother's well-worn tags.
But then his mother could rattle bad colloquial French, and he couldn't.

Mary asked him many questions about the mine and Monica, and Hilda
Blessington listened with lowered head, only occasionally fixing him
with queer searching eyes, like some odd creature not quite human. Jack
was something of a hero. And he was pleased. He wanted to be a hero.

But he was no hero any more for Aunt Matilda. Now that the cherub look
had gone forever, and the shy, blushing, blurting boy had turned into a
hard-boned, healthy young man, with a half haughty aloofness and a
little reckless smile that made you feel uncomfortable, she was driven
to venting some venom on him.

"That is the worst of the colonies," she said from her bluish powdered
face. "Our most charming, cultured young men go out to the back of
beyond, and they come home quite--quite--"

"Quite what, Marm?"

"Why I was going to say uncouth, but that's perhaps a little strong."

"I should say not at all," he answered. He disliked the old lady, and
enjoyed baiting her. Great stout old hen, she had played
cock-o'-the-walk long enough.

"How many children have you got out there?" she suddenly asked, rudely.

"We have only the twins of my own," he answered. "But of course there is
Jane."

"Jane! Jane! Which is Jane?"

"Jane is Easu's child. Monica's first."

Everybody started. It was as if a bomb had been dropped in the room.
Miss Blessington coloured to the roots of her fleecy brown hair. Mary
studied her fingers, and Aunt Matilda sat in a Queen Victoria statue
pose, outraged.

"What is she like?" asked Mary softly, looking up.

"Who, Jane? She's a funny little urchin. I'm fond of her. I believe
she'd always stand by me."

Mary looked at him. It was a curious thing to say.

"Is that how you think of people--whether they would always stand by you
or not?" she asked softly.

"I suppose it is," he laughed. "Courage is the first quality in life,
don't you think? And fidelity the next."

"Fidelity?" asked Mary.

"Oh, I don't mean automatic fidelity. I mean faithful to the living
spark," he replied a little hastily.

"Don't you try to be too much of a spark, young man," snapped Aunt
Matilda, arousing from her statuesque offence in order to let nothing
pass by her.

"I promise you I won't try," he laughed.

Mary glanced at him quickly--then down at her fingers.

"I think fidelity is a great problem," she said softly.

"Pray, why?" bounced Aunt Matilda. "You give your word, and you stick to
it."

"Oh, it's not just simple word-faithfulness, Mrs. Watson," said Jack. He
had Mary in mind.

"Well, I suppose I have still to live and learn," said Aunt Matilda.

"What's that you have still to live and learn, Matilda?" said Mr.
George, coming in again with papers.

"This young man is teaching me lessons about life. Courage is the first
quality in life, if you please."

"Well, why not?" said Old George amiably. "I like spunk myself."

"Courage to do the _right thing!_" said Aunt Matilda.

"And who's going to decide which is the right thing?" asked the old man,
teasing her.

"There's no question of it," said Aunt Matilda.

"Well," said the old lawyer, rubbing his head, "there often is, my dear
woman, a very big question!"

"And fidelity is the second virtue," said Mary, looking up at him with
trustful eyes, enquiringly.

"A man's no good unless he can keep faith," said the old man.

"But what is it one must remain faithful to?" came the quiet cool voice
of Hilda Blessington.

"Do you know what old Gran Ellis said?" asked Jack. "She said a man's
own true self is God in him. She was a queer old bird."

"His _true_ self," said Aunt Matilda. "His true self! And I should say
old Mrs. Ellis was a doubtful guide to young people, judging from her
own family."

"She made a great impression on me, Marm," said Jack politely.

Mr. George had brought the papers referring to the new property. Jack
read various documents, rather absently. Then the title deeds. Then he
studied a fascinating little green-and-red map, "delineating and setting
forth," with "easements and encumbrances," whatever they were. There was
a bank-book showing a balance of four hundred pounds nineteen shillings
and sixpence, in the West Australian Bank.

Jack told about his visit to Grant Farm, and the man under the umbrella.
They all laughed.

"The poor fellow had a bad start," said Mr. George. "But he was a good
farmer and a good business man, in his right times. Oh, he knew who he
was leaving the place to, when Rackett drew up that will."

"Gran Ellis told me about him," said Jack. "She told me about all the
old people. She told me about my mother's old sister. And she told me
about the father of this crazy man as well, but--"

Mr. George was looking at him coldly and fiercely.

"The poor fellow's father," said the old man, "was an Englishman who
thought himself a swell, but wasn't too much of a high-born gentleman to
abandon a decent girl and go round to the east side and marry another
woman, and flaunt round in society with women he hadn't married."

Jack remembered. It was Mary's father: seventh son of old Lord Haworth.
What a mix-up! How bitter Old George sounded!

"It seems to have been a mighty mix-up out hare, fifty years ago, sir,"
he said mildly.

"It was a mix-up then--and is a mix-up now."

"I suppose," said Jack, "if the villain of a gentleman had never
abandoned my Aunt--I can't think of her as an Aunt--he'd never have gone
to Sydney, and his children that he had there would never have been
born."

"I suppose not," said Mr. George drily. But he started a little and
involuntarily looked at Mary.

"Do you think it would have been better if they had never been born?"
Jack asked pertinently.

"I don't set up to judge," said the old man.

"Does Mrs. Watson?"

"I certainly think it would be better," said Mrs. Watson, "if that poor
half-idiot cousin of yours had never been born."

"I've got Gran Ellis on my mind," said Jack. "She was funny, what she
condemned and what she didn't. I used to think she was an old terror.
But I can understand her better now. She was a wise woman, seems to me."

"Indeed!" said Aunt Matilda. "I never put her and wisdom together."

"Yes, she was wise. I can see now. She knew that sins are as vital a
part of life as virtues, and she stuck up for the sins that are
necessary to life."

"What's the matter with you, Jack Grant, that you go and start
moralising?" said Old George.

"Why sir, it must be that my own sinful state is dawning on my mind,"
said Jack, "and I'm wondering whether to take Mrs. Watson's advice and
repent and weep, etc., etc. Or whether to follow old Gran Ellis' lead,
and put a sinful feather in my cap."

"Well," said Old George, smiling, "I don't know. You talk about courage
and fidelity. Sin usually means doing something rather cowardly, and
breaking your faith in some direction."

"Oh I don't know, sir. Tom and Lennie are faithful to me. But that
doesn't mean they are not free. They are free to do just what they like,
so long as they are faithful to the spark that is between us. As I am
faithful to them. It seems to me, Sir, one is true to one's _word_ in
_business_, in affairs. But in life one can only be true to the spark."

"I'm afraid there's something amiss with you, son, that's set you off
arguing and splitting hairs."

"There is. Something is always amiss with most of us. Old Gran Ellis was
a lesson to me, if I'd known. Something is always wrong with the lot of
us. And I believe in thinking before I act."

"Let us hope so," said Mr. George. "But it sounds funny sort of thinking
you do."

"But," said Hilda Blessington, with wide, haunted eyes, "what is the
spark that one must be faithful to? How are we to be sure of it?"

"You just feel it. And then you act upon it. That's courage. And then
you always live up to the responsibility of your act. That's
faithfulness. You have to keep faith in all kinds of ways. I have to
keep faith with Monica and the babies, and young Jane, and Lennie and
Tom and dead Gran Ellis: and--and more--yes, more."

He looked with clear hard eyes at Mary, and at the young girl. They were
both watching him, puzzled and perturbed. The two old people in the
background were silent but hostile.

"Do you know what I am faithful to?" he said, still to the two young
women, but letting the elders hear. "I am faithful to my own inside,
when something stirs in me. Gran Ellis said that was God in me. I know
there's a God outside of me. But he tells me to go my own way, and never
be frightened of people and the world, only be frightened of _Him._ And
if I felt I really wanted two wives, for example, I would have them and
keep them both. If I really wanted them, it would mean it was the God
outside of me bidding me, and it would be up to me to obey, world or no
world."

"You describe exactly the devil driving you," said Aunt Matilda.

"Doesn't he!" laughed Mr. George, who was oddly impressed. "I hope there
isn't a streak of madness in the family."

"No, there's not. The world is all so tame, it's a bit imbecile, in my
opinion. Really a dangerous idiot. If I do want two wives--or even
three--I _do._ Why should I mind what the idiot says."

"Sounds like _you'd_ gone cracked, out there in that mining settlement,"
said Mr. George.

"If I said I wanted two fortunes instead of one, you wouldn't think it
cracked," said Jack, with a malicious smile.

"No, only greedy," said Old George.

"Not if I could use them. And the same if I have real use for two
wives--or even three--" said Jack, grinning, but with a queer bright
intention, at Hilda Blessington. "Well, three wives would be three
fortunes for my blood and spirit."

"You are not allowed to say such things, even as a joke," said Aunt
Matilda, with ponderous disapproval. "It is no joke to _me._"

"Surely I say them in dead earnest," persisted Jack mischievously. He
was aware of Mary and Hilda Blessington listening, and he wanted to
throw a sort of lasso over them.

"You'll merely find yourself in gaol for bigamy," said Mr. George.

"Oh," said Jack, "I wouldn't risk that. It would really be a Scotch
marriage. Monica is my legal wife. But what I pledged myself to, I'd
stick to, as I stick to Monica, I'd stick to the others the same."

"I won't hear any more of this nonsense," said Aunt Matilda, rising.

"Nonsense it is," said Old George testily.

Jack laughed. Their being bothered amused him. He was a little surprised
at himself breaking out in this way. But the sight of Mary, and the
sense of a new, different responsibility, had struck it out of him. His
nature was ethical, inclined to be emotionally mystical. Now, however,
the sense of foolish complacency and empty assurance in Aunt Matilda,
and in all the dead-certain people of this world struck out of him a
hard, sharp, non-emotional opposition. He felt hard and mischievous,
confronting them. Who were they, to judge and go on judging? Who was
Aunt Matilda, to judge the dead fantastic soul of the fierce Gran? The
Ellises, the Ellises, they all had some of Gran's fierce pagan
uneasiness about them, they were all a bit uncanny. That was why he
loved them so.

And Mary! Mary had another slow, heavy, mute mystery that waited and
waited forever, like a lode-stone. And should he therefore abandon her,
abandon her to society and a sort of sterility? Not he. She was his.
His, and no other man's. She knew it herself. He knew it. Then he would
fight them all. Even the good Old George. For the mystery that was his
and Mary's.

Let it be an end of popular goodness. Let there be another deeper,
fiercer, untamed sort of goodness, like in the days of Abraham and
Samson and Saul. If Jack was to be good he would be good with these
great old men, the heroic fathers, not with the saints. The Christian
goodness had gone bad, decayed almost into poison. It needed again the
old heroic goodness of untamed men, with the wild great God who was
forever too unknown to be a paragon.

Old George was a little afraid of Jack, uneasy about him. He thought him
not normal. The boy had to be put in a category by himself, like a
madman in a solitary cell. And at the same time, the old man was
delighted. He was delighted with the young man's physical presence.
Bewildered by the careless, irrational things Jack would say, the old
bachelor took off his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes again and
again, as if he were going blind, and as if he were losing his old
dominant will.

He had been a dominant character in the colony so long. And now this
young fellow was laughing at him and stealing away his power of
resistance.

"Don't make eyes at me, sir," said Jack, laughing. "I know better than
you what life means."

"You do, do you? Oh you do?" said the old man. And he laughed too.
Somehow it made him feel warm and easy. "A fine crazy affair it would be
if it were left to you." And he laughed loud at the absurdity.



II


Jack persuaded Mary to go with Mr. George and himself to look at Grant
Farm. Mary and the old lawyer went in a buggy, Jack rode his own horse.
And it seemed to him to be good to be out again in the bush and forest
country. It was rainy season, and the smell of the earth was delicious
in his nostrils.

He decided soon to leave the mine. It was running thin. He could leave
it in charge of Tom. And then he must make some plans for himself.
Perhaps he would come and live on the Grant Farm. It was not too far
from Perth, or from Wandoo, it was in the hills, the climate was balmy
and almost English, after the goldfields, and there were trees. He
really rejoiced again, riding through strong, living trees.

Sometimes he would ride up beside Mary. She sat very still at Mr.
George's side, talking to him in her quick, secret-seeming way. Mary
always looked as if the things she was saying were secrets.

And her upper lip with its down of fine dark hair, would lift and show
her white teeth as she smiled with her mouth. She only smiled with her
mouth: her eyes remained dark and glistening and unchanged. But she
talked a great deal to Mr. George, almost like lovers, they were so
confidential and so much in tune with tone another. It was as if Mary
was happy with an old man's love, that was fatherly, warm, and sensuous,
and wise and talkative, without being at all dangerous.

When Jack rode up, she seemed to snap the thread of bar communication
with Mr. George, her ready volubility failed, and she was a little
nervous. Her eyes, her dark eyes, were afraid of the young man. Yet they
would give him odd, bright, corner-wise looks, almost inviting. So
different from the full, confident way she looked at Mr. George. So
different from Monica's queer yellow glare. Mary seemed almost to peep
at him, while her dark face, like an animal's muzzle with its slightly
heavy mouth, remained quite expressionless.

It amused him. He remembered how he had kissed her, and he wondered if
she remembered. It was impossible, of course, to ask her. And when she
talked, it was always so seriously. That again amused Jack. She was so
voluble, especially with Mr. George, on all kinds of deep and difficult
subjects. She was quite excited, just now about authoritarianism. She
was being drawn by the Roman Catholic Church.

"Oh," she was saying, "I am an authoritarian. Don't you think that the
whole natural scheme is a scheme of authority, one rank having authority
over another?"

Mr. George couldn't quite see it. Yet it tickled his paternal male
conceit of authority, so he didn't contradict her. And Jack smiled to
himself. "She runs too much to talk," he thought. "She runs too much in
her head." She seemed, indeed, to have forgotten quite how he kissed
her. It seemed that "questions of the day" quite absorbed her.

They came through the trees in the soft afternoon sunshine. Jack
remembered the place well. He remembered the Jamboree, and that girl who
had called him Dearie! His first woman! And insignificant enough; but
not bad. He thought kindly of her. She was a warm-hearted soul. But she
didn't belong to his life at all. He remembered too how he had kicked
Tom. The faithful Tom! Mary would never marry Tom, that was a certainty.
And it was equally certain, Tom would never break his heart.

Jack was thinking to himself that he would build a new house on this
place, and ask Mary to live in the old house. That was a brilliant idea.

But as he drove up, he thought: "The first money you spend on this
place, my boy, will be on a brand new five-barred white gate."

Emma and Amos came out full of joy. They too were a faithful old pair.
Jack handed Mary down. She wore a dark-blue dress and white silk gloves.
It was so like her, to put on white silk gloves. But he liked the touch
of them, as he handed her down. Her small, short, rather passive hands.

He and she walked round the place, and she was very much interested. A
new place, a new farm, a new undertaking always excited her, as if it
was she who was making the new move.

"Don't you think _that_ will be a good place for the new house," he was
saying to her. "Down there, near that jolly bunch of old trees. And the
garden south of the trees. If you dig in that flat you'll find water,
sure to."

She inspected the place most carefully, and uttered her mature
judgments.

"You'll have to help think it out," he said. "Monica's as different as
an opossum. Would you like to build yourself a house here, and tend to
things? I'll build you one if you like. Or give you the old one."

She looked at him with glowing eyes.

"Wouldn't that be splendid!" she said. "Oh, wouldn't that be splendid!
If I had a house and a piece of land of my own! Oh yes!"

"Well I can easily give it you," he said. "Just whatever you like."

"Isn't that lovely!" she exclaimed.

But he could tell she was thinking merely of the house and the bit of
land, and herself a sort of Auntie to his and Monica's children. She was
fairly jumping into old-maidom, both feet first. Which was not what he
intended. He didn't want her as an Auntie for his children.

They went back to the house, and inspected there. She liked it. It was a
stone one-storey house with a great kitchen and three other rooms, all
rather low and homely. The dead cousin had wanted his house to be
exactly like the houses of other respectable farmers. And he had not
been prevented.

The place was a bit tumble-down, but clean. Emma was baking scones, and
the sweet smell of scorched flour filled the house. Mary lit the lamp in
the little parlour, and set it on the highly-polished but rather
ricketty rosewood table, next the photograph album. The family Bible had
been removed to the bedroom. But the old man had a photograph album,
like any other respectable householder.

Mary drew up one of the green-rep chairs, and opened the book. Jack,
looking over her shoulder, started a little as he saw the first
photograph: an elderly lady in lace cap and voluminous silken skirts was
seated reading a book, while negligently leaning with one hand on her
chair was a gentleman, with long white trousers and old-fashioned coat
and side-whiskers, obviously having his photograph taken.

This was the identical photograph which held place of honour in Jack's
mother's album; being the photograph of her father and mother.

"See!" said Jack. "That's my grandfather and grand-mother. And he must
have been the man who took Gran Ellis' leg off. Goodness!"

Mary gazed at them closely.

"He looks a domineering man!" she said. "I hope you're not like him."

Jack didn't feel at all like him. Mary turned over, and they beheld two
young ladies of the Victorian period. Somebody had marked a cross, in
ink, over the head of one of the young ladies. They must be his own
Aunts, both of them many years older than his own mother, who was a late
arrival.

"Do you think that was his mother?" said Mary, looking up at Jack, who
stood at her side. "She was beautiful."

Jack studied the photograph of the young woman. She looked like nobody's
mother on earth, with her hair curiously rolled and curled, and a great
dress flouncing round her. And her beauty was so photographic and
abstract, he merely gazed seeking for it.

But Mary, looking up at him, saw his silent face in the glow of the
lamp, his rather grim mouth closed ironically under his moustache, his
open nostrils, and the long, steady, self-contained look of his eyes
under his lashes. He was not thinking of her at all, at the moment. But
his calm, rather distant, unconsciously imperious face was something
quite new and startling, and rather frightening to her. She became
intensely aware of his thighs standing close against her, and her heart
went faint. She was afraid of him.

In agitation, she was going to turn the leaf. But he put his
work-hardened hand on the page, and turned back to the first photograph.

"Look!" he said. "_He_----" pointing to his grandfather, "disowned
her----" turning to the Aunt marked with a cross, "----and she died an
outcast, in misery, and her son burrowed here, half crazy. Yet their two
faces are rather alike. Gran Ellis told me about them."

Mary studied them.

"They are both a bit like yours," she said, "their faces."

"Mine!" he exclaimed. "Oh no! I look like my father's family."

He could see no resemblance at all to himself in the handsome,
hard-mouthed, large man, with the clean face and the fringe of fair
whiskers, and the black cravat, and the overbearing look.

"Your eyes are set in the same way," she said. "And your brows are the
same. But your mouth is not so tight."

"I don't like what I heard of him, anyhow," said Jack. "A puritanical
surgeon! Turn over."

She turned over and gave a low cry. There was a photograph of a young
elegant with drooping black moustachios, and mutton-chop side whiskers,
and large, languid, black eyes, leaning languidly and swinging a cane.
Over the top was written, in a weird handwriting: _The Honourable George
Rath, blasted father of_


[Illustration]


This skull and cross-bones was repeated on the other margins of the
photograph.

"Oh!" said Mary, covering her face with her hands.

Jack's face was a study. Mary had evidently recognised the photograph of
her father as a young man. Yet Jack could not help smiling at the skull
and cross-bones, in connection with the Bulwer Lytton young elegant, and
the man under the green umbrella.

"My God!" he thought to himself. "All that happens in a generation! From
that sniffy young dude to that fellow here who made this farm, and Mary
with her face in her hands!"

He could not help smiling to himself.

"Had you seen that photograph before?" he asked her.

She, unable to answer, kept her face in her hands.

"Don't worry," he said. "We're all more or less that way. We're none of
us perfect."

Still she did not answer. Then he went on, almost without thinking, as
he studied the rather fetching young gentleman with the long black hair
and bold black eyes, and the impudent, handsome, languid lips:

"You're a bit like him, too. You're a bit like him in the look of your
eyes. I bet he wasn't tall either. I bet he was rather small."

Mary took her hands from her face and looked up fierce and angry.

"You have no feeling," she said.

"I have," he replied, smiling slightly. "But life seems to me too rummy
to get piqued about it. Think of him leaving a son like the fellow I saw
under the umbrella! Think of it! Such a dandy! And that his son! And
then having you for a daughter when he was getting quite on in years. Do
you remember him?"

"How can you talk to me like that?" she said.

"But why? It's life. It's how it was. Do you remember your father?"

"Of course I do."

"Did he dye his whiskers?"

"I won't answer you."

"Well, don't then. But this man under the umbrella here--you should have
seen him--was your half-brother and my cousin. It makes us almost
related."

Mary left the room. In a few minutes Mr. George came in.

"What's wrong with Mary?" he asked, suspiciously, angrily. Jack shrugged
his shoulders, and pointed to the photograph. The old man bent over and
stared at it: and laughed. Then he took the photograph out of the book,
and put it in his pocket.

"Well, I'm damned!" he said. "Signs himself skull and cross-bones! Think
of that now!"

"Was the Honourable George a smallish-built man?" asked Jack.

"Eh!" The old man started. Then startled, he began to remember back.
"Ay!" he said. "He was. He was smallish-built, and the biggest little
dude you ever set eyes on. Something about his backside always reminded
me of a woman. But all the women were wild about him. Ay, even when he
was over fifty, Mary's mother was wild in love with him. And he married
her because she was going to be a big heiress. But she died a bit too
soon, an' he got nothing, nor Mary neither, because she was his
daughter." The old man made an ironic grimace. "He only died a few years
back, in Sydney," he added. "But I say, that poor lass is fair cut up
about it. We'd always kept it from her. I feel bad about her."

"She may as well get used to it," said Jack, disliking the old man's
protective sentimentalism.

"Eh! Get used to it! Why? How can she get used to it?"

"She's got to live her own life some time."

"How d'y' mean, live her own life? She's never going to live _that_ sort
of a life, as long as I can see to it!" He was quite huffed.

"Are you going to leave her to be an old maid?" said Jack.

"Eh? Old maid? No! She'll marry when she wants to."

"You bet," said Jack with a slow smile.

"She's a child yet," said Mr. George.

"An elderly child--poor Mary!"

"Poor Mary! Poor Mary! Why poor Mary? Why so?"

"Just poor Mary," said Jack, slowly smiling.

"I don't see it. Why is she poor? You're growing into a real young
devil, you are." And the old man glanced into the young man's eyes in
mistrust, and fear, and also in admiration.

They went into the kitchen, the late tea was ready. It was evident that
Mary was waiting for them to come in. She had recovered her composure,
but was more serious than usual. Jack laughed at her, and teased her.

"Ah, Mary," he said, "do you still believe in the Age of Innocence?"

"I still believe in good feeling," she retorted.

"So do I. And when good feeling's comical, I believe in laughing at it,"
he replied.

"There's something wrong with you," she replied.

"Quoth Aunt Matilda," he echoed.

"Aunt Matilda is very often right," she said.

"Never, in my opinion. Aunt Matilda is a wrong number. She's one of
life's false statements."

"Hark at him!" laughed Old George.

As soon as the meal was over, he rose, saying he would see to his horse.
Mary looked up at him as he put his hat on his head and took the
lantern. She didn't want him to go.

"How long will you be?" she asked.

"Why, not long," he answered, with a slight smile.

Nevertheless he was glad to be out and with his horse. Somehow those
others made a false atmosphere, Mary and Old George. They made Jack's
soul feel sarcastic. He lingered about the stable in the dim light of
the lantern, preparing himself a bed. There were only two bedrooms in
the house. The old couple would sleep on the kitchen floor, or on the
sofa. He preferred to sleep in the stable. He had grown so that he did
not like to sleep inside their fixed, shut-in houses. He did not mind a
mere hut, like his at the camp. But a shut-in house with fixed furniture
made him feel sick. He was sick of the whole pretence of it.

And he knew he would never come to live on this farm. He didn't want to.
He didn't like the atmosphere of the place. He felt stifled. He wanted
to go North, or West, or North-West once more.

Suddenly he heard footsteps: Mary picking her way across.

"Is your horse all right?" she asked. "I was afraid something was wrong
with him. And he is so beautiful. Or is it a mare?"

"No," he said. "It is a horse. I don't care for a mare, for riding."

"Why?"

"She has so many whims of her own, and wants so much attention paid to
her. And then ten to one you can't trust her. I prefer a horse to ride."

She saw the rugs spread on the straw.

"Who is going to sleep here?" she asked.

"Why--but----"

He cut short her expostulations.

"Oh, but do let me bring you sheets. Do let me make you a proper bed!"
she cried.

But he only laughed at her.

"What's a _proper_ bed?" he said. "Is this an improper one, then?"

"It's not a comfortable one," she said with dignity.

"It is for me. I wasn't going to ask you to sleep on it too, was I,
now?"

She went out and stood looking at the Southern Cross.

"Weren't you coming indoors again?" she asked.

"Don't you think it's nicer out here? Feels a bit tight in there. I say,
Mary, I don't think I shall ever come and live on this place."

"Why not?"

"I don't like it."

"Why not?"

"It feels a bit heavy--and a bit tight to me."

"What shall you do then?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'll decide When I'm back at the camp. But I say,
wouldn't you like this place? I'll give it you if you would. You're next
of kin really. If you'll have it, I'll give it you."

Mary was silent for some time.

"And what do you think you'll do if you don't live here?" she asked.
"Will you stay always on the goldfields?"

"Oh dear no! I shall probably go up to the Never-Never, and raise
cattle. Where there aren't so many people, and photo albums, and good
old Georges and Aunt Matildas and all that."

"You'll be yourself, wherever you are."

"Thank God for that, but it's not quite true. I find I'm less myself
down here, with all you people."

Again she was silent for a time.

"Why?" she asked.

"Oh, that's how it makes me feel, that's all."

"Are you more yourself on the goldfields?" she asked rather
contemptuously.

"Oh yes."

"When you are getting money, you mean?"

"No. But I've got so that Aunt Matilda-ism and Old-Georgism don't agree
with me. They make me feel sarcastic, they make me feel out of sorts all
over."

"And I suppose you mean Mary-ism too," she said.

"Yes, a certain sort of Mary-ism does it to me as well. But there's a
Mary without the ism that I said I'd come back for.--Would you like this
place?"

"Why?"

"To cultivate your Mary-ism. Or would you like to come to the
North-West?"

"But why do you trouble about me?"

"I've come back for you. I said I'd come back for you. I am here."

There was a moment of tense silence.

"You have married Monica, now," said Mary in a low voice.

"Of course I have. But the leopard doesn't change his spots when he goes
into a cave with a she-leopard. I said I'd come back for you as well,
and I've come."

A dead silence.

"But what about Monica?" Mary asked, with a little curl of irony.

"Monica?" he said. "Yes, she's my wife, I tell you. But she's not my
only wife. Why should she be? She will lose nothing."

"Did she say so? Did you tell her?" Mary asked insidiously.

Slowly an anger suffused thick in his chest, and then seemed to break in
a kind of explosion. And the curious tension of his desire for Mary
snapped with the explosion of his anger.

"No," he said. "I didn't tell her. I had to ask you first. Monica is
thick with her babies now. She won't care where I am. That's how women
are. They are more creatures than men are. They're not separated out of
the earth. They're like black ore. The metal's in them, but it's still
part of the earth. They're all part of the matrix, women are, with their
children clinging to them."

"And men are pure gold?" said Mary sarcastically.

"Yes, in streaks. Men are the pure metal, in streaks. Women never are.
For my part, I don't want them to be. They _are_ the mother-rock. They
are the matrix. Leave them at that. That's why I want more than one
wife."

"But why?" she asked.

He realised that, in his clumsy fashion, he had taken the wrong tack.
The one thing he should never have done, he had begun to do: explain and
argue. Truly, Mary put up a permanent mental resistance. But he should
have attacked elsewhere. He should have made love to her. Yet, since she
had so much mental resistance, he had to make his position clear.--Now
he realised he was angry and tangled.

"Shall we go in?" he said abruptly.

And she returned with him in silence back to the house. Mr. George was
in the parlour, looking over some papers. Jack and Mary went in to him.

"I have been thinking, Sir," said Jack, "that I shall never come and
live on this place. I want to go up to the North-West and raise cattle.
That'll suit me better than wheat and dairy. So I offer this place to
Mary. She can do as she likes with it. Really, I feel the property is
naturally hers."

Now Old George had secretly cherished this thought for many years, and
it had riled him a little when Jack calmly stepped into the inheritance.

"Oh, you can't be giving away a property like this," he said.

"Why not? I have all the money I want. I give the place to Mary. I'd
much rather give it to her than sell it. But if she won't have it, I'll
ask you to sell it for me."

"Why! Why!" said Old George fussily, stirring quite delighted in his
chair, and looking from one to the other of the young people, unable to
understand their faces. Mary looked sulky and unhappy, Jack looked
sarcastic.

"I won't take it, anyhow," exclaimed Mary.

"Eh? Why not? If the young millionaire wants to throw it away----" said
the old man ironically.

"I won't! I won't take it!" she repeated abruptly.

"Why--what's amiss?"

"Nothing! I won't take it."

"Got a proud stomach from your aristocratic ancestors, have you?" said
Old George. "Well, you needn't have; the place is your father's son's
place, you needn't be altogether so squeamish."

"I wouldn't take it if I was starving," she asserted.

"You're in no danger of starving, so don't talk," said the old man,
testily. "It's a nice little place. I should enjoy coming out here and
spending a few months of the year myself. Should like nothing better."

"But I won't take it," said Mary.

Jack went grinning off to his stable. He was angry, but it was the kind
of anger that made him feel sarcastic.

Damn her! She was in love with him. She had a passion for him. What did
she want? Did she want him to make love to her, and run away with her,
and abandon Monica and Jane and the twin babies?--No doubt she would
listen to such a proposition hard enough. But he was never going to make
it her. He had married Monica, and he would stick to her. She was his
first and chief wife, and whatever happened, she should remain it. He
detested and despised divorce; a shifty business. But it was nonsense to
pretend that Monica was the beginning and end of his marriage with
woman. Woman was the matrix, the red earth, and he wanted his roots in
this earth. More than one root, to keep him steady and complete. Mary
instinctively belonged to him. Then why not belong to him completely?
Why not? And why not make a marriage with her too? The legal marriage
with Monica, his own marriage with Mary. It was a natural thing. The old
heroes, the old fathers of red earth, like Abraham in the Bible, like
David even, they took the wives they needed for their own completeness,
without this nasty chop-and-change business of divorce. Then why should
he not do the same?

He would have all the world against him. But what would it matter, if he
were away in the Never-Never, where the world just faded out? Monica
could have the chief house. But Mary should have another house, with
garden and animals if she wanted them. And she should have her own
children: his children. Why should she be only Auntie to Monica's
children? Mary, with her black, glistening eyes and her short, dark,
secret body, she was asking for children. She was asking him for his
children, really. He knew it, and secretly she knew it; and Aunt
Matilda, and even Old George knew it, somewhere in themselves. And Old
George was funny. He wouldn't really have minded an affair between Jack
and Mary, provided it had been kept dark. He would even have helped them
to it, so long as they would let nothing be known.

But Jack was too wilful and headstrong, and too proud, for an intrigue.
An intrigue meant a certain cringing before society, and this he would
never do. If he took Mary, it was because he felt she instinctively
belonged to him. Because, in spite of the show she kept up, her womb was
asking for him. And he wanted her for himself. He wanted to have her and
to answer her. And he would be judged by nobody.

He rose quickly, returning to the house. Mary and the old man were in
the kitchen, getting their candles to go to bed.

"Mary," said Jack, "come out and listen to the night-bird."

She started slightly, glanced at him, then at Mr. George.

"Go with him a minute, if you want to," said the old man.

Rather unwillingly she went out of the door with Jack. They crossed the
yard in silence, towards the stable. She hesitated outside, in the thin
moonlight.

"Come to the stable with me," he said, his heart beating thick, and his
voice strange and low.

"Oh Jack!" she cried, with a funny little lament; "you're married to
Monica! I can't! You're Monica's."

"Am I?" he said. "Monica's mine, if you like, but why am I all hers?
She's certainly not all mine. She belongs chiefly to her babies just
now. Why shouldn't she? She's their red earth. But I'm not going to shut
my eyes. Neither am I going to play the mild Saint Joseph. I don't feel
that way. At the present moment I'm not Monica's, any more than she is
mine. So what's the good of your telling me? I shall love her again,
when she is free. Everything in season, even wives. Now I love you
again, after having never thought of it for a long while. But it was
always slumbering inside me, just as Monica is asleep inside me this
minute. The sun goes, and the moon comes. A man isn't made up of only
one thread. What's the good of keeping your virginity! It's really mine.
Come with me to the stable, and then afterwards come and live in the
North-West, in one of my houses, and have your children there, and
animals or whatever you want."

"Oh God!" cried Mary. "You must really be mad. You don't love me, you
can't, you must love Monica. Oh God, why do you torture me!"

"I don't torture you. Come to the stable with me. I love you too."

"But you love Monica."

"I shall love Monica again, another time. Now I love you. I don't
change. But sometimes it's one, then the other. Why not?"

"It can't bel It can't be!" cried Mary.

"Why not? Come into the stable with me, with me and the horses."

"Oh don't torture me! I hate my animal nature. You want to make a slave
of me," she cried blindly.

This struck him silent. Hate her animal nature? What did she mean? Did
she mean the passion she had for him? And make a slave of her? How?

"How make a slave of you?" he asked. "What are you now? You are a sad
thing as you are. I don't want to leave you as you are. You are a slave
now, to Aunt Matilda and all the conventions. Come with me into the
stable."

"Oh, you are cruel to me! You are wicked! I can't. You know I can't."

"Why can't you? You can. I am not wicked. To me it doesn't matter what
the world is. You _really_ want me, and nothing but me. It's only the
outside of you that's afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of, now we
have enough money. You will come with me to the North-West, and be my
other wife, and have my children, and I shall depend on you as a man has
to depend on a woman."

"How selfish you are! You are as selfish as my father, who betrayed your
mother's sister and left this skull-and-cross-bones son," she cried.
"No, it's dreadful, it's horrible. In this horrible place, too,
proposing such a thing to me. It shows you have no feelings."

"I don't care about feelings. They're what people have because they feel
they ought to have them. But I know my own real feelings. I don't care
about your feelings."

"I know you don't," she said. "Good-night!" She turned abruptly and
hurried away in the moonlight, escaping to the house.

Jack watched the empty night for some minutes. Then he turned away into
the stable.

"That's that!" he said, seeing his little plans come to nought.

He went into the stable and sat down on his bed, near the horses. How
good it was to be with the horses! How good animals were, with no
"feelings" and no ideas. They just straight felt what they felt, without
lies and complications.

Well, so be it! He was surprised. He had not expected Mary to funk the
issue, since the issue was clear. What else was the right thing to do?
Why, nothing else!

It seemed to him so obvious. Mary obviously wanted him, even more,
perhaps, than he wanted her. Because she was only a part thing, by
herself. All women were only parts of some whole, when they were by
themselves: let them be as clever as they might. They were creatures of
earth, and fragments, all of them. All women were only fragments;
fragments of matrix at that.

No, he was not wrong, he was right. If the others didn't agree, they
didn't, that was all. He still was right. He still hated the nauseous
one-couple-in-one-cottage domesticity. He hated domesticity altogether.
He loathed the thought of being shut up with one woman and a bunch of
kids in a house. Several women, several houses, several bunches of kids:
it would then be like a perpetual travelling, a camp, not a home. He
hated homes. He wanted a camp.

He wanted to pitch his camp in the wilderness: with the faithful Tom,
and Lennie, and his own wives. Wives, not wife. And the horses, and the
come-and-go, and the element of wildness. Not to be tamed. His men, men
by themselves. And his women never to be tamed. And the wilderness still
there. He wanted to go like Abraham under the wild sky, speaking to a
fierce wild Lord, and having angels stand in his doorway.

Why not? Even if the whole world said No! Even then, why not?

As for being ridiculous, what was more ridiculous than men wheeling
perambulators and living among a mass of furniture in a tight house?

Anyhow it was no good talking to Mary at the moment. She wasn't a piece
of the matrix of red earth. She was a piece of the upholstered world.
Damn the upholstered world! He would go back to the goldfields, to Tom
and Lennie and Monica, back to camp. Back to camp, away from the
upholstery.

No, he wasn't a man who had finished when he had got one wife.

And that damned Mary, by the mystery of fate, was linked to him.

And damn her, she preferred to break that link, and turn into an
upholstered old maid. Of all the hells!

Then let her marry Blessington and a houseful of furniture. Or else
marry Old George, and gas to him while he could hear. She loved gassing.
Talk, talk, talk, Jack hated a talking woman. But Mary would rather sit
gassing with Old George than be with him, Jack. Of all the surprising
hells!

At least Tom wasn't like that. And Monica wasn't. But Monica was wrapped
up in her babies, she seemed to swim in a sea of babies, and Jack had to
let her be. And she too had a hankering after furniture. He knew she'd
be after it, if he didn't prevent her.

Well, it was no good preventing people, even from stuffed plush
furniture and knick-knacks. But he'd keep the brake on. He would do
that.



CHAPTER XXV

TROT, TROT BACK AGAIN


But as he rode back to Perth, with Mary rather stiff and silent, and Mr.
George absorbed in his own thoughts; and as they greeted people on the
road, and passed by settlements; and as they saw far off the pale-blue
sea with a speck of a steamer smoking, and the dim fume of Perth down at
sea-level, he thought to himself: "I had better be careful. I had better
be wary. The world is cold and cautious, it has cold blood, like ants
and centipedes. They, all the men in the world, they hardly want one
wife, let alone two. And they would take any excuse to destroy me. They
would like to destroy me, because I am not cold and like an ant, as they
are. Mary would like me to be killed. Look at her face. She would feel a
real deep satisfaction if my horse threw me against those stones and
smashed my skull in. She would feel vindicated. And Old George would
think it served me right. And practically everybody would be glad. Not
Tom and Len. But practically everybody else. Even Monica, though she is
my wife. Even she feels a judgment ought to descend upon me. Because I'm
not what she wants me to be. Because I'm not as she thinks I ought to
be. And because she can't get beyond me. Because something inside her
knows she can't get past me. Therefore, in one corner of her she hates
me, like a scorpion lurking. If I'm unaware, and put my hand unthinking
in that corner, she'll sting me and hope to kill me. How curious it is!
And since I have found the gold it is more emphatic than before. As if
they grudged me something. As if they grudged me my very being. Because
I'm not one of them, and just like they are, they would like me
destroyed. It has always been so ever since I was born. My Aunts, my own
father. And my mother didn't want me destroyed as they secretly did, but
even my mother would not have tried to prevent them from destroying me.
Even when they like me, as Old George does, they grudge their own
liking, they take it back whenever they can. He defended me over Easu
because he thought I was defending Monica, and going the good way of the
world. Now he scents that I am going my own way, he feels as if I were a
sort of snake that should be put out of existence. That's how Mary feels
too: and Mary loves me, if loving counts for anything. Tom and Len don't
wish me destroyed. But if they saw the world destroying me they'd
acquiesce. Their fondness for me is only passive, not active. I believe,
if I ransacked earth and heaven, there's nobody would fight for me as I
am, not a soul, except that little Jane of Easu's. The others would
fight like cats and dogs for me _as they want me to be._ But for me as I
am, they think I ought to be destroyed.

"And I, I am a fool, talking to them, giving myself away to them, as to
Mary. Why, Mary ought to go down on her knees before the honour, if I
want to take her. Instead of which she puffs herself up, and spits venom
in my face like a cobra.

"Very well, very well. Soon I can go out of her sight again, for I
loathe the sight of her. I can ride down Hay Street without yielding a
hair's breadth to any man or woman on earth. And I can ride out of Perth
without leaving a vestige of myself behind, for them to work mischief
on.

"God, but it's a queer thing, to know that they all want to destroy me
as I am, even out here in this far-off colony. I thought it was only my
Aunts, and my father because of his social position. But it is
everybody. Even, passively, my mother, and Tom and Len. Because inside
my soul I don't conform: can't conform. They would all like to kill the
non-conforming me. Which is me myself.

"And at the same time they all love me exceedingly the moment they think
I am in line with them. The moment they think I am in line with them,
they're awfully fond of me. Monica, Mary, Old George, even Aunt Matilda,
they're almost all of them in love with me then, and they'd give me
anything. If I asked Mary to sin with me as something I shouldn't do,
but I went down on my knees and asked for it, unable to help myself,
she'd give in to me like anything. And Monica, if I was willing to be
forgiven, would forgive me with unction.

"But since I refuse the sin business, and I never go down on my knees;
and since I say that my way is better than theirs, and that I should
have my two wives, and both of them know that it is an honour for them
to be taken by me, an honour for them to be put into my house and
acknowledged there, they would like to kill me. It is I who must grovel,
I who must submit to judgment. If I would but submit to their judgment,
I could do all the wicked things I like, and they would only love me
better. But since I will never submit to them, they would like to
destroy me off the face of the earth, like a rattlesnake.

"They shall not do it. But I must be wary. I must not put out my hand to
ask them for anything, or they will strike my hand like vipers out of a
hole. I must take great care to ask them for nothing, and to take
nothing from them. Absolutely I must have nothing from them, not so much
as to let them carry the cup of tea for me, unpaid. I must be very
careful. I should not have let that brown snake of a Mary see I wanted
her. As for Monica, I married her, so that makes them all allow me
certain rights, as far as she is concerned. But she has her rights too,
and the moment she thinks I trespass on them, she will unsheath her
fangs.

"As for me, I refuse their social rights, they can keep them. If they
will give me no rights, to the man I am, to me as I am, they shall give
me nothing.

"God, what am I going to do? I feel like a man whom the
snake-worshipping savages have thrown into one of their snake-pits. All
snakes, and if I touch a single one of them, it will bite me. Man or
woman, wife or friend, every one of them is ready for me since I am
rich. Daniel in the den of lions was a comfortable man in comparison.
These are all silent, damp, creeping snakes, like that yellow-faced Mary
there, and that little whip-snake of a Monica, whom I have loved. 'Now
they bite me where I most have sinned,' says old Don Rodrigo, when the
snakes of the Inferno bite him. So they shall not bite me. God in
heaven, no, so they shall not bite me. Snakes they are, and the world is
a snake-pit into which one is thrown. But still they shall not bite me.
As sure as God is God, they shall not bite me. I will crush their heads
rather.

"Why did I want that Mary? How unspeakably repulsive she is to me now!
Why did I ever want Monica so badly? God, I shall never want her again.
They shall not bite me as they bit Don Rodrigo, or Don Juan. My name is
John, but I am no Don. God forbid that I should take a title from them.

"And the soft, good Tom and Lennie, they shall live their lives, but not
with my life.

"Am I not a fool! Am I not a pure crystal of a fool! I thought they
would love me for what I am, for the man I am, and they only love me for
the me as they want me to be. They only love me because they get
themselves glorified out of me.

"I thought at least they would give me a certain reverence, because I am
myself and because I am different, in the name of the Lord. But they
have all got their fangs full and surcharged with insult, to vent it on
me the moment I stretch out my hand.

"I thought they would know the Lord was with me, and a certain new thing
with me on the face of the earth. But if they know the Lord is with me,
it is only so that they can intensify and concentrate their poison, to
drive Him out again. And if they guess a new thing in me, on the face of
the earth, it only makes them churn their bile and secrete their malice
into a poison that would corrode the face of the Lord.

"Lord! Lord! That I should ever have wanted them, or even wanted to
touch them! That ever I should have wanted to come near them, or to let
them come near me. Lord, as the only boon, the only blessedness, leave
me intact, leave me utterly isolate and out of the reach of all men.

"That I should have wanted! That I should have wanted Monica so badly!
Well, I got her, and she saves her fangs in silent readiness for me, for
the me as I am, not the me that is hers. That I should have wanted this
Mary, whom I now despise. That I should have thought of a new little
world of my own!

"What a fool! To think of Abraham, and the great men in the early days.
To think that I could take up land in the North, a big wild stretch of
land, and build my house and raise my cattle and live as Abraham lived,
at the beginning of time, but myself at another, late beginning. With my
wives and the children of my wives, and Tom and Lennie with their
families, my right hand and my left hand, and absolutely fearless. And
the men I would have work for me, because they were fearless and hated
the world. Each one having his share of the cattle, and the horses, at
the end of the year. Men ready to fight for me and with me, no matter
against what. A little world of my own, in the North-West. And my
children growing up like a new race on the face of the earth, with a new
creed of courage and sensual pride, and the black wonder of the halls of
death ahead, and the call to be lords of death, on earth. With my Lord,
as dark as death and splendid with lustrous doom, a sort of spontaneous
royalty, for the God of my little world. The spontaneous royalty of the
dark Overlord, giving me earth-royalty, like Abraham or Saul, that can't
be quenched and that moves on to perfection in death. One's last and
perfect lordliness in the halls of death, when slaves have sunk as
carrion, and only the serene in pride are left to judge the unborn.

"A little world of my own! As if I could make it with the people that
are on earth to-day! No, no, I can do nothing but stand alone. And then,
when I die, I shall not drop like carrion on the earth's earth. I shall
be a lord of death, and sway the destinies of the life to come."



CHAPTER XXVI

THE RIDER ON THE RED HORSE


Jack was glad to get away from Perth, to ride out and leave no vestige
of his soul behind, for them to work mischief on. He saddled his horse
before dawn, and still before sun was up, he was trotting along beside
the river. He loved the world, the early morning, the sense of newness.
It was natural to him to like the world, the trees, the sky, the
animals, and even, in a casual way, people. It was his nature to like
the casual people he came across. And, casually, they all liked him. It
was only when he approached nearer, into intimacy, that he had a
revulsion.

In the casual way of life he was good-humored, and could get on with
almost everybody. He took them all at their best, and they responded.
For on the whole, people are glad to be taken at their best, on trust.

But when he went further, the thing broke down. Casually, he could get
on with anybody. Intimately, he could get on with nobody. In intimate
life, he was quiet and unyielding, often oppressive. In the casual way,
he was most yielding and agreeable. Therefore it was his friends who
suffered most from him.

He knew this. He knew that Monica and Lennie suffered from his aloofness
and a certain arrogance, in intimate life. So friendly with everybody,
he was. And at the centre, not really friendly even with his wife and
his dearest friends. Withheld, unyielding, exacting even in his silence,
he kept them in a sort of suspense.

As he rode his bright bay stallion on the soft road, he became aware of
this. Perhaps his horse was the only creature with which he had the
right relation. He did not love it, but he harmonised with it. As if,
between them, they made a sort of centaur. It was not love. It was a
sort of understanding in power and mastery and crude life. A harmony
even more than an understanding. As if he himself were the breast and
arms and head of the ruddy, powerful horse, and it, the flanks and
hoofs. Like a centaur. It had a real joy in riding away with him to the
bush again. He knew by the uneven, springy dancing. And he had perhaps a
greater joy. The animal knew it in the curious pressure of his knees,
and the soft rhythm of the bit. Between them, they moved in a sort of
triumph.

The red stallion was always glad when Jack rode alone. It did not like
company, particularly human company. When Jack rode alone, his horse had
a curious bubbling, exultant movement. When he rode in company, it went
in a more suppressed way. And when he stopped to talk to people, in his
affable, rather loving manner, the horse became irritable, chafing to go
on. He had long ago realised that the bay could not bear it when he
reined in and stayed chatting. His voice, in its amiable flow, seemed to
irritate the animal. And it did not like Lennie. Lucy, the old mare,
loved Lennie. Most horses liked him. But Jack's stallion got a bit
wicked, irritable with him.

And when Jack had made a fool of himself, as with Mary, and felt
tangled, he always craved to get on his horse Adam, to be put right. He
would feel the warm flow of life from the horse mount up him and wash
away in its flood the human entanglements in his nerves. And sometimes
he would feel guilty towards his horse Adam, as if he had betrayed the
natural passion of the horse, giving way to the human travesty.

Now, in the morning before sunrise, with the red horse bubbling with
exultance between his knees, his soul turned with a sudden jerk of
realisation away from his fellow-men. He really didn't want his
fellow-men. He didn't want that amiable casual association with them,
which took up so large a part of his life. It was a habit and a bluff on
his part. Also it was part of his nature. A certain real amiability in
him, and a natural kindly disposition towards his fellow-men combated
inside him with a repudiation of the whole trend of modern human life,
the emotional, spiritual, ethical, and intellectual trend. Deep inside
himself, he fought like a wild-cat against the whole thing. And yet,
because of a naturally amiably disposed, even benevolent nature in
himself, he took any casual individual into his warmth, and was
bosom-friends for the moment. Until, inevitably, after a short time the
individual betrayed himself a unit of the universal human trend, and
then Jack recoiled in anger and revulsion again.

This was a sort of dilemma. Monica, and Tom, and Lennie, who knew him
intimately, knew the absoluteness of his repudiation of mankind and
mankind's direction in general. They knew it to their cost, having
suffered from it. Therefore the anomaly of his casual intimacies and his
casual bosom-friend-ships was considerably puzzling and annoying to
them. He seemed to them false to himself, false to the other thing he
was trying to put across. Above all, it seemed false to _them_, his
real, old friends, towards whom he was so silently exacting and
overbearing.

This morning, after his fiasco with Mary, he vaguely realised himself.
He vaguely realised that he had to make a change. The casual intimacies
were really a self-betrayal. But they made his life easy. It was the
easiest way for him to encounter people. To suppress for the time being
his deepest self, his thoughts, his feelings, his vital repudiation of
the way of human life now, and to play at being really pleasant and
ordinary. He liked to think that most people, casually and
superficially, were nice. He hated having to withdraw.

But now, after the fiasco with Mary, he realised again his necessity to
withdraw. To pass people by. They were all going in the opposite
direction to his own. Then he was wrong to rein up and pretend a
bosom-friendship for half an hour. As he did so, he was only being borne
down stream, in the old, deadly direction, against himself.

Even his horse knew it: even old Adam. He pressed the animal's sides
with his legs, and made a silent pact with him: not to make this
compromise of amiability and casual friendship, not forever to be
reining up and allowing himself to be carried backwards in the weary
flood of the old human direction. To forfeit the casual amiabilities,
and go his way in silence. To have the courage to turn his face right
away from mankind. His soul and his spirit had already turned away. Now
he must turn away his face, and see them all no more.

"I never want to see their faces any more," he said aloud to himself.
And his horse between his thighs danced and began to canter, as the sun
came sparkling up over the horizon. Jack looked into the sun, and knew
that he must turn his own face aside forever from the people of his
world, not look at them or communicate with them again, not any more.
Cover his own face with shadow, and let the world pass on its way,
unseen and unseeing.

And he must know as he knew his horse, not face to face, never any more
face to face, but communicating as he did with his stallion Adam, from a
pressure of the thighs and knees. The arrows of the Archer, who is also
a centaur.

Vision is no good. It is no good seeing any more. And words are no good.
It is useless to talk. We must communicate with the arrows of sightless,
wordless knowledge, as Jack communicated with his horse, by a pressure
of the thighs and knees.

The sun had risen gold above the far-off ridge of the bush. Jack drew up
at an inn by the side of the road, to eat breakfast. He left his horse
at the hitching-post near the door, and went into the bar parlour. There
was a smell of mutton chops frying, and he was hungry.

As he sat eating, he heard his horse neighing fiercely. He pricked his
ears. Again Adam's powerful neigh, and far off a high answering call of
a mare. He went out quickly to the door of the inn. Adam stood by the
post, his feet apart, his ears erect, his head high up, looking with
flashing eyes back down the road. How beautiful he was! in the
newly-risen sun shining bright almost as fire, every fibre of him on the
alert, tall and overweening. And down the road, a grey horse, cloud
colour, running eagerly forwards, its rider, a young lady, flushing
scarlet and trying to hold up her mare. It was no good. The mare's
shrill, wild neigh came answering the stallion's, and the lady rider was
powerless to hold her creature back. Strong, like bells in his deep
chest, came the stallion's call once more. And lifting her head as she
ran on swift, light feet, the mare sang back.

The girl was Hilda Blessington. Jack took his horse and quickly ran him,
rearing and flaming, round to the stable. There he shut him up, though
his feet were thudding madly on the wooden floor, and his powerful
neighing shook the place with a sound like fire.

The grey mare came running straight to the stable, carrying its
helpless, scarlet-flushing rider. Jack lifted the girl down, and held
the mare. There was a terrific thudding from the stable.

"I'll put her in the paddock, shall I?" said Jack.

"I think you'd better," she said.

He looked uneasily at the stable, whence came a sound of something going
smash. The shut-up stallion sounded like an enclosed thunderstorm.

"Shall I put them both in the paddock?" said Jack. "It seems the
simplest thing to do."

"Yes," she murmured in confusion. "Perhaps you'd better."

She was rather frightened. The duet of neighing was terrific, like the
bells of some wild cathedral going at full clash. The landlord of the
inn came running up. Jack was just slipping the mare's saddle off.

"Steady! Steady!" he said. Then to the landlord: "Take her to the
paddock and turn her loose. I'm going to turn the horse loose with her."

The landlord dragged the frantic grey animal away, while she screamed
and reared and pranced.

Jack ran to the stable door, calling to his horse. He opened carefully.
The first thing he saw was the blazing eyes of the stallion. The horse
had broken the halter, and had his nose and his wild eyes at the door,
prepared to charge. Jack called to him again, and managed to get in
front of him and close the door behind him. The animal was listening to
two things at once, thinking two things at once. He was quivering in
every fibre, in a state almost of madness. Yet he stood quite still
while Jack slipped off the loosened saddle.

Then again he began to jump. Already he had smashed in one side of the
stall, and had a bleeding fetlock. Jack got hold of the broken halter,
and opened the door. The horse, like a great ruddy thunderbolt, sprang
out of the stable, jerking Jack with him. The man, with a flying jump,
got on the bright, brilliant bare back of the stallion, and clung there
as the creature, swerving on powerful haunches past the terrified Hilda,
ran with a terrific, splendid neighing towards the paddock, moving
rhythmic and handsome.

There was the grey mare at the gate, inside, neighing back, and the
landlord keeping guard. The men had to be very quick, the one to open
the gate, the other to slip down.

Jack left the broken halter-rope dangling from his horse's head--it was
broken quite short--and went back into the yard.

"What a commotion!" he said laughingly, to the flushed, deeply
embarrassed girl. "But you won't mind if your grey mare gets a foal to
my horse?"

"Oh no," she said. "I shall like it."

"Why not?" said he. "They'll be all right. There's the landlord and
another fellow there with them. Will you come in? Have you had
breakfast? Come and eat something."

She went with him into the bar parlour, where he sat down again to eat
his half-cold mutton chops. She was silent and embarrassed, but not
afraid. The colour still was high in her young, delicate cheeks, but her
odd, bright, round, dark-grey eyes were fearless above her fear. She had
really a great dread of everything, especially of the social world in
which she had been brought up. But her dread had made her fearless.
There was something slightly uncanny about her, her quick, rabbit-like
alertness and her quick, open defiance, like some unyielding animal. She
was more like a hare than a rabbit: like a she-hare that will fight all
the cats that are after her young. And she had a great capacity for
remaining silent and remote, like a quaint rabbit unmoving in a corner.

"Were you riding this way by accident?" he asked her.

"No," she said quickly. "I hoped I might see you. Mary said you were
leaving early in the morning."

"Why did you want to see me?" he asked, amused.

"I don't know. But I did."

"Well, it was a bit of a hubbub," he laughed.

She glanced at him sharply, warily, on the defensive, and then laughed
as well, with a funny little chuckle.

"Why did you leave so suddenly?" she asked.

"No, it wasn't sudden. I'd had enough."

"Enough of what?"

"Everything."

"Even of Mary?"

"Chiefly of Mary."

She eyed him again sharply, wonderingly, searchingly, then again gave
her odd little chuckle of a laugh.

"Why 'chiefly of Mary'?" she asked. "I think she's so nice. She'd make
me such a good step-mother."

"Do you want one?" he asked.

"Yes, I do rather. Then my father would want to get rid of me. I should
be in the way."

"And do you want to be got rid of?"

"Yes, I do rather."

"What for?"

"I want to go right away."

"Back to England?"

"No. Not that. Never there again. Right away from Perth. Into the
unoccupied country. Into the North-West."

"What for?"

"To get away."

"What from?"

"Everything. Just everything."

"But what would you find when you'd got away?"

"I don't know. I want to try. I want to try."

She had such an odd, definite decisiveness and self-confidence, he was
very much amused. She seemed the queerest, oddest, most isolated bird he
had ever come across. Exceedingly well-bred, with all the charm of pure
breeding. By nature, timorous like a hare. But now, in her queer state
of rebellion, like a hare that is perfectly fearless, and will go its
own way in determined singleness.

"You must come and see Monica and me when we move to the North-West.
Would you like to?"

"Very much. When will that be?"

"Soon. Before the year is out. Shall I tell Monica you're coming? She'd
be glad of another woman."

"Are you sure you want me?"

"Quite."

"Are you sure everybody will want me? I shan't be in the way? Tell me
quite frankly."

"I'm sure everybody will want you. And you can't be in the way, you are
much too wary."

"I only seem it."

"Do come, though."

"I should love to."

"Well, do. When could you come?"

"Any time. Tomorrow if you wish. I am quite independent. I have a
certain amount of money, from my mother. Not much, but enough for all I
want. And I am of age. I am quite free.--And I think if I went, father
would marry Mary. I wish he would."

"Why?"

"Then I should be free."

"But free what for?"

"Anything. Free to breathe. Free to live. Free not to marry. I know they
want to get me married. They've got their minds fixed on it. And I'm
afraid they'll force me to do it, and I don't want it."

"Marry who?"

"Oh, nobody in particular. Just somebody, don't you know."

"And don't you want to marry?" asked Jack, amused.

"No. No, I don't. Not any of the people I meet. No! Not that sort of
man. No. Never!"

He burst into a laugh, and she, glancing in surprise at his amusement,
suddenly chuckled.

"Don't you like men?" he asked, still laughing.

"No. I don't. I dislike them very much."

Her quick, cod, alert manner of statement amused him more than anything.

"Not any men at all?"

"No. Not yet. And I dislike the idea of marriage. I just hate it. I
don't think I'd mind men so much, if it weren't' for marriage in the
background. I can't do with marriage."

"Might you like men without marriage?" he asked, laughing.

"I don't know," she said, with her odd precision. "So far it's all just
impossible. I can't stand it. All that sort of thing is impossible to
me. No, I don't care for men at all."

"What sort of thing is just impossible?" he asked.

"Men! Particularly a man. Impossible!"

Jack roared with laughter at her. She seemed rather to like being
laughed at. And her odd, cool, precise intensity tickled him to death.

"You want to be virgin in the virgin bush?" he asked.

She glanced at him quickly.

"Something like that," she said, with her little chuckle. "I think later
on, not now, not now--" she shook her head--"I might like to be a man's
second or third wife: if the other two were living. I would never be the
first. Never. You remember you talked about it."

She looked at him with her round, bright, odd eyes, like an elf or some
creature of the border-land, and as he roared with laughter, she smiled
quickly and with an odd, mischievous response.

"What you said the other night, when Aunt Matilda was so angry, made me
think of it.--She hates you," she added.

"Who, Aunt Matilda? Good job."

"Yes, very good job! Don't you think she's _terrible?_"

"I do," said Jack.

"I'm glad you do. I can't stand her. I like Mr. George. But I don't care
for it when he seems to like _me._"

Jack roared with laughter again, and again, from some odd corner of
herself, she smiled.

"Why do you laugh?" she said. But the infection of laughter made her
give a little chuckle.

"It's all such a real joke," he said.

"It is," she answered. "Rather a bad joke."

Slowly he formed a dim idea of her precise life, with a rather tyrannous
father who was fond of her in the wrong way, and brothers who had
bullied her and jeered at her for her odd ways and appearance, and her
slight deafness. The governess who had mis-educated her, the loneliness
of the life in London, the aristocratic but rather vindictive society in
England, which had persecuted her in a small way, because she was one of
the odd border-line people who don't and _can't_, really belong. She
kept an odd, bright, amusing spark of revenge twinkling in her all the
time. She felt that with Jack she could kindle her spark of revenge into
a natural sun. And without any compunction, she came to tell him.

He was tremendously amused. She was a new thing to him. She was one who
knew the world, and society, better than he did, and her hatred of it
was purer, more twinkling, more relentless in a quiet way. Her way was
absolutely relentless, and absolutely quiet. She had gone further along
that line than himself. And her fearlessness was of a queer, uncanny
quality, hardly human. She was a real border-line being.

"All right," he said, making a pact with her. "By Christmas we'll ask
you to come and see us in the North-West."

"By Christmas! It's a settled thing?" she said, holding up her
forefinger with an odd, warning, alert gesture.

"It's a settled thing," he replied.

"Splendid!" she answered. "I believe you'll keep your word."

"You'll see I shall."

She rose. The horses, quieted down, were caught and saddled and brought
round. She glanced from her blue-grey mare to his red stallion, and gave
her odd, squirrel-like chuckle.

"What a _contretemps_," she said. "It's like the sun mating with the
moon." She gave him a quick, bright, odd glance: some of the coolness of
a fairy.

"Is it!" he exclaimed, as he lifted her into the saddle. She was slim
and light, with an odd, remote reserve.

He mounted his horse.

"We go different ways for the moment," she said.

"Till Christmas," he answered. "Then the moon will come to the sun, eh?
Bring the mare with you. Shell probably be in foal."

"I certainly will. Goodbye, till Christmas. Don't forget. I shall expect
you to keep your word."

"I will keep my word," he said. "Goodbye till Christmas."

He rode away, laughing and chuckling to himself. If Mary had been a
fiasco, this was a real joke. A real, unexpected joke.

His horse travelled with quick, strong, rhythmic movement, inland, away
from the sea. At the last ridge he turned and saw the pale-blue ocean
full of light. Then he rode over the crest and down the silent grey
bush, in which he had once been lost.



THE END





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Boy in the Bush" ***

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