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 comed 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.