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 burning 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.—He 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.