But Tom had heard something: not the parrots, not the soft thud of the following horses. He must have heard with his sixth sense: perhaps the warning call of the boomer. With face set and eyes burning he swung and urged his horse in a new direction. And like men coming in to supper from different directions, the handful of horsemen came swish-swish through the scrub, toward a centre.
Lucy pricked one ear. Perhaps she too had heard something. Then she gathers herself together and goes like the wind after the twinkling grey quarters of Tom's stallion. Her excitement mounts to Jack's head, and he rides like a catapult on the wind.
Again Tom was reining in, pulling his horse almost on to its haunches. And Jack must hold like a vice with his knees, for Lucy was pawing the air, frantic at being held up.
"Coo-ee!" came Tom's clear tenor, ringing through the bush. "Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!" A marvellous sound, and Lucy pawing and dancing among the scrub.
"Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Coo-ee!"
It seemed to Jack, this sound in the bush was like God. Like the call of the heroic soul seeking its body. Like the call of the bodiless soul, sounding through the immense dead spaces of the dim, open bush, strange and heroic and inhuman. The deep long "coo," mastering the silence, the high summons of the long "eee." The "coo" rising more imperious, and then the "eee!" thrilling and holding aloft. Then the swift lift and fall: "Coo-eee! Coo-eee! Coo-eee!" till the air rocks with the fierce pulse, as if a new heart were in motion, and the shriek and scream of the "eee!" rips in strange flashes into the far-off, far-off consciousness.
Much stranger than the weird yelp of the Red Indians' war-cry was this rocking, ripping noise in the vast grey bush.
The others were coming in from right to left, like silent phantoms through the sunny evanescence of the bush, riding hard. Tom is displaced by Red. A few quick words given and taken. Easu has unleashed the dogs, slashed the long lash with a resounding crack in the air. The long lean dogs stretch out—uncannily long, from tip to tip. Tom lets go and away. Jack lets go and away, and unconsciously his hand goes down for the bow of the slippery saddle.
Lucy had the situation well in hand, which was more than Jack had. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud! Up, fly! Crash!—Hello?—All right. A beauty! A dream of a jumper, this Lucy. But Jack wished his seat weren't so slippery.
They were turning into bigger timber: trees further apart, but much bigger, and with hanging limbs. "Look out! Look out f' y' head!" Jack kept all his eyes open, till he knew by second sight when to duck. He watched the twinkling hind quarters of Tom's grey, among the trees.
There was a short yapping of the dogs. Lucy was going like the wind, Jack was riding light, but she was beginning to breathe heavily. No longer so young as she was. How hot the sun was, in the almost shadeless bush. And what was leading, where was the 'roo? Jack strained his eyes almost out of his head, but could see nothing.
They were on the edge of the hills, and the country changed continually. No sooner were you used to scrub, than it was thin trees. No sooner did you know that Lucy could manipulate thin trees, than you were among big timber, with more space and dangerous boughs. Then it was salty paper-bark country—and back to forest again: close trees, fallen logs, blood-rat holes and sudden outcropping of dark-brown, ancient-looking rocks with little flat crags, to be avoided. But the other men were going full speed, and full speed you must follow, watching with all your eyes, and riding light, and swept along in the rim.
Up! That was over an elephant log, and down went a man at Tom's heels. It was Grace's young man. No matter. Jack was going to look over his shoulder when Tom again shouted "Up!" and Jack and Lennie followed over the fallen timber.
Suddenly they were in a great black blanket of burnt country, clear of undergrowth or scrubs, with skeletons of black, charred trees standing gruesome. And there, right under their noses, leapt three kangaroos, swerving across. The baby one, Joey, was first, lithe, light, apparently not a bit afraid, but wildly excited; then the mother doe, all out, panting, anxious-eyed, stiffly jumping; and behind, a long way, with the dogs like needles coming after, ran the Old Man boomer; a great big chap making mighty springs and in varying directions. Yes, he was making a rear-guard action for the safety of his mate and spawn. Leaping with great leaps, as if to the end of the world, leaning forward, his little hands curled in, his immense massive tail straight out behind him like some immense living rudder. And seeming perfectly calm, almost indifferent. With steady, easy, enormous springs he went this way, that way, detouring, but making for the same ridge his doe and Joey had passed.
The charred ground proved treacherous, holes, smouldering trunks of trees, smouldering hollows where trunks had been. Soon two horses were running loose, with men limping after them. But on went the rest. Thud and crackle went the hoofs of the galloping horses in the charcoal, as after the dogs, after the 'roos they followed, kicking up clouds of grey ash-mounds and red-burnt earth, jumping suddenly over the still-glowing logs.
The chase paused on the ridge, for the drop was sudden and steep, with rocks and boulders cropping out. Down slid the dogs in a cloud, yelping hard, making Easu at all costs turn to try the right, Tom to try the left.
They dropped awkwardly and joltingly down, between rocks, in loose charcoal powder and loose earth.
"Ain't that ole mare a marvel, Jack!" said Tom. "This nag is rode stiff, all-under my knees."
Jack's face was full of wild joy. The stones rattled, the men stood back from the stirrups, the horses seemed to be diving. But Lucy was light and sure.
Down they jolted into the gully. Easu came up swearing—lost the quarry and dogs, Jack pulled Lucy over a boulder to get out of Easu's way: a thing he shouldn't have done. Crack! went his head against a branch, and Jack was bruising himself on the ground before he knew where he was.
But he was on his feet again, intently chasing Lucy.
"Here y'are!" It was Herbert who leaned down, picked up the reins of the scampering mare, and threw them to Jack. Jack's face was bleeding. Lennie came up and opened his mouth in dismay. But somebody coo-eed, and the chase was too good to lose. They are all gone.
Jack stiffly mounted, to find himself blinded by trickling blood. Lucy once more was stirring between his knees, stretching herself out, and he had to let her go, fumbling meanwhile for a handkerchief which he pushed under his hat-brim, and pulled down the old felt firmly. Wiping his eyes with his sleeve, he found the wound staunched by the impromptu dressing.
The scene had completely changed. Lucy was whisking him around the side of a huge dark boulder. They were in the dry bed of the gully, on stones.
Lucy stopped dead, practically on her haunches, but her impetus carried her over, and she was slithering down into a loose gravelly hole. Jack jumped off, to find himself face to face with the biggest boomer kangaroo he had ever imagined. It was the Old Man, sitting there at the bottom of the gravel-hole, in the hollow of a barren she-oak, his absurd paws drooping dejectedly before him and his silly dribbling under-jaw working miserably.
"He's trying to get the wind up for another fly," thought Jack, standing there as dazed as the 'roo itself, and feeling himself very much in the same condition. Then he wondered where the doe and Joey were, and where all the other hunters. He hoped they wouldn't come. Lucy stood by, as calm as a cucumber.
Jack took a step nearer the Old Man 'roo, and instantly brought up his fists as the animal doubled its queer front paws and hit out wildly at him. He wanted to hit back.
"Mind the claws!" called somebody, with a quiet chuckle, from above.
Jack looked round, and there was Lennie and the heavy horse, the horse head-down, tail up, feet spread, like a salamander lizard on a wall, slithering down the grade into the hole, Lennie erect in the stirrups. Jack gave a loud laugh.
And the Old Man, either possessed of a sense of humour or terrified to death, seized the nearest thing at hand—which happened to be Jack; grabbed him, gripped him, hugged him in desperate fury, and tried to get up his huge, flail-like hind leg, to rip up the enemy with the toe claw. One stroke of that claw, and Jack was done.
In terror, anger, surprise, Jack jumped at the kangaroo's throat, as far as the animal's grip would let him. The 'roo, trying all the time to use his hind legs, upset, so that the two went rolling on the gravel together. Jack was in horrid proximity to the weird grey fur, clutched by the weird-smelling, violent animal, in a sort of living earthquake, as the kangaroo writhed and bounced to use his great, oar-like hind legs, and Jack clung close and hit at the creature's body, hit, hit, hit. It was like hitting living wire bands. Somebody was roaring, or else it was his own consciousness shouting: "Don't let the hind claw get to work."—How horrible a wild thing was, when you were mixed up with it! The terrible nausea of its powerful, furry, violent-blooded contact. Its unnatural, almost obscene power! Its different consciousness! Its overpowering smell!
The others were coming back up the stream-bed, jumping the rocks, towards this place where Jack had fallen and Lennie had come down after him. Easu was calling off the dogs, ferociously. Tom rushed in and got the 'roo by the head.
Lennie was lying on the gravel laughing so hard he couldn't stand on his legs.
III
Jack wrote a letter to his old friend, the vet with the "weakness," in England.
"We are out at a place back of beyond, at a place called Gum Tree Valley, so I take up my pen to write as I have time.—Tom Ellis is here bossing the clearing gang, and he has a lot of Aunts, whom he rightly calls ants. One of them has a place near here, and we go to dinner on Sundays, and to help when wanted. We stayed all last week and helped muster in the sheep for the shearing. We rode all round their paddock boundaries and rounded in the sheep that had strayed and got lost. They had run off from the main—about a score of flocks—and were feeding in little herds and groups miles apart. It's a grand sight to see them all running before you, their woolly backs bobbing up and down like brown water. I can tell you I know now the meaning of the Lost Sheep, and the sort of joy you have in cursing him when you find him.
"You told me to let you know if I heard any first hand news of gold finding. Well, I haven't heard much. But a man rode into Greenlow's—that's Tom's Aunt—place on Sunday, and he said to Tom: 'Are those the Stirling Ranges?' Tom said: 'No, they're not. They're the Darling Ranges.' He said: 'Are you sure?'"—and got very excited. The black-fellows came and stood by and they were vastly amused, grinning and looking away. He got out a compass and said: 'You are wrong, Mr. Ellis, they are the Stirling Ranges.' Tom said: 'Call 'em what you choose, chum. We call 'em Darling—and them others forty mile southwest we call the Stirling.' The man groaned. Minnie Greenlow called us to come in to tea, and he came along as well. His manners were awful. He fidgetted and pushed his hat back on his head and leant forward and spat in the fire at a long shot, and tipped his cup so that his tea swobbed in his saucer, then drank it out of the saucer. Then he pushed the cake back when handed to him, and leaned his head on his arms on the table and groaned. You'd have thought he was drunk, but he wasn't, because he said to Tom, 'Are ye sure them's not the Stirling Ranges? I can't drink my tea for thinkin' about it.' And Tom said: 'Sure.' and then he seemed more distracted than ever, and blew through his teeth and mopped his head, and was upset to a degree.
"When we had finished tea and we all went outside he said: 'Well, I think I'll get back now. It's no use when the compass turns you down. I'll never find it." We didn't know what he was talking about, but when he'd got into his buggy and drove away the blacks told us: 'Master lookin' for big lump yellow dirt—He think that very big fish, an' he bury him long time. Cornin' back no finda him.'—While the boys were talking who should shout to have the slip rail let down but this same stranger and he drove right past us and away down the long paddock. When he got to the gate there he turned round and came back and drew up by us muttering, and said: 'Where did you tell me the Stirling Ranges were?'—Tom pointed it out, and he said, 'So long!' and drove off. We didn't see him again. We didn't want to. But Tom is almost sure he found a lump of gold some time back and buried it for safety's sake and now can't find it.
"That's all the gold I've heard about out here.
"Now for news. One day I went out with tucker to old Jack Moss. He's keeping a bit of land warm for the Greenlows, shepherds sheep down there, about forty miles from everywhere. He talked and talked, and when he didn't talk he didn't listen to me. He looked away over the scrub and sucked his cutty. They say he's hoarded wealth but I didn't see any signs. He was in tatters and wore rags round his feet for boots, which were like a gorilla's. Another day we had a kangaroo hunt. We all chased an Old Man for miles and at last he tinned and faced us. I was so close I had no time to think and was on him before I had time to pull up. I jumped to the ground and grappled, and we rolled over and over down the gully. They couldn't shoot him because of me, but they fought him off and killed him. And then we saw his mate standing near among the stones, on her hind legs, with her front paws hanging like a helpless woman. Then Tom, who was tying up my cuts, called out: 'Look at her pouch! It's plum full of little nippers!' and so it was. You never saw such a trick. So we let her go. But we got the Old Man.
"Another day we rode round the surveyed area here, which Mr. Ellis is taking up for the twins Og and Magog. I asked Tom a lot of questions about taking up land. I think I should like to try. Perhaps if I do you will come out. You would like the horses. There are quite a lot wild. We hunt them in and pick out the best and use them. That's how lots of people raise their horse-flesh. They are called brumbies. Excuse me for not ending properly, the mailman is coming along, he comes once a fortnight. We are lucky.
Jack."
IV
To his friend, the pugilist, he wrote:
"Dear Pug:
"You ask me what I think about sending Ned out here. Well, there's no opening that I can see for a gym. But work, that's another question, there's more than enough. I am at work at a place called Gum Tree Valley, clearing, but we came up to Tom's Aunt's place last week, to help, and we've been shearing. At least I haven't. I've been the chap who tars. You splash tar on like paint when the shearers make a misfire and gash the poor brutes and curse you. Lord, don't they curse, if the boss isn't round. He's got a grey beard and dribbles on it, and the flies get caught in it and buzz as if it was a spider's web. He makes everyone work from mom till night like the Devil. Gosh, if it wasn't that it is only for a short spell, I'd get. Don't you worry, up-country folk know how to get your tucker's worth out of you all right Today the Sabbath we had a rest.—I don't think! We washed our clothes. Talk about a goodly pile! Only a rumour. For the old man fetched along his vests and pants, and greasy overalls and aprons, his socks, his slimy hanks and night-shirt Imagine our horror. He's Tom's Aunt's husband, and has no sons only herds of daughters, so we had to do it. We scrubbed 'em with horse-brushes on the stones. Jinks, but I rubbed some holes in 'em!
"But cheer up. I'm not grumbling. I like getting experience as it is called.
"I mean to take up land and have a place of my own some day, then you and Ned could visit me and we could have some fun with the gloves. Lennie says I'm like a kangaroo shaping and punching at nothing, so I got a cow's bladder and blew it up and tied it to a branch, and I batter on it. Must have something to hit. You know kangaroos shape up and make a punch. They are pretty doing that. We have a baby one, Joey, and it takes a cup in its little hands and drinks. Honest to God it's got hands, you never saw such a thing.
"Kindest regards to your old woman and Ned. Lord only knows how I've missed you, and pray that some day I will be fortunate enough to meet you again. Until then.
"Farewell.
"A Merry Xmas and a Glad New Year, by the time you get this. Think of me in the broiling heat battling with sheep, their Boss, and the flies, and you'll think of me true.
"Ever your sincere friend
Jack."
V
As the time for returning from camp drew near, Jack dwelt more and more on this question of the future—of taking up land. He wished so often that life could always be a matter of camping, land-clearing, kangaroo hunting, shearing, and generally messing about. But deep underneath himself he knew it couldn't: not for him at least. Plenty of fellows lived all their life messing from camp to camp and station to station. But himself—sooner or later he would have to bite on to something. He'd have to plunge in to that cold water of responsible living, some time or other.
He asked Tom about it.
"You must make up y' mind what you want to go in for, cattle, sheep, horses, wheat, or mixed farming like us," said Tom. "Then you can go out to select. But it's no good before you know what you want."
Jack was surprised to find how little information he got from the men he mixed with. They knew their jobs: teamsters knew about teams, and jobs on the mill; the timber workers knew hauling and sawing; township people knew trading; the general hands knew about hunting and bush-craft and axe handling; and farmers knew what was under their nose, but nothing of the laws of the land, or how he himself was to get a start.
At last he found a small holder who went out as a hired man after he had put in the seed on his own land. And this, apparently, was how Jack would have to start. The man brought out various grubby Government papers, and handed them over.
Jack had a bad time with them: Government reports, blue books, narratives of operations. But he swotted grimly. And he made out so 'much:
1. Any reputable immigrant over 21 years could procure 50 acres of unimproved rural Crown land open for selection; if between the ages of 14 and 21, 25 acres.
2. Such land must be held by "occupation certificate," deemed transferable only in case of death, etc.
3. The occupation certificate would be exchanged for a grant at the end of five years, or before that time, providing the land had been enclosed with a substantial fence and at least a quarter cultivated. But if at the end of the five years the above conditions, or any of them, had not been observed, the lots should revert to the Crown.
4. Country land was sub-divided into agricultural and pastoral, either purchasable at the sum of 10/- an acre, or leased: the former for eight years at the nominal sum of 1/- an acre, with the right of purchase, the latter for one year at annual rental of 2/- per hundred acres, with presumptive renewal; or five pounds per 1000 acres with rights.
Jack got all this into his mind, and at once loathed it. He loathed the thought of an "occupation certificate." He loathed the thought of being responsible to the Government for a piece of land. He almost loathed the thought of being tied to land at all. He didn't want to own things; especially land, that is like a grave to you as soon as you do own it. He didn't want to own anything. He simply couldn't bear the thought of being tied down. Even his own unpacked luggage he had detested.
But he started in with this taking-up land business, so he thought he'd try an easy way to get through with it.
"Dear Father,
"I could take up land on my own account now if you sent a few hundred pounds for that purpose per Mr. George. He would pay the deposit and arrange it for me. I have my eye on one or two improved farms falling idle shortly down this Gum Valley district, which is very flourishing. When they fall vacant on account of settlers dropping them, they can be picked up very cheap.
"I hope you are quite well, as I am at present
"Your affec. son
Jack."
Jack spent his sixpence on this important document, and forgot all about it. And in the dead end of the hot summer, just in the nick of time, he got his answer:
Sea View Terrace,
Bournemouth.
2. 2. '83,Dear Jack:
"Thank you for your most comprehensive letter of 30/11/82. It is quite impossible for me to raise several hundreds of pounds, or for the matter of that, one hundred pounds, in this offhand manner. I don't want to be hard on you, but we want you to be independent as soon as possible. We have so many expenses, and I have no intention of sinking funds in the virgin Australian wild, at any rate until I see a way clear to getting some return for my money, in some form of safe interest accruing to you at my death.—You must not expect to run before you can walk. Stay where you are and learn what you can till your year is up, and then we will see about a jackeroo's job, at which your mother tells me you will earn £1. a week, instead of our having to pay it for you.
"We all send felicitations
Your affectionate father
G. B. Grant."
But this is running ahead.—It is not yet Christmas, 1882.
CHAPTER VIII
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
I
It was a red hot Christmas that year—'ot, 'ot, 'ot, all day long. Good Lord, how hot it was!—till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings in its trail. After six o'clock you would sense the breeze coming from the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was. Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one's life.
It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one's bed. To have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It lifted you up.
Mr. Ellis had taken Gran away for the time, so the place seemed freer, noisier. There was nothing to keep quiet for. It was holiday—pinkie, the natives called it; the fierce midsummer Christmas. Everybody was allowed to "spell" a great deal.
Tom and Jack were roasted like Red Indians, rather uncouth, and more manly. At first they seemed rather bumptious, thinking themselves very much men. Jack could now ride his slippery saddle in fine style, and handle a rope or an axe, and shoot straight. He knew jarrah, karri, eucalyptus, sandal, wattle, peppermint, banksia, she-oaks, pines, paper-back and gum trees; he had learned to tan a kangaroo hide, pegging it on to a tree; he had looked far into the wilderness, and seen the beyond, and been seized with a desire to explore it; he had made excursions over "likely places," with hammer and pick, looking for gold. He had hunted and brought home meat, had trapped and destroyed many native cats and dingoes. He had lain awake at night and listened to the more-porks, and in the early morning had heard with delight the warbling of the timeline and thickhead thrushes that abounded round the camp, mingled with the noises of magpies, tits, and wrens. He had watched the manoeuvres of willy-wagtails, and of a brilliant variety of birds: weavers, finches, parrots, honeyeaters, and pigeons. But the banded wrens and blue-birds were his favourites in the bush world.
Well, on such a hero as this, the young home-hussies Monica and Grace had better not look too lightly. He was so grand they could hardly reach him with a long pole.
"An' how many emus did y' see?" asked Og. For lately at Wandoo they had had a plague of emus, which got into the paddocks and ate down the sheeps' food-stuffs, and then got out again by running at the fences and bashing a way through.
Jack had never seen one.
"Never seen an emu!"—Even little Ellie shrilled in derisive amazement. "Monica, he's never seen an emu!"
Already they had snipped the tip off the high feather he had in his cap.
But he was still a hero, and Lennie followed him round like a satellite, while the girls were obviously thrilled at having Tom and him back again. They would giggle and whisper behind Bow's back, and wherever he was, they were always sauntering out to stand not far off from him. So that, of course, their thrill entered also into Jack's veins, he felt a cocky young lord, a young life-master. This suited him very well.
But there was no love-making, of course. They all laughed and joked together over the milking and pail-carrying and feeding and butter-making and cheese-making and everything, and life was a happy delirium.
They had waited for Tom to come home, to rob the bees. Tom hated the bees and they hated him, but he was staunch. Veils, bonnets, gloves, gaiters were produced, and off they all set, in great joy at their own appearance, with gong, fire, and endless laughter. Tom was to direct from a distance: he stood afar, "Smoking them off." Grace and Monica worked merrily among the hives, manipulating the boxes which held the comb, lifting them on to the milk pans to save the honey, and handing the pans to the boys to carry in.
"Oooh!" yelled Tom suddenly, "Oooh!"
A cloud of angry bees was round his head. Down went his fire-protector—a tin full of smouldering chips—down went flappers and bellows as with a shriek he beat the air. The more he beat the darker the venomous cloud. Crippled with terror, he ran on shaking legs. The girls and youngsters were paralysed with joy. They swarmed after him shrieking with laughter. His head was completely hidden by bees, but his arms like windmills waved wildly to and fro. He dashed into the cubby, but the bees went with him. He appeared at the window for a moment, showing a demented face, then he jumped out, and the bees with him. Leaping the drain gap and yelling in terror, he made for the house. The bees swung with him and the children after. Jack and the girls stood speechless, looking at one another. Monica had on man's trousers with an old uniform buttoned close to her neck, workmen's socks over her shoes and trouser-ends, and a Chinaman's hat with a veil over it, netted round her head like a meat-safe. Jack noticed that she was funny. Suddenly, somehow, she looked mysterious to him, and not just the ordinary image of a girl. Suddenly a new cavern seemed to open before his eyes: the mysterious, fascinating cavern of the female unknown. He was not definitely conscious of this. But seeing Monica there in the long white flannel trousers and the Chinaman's-hat meat-safe over her face, something else awoke in him, a new awareness of a new wonder. He had but lately stood on the inward ranges and looked inland into the blue, vast mystery of the Australian interior. And now with another opposite vision he saw an opposite mystery opposing him: the mystery of the female, the young female there in her grotesque garb.
A new awareness of Monica began to trouble him.
"Oooh! Oooh! Ma! Ma! Ma!" Out rushed Tom straight from the kitchen door, the bees still with him. Straight he dashed to the garden, and to the well in the middle. He loosed the windlass and stood on the coping screaming while the bucket clanged and clashed to the bottom. Then Tom seized the rope, and turning his legs round it, slid silently into the hidden, cool dark depths.
The children shrieked with bliss, Jack and the girls rocked with helpless laughter, convulsed by this last exit.
The bees were puzzled. They poised buzzbee fashion above the well-head, explored the mouth of the shaft, and rose again and hovered. Then they began to straggle away. They melted into the hot air.
And now the girls and Jack drew up from the well a raging and soaking Tom. Drew him up uncertainly, wobblingly, a terrible weight on the straining, creaking windlass. Ma and Ellie took him in hand and daubed him a sublime blue: like an ancient Briton, Grace said. Then they gave him bread and jam and a cup of tea.
Then occurred another honey-bee tragedy. Ellie, who had done nothing at all to the bees, suddenly shrieked loudly and ran pelting round, screaming: "I've got a bee in my head! I've got a bee in my head!" Monica caught and held her, while Jack took the bee, a big drone, out of the silky meshes of her honey hair. And as he lifted his eyes he met the yellow eyes of Monica. And the two exchanged a moment's look of intimacy and communication and secret shame, so that they both went away avoiding one another.
II
On New Year's Eve there was always a foregathering of the settlers at the Wandoo homestead. They must foregather somewhere, and Wandoo was the oldest and most flourishing place. It occupied the banks of the so-called Avon River, which was mostly just a great dry bed of stones. But it had plenty of fresh water in the soaks and wells, among the scorched rocks, and these wells were fed by underground springs, not brackish, as is so often the case. Wandoo was therefore a favoured place.
"What am I to wear?" said Jack, aghast, when he heard of the affair.
"Anything," said Tom.
"Nothing," said Len.
"Your new riding suit," said Monica, who had begun to assume airs of proprietorship over him.—"And you needn't say anything, young Len," she continued venomously. "Because you've got to wear that new holland suit Ma got you from England, and boots and socks as well."
"It's awful. Oo-er! It's awful!" groaned Lennie.
It was. A tight-fitting brown holland suit with pants halfway down the shin and many pearl-buttons across the stomach, the coat with a stiff stand-up collar and rigid seams. Harry had a similar rig, but the twins out—did Solomon in sailor suits with gold braid and floppy legs. At least they started in glory.
Tom, in his father's old tennis-flannels and a neat linen jacket, looked quite handsome. But when he saw Jack in his real pukka riding rig, he exclaimed.
"God Almighty, but you've got the goods!"
"A bit too dashing?" asked Jack anxiously.
"Not on your life! You'll do fine. Reds all go in for riding breeks and coats as near sporting dog's yank as they k'n get'm. There's a couple o' white washing suits o' Dad's as he's grown out of, as I'll plank up in the loft to change into tonight. We can't come in this here cubby again. Once we leave it, it'll be jumped by all the women and children from round the country to put their things in."
"Won't they go into the house?"
"Hallelujah no! Only relations go upstairs. Quality into the dyin' room. Yahoos anywhere, and the ladies always bag our cubby!"
"Lor!"
But it had to be so. For the New Year's chivoo the settlers all saved up, and they all dressed up. By ten o'clock the place was like a fair ground. Horses of all sorts nosing their feed-bags; conveyances of all sorts unhitched; girls all muslin and ribbon; boys with hats on at an angle, and boots on; men in clean shirts and brilliant ties, mothers in frill and furbelow, with stiffly-starched little children half hidden under sunbonnets; old dames and ancient patriarchs, young bearded farmers, and shaven civilians ridden over from York. Children rushing relentlessly in the heat, amid paper bags, orange peel, concertina-playing, baskets of victuals and fruit, canvas, rubbish and nuts all over the scorched grass. Christmas!
Tom had asked Jack to organise a cricket eleven to play against the Reds. The Reds were dangerous opponents, and the dandies of the day. In riding breeches made India fashion, with cotton gaiters, and rubber-soled shoes, white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats, they looked a handsome colonial set. And they had a complete eleven.
Tom was sitting on a bat bemoaning his fate. He had only five reliable men.
"Aw, shut up!" said Lennie. "Somebody'll turn up.—Who's comin' in at the gate now? Ain't it the parson from York, and five gents what can handle a bat. Hell!—ain't my name cockadoodle!"
In top hats and white linen suits these gentlemen had ridden their twenty-five miles for a game. What price the Reds now!
Tom's side was in first, Easu and Ross Ellis bowling, Easu, big, loose, easy, looked strange and native, as if he belonged to the natural salt of the earth there. He seemed at home, like an emu or a yellow mimosa tree. He was a bowler of repute. But somehow Jack could not bear to see him palm the ball before he bowled: could not bear to watch it. Whereas fat Ross Ellis, the other bowler, spitting on his hand and rolling the ball in elation after getting the wicket of the best man from York, Jack didn't mind him.—But unable to watch Easu, he walked away across the paddock, among the squatting mothers whose terror was the flying leather ball.
"Your turn at the wickets, Mr. Grant," called the excited, red-faced parson, who, Lennie declared, "Couldn't preach less or act more."
"We're eight men out for twenty-six rounds, so smack at 'em. If ye can get the loose end on Ross, do it. I'll be in t'other end next and stop 'em off Easu. I come in right there as th' useful block."
Jack was excited. And when he was excited, phrases always came up in his mind. He had the sun in his eyes, but the bat felt good.
"If a gentleman sees bad, he ignores it. He——"
Here comes the ball from that devil Easu!
How's that!
"Finds good and fans it to flame—fans it to——"
Joe Low, that stripling, had the other wicket.
Smack! Jack scored the first run off Easu, running for his life.
"You can be a gentleman even if you are a bush-whacker."
Nine wickets had fallen to Easu for twenty-seven runs, and Easu was elated. Then the parson came forth and stood opposite Jack. He at once whacked Ross' ball successfully, for three. Jack hitched his belt after the run, and hit out for another.
Smack! no need to run that time. It was a boundary.
Lennie's voice outside yelling admiration roused his soul, as did Easu's yelling agrily to Ross: "You give that ball to Sam, this over. You blanky idjut!"
Ross picked up the returning leather, and sent down a sulky grubber which Jack naturally skied. Herbert, placed at a point in the shade, came out to catch it, and missed.
Somehow the parson had steadied Jack's spirit. And when, in a crisis, Jack got his spirit steadied, it seemed to him he could get a semi-magical grip over a situation. Almost as if he could alter the swerve of the ball by his pure, clairvoyant will. So it seemed. And keyed up against the weird, handsome, native Easu, as if by a magic of will Jack held the wicket and got the runs. It was one of those subtle battles which are beyond our understanding. And Jack won.
But Easu got him out in the end. In the first innings, a terrific full pitch came down crash over his head on to the middle wicket, when he had made his first half century; that was Easu; and Easu stumped him out in the second innings, for twenty.
Nevertheless, the Reds were beaten by a margin of sixteen runs before the parson and the gentlemen in top hats set off for their long and dusty ride to York.
III
Jack hated the Reds with all the wholesale hatred of eighteen. There they were, all of them, swaggering round as if the place belonged to them, taking everything and giving nothing. Their peculiar air of assertion was particularly maddening, in contrast with the complete lack of assumption on the part of the other Australians. It was as if the Reds had made up their minds, all of them, to leave a bruise on everything they touched. They were all big men, and older than Jack. Easu must have been over thirty, and unmarried, with a bad reputation among the women of the colony. Yet, apparently, he could always find a girl. That slow, laconic assurance of his, his peculiar, meaning smile as he drifted up loose-jointed to a girl, seemed nearly always to get through. The women watched him out of the corner of their eye. They didn't like him. But they felt his power. And that was perhaps even more effective.
For he had power. And this was what Jack felt lacking in himself. Jack had quick, intuitive understanding, and a quick facility. But he had not Easu's power. Sometimes Easu could look really handsome, strolling slowly across to some girl with a peculiar rolling gait that distinguished him, and smiling that little, meaningful, evil smile. Then he looked handsome, and as if he belonged to another race of men, men who were like small-headed demons out to destroy the world.
"I'm fighting him," thought Jack. "I wouldn't have a good opinion of myself if I didn't."
For he saw in Easu a malevolent principle, a kind of venom.
Ross Ellis, the youngest of the Reds, was old enough to be joining the mounted police force in a few days, and Mr. Ellis had sent up a strong chestnut mount for him, from the coast. Easu, tall, broad, sinewy, with sinewy powerful legs and small buttocks, was sitting close on the prancing chestnut, showing off, his malevolence seeming to smile under his blond beard, and his blue, rivet eyes taking in everything. All the time he went fooling the simple farmers who had come to the sports, raising a laugh where he could, and always a laugh of derision.
"Tom," said Jack at last, "couldn't you boss it a bit over those Reds? It's your place, it's your house, not theirs. Go on, put them down a bit, do."
"Aw," said Tom. "They're older'n me, and the place by rights belongs to them: leastways they think so. And they are crack sportsmen."
"Why, they're not! Look at Easu parading on that police horse your father sent up from the coast! And look at all the other cockeys getting ready to compete against him in the riding events. They haven't a chance, and he knows it."
"He won't risk taking that police horse over the jumps, don't you fret."
"No, but he has the pick of your stable, and he'll beat all the others while you stand idling by. Why should he be cock of the walk?"
"Why," cried Lennie breaking in, "I could beat anyfin' on Lucy. But Tom won't let me go in against the other chaps, will you, Tom?"
Tom smiled. He had a plain brick-red face, patient and unchanging, with white teeth, and brown, sensitive eyes. When he smiled he had a great charm. But he did not often smile, and his mouth was marred by the look so many men develop in Australia, facing the bush: that lipless look, which Jack, as he grew more used to it, came to call the suffering look. As if they had bitten and been bitten hard, perhaps too hard.
"Well, Nipper," he said after a moment's hesitation; "if you finds them Waybacks has it between 'em, you stand out. But y'c'n have Lucy if you like, an' if y' beat the Reds—y'c'n beat 'em."
"That's what I mean all right!" cried Lennie, capering. "I savvy O. K. I'll give 'em googlies and sneaks an' leg-breaks, y' see if I don't, an' even up for 'em."
IV
Monica came up and took Jack's arm with sudden impulsive affection, on this very public day. Drawing him away, she said:
"Come and sit down a bit under the Bay Fig, Jack. I want to rest. All these people tearing us in two from morning till night."
Jack found himself thrilling to the girl's touch, to his own surprise and disgust. He flushed slowly, and went on stiff legs, hoping nobody was looking at him. Nobody was looking specially, of course. But Monica kept hold of his arm, with her light, tense girlish hand, and he found it difficult to walk naturally. And again the queer electric thrills went through him, from that light blade of her hand.
She was very lovely to-day, with a sort of winsomeness, a sort of fierce appeal. As a matter of fact, she had been flirting dangerously with Red Easu, till she was a bit scared. And she had been laughing and fooling with Hal Stockley—otherwise Pink-eye Percy—whom all the girls were mad about, but who didn't affect her seriously. Easu affected her, though. And she didn't really like him. That was why she had come for Jack, whom she liked very much indeed. She felt so safe and happy with him. And she loved his delicate, English, virgin quality, his shyness and natural purity. He was purer than she was. So she wanted to make him in love with her. She was sure he was in love with her. But it was such a shy, unwilling love, she was half annoyed.
So she leaned forward to him, with her fierce young face and her queer, yellow, glowering eyes, not far from his, and she seemed to yearn to him with a yearning like a young leopard. Sometimes she touched his hand, and sometimes, laughing and showing her small, pointed teeth winsomely, she would look straight into his eyes, as if searching for something. And he flushed with a dazed sort of delight, unwilling to be overpowered by the new delight, yet dazed by it, even to the point of forgetting the other people and the party, and Easu on the chestnut horse.
But he made no move. When she touched his hand, though his eyes shone with a queer suffused light, he would not take her hand in his. He would not touch her. He would not make any definite response. To all she said, he answered in simple monosyllables. And there he sat, suffused with delight, yet making no move whatsoever.
Till at last Monica, who was used to defending herself, was niffed. She thought him a muff. So she suddenly rose and left him. Went right away. And he was very much surprised and chagrined, feeling that somehow it wasn't possible, and feeling as if the sun had gone out of the sky.
V
The sun really was low in the heavens. The breeze came at last from the sea and freshened the air and lifted the sweet crushed scent of the trampled dry grass. It was time for the last events of the sports. Everybody was eager, revived by the approach of evening, and Jack felt the drunkenness of new delight upon him. He was still vague, however, and unwilling even to think of Monica, much less seek her out.
The black-boys' event, with unbroken buckjumpers, was finishing down by the river. Joe Low, with a serious face but sparkling eyes, went riding by on a brumby colt he had caught and broken himself. Jack sat alone under a tree, waiting for the flat race, in which he was entered, and feeling sure of himself.
Easu came dancing up on the raw chestnut that had been sent up from the coast along with the police horse. He wore spurs, and had a long parrot-feather in his hat.
"Here you young Pommy Grant," he said to Jack. "Ketch hold of me bit while I fix me girths a bit tighter, and then you c'n hold your breath while I show them Cornseeds what."
He had a peculiarly insolent manner towards Jack. The latter nevertheless held the frothy chestnut while Easu swung out of the saddle and hitched up the girth. As he bent there beside the horse, Jack noticed his broad shoulders and narrow waist and small hard, tense hips. Yes, he was a man. But ugh! what an objectionable one! Especially the slight hateful smile of derision on the red face and in the light-blue, small-pupilled eyes.
But he dipped into the saddle again, and once more it was impossible not to admire his seat, his close, fine, clean, small seat in the saddle. There was no spread about him there. And the power of the long, muscular thighs. Then once more he dismounted, leaving Jack to hold the bridle of the chestnut whilst he himself strolled away.
The other farmers were waiting on their horses, so serious and quiet: in their patience and unobtrusiveness, so gentlemanly, Jack thought. So unlike the assertive, jeering Easu.
Lennie came up and whipped the pin out of Jack's favour. It was a rosette of yellow ribbon, shiny as a buttercup, that Monica had made him.
"Here, what're you doing!" he cried.
"Aw, shut it. Keep still!" said Lennie.
And slipping round, he pushed the pin, point downward, into the back saddle-pad of the chestnut Jack was holding. That wasn't fair. But Jack let be.
The judge called his warning, the Cornseeds lined up, along with Joe Low and a young yellow-faced dairyman and a slender skin-hunter, and a woolly old stockman. Easu came and took his chafing horse, but did not mount.
"One!" Easu swung up, standing in his stirrups, scarce touching the saddle-seat.
"Two! Three!" and the sharp crack of a pistol.
Away went the scraggy brumby and Joe, and like a torrent, the dairyman and the skin-hunter and the stockman. But the chestnut had never heard a pistol shot before, and was jumping round wildly.
"Blood and pace, mark you;" said the judge, waving towards the chestnut. "Them cockeys does their best on what they got, but watch that chestnut under Red Ellis. It's a pleasure to see good horse-flesh like them Ellises brings up to these parts."
Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on to the track at that minute, and sat down.
The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.
"Oh, Gawd my fathers!" murmured Tom in Jack's ear. "Think of Easu getting a toss! Easu letting any horse get the soft side of him! Oh, my Gawd, if I'm not sorry for Easu when that crowd o' Reds sets on to him with their tongues to-morrow."
"I'm jolly glad," said Jack complacently.
"So am I," said Lennie. "An' I did it, an' I wish it had killed him. I put a pin under the saddle-crease, Tom. Don't look at me, y'needn't. I've had one up again 'im for a long time, for Jack's sake. D'y' know what he did? He put Jack on that Stampede stallion, when Jack hadn't been on our place a fortnight. So he did. An' if Jack had been killed, who'd ha' called him a murderer? Zah, one of the blacks, told me. And nobody durst tell you, cos they durstn't."
"On Stampede!" exclaimed Tom, going yellow, and hell coming into his brown eyes. "An' a new chum my father trusted to him to show him round."
"Oh well," said Jack.
"The sod!" said Tom: and that was final.
Then after a moment:
"If the Reds is going over the jumps, you go and get Lucy, Len."
"I likes your sperrit, Tom. I was goin' to anyway, case they get that dark 'oss." Lennie threw off his coat, hat, and tie, then sat on the trodden brown grass to take off his boots and stockings. Thus stripped, he stood up and hitched his braces looser, remarking:
"Jack Grant said he'd bash Easu's head for 'im if he said anything to me after I beat 'im over the jumps, so I was goin' to risk it anyway."
Jack had said no such thing, but was prepared to take the hint.
The chestnut had been caught and tied up. Down the field they could see Easu persuading Sept to ride a smart piebald filly that had been brought in. Sept was the thinnest of the Reds. The jumping events continued away on the left, the sun was almost setting.
"Hurry up there for the final!" called the judge.
Sept came up on the delicate piebald filly which they had brought over from their own place. She was dark chestnut, and with flames of pure white, she seemed dazzling.
"That's the dark 'oss I mentioned!" said Len. "Gosh, but me heart is beatin'! It'll be a real match between me and him, for that there filly can jump like a 'roo, I've watched 'er."
Joe Low rode up to the jumping yard, and lifted his brumby over. The filly danced down and followed. Lennie was in the saddle like a cat and Lucy went over the rail without effort.
When the rail was at five feet two, Joe Low's brumby was done. Lucy clipped the rail and the filly cleared it. Sept brought his creature round to the judge, with raised eyebrows.
"No y' don't," yelled Lennie, riding down the track hell for leather, and Lucy went over like a swallow. Sept laughed, and came down to the rail that was raised an inch. The filly sailed it, but hit the bar. Lucy baulked. Len swung her round and came again. A perfect over.
Next! The filly, snorting and frothing, tore down, jibbed, and was sworn at loudly by Easu standing near. Sept whipped and spurred her over.
But at that rail, raised to five feet nine, she would not be persuaded, though Lucy cleared it with a curious casual ease. The filly would not take it.
"Say, Mister!" called Lennie when he knew he was winner. "Raise that barrier five inches and see us bound it."
He made his detour, brought Lucy along on twinkling feet, and cleared it prettily.
The roar of delight from the crowd sent Easu mad. Jack kept an eye on him, in case he meant mischief. But Easu only went away to where the niggers were still trying out the buck jumpers. Taking hold of a huge rogue of a mare, he sprang on her back and came bucking all along the track, apparently to give a specimen of horsemanship. The crowd watched the queer massive pulsing up and down of the man and the powerful bucking horse, all in a whirl of long hair, like some queer fountain of life. And there was Monica watching Easu's cruel, changeless face, that seemed to have something fixed and eternal in it, amid all that heaving.
Jack felt he had a volcano inside him. He knew that Stampede had been caught again, and was being led about down there, securely roped, as part of the show. Down there among the outlaws.
Away ran Jack. Anything rather than be beaten by Easu. But as he ran, he kept inside him that queer little flame of white-hot calm which was his invincibility.
He patted Stampede's arching neck, and told Sam to saddle him. Sam showed the whites of his eyes, but obeyed, and Stampede took it. Jack stood by, intense in his own cool calmness. He didn't care what happened to him. If he was to be killed he would be killed. But at the same time, he was not reckless. He watched the horse with mystical closeness, and glanced over the saddle and bridle to see if they were all right.
Then, swift and light, he mounted and knew the joy of being a horseman, the thrill of being a real horseman. He had the gift, and he knew it. If not the gift of sheer power, like Easu, who seemed to overpower his horse as he rode it; Jack had the gift of adjustment. He adjusted himself to his horse. Intuitively, he yielded to Stampede, up to a certain point. Beyond that certain flexible point, there would be no yielding, none, and never.
Jack came bucking along in Easu's wake, on a much wilder horse. But though Stampede was wild and wicked, he never exerted his last efforts. He bucked like the devil. But he never let himself altogether go. And Jack seemed to be listening with an inward ear to the animal, listening to its passion. After all it was a live creature, to be mastered, but not to be overborne. Intuitively, the boy gave way to it as much as possible. But he never for one moment doubted his own mastery over it. In his mastery there must be a living tolerance. This his instinct told him. And the stallion, bucking and sitting up, seemed somehow to accept it.
For after all, if the horse had gone really wicked, absolutely wicked, it would have been too much for Master Jack. What he depended on was the bit of response the animal was capable of. And this he knew.
He found he could sit the stallion with much greater ease than before. And that strange, powerful life beneath him and between his thighs, heaving and breaking like some enormous alive wave, exhilarated him with great exultance, the exultance in the power of life.
Monica's eyes turned from the red, fixed, overbearing face of Easu, to the queer, abstract, radiant male face of Jack, and a great pang went through her heart, and a cloud came over her brow. The boy balanced on the trembling, spurting stallion, looking down at it with dark-blue, wide, dark-looking eyes, and thinking of nothing, yet feeling so much; his face looking soft and warm with a certain masterfulness that was more animal than human, like a centaur, as if he were one blood with the horse, and had the centaur's superlative horse-sense, its non-human power, and wisdom of hot blood-knowledge. She watched the boy, and her brow darkened and her face was fretted as if she were denied something. She wanted to look again at Easu, with his fixed hard will that excited her. But she couldn't. The queer soft power of the boy was too much for her, she could not save herself.
So they rode, the two men, and all the people watched them, as the sun went down in the wild empty sea westward from hot Australia.
CHAPTER IX
NEW YEAR'S EVE
I
New Year's Eve was celebrated Scotch style, at Wandoo. It was already night, and Jack and Tom had been round seeing if the visitors had everything they wanted. Ma and a few select guests were still in the kitchen. The cold collation in the parlour still waited majestically. The twins and Harry were no longer visible: they had subsided on their stomachs by the wood-pile, in the hot evening, and found refuge in sleep; for all the world like sailors sunk dilapidated and demoralised after a high old spree. But Ellie and Baby were at their zenith. Having been kept out of the ruck most carefully upstairs, they were now produced at their best. Mr. Ellis was again away in Perth, seeing the doctor.
Tom and Jack went into the loft and changed into clean white duck. They came forth like new men, jerking their arms in the stiff starched sleeves. And they proceeded to light the many Chinese lanterns hung in the barn, till the great place was mellow with soft light. Already in the forenoon they had scraped candle ends on the floor, and rubbed them in. Now they rubbed in the wax a little more, to get the proper slipperiness.
The light brought the people, like moths. Of course the Reds were there, brazen as brass. They too had changed into white suits, tight round the calf and hollow at the waist, and, for the moment, with high collars rising to their ears above the black cravats. Also they sported elastic-sided boots of patent leather, whereas most of the other fellows were in their heavy hob-nailed boots, nicely blacked, indeed, but destitute of grace. With their hair brushed down in a curl over their foreheads, and their beards brushed apart, their strong sinewy bodies filling out the white duck, they felt absolutely invincible, and almost they looked it. For Jack was growing blind to the rustic absurdities, blinded by the animal force of these Australians.
Jack sat down by Herbert, who was pleasant and mild after his illness, always a little shy with the English boy. But the other Reds had taken possession of the place. Their bounce and brass were astounding. Jack watched them in wonder at their aggressive self-assertion. They were real bounders, more crude and more bouncy than ever the Old Country could produce. But that was Australian. The bulk of the people, perhaps, were dumb and unassuming. But there was always a proportion of real brassy bounders, ready to walk over you and jump in your stomach, if you'd let them.
Easu had constituted himself Master of the Ceremonies, and we know what an important post that is, in a country bean-feast. Wherever he was, he must be in the front, bossing and hectoring other people. He had appointed his brothers "stewards." The Reds were to run the show. There was to be but one will: the will of the big, loose-jointed, domineering Easu, with his reddish blonde beard brushed apart and his keen eyes spying everything with a slight jeer.
Most of the guests, of course, were as they had been all day, in their Sunday suits or new dungarees. Joe Low, trim in a clean cotton jacket, sat by the great open doors very seriously blowing notes out of an old brass cornet, that had belonged to his father, a retired sergeant of the Foot. Near him, a half-caste Huck was sliding a bow up and down a yellow-looking fiddle, while other musicians stood with their instruments under their arms. Outside in the warm night bearded farmers smoked and talked. Mamas sat on the forms round the barn, and the girls, most of them fresh and gay in billowy cotton frocks, clustered around in excitement. It was the great day of all the year.
For the rest, most of the young men were leaning holding up the big timber supports of the barn, or framing the great opening of the sliding doors, which showed the enormous dark gap of the naked night.
Fire-eating Easu waved energetically to Joe, who blew a blast on the cornet. This done, the strong but "common" Australian voice of Easu, shouted effectively:
"Take partners. Get ready for the Grand March."
For of course he plumed himself on doing everything in "style," everything grand and correct, this Australian who so despised the effete Old Country. The rest of the Reds straightaway marched to the sheepish and awkward fellows who stood propped up against any available prop, seized them by the arm, and rushed them up to some equally sheepish maiden. And instead of resenting it, the poor clowns were glad at being forced into company. They grinned and blushed, and the girls giggled and bridled, as they coupled and arranged themselves, two by two, close behind one another.
A blast of music. Easu seized Monica, who was self-consciously waiting on the arm of another young fellow. He just flung his arm round her waist and heaved her to the head of the column. Then the procession set off, Easu in front with his arm round Monica's waist, he shining with his own brass and self-esteem, she looking falsely demure. After them came the other couples, self-conscious but extremely pleased with themselves, slowly marching round the barn.
Jack, who had precipitated himself into the night rather than be hauled into action by one of the Red stewards, stood and looked on from afar, feeling out of it. He felt out in the cold. He hated Easu's common, gloating self-satisfaction, there at the head with Monica. Red cared nothing about Monica, really. Only she was the star of the evening, the chief girl, so he had got her. She was the chief girl for miles around. And that was enough for Easu. He was determined to leave his mark on her.
After the March, the girls went back to their Mamas, the youths to their shoulder-supports; and following a pause, Easu again came into the middle of the floor, and began bellowing instructions. He was so pleased with the sound of his own voice, when it was lifted in authority. Everybody listened with all their ears, afraid of disobeying Easu.
When the ovation was over, the boldest of the young men made a bee-line for the prettiest girls, and there was a hubbub. In a twinkling any girl whom Jack would have deigned to dance with, was monopolised, only the poorest remained. Meanwhile the stewards were busy sorting the couples into groups.
Jack could not dance. He had not intended to dance. But he didn't at all like being left out entirely, in oblivion as if he did not exist. Not at all. So he drifted towards the group of youths in the doorway. But he slid away again as Ross Ellis plunged in, seized whom he could by the arm, and led them off to the crude and unprepossessing maidens left still unchosen. He felt he would resent intensely being grabbed by the arm and hustled into a partner by one of the Reds.
What was to be done? He seemed to be marooned in his own isolation like some shipwrecked mariner: and he was becoming aware of the size of his own hands and feet. He looked for Tom. Tom was steering a stout but willing mother into the swim, and Lennie, like a faithful little tug, was following in his wake with a gentle but squint-eyed girl.
Jack became desperate. He looked round quickly. Mrs. Ellis was sitting alone on a packing case. At the same moment he saw Ross Ellis bearing down on him with sardonic satisfaction.
Action was quicker than thought. Jack stood bowing awkwardly before his hostess.
"Won't you do me the honour, Mrs. Ellis?"
"Oh, dear me! Oh dear, Jack Grant! But I believe I will. I never thought of such a thing. But why not? Yes, I will, it will give me great pleasure. We shall have to lead off, you know. And I was supposed to lead with Easu, seeing my husband isn't here. But never mind, we'll lead off, you and I, just as well."
She rose to her feet briskly, seeming young again. Lately Jack thought she seemed always to have some trouble on her mind. For the moment she shook it off.
As for him, he was panic-stricken. He wished he could ascend into heaven; or at least as high as the loft.
"You'll help me through, marm, won't you?" he said. 'This dance is new to me.'
And he bowed to her, and she bowed to him, and it was horrible. The horrible things people did for enjoyment!
"This dance is new to him," Mrs. Ellis passed over his shoulder to a pretty girl in pink. "Help him through, Alice."
Feeling a fool, Jack turned and met a wide smile and a nod. He bowed confusedly.
"I'm your corner," said the girl. "I'll pass it on to Monica, she'll be your vis-à-vis."
"Pick up partners," Easu was yelling with his domineering voice. "All in place, please! One more couple! One more couple!" He was at the other end of the barn, coming forward now, looking around like a general. He was coming for his Aunt.
"Ah!" he said, when he saw Mrs. Ellis and Jack. "You're dancing with Jack Grant, Aunt Jane? Thought he couldn't dance."
And he straightway turned his back on them, looking for Monica. Monica was standing with a young man from York.
"Monica, I want you," said Easu. "You can find a girl there," he said, nodding from the young fellow to a half-caste girl with fuzzy hair. The young fellow went white. But Monica crossed over to Easu, for she was a wicked little thing, and this evening she was hating Jack Grant, the booby.
"One more couple not needed," howled Easu. "Top centre. Where are you, Aunt Jane? Couple from here, lower centre, go to third set on left."
Easu was standing near the top. He stepped backward, and down came his heel on Jack's foot. Jack got away, but an angry light came into his eyes. His face, however, still kept that cherubic expression characteristic of it, and so ill-fitting his feelings. Easu was staring over the room, and never even looked round.
"All in place? Music!" cried the M. C.
The music started with a crash and a bang, Mrs. Ellis had seized Jack's arm and was leading him into the middle of the set.
"Catch hands, Monica," she said.
He loved Monica's thin, nervous, impulsive hands. His heart went hot as he held them. But Monica wouldn't look at him. She looked demurely sideways. But he felt the electric thrill that came to him from her hands, and he didn't want to let go.
She loosed his grasp and pushed him from her.
"Get back to Ma," she whispered. "Corner with Alice."
"Oh, Lor!" thought Jack. For he was cornered and grabbed and twisted by the girl with the wide smile, before he was let go to fall into place beside Ma, panting with a sort of exasperation.
So it continued, grabbing and twisting and twirling, all perfectly ridiculous and undignified. Why, oh, why did human beings do it! Yet it was better than being left out. He was half-pleased with himself.
Something hard and vicious dug him in the ribs. It was the elbow of Easu, who passed skipping like a goat.
Was Easu making a dead set at him? The devil's own anger began to rise in the boy's heart, bringing up with it all the sullen dare-devil that was in him. When he was roused, he cared for nothing in earth or heaven. But his face remained cherubic.
"Follow!" said a gentle voice. Perhaps it was all a mistake. He found himself back by Mrs. Ellis, watching other folks prance. There he stood and mopped his brow, in the hot, hot night. He was wet with sweat all over. But before he could wipe his face the pink Alice had caught and twirled him, taking him unawares. He waited alert. Nothing happened. Actually peace for a few seconds.
The music stopped. Perhaps it was over. Oh, enjoyment! Why did people do such things to enjoy themselves? Only he would have liked to hold Monica's thin, keen hands again. The thin, keen, wild, wistful Monica. He would like to be near her.
Easu was bawling something. Figure Number Two. He could not listen to instructions in Easu's voice.
They were dancing again, and he knew no more than at first what he was doing. All a maze. A natural diffidence and a dislike of being touched by any casual stranger made dancing unpleasant to him. But he kept up. And suddenly he found himself with Monica folded in his arms, and she clinging to him with sudden fierce young abandon. His heart stood still, as he realised that not only did he want to hold her hands—he had thought it was just that; but he wanted to hold her altogether in his arms. Terrible and embarrassing thought! He wished himself on the moon, to escape his new emotions. At the same time there was the instantaneous pang of disappointment as she broke away from him. Why could she not have stayed! And why, oh, why were they both doing this beastly dancing!
He received a clean clear kick on the shin as he passed Easu. Dazed with a confusion of feelings, keenest among which perhaps was anger, he pulled up again beside Ma. And there was Monica suddenly in his arms again.
"You always go again," he said in a vague murmur.
"What did you say?" she asked archly, as she floated from him, just at the moment when Easu jolted him roughly. Across the little distance she was watching the hot anger in the boy's confused, dark-blue eyes.
Another pause. More beastly instructions. Different music. Different evolutions.
"Steady, now!" he said to himself, trying to make his way in the new figure. But what work it was! He tried to keep his brain steady. But Ma on his arm was heavy as lead.
And then, with great ease and perfect abandon, in spite of her years, Ma threw herself on his left bosom and reclined in peace there. He was overcome. She seemed absolutely to like resting on his bosom.
"Throw out your right hand, dear boy," she whispered, and before he knew he had done it, Easu had seized his hand in a big, brutal, bullying grasp, and was grinding his knuckles. And then sixteen people began to spin.
The startled agony of it made a different man of him. For Ma was heavy as a log on his left side, clinging to him as if she liked to cling to his body. He never quite forgave her. And Easu had his unprotected right hand gripped in a vice and was torturing him on purpose with the weight and the grind. Jack's hands were naturally small, and Easu's were big. And to be gripped by that great malicious paw was horrible. Oh, the tension, the pain and rage of that giddy-go-rounding, first forward, then abruptly backwards. It broke some of his innocence forever.
But although paralytic with rage when released, Jack's face still looked innocent and cherubic. He had that sort of face, and that diabolic sort of stoicism. Mrs. Ellis thought: "What a nice kind boy! but late waking up to the facts of life!" She thought he had not even noticed Easu's behaviour. And again she thought to herself, her husband would be jealous if he saw her. Poor old Jacob! Aloud she said:
"The next is the last figure. You're doing very well, Jack. You go off round the ring now, handing the ladies first your right and then your left hand."
He felt no desire to hand anybody his hand. But in the middle of the ring he met Monica, and her slim grasp took his hurt right hand, and seemed to heal it for a moment.
Easu grabbed his arm, and he saw three others, suffering fools gladly, locked arm in arm, playing soldiers, as they called it. Oh, God! Easu, much taller than Jack, was twisting his arm abominably, almost pulling it out of the socket. And Jack was saving up his anger.
It was over. "That was very kind of you, my dear boy," Mrs. Ellis was saying. "I haven't enjoyed a dance so much for years."
Enjoyed! That ghastly word! Why would people insist on enjoying themselves in these awful ways! Why "enjoy" oneself at all? He didn't see it. He decided he didn't care for enjoyment, it wasn't natural to him. Too humiliating, for one thing.
Twenty steps involved in the black skirts of Mrs. Ellis, and he was politely rid of her. She was very nice. And by some mystery she had really enjoyed herself in this awful mêlée. He gave it up. She was too distant in years and experience for him to try to understand her. Did these people never have living anger, like a bright black snake with unclosing eyes, at the bottom of their souls? Apparently not.
II
There was an interval in the dancing, and they were having games. Red was of course still bawling out instructions and directions, being the colonel of the feast. He was in his element, playing top sawyer.
The next game was to be "Modern Proposals." It sounded rotten to Jack. Each young man was to make an original proposal to an appointed girl. Great giggling and squirming even at the mention of it.
Easu still held the middle of the floor. Jack thought it was time to butt in. With his hands in his pockets he walked coolly into the middle of the room.
"You people don't know me, and I don't know you," he found himself announcing in his clear English voice. "Supposing I call this game."
Carried unanimously!
The young men lined up, and Easu, after standing loose on his legs for some time just behind Jack, went and sat down somewhat discomfited.
Jack pushed Tom on to his knees before the prettiest girl in the room—the prettiest strange girl, anyhow. Tom, furiously embarrassed on his knees, stammered:
"I say! There's a considerable pile o' socks wantin' darning in my ol' camp. I'd go so far as to face the parson, if you'd do 'em for me."
It was beautifully non-committal. For all the Bushies were at heart terrified lest they might by accident contract a Scotch marriage, and be held accountable for it.