"Come on, ye pair of——"
Jack gave another twist to the wrist of the prisoner, who howled, and then he kicked him three yards away. But his heart smote him, for the kick was so bony, the tramp was thin and frail. Then, full of the black joy of scattering such wastrels, he sprang unexpectedly on the other tramp. The swaggy gave a yell, and fled. For a minute or two the couple of ragged, wretched, despicable figures could be seen bolting like running vermin down the trail. Then they were out of sight.
Tom and Jack sat by the fire and roared with laughter, roared and roared till the bush was startled.
They were just packing up when someone else came down the road. It was a young woman in a very wide skirt on a very small pony, riding as if she were used to it. This was not the figure they expected to see.
"Why!" cried Tom, staring. "I do believe it's Ma's niece grown up."
It was. She was quite pleasant, but her hands were stub-fingered and work-hardened, and her voice was common.
"Y' didn't come along yesterday, as Ma expected," she explained, "so I just took Tubby to see if y' was coming today. How's the twins? How's Monica and Grace? I do wish they'd come."
"They're all right," said Tom.
"We heard about your Dad and your Gran. Fancy! But I wish Monica had come with you. She was such a little demon at school. I'm fair longing to see her."
"She's not the only one of you that's a demon!" said Tom, in the correct tone of banter, putting over his horse and drawing to the girl's side, and becoming very manly for her benefit. "An' what's wrong with us, that you aren't glad to see us?"
"Oh, you're all right," said the cousin. "But a girl of your own age is more fun, you know."
"Well, I don't happen to be a girl of your own age," said Tom. "Just by accident, I'm a man. But come on. There's some roughs about. We might just as well get out of their way."
He trotted alongside the damsel, leaving Jack to bring the pack-horse. Jack didn't mind.
II
So they went on, receiving a rough and generous hospitality from, one or another of Tom's or Jack's relations, of whom there were astonishingly many, along the grand bush track to Geraldton. If they weren't direct relations, they were relations by marriage, and it served just as well. There were the Brockmans, there were the Browns, and Gales, and Davises, Edgars and Conollys, Burgesses, Cooks, Logues, Cradles, Morrises, Fitzgeralds and Glasses. Families united by some fine-drawn connection or other; and very often much more divided than united, by some very plain-drawn feud. Their names like brooks trickled across the land, and you crossed and re-crossed. You would lose a name entirely: like the Brockman name. Then suddenly it reappeared as Brackman, and "Oh yes, we're cousins!"
"Who isn't cousin!" thought Jack.
Some of them had huge tracts of land fenced in. Some had little bits of poor farms. Sometimes there were deserted farms.
"And to think," said Tom, "that none of them is my own mother's relations. All Dad's, or else Ma's. Mostly Ma's."
It was queer the way he hankered after his own real mother. Jack, for his part, didn't care a straw who was his mother's relation and who wasn't. But you would have thought Tom lived under a Matriarchy, and derived everything from a lost mother.
It was not wet enough yet to be really boggy, though camping out was damp. However, they mostly got a roof. If it wasn't a relation's, it was a barn, or the "Bull and Horns" by Gingin. And to the boys, all that mattered was whether they were on the right road: often a very puzzling question; or if the heavy rain would hold off; if there was plenty of grub; if the horses seemed tired or not quite fit; if they were going to get through a boggy place all right; if the packs were fast; if they made good going. The inns were "low" in every sense of the word, including the low-pitched roof. And full of bugs, however new the country. With red-nosed, grassy-whiskered landlords who thumbed the glasses when there were any glasses to thumb. And there were always men at these inns, almost always the same kind of brutal, empty roughs.
"Look here," said Jack, "wherever we go there are these roughs, and more roughs, and more. Where the devil do they come from, and how do they make a living? Apart from farm labourers, I mean."
"A lot of them are shearers," said Tom, "drifting from job to job, according to climate. When shearing season's over here, they work on to the south-west, where it's cooler. And then there are kangaroo and 'possum snarers. That young fellow we saw rooked of all his sugar last night was a skin-hunter. They get half-a-crown apiece for good 'roo skins, and it's quite a trade. The others last night were mostly sandalwood getters. There's quite a lot of men make money collecting bark for export, and manna-gum. That rowdy lot playing fifty-three were a gang of well-sinkers. Then what with timber-workers, haulers, teamsters, junkers—oh, there's all sorts. But they're mostly one sort, swabs, rough and rowdy, an' can't keep their pants hitched up enough to be decent. You've seen 'em. They're mostly like the dirty old braces they wear. All the snap gone out of 'em, all the elastic perished. They just work and booze and loaf, and work and booze. I hope I'll never get so that I don't keep myself spruce. I hope I never will. But that's the worst o' the life out here. Nobody hardly keeps spruce."
Jack kept this well in mind. He too hated a man slouching along with a discoloured face, and trousers slopping down his insignificant legs. He loathed that look which tramps and ne'er-do-wells usually have, as if their legs weren't there, inside their beastly bags. Despicable about the rear and the legs. The best of the farmers, on the contrary, had strong, sinewy legs, full of life. Easu was like that, his powerful legs holding his horse. And Tom had good, live legs. But poor Dad had not been very alive, inside his pants.
"Whatever I do, I'll never go despicable and humiliated about the legs and seat," said Jack to himself, as he pressed the stirrups with his toes and felt the powerful elasticity of his thighs, holding the live body of the horse between his muscles in permanent grip. And it seemed as if the powerful animal life of the horse entered into him, through his legs and seat, and made him strong.
"What's a junker, Tom?"
"A low, four-wheeled log hauler, with a long pole."
"I thought it was a man. A swab is a man?"
"Yes. He's any old drunk."
"But a swaggy is a tramp?"
"It is. It is one who humps it. If he's got a pack, it's his swag. If he's only got a blanket and a billy, it's his bluey and his drum. And if he's got nothing, it's Waltzing Matilda."
"I suppose so," said Jack. "And his money is his sugar?"
"Right-O! son!"
"And Chink is Chinaman?"
"No, sir. That's Chow. Chink means prison. An' a lag is a ticketer: one who's out on lease. Now what more Child's Guide to Knowledge do you want?"
"I'm only getting it straight. Jam and dog both mean 'side'?"
"Verily. Only dog is sometimes same as bully tinned meat."
"And what's stosh?"
"Landin' him one."
Jack rode on, thinking about it.
"What's a remittance man, really, Tom?"
"A waster. A useless bird shipped out here to be kept south o' the line, because he's a disgrace to England. And his family soothes their conscience by sending him so much a month, which they call his remittance, 'stead o' letting him starve, or work. Like Rackett. Plenty o' money sent out to him to stink on."
"Why don't you like Rackett?"
"I fairly despise him, an' his money. He's absolutely useless baggage, rotting life away. I can't abear to see him about. Old George gave me the tip he was leaving our place, else I'd never have gone and left him loose there."
"He is no harm."
"How do you know? If be hasn't got a disease of the body, he's got a disease of the soul."
"What disease?"
"Dunno."
"Does he take drugs?"
"I reckon that's about his figure. But he's an eyesore to me, loafin', loafin'. An' he's an eyesore to Ma, save for the bit he teaches Lennie. An' when he starts talkin' on the high fiddle, like he does to Mary the minute she comes down, makes you want to walk on his face."
Poor Rackett! Jack marvelled that Tom had always been so civil.
The two jogged along very amicably together. Tom was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. At the same time, he was in his own estimation a gentleman, and a person of consideration. It was "thus far" with him.
But whoever came along, they all drew up.
"Hello, mate! How's goin'? . . . Well, so long!"
One youth was walking to Fremantle to take a job offered by his uncle, serving in a grocery shop. The lad was in tatters. His blanket was tied with twine, his battered billy hung on to it. But he was jubilant. And now he is one of Australia's leading lights. Even it is said of him that he never forgot the kindness he received on the road.
But most of the trailers were sundowners, sloping along anyhow, subsisting anyhow, but ready with the ingenious explanation that they "chopped a bit," or "fenced a bit," or "trapped a bit." Perhaps they never realised how much bigger was the bit they loafed.
They were not bad. The bad ones were the scoundrels down from the Never-Never, emerging in their rags and moral degradation after years on the sheep runs or cattle stations, years of earnings spent in drink and squalid, beastly debauchery. Some were hoarding their cheques for coast-town consumption, like the first two rogues, and cadging and stealing their way.
But then there were families driving to the nearest settlement to do a bit of shopping, or visit their relations, or fetch the doctor to "fix up Teddy's little leg." Once there was a posse of mounted police, very important and gallant, with horses champing and chains clinking. They were out after a criminal supposed to have been landed on the coast by a dago boat "from the other side." Then there was an occasional Minister of the Gospel, on a pony, dressed in black. Jack's heart always sank when he saw that black. He decided that priests should be white, or in orange robes, like the Buddhist priests he had seen in Colombo, or in a good blue, like some nuns.
Gradually the road became a home: more a home than any homestead.
"Let's get!" was Tom's perpetual cry, when they were fixed up in the house of some relation, or in some inn. He only felt happy on the road. Sometimes they went utterly lonely for many miles. Sometimes they passed a deserted habitation. But there were always signs of life near a well. And often there were milestones.
"Fifty-seven miles to where?"
"I don't know. We're leagues from Gingin. Certainly fifty-seven miles to nowhere of any importance on the face of this earth."
"Wonder what Gingin means?"
"Better not ask. You never know what these natives'll be naming places after. Usually something vile. But gin means a woman, whatever Gingin is."
Gradually they got further and further, geographically, mentally, and emotionally, from Wandoo and all permanent associations. Jack was glad. He loved the earth, the wild country, the bush, the scent. He wanted to go on forever. Beyond the settlements—beyond the ploughed land—beyond all fences. That was it—beyond all fences. Beyond all fences, where a man was alone with himself and the untouched earth.
Man escaping from Man! That's how it is all the time. The passion men have to escape from mankind. What do they expect in the beyond? God?
They'll never find the same God! Never again. They are trying to escape from the God men acknowledge, as well as from mankind, the acknowledger.
The land untouched by man. The call of the mysterious, vast, unoccupied land. The strange inaudible calling, like the far-off call of a kangaroo. The strange, still, pure air. The strange shadows. The strange scent of wild, brown, aboriginal honey.
Being early for the boat, the boys camped for twenty-four hours in a perfectly lonely place. And in the utterly lonely evening Jack began craving again: for Monica, for a woman, for some object for his passion to settle on. And he knew again, as he had always known, that nowhere is free, so long as man is passionate, desirous, yearning. His only freedom is to find the object of his passion, and fulfil his desires and satisfy his yearning, as far as his life can succeed. Or else, which is more difficult, to harden himself away from all desire and craving, to harden himself into pride, and refer himself to that other god.
Yes, in the wild bush, God seemed another god. God seemed absolutely another god, vaster, more calm and more deeply, sensually potent. And this was a profound satisfaction. To find another, more terrible, but also more deeply-fulfilling god stirring subtly in the uncontaminated air about one. A dread god. But a great god, greater than any known. The sense of greatness, vastness, and newness, in the air. And the strange, dusky, gray eucalyptus-smelling sense of depth, strange depth in the air, as of a great deep well of potency, which life had not yet tapped. Something which lay in a man's blood as well—and in a woman's blood—in Monica's—in Mary's—in the Australian blood. A strange, dusky, gun-smelling depth of potency that had never been tapped by experience. As if life still held great wells of reserve vitality, strange unknown wells of secret life-source, dusky, of a strange, dim, aromatic sap which had never stirred in the veins of man, to consciousness and effect. And if he could take Monica and set the dusky, secret, unknown sap flowing in himself and her, to some unopened life consciousness—that was what he wanted. Dimly, uneasily, painfully he realised it.
And then the bush began to frighten him, as if it would kill him, as it had killed so much man-life before, killed it before the life in man had had time to come to realisation.
He was glad when the road came down to the sea. There, the great, pale-blue, strange, empty sea, on new shores with new strange sea-birds flying, and strange rocks sticking up, and strange blue distances up the bending coast. The sea that is always the same, always a relief, a vastness and a soothing. Coming out of the bush, and being a little afraid of the bush, he loved the sea with an English passion. It made him feel at home in the same known infinite of space.
Especially on a windy day, when the track would curve down to a greeny-grey opalescent sea that beat slowly on the red sands, like a dying grey bird with white wing-feathers. And the reddish cliffs with sage-green growth of herbs, stood almost like flesh.
Then the road went inland again, through a swamp, and to the bush. To emerge next morning in the sun, upon a massive deep indigo ocean, infinite, with pearl-clear horizon; and in the nearness, emerald-green and white flashing unspeakably bright on a pinkish shore, perfectly world-new.
They were nearing the journey's end. Nearing the little port, and the ship, and the world of men.
CHAPTER XVII
AFTER TWO YEARS
I
A sky with clouds of white and grey, and patches of blue. A green sea flecked with white, and shadowed golden brown. On the horizon, the sense of a great open void, like an open valve, as if the bivalve oyster of the world, sea and sky, were open away westward, open into another infinity, and the people on land, inside the oyster of the world, could look far out to the opening.
They could see the bulk of near islands. Further off, a tiny white sail coming down fast on the fresh great sea-wind, emanating out of the north-west. She seemed to be coming from the beyond, slipping into the slightly-open, living oysters of our world.
The men on the wharf at Fremantle, watching her black hull emerge from the flecked sea, as she sailed magically nearer, knew she would be a cattle-boat coming in from the great Nor'-West. They watched her none the less.
As she hesitated, turning to the harbour, she was recognised as the old fore-and-aft schooner "Venus"; though if Venus ever smelled like that, we pity her lovers. Smell or not, she balanced nicely, and with a bit of manœuvring ebbed her delicate way up the wharf.
There they are! There they are, Tom and Jack, though their own mothers wouldn't know them! Looking terribly like their fellow-passengers: stubby beards, long hair, greasy dirty dungarees, and a general air of disreputable outcasts. But, no doubt, with cheques of some sort in their pockets.
Two years, nearer three years have gone by, since they set out from Wandoo. It is more than three years since Jack landed fresh from England, in this very Fremantle. And he is so changed, he doesn't even trouble to remember.
They don't trouble to remember anything: not yet. Back in the Never-Never, one by one the ties break, the emotional connections snap, memory gives out, and you come undone. Then, when you have come undone from the great past, you drift in an unkempt nonchalance here and there, great distances across the great hinterland country, and there is nothing but the moment, the instantaneous moment. If you are working your guts out, you are working your guts out. If you are rolling across for a drink, you are rolling across for a drink. If you are just getting into a fight with some lump of a brute, you are just getting into a fight with some lump of a brute. If you are going to sleep in some low hole, you are going to sleep in some low hole. And if you wake feeling dry and hot and hellish, why, you feel dry and hot and hellish till you leave off feeling dry and hot and hellish. There's no more to it. The same if you're sick. You're just sick, and stubborn as hell, till your stubbornness gets the better of your sickness.
There are words like home, Wandoo, England, mother, father, sister, but they don't carry very well. It's like a radio message that's so faint, so far off, it makes no impression on you; even if you can hear it in a shadowy way. Such a faint, unreal thing in the broadcast air.
You have moved outside the pale, the pale of civilisation, the pale of the general human consciousness. The human consciousness is a definitely limited thing, even on the face of the earth. You can move into regions outside of it. As in Australia. The broadcasting of the vast human consciousness can't get you. You are beyond. And since the call can't get you, the answer begins to die down inside yourself, you don't respond any more. You don't respond, and you don't correspond.
There is no past: or if there is, it is so remote and ineffectual it can't work on you at all. And there is no future. Why saddle yourself with such a spectre as the future? There is the moment. You sweat, you rest, the bugs bite you, you thirst, you drink, you think you're going to die, you don't care, and you know you won't die, because a certain stubbornness inside you keeps the upper hand.
So you go on. If you've got no work, you either get a horse or you tramp it off somewhere else. You keep your eyes open that you don't get lost, or stranded for water. When you're damned, infernally and absolutely sick of everything, you go to sleep. And then if the bugs bite you, you are beyond that too.
But at the bottom of yourself, somewhere, like a tiny seed, lies the knowledge that you're going back in a while. That all the unreal will become real again, and this real will become unreal. That all that stuff, home, mother, responsibility, family, duty, etc., it all will loom up again into actuality, and this, this heat, this parchedness, this dirt, this mutton, these dying sheep, these roving cattle that take the flies by the million, these burning tin gold-camps—all this will recede into the unreal, it will cease to be actual.
Some men decide never to go back, and they are the derelicts, the scarecrows and the warning. "Going back" was a problem in Jack's soul. He didn't really want to go back. All that which lay behind, society, homes, families, he felt a deep hostility towards. He didn't want to go back. He was like an enemy, lurking outside the great camp of civilisation. And he didn't want to go into camp again.
Yet neither did he want to be a derelict. A mere derelict he would never be, though temporary derelicts both he and Tom were. But he saw enough of the real waster, the real out-and-out derelict, to know that this he would never be.
No, in the end he would go back to civilisation. But the thought of becoming a part of the civilised outfit was deeply repugnant to him. Some other queer hard resolve had formed in his soul. Something gradually went hard in the centre of him. He couldn't yield himself any more. The hard core remained impregnable.
They had dutifully spent their year on the sheep-run Mr. George had sent them to. But after that, it was shift for yourself. They had stuck at nothing. Only they had stuck together.
They had cashed their cheques in many a well-known wooden "hotel" of the far-away coast. Oh, those wooden hotels with their uneasy verandahs, flies, flies, flies, flies, flies, their rum or whiskey, their dirty glasses, their flimsy partitions, their foul language, their bugs and dirt and desolation. The brutal foul-mouthed desolation of them, with the horses switching their tails at the hitching posts, the riders slowly soaking, staring at the blue heat and the silent world of dust, too far gone even to speak. Gone under the heat, the drought, the Never-Neverness of it, the unspeakable hot desolation. And evening coming, with men already drunk, already ripe for brawling, obscenity, and swindling gambling.
They had gone away chequeless, mourning their chequelessness, back on their horses to the cable station. Then following the droves miles and miles through the tropical, or semi-tropical bush, and over the open country, camping by water for a week at a time, and going on.
Then they had chucked cattle, wasted their cheques, footed it for weary, weary miles, like the swaggies they had so despised. Clothes in rags, boots in holes, another job; away in out-back camps with horsemen prospectors, with well-contractors; shepherding again, with utter wastrels of shepherds camping along with them, chucking the job, chucking the blasted rich aristocratic squatters, with all their millions of acres and sheep and fence and blasted outfit, all so dead bent on making money as quick as possible, all the machinery of civilisation, as far as possible, starting to grind and squeak there in the beyond. They had gone off with well-sinkers, and laboured like navvies. Chucked that, taken the road, spent the night at mission stations, watched the blacks being saved, and got to the mining camps.
Poor old Tom had got into deep waters. Even now he more than thought that he was legally married to a barmaid, far away back in the sublimest town you can imagine, back there in the blasting heat which so often burns a man's soul away even before it burns up his body. It had burned a hole in Tom's soul, in that town away back in the blasting heat, a town consisting of a score or so of ready-made tin houses got up from the coast in pieces, and put together by anybody that liked to try. There they stood or staggered, the tin ovens that men and women lived in; houses leaning like drunken men against stark tree-trunks, others looking strange and forlorn with some of their parts missing, said parts being under the seas, or elsewhere mislaid. But the absence of one section of a wall did not spoil the house for habitation. It merely gave you a better view of the inside happenings. Many of the tin shacks were windowless, and even shutterless: square holes in the raw corrugated erection. One was entirely wall-less, and this was the pub. It was just a tin roof reared on saplings against an old tree, with a sacking screen round the bar, through which sacking screen you saw the ghost of the landlady and her clients, if you approached from the back. The front view was open.
Here sat the motionless landlady, in her cooking hot shade, dispensing her indispensable grog, while her boss or husband rolled the barrels in. He had a team with which he hauled up the indispensable from the coast.
The nice-mannered Miss Snook took turn with her mama in this palace of Circe. She was extremely "nice" in her manners, for the "boss" owned the team, the pub, and the boarding-house at which you stayed so long as you could pay the outrageous prices. So Miss Snook, never familiarised into Lucy, for she wouldn't allow it, oscillated between the closed oven of the boarding-house and the open oven of the pub.
Father—or the "boss"—had been a barber in Sydney. Now he cooked in the boarding-house, and drove the team. "Mother" had been the high-born daughter of a chemist; she had ruined all her prospects of continuing in the eastern "swim" by running away with the barber, now called "boss." However, she took her decline in the social scale with dignity, and allowed no familiarities. Her previous station helped her to keep up her prices.
"We're not, y'understand, Mr. Grant, a Provident concern, as some foot-sloggers seem to think us. We're doing our best to provide for Lucy, against she wants to get married, or in case she doesn't."
She and Lucy did the washing and cleaning between them, but their efforts were nominal. Boss' cooking left everything to be desired. The place was a perfect Paradise.
"We know a gentleman when we see one, Mr. Grant, and we're not going to throw our only child away on a penniless waster."
Jack wanted loudly to proclaim himself a penniless waster. But Tom and he had a pact, not to say anything about themselves, or where they came from. They were just "looking round."
And in that heat, the plump, perspiring, cotton-clad Lucy thought that Tom seemed more amenable than Jack. Poor Tom seemed to fall for it, and Jack had to look on in silent disgust.
There was even a ghastly, gruesome wedding. Neither of the boys could bear to think of it. Even in the stupefaction of that heat, when the brain seems to melt, and the will degenerates, and nothing but the most rudimentary functions of the organism called man, continue to function, even then a sense of shame overpowered them. But Tom was in a trance, pig-headed as any of Circe's swine. He continued in the trance for about a week after his so-called marriage. Then he woke up from the welter of perspiration, rum, and Lucy in an amazed horror, and the boys escaped.
The nightmare of this town—it was called "Honeysuckle"—was able to penetrate Tom's most nonchalant mood, even when he was hundreds of trackless miles away. The young men covered their tracks carefully. The Snooks knew nothing but their names. But a name, alas, is a potent entity in the wilds.
They covered their tracks and disappeared again. But even so, an ancient letter from Wandoo followed them to a well-digging camp. It was from Monica to Tom, but it didn't seem to mean much to either boy.
For almost a year Tom and Jack had never written home. There didn't seem any reason. In his last letter Tom, suddenly having some sort of qualms, had sent his cheque to his maiden Aunts in York, because he knew, now Gran and Dad were gone, they'd be in shallow water. This off his conscience, he let Wandoo go out of his mind and spirit.
But now wandered in a letter from Aunt Lucy—dreaded name! It was a "thank you, my dear nephew," and went on to say that though she would be the last to repeat things she hoped trouble was not hanging over Mrs. Ellis' head.
Tom looked at Jack——
"We'd best go back," said Jack, reading his eyes.
"Seems like it."
So—the time had come. The "freedom" was over. They were going back.—They caught the old ship "Venus," going south with cattle.
To come back in body is not always to come back in mind and spirit. When Jack saw the white buildings of Fremantle he knew his soul was far from Fremantle. But nothing to be done. The old ship bumped against the wharf, and was tied up. Nothing to do but to step ashore.
They loafed off that ship with a gang of similar unkempt, unshaved, greasy, scoundrelly returners.
"Come an' 'ave a spot!"
"What about it, Tom?"
"Y'know I haven't a bean above the couple o' dollars to take me to Perth."
"Oh, dry it up," cried the mate. "What y'come ashore for? You're not goin' without a spot. It's on me. My shout."
"Shout it back in Perth, then."
"Wot'll y'ave?"
And through the swing doors they went.
"Best an' bitter's mine."
II
Jack had not let himself be cleaned out entirely, as Tom had. Tom seemed to want to be absolutely stumped. But Jack with deeper sense of the world's enmity, and his own need to hold his own against it, had posted a couple of cheques to Lennie to hold for him. Save for this he too was cleaned out.
The same little engine of the same little train of four years ago shrieked her whistle. The North-West crowd drifted noisily out of the Hotel and down the platform, packing into the third class compartment, in such positions as happily to negotiate the spittoons.
"Let's go forward," said Jack. "We might as well have cushions, if we're not smoking."
And he drew Tom forward along the train. They were going to get into another compartment, but seeing the looks of terror on the face of the woman and little girl already there, they refrained and went further.
Aggressively they entered another smoking compartment. A couple of fat tradesmen and a clergyman glowered at them. One of the tradesmen pulled out a handkerchief, shook it, and pretended to wipe his nose. There was perfume in the air.
"Oh my aunt!" said Tom, putting his hand on his stomach. "Turns me right over."
"What?" asked Jack.
"All this smell o' scent."
Jack grinned to himself. But he was back in civilisation, and he involuntarily stiffened.
"Hello! There's Sam Ellis!" Tom leaned out of the door. "Hello, Sam! How's things, eh?"
The young fellow addressed looked at Tom, grinned sicklily, and turned away. He didn't know Tom from Adam.
"Let's have another drink!" said Tom, flabbergasted, getting out of the train.
Jack followed, and they started down the platform, when the train jogged, jerked, and began to pull away. Instantly they ran for it, caught the rail of the guard's van, and swung themselves in. The interior was empty, so they sat down on the little boxes let in at the side. Then the two eyed each other self-consciously, uncomfortably. They felt uncomfortable and aware of themselves all at once.
"Of all the ol' sweeps!" said Tom. "Tell you what, you look like a lumper, absolutely nothing but a lumper."
"And what do you think you look like, you distorted scavenger!"
Tom grinned uncomfortably.
They got out of the station at Perth without having paid any railway fare.
The first place they went to was Mr. George's office. Jack pushed Tom through the door, and stood himself in the doorway fingering his greasy felt hat. Tom dropped his, picked it up, hit it against his knee.
Mr. George, neat in pale-grey suit and white waistcoat, glared at them briefly.
"Now then, my men, what can I do f' ye?"
"Why——" began Tom, grinning sheepishly.
"Trouble about a mining right?—mate stolen half y' gold dust?—want stake a claim on somebody else's reserve?—Come, out with it. What d' you want me to do for ye, man?"
"Why——" Tom began, more foolishly grinning than ever. Mr. George looked shrewdly at him, then at Jack. Then he sat back smiling.
"Well, if you're not a pair!" he said. "So it was mines for the last outfit? How'd it go?"
"About as slow as it could," said Tom.
"So you've not come back millionaires?" said Mr. George, a little bit disappointed.
"Come to ask for a fiver," said Tom.
"You outcast!" said Mr. George. "You had me, completely. But look here, lads, I'll stand y' a fiver apiece if y'll stop around Perth like that all morning, an' nobody spots ye."
"Easy!" said Tom.
"A bigger pair o' blackguards I've seldom set eyes on.—But you have dinner with me at the club tonight, I'll hear all about y' then. Six-thirty sharp. An' then I'll take ye to the Government House. Y' can wear that evening suit in the closet at my house, Jack, that you've left there all this time. See you six-thirty then."
III
Dismissed, they bundled into the street.
"Outcasts on the face value of us!" said Jack.
Tom stopped to roar with laughter, and bumped into a pedestrian.
"Hold hard! Keep a hand on the reins, can't yon?" exclaimed the individual, pushing Tom off.
Tom looked at him. It was Jimmie Short, another sort of cousin.
"Stow it, Jimmie. Don't y' know me?"
Jimmie took him firmly by the coat lapels and pulled him into the gutter.
"'f course I know ye," said Jimmie in a conciliatory tone, as to a drunk. "Meet me in half an hour at the Miners' Refuge, eh? Three steps and a lurch and there y' are!—Come, matey"—this to Jack—"take hold of y' pal's arm. See ye later."
Tom was weak with laughter at Jimmie's benevolent attitude. They were not recognised at all, as they lurched across the road.
They had a drink, and strolled down the long principal street of Perth, looking in at the windows of all the shops, and in spite of the fact that they had no money, buying each a silk handkerchief and a cake of scented soap. The excitement of this over, they rolled away to the riverside, to the ferry. Then again back into the town.
At the corner of the Freemason's Hotel they saw Aunt Matilda and Mary; Aunt Matilda huge in a tight-fitting, ruched dress of dark purple stuff, and Mary in a black-and-white striped dress with a tight bodice and tight sleeves with a little puff at the top, and a long skirt very full behind. She wore also a little black hat with a wing. And Jack, with a wickedness brought with him out of the North-West, would have liked to rip these stereotyped clothes and corsets off her, and make her walk down Hay Street in puris naturalibus. She went so trim and exact behind the huge Mrs. Watson. It would have been good to unsheathe her.
"Hello!" cried Tom. "There's Aunt Matilda. We've struck it rich."
The two young blackguards followed slowly after the two women, close behind them. Mary carried a book, and was evidently making for the little bookshop that had a lending library of newish books.
"Well, Mary, while you go in there I'll go and see if the chemist can't give me something for my breathing, for its awful!" said Mrs. Watson, standing and puffing before the bookshop.
"Shall I come for you or you for me?" asked Mary.
"I'll sit and wait for you in Mr. Pusey's," panted Aunt Matilda, and she sailed forward again, after having glanced suspiciously backward at the two ne'er-do-wells who were hesitating a few yards away.
Mary, with her black hair in a huge bun, her hat with a wing held on by steel pins, was gazing contemplatively into the window of the bookshop, at the newest book. The Book-lovers Latest! said a cardboard announcement.
"Can you help a poor chap, Miss?" said Tom, dropping his head and edging near.
Mary started, looked frightened, glanced at the first tramp and then at the second, in agitation, began to fumble for her purse, and dropped her book, spilling the loose leaves.
Jack at once began to gather up the scattered pages of the book: an Anthony Trollope novel. Mary, with black kid-gloved fingers, was fumbling in her purse for a penny. Tom peeped into the purse.
"Lend us the half-a-quid, Mary," he said.
She looked at his face, and a slow smile of amusement dawned in her eyes.
"I should never have known you!" she said.
Then as Jack rose, shoving the leaves together in the book, she looked into his blue eyes with her brown, queer shining eyes.
She held out her hand to him without saying a word, only looked into his eyes with a look of shining meaning. Which made him grin sardonically inside himself. He shook hands with her silently.
"You look something like you did after you'd been fighting with Easu Ellis," she said. "When are you going to Wandoo?
"Tomorrow, I should think," said Tom. "Everybody O.K. down there?"
"Oh I think so!" said Mary nervously.
"What do you men want?" came a loud, panting voice. Aunt Matilda sailing up, purple in the face.
"Lend us half-a-quid, Mary," murmured Tom, and hastily she handed it over. Jack had already commenced to beat a retreat. Tom sloped away as the large lady loomed near.
"Beggars!" she panted. "Are they begging?—How much—how much did you give him? The disgraceful——!"
"He made me give him half-a-sovereign, Aunt."
Mrs. Watson had to stagger into the shop for a chair.
The boys had a drink, and set off to the warehouse to look up Jack's box, in which were his white shirts and other forgotten garments.
Back in town, Jack felt a slow, sinister sense of oppression coming over him, a sort of fear, as if he were not really free, as if something bad were going to happen to him.
"How am I going to get dressed to dine with Old George tonight?" grumbled the still-careless Tom, who was again becoming tipsy. "Wherever am I goin' to get a suit to sport?"
"Oh, some of yer relations 'll fix you up."
Jack had an undefinable, uncomfortable feeling that he might suddenly come upon Monica, and she might see him in this state. He wouldn't like the way she'd look at him. No, he wouldn't be looked at like that, not for a hundred ponies.
They turned their backs on the beautiful River, with its Mount Eliza headland and wide sweeps and curves twinkling in the sun, and they walked up William Street looking for an adventure.
A man whom they knew from the north, in filthy denims, came out of a boot-shop and hailed them.
"Come an' stop one on me, maties."
"Righto! But where's Lukey? He stood us one this morning. Seen him?"
"Yes, I seen him.—But 'arf a mo'!"
Scottie turned into the pawnbroker's, under the three balls, and the boys followed.
"If y' sees what y' didn't oughta see, keep y' mouth shut."
"As a dead crab," assented Jack.
"Now then, Unde! What'll y' advance on that pair o' bran new boots I've just bought?"
"Two bob."
"Glory be. An' I just give twenty for 'em. Ne' mind, gimme th' ticket."
This transaction concluded, Jack wondered what he could pawn. He pulled out a front tooth, beautifully set in a gold plate. It had been a parting finish to his colonial outfit, the original tooth having been lost in a football scrum.
"Father Abraham," he said, holding up the tooth, "I'm a gentleman whether I look it or not. So is my friend this gentleman. He needs a dress suit for tonight, though you wouldn't believe it. He needs a first-class well-fitting dress suit for this evening."
"I have first-class latest fashion gents' clothes upstairs. But a suit like that is worth five pound to me."
"Let me try the jacket on."
Abraham was doubtful. But at length Tom was hustled shamefacedly into a rather large tail-coat. It looked awful, but Jack said it would do. The man wouldn't take a cent less than two quid deposit: and ten bob for the loan of the suit. The boys said they would call later.
"What'll you give me on this tooth?" asked Jack. "There's not a more expensive tooth in Western Australia."
"I'll lend y' five bob on that, pecos y' amuth me."
"And well come in later for the dress suit. All right, Aaron. Hang on to that tooth, it's irreplaceable. Treat it like a jewel. Give me the five bob and the ticket."
In the Miners' Refuge Jack flung himself down on a bench beside an individual who looked tidy but smelt strongly of rum, and asked:
"Say, mate, where can y' get a wash an' a brush-up for two?—local?"
The fellow got up and lurched surlily to the counter, refusing to answer.
Jack sat on, while Tom drank beer, and a heavy depression crept over his spirit. He had been hobnobbing with riff-raff so long, it had almost become second nature. But now a sense of disgust and impending disaster came over him. He would soon have to make an angry effort, and get out. He was becoming angry with Tom, for sitting there so sloppily soaking beer, when he knew his head was weak.
They began to eat sandwiches, hungrily standing at the bar. Another slipshod waster, eyeing the denim man as if he were a fish, sidled over to him and muttered.
"Sorry," said Scottie with a mournful expression, pulling out the pawn-ticket, "I've just had to pawn me boots. Can't be done."
Jack grinned. The waster then came sloping over to him.
"Y' axed me mate a civil question just now, lad, an' I'd 'ave answered it for 'im, but I just spotted a racin' pal o' mine an' was onter him ter get a tip he'd promised—a dead cert f' Belmont tomorrer. Y' might ha' seen him lettin' me inter th' know," he breathed. "Hev' a drink, lad!"
"Thanks!" said Jack. "This is my mate.—I'll take the shout, an' one back, an' then we must be off. Going up country tomorrer morning."
This seemed to push the man's mind on quicker.
"Just from up North, aren't ye? Easy place to knock up a cheque. How'd y' like to double a fiver?"
"O.K.," said Tom.
"Well here's a dead cert. Take it from me, and don't let it past yer. I got it from a racin' pal wot's in the know. Not straight for the punters, maybe—but straight as a die f'r me 'n my pals. Double y' money? Not 'arf! Multiply it by ten. 'S a dead cert."
"Name?"
"Not so quick. Not in 'ere. Come outside, 'n I'll whisper it to y'."
Jack paid for the drinks, and winking warningly to Tom, followed the man outside.
"The name o' the 'oss," the fellow said—"But tell yer wot, I'll put ye on the divvy with a book I know—or y' c'n come wi' me. He keeps a paper-shop in Hay Street."
"We don't know the name of the horse yet."
"Comin' from up North you don't know the name o' none of 'em, do yer? He's a rank outsider. Y' oughter get twenties on 'im."
"We've only got a quid atween us," said Tom.
"Well, that means a safe forty—after th' race."
"Bob on!" said Tom. "Where's the bookshop?"
"How can we go in an' back a hoss without knowin' his name?" said Jack.
"Oh I'll tip it y' in 'ere."
They entered a small paper-shop, and the man said to the fellow behind the counter:
"These two gents's pals o' mine.—How much did y' say y'd lay, mates?"
"Out with the name o' th' hoss first," said Tom confidentially.
"This shop's changed hands lately," said the fat fellow behind the counter. "I don't make books. Got no licence."
Didn't that look straight? But the boys were no greenhorns. They walked out of the shop again.
In the road the stranger said:
"The name o' th' 'oss is Double Bee. If y'll give me th' money I'll run upstairs 'ere t' old Josh—everyone knows him for a sound book."
"The name o' th' hoss," said Jack, "is Boots-two-Bob. An' a more cramblin' set o' lies I never heard. Get outter this, or I'll knock y' head off."
The fellow went off with a yellow look.
"Gosh!" said Tom. "We're back home right enough, what?"
"Bon soir, as Frenchy used to say?"
Rolling a little drearily along, they saw Jimmie Short standing on the pavement watching them.
"Hello, mates!" he said. "Still going strong?"
"Fireproof!" said Tom.
"Remember barging into me this morning? And my best girl was just coming round the corner with her Ma! Had to mind my company, eh, boys. But come an' have a drink now.—I seem to have seen you before to-day, haven't I? Where was it?"
"Don't try and think," said Tom. "Y' might do us out of a pony."
"Righto! old golddust! Step over on to the Bar-parlour mat."
"I'm stepping," said Tom. "'N I'm not drunk."
"No, he's not," said Jack.
"You bet he's not," said Jimmie. He was eyeing them curiously as if his memory pricked him.
"My name," said Tom, "is Ned Kelly. And if yours isn't Jimmie Miller, what is it?"
"Why, it's Short.—Well, I give it up. I can't seem to lay my finger on you, Kelly."
Tom roared with laughter.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Ten past twelve."
"We've won a pony off Old George!" said the delighted Tom. "I'm Tom Ellis and he's Jack Grant. Now do you know us, Jimmie?"
Jack was glad to get washed and barbered and dressed. After all, he was sick of wasters and roughs. They were stupider than respectable people, and much more offensive physically and morally. To hell with them all. He wouldn't care if some tyrant would up and extirpate the breed.
Anyhow he stepped clean out of their company.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GOVERNOR'S DANCE
Three gentlemen in evening dress passing along by the low brick wall skirting the Government House. One of the gentlemen portly and correct, two of the gentlemen young, with burnt brown faces that showed a little less tan below the shaving line, and limbs too strong and too rough to fit the evening clothes. Jack's suit was on the small side, though he'd scarcely grown in height. But it showed a big piece of white shirt-cuff at the wrists, and seemed to reveal the muscles of his shoulders unduly. As for Tom's quite good and quite expensive suit from the pawn-shop, it was a little large for him. If he hadn't been so bursting with life it would have been sloppy. But the crude animal life came so forcibly through the black cloth, that you had to overlook the anomaly of the clothes. Both boys wore socks of fine scarlet wool, and the new handkerchiefs of magenta silk inside their waistcoats. The scarlet, magenta, and red-brown of their faces made a gallant pizzicato of colour against the black and white. Anyhow they fancied themselves, and walked conceitedly.
Jack's face was a little amusing. It had the kind of innocence and half-smile you can see on the face of a young fox, which will snap holes in your hand if you touch it. He was annoyed by his father's letter to him for his twenty-first birthday. The general had retired, and hadn't saved a sou. How could he, given his happy, thriftless lady. So it was a case of "My dear boy, I'm thankful you are at last twenty-one, because now you must look out for yourself. I have bled myself to send you this cheque for a hundred pounds, but I know you think I ought to send you something, so take it, but don't expect any more, for you won't get it if you do."
This was not really the text of the General's letter, but this was how Jack read it. As for his mother, she sent him six terrible neckties and awful silver-backed brushes which he hated the sight of, much love, a few tears, a bit of absurd fond counsel, and a general wind-up of tender doting.
He was annoyed, because he had expected some sort of real assistance in setting out like a gentleman on his life's career, now he had attained his majority. But the hundred quid was a substantial sop.
Mr. George had done them proud at the Weld Club, and got them invitations to the ball from the Private Secretary. Oh yes, he was proud of them, handsome upstanding young fellows. So they were proud of themselves. It was a fine, hot evening, and nearly everybody was walking to the function, showing off their splendour. For few people' possessed private carriages, and the town boasted very few cabs indeed.
Mr. George waited in the porch of the Government House for Aunt Matilda and Mary. They had not long to wait before they saw the ladies in their shawls, carrying each a little holland bag with scarlet initials, containing their dancing slippers, slowly and self-consciously mounting the steps.
The boys braced themselves to face the introduction to the Representation. They were uneasy. Also they wanted to grin. In Jack's mind a picture of Honeysuckle, that tin town in the heat, danced as on heat-waves, as he made his bows and his murmurs. He wanted to whisper to Tom: "Ain't we in Honeysuckle?" But it would have been too cruel.
Clutching their programmes as drowning men clutch straw, they passed on. The primary ordeal was over.
"Oh Lord, I'm sweating already," said Tom with a red-faced grin. "I'm off to get me bill-head crammed."
"Take me with you, for the Lord's sake," said Jack.
"Y're such an owl of a dancer. An' y' have to do it proper here. You go to Mr. George."
"Don't desert me, you swine."
"Go-on! Want me to take you back to Auntie?—Go-on! I'm goin' to dance an' sit out an' hold their little white hands."
Tom pulled a droll face, as he took his place in the line of glove-buttoning youths who made a queue on the Governor's left hand, where his daughter stood booking up duty dances. Jack, galvanised by the advent of the A.D.C., ducked through the crowd to Aunt Matilda's side.
He was always angry that he couldn't dance. The fact was, he would never learn. He could never bring himself to go hugging promiscuous girls round the waist and twiddling through dances with them. Underneath all his carelessness and his appearance of "mixing," there was a savage physical reserve which prevented his mixing at all. He could not bear the least physical intimacy. Something inside him recoiled and stood savagely at a distance, even from the prettiest girl, the moment she seemed to be "coming on." To take the dear young things in his arms was repugnant to him, it offended a certain aloof pride and a subtle arrogance in him. Even with Tom, intimate though they were, he always kept a certain unpassable space around him, a definite noli me tangere distance which gave the limit to all approach. It would have been difficult to define this reserve. Jack seemed absolutely the most open and accessible individual in the world, a perfect child. He seemed to lay himself far too open to anybody's approach. But those who knew him better, like Mrs. Ellis or his mother, knew the cold inward reserve, the savage unwillingness to be touched, which was central in him, as in a wolf-cub. There was something reserved, fierce and untouched at the very centre of him. Something, at the centre of all his openness and his seeming softness, that was cold, overbearing, and a little angry. This was the old overweening English blood in him, which would never really yield to promiscuity, or to vulgar intimacy. He seemed to mix in with everybody at random. But as a matter of fact he had never finally mixed in with anybody, not even with his own father and mother, not even with Tom. And certainly not with any casual girl. Essentially, he kept himself a stranger to everybody.
Aunt Matilda was in green satin with a tiara of diamonds. "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know," was Jack's inward comment as he approached her.
Aloud he said:
"Would it be right if I asked you to let me have the pleasure of taking you in to supper later, Marm?"
"Oh, you dear boy!" simpered Aunt Matilda. "So like y' dear father. But you see I'm engaged on these occasions. We have to go in in order of rank and precedence. But you can take Mary. She says she has hurt her foot and can't dance much."
Mary took his arm, and they went out on to the terrace. There was clear moonlight, and trees against a shadowy, grey-blue sky, and a dark perfume of tropical flowers. Jack felt the beauty of it and it moved him. He waited for his soul to melt. But his soul would never melt. It was hard and clear as the moon itself.
"It is much better here," he said, looking at the sky.
"Oh, it's beautiful!" said Mary. "I wanted so much to sit quietly and talk to you. It seems so long, and you looked so wild and different this morning. I've been so frightened, reading so much about the natives murdering people."
Mary was different too, but Jack didn't know wherein.
"I don't believe there's much more danger in one place than in another," he said, "so long as you keep yourself in hand. Shall we sit down and have a real wongie?"
They found a seat under the overspreading tree, and sat listening to the night-insects.
"You're not very glad to be back, are you?" asked Mary.
"Yes I am," he assented, without a great deal of vigour. "What has been happening to you all this time, Mary?"
"The little things that are nothing," she said. "The only thing"—she hesitated—"is that they want me to marry. And I lie awake at night wondering about it."
"Marry who?" asked Jack, his mind running at once to Rackett.
They were sitting under a magnolia tree. Jack could make out the dark shape of a great flower against the moon, among black leaves. And the perfume was magnolia flowers.
"Do you want me to talk about it?" she said.
"I do."
Jack was glancing rather fiercely down the slope of the black-and-white garden, that sloped its lawns to the river. Mary sat very still beside him, in a cream lace dress.
"It's a Mr. Boyd Blessington. He is a widower with five children, but he is an interesting man. He's got a black beard."
"Goodness!" said Jack. "Have you accepted him?"
"No. Not yet."
"Why do you think of marrying him? Do you like him?"
"For some things. He is a good man, and he wants me in a good way. He has a beautiful library. And as he is a man of the world, there seems to be a big world round him. Yes, he is quite somebody. And Aunt Matilda says it is a wonderful opportunity for me. And I know it is."
Jack mused in silence.
"It may be," he said. "But I hardly fancy you kissing a widower of fifty, with a black beard and five children. Lord!"
"He's only thirty-seven. And he's a man."
Jack thought about Monica. He wanted Monica. But he also couldn't bear to let Mary go. This arrogance in him made him silent for some moments. Then he turned to Mary, his head erect, and looked down sternly on her small sinking figure in the pale lace dress.
"Do you want him?" he asked, in a subtle tone of authority and passion.
Mary was silent for some moments.
"No-o!" she faltered. "Not—not——"
Her hands lay inert in her lap. They were small, soft, dusky hands. The flame went over him, over his will. By some curious destiny, she really belonged to him. And Monica? He wanted Monica too. He wanted Monica first. But Mary also was his. Hard and savage he accepted this fact.
He took her two hands and lifted them to his lips, and kissed them with strange, blind passion. When the flame went over him, he was blind. Mary gave a little cry, but did not withdraw her hands.
"I thought you cared for Rackett," he said suddenly, looking at her closely. She shook her head, and he saw she was crying.
He put his arm round her and gathered her in her lace dress to his breast. She was small, but strangely heavy. Not like that whip-wire of a Monica. But he loved her heaviness too. The heaviness of a dark magnetic stone. He wanted that too.
And in his mind he thought, "Why can't I have her too? She is naturally mine."
His soul was hard and unbending. "She is naturally mine!" he said to himself. And he kissed her softly, softly, kissed her face and her tears. And all the while Mary knew about Monica. And he, his soul fierce, would not yield in either direction. He wanted to marry her, and he wanted to marry Monica. Something was in Mary that would never be appeased unless he married her. And something in him would never be appeased unless he married Monica. His young, clear instinct saw both these facts. And the inward imperiousness of his nature rose to meet it.—"Why can't I have both these women?" he asked himself. And his soul, hard in its temper like a sword, answered him: "You can if you will."
Yet he was wary enough to know he must go cautiously. Meanwhile, determined that one day he would marry Monica and Mary both, he held the girl soft and fast in his arms, kissing her, wanting her, but wanting her with the slow knowledge that he must wait and travel a long way before he could take her, yet take her he would. He wanted Monica first. But he also wanted Mary. The soft, slow weight of her as she lay silent and unmoving in his arms.
They could hear the music inside.
"I must go in for the next dance," she said in a muted tone. He kissed her mouth and released her. Then he escorted her back to the ballroom. She went across to Aunt Matilda, as the dance ended. And in her lace dress, the small, heavy, dusky Mary was like a lode-stone passing among flimsy people. She had a certain magnetic heaviness of her own, and a certain stubborn, almost ugly kind of beauty which in its heavy quietness, seemed like a darkish, perhaps bitter flower that rose from a very deep root. You were sensible of a deep root going down into the dark.
A tall, thin, rather hollow-chested man in a perfect evening suit and with orders on his breast, was speaking to her. He too had a faint air of proprietorship. He had a black beard and eyeglasses. But his face was sensitive, and delicate in its desire. It was evident he loved her with a real, though rather social, uneasy desirous love, as if he wanted all her answer. He was really a nice man, a bit frail and sad. Jack could see that. But he seemed to belong so entirely to the same world as the General, Jack's father. He belonged to the social world, and saw nothing really outside.
Mary too belonged almost entirely to the social world, her instinct was strongly social. But there was a wild tang in her. And this Jack depended on. Somewhere deep in himself he hated his father's social world. He stood in the doorway and watched her dancing with Blessington. And he knew that as Mrs. Blessington, with a thoughtful husband and a good position in society, she would be well off. She would forfeit that bit of a wild tang.
If Jack let her. And he wasn't going to let her. He was hard and cool inside himself. He took his impetus from the wild sap that still flows in most men's veins, though they mostly choose to act from the tame sap. He hated his father's social sap. He wanted the wild nature in people, the unfathomed nature, to break into leaf again. The real rebel, not the mere reactionary.
He hated the element of convention and slight smugness which showed in Mary's movements as she danced with the tall, thin reed of a man. Anything can become a convention, even an unconventionality, even the frenzied jazzing of the modern ballroom. And then the same element of smugness, very repulsive, is evident, evident even in the most scandalous jazzers. This is curious, that as soon as any movement becomes accepted in the public consciousness, it becomes ugly and smug, unless it be saved by a touch of the wild individuality.
And Mary dancing with Mr. Blessington was almost smug. Only the downcast look on her face showed that she remembered Jack. Blessington himself danced like a man neatly and efficiently performing his duty.
The dance ended. Aunt Matilda was fluttering her fan at him like a ruffled cockatoo. There was a group: Mary, Blessington, Mr. George, Mr. James Watson, Aunt Matilda's brother-in-law, and Aunt Matilda. Mr. Blessington, with the quiet assurance of his class, managed to eclipse Mr. George and Jim Watson entirely, though Jim Watson was a rich man.
Jack went over and was introduced. Blessington and he bowed at one another. "Stay in your class, you monkey!" thought Jack with some of the sensual arrogance he had brought with him from the North-West.
Mr. Blessington introduced him to a thin, nervous girl, his daughter. She was evidently unhappy, and Jack was sorry for her. He took her out for refreshments, and was kind to her. She made dark-grey startled round eyes at him, and looked at him as if he were an incalculable animal that might bite. And he, in manner, if not in actuality, laughed and caressed the frail young thing to cajole some life into her.
Mary danced with Tom, and then with somebody else. Jack lounged about, watching with a set face that still looked innocent and amiable, keeping a corner of his eye on Mary, but chatting with various people. He wouldn't make a fool of himself, trying to dance.
When Mary was free again—complaining of her foot—he said to her:
"Come outside a bit."
And obediently she came. They went and sat under the same magnolia tree.
"He's not a bad fellow, your Blessington," he said.
"He's not my Blessington," she replied, "Not yet anyhow. And he never would be really my Blessington."
"You never know. I suppose he's quite rich."
"Don't be horrid to me."
"Why not?—I wish I was rich. I'd do as I liked. But you'll never marry him."
"Why shan't I?"
"You just won't."
"I shall if Aunt Matilda makes me. I'm absolutely dependent on her—and do you think I don't feel it? I want to be free. I should be much freer if I married Mr. Blessington. I'm tired of being as I am."
"What would you really like to do?"
She was silent for a time. Then she answered:
"I should like to live on a farm."
"Marry Tom," he said maliciously.
"Why are you so horrid?" she said, in hurt surprise.
He was silent for a time.
"Anyhow you won't marry Boyd Blessington."
"Why are you so sure? Aunt Matilda is going to England in April. And I won't travel with her. Travel with her would be unspeakable. I want to stay in Australia."
"Marry Tom," he said again, in malice.
"Why," she asked in amazement, "do you say that to me?" But he didn't know himself.
"A farm—" he was beginning, when a figure sailed up in the moonlight. It was Aunt Matilda. The two young people rose to their feet. Jack was silent and rather angry. He wanted to curl his nose and say: "It isn't done, Marm!" But he said nothing. Aunt Matilda did the talking.
"I thought it was your voices," she said coldly. "Why do you make yourself conspicuous, Mary? Mr. Blessington is looking for you in all the rooms."
Mary was led away. Jack followed. Aunt Matilda had no sooner seen Mary led out by Mr. Blessington for the Lancers, than she came full sail upon Jack, as he stood lounging in the doorway.
"Come for a little walk on the terrace, dear boy," she said.
"Can't I have the pleasure of piloting you through this set of lancers, Marm?" he retorted.
She stood and smiled at him fixedly.
"I've heard of y'r dancing, dear boy," she said, "and your father was a beautiful dancer. This Governor is very particular. He sent his A. D. C. to stop Jimmie Short reversing, right at the beginning of the evening."—She eyed him with a shrewd eye.
"Surely worse form to hurt a gentleman's feelings, than to reverse, Marm!" retorted Jack.
"It wasn't bad form, it was bad temper. The Governor can't reverse himself. Ha-ha-ha! Neither can I go through a set of Lancers with you. So come and take me out a minute."
They went in silence down the terrace.
"Lovely evening! Not at all too hot," he said.
She burst into a sputter of laughter.
"Lor! m'dear. You are amusin'!" she said. "But you won't get out of it like that, young man. What have y' t'say f' y'self, running off with Mary like that twice!"
"You told me I could take her, Marm."
"I didn't ask you to keep her out and get her talked about, m'dear! I'm not a fool, my dear boy, and I'm not going to let her lose the chance of a life-time. You want her y'self for one night!" She slapped her fan crossly. "You leave well enough alone, we don't want another scandal in the family. Mr. Blessington is a good man for Mary, a God-send. For she's heavy, she's heavy, she's heavy for any man to take up with." Aunt Matilda said this almost spitefully. "Mr. Blessington's the very man for her, and a wonderful match. She's got her family. She's the granddaughter of Lord Haworth. And he has position. Besides they're suited for one another. It's the very finger of Heaven. Don't you dare make another scandal in the family."
She stopped under a lamp, and was leaning forward peering at him. Her large person exhaled a scent of artificial perfume. Jack hated perfume, especially in the open air. And her face, with its powder and wrinkles, in the mingled light of the lamp and the moon, made him think of a lizard.
"D'you want Mary yourself," she snapped, like a great lizard. "It's out of the question. You've got to make your way. She'd have to go on waiting for years. And you'd compromise her."
"God forbid!" said Jack ironically.
"Then leave her alone," she said. "If you compromise her, I'll do no more for her, mind that."
"Just exactly what do you mean, compromise her?" he asked.
"Get her talked about—as you're trying to," she snapped.
He thought it over. He must anyhow appear to yield to circumstances.
"All right," he said. "I know what you mean."
"See you do," she retorted. "Now take me back to the ballroom."
They returned, in a silence that was safe, if not golden. He was inwardly more set than ever. His appearance, however, was calm and innocent. She was much more ruffled. She wondered if she had said too much or too little, if he were merely stupid, or really dangerous.
He politely steered a way back to the reception room, placed her in a chair and turned to disappear. One thing he could not stand, and that was her proximity.
But as she sat down, she clutched his sleeve, cackling her unendurable laugh.
"Sit down, then," she said. "We're friends now, aren't we?" And she tapped his tanned cheek, that still had a bit of the peach-look, with her feathery black fan.
"On the contrary, Marm," he said, bowing but not taking a seat.
"Lor', but you are an amusin' boy, m'dear!" she said, and she let go his sleeve as she turned to survey the field.
In that instant he slipped away from her disagreeable presence.
He slipped behind a stout Judge from Melbourne, then past a plumed woman, apparently of fashion, and was gone.
What he had to do was to reconnoitre his own position. He wanted Monica first. That was his fixed determination. But he was not going to let go of Mary either. Not in spite of battalions of Aunt Matildas, or correct social individuals. It was a battle.