"A man's no good unless he can keep faith," said the old man.
"But what is it one must remain faithful to?" came the quiet cool voice of Hilda Blessington.
"Do you know what old Gran Ellis said?" asked Jack. "She said a man's own true self is God in him. She was a queer old bird."
"His true self," said Aunt Matilda. "His true self! And I should say old Mrs. Ellis was a doubtful guide to young people, judging from her own family."
"She made a great impression on me, Marm," said Jack politely.
Mr. George had brought the papers referring to the new property. Jack read various documents, rather absently. Then the title deeds. Then he studied a fascinating little green-and-red map, "delineating and setting forth," with "easements and encumbrances," whatever they were. There was a bank-book showing a balance of four hundred pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, in the West Australian Bank.
Jack told about his visit to Grant Farm, and the man under the umbrella. They all laughed.
"The poor fellow had a bad start," said Mr. George. "But he was a good farmer and a good business man, in his right times. Oh, he knew who he was leaving the place to, when Rackett drew up that will."
"Gran Ellis told me about him," said Jack. "She told me about all the old people. She told me about my mother's old sister. And she told me about the father of this crazy man as well, but—"
Mr. George was looking at him coldly and fiercely.
"The poor fellow's father," said the old man, "was an Englishman who thought himself a swell, but wasn't too much of a high-born gentleman to abandon a decent girl and go round to the east side and marry another woman, and flaunt round in society with women he hadn't married."
Jack remembered. It was Mary's father: seventh son of old Lord Haworth. What a mix-up! How bitter Old George sounded!
"It seems to have been a mighty mix-up out hare, fifty years ago, sir," he said mildly.
"It was a mix-up then—and is a mix-up now."
"I suppose," said Jack, "if the villain of a gentleman had never abandoned my Aunt—I can't think of her as an Aunt—he'd never have gone to Sydney, and his children that he had there would never have been born."
"I suppose not," said Mr. George drily. But he started a little and involuntarily looked at Mary.
"Do you think it would have been better if they had never been born?" Jack asked pertinently.
"I don't set up to judge," said the old man.
"Does Mrs. Watson?"
"I certainly think it would be better," said Mrs. Watson, "if that poor half-idiot cousin of yours had never been born."
"I've got Gran Ellis on my mind," said Jack. "She was funny, what she condemned and what she didn't. I used to think she was an old terror. But I can understand her better now. She was a wise woman, seems to me."
"Indeed!" said Aunt Matilda. "I never put her and wisdom together."
"Yes, she was wise. I can see now. She knew that sins are as vital a part of life as virtues, and she stuck up for the sins that are necessary to life."
"What's the matter with you, Jack Grant, that you go and start moralising?" said Old George.
"Why sir, it must be that my own sinful state is dawning on my mind," said Jack, "and I'm wondering whether to take Mrs. Watson's advice and repent and weep, etc., etc. Or whether to follow old Gran Ellis' lead, and put a sinful feather in my cap."
"Well," said Old George, smiling, "I don't know. You talk about courage and fidelity. Sin usually means doing something rather cowardly, and breaking your faith in some direction."
"Oh I don't know, sir. Tom and Lennie are faithful to me. But that doesn't mean they are not free. They are free to do just what they like, so long as they are faithful to the spark that is between us. As I am faithful to them. It seems to me, Sir, one is true to one's word in business, in affairs. But in life one can only be true to the spark."
"I'm afraid there's something amiss with you, son, that's set you off arguing and splitting hairs."
"There is. Something is always amiss with most of us. Old Gran Ellis was a lesson to me, if I'd known. Something is always wrong with the lot of us. And I believe in thinking before I act."
"Let us hope so," said Mr. George. "But it sounds funny sort of thinking you do."
"But," said Hilda Blessington, with wide, haunted eyes, "what is the spark that one must be faithful to? How are we to be sure of it?"
"You just feel it. And then you act upon it. That's courage. And then you always live up to the responsibility of your act. That's faithfulness. You have to keep faith in all kinds of ways. I have to keep faith with Monica and the babies, and young Jane, and Lennie and Tom and dead Gran Ellis: and—and more—yes, more."
He looked with clear hard eyes at Mary, and at the young girl. They were both watching him, puzzled and perturbed. The two old people in the background were silent but hostile.
"Do you know what I am faithful to?" he said, still to the two young women, but letting the elders hear. "I am faithful to my own inside, when something stirs in me. Gran Ellis said that was God in me. I know there's a God outside of me. But he tells me to go my own way, and never be frightened of people and the world, only be frightened of Him. And if I felt I really wanted two wives, for example, I would have them and keep them both. If I really wanted them, it would mean it was the God outside of me bidding me, and it would be up to me to obey, world or no world."
"You describe exactly the devil driving you," said Aunt Matilda.
"Doesn't he!" laughed Mr. George, who was oddly impressed. "I hope there isn't a streak of madness in the family."
"No, there's not. The world is all so tame, it's a bit imbecile, in my opinion. Really a dangerous idiot. If I do want two wives—or even three—I do. Why should I mind what the idiot says."
"Sounds like you'd gone cracked, out there in that mining settlement," said Mr. George.
"If I said I wanted two fortunes instead of one, you wouldn't think it cracked," said Jack, with a malicious smile.
"No, only greedy," said Old George.
"Not if I could use them. And the same if I have real use for two wives—or even three—" said Jack, grinning, but with a queer bright intention, at Hilda Blessington. "Well, three wives would be three fortunes for my blood and spirit."
"You are not allowed to say such things, even as a joke," said Aunt Matilda, with ponderous disapproval. "It is no joke to me."
"Surely I say them in dead earnest," persisted Jack mischievously. He was aware of Mary and Hilda Blessington listening, and he wanted to throw a sort of lasso over them.
"You'll merely find yourself in gaol for bigamy," said Mr. George.
"Oh," said Jack, "I wouldn't risk that. It would really be a Scotch marriage. Monica is my legal wife. But what I pledged myself to, I'd stick to, as I stick to Monica, I'd stick to the others the same."
"I won't hear any more of this nonsense," said Aunt Matilda, rising.
"Nonsense it is," said Old George testily.
Jack laughed. Their being bothered amused him. He was a little surprised at himself breaking out in this way. But the sight of Mary, and the sense of a new, different responsibility, had struck it out of him. His nature was ethical, inclined to be emotionally mystical. Now, however, the sense of foolish complacency and empty assurance in Aunt Matilda, and in all the dead-certain people of this world struck out of him a hard, sharp, non-emotional opposition. He felt hard and mischievous, confronting them. Who were they, to judge and go on judging? Who was Aunt Matilda, to judge the dead fantastic soul of the fierce Gran? The Ellises, the Ellises, they all had some of Gran's fierce pagan uneasiness about them, they were all a bit uncanny. That was why he loved them so.
And Mary! Mary had another slow, heavy, mute mystery that waited and waited forever, like a lode-stone. And should he therefore abandon her, abandon her to society and a sort of sterility? Not he. She was his. His, and no other man's. She knew it herself. He knew it. Then he would fight them all. Even the good Old George. For the mystery that was his and Mary's.
Let it be an end of popular goodness. Let there be another deeper, fiercer, untamed sort of goodness, like in the days of Abraham and Samson and Saul. If Jack was to be good he would be good with these great old men, the heroic fathers, not with the saints. The Christian goodness had gone bad, decayed almost into poison. It needed again the old heroic goodness of untamed men, with the wild great God who was forever too unknown to be a paragon.
Old George was a little afraid of Jack, uneasy about him. He thought him not normal. The boy had to be put in a category by himself, like a madman in a solitary cell. And at the same time, the old man was delighted. He was delighted with the young man's physical presence. Bewildered by the careless, irrational things Jack would say, the old bachelor took off his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes again and again, as if he were going blind, and as if he were losing his old dominant will.
He had been a dominant character in the colony so long. And now this young fellow was laughing at him and stealing away his power of resistance.
"Don't make eyes at me, sir," said Jack, laughing. "I know better than you what life means."
"You do, do you? Oh you do?" said the old man. And he laughed too. Somehow it made him feel warm and easy. "A fine crazy affair it would be if it were left to you." And he laughed loud at the absurdity.
II
Jack persuaded Mary to go with Mr. George and himself to look at Grant Farm. Mary and the old lawyer went in a buggy, Jack rode his own horse. And it seemed to him to be good to be out again in the bush and forest country. It was rainy season, and the smell of the earth was delicious in his nostrils.
He decided soon to leave the mine. It was running thin. He could leave it in charge of Tom. And then he must make some plans for himself. Perhaps he would come and live on the Grant Farm. It was not too far from Perth, or from Wandoo, it was in the hills, the climate was balmy and almost English, after the goldfields, and there were trees. He really rejoiced again, riding through strong, living trees.
Sometimes he would ride up beside Mary. She sat very still at Mr. George's side, talking to him in her quick, secret-seeming way. Mary always looked as if the things she was saying were secrets.
And her upper lip with its down of fine dark hair, would lift and show her white teeth as she smiled with her mouth. She only smiled with her mouth: her eyes remained dark and glistening and unchanged. But she talked a great deal to Mr. George, almost like lovers, they were so confidential and so much in tune with tone another. It was as if Mary was happy with an old man's love, that was fatherly, warm, and sensuous, and wise and talkative, without being at all dangerous.
When Jack rode up, she seemed to snap the thread of her communication with Mr. George, her ready volubility failed, and she was a little nervous. Her eyes, her dark eyes, were afraid of the young man. Yet they would give him odd, bright, corner-wise looks, almost inviting. So different from the full, confident way she looked at Mr. George. So different from Monica's queer yellow glare. Mary seemed almost to peep at him, while her dark face, like an animal's muzzle with its slightly heavy mouth, remained quite expressionless.
It amused him. He remembered how he had kissed her, and he wondered if she remembered. It was impossible, of course, to ask her. And when she talked, it was always so seriously. That again amused Jack. She was so voluble, especially with Mr. George, on all kinds of deep and difficult subjects. She was quite excited, just now about authoritarianism. She was being drawn by the Roman Catholic Church.
"Oh," she was saying, "I am an authoritarian. Don't you think that the whole natural scheme is a scheme of authority, one rank having authority over another?"
Mr. George couldn't quite see it. Yet it tickled his paternal male conceit of authority, so he didn't contradict her. And Jack smiled to himself. "She runs too much to talk," he thought. "She runs too much in her head." She seemed, indeed, to have forgotten quite how he kissed her. It seemed that "questions of the day" quite absorbed her.
They came through the trees in the soft afternoon sunshine. Jack remembered the place well. He remembered the Jamboree, and that girl who had called him Dearie! His first woman! And insignificant enough; but not bad. He thought kindly of her. She was a warm-hearted soul. But she didn't belong to his life at all. He remembered too how he had kicked Tom. The faithful Tom! Mary would never marry Tom, that was a certainty. And it was equally certain, Tom would never break his heart.
Jack was thinking to himself that he would build a new house on this place, and ask Mary to live in the old house. That was a brilliant idea.
But as he drove up, he thought: "The first money you spend on this place, my boy, will be on a brand new five-barred white gate."
Emma and Amos came out full of joy. They too were a faithful old pair. Jack handed Mary down. She wore a dark-blue dress and white silk gloves. It was so like her, to put on white silk gloves. But he liked the touch of them, as he handed her down. Her small, short, rather passive hands.
He and she walked round the place, and she was very much interested. A new place, a new farm, a new undertaking always excited her, as if it was she who was making the new move.
"Don't you think that will be a good place for the new house," he was saying to her. "Down there, near that jolly bunch of old trees. And the garden south of the trees. If you dig in that flat you'll find water, sure to."
She inspected the place most carefully, and uttered her mature judgments.
"You'll have to help think it out," he said. "Monica's as different as an opossum. Would you like to build yourself a house here, and tend to things? I'll build you one if you like. Or give you the old one."
She looked at him with glowing eyes.
"Wouldn't that be splendid!" she said. "Oh, wouldn't that be splendid! If I had a house and a piece of land of my own! Oh yes!"
"Well I can easily give it you," he said. "Just whatever you like."
"Isn't that lovely!" she exclaimed.
But he could tell she was thinking merely of the house and the bit of land, and herself a sort of Auntie to his and Monica's children. She was fairly jumping into old-maidom, both feet first. Which was not what he intended. He didn't want her as an Auntie for his children.
They went back to the house, and inspected there. She liked it. It was a stone one-storey house with a great kitchen and three other rooms, all rather low and homely. The dead cousin had wanted his house to be exactly like the houses of other respectable farmers. And he had not been prevented.
The place was a bit tumble-down, but clean. Emma was baking scones, and the sweet smell of scorched flour filled the house. Mary lit the lamp in the little parlour, and set it on the highly-polished but rather ricketty rosewood table, next the photograph album. The family Bible had been removed to the bedroom. But the old man had a photograph album, like any other respectable householder.
Mary drew up one of the green-rep chairs, and opened the book. Jack, looking over her shoulder, started a little as he saw the first photograph: an elderly lady in lace cap and voluminous silken skirts was seated reading a book, while negligently leaning with one hand on her chair was a gentleman, with long white trousers and old-fashioned coat and side-whiskers, obviously having his photograph taken.
This was the identical photograph which held place of honour in Jack's mother's album; being the photograph of her father and mother.
"See!" said Jack. "That's my grandfather and grand-mother. And he must have been the man who took Gran Ellis' leg off. Goodness!"
Mary gazed at them closely.
"He looks a domineering man!" she said. "I hope you're not like him."
Jack didn't feel at all like him. Mary turned over, and they beheld two young ladies of the Victorian period. Somebody had marked a cross, in ink, over the head of one of the young ladies. They must be his own Aunts, both of them many years older than his own mother, who was a late arrival.
"Do you think that was his mother?" said Mary, looking up at Jack, who stood at her side. "She was beautiful."
Jack studied the photograph of the young woman. She looked like nobody's mother on earth, with her hair curiously rolled and curled, and a great dress flouncing round her. And her beauty was so photographic and abstract, he merely gazed seeking for it.
But Mary, looking up at him, saw his silent face in the glow of the lamp, his rather grim mouth closed ironically under his moustache, his open nostrils, and the long, steady, self-contained look of his eyes under his lashes. He was not thinking of her at all, at the moment. But his calm, rather distant, unconsciously imperious face was something quite new and startling, and rather frightening to her. She became intensely aware of his thighs standing close against her, and her heart went faint. She was afraid of him.
In agitation, she was going to turn the leaf. But he put his work-hardened hand on the page, and turned back to the first photograph.
"Look!" he said. "He——" pointing to his grandfather, "disowned her——" turning to the Aunt marked with a cross, "——and she died an outcast, in misery, and her son burrowed here, half crazy. Yet their two faces are rather alike. Gran Ellis told me about them."
Mary studied them.
"They are both a bit like yours," she said, "their faces."
"Mine!" he exclaimed. "Oh no! I look like my father's family."
He could see no resemblance at all to himself in the handsome, hard-mouthed, large man, with the clean face and the fringe of fair whiskers, and the black cravat, and the overbearing look.
"Your eyes are set in the same way," she said. "And your brows are the same. But your mouth is not so tight."
"I don't like what I heard of him, anyhow," said Jack. "A puritanical surgeon! Turn over."
She turned over and gave a low cry. There was a photograph of a young elegant with drooping black moustachios, and mutton-chop side whiskers, and large, languid, black eyes, leaning languidly and swinging a cane. Over the top was written, in a weird handwriting: The Honourable George Rath, blasted father of
This skull and cross-bones was repeated on the other margins of the photograph.
"Oh!" said Mary, covering her face with her hands.
Jack's face was a study. Mary had evidently recognised the photograph of her father as a young man. Yet Jack could not help smiling at the skull and cross-bones, in connection with the Bulwer Lytton young elegant, and the man under the green umbrella.
"My God!" he thought to himself. "All that happens in a generation! From that sniffy young dude to that fellow here who made this farm, and Mary with her face in her hands!"
He could not help smiling to himself.
"Had you seen that photograph before?" he asked her.
She, unable to answer, kept her face in her hands.
"Don't worry," he said. "We're all more or less that way. We're none of us perfect."
Still she did not answer. Then he went on, almost without thinking, as he studied the rather fetching young gentleman with the long black hair and bold black eyes, and the impudent, handsome, languid lips:
"You're a bit like him, too. You're a bit like him in the look of your eyes. I bet he wasn't tall either. I bet he was rather small."
Mary took her hands from her face and looked up fierce and angry.
"You have no feeling," she said.
"I have," he replied, smiling slightly. "But life seems to me too rummy to get piqued about it. Think of him leaving a son like the fellow I saw under the umbrella! Think of it! Such a dandy! And that his son! And then having you for a daughter when he was getting quite on in years. Do you remember him?"
"How can you talk to me like that?" she said.
"But why? It's life. It's how it was. Do you remember your father?"
"Of course I do."
"Did he dye his whiskers?"
"I won't answer you."
"Well, don't then. But this man under the umbrella here—you should have seen him—was your half-brother and my cousin. It makes us almost related."
Mary left the room. In a few minutes Mr. George came in.
"What's wrong with Mary?" he asked, suspiciously, angrily. Jack shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the photograph. The old man bent over and stared at it: and laughed. Then he took the photograph out of the book, and put it in his pocket.
"Well, I'm damned!" he said. "Signs himself skull and cross-bones! Think of that now!"
"Was the Honourable George a smallish-built man?" asked Jack.
"Eh!" The old man started. Then startled, he began to remember back. "Ay!" he said. "He was. He was smallish-built, and the biggest little dude you ever set eyes on. Something about his backside always reminded me of a woman. But all the women were wild about him. Ay, even when he was over fifty, Mary's mother was wild in love with him. And he married her because she was going to be a big heiress. But she died a bit too soon, an' he got nothing, nor Mary neither, because she was his daughter." The old man made an ironic grimace. "He only died a few years back, in Sydney," he added. "But I say, that poor lass is fair cut up about it. We'd always kept it from her. I feel bad about her."
"She may as well get used to it," said Jack, disliking the old man's protective sentimentalism.
"Eh! Get used to it! Why? How can she get used to it?"
"She's got to live her own life some time."
"How d'y' mean, live her own life? She's never going to live that sort of a life, as long as I can see to it!" He was quite huffed.
"Are you going to leave her to be an old maid?" said Jack.
"Eh? Old maid? No! She'll marry when she wants to."
"You bet," said Jack with a slow smile.
"She's a child yet," said Mr. George.
"An elderly child—poor Mary!"
"Poor Mary! Poor Mary! Why poor Mary? Why so?"
"Just poor Mary," said Jack, slowly smiling.
"I don't see it. Why is she poor? You're growing into a real young devil, you are." And the old man glanced into the young man's eyes in mistrust, and fear, and also in admiration.
They went into the kitchen, the late tea was ready. It was evident that Mary was waiting for them to come in. She had recovered her composure, but was more serious than usual. Jack laughed at her, and teased her.
"Ah, Mary," he said, "do you still believe in the Age of Innocence?"
"I still believe in good feeling," she retorted.
"So do I. And when good feeling's comical, I believe in laughing at it," he replied.
"There's something wrong with you," she replied.
"Quoth Aunt Matilda," he echoed.
"Aunt Matilda is very often right," she said.
"Never, in my opinion. Aunt Matilda is a wrong number. She's one of life's false statements."
"Hark at him!" laughed Old George.
As soon as the meal was over, he rose, saying he would see to his horse. Mary looked up at him as he put his hat on his head and took the lantern. She didn't want him to go.
"How long will you be?" she asked.
"Why, not long," he answered, with a slight smile.
Nevertheless he was glad to be out and with his horse. Somehow those others made a false atmosphere, Mary and Old George. They made Jack's soul feel sarcastic. He lingered about the stable in the dim light of the lantern, preparing himself a bed. There were only two bedrooms in the house. The old couple would sleep on the kitchen floor, or on the sofa. He preferred to sleep in the stable. He had grown so that he did not like to sleep inside their fixed, shut-in houses. He did not mind a mere hut, like his at the camp. But a shut-in house with fixed furniture made him feel sick. He was sick of the whole pretence of it.
And he knew he would never come to live on this farm. He didn't want to. He didn't like the atmosphere of the place. He felt stifled. He wanted to go North, or West, or North-West once more.
Suddenly he heard footsteps: Mary picking her way across.
"Is your horse all right?" she asked. "I was afraid something was wrong with him. And he is so beautiful. Or is it a mare?"
"No," he said. "It is a horse. I don't care for a mare, for riding."
"Why?"
"She has so many whims of her own, and wants so much attention paid to her. And then ten to one you can't trust her. I prefer a horse to ride."
She saw the rugs spread on the straw.
"Who is going to sleep here?" she asked.
"Why—but——"
He cut short her expostulations.
"Oh, but do let me bring you sheets. Do let me make you a proper bed!" she cried.
But he only laughed at her.
"What's a proper bed?" he said. "Is this an improper one, then?"
"It's not a comfortable one," she said with dignity.
"It is for me. I wasn't going to ask you to sleep on it too, was I, now?"
She went out and stood looking at the Southern Cross.
"Weren't you coming indoors again?" she asked.
"Don't you think it's nicer out here? Feels a bit tight in there. I say, Mary, I don't think I shall ever come and live on this place."
"Why not?"
"I don't like it."
"Why not?"
"It feels a bit heavy—and a bit tight to me."
"What shall you do then?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'll decide When I'm back at the camp. But I say, wouldn't you like this place? I'll give it you if you would. You're next of kin really. If you'll have it, I'll give it you."
Mary was silent for some time.
"And what do you think you'll do if you don't live here?" she asked. "Will you stay always on the goldfields?"
"Oh dear no! I shall probably go up to the Never-Never, and raise cattle. Where there aren't so many people, and photo albums, and good old Georges and Aunt Matildas and all that."
"You'll be yourself, wherever you are."
"Thank God for that, but it's not quite true. I find I'm less myself down here, with all you people."
Again she was silent for a time.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, that's how it makes me feel, that's all."
"Are you more yourself on the goldfields?" she asked rather contemptuously.
"Oh yes."
"When you are getting money, you mean?"
"No. But I've got so that Aunt Matilda-ism and Old-Georgism don't agree with me. They make me feel sarcastic, they make me feel out of sorts all over."
"And I suppose you mean Mary-ism too," she said.
"Yes, a certain sort of Mary-ism does it to me as well. But there's a Mary without the ism that I said I'd come back for.—Would you like this place?"
"Why?"
"To cultivate your Mary-ism. Or would you like to come to the North-West?"
"But why do you trouble about me?"
"I've come back for you. I said I'd come back for you. I am here."
There was a moment of tense silence.
"You have married Monica, now," said Mary in a low voice.
"Of course I have. But the leopard doesn't change his spots when he goes into a cave with a she-leopard. I said I'd come back for you as well, and I've come."
A dead silence.
"But what about Monica?" Mary asked, with a little curl of irony.
"Monica?" he said. "Yes, she's my wife, I tell you. But she's not my only wife. Why should she be? She will lose nothing."
"Did she say so? Did you tell her?" Mary asked insidiously.
Slowly an anger suffused thick in his chest, and then seemed to break in a kind of explosion. And the curious tension of his desire for Mary snapped with the explosion of his anger.
"No," he said. "I didn't tell her. I had to ask you first. Monica is thick with her babies now. She won't care where I am. That's how women are. They are more creatures than men are. They're not separated out of the earth. They're like black ore. The metal's in them, but it's still part of the earth. They're all part of the matrix, women are, with their children clinging to them."
"And men are pure gold?" said Mary sarcastically.
"Yes, in streaks. Men are the pure metal, in streaks. Women never are. For my part, I don't want them to be. They are the mother-rock. They are the matrix. Leave them at that. That's why I want more than one wife."
"But why?" she asked.
He realised that, in his clumsy fashion, he had taken the wrong tack. The one thing he should never have done, he had begun to do: explain and argue. Truly, Mary put up a permanent mental resistance. But he should have attacked elsewhere. He should have made love to her. Yet, since she had so much mental resistance, he had to make his position clear.—Now he realised he was angry and tangled.
"Shall we go in?" he said abruptly.
And she returned with him in silence back to the house. Mr. George was in the parlour, looking over some papers. Jack and Mary went in to him.
"I have been thinking, Sir," said Jack, "that I shall never come and live on this place. I want to go up to the North-West and raise cattle. That'll suit me better than wheat and dairy. So I offer this place to Mary. She can do as she likes with it. Really, I feel the property is naturally hers."
Now Old George had secretly cherished this thought for many years, and it had riled him a little when Jack calmly stepped into the inheritance.
"Oh, you can't be giving away a property like this," he said.
"Why not? I have all the money I want. I give the place to Mary. I'd much rather give it to her than sell it. But if she won't have it, I'll ask you to sell it for me."
"Why! Why!" said Old George fussily, stirring quite delighted in his chair, and looking from one to the other of the young people, unable to understand their faces. Mary looked sulky and unhappy, Jack looked sarcastic.
"I won't take it, anyhow," exclaimed Mary.
"Eh? Why not? If the young millionaire wants to throw it away——" said the old man ironically.
"I won't! I won't take it!" she repeated abruptly.
"Why—what's amiss?"
"Nothing! I won't take it."
"Got a proud stomach from your aristocratic ancestors, have you?" said Old George. "Well, you needn't have; the place is your father's son's place, you needn't be altogether so squeamish."
"I wouldn't take it if I was starving," she asserted.
"You're in no danger of starving, so don't talk," said the old man, testily. "It's a nice little place. I should enjoy coming out here and spending a few months of the year myself. Should like nothing better."
"But I won't take it," said Mary.
Jack went grinning off to his stable. He was angry, but it was the kind of anger that made him feel sarcastic.
Damn her! She was in love with him. She had a passion for him. What did she want? Did she want him to make love to her, and run away with her, and abandon Monica and Jane and the twin babies?—No doubt she would listen to such a proposition hard enough. But he was never going to make it her. He had married Monica, and he would stick to her. She was his first and chief wife, and whatever happened, she should remain it. He detested and despised divorce; a shifty business. But it was nonsense to pretend that Monica was the beginning and end of his marriage with woman. Woman was the matrix, the red earth, and he wanted his roots in this earth. More than one root, to keep him steady and complete. Mary instinctively belonged to him. Then why not belong to him completely? Why not? And why not make a marriage with her too? The legal marriage with Monica, his own marriage with Mary. It was a natural thing. The old heroes, the old fathers of red earth, like Abraham in the Bible, like David even, they took the wives they needed for their own completeness, without this nasty chop-and-change business of divorce. Then why should he not do the same?
He would have all the world against him. But what would it matter, if he were away in the Never-Never, where the world just faded out? Monica could have the chief house. But Mary should have another house, with garden and animals if she wanted them. And she should have her own children: his children. Why should she be only Auntie to Monica's children? Mary, with her black, glistening eyes and her short, dark, secret body, she was asking for children. She was asking him for his children, really. He knew it, and secretly she knew it; and Aunt Matilda, and even Old George knew it, somewhere in themselves. And Old George was funny. He wouldn't really have minded an affair between Jack and Mary, provided it had been kept dark. He would even have helped them to it, so long as they would let nothing be known.
But Jack was too wilful and headstrong, and too proud, for an intrigue. An intrigue meant a certain cringing before society, and this he would never do. If he took Mary, it was because he felt she instinctively belonged to him. Because, in spite of the show she kept up, her womb was asking for him. And he wanted her for himself. He wanted to have her and to answer her. And he would be judged by nobody.
He rose quickly, returning to the house. Mary and the old man were in the kitchen, getting their candles to go to bed.
"Mary," said Jack, "come out and listen to the night-bird."
She started slightly, glanced at him, then at Mr. George.
"Go with him a minute, if you want to," said the old man.
Rather unwillingly she went out of the door with Jack. They crossed the yard in silence, towards the stable. She hesitated outside, in the thin moonlight.
"Come to the stable with me," he said, his heart beating thick, and his voice strange and low.
"Oh Jack!" she cried, with a funny little lament; "you're married to Monica! I can't! You're Monica's."
"Am I?" he said. "Monica's mine, if you like, but why am I all hers? She's certainly not all mine. She belongs chiefly to her babies just now. Why shouldn't she? She's their red earth. But I'm not going to shut my eyes. Neither am I going to play the mild Saint Joseph. I don't feel that way. At the present moment I'm not Monica's, any more than she is mine. So what's the good of your telling me? I shall love her again, when she is free. Everything in season, even wives. Now I love you again, after having never thought of it for a long while. But it was always slumbering inside me, just as Monica is asleep inside me this minute. The sun goes, and the moon comes. A man isn't made up of only one thread. What's the good of keeping your virginity! It's really mine. Come with me to the stable, and then afterwards come and live in the North-West, in one of my houses, and have your children there, and animals or whatever you want."
"Oh God!" cried Mary. "You must really be mad. You don't love me, you can't, you must love Monica. Oh God, why do you torture me!"
"I don't torture you. Come to the stable with me. I love you too."
"But you love Monica."
"I shall love Monica again, another time. Now I love you. I don't change. But sometimes it's one, then the other. Why not?"
"It can't be! It can't be!" cried Mary.
"Why not? Come into the stable with me, with me and the horses."
"Oh don't torture me! I hate my animal nature. You want to make a slave of me," she cried blindly.
This struck him silent. Hate her animal nature? What did she mean? Did she mean the passion she had for him? And make a slave of her? How?
"How make a slave of you?" he asked. "What are you now? You are a sad thing as you are. I don't want to leave you as you are. You are a slave now, to Aunt Matilda and all the conventions. Come with me into the stable."
"Oh, you are cruel to me! You are wicked! I can't. You know I can't."
"Why can't you? You can. I am not wicked. To me it doesn't matter what the world is. You really want me, and nothing but me. It's only the outside of you that's afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of, now we have enough money. You will come with me to the North-West, and be my other wife, and have my children, and I shall depend on you as a man has to depend on a woman."
"How selfish you are! You are as selfish as my father, who betrayed your mother's sister and left this skull-and-cross-bones son," she cried. "No, it's dreadful, it's horrible. In this horrible place, too, proposing such a thing to me. It shows you have no feelings."
"I don't care about feelings. They're what people have because they feel they ought to have them. But I know my own real feelings. I don't care about your feelings."
"I know you don't," she said. "Good-night!" She turned abruptly and hurried away in the moonlight, escaping to the house.
Jack watched the empty night for some minutes. Then he turned away into the stable.
"That's that!" he said, seeing his little plans come to nought.
He went into the stable and sat down on his bed, near the horses. How good it was to be with the horses! How good animals were, with no "feelings" and no ideas. They just straight felt what they felt, without lies and complications.
Well, so be it! He was surprised. He had not expected Mary to funk the issue, since the issue was clear. What else was the right thing to do? Why, nothing else!
It seemed to him so obvious. Mary obviously wanted him, even more, perhaps, than he wanted her. Because she was only a part thing, by herself. All women were only parts of some whole, when they were by themselves: let them be as clever as they might. They were creatures of earth, and fragments, all of them. All women were only fragments; fragments of matrix at that.
No, he was not wrong, he was right. If the others didn't agree, they didn't, that was all. He still was right. He still hated the nauseous one-couple-in-one-cottage domesticity. He hated domesticity altogether. He loathed the thought of being shut up with one woman and a bunch of kids in a house. Several women, several houses, several bunches of kids: it would then be like a perpetual travelling, a camp, not a home. He hated homes. He wanted a camp.
He wanted to pitch his camp in the wilderness: with the faithful Tom, and Lennie, and his own wives. Wives, not wife. And the horses, and the come-and-go, and the element of wildness. Not to be tamed. His men, men by themselves. And his women never to be tamed. And the wilderness still there. He wanted to go like Abraham under the wild sky, speaking to a fierce wild Lord, and having angels stand in his doorway.
Why not? Even if the whole world said No! Even then, why not?
As for being ridiculous, what was more ridiculous than men wheeling perambulators and living among a mass of furniture in a tight house?
Anyhow it was no good talking to Mary at the moment. She wasn't a piece of the matrix of red earth. She was a piece of the upholstered world. Damn the upholstered world! He would go back to the goldfields, to Tom and Lennie and Monica, back to camp. Back to camp, away from the upholstery.
No, he wasn't a man who had finished when he had got one wife.
And that damned Mary, by the mystery of fate, was linked to him.
And damn her, she preferred to break that link, and turn into an upholstered old maid. Of all the hells!
Then let her marry Blessington and a houseful of furniture. Or else marry Old George, and gas to him while he could hear. She loved gassing. Talk, talk, talk, Jack hated a talking woman. But Mary would rather sit gassing with Old George than be with him, Jack. Of all the surprising hells!
At least Tom wasn't like that. And Monica wasn't. But Monica was wrapped up in her babies, she seemed to swim in a sea of babies, and Jack had to let her be. And she too had a hankering after furniture. He knew she'd be after it, if he didn't prevent her.
Well, it was no good preventing people, even from stuffed plush furniture and knick-knacks. But he'd keep the brake on. He would do that.
CHAPTER XXV
TROT, TROT BACK AGAIN
But as he rode back to Perth, with Mary rather stiff and silent, and Mr. George absorbed in his own thoughts; and as they greeted people on the road, and passed by settlements; and as they saw far off the pale-blue sea with a speck of a steamer smoking, and the dim fume of Perth down at sea-level, he thought to himself: "I had better be careful. I had better be wary. The world is cold and cautious, it has cold blood, like ants and centipedes. They, all the men in the world, they hardly want one wife, let alone two. And they would take any excuse to destroy me. They would like to destroy me, because I am not cold and like an ant, as they are. Mary would like me to be killed. Look at her face. She would feel a real deep satisfaction if my horse threw me against those stones and smashed my skull in. She would feel vindicated. And Old George would think it served me right. And practically everybody would be glad. Not Tom and Len. But practically everybody else. Even Monica, though she is my wife. Even she feels a judgment ought to descend upon me. Because I'm not what she wants me to be. Because I'm not as she thinks I ought to be. And because she can't get beyond me. Because something inside her knows she can't get past me. Therefore, in one corner of her she hates me, like a scorpion lurking. If I'm unaware, and put my hand unthinking in that corner, she'll sting me and hope to kill me. How curious it is! And since I have found the gold it is more emphatic than before. As if they grudged me something. As if they grudged me my very being. Because I'm not one of them, and just like they are, they would like me destroyed. It has always been so ever since I was born. My Aunts, my own father. And my mother didn't want me destroyed as they secretly did, but even my mother would not have tried to prevent them from destroying me. Even when they like me, as Old George does, they grudge their own liking, they take it back whenever they can. He defended me over Easu because he thought I was defending Monica, and going the good way of the world. Now he scents that I am going my own way, he feels as if I were a sort of snake that should be put out of existence. That's how Mary feels too: and Mary loves me, if loving counts for anything. Tom and Len don't wish me destroyed. But if they saw the world destroying me they'd acquiesce. Their fondness for me is only passive, not active. I believe, if I ransacked earth and heaven, there's nobody would fight for me as I am, not a soul, except that little Jane of Easu's. The others would fight like cats and dogs for me as they want me to be. But for me as I am, they think I ought to be destroyed.
"And I, I am a fool, talking to them, giving myself away to them, as to Mary. Why, Mary ought to go down on her knees before the honour, if I want to take her. Instead of which she puffs herself up, and spits venom in my face like a cobra.
"Very well, very well. Soon I can go out of her sight again, for I loathe the sight of her. I can ride down Hay Street without yielding a hair's breadth to any man or woman on earth. And I can ride out of Perth without leaving a vestige of myself behind, for them to work mischief on.
"God, but it's a queer thing, to know that they all want to destroy me as I am, even out here in this far-off colony. I thought it was only my Aunts, and my father because of his social position. But it is everybody. Even, passively, my mother, and Tom and Len. Because inside my soul I don't conform: can't conform. They would all like to kill the non-conforming me. Which is me myself.
"And at the same time they all love me exceedingly the moment they think I am in line with them. The moment they think I am in line with them, they're awfully fond of me. Monica, Mary, Old George, even Aunt Matilda, they're almost all of them in love with me then, and they'd give me anything. If I asked Mary to sin with me as something I shouldn't do, but I went down on my knees and asked for it, unable to help myself, she'd give in to me like anything. And Monica, if I was willing to be forgiven, would forgive me with unction.
"But since I refuse the sin business, and I never go down on my knees; and since I say that my way is better than theirs, and that I should have my two wives, and both of them know that it is an honour for them to be taken by me, an honour for them to be put into my house and acknowledged there, they would like to kill me. It is I who must grovel, I who must submit to judgment. If I would but submit to their judgment, I could do all the wicked things I like, and they would only love me better. But since I will never submit to them, they would like to destroy me off the face of the earth, like a rattlesnake.
"They shall not do it. But I must be wary. I must not put out my hand to ask them for anything, or they will strike my hand like vipers out of a hole. I must take great care to ask them for nothing, and to take nothing from them. Absolutely I must have nothing from them, not so much as to let them carry the cup of tea for me, unpaid. I must be very careful. I should not have let that brown snake of a Mary see I wanted her. As for Monica, I married her, so that makes them all allow me certain rights, as far as she is concerned. But she has her rights too, and the moment she thinks I trespass on them, she will unsheath her fangs.
"As for me, I refuse their social rights, they can keep them. If they will give me no rights, to the man I am, to me as I am, they shall give me nothing.
"God, what am I going to do? I feel like a man whom the snake-worshipping savages have thrown into one of their snake-pits. All snakes, and if I touch a single one of them, it will bite me. Man or woman, wife or friend, every one of them is ready for me since I am rich. Daniel in the den of lions was a comfortable man in comparison. These are all silent, damp, creeping snakes, like that yellow-faced Mary there, and that little whip-snake of a Monica, whom I have loved. 'Now they bite me where I most have sinned,' says old Don Rodrigo, when the snakes of the Inferno bite him. So they shall not bite me. God in heaven, no, so they shall not bite me. Snakes they are, and the world is a snake-pit into which one is thrown. But still they shall not bite me. As sure as God is God, they shall not bite me. I will crush their heads rather.
"Why did I want that Mary? How unspeakably repulsive she is to me now! Why did I ever want Monica so badly? God, I shall never want her again. They shall not bite me as they bit Don Rodrigo, or Don Juan. My name is John, but I am no Don. God forbid that I should take a title from them.
"And the soft, good Tom and Lennie, they shall live their lives, but not with my life.
"Am I not a fool! Am I not a pure crystal of a fool! I thought they would love me for what I am, for the man I am, and they only love me for the me as they want me to be. They only love me because they get themselves glorified out of me.
"I thought at least they would give me a certain reverence, because I am myself and because I am different, in the name of the Lord. But they have all got their fangs full and surcharged with insult, to vent it on me the moment I stretch out my hand.
"I thought they would know the Lord was with me, and a certain new thing with me on the face of the earth. But if they know the Lord is with me, it is only so that they can intensify and concentrate their poison, to drive Him out again. And if they guess a new thing in me, on the face of the earth, it only makes them churn their bile and secrete their malice into a poison that would corrode the face of the Lord.
"Lord! Lord! That I should ever have wanted them, or even wanted to touch them! That ever I should have wanted to come near them, or to let them come near me. Lord, as the only boon, the only blessedness, leave me intact, leave me utterly isolate and out of the reach of all men.
"That I should have wanted! That I should have wanted Monica so badly! Well, I got her, and she saves her fangs in silent readiness for me, for the me as I am, not the me that is hers. That I should have wanted this Mary, whom I now despise. That I should have thought of a new little world of my own!
"What a fool! To think of Abraham, and the great men in the early days. To think that I could take up land in the North, a big wild stretch of land, and build my house and raise my cattle and live as Abraham lived, at the beginning of time, but myself at another, late beginning. With my wives and the children of my wives, and Tom and Lennie with their families, my right hand and my left hand, and absolutely fearless. And the men I would have work for me, because they were fearless and hated the world. Each one having his share of the cattle, and the horses, at the end of the year. Men ready to fight for me and with me, no matter against what. A little world of my own, in the North-West. And my children growing up like a new race on the face of the earth, with a new creed of courage and sensual pride, and the black wonder of the halls of death ahead, and the call to be lords of death, on earth. With my Lord, as dark as death and splendid with lustrous doom, a sort of spontaneous royalty, for the God of my little world. The spontaneous royalty of the dark Overlord, giving me earth-royalty, like Abraham or Saul, that can't be quenched and that moves on to perfection in death. One's last and perfect lordliness in the halls of death, when slaves have sunk as carrion, and only the serene in pride are left to judge the unborn.
"A little world of my own! As if I could make it with the people that are on earth to-day! No, no, I can do nothing but stand alone. And then, when I die, I shall not drop like carrion on the earth's earth. I shall be a lord of death, and sway the destinies of the life to come."
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RIDER ON THE RED HORSE
Jack was glad to get away from Perth, to ride out and leave no vestige of his soul behind, for them to work mischief on. He saddled his horse before dawn, and still before sun was up, he was trotting along beside the river. He loved the world, the early morning, the sense of newness. It was natural to him to like the world, the trees, the sky, the animals, and even, in a casual way, people. It was his nature to like the casual people he came across. And, casually, they all liked him. It was only when he approached nearer, into intimacy, that he had a revulsion.
In the casual way of life he was good-humored, and could get on with almost everybody. He took them all at their best, and they responded. For on the whole, people are glad to be taken at their best, on trust.
But when he went further, the thing broke down. Casually, he could get on with anybody. Intimately, he could get on with nobody. In intimate life, he was quiet and unyielding, often oppressive. In the casual way, he was most yielding and agreeable. Therefore it was his friends who suffered most from him.
He knew this. He knew that Monica and Lennie suffered from his aloofness and a certain arrogance, in intimate life. So friendly with everybody, he was. And at the centre, not really friendly even with his wife and his dearest friends. Withheld, unyielding, exacting even in his silence, he kept them in a sort of suspense.
As he rode his bright bay stallion on the soft road, he became aware of this. Perhaps his horse was the only creature with which he had the right relation. He did not love it, but he harmonised with it. As if, between them, they made a sort of centaur. It was not love. It was a sort of understanding in power and mastery and crude life. A harmony even more than an understanding. As if he himself were the breast and arms and head of the ruddy, powerful horse, and it, the flanks and hoofs. Like a centaur. It had a real joy in riding away with him to the bush again. He knew by the uneven, springy dancing. And he had perhaps a greater joy. The animal knew it in the curious pressure of his knees, and the soft rhythm of the bit. Between them, they moved in a sort of triumph.
The red stallion was always glad when Jack rode alone. It did not like company, particularly human company. When Jack rode alone, his horse had a curious bubbling, exultant movement. When he rode in company, it went in a more suppressed way. And when he stopped to talk to people, in his affable, rather loving manner, the horse became irritable, chafing to go on. He had long ago realised that the bay could not bear it when he reined in and stayed chatting. His voice, in its amiable flow, seemed to irritate the animal. And it did not like Lennie. Lucy, the old mare, loved Lennie. Most horses liked him. But Jack's stallion got a bit wicked, irritable with him.
And when Jack had made a fool of himself, as with Mary, and felt tangled, he always craved to get on his horse Adam, to be put right. He would feel the warm flow of life from the horse mount up him and wash away in its flood the human entanglements in his nerves. And sometimes he would feel guilty towards his horse Adam, as if he had betrayed the natural passion of the horse, giving way to the human travesty.
Now, in the morning before sunrise, with the red horse bubbling with exultance between his knees, his soul turned with a sudden jerk of realisation away from his fellow-men. He really didn't want his fellow-men. He didn't want that amiable casual association with them, which took up so large a part of his life. It was a habit and a bluff on his part. Also it was part of his nature. A certain real amiability in him, and a natural kindly disposition towards his fellow-men combated inside him with a repudiation of the whole trend of modern human life, the emotional, spiritual, ethical, and intellectual trend. Deep inside himself, he fought like a wild-cat against the whole thing. And yet, because of a naturally amiably disposed, even benevolent nature in himself, he took any casual individual into his warmth, and was bosom-friends for the moment. Until, inevitably, after a short time the individual betrayed himself a unit of the universal human trend, and then Jack recoiled in anger and revulsion again.
This was a sort of dilemma. Monica, and Tom, and Lennie, who knew him intimately, knew the absoluteness of his repudiation of mankind and mankind's direction in general. They knew it to their cost, having suffered from it. Therefore the anomaly of his casual intimacies and his casual bosom-friend-ships was considerably puzzling and annoying to them. He seemed to them false to himself, false to the other thing he was trying to put across. Above all, it seemed false to them, his real, old friends, towards whom he was so silently exacting and overbearing.
This morning, after his fiasco with Mary, he vaguely realised himself. He vaguely realised that he had to make a change. The casual intimacies were really a self-betrayal. But they made his life easy. It was the easiest way for him to encounter people. To suppress for the time being his deepest self, his thoughts, his feelings, his vital repudiation of the way of human life now, and to play at being really pleasant and ordinary. He liked to think that most people, casually and superficially, were nice. He hated having to withdraw.
But now, after the fiasco with Mary, he realised again his necessity to withdraw. To pass people by. They were all going in the opposite direction to his own. Then he was wrong to rein up and pretend a bosom-friendship for half an hour. As he did so, he was only being borne down stream, in the old, deadly direction, against himself.
Even his horse knew it: even old Adam. He pressed the animal's sides with his legs, and made a silent pact with him: not to make this compromise of amiability and casual friendship, not forever to be reining up and allowing himself to be carried backwards in the weary flood of the old human direction. To forfeit the casual amiabilities, and go his way in silence. To have the courage to turn his face right away from mankind. His soul and his spirit had already turned away. Now he must turn away his face, and see them all no more.
"I never want to see their faces any more," he said aloud to himself. And his horse between his thighs danced and began to canter, as the sun came sparkling up over the horizon. Jack looked into the sun, and knew that he must turn his own face aside forever from the people of his world, not look at them or communicate with them again, not any more. Cover his own face with shadow, and let the world pass on its way, unseen and unseeing.
And he must know as he knew his horse, not face to face, never any more face to face, but communicating as he did with his stallion Adam, from a pressure of the thighs and knees. The arrows of the Archer, who is also a centaur.
Vision is no good. It is no good seeing any more. And words are no good. It is useless to talk. We must communicate with the arrows of sightless, wordless knowledge, as Jack communicated with his horse, by a pressure of the thighs and knees.
The sun had risen gold above the far-off ridge of the bush. Jack drew up at an inn by the side of the road, to eat breakfast. He left his horse at the hitching-post near the door, and went into the bar parlour. There was a smell of mutton chops frying, and he was hungry.
As he sat eating, he heard his horse neighing fiercely. He pricked his ears. Again Adam's powerful neigh, and far off a high answering call of a mare. He went out quickly to the door of the inn. Adam stood by the post, his feet apart, his ears erect, his head high up, looking with flashing eyes back down the road. How beautiful he was! in the newly-risen sun shining bright almost as fire, every fibre of him on the alert, tall and overweening. And down the road, a grey horse, cloud colour, running eagerly forwards, its rider, a young lady, flushing scarlet and trying to hold up her mare. It was no good. The mare's shrill, wild neigh came answering the stallion's, and the lady rider was powerless to hold her creature back. Strong, like bells in his deep chest, came the stallion's call once more. And lifting her head as she ran on swift, light feet, the mare sang back.
The girl was Hilda Blessington. Jack took his horse and quickly ran him, rearing and flaming, round to the stable. There he shut him up, though his feet were thudding madly on the wooden floor, and his powerful neighing shook the place with a sound like fire.
The grey mare came running straight to the stable, carrying its helpless, scarlet-flushing rider. Jack lifted the girl down, and held the mare. There was a terrific thudding from the stable.
"I'll put her in the paddock, shall I?" said Jack.
"I think you'd better," she said.
He looked uneasily at the stable, whence came a sound of something going smash. The shut-up stallion sounded like an enclosed thunderstorm.
"Shall I put them both in the paddock?" said Jack. "It seems the simplest thing to do."
"Yes," she murmured in confusion. "Perhaps you'd better."
She was rather frightened. The duet of neighing was terrific, like the bells of some wild cathedral going at full clash. The landlord of the inn came running up. Jack was just slipping the mare's saddle off.
"Steady! Steady!" he said. Then to the landlord: "Take her to the paddock and turn her loose. I'm going to turn the horse loose with her."
The landlord dragged the frantic grey animal away, while she screamed and reared and pranced.
Jack ran to the stable door, calling to his horse. He opened carefully. The first thing he saw was the blazing eyes of the stallion. The horse had broken the halter, and had his nose and his wild eyes at the door, prepared to charge. Jack called to him again, and managed to get in front of him and close the door behind him. The animal was listening to two things at once, thinking two things at once. He was quivering in every fibre, in a state almost of madness. Yet he stood quite still while Jack slipped off the loosened saddle.
Then again he began to jump. Already he had smashed in one side of the stall, and had a bleeding fetlock. Jack got hold of the broken halter, and opened the door. The horse, like a great ruddy thunderbolt, sprang out of the stable, jerking Jack with him. The man, with a flying jump, got on the bright, brilliant bare back of the stallion, and clung there as the creature, swerving on powerful haunches past the terrified Hilda, ran with a terrific, splendid neighing towards the paddock, moving rhythmic and handsome.
There was the grey mare at the gate, inside, neighing back, and the landlord keeping guard. The men had to be very quick, the one to open the gate, the other to slip down.
Jack left the broken halter-rope dangling from his horse's head—it was broken quite short—and went back into the yard.
"What a commotion!" he said laughingly, to the flushed, deeply embarrassed girl. "But you won't mind if your grey mare gets a foal to my horse?"
"Oh no," she said. "I shall like it."
"Why not?" said he. "They'll be all right. There's the landlord and another fellow there with them. Will you come in? Have you had breakfast? Come and eat something."
She went with him into the bar parlour, where he sat down again to eat his half-cold mutton chops. She was silent and embarrassed, but not afraid. The colour still was high in her young, delicate cheeks, but her odd, bright, round, dark-grey eyes were fearless above her fear. She had really a great dread of everything, especially of the social world in which she had been brought up. But her dread had made her fearless. There was something slightly uncanny about her, her quick, rabbit-like alertness and her quick, open defiance, like some unyielding animal. She was more like a hare than a rabbit: like a she-hare that will fight all the cats that are after her young. And she had a great capacity for remaining silent and remote, like a quaint rabbit unmoving in a corner.
"Were you riding this way by accident?" he asked her.
"No," she said quickly. "I hoped I might see you. Mary said you were leaving early in the morning."
"Why did you want to see me?" he asked, amused.
"I don't know. But I did."
"Well, it was a bit of a hubbub," he laughed.
She glanced at him sharply, warily, on the defensive, and then laughed as well, with a funny little chuckle.
"Why did you leave so suddenly?" she asked.
"No, it wasn't sudden. I'd had enough."
"Enough of what?"
"Everything."
"Even of Mary?"
"Chiefly of Mary."
She eyed him again sharply, wonderingly, searchingly, then again gave her odd little chuckle of a laugh.
"Why 'chiefly of Mary'?" she asked. "I think she's so nice. She'd make me such a good step-mother."
"Do you want one?" he asked.
"Yes, I do rather. Then my father would want to get rid of me. I should be in the way."
"And do you want to be got rid of?"
"Yes, I do rather."
"What for?"
"I want to go right away."
"Back to England?"
"No. Not that. Never there again. Right away from Perth. Into the unoccupied country. Into the North-West."
"What for?"
"To get away."
"What from?"
"Everything. Just everything."
"But what would you find when you'd got away?"
"I don't know. I want to try. I want to try."
She had such an odd, definite decisiveness and self-confidence, he was very much amused. She seemed the queerest, oddest, most isolated bird he had ever come across. Exceedingly well-bred, with all the charm of pure breeding. By nature, timorous like a hare. But now, in her queer state of rebellion, like a hare that is perfectly fearless, and will go its own way in determined singleness.
"You must come and see Monica and me when we move to the North-West. Would you like to?"
"Very much. When will that be?"
"Soon. Before the year is out. Shall I tell Monica you're coming? She'd be glad of another woman."
"Are you sure you want me?"
"Quite."
"Are you sure everybody will want me? I shan't be in the way? Tell me quite frankly."
"I'm sure everybody will want you. And you can't be in the way, you are much too wary."
"I only seem it."
"Do come, though."
"I should love to."
"Well, do. When could you come?"
"Any time. Tomorrow if you wish. I am quite independent. I have a certain amount of money, from my mother. Not much, but enough for all I want. And I am of age. I am quite free.—And I think if I went, father would marry Mary. I wish he would."
"Why?"
"Then I should be free."
"But free what for?"
"Anything. Free to breathe. Free to live. Free not to marry. I know they want to get me married. They've got their minds fixed on it. And I'm afraid they'll force me to do it, and I don't want it."
"Marry who?"
"Oh, nobody in particular. Just somebody, don't you know."
"And don't you want to marry?" asked Jack, amused.
"No. No, I don't. Not any of the people I meet. No! Not that sort of man. No. Never!"
He burst into a laugh, and she, glancing in surprise at his amusement, suddenly chuckled.
"Don't you like men?" he asked, still laughing.
"No. I don't. I dislike them very much."
Her quick, cool, alert manner of statement amused him more than anything.
"Not any men at all?"
"No. Not yet. And I dislike the idea of marriage. I just hate it. I don't think I'd mind men so much, if it weren't' for marriage in the background. I can't do with marriage."
"Might you like men without marriage?" he asked, laughing.
"I don't know," she said, with her odd precision. "So far it's all just impossible. I can't stand it. All that sort of thing is impossible to me. No, I don't care for men at all."
"What sort of thing is just impossible?" he asked.
"Men! Particularly a man. Impossible!"