"Do you think they would want to be like you?" asked Mr. George.
Lennie looked from him to Rackett, and then to Jack.
"Jack's not so very diff'rent," he said slowly. And he shook his head. "But can't y' believe me," he cried. "I don' wantta go to England. I don' wantta talk fine and be like them. Can't ye see I don't? I don' wantta. What's the good! What's the mortal use of it, anyhow? Aren't I right as I am?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I wants to work. I wants to milk an' feed, and plough, and reap and lay out irrigation, like Dad. An' I wants to look after Ma an' the kids. An' then I'll get married and be on a place of me own with kids of me own, an' die, like Dad, an' be done for. That's what I wants. It is."
He looked desperately at his mother.
Mr. George slowly shook his head, staring at the keen, beautiful, but reluctant boy.
"I suppose that's what we've come to," said Rackett.
"Didn't you learn me!" cried Lennie defiantly. And striking a little attitude, like a naive earnest actor, he repeated:
"'Here rests, his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth of fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.
"'Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send.
He gave to misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend."
"There," he continued. "That's me! An' I've got a friend already."
"You're a little fool," said Mr. George. "Much mark of melancholy there is on you! And do you think misery is going to thank you for your idiotic tear? As for your friend, he's going away. And you're a fool, putting up a headstone to yourself while you're alive still. Damn you, you little fool, and be damned to you."
Mr. George was really cross. He flounced his spectacles off his nose. Len was frightened. Then he said, rather waveringly, turning to his mother:
"We're all right, Ma, ain't we?"
Mrs. Ellis looked at him with her subtlest, tenderest smile. And in Lennie's eyes burned a light of youthful indignation against these old men.
These days Monica was fascinating to Jack's eyes. She wore a black dress, and her slimness, her impulsive girlishness under this cloud were wistful, exquisite. He would have liked to love her, soothingly, protectively, passionately. He would have liked to cherish her, with passion. Always he looked to her for a glance of intimacy, looked to see if she wouldn't accept his passion and his cherishing. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to feel the eternal lightning of her slim body through the cloud of that black dress. He wanted to declare to her that he loved her, as Alec Rice had declared to Grace; and he wanted to ask her to marry him. To ask her to marry him at once.
But mostly he wanted to touch her and hold her in his arms. He watched her all the time, hoping to get one of the old, long looks from her yellow eyes, from under her bended brows. Her long, deep, enigmatic looks, that used to worry him so. Now he longed for her to look at him like that.
Or better still if she would let him see her trouble and her grief, and love her so, with a passionate cherishing.
But she would do neither. She kept her grief and her provocation both out of sight, as if neither existed. Her little face remained mute and closed, like a shut-up bud. She only spoke to him with a vague distant voice, and she never really looked at him. Or if she did glance at him, it was in a kind of anger, and pain, as if she did not want to be interfered with; didn't want to be pulled down.
He was completely puzzled. Her present state was quite incomprehensible to him. She had nothing to reproach him with, surely. And if she had loved him, even a little, she could surely love him that little still. If she had so often taken his hand and clutched it, surely she could now let him take her hand, in real sympathy.
It was if she were angry with him because Dad had died. Jack hadn't wanted Dad to die. Indeed no. He was cut up by it as if he had been one of the family. And it was as bad a blow to his destiny as to hers. He was as sore and sorry as anybody. Yet she kept her face shut against him, and avoided him, as if he were to blame.
Completely puzzled, Jack went on with his preparations for departure. He had no choice. He was under orders from Mr. George, and with Mrs. Ellis' approval, to quit Wandoo, to ride with Tom up to Geraldton, and to spend at least a year on the sheep station up north. It had to be. It was the wheel of fate. So let it be.
And as the last day drew near, the strange volcano of anger which slumbered at the bottom of his soul—a queer, quiescent crater of anger which churned its deep hot lava invisible—threw up jets of silver rage, which hardened rapidly into a black, rocky indifference. And this was characteristic of him: an indifference which was really congealed anger, and which gave him a kind of innocent, remote, childlike quietness.
This was his nature. He was himself vaguely aware of the unplumbed crater of silent anger which lay at the bottom of his soul. It was not anger against any particular thing, or because of anything in particular. It was just generic, inherent in him. It was himself. It did not make him hate people, individually, unless they were hateful. It did not make him hard or cruel. Indeed he was too yielding rather than otherwise, too gentle and mindful of horses and cattle, for example, unmindful of himself. Tom often laughed at him for it. If Lucy had a will of her own, and a caprice she wanted to execute, he always let her go ahead, take her way, as far as was reasonable. If she exceeded her limits, his anger roused and there was no doing any more with him. But he very rarely, very rarely got really angry. Only then in the long, slow accumulation of hostility, as with Easu.
But anger! A deep, fathomless well-head of slowly-moving, invisible fire. Somewhere in his consciousness he was aware of it, and in this awareness it was as if he belonged to a race apart. He never felt identified with the great humanity. He belonged to a race apart, like the race of Cain. This he had always known.
Sometimes he met eyes that were eyes of his own outcast race. As a tiny boy it had been so. Fairs had always fascinated him, because at the fairs in England he met the eyes of gipsies who, in a glance, understood him. His own people could not understand. But in the black eyes of a gipsy woman he had seen the answer, even as a boy of ten. And he had thought: I ought to go away with her, run away with her.
It was the anger, the deep, burning life-anger which was the kinship. Not a deathly, pale, nervous anger. But an anger of the old blood. And it was this which had attracted him to grooms, horsey surroundings, and to pugilists. In them was some of this same deep, generous anger of the blood. And now in Australia too, he saw it like a secret away at the bottom of the black, full, strangely shining eyes of the aborigines. There it lay, the secret, like an eternal, brilliant snake. And it established at once a kind of free-masonry between him and the blacks. They were curiously aware of him, when he came: aware of his coming, aware of his going. As if in him were the same great Serpent of their anger. And they were downcast now he was going away, as if their strength were being taken from them. Old Tim, who had taken a great fancy to Jack, relapsed into a sort of glumness as if he too, now, were preparing to die.
Since Jack had come back from the Greenlows' farm, Monica had withdrawn to a distance, a kind of luminous distance, and put a chasm between herself and Jack. She moved mute and remote on the shining side of the chasm. He stood on the dark side, looking across the blackness of the gulf at her as if she were some kind of star. Surely the gulf would close up. Surely they both would be on natural ground again.
But no! always that incomprehensible little face with fringed lashes, and mouth that opened with a little smile, a vulnerable little smile, as if asking them all to be kind to her, to be pitiful towards her, and not try to touch her.
"Well, good-bye, Monica, for the present," he said, as he sat in the saddle in the yard, and Tom started away riding towards the gate, leading the bulky-looking pack-horse.
"Good-bye. Come back!" said Monica, looking up with a queer, hard little question come into her eyes, but her face remote as ever.
Jack kicked his horse and started.
"I'll come back," he said over his shoulder. But he didn't look round at her. His heart had gone hard and hot in his breast. He was glad to be going.
Lennie had opened the gate. He stood there as Jack rode through.
"Why can't I never come?" he cried.
Jack laughed and rode on, after the faithful Tom. He was glad to go. He was glad to leave Wandoo. He was glad to say no more good-byes, and to feel no more pain. He was glad to be gone, since he was going, from the unlucky place. He was glad to be gone from its doom. There was a doom over it, a doom. And he was glad to be gone.
The morning was still orange and green. Winter had set in at last, the rains had begun to be heavy. They might have trouble with drenchings and hoggings, but that, Tom said, was better than drought and sunstrokes. And anyhow the weather this morning was perfect.
The dark forest of karri that ran to the left of Wandoo away on the distant horizon, cut a dark pattern on the egg-green sky. Good-bye! Good-bye! to it. The sown fields they were riding through glittered with tender blades of wheat. Good-bye! Good-bye! Somebody would reap it. The bush was now full of sparks of the beautiful, uncanny flowers of Western Australia, and bright birds started and flew. Sombre the bush was in itself, but out of the heavy dullness came sharp scarlet, flame-spark flowers, and flowers as lambent gold as sunset, and wan white flowers, and flowers of a strange, darkish rich blue, like the vault of heaven just after sundown. The scent of rain, of eucalyptus, and of the strange brown-green shrubs of the bush!
They rode in silence, Tom ahead with the pack-horse, and they did not draw near, but rode apart. They were travelling due west from York, along a bush track toward Paddy's Crossing. And as they went they drew nearer and nearer to the dark, low fringe of hills behind which, for the last twelve months, Jack had seen the sun setting with its great golden glow. Trees grew along the ridge of the hills, scroll-like and mysterious. They had always seemed to Jack like the bar of heaven.
By noon the riders reached the ridge, and the bar of heaven was the huge karri trees which went up aloft so magnificently. But the karri forest ended here with a jerk. Beyond, the earth ran away down long, long slopes, covered with scrub, down the greyness and undulation of Australia, towards the great dimness where was the coast. The sun was hot at noon. Jack was glad when Tom called a halt under the last trees, facing the great, soft, open swaying of the land seaward, and they began to make tea.
They had hardly sat down to drink their tea, when they heard a buggy approaching. It was the mysterious Dr. Rackett, driven by the grinning Sam. Rackett said nothing, just greeted the youths, pulled his tin mug and tucker from under the buggy seat, and joined in, chatting casually as if it had all been pre-arranged.
Tom was none too pleased, but he showed nothing. And when the tea was finished, he made good by handing over the beast of a pack-horse to Sam. Poor Sam sat in the back of the vehicle lugging the animal along, jerking its reluctant neck. Rackett drove in lonely state on the driving seat. Tom and Jack trotted quickly ahead, on the down-slope, and were soon out of sight. They were thankful to ride free.
Over the ridge they felt Wandoo was left behind, and they were in the open world again, away from care. Whenever man drives his tent-pegs deep, to stay, he drives them into underlying water of sorrow. Best ride tentless. So thought the boys.
They were going to a place called Paddy's Crossing, a settlement new to Jack, but well known to Tom as the place-where-men-went-when-they-wanted-a-private-jamboree. What a jamboree was, Jack, being a gentleman, that is not a lady, would learn in due course.
As the ground came to a rolling hollow, Tom set off at a good pace, and away they went, galloping beautifully along the soft earth trail, galloping, galloping, putting the miles between them and Wandoo and women and care. They both rode in a kind of passion for riding, for hurling themselves ahead down the new road. To be men out alone in the world, away from the women and the dead stone of trouble.
They reached the river hours before Rackett's turn-out. Fording it they rode into the mushroom settlement, a string of slab cabins with shingle roofs and calico window-panes—or else shuttered-up windows. The stoves were outside the chimney-less cabins, under brush shelters. One such "kitchen," a fore-runner, had already a roof of flattened-out, rusty tin cans.
But it was a cosy, canny nook, homely, nestling down in the golden corner of the earth, the mimosa in bloom by the river. And it was beautifully ephemeral. As transient, as casual as the bushes themselves.
Jack for the moment had a dread of solid houses of brick and stone and permanence. There was always horror somewhere inside them.
He wanted the empty, timeless Australia, with nooks like this of flimsy wooden cabins by a river with a wattle bush.
There was one older, white-washed cabin with vine trellises.
"That's Paddy's," said Tom. "He grows grapes, and makes wine out of the little black ones. But the muscats is best. I'm not keen on wine, anyhow. Something a drop more warming."
Jack was amazed at the good Tom. He had never known him to drink.
"There's nobody about," said Jack, as they rode up the incline between the straggling cabins.
"All asleep," said Tom.
It was not so, however, because as they crested the slope and looked into the little hollow beyond, they saw a central wooden building, hall or mission or church, and people crowding like flies.
But Tom turned up to Paddy's white inn, up the side slope. He was remorseful about having galloped the horses at the beginning of such a long trip. The inn seemed deserted. Tom coo-eeed! but there was no answer.
"All shut up!" he said. "What's that paper on the door?"
Jack got down and walked stiffly to the door, for the ride had been long and hard and downhill, and his knees were hurting. "'Gone to the wedin be ome soon P. O. T.'" he read. "What is P. O. T.?" he asked.
"What I stand in need of," said the amazing Tom.
They were just turning their horses towards the stable when, with a racket and a canter, an urchin drove round from the yard in a pitch-black wicker chaise, a bone-white, careworn horse slopping between the shafts.
"You two blokes," yelled the urchin, "'d better get on th' trail for th' church, else Father Prendy 'll be on y' tail, I tell y'."
"What's up?" shouted Tom.
"I'm just off fer th' bride. Ol' Nick 'ere 'eld me up runnin' away from me in the paddock."
Tom grinned, the outfit swept past. Our heroes took their horses to the stable and settled them down conscientiously. Then they set off, glad to be on foot, down to the church.
The crowd was buzzing. It was half-past three. Father Prendy, the old mission priest, who looked like a dusty old piece of furniture from a loft, was peering up the road. The black wicker buggy still made no appearance with the bride.
"Two o'clock's the legal limit for marriages," said Father Prendy. "But praise God, we've half an hour yet."
And he showed his huge watch, which said half-past one, since he had slipped away for a moment to put back the fingers.
The slab-building—hall, school, and church—was now a church, though the oleographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort in Robes still glowed on the walls, and a blackboard stood with its face to the wall, and one of those wire things with coloured beads poked out from behind, and the globe of the world could not be hidden entirely by the eucalyptus boughs.
But it was a church. A table with a white cloth and a crucifix was the altar. Crimson-flowering gum-blossom embowered the walls, the blackboard, the windows, but left the Queen and Prince Consort in full isolation. Forms were ranked on the mud floor, and these forms were densely packed with settlers dressed in all kinds of clothes. It was not only a church, it was a wedding. Just inside the door, like a figure at Madame Tussaud's, sat an elderly creature in greenish evening suit with white waistcoat, and copper-toed boots, waiting apparently for the Last Trump. On the other side was a brown-whiskered man in frock-coat, a grey bell-topper in his hand, leaning balanced on a stick. He was shod in white socks and carpet slippers. Later on this gentleman explained to Jack: "I suffer from corns, and shouldn't be happy in boots."
There was a great murmuring and staring, and shuffling and shifting as Jack and Tom came up, as though one of them was the bride in disguise. The wooden church buzzed like a cocoanut shell. A red-faced man seized Tom's arm as if Tom were a long-lost brother, and Jack was being introduced, shaking the damp, hot, trembling hand of the red-faced man, who was called Paddy.
"It's fair come over me, so ut has!—praise be to the saints an' may the devil run away with them two young termagants! Father Prendy makin' them come to this pass all at onst! For mark my words, in his own mind he's thinkin' the wrong they've done, neither of them speakin' to confess, till he was driven to remark on the girl's unnatural figure. And not a soul in the world, mark you, has seen 'em speak a word to one another for the last year in or out. But she says it's he, an' Denny Mackinnon, he payin', I'll be bound, that black priest of a Father Prendy to come over me an' make me render up my poor innocent Pat to the hussy, in holy matrimony. May the saints fly away with 'em."
He wiped away his sweat, speechless. And Denny Mackinnon, the hussy's father—it could be no other than he—in moth-eaten scarlet coat and overall trousers, and top-boots slashed for his bunions, and forage-cap slashed for his increased head, stood bulging on the other side of the door, compressed in his youthful uniform, and scarlet in the face with the compression. He was a stout man with a black beard and a fixed, fierce, solemn expression. Creator of this agitated occasion, he was almost bursting with wrathful agitation as that hussy of a daughter of his still failed to appear. By his side stood an ancient man, with a long grey beard, anciently clad.
Patrick, the bridegroom to be, lurked near his father. He was a thin, pale, freckled, small-faced youth with broad, brittle shoulders and brittle limbs, who would no doubt, in time, fill out into a burly fellow. As it was, he was agitated and unlovely in a new ready-made suit and a black bomb of a hard hat that wouldn't stay on, and new boots that stank to heaven of improperly dressed kangaroo hide: one of the filthiest of stinks.
Poor Paddy, the father of the bridegroom, was a tall, thin, well set-up man with trembling hands and a face like beetroot, garbed in a blue coat with brass buttons, mole trousers, leggings, and a sideways-leaning top hat. His tie was a flowing red with white spots. His eyes were light blue and wickedly twinkling behind their slight wateriness.
"What's that yer sayin' about me?" said Father Prendy, coming up rubbing his hands, bowing to the strangers, beaming with a cheerfulness that could outlast any delay under the sun.
"'Twas black I was callin' ye, Father Prendy," said Paddy. "For the fine pair of black eyes ye carry, why not? Isn't it a good drink ye'll be havin' on me afore the day is out, eh? Isn't it a pretty penny ye're costin' me, with your marrin' an' givin' in marriage? An' why isn't it Danny what pays the wedding breakfast, eh?"
"Hold your peace, Paddy, my dear. I see a wagon comin', don't I?"
Sure enough the black wicker buggy rattling down hill, the white horse seeming to swim, the urchin standing up, feet wide apart, elbows high up, bending forward and urging the bone-white steed with curses unnameable.
"What now! What now!" murmured the priest, feeling in his pocket for his stole. "What now!"
"Where's Dad?" yelled the urchin, pulling the bone-white steed on its bony haunches, in front of the church.
Dad had gone round the corner. But he came bustling and puffing and bursting in his skin-tight scarlet coat, that almost cut his arms off, his own ancient father, with a long grey beard, pushing him irritably, propelling him towards the slippery boy. As if this family, generation by generation, got more and more behindhand in its engagements.
"Gawd's sake!" blowed the scarlet Dad, as the old grey granddad shoved him.
"Hold ye breath, Dad, 'n come 'ome!" said the urchin, subsiding comfortably on to the seat, and speaking as if he enjoyed the utmost privacy. "Sis can't get away. She's had a baby. An' Ma says I was to tell Mr. O'Burk as it's a foine boy, an' would Father Prendy step up, and Pat O'Burk can come 'n see with his own eyes."
"Let's get along," said Jack uncomfortably, in Tom's ear.
"Get! Not for mine! We're in luck's way, if ever we were."
"There's no fun under the circumstances."
"Oh, Lord my, ain't there! What's wrong? They're all packing into the buggy. Father Prendy's putting his watch back a few more minutes. He'll have 'em married before you can betcher life. It's a wedding, this is, boy!"
The people now came crowding, nudging, whispering, giggling, stumbling out of the church. The gentleman in the carpet slippers rakishly adjusted his grey bell-topper over his left brow, and came swaggering forward.
"Major Brownlee—Mr. Jack Grant," Tom introduced them.
"Retired and happy in the country," the Major explained, and he continued garrulously to explain his circumstances, his history and his family history. This continued all the way to the inn: a good half-hour, for the Major walked insecurely on his tender feet.
When they arrived at Paddy's white, trellised house, all was in festivity. Paddy had thrown open the doors, disclosing the banquet spread in the bar parlour. Large joints of baked meat, ham, tongue, fowls, cakes and bottles and bunches of grapes and piles of apples: these Jack saw in splendid confusion.
"Come along in, come along in!" cried Paddy, as the Major and his young companions hesitated under the vine-trellis. "I guess ye're the last. Come along in—all welcome!—an' wet the baby's eye. Sure, she's a clever girl to get a baby an' a man the same fine afternoon. A fine child, let me tell you. Father Prendy named him for me, Paddy O'Burk Tracy, on the spot, the minute the wedding was tied up. So yer can please yerselves whether it's a christening ye're coming to, or a wedding. I offer ye the choice. Come in."
"P. O. T." thought Jack. He still did not feel at ease. Perhaps Paddy noticed it. He came over and slapped him on the back.
"It's yerself has brought good luck to the house, sir. Sit ye down an' help y'self. Sit ye down an' make y'self at home."
Jack sat down along with the rest of the heterogeneous company. Paddy went round pouring red wine into glasses.
"Gentlemen!" he announced from the head of the table. "We are all here, for the table's full up. The first toast is: The stranger within our gates!"
Everybody drank but Jack. He was uncomfortably uncertain whether the baby was meant, or himself. At the last moment he hastily drank, to transfer the honour to the baby.
Then came "The Bride!" then "The Groom!" then "The Priest! Father Prendy, that black limb o' salvation!" Dozens of toasts, it didn't seem to matter to whom. And everybody drank and laughed, and made clumsy jokes. There were no women present, at least no women seated. Only the women who went round the table, waiting. One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Westminster chimes from the Grandfather's clock behind Jack. Seven o'clock! He had not even noticed them bring in the lights. Father Prendy was on his feet blessing the bride: "at the moment absent on the high mission of motherhood." He then blessed the bridegroom, at the moment asleep with his head on the table.
The table had been cleared, save for bottles, fruit, and terrible cigars. The air was dense with smoke, bitter in the eyes, thick in the head. Everything seemed to be tinning thick and swimmy, and the people seemed to move like living oysters in a natural, live liquor. A girl was sitting on Jack's chair, putting her arm surreptitiously round his waist, sipping out of his glass. But he pushed her a little aside, because he wanted to watch four men who had started playing euchre.
"There's a bright moon, gentlemen. Let's go out and have a bit o' sparrin'," said Paddy swimmingly, from the head of the table.
That pleased Jack a lot. He was beginning to feel shut in.
He rose, and the girl—he had never really looked at her—followed him out. Why did she follow him? She ought to stay and clear away dishes.
The yard, it seemed to Jack, was clear as daylight: or clearer, with a big, flat white moon. Someone was sizing up to a little square man with long thick arms, and the little man was probing them off expertly. Hello! Here was a master, in his way.
The girl was leaning up against Jack, with her hand on his shoulder. This was a bore, but he supposed it was also a kind of tribute. He had still never looked at her.
"That's Jake," she said. "He's champion of these parts. Oh my, if he sees me leanin' on y' arm like this, hell be after ye!"
"Well, don't lean on me then," said Jack complacently.
"Go on, he won't see me. We're in the dark right here."
"I don't care if he sees you," said Jack.
"You do contradict yourself," said the girl.
"Oh no, I don't!" said Jack.
And he watched the long-armed man, and never once looked at the girl. So she leaned heavier on him. He disapproved, really, but felt rather manly under the burden.
The little, square, long-armed man was oldish, with a grey beard. Jack saw this as he danced round, like a queer old satyr, half gorilla, half satyr, roaring, booing, fencing with a big yahoo of a young bushman, holding him off with his unnatural long arms. Over went the big young fellow sprawling on the ground, causing such a splother that everyone shifted a bit out of his way. They all roared delightedly.
The long-armed man, looking round for his girl, saw her in the shadow, leaning heavily and laughingly on Jack's young shoulder. Up he sprang, snarling like a gorilla, his long hairy arms in front of him. The girl retreated, and Jack, in a state of semi-intoxicated readiness, opened his arms and locked them round the little gorilla of a man. Locked together, they rolled and twirled round the yard under the moon, scattering the delighted onlookers like a wild cow. Jack was laughing to himself, because he had got the grip of the powerful long-armed old man. And there was no real anger in the tussle. The gorilla was an old sport.
Jack was sitting in a chair under the vine, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, getting his wind. Paddy was fanning him with a bunch of gum-leaves, and congratulating him heartily.
"First chap as ever laid out Long-armed Jake."
"What'd he jump on me for?" said Jack. "I said nothing to him."
"What y' sayin'?" ejaculated Paddy coaxingly. "Didn't ye take his girl, now?"
"Take his girl? I? Not She leaned on me, I didn't take her."
"Arrah! Look at that now! The brazenness of it! Well, be it on ye! Take another drink. Will ye come an' show the boys some o' ye tricks, belike?"
Jack was in the yard again, shaking hands with Long-armed Jake.
"Good on y'! Good on y'!" cried old Jake. "Ye're a cock-bird in fine feather! What's a wench between two gentlemen! Shake, my lad, shake! I'm Long-armed Jake, I am, an' I set a cock-bird before any whure of a hen."
They rounded up, sparred, staved off, showed off like two amiable fighting-cocks, before the admiring cockeys. Then they had good-natured turns with the young farmers, and mild wrestling bouts with the old veterans. Having another drink, playing, gassing, swaggering . . .
Tom came bawling as if he were deaf:
"What about them 'osses?"
"What about 'em?" said Jack.
"See to 'm!" said Tom. And he went back to where he came from.
"All right, Mister, we'll see to 'm!" yelled the admiring youngsters. "Well water 'm an' feed 'm."
"Water?" said Jack.
"Yes.—Show us how to double up, Mister, will y'?"
"A' right!" said Jack, who was considerably tipsy. "When—when I've—fed—th' 'osses."
He set off to the stables. The admiring youngsters ran yelling ahead. They brought out the horses and led them down to the trough. Jack followed, feeling the moon-lit earth sway a little.
He shoved his head in between the noses of the horses, into the cool trough of water. When he lifted and wrung out the shower from his hair, which curled when it was wet, he saw the girl standing near him.
"Y' need a towel, Mister," she said.
"I could do with one," said he.
"Come an' I'll get ye one," she said.
He followed meekly. She led him to an outside room, somewhere near the stable. He stood in the doorway.
"Here y' are!" she said, from the darkness inside.
"Bring it me," he said from the moon outside.
"Come in an' I'll dry your hair for yer." Her voice sounded like the voice of a 'wild creature in a black cave. He ventured, unseeing, uncertain, into the den, half reluctant. But there was a certain coaxing imperiousness in her wild-animal voice, out of the black darkness.
He walked straight into her arms. He started and stiffened as if attacked. But her full, soft body was moulded against him. Still he drew fiercely back. Then feeling her yield to draw away and leave him, the old flame flew over him, and he drew her close again.
"Dearie!" she murmured. "Dearie!" and her hand went stroking the back of his wet head.
"Come!" she said. "And let me dry your hair."
She led him and sat him on a pallet bed. Then she closed the door, through which the moonlight was streaming. The room had no window. It was pitch dark, and he was trapped. So he felt as he sat there on the hard pallet. But she came instantly and sat by him and began softly, caressingly to rub his hair with a towel. Softly, slowly, caressingly she rubbed his hair with a towel. And in spite of himself, his arms, alive with a power of their own, went out and clasped her, drew her to him.
"I'm supposed to be in love with a girl," he said, really not speaking to her.
"Are you, dearie?" she said softly. And she left off rubbing his hair and softly put her mouth to his.
Later—he had no idea what time of the night it was—he went round looking for Tom. The place was mostly dark. The inn was half dark... Nobody seemed alive. But there was music somewhere. There was music.
As he went looking for it, he came face to face with Dr. Rackett.
"Where's Tom?" he asked.
"Best look in the barn."
The dim-lighted barn was a cloud of half-illuminated dust, in which figures moved. But the music was still martial and British. Jack, always tipsy, for he had drunk a good deal and it took effect slowly, deeply, felt something in him stir to this music. They were dancing a jig or a horn-pipe. The air was all old and dusty in the barn. There were four crosses of wooden swords on the floor. Young Patrick, in his shirt and trousers, had already left off dancing for Ireland, but the Scotchman, in a red flannel shirt and a reddish kilt, was still lustily springing and knocking his heels in a haze of dust. The Welshman was a little poor fellow in old shirt and trousers. But the Englishman, in costermonger outfit, black bell-bottom trousers and lots of pearl buttons, was going well. He was thin and wiry and very neat about the feet. Then he left off dancing, and stood to watch the last two.
Everybody was drunk, everybody was arguing, according to his nationality, as to who danced best. The Englishman in the bell-bottom trousers knew he danced best, but spent his last efforts deciding between Sandy and Taffy. The music jigged on. But whether it was British Grenadiers or Campbells Are Coming Jack didn't know. Only he suddenly felt intensely patriotic.
"I am an Englishman," he thought, with savage pride. "I am an Englishman. That is the best on earth. Australian is English, English, English, she'd collapse like a balloon but for the English in her. British means English first. I'm a Britisher, but I am an Englishman! God! I could crumple the universe in my fist, I could . . . I'm an Englishman, and I could crush everything in my hand. And the women are left behind. I'm an Englishman."
Voices had begun to snarl and roar, fists were lifted.
"Mussen quarrel!—my weddin'! Mussen quarrel!" Pat was drunkenly saying, sitting on a box shaking his head.
Then suddenly he sprang to his feet, and quick and sharp as a stag, rushed to the wooden swords and stood with arms uplifted, smartly showing the steps. The fellow had spirit, a queer, staccato spirit.
Somebody laughed and cheered, and then they all began to laugh and cheer, and Pat pranced faster, in a cloud of dust, and the quarrel was forgotten.
Jack went to look for Tom. "I'm an Englishman," he thought. "I'd better look after him."
He wasn't in the barn. Jack looked and looked.
He found Tom in the kitchen, sitting in a corner, a glass at his side, quite drunk.
"It's time to go to bed, Tom."
"G'on, ol' duck. I'm waitin' for me girl."
"You won't get any girl tonight. Let's go to bed."
"Shan't I get—? Yes shal! Yes shal!"
"Where shall I find a bed?"
"Plenty 'r flore space."
And he staggered to his feet as a short, stout, red-faced, black-eyed, untidy girl slipped across the kitchen and out of the door, casting a black-eyed, meaningful look at the red-faced Tom, over her shoulder as she disappeared. Tom swayed to his feet and sloped after her with amazing quickness. Jack stood staring out of the open door, dazed. They both seemed to have melted.
Himself, he wanted to sleep—only to sleep. "Plenty of floor space," Tom had said. He looked at the floor. Cockroaches running by the dozen, in all directions: those brown, barge-like cockroaches of the south, that trail their huge bellies, and sheer off in automatic straight lines and make a faint creaking noise, if you listen. Jack looked at the table: an old man already lay on it. He opened a cupboard: babies sleeping there.
He swayed, drunk with sleep and alcohol, out of the kitchen in some direction: pushed a swing door: the powerful smell of beer and sawdust made him know it was the bar. He could sleep on the seat. He could sleep in peace.
He lurched forward and touched cloth. Something snored, started, and reared up.
"What y' at?"
Jack stood back breathless—the figure subsided—he could beat a retreat.
Hopeless he looked in on the remains of the breakfast. Table and every bench occupied. He boldly opened another door. A small lamp burning, and what looked like dozens of dishevelled elderly women's awful figures, heaped crosswise on the hugest double bed he had ever seen.
He escaped into the open air. The moon was low. Someone was singing.
It was day. The lie was hard. He didn't want to wake. He turned over and was sleep again, though the lie was very hard.
Someone pushing him. Tom, with a red, blank face was saying:
"Wake up! Let's go before Rackett starts."
And the rough hands pushing him crudely. He hated it.
He sat up. He had been lying on the bottom of the buggy, with a sack over him. No idea how he got there. It was full day.
"Old woman's got some tea made. If y' want t' change y' bags, hop over 'n take a dip in the pool. Down th' paddock there. Here's th' bag. I've left soap n' comb on th' splash board, an' I've seen to th' 'osses. I'm goin' f'r a drink while you get ready."
Tom had got a false dawn on him. He had wakened with that false energy which sometimes follows a "drunk," and which fades all too quickly. For he had hardly slept at all.
So when Jack was ready, Tom was not. His stupor was overcoming him. He was cross—and half way through his second pewter mug of beer.
"I'm not coming," said Tom.
"You are," said Jack. For the first time he felt that old call of the blood which made him master of Tom. Somewhere, in the night, the old spirit of a master had aroused in him.
Tom finished his mug of beer slowly, sullenly. He put down the empty pot.
"Get up!" said Jack. And Tom got slowly to his feet.
They set off, Jack leading the pack-horse. But the beer and the "night before" had got Tom down. He rode like a sack in the saddle, sometimes semi-conscious, sometimes really asleep. Jack followed just behind, with the beast of a pack-horse dragging his arm out. And Tom ahead, like a sot, with no life in him.
Jack himself felt hot inside, and dreary, and riding was a cruel effort, and the pack-horse, dragging his arm from its socket, was hell. He wished he had enough saddle-tree to turn the rope round: but he was in his English saddle.
Nevertheless, he had decided something, in that jamboree. He belonged to the blood of masters, not servants. He belonged to the class of those that are sought, not those that seek. He was no seeker. He was not desirous. He would never be desirous. Desire should not lead him humbly by the nose. Not desire for anything. He was of the few that are masters. He was to be desired. He was master. He was a real Englishman.
So he jogged along, in the hot, muggy day of early winter. Heavy clouds hung over the sky, lightning flashed beyond the purple hills. His body was a burden and a weariness to him, riding was a burden and a weariness, the pack-horse was hell. And Tom, asleep on his nag, like a dead thing, was hateful to have ahead. The road seemed endless.
Yet he had in him his new, half savage pride to keep him up, and an isolate sort of resoluteness.
At mid-day they got down, drank water, camped, and slept without eating. Thank God the rain hadn't come. Jack slept like the dead till four o'clock.
He woke sharp, wondering where he was. The clouds looked threatening. He got up. Yes, the horses were there. He still felt bruised, and hot and dry inside, from the jamboree. Why in heaven did men want jamborees?
He made a fire, boiled the billy, prepared tea, and set out some food, though he didn't want any.
"Get up there!" he shouted to Tom, who lay like a beast.
"Get up!" he shouted. But the beast slept.
"Get up, you beast!" he said, viciously kicking him. And he was horrified because Tom got up, without any show of retaliation at all, and obediently drank his tea.
They ate a little food, in silence. Saddled in silence, each finding the thought of speech repulsive. Watched one another to see if they were ready. Mounted, and rode in repulsive silence away. But Jack had left the pack-horse to Tom this time. And it began to rain, softly, sleepily.
And Tom was cheering up. The rain seemed to revive him wonderfully. He was one who was soon bowled over by a drink. Consequently he didn't absorb much, and he recovered sooner. Jack absorbed more, and it acted more slowly, deeply, and lastingly on him. On they went, in the rain. Tom began to show signs of new life. He swore at the pack-horse. He kicked his nag to a little trot, and the packs flap-flapped like shut wings, on the rear pony. Presently he reined up, and sat quite still for a minute. Then he broke into a laugh, lifting his face to the rain.
"Seems to me we're off the road," he said. "We haven't passed a fence all day, have we?"
"No," said Jack. "But you were asleep all morning."
"We're off the road. Listen!"
The rain was seeping down on the bush; in the grey evening, the warm horses smelt of their own steam. Jack could hear nothing except the wind and the increasing rain.
"This track must lead somewhere. Let's get to shelter for the night," said Jack.
"Agreed!" replied Tom magnanimously. "We'll follow on, and see what we shall see."
They walked slowly, pulling at the pack-horse, which was dragging at the rope, tired with the burden that grew every minute heavier with the rain.
Tom reined in suddenly.
"There is somebody behind," he said. "It's not the wind."
They sat there on their horses in the rain, and waited. Twilight was falling. Then Jack could distinguish the sound of a cart behind. It was Rackett in the old shay rolling along in the lonely dusk and rain, through the trees, approaching. Black Sam grinned mightily as he pulled up.
"Thought I'd follow, though you are on the wrong road," said Rackett from beneath his black waterproof. "Sam showed me the turning two miles back. You missed it. Anyhow we'd better camp in on these people ahead here."
"Is there a place ahead?" asked Jack.
"Yes," replied Rackett. "Even a sort of relation of yours, that I promised Gran I would come and see. Hence my following on your heels."
"Didn't know I'd any relation hereabouts," said Tom sulkily. He couldn't bear Rackett's interfering in the family in any way.
"You haven't. I meant Jack. But we'll get along, shall we?"
"We're a big flood," remarked Tom. "But if they'll give us the barn, well manage. It's getting wet to sleep out."
They pressed ahead, the pack-horse trotting, but lifting up his head like a venomous snake, in unwillingness. They had come into the open fields. At last in the falling dark they saw a house and buildings. A man hove in sight, but lurked away from them. Rackett hailed him. The man seemed to oppose their coming further. He was a hairy, queer figure, with his untrimmed beard.
"Master never takes no strangers," he said.
Rackett slipped a shilling in his hand, and would he ask his master if they might camp in the barn, out of the rain.
"Y' ain't the police, now, by any manner of means?" asked the man.
"God love you, no," said Rackett.
"We're no police," said Tom. "I'm Tom Ellis, from Wandoo, over York way."
"Ellis! I heared th' name. Well, master's sick, an' skeered to death o' th' police. They're ready to drop in on the place, that they are, rot 'em, the minute he breathes his last. And he's skeered he's dyin' this time. Oh, he's skeered o' t. So I have me doubts of all strangers. I have me doubts, no matter what they be. Master he've sent a letter to his only relation upon earth, to his nephew, which thank the Lord he's writ for to come an' lay hold on the place, against he dies. If there's no one to lay hold, the police steps in, without a word. That's how they do it. They lets the places in grants like—lets a man have a grant—and when the poor man dies, his place is locked up by the Government. They takes it all."
"Gawd's sake!" murmured Tom aside. "The man's potty!"
"Bush mad," supplemented Rackett, who was sitting in the buggy with his chin in his hand, intently listening to the queer, furtive, garrulous individual.
"Say, friend," he added aloud. "Go and ask your master if we harmless strangers can camp in the barn out of the wet."
"What might your names be, Mister?" asked the man.
"Mine's Dr. Rackett. This is Tom Ellis. And this is Jack Grant. And no harm in any of us."
"D'y' say Jack Grant? Would that be Mr. John Grant?" asked the man, galvanised by sudden excitement.
"None other!" said Rackett.
"Then he's come!" cried the man.
"He certainly has," replied Rackett.
"Oh, Glory, Glory! Why didn't ye say so afore? Come in. Come in all of ye, come in! Come in, Mr. Grant! Come in!"
They got down, gave the reins to Sam, and were ready to follow the bearded man, looking one another in the face in amazement, and shaking their heads.
"Gawd Almighty, I'd rather keep out o' this!" murmured Tom, standing by his horse and keeping the rope of the pack-horse.
"Case of mistaken identity," said Rackett coolly. "Hang on, boys. We'll get a night's shelter."
A woman came out of the dilapidated stone house, clutching her hands in distress and agitation.
"Missus! Missus! Here he is at last. God be praised!" cried the bearded man. She ran up in sudden effusion of welcome, but he ordered her into the house to brighten up the fire, while he waved the way to the stables, knowing that horse comes before man, in the bush.
When they had shaken down in the stable, they left Sam to sleep there, while the three went across to the house. Tom was most unwilling.
The man was at the door, to usher them in.
"I've broke the news to him, sir!" he said in a mysterious voice to Jack, as he showed them into the parlour.
"What's your Master's name?" asked Rackett.
"Don't y' know y're at your destination?" whispered the man. "This is Mr. John Grant's. This is the place ye're looking for."
A melancholy room! The calico ceiling drooped, the window and front door were hermetically sealed, an ornate glass lamp shone in murky, lonely splendour upon a wool mat on a ricketty round table. Six chairs stood against the papered walls. Nothing more.
Tom wanted to beat it back to the kitchen, through which they had passed to get to this sarcophagus, and where a fire was burning and a woman was busy. But the man was tapping at another door, and listening anxiously before entering.
He went into the dark room beyond, where a candle shone feebly, and they heard him say:
"Your nephew's come, Mr. Grant, and brought a doctor and another gentleman, the Lord be praised."
"The Lord don't need to be praised on my behalf, Amos," came a querulous voice. "And I ain't got no nephew, if I did send him a letter. I've got nobody. And I want no doctor, because I died when I left my mother's husband's house."
"They're in the parlour."
"Tell 'em to walk up."
The man appeared in the doorway. Rackett walked up, Jack followed, and Tom hung nervously and disgustedly in the rear.
"Here they are! Here's the gentry," said Amos.
In the candle-light they saw a thin man in red flannel night-cap with a blanket round his shoulders, sitting up in bed under an old green cart-umbrella. He was not old, but his face was thin and wasted, and his long colourless beard seemed papery. He had cunning, shifty eyes with red rims, and looked as mad as his setting.
Rackett had shoved Jack forward. The sick man stared at him and seemed suddenly pleased. He held out a thin hand. Rackett nudged Jack, and Jack had to shake. The hand seemed wet and icy, and Jack shuddered.
"How d'you do!" he mumbled. "I'm sorry, you know; I'm not your nephew."
"I know ye're not. But are y' Jack Grant?"
"Yes," said Jack.
The man under the umbrella seemed hideously pleased.
Jack heard Tom's ill-suppressed, awful chuckle from behind.
The sick man peered irritably at the other two. Then he nodded slowly, under the green baldachino of the old cart-umbrella.
"Jack Grant! Jack Grant! Jack Grant!" he murmured, to himself. He was surely mad, obviously mad.
"I'm right glad you've come, Cousin," he said suddenly, looking again very pleased. "I'm surely glad you've come in time. I've a nice tidy place put together for you, Jack, a small proposition of three thousand acres, five hundred cleared and cropped, fifty fenced—dog-leg fences, broke MacCullen's back putting 'em up. But I'll willingly put in five hundred more, for a gentleman like young master. Meaning old master will soon be underground. Well, who cares, now young master's come to light, and the place doesn't go out of the family! I am determined the place shall not go out of the family, Cousin Jack. Aren't you pleased?"
"Very," said Jack soothingly.
"Call me Cousin John. Or Uncle John if you like. I'm more like your uncle, I should think. Shake hands, and say, Right you are, Uncle John. Call me Uncle John."
Jack shook hands once more, and dutifully, as to a crazy person, he said:
"Right you are, Uncle John."
Tom, in the background, was going into convulsions. But Rackett remained quite serious.
Uncle John closed his eyes muttering, and fell back under the cart-umbrella.
"Mr. Grant," said Dr. Rackett, "I think Jack would like to eat something after his ride."
"All right, let him go to the kitchen with yon buck wallaby as can't keep a straight face. Stop with me a minute yourself, Mister, if you will."
The two boys bundled away into the kitchen. The woman had a meal ready, and they sat down at the table.
"I thank my stars," said Tom impressively, "he's not my Uncle John."
"Shut up," said Jack, because the woman was there.
They ate heartily, the effects of the jamboree having passed. After the meal they strolled to the door to look out, away from that lugubrious parlour and bedroom. They found a stiff wind blowing, the sky clear with running clouds and vivid stars in the spaces.
"Let's get!" said Tom. It was his constant craving.
"We can't leave Rackett."
"We can. He pushed us in. Let's get. Why can't we?"
"Oh well, we can't," said Jack.
Rackett had entered the kitchen, and was eating his meal. He asked the woman for ink.
"There's no ink," she said.
"Must be somewhere," said Amos, her husband. "Jack Grant's letter was written in ink."
"I never got a letter," said Jack, turning.
"Eh, hark ye! How like old master over again! Ye've come, haven't ye?"
"By accident," said Jack. "I'm not Mr. Grant's nephew."
"Hark ye! Hark ye! It runs in the family, father to son, uncle to nephew. All right! All right! Have it your own way," cried Amos. He had been struggling with crazy contradictions too long.
Tom was in convulsions. Rackett put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "It's all right," he said. "Don't worry him. Leave it to me." And to the woman he said, if there was no ink she was to kill a fowl and bring it to him, and he'd make ink with lamp-black and gall.
"You two boys had better be off to bed," he said. "You have to be off in good time in the morning."
"Oh, not going, not going so soon, surely! The young master's not going so soon! Surely! Surely! Master's so weak in the head and stomach, we can't cope with him all by ourselves," cried the old man and woman.
"Perhaps I'll stay," said Rackett. "And Jack will come back one day, don't you worry. Now let me make that ink."
The boys were shown into a large, low room—the fourth room of the house—that opened off the kitchen. It contained a big bed with clean sheets and white crochet quilt. Jack surmised it was the old couple's bed, and wanted to go to the barn. But Tom said, since they offered it, there was nothing to do but to take it.
Tom was soon snoring. Jack lay in the great feather bed feeling that life was all going crazy. Tom was already snoring. He cared about nothing. Out of sight, out of mind. But Jack had a fit of remembering. His head was hot, and he could not sleep. The wind was blowing, it was raining again. He could not sleep, he had to remember.
It was always so with him. He could go on careless and unheeding, like Tom, for a while. Then came these fits of reckoning and remembering. Life seemed unhinged in Australia. In England there was a strong central pivot to all the living. But here the centre pin was gone, and the lives seemed to spin in a weird confusion.
He felt that for himself. His life was all unhinged. What was he driving at? What was he making for? Where was he going? What was his life, anyhow?
In England, you knew. You had your purpose. You had your profession and your family and your country. But out here you had no profession. You didn't do anything for your country except boast of it to strangers, and leave it to get along as best it might. And as for your family, you cared for that, but in a queer, centreless fashion.
You didn't really care for anything. The old impetus of civilisation kept you still going, but you were just rolling to rest. As Mr. Ellis had rolled to rest, leaving everything stranded. There was no grip, no hold.
And yet, what Jack had rebelled against in England was the tight grip, the fixed hold over everything. He liked this looseness and carelessness of Australia. Till it seemed to him crazy. And then it scared him.
Tonight everything seemed to him crazy. He didn't pay any serious attention to Uncle John Grant: he was obviously out of his mind. But then everything seemed crazy. Mr. Ellis' death, and Gran's death, and Monica and Easu Ellis—it all seemed crazy as crazy. And the jamboree, and that girl who called him Dearie! And the journey, and this mad house in the rain. What did it all mean? What did it all stand for?
Everything seemed to be spinning to a darkness of death. Everybody seemed to be dancing a crazy dance of death. He could understand that the blacks painted themselves like white bone skeletons, and danced in the night, light skeletons dancing, in their corrobees. That was how it was. The night, dark and fleshly, and skeletons dancing a clicketty dry dance m it.
Tom, so awfully upset at his father's death! And now as careless as a lark, just spinning his way along the road, in a sort of weird dance, dancing humorously to the black verge of oblivion. That was how it was. To dance humorously to the black verge of oblivion. The children of death. With a sort of horror of death around them. Wandoo suddenly grim and grisly with the horror of death.
Death, the great end and goal. Death, the black, void, pulsating reality which would swallow them all up, like a black lover finally possessing them. The great black fleshliness of the end, the huge body of death reeling to swallow them all. And for this they danced, and for this they loved and reared families and made farms: to provide good meat and white, pure bones for the black, avid horror of death.
Something of the black, aboriginal horror came over him. He realised, to his amazement, the actuality of the great, grinning black demon of death. The vast, infinite demon that eats our flesh and cracks our bones in the last black potency of the end. And for this, for this demon one seeks for a woman, to lie with her and get children for the Moloch. Children for the Moloch! Lennie, Monica, the twins, Og and Magog! Children for the Moloch.
One God or the other must take them at the end. Either the dim white god of the heavenly infinite. Or else the great black Moloch of the living death. Devoured and digested in the living death.
Satan, Moloch, Death itself, all had been unreal to him before. But now, suddenly, he seemed to see the black Moloch grinning huge in the sky, while human beings danced towards his grip, and he gripped and swallowed them into the black belly of death. That was their end.
Dance! Dance! Death has its deep delights! And ever-recurring. Be careless, ironical, stoical and reckless. And go your way to death with a will. With a dark handsomeness, and a dark lustre of fatality, and a splendour of recklessness. Oh, God, the Lords of Death! The big, darkly-smiling, heroic men who are Lords of Death! And they too go on splendidly towards death, the great goal of unutterable satisfaction, and consummated fear.
"I am going my way the same," Jack thought to himself. "I am travelling in a reckless, slow dance, darker and darker, into the black, hot belly of death, where is my end. Oh, let me go gallantly, let me have the black joy of the road. Let me go with courage, and a bit of splendour and dark lustre, down to the great depths of death, that I am so frightened of, but which I long for in the last consummation. Let death take me in a last black embrace. Let me go on as the niggers go, with the last convulsion into the last black embrace. Since I am travelling the dark road, let me go in pride. Let me be a Lord of Death, since the reign of the white Lords of Life, like my father, has become sterile and a futility. Let me be a Lord of Death. Let me go that other great road, that the blacks go."
The bed was soft and hot, and he stretched his arms fiercely. If he had Monica! Oh, if he had Monica! If that girl last night had been Monica!
That girl last night! He didn't even know her name. She had stroked his head—like—like—Mary! The association flashed into his mind. Yes, like Mary. And Mary would be humble and caressive and protective like that. So she would. And dark! It would be dark like that if one loved Mary. And brief! Brief! But sharp and good in the briefness. Mary! Mary!
He realised with amazement it was Mary he was now wanting. Not Monica. Or was it Monica? Her slim keen hand. Her slim body like a slim cat, so full of life. Oh, it was Monica! First and foremost, most intensely, it was Monica, because she was really his, and she was his destiny. He dared not think of her.
He rolled in the bed in misery. Tom slept unmoving. Oh, why couldn't he be like Tom, slow and untormented. Why couldn't he? Why was his body tortured? Why was he travelling this road? Why wasn't Monica there like a gipsy with him. Why wasn't Monica there?
Or Mary! Why wasn't Mary in the house? She would be so soft and understanding, so yielding. Like the girl of the long-armed man. The long-armed man didn't mind that he had taken his girl, for once.
Why was he himself rolling there in torment? Pug had advised him to "punch the ball," when he was taken with ideas he wanted to get rid of. There was no ball to punch. "Train the body hard, but train the mind hard too." Yes, all very well. He could think, now for example, of fighting Easu, or of building up a place and raising fine horses. But the moment his mind relaxed for sleep, back came the other black flame. The women! The women! The women! Even the girl of last night.
What was a man born for? To find a mate, a woman, isn't it? Then why try to think of something else? To have a woman—to make a home for her—to have children.—And other women in the background, down the long, dusky, strange years towards death. So it seemed to him. And to fight the men that stand in one's way. To fight them. Always a new one cropping up, along the strange dusky road of the years, where you go with your head up, and your eyes open, and your spine sharp and electric, ready to fight your man and take your woman, on and on down the years, into the last black embrace of death. Death that stands grinning with arms open and black breast ready. Death, like the last woman you embrace. Death, like the last man you die fighting with. And he beats you. But somehow you are not beaten, if you are a Lord of Death.
Jack hoped he would die a violent death. He hoped he would live a defiant, unsubmissive life, and die a violent death. A bullet, or a knife piercing home. And the women he left behind—his women, enveloped in him as in a dark net. And the children he left, laughing already at death.
And himself! He hoped never to be downcast, never to be melancholy, never to yield. Never to yield. To be a Lord of Death, and go on to the black arms of death, still laughing. To laugh, and bide one's time, and leap at the right moment.
"My dear nephew, I haven't sent you a letter since the last one which I never wrote, yet you have come in answer to the one you never got. I wrote because I wanted you to come and receive the property, and I never posted it because I didn't know your address, and you couldn't come if I did, because you don't exist. Yet here you are and I think you look very pleased to receive the property which you haven't got yet. I was so afraid I should die sudden after this long lingering illness, but it's you who has come suddenly and the illness hasn't begun yet. So here am I speechless, but you are doing a lot of talking to your dear uncle who never had a nephew. What does it matter to me if you are Jack Grant because I am not, but took the name into the grant of land given me on the land grant system at a shilling an acre. So like a bad shilling the name turns up again on the register, so that the land goes back to the grant and the Grant to the land. But a better-looking nephew I never wish to see, being as much like me as an ape is like meat. So when I'm dead I won't be alive to trouble you, and I'll trouble no further about you since you might as well be dead for all I care."
In this vein Tom ranted on the next morning, when they had set out in the glorious early dawn. Tom never wearied of the uncle under the umbrella. He told the tale to everybody who would listen, and wore out Jack's ears with these long and facile pleasantries.
They were both glad to get away from the crazy, lugubrious place. Jack refused to give it a thought further, though he felt vaguely, at the back of his mind, that he knew something about it already. Something somebody had told him.
Rackett had stayed behind, so they made no very good pace, leading the pack-horse. But they pushed on, being already overdue at the homestead of one of Tom's Aunts, who was expecting them.
Once on horseback and in the open morning, Jack wished for nothing more. Women, death, skeletons, the dance into the darkness, the future, the past, love, home, and sorrow all disappeared in the bright well of the daylight, as if they'd dropped into a pool. He wanted nothing more than to ride, to jog along the track on the rather wet road, through bush and scrub still wet with rain, in a pure Westralian air that was like a clean beginning of everything, seeing the tiny bushman's flowers sparking and gilding eerily in the dunness of the world.
By mid-day they reached the highway to Geraldton, via Gingin, and camped at the Three-mile Government well in perfect good spirits. Everything was gone, everything was forgotten except the insouciance of the moment. They knew the uselessness of thinking and remembering and worrying. When worry starts biting like mosquitoes, then, if it bites hard enough, you've got to attend. But it's like illness, avoid it, beat it back if you can.
They found the high-road merely a bush-track after all. If it was near a settlement, or allotments or improved lands, it might run well for miles. But for the most part, it was exceedingly bad, full of holes of water, and beginning in places to be a bog.
Tom was now at his best, out in the bush again. All his bush lore came back to him, and he was like an animal in its native surroundings. His charm came back too, and his confidence. He went ahead looking keenly about, like a travelling animal, pointing out to Jack first this thing and then the other, initiating him into bush wisdom, teaching him the big cipher-book of the bush. And Jack learned gladly. It was so good, so good to be away from homesteads, and women, and money, watching the trees and the land and the marks of wild life. And Tom, a talker once he was wound up, told the histories of settlers, their failures and successes, and their peculiarities. It seemed to Jack there was a surplus of weird people out there. But then, Tom said, the weird ones usually came first, and they got weirder in the wild.
They passed an enormous hollow tree, from which issued an old man with a grey beard that came to his waist, dressed in rags. A grey-haired, very ragged woman also came out, carrying a baby. Other children crawled around. The travellers called Good-day! as they passed.
Tom said the woman's baby was the youngest of seventeen children. The eldest son was already grown up, a prosperous young man trading in sandal-wood. But Dad and Mum liked the bush, and would accept nothing for their supposed welfare, either from their sons or anyone else.
In the middle of the afternoon they passed a sundowner trekking with a cartful of produce down to Middle Swan. At four o'clock they camped for half an hour, to drink a billy of tea. Before the water boiled they saw two tramps coming down the road. The slouchers came straight up and greeted the boys, eyeing them curiously up and down.
"Wot cheer, mate!" said one, a ruffianly mongrel.
"Good O! How's the goin' Gingin way?" asked Tom.
"Plenty grass an' water this time o' the year. But look out for the settlers this side. They ain't over hopeful." He turned to stare at Jack. Then he continued, to Tom: "How's it y' got y' baby out?"
"New chum," explained Tom. He spoke quietly, but his mouth had hardened. "You blokes want anything of us?"
"Yessir," said the spokesman, coming in close. "We wants bacca."
"Do you?" said Tom pleasantly, and he pulled out his pouch. "I've only got three plugs. That's one apiece for me an' the baby, an' you can have the other to do as you likes with. But chum here doesn't keer much for smokin', so he might give you his."
There was a tone of finality in Tom's voice.
"You've surely got more blasted cheek than most kids," said the fellow. "What've ye got planted away in y' swags?" He glanced at his mate. "We don't want to use no bally persuasion, does we, Bill?"
Bill was of villainous but not very imposing appearance. He had weak eyes, a dirty hairy face, and a purple mouth showing unbecomingly through his whiskers.
Tom calmly filled his pipe, and waving to the first tramp, gave him sufficient to fill his cutty. The fellow took it, ignoring his mate, and began to fill up eagerly. He sat down by the fire, and taking a hot ember, lit up, puffing avidly.
"The other can have my share, if he wants it," said Jack.
"Thank you kindly," said the other with a sneer. And as he stuffed it in his pipe: "It'll do for a start." But he was puffing almost before he could finish his words.
They smoked in silence round the fire for some time. Then Tom rose and went over to the pack, as if he were going to give in to the ruffians. One swaggy rose and followed him.
The other tramp, taking not the slightest notice of the boy sitting there, reached out his filthy hand and began to fill his pockets with everything that lay near the fire: the packet of tea, a spoon, a knife.
He had got as far as the spoon when the astonished Jack said: "Drop it!" as if he were speaking to a dog.
The man turned with a snarl, and made to cuff him. Jack seized his wrist and twisted it cruelly, making him drop the spoon and shout with pain. The other swaggy at once ran on Jack from the rear, and fell over him. Tom rushed on the second swaggy and fell too. Over they all went in a heap. Jack laughed aloud in the scrimmage, as he gripped the swaggy's wrist with one hand and with the other emptied out the contents of the pocket again. He brought out two knives, one of which didn't belong to him. Dropping the lot for safety, he got to his feet. Tom and the second swaggy were rolling and unlocking. That villain spied the open knife, seized it and sprang to his feet, snarling and brandishing.