As a matter of fact, he had not yet come-to in Australia. He had not yet extricated himself from England and the ship. Half of himself was left behind, and the other half was gone ahead. So there he sat, mute and stupid.
He only knew he wanted something, and he resented something. He resented having been so much found fault with. They had hated him because he preferred to make friends among “good-for-nothings.” But as he saw it, “good-for-nothings” were the only ones that had any daring. Not altogether tamed. He loathed the thought of harness. He hated tameness, hated it, hated it. The thought of it made his innocent face take on a really devilish look. And because of his hatred of harness, he hated answering the questions that people put to him. Neither did he ask many, for his own part. But now one popped out.
“There are policemen here, are there?”
“Yes, sir, a good force of mounted police, a smart body of men. And they’re needed. Western Australia is full of old prisoners, black fellers, and white ones too. The whites, born here, is called ‘gropers,’ if you take me, sir. Sand-gropers. And they all need protection one from the other. And there’s half-pay officers, civil and military, and clergy, scattered through the bush — — ”
“Need protecting from one another, and yet he says there’s nobody to hold up the coach,” thought Jack to himself, cynically.
The bush had alternated with patches of wild scrub. But now came clearings: a little wooden house, and an orchard of trees planted in rows, with a grazing field beyond. Then more flat meadows, and ploughed spaces, and a humpy or a shack here and there: children playing around, and hens: then a regular homestead, with a verandah on either side, and creepers climbing up, and fences about.
“The soil is red!” said Jack.
“Clay! That’s clay! No more sand, except in patches, all the way to Albany. This is Guildford where the roses grow.”
They clattered across a narrow wooden bridge with a white railing, and up to a wooden inn where the horses were to be changed. Jack got down in the road, and saw Mr. George and Mr. Ellis both sleepily emerge and pass without a word into the place marked BAR.
“I think I’ll walk on a bit,” said Jack, “if you’ll pick me up. But at that moment a fleecy white head peering out of the back of the coach cried:
“Oh, Mr. Gwey! Oh, Mr. Gwey! They’ve frowed away a perfeckly good cat.”
The driver went over with Jack to where the chubby arm was pointing, and saw the body of a cat stretched by the trodden grass. It was quite dead. They stood looking at it, Grey explaining that it was a good skin and it certainly was a pity to waste it, and he hoped someone would find it who would tan it before it went too far, for as for him, he could not take it along in the coach, the passengers might object before they reached Albany, though the weather was cooling up a bit.
Jack laughed and went back to the coach to throw off his overcoat. He loved the crazy inconsequence of everything. He stepped along the road feeling his legs thrilling with new life. The thrill and exultance of new life. And yet somewhere in his breast and throat tears were heaving. Why? Why? He didn’t know. Only he wanted to cry till he died. And at the same time, he felt such a strength and a new power of life in his legs as he strode the Australian way, that he threw back his head in a sort of exultance.
Let the exultance conquer. Let the tears go to blazes. When the coach came alongside, there was the old danger-look in his eyes, a defiance, and something of the cat-look of a young lion. He did not mount, but walked on up the hill. They were climbing the steep Darling Ranges, and soon he had a wonderful view. There was the wonderful clean new country spread out below him, so big, so soft, so ancient in its virginity. And far beyond, the gleam of that strange empty sea. He saw the grey-green bush ribboned with blue rivers, winding to an unknown sea. And in his heart he was determining to get what he wanted. Even though he did not know what it was he wanted. In his heart he clinched his determination to get it. To get it out of this ancient country’s virginity.
He waited at the top of the hill. The horses came clop-clopping up. Morning was warm and full of sun. They had rolled up the flaps of the wagonette, and there was the beaming face of Mr. George, and the purple face of Mr. Ellis, and the back of the head of the floss-haired child.
Jack looked back again, when he had climbed to his seat and the horses were breathing, to where the foot of the grey-bush hills rested in a valley ribboned with rivers and patched with cultivation, all frail and delicate in a dim ethereal light.
“A land of promise! A land of promise,” said Mr. George. “When I was young I bid £1080 for 2,700 acres of it. But Hammersley bid twenty pounds more, and got it. — Take up land, Jack Grant, take up land. Buy, beg, borrow or steal land, but get it, sir, get it.”
“He’ll have to go farther back to find it,” said Mr. Ellis, from his blue face. “He’ll get none of what he sees there.”
“Oh, if he means to stay, he can jump it. — The law is always bendin’ and breakin’, bendin’ and breakin’.”
“Well, if he’s going to live with me, Mr. George, don’t put him on to land-snatching,” said Mr. Ellis. And the two men fell to a discussion of Land Acts, Grants, Holdings, Claims, and Jack soon ceased to listen. He thought the land looked lovely. But he had no desire to own any of it. He never felt the possibility of “owning” land. There the land was, for eternity. How could he own it? — Anyhow, it made no appeal to him along those lines.
But Mr. Ellis loved “timber” and broke the spell by pointing and saying:
“See them trees, Jack my boy? Jarrah! Hills run one into the other way to the Blackwood River. Hundreds of miles of beautiful jarrah timber. The trees like this barren ironstone formation. It’s well they do, for nothing else does.”
“There’s one o’ the mud-brick buildings the convicts lived in, while they were building the road,” said the driver, not to be done out of his say. “One of the convicts broke and got away. Mostly when they went off they was driven in by the bush. But this one never. They say he’s wanderin’ yet. I say, dead.”
Mr. George was explaining the landscape.
“Down there, Darlington. Governor Darling went down and never came back. Went home the quick way. — Boya, native word for rock. Mahogany Creek just above there. They’ll see us coming. Kids watch from the rise, run back and holloa. Pa catches rooster, black girl blows fire, Ma mixes paste, yardman peels spuds, — dinner when we get there.”
“And, sir, Sam has a good brew, none better. Also, sir, though it looks lonesome, he’s mostly got company.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, sir, everyone comes for miles round to hear his missus play the harmonium. Got it out from England, and if it doesn’t break your heart to hear it! The voice of the past! You’d love to hear it, Mr. Grant, being new from home.”
“I’m sure I should,” said Jack, thinking of the concert.
The dinner at Mahogany Creek was as Mr. George had said. Afterwards, on again through the bush.
Towards the end of the afternoon the coach pulled up at a little by-road, where stood a basket-work shay, and a tall young fellow in very old clothes lounging with loose legs.
“‘Ere y’are!” said Grey, and walking the horses to the side of the road, he scrambled down to pull water from a well. “Here we are!” said Mr. Ellis from the back of the coach, where the tall youth was just receiving the floss-haired baby between his big red hands. Fat Mr. Ellis got down. The youth began pulling out Jack’s bags and boxes, and Jack hurried round to help him.
“This is Tom,” said Mr. Ellis.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Tom, holding out a big hand and clasping Jack’s hand hard for a moment. Then they went on piling the luggage on the wicker shay.
“That’s the lot!” called Mr. Ellis.
“Good-bye, Jack!” said Mr. George, leaning his grey head out of the coach. “Be good and you’ll be happy.”
Over which speech Jack puzzled mutely. But the floss-haired baby girl was embra
cing his trouser legs.
“I never knew you were an Ellis,” he said to her.
“Ay, she’s another of ‘em,” said Mr. Ellis.
The coach was going. Jack went over awkwardly and offered the driver a two-shilling piece.
“Put it back in y’r pocket, lad, y’ll want it more than I shall,” said Grey unceremoniously. “The best o’ luck to you, an’ I mean it.”
They all packed into the shay, Jack sitting with his back to the horses, the little girl tied in beside him, his smaller luggage bundled where it could be stowed; and in absolute silence they drove through the silence of the standing, motionless gum trees. Jack had never felt such silence. At last they pulled up. Tom jumped down and drew a slip-rail, and they passed a log fence, inside which there were many sheep, though it was still bush. Tom got in again and they drove through bush, with occasional sheep. Then Tom got down again — Jack could not see for what purpose. The youth fetched an axe out of the cart and started chopping. A tree was across the road: he was chopping at the broken part. There came a sweet scent.
“Raspberry jam!” said Mr. Ellis. “That’s acacia acuminata, a beautiful wood, good for fences, posts, pipes, walking-sticks. And they’re burning it off by the million acres.”
Tam pulled the trunk aside, and drove on again till he came to another gate. Then they saw ahead a great clearing in the bush, and in the midst of the clearing a “ginger-bread” house, made of wood slabs, with a shingle roof running low all round to the verandahs. A woman in dark homespun cloth with an apron and sunbonnet, and a young bearded man in moleskins and blue shirt, came out with a cheery shout.
“You get along inside and have some tea,” said the young bearded man. “I’ll change the horses.”
The woman lifted down the baby, after having untied her. There was a door in the front of the house, a window on each side. But they all went round under the eaves to the mud-brick kitchen behind, and had tea. The woman hardly spoke, but she smiled and passed the tea and nursed Ellie. When the young bearded man came in, he smiled and said:
“I’ve got the mail out of the shay, Mr. Ellis.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Ellis.
After which no one spoke again.
When they set off once more, there was a splendid pair of greys on either side the pole.
“Bill and Lil,” said Mr. Ellis. “My own breed. Angus lends us his for the twenty miles to the cross roads. We’ve just changed them and got our own. There’s another twenty miles yet.”
It now began to rain, and gradually grew dark and cold. The bush was dree, the dreest thing Jack had ever known. Rugs and mackintoshes were fetched out, the baby was fastened snug in a corner out of the wet, and the horses kept up a steady pace. And then, as Nature went to roost, Mr. Ellis woke up and pulled out his pipe, to begin a conversation.
“How’s Ma?”
“Great!”
“How’s Gran?”
“Same.”
“All well?”
“Yes.”
“He’s come twenty miles,” thought Jack, “and he only asks now!”
“See the doctor in town, Dad?” asked Tom.
“I did.”
“What’d he say?”
“Oh, heart’s wrong all right, just what Rackett said. But might live to be older than he is. So I might too, lad.”
“So you will an’ all, Dad.”
And then Mr. Ellis, as if desperate to change the conversation, pulling hard at his pipe:
“Jersey cow calved?”
“Yes.”
“Bull again?”
“No, heifer. Beauty.”
They both smiled silently. Then Tom’s tongue suddenly was loose.
“Little beauty, she is. And the Berkshire has farrowed nine little prize-winners. Cowslip came on with ‘er butter since she come on to the barley. I cot them twins Og an’ Magog peltin’ the dogs with eggs, an’ them so scarce, so I wopped ‘em both. That black spaniel bitch, I had to kill her for she worried one o’ the last batch o’ sucking pigs, though I don’t know how she come to do such a thing. I’ve finished fallowin’ in the bottom meadow, an’ I’m glad you’re back to tell us what to get on wif.”
“How’s clearing in th’ Long Mile Paddock?”
“Only bin down there once. Sam’s doin’ all right.”
“Hear anything of the Gum Tree Gully clearing gang?”
“Message from Spencer, an’ y’ t’go down some time — as soon’s y’ can.”
“Well, I want the land reclaimed this year, an’ I want it gone on with. Never know what’ll happen, Tom. I’d like for you to go down there, Tom. You c’n take th’ young feller behind here with you, soon’s the girls come home.”
“What’s he like?”
“Seems a likely enough young chap. Old George put in a good word for’m.”
“Bit of a toff.”
“Never you mind, s’ long’s his head’s not toffy.”
“Know anything?”
“Shouldn’t say so.”
“Some fool?”
“Don’t know. You find out for y’self.”
Silence.
Jack heard it all. But if he hadn’t heard it, he could easily have imagined it.
“Yes, you find out,” he thought to himself, going dazed with fatigue and indifference as he huddled under the blanket, hearing the horses’ hoofs clop-clop! and the rain splash on his shoulders. Sometimes the horses pulled slow and hard in the dark, sometimes they bowled along. He could see nothing. Sometimes there was a snort and jangle of harness, and the wheels resounding hollow. “Bridging something,” thought Jack. And he wondered how they found their way in the utter dark, for there were no lamps. The trees dripped heavily.
And then, at the end of all things, Tom jumped down and opened a gate. Hope! But on and on and on. Stop! — hope! — another gate. On and on. Same again. And so interminably.
Till at last some intuition seemed to communicate to Jack the presence of home. — The rain had stopped, the moon was out. Ghostly and weird the bush, with white trunks spreading like skeletons. There opened a clearing, and a dog barked. A horse neighed near at hand. There were no trees, a herd of animals was moving in the dusk. And then a dark house loomed ahead, unlighted. The shay drove on, and round to the back. A door opened, a woman’s figure stood in the candle-light and firelight.
“All right, Ma!” called Tom.
“All right, dear!” called Mr. Ellis.
“All right!” shrilled a little voice — —
Well, here they were, in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellis was a brown-haired woman with a tired look in her eyes. She looked a long time at Jack, holding his hand in her one hand and feeling his wet coat with the other.
“You’re wet. But you can go to bed when you’ve had your supper. I hope you’ll be all right. Tom’ll look after you.”
She was hoping that he would only bring good with him. She was all mother: and mother of her own children first. She felt kindly towards him. But he was another woman’s son.
When they had eaten, Tom led the newcomer away out of the house, across a little yard, threw open a door in the dark, and lit a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle. Jack looked round at the mud floor, the windowless window, the unlined wooden walls, the calico ceiling, and he was glad. He was to share this cubby hole, as they called it, with the other Ellis boys. His truckle bed was fresh and clean. He was content. It wasn’t stuffy, it was rough and remote.
When he opened his portmanteau to get out his nightshirt he asked Tom where he was to put his clothes. For there was no cupboard or chest of drawers or anything.
“On your back or under your bed,” said Tom. “Or I might find y’ an old packing case, if y’re decent. — But say, ol’ bloke, lemme give y’a hint. Don’t y’ get sidey or nosey up here, puttin’ on jam an suchlike, f’r if y’do y’ll shame me in front of strangers, an’ I won’t stand it.”
“Jam, did you say?”
“Yes, jam, macaroni, c
ockadoodle. We’re plain people out here-aways, not mantel ornaments nor dickey-toffs, an’ we want no flash sparks round, see?”
“I’m no flash spark,” said Jack. “Not enough for ‘em at home. It’s too much fist and too little toff, that’s the matter with me.”
“C’n y’ use y’r fists?”
“Like to try me?”
Jack shaped up to him.
“Oh for the love o’ Mike,” laughed Tom, “stow the haw-haw gab! You’ll do me though, I think.”
“I’ll try to oblige,” said Jack, rolling into bed.
“Here!” said Tom sharply. “Out y’ get an’ say y’ prayers. What sortta example for them kids of ours, gettin’ into bed an’ forgettin’ y’r prayers?”
Jack eyed the youth.
“You say yours?” he asked.
“Should say I do. Gran is on ter me right cruel if I don’t see to it, whoever sleeps in this cubby. They has ter say their prayers, see?”
“All right!” said Jack laconically.
And he obediently got up, kneeled on the mud floor, and gabbled through his quota. Somewhere in his heart he was touched by the simple honesty of the boy. And somewhere else he was writhing with slow, contemptuous repugnance at the vulgar tyranny.
But he called again to his aid that natural indifference of his, grounded on contempt. And also a natural boyish tolerance, because he saw that Tom had a naive, if rather vulgar, good-will.
He gabbled through his prayers wearily, but scrupulously to the last Amen. Then rolled again into bed to sleep till morning, and forget, forget, forget! He depended on his power of absolute forgetting.
CHAPTER IV
WANDOO
I
Two things struggled in Jack’s mind when he awoke in the morning. The first was the brave idea that he had left everything behind; that he had done with his boyhood and was going to enter into his own. The second was a noise of somebody quoting Latin and clicking wooden dumb-bells.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 388