Jack opened his eyes. There were four beds in the cubby hole. Between two beds stood a thin boy of about thirteen, swinging dumb-bells, and facing two small urchins who were faithfully imitating him, except that they did not repeat the Latin tags. They were all dressed in short breeches loosely held up by braces, and under-vests.
Veni! up went their arms smartly, — vidi! down came the clubs to horizontal, — vici! the clubs were down by their sides.
Jack smiled to himself and dozed again. It was scarcely dawn. He was dimly aware of the rain pattering on the shingle roof.
“Ain’t ye gettin’ up this morning?”
It was Tom standing contemplating him. The children had run out barefoot and bare-armed in the rain.
“Is it morning?” asked Jack, stretching.
“Not half. We’ve fed th’ osses. Come on.”
“Where do I wash?”
“At the pump. Look slippy and get, your clothes on. Our men live over at Red’s, we have to look sharp in the morning.”
Jack looked slippy, and went out to wash in the tin dish by the pump. The rain was abating, but it seemed a damp performance.
By the time he was really awake, the day had come clear. It was a fine morning, the air fresh with the smell of flowering shrubs: silver wattle, spirea, daphne and syringa which Ellis grew in his garden. Already the sun was coming warm.
The house was a low stone building with a few trees round it. But all the life went on here at the back, here where the pump was, and the various yards and wooden out-buildings. There was a vista of open clearing, and a few huge gum-trees. The sky was already blue, a certain mist lay below the great isolated trees.
In the yard a score of motherless lambs were penned, bleating, their silly faces looking up at Jack confidently, expecting the milk bottle. He walked with his hands in the pockets of his old English tweeds, feeling over-dressed and a bit out of place. Cows were tethered to posts or standing loose about the fenced yard, and the half-caste Tim, and Lennie, the dumb-bell boy, and a girl, were silently milking. The heavy, pure silence of the Australian morning.
Jack stood at a little distance. A cat whisked across the yard and ran up a queer-looking pine-tree, a dissipated old cow moved about at random. “Hey you!” shouted Tom impatiently, “Take hoult of that cart ‘oss nosin’ his way inter th’ chaff-house, and bring him here. An’ see to that grey’s ropes: she’s chewin’ ‘em free. Look slippy, make yourself useful.”
There was a tone of amiability and intimacy mixed with this bossy shouting. Jack ran to the cart ‘oss. He couldn’t help liking Tom and the rest. They were so queer and naive, and they seemed oddly forlorn, like waifs lost in this new country. Jack had always had a leaning towards waifs and lost people. They were the only people whose bossing he didn’t mind.
The children at their various tasks were singing in shrill, clear voices, with a sort of street-arab abandon. Lennie, the boy, would break the shrilling of the twin urchins with a sudden musical yell, from the side of the cow he was milking. And they seemed to sing anything, songs, poetry, nonsense, anything that came into their heads, like birds singing variously and at random.
“The blue, the fresh, the ever free
I am where I would ever be
With the blue above, and the blue below — ”
Then a yell from Lennie by the cows:
“And wherever thus in childhood’s our — ”
The twins:
“I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more — ”
Again a sudden and commanding yell from Lennie.
“I never loved a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But, when it came to know me well
And love me — ”
Here the twins, as if hypnotized, howled out —
“ — it was sure to die.”
They kept up this ragged yelling in the new, soft morning, like lost wild things. Jack laughed to himself. But they were quite serious. The elders were dumb-silent. Only the youngsters made all this noise. Was it a sort of protest against the great silence of the country? Was it their young, lost effort in the noiseless antipodes, whose noiselessness seems like a doom at last? They yelled away like wild little lost things, with an uncanny abandon. It pleased Jack.
II
They had all gone silent again, and collected under the peppermint tree at the back door, where Ma ladled out tea into mugs for everybody. Ma was Mrs. Ellis. She still had the tired, distant look in her eyes, and a tired bearing, and she seemed to take no notice of anybody, either when she was in the kitchen or when she came out with pie to the group squatting under the tree. When anyone said: “Some more tea, Ma!” she silently ladled out the brew. Jack was not a very intent observer. But he was struck by Mrs. Ellis’ silence and her “drawn” look.
Tom came and hitched himself up against the trunk of the tree. Lennie was sitting opposite on a log, holding his tin mug and eyeing the stranger in silence. On another log sat the two urchins, sturdy, wild little brats, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed, as Jack had first seen them, their dress still consisting of a little pair of pants and a cotton undervest: and a pair of braces. The last seemed by far the most important garment. Lennie was clothed, or unclothed, the same, while Tom had added a pair of boots. The bare arms out of the cotton vests were brown and smooth, and they gave the boys and the youth a curiously naked look. A girl of about twelve, in a dark-blue spotted pinafore and a rag of red hair-ribbon, sat on a little stump near the twins. She was silent like her mother — but not yet “drawn.”
“What d’ye think of Og an’ Magog?” said Tom, pointing with his mug at the twins. “Called for giants ‘cos they’re so small.”
Jack did not know what to think. He tried to smile benevolently.
“An’ that’s Katie,” continued Tom, indicating the girl, who at once looked foolish. “She’s younger’n Lennie, but she’s pretty near his size. He’s another little ‘un. Little an’ cheeky, that’s what he is. Too much cheek for his age — which is, fourteen. You’ll have to keep him in his place, I tell you straight.”
“Ef ye ken!” murmured Len with a sour face.
Then, chirping up with a real street-arab pertness, he seemed to ignore Jack as he asked brightly of Tom:
“An’ who’s My Lord Duke of Early Risin’, if I might be told? — For before Gosh he sports a tidy raiment.”
“Now, Len, none o’ yer lingo!” warned Tom.
“Who is he, anyway, as you should go tellin’ him to keep me in my place?”
“No offence intended, I’m sure,” said Jack pleasantly.
“Taken though!” said Lennie, with such a black look that Jack’s colour rose in spite of himself.
“You keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll punch it for you,” he said. He and Lennie stared each other in the eye.
Lennie had a beautiful little face, with an odd pathos like some lovely girl, and grey eyes that could change to black. Jack felt a certain pang of love for him, and in the same instant remembered that she-lioness cub of a Monica. Perhaps she too had the same odd, lovely pathos, like a young animal that runs alert and alone in the wood. Why did these children seem so motherless and fatherless, so much on their own? — It was very much how Jack felt himself. Yet he was not pathetic.
Lennie suddenly smiled whimsically, and Jack knew he was let into the boy’s heart. Queer! Up till now they had all kept a door shut against him. Now Len had opened the door. Jack saw the winsomeness and pathos of the boy vividly, and loved him, too. But it was still remote. And still mixed up in it was the long stare of that Monica.
“That’s right, you tell ‘im,” said Tom. “What I say here — no back chat, an’ no tales told. That’s what’s the motto on this station.”
“Obey an’ please my Lord Tom Noddy, So God shall love and angels aid ye — — ” said Lennie, standing tip-toe on his log and balancing his bare feet, and repeating his rhyme wi
th an abstract impudence, as if the fiends of air could hear him.
“Aw, shut up, you!” said Tom. “You’ve got ter get them ‘osses down to Red’s. Take Jack an’ show him.”
“I’ll show him,” said Len, munching a large piece of pie as he set off.
“Ken ye ride, Jack?”
Jack didn’t answer, because his riding didn’t amount to much.
III
Len unhitched four heavy horses, led them into the yard, and put the ropes into Jack’s hands. The child marched so confidently under the noses of the great creatures, as they planted their shaggy feet. And he was such a midget, and with his brown bare arms and bare legs and feet, and his vivid face, he looked so “tender.” Jack’s heart moved with tenderness.
“Don’t you ever wear boots?” he asked.
“Not if I k’n help it. Them kids now, they won’t neither, ‘n I don’t blame ‘em. Last boots Ma sent for was found all over the manure heap, so the old man said he’d buy no more boots, an’ a good job too. The only thing as scares me is double-gees: spikes all roads and Satan’s face on three sides. Ever see double-gees?”
Len was leading three ponderous horses. He started peering on the road, the horses marching just behind his quick little figure. Then he found a burr with three queer sides and a sort of face on each side with sticking-out hair.
He was a funny kid, with his scraps of Latin and tags of poetry. Jack wondered that he wasn’t self-conscious and ashamed to quote poetry. But he wasn’t. He chirped them off, the bits of verse, as if they were a natural form of expression.
They had led the horses to another stable. Len again gave the ropes to Jack, disappeared, and returned leading a saddled stock-horse. Holding the reins of the saddle-horse, the boy scrambled up the neck of one of the big draft-horses like a monkey.
“Which are you goin’ to ride?” he asked Jack from the height. “I’m taking three an’ leading Lucy. You take the other three.”
So he received the three halter ropes.
“I think I’ll walk,” said Jack.
“Please y’self. You k’n open the gates easy walkin’; and comin’ back I’ll do it, ‘n you k’n ride Lucy an I’ll ride behind pinion so’s I can slip down easy.”
Yes, Lennie was a joy. On the return journey, when Jack was in the saddle riding Lucy, Len flew up behind him and stood on the horse’s crupper, his hands on Jack’s shoulders, crying: “Let ‘er go!” At the first gate, he slid down like a drop of water, then up again, this time sitting back to back with Jack, facing the horse’s tail, and whistling briskly. Suddenly he stopped whistling, and said:
“Y’ve seen everybody but Gran an’ Doc. Rackett, haven’ you? He teaches me — a rum sortta dock he is, too, never there when he’s wanted. But he’s a real doctor all right: signs death certificates an’ no questions asked. Y’ c’d do a murder, ‘n if you was on the right side of him, y’d never be hung. He’d say the corpse died of natural causes.”
“I didn’t know a corpse died,” said Jack laughing.
“Didn’t yer? Well yer know now! — Gran’s as good as a corpse, an’ she don’t want ter die. She put on Granfer’s grave: ‘Left desolate, but not without hope.’ So they all thought she’d get married again. But she never. — Did y’ go to one of them English schools?”
“Yes.”
“Ever wear a bell-topper?”
“Once or twice.”
“Gosh! — May I never go to school, God help me. I should die of shame and disgrace. Arrayed like a little black pea in a pod, learnin’ to be useless. Look at Rackett. School, an’ Cambridge, an’ comes inter money. Wastes it. Wastes his life. Now he’s teachin’ me, an’ th’ only useful thing he ever did.”
After a pause, Jack ventured.
“Who is Dr. Rackett?”
“A waster. Down and out waster. He’s got a sin. I don’t know what it is, but it’s wastin’ his soul away.”
IV
It was no use Jack’s trying to thread it all together. It was a bewilderment, so he let it remain so. It seemed to him, that right at the very core of all of them was the same bewildered vagueness: Mr. Ellis, Mrs. Ellis, Tom, the men — they all had that empty bewildered vagueness at the middle of them. Perhaps Lennie was most on the spot. The others just could attend to their jobs, no more.
Jack still had no acquaintance with anyone but Tom and Len. He never got an answer from Og and Magog. They just grinned and wriggled. Then there was Katie. Then Harry, a fat, blue-eyed small boy. And then that floss-haired Ellie who had come from Perth. And smaller than her, the baby. All very confusing.
The second morning, when they were at the proper breakfast, Dad suddenly said:
“Ma! Dye know where the new narcissus bulbs are gone? I was waiting to plant ‘em till I got back.”
“I’ve not seen them since ye put them in the shed at the end of the verandah, dear.”
“Well, they’re gone.”
Dead silence.
“Is ‘em like onions?” asked Og, pricking up intelligently.
“Yes. They are! Have you seen them?” asked Dad sternly.
“I see Baby eatin’ ‘em, Dad,” replied Og calmly.
“What, my bulbs, as I got out from England! Why, what the dickens, Ma, d’you let that mischievous monkey loose for? My precious narcissus bulbs, the first I’ve ever had. An’ besides — Ma! I’m not sure but what they’re poison.”
The parents looked at one another, then at the gay baby. There is a general consternation. Ma gets the long, evil blue bottle of castor oil and forcibly administers a spoonful to the screaming baby. Dad hurries away, unable to look on the torture of the baby — the last of his name. He goes to hunt for the bulbs in the verandah shed. Tom says, “By Gosh!” and sits stupefied. Katie jumps up and smacks Og for telling tales, and Magog flies at Katie for touching Og. Jack, as a visitor, unused to family life, is a little puzzled.
Lennie meanwhile calmly continues to eat his large mutton chop. The floss-haired Ellie toddles off talking to herself. She comes back just as intent, wriggles on her chair on her stomach, manages to mount, and puts her two fists on the table, clutching various nibbled, onion-like roots.
“Vem’s vem, ain’t they, Dad? She never ate ‘em. She got ‘em out vis mornin’ and was suckin’ ‘em, so I took ‘em from her an’ hid ‘em for you.”
“Should Dad have said Narcissi or Narcissuses?” asked Len from over his coffee mug, in the hollow voice of one who speaks out of his cups.
Nobody answered. The baby was shining with castor oil. Jack sat in a kind of stupefaction. Everybody ate mutton chops in noisy silence, oppressively, and chewed huge doorsteps of bread.
Then there entered a melancholy, well-dressed young fellow who looked like a daguerreotype of a melancholy young gentleman. He sauntered in in silence, and pulling out his chair, sat down at table without a word. Katie ran to bring his breakfast, which was on a plate on the hearth, keeping warm. Then she sat down again. The meal was even more oppressive. Everybody was eating quickly, to get away.
And then Gran opened the door leading from the parlour, and stood there like the portrait of an old, old lady, stood there immovable, just looking on, like some ghost. Jack’s blood ran cold. The boys, pushing back their empty plates, went quietly out to the verandah, to the air. Jack followed, clutching his cap, that he had held all the time on his knee.
Len was pulling off his shirt. The boys had to wear shirts at meal times.
This was the wild new country! Jack’s sense of bewilderment deepened. Also he felt a sort of passionate love for the family — as a savage must feel for his tribe. He felt he would never leave the family. He must always be near them, always in close physical contact with them. And yet he was just a trifle horrified by it all.
CHAPTER V
THE LAMBS COME HOME
I
A month later Tom and Lennie went off with the greys, Bill and Lil, to fetch the girls. It had been wet, so Jack had spent most of his day in the sheds mend
ing corn sacks. He was dressed now in thick cotton trousers, coloured shirt, and grey woollen socks, and copper-toed boots. When he went ploughing, by Tom’s advice he wore “lasting” socks — none.
His tweed coat hung on a nail on the wall of the cubby, his good trousers and vest were under the mattress of his bed. The only useful garment he had brought had been the old riding breeches of the Agricultural College days.
On the back of his Tom-clipped hair was an ant-heap of an old felt hat, and so he sat, hour after hour, sewing the sacks with a big needle. He was certainly not unhappy. He had a sort of passion for the family. The family was almost his vice. He felt he must be there with the family, and then nothing else mattered. Dad and Ma were the silent, unobtrusive pillars of the house. Tom was the important young person. Lennie was the soul of the place. Og and Magog were the mischievous life. Then there was Harry, whom Jack didn’t like, and the little girls, to be looked after. Dr. Rackett hovered round like an uneasy ghost, and Gran was there in her room. Now the girls were coming home.
Jack felt he had sunk into the family, merged his individuality, and he would never get out. His own father and mother, England, or the future, meant nothing to him. He loved this family. He loved Tom, and Lennie, and he wanted always to be with all of them. This was how it had taken him: as a real passion.
He loved, too, the ugly stone house, especially the south side, the shady side, which was the back where the peppermint tree stood. If you entered the front door — which nobody did — you were in a tiny passage from which opened the parlour on one side, and the dying room on the other. Tom called it the dying room because it had never been used for any other purpose by the family. Old Mr. Ellis had been carried down there to die. So had his brother Willie. As Tom explained: “The staircase is too narrow to handle a coffin.”
Through the passage you dropped a step into the living room. On the right from this you stepped up a step into the kitchen, and on the left, up a step into Gran’s room. Gran’s room had once been the whole house: the rest had been added on. It is often so in Australia.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 389