In terror, anger, surprise, Jack jumped at the kangaroo’s throat, as far as the animal’s grip would let him. The ‘roo, trying all the time to use his hind legs, upset, so that the two went rolling on the gravel together. Jack was in horrid proximity to the weird grey fur, clutched by the weird-smelling, violent animal, in a sort of living earthquake, as the kangaroo writhed and bounced to use his great, oar-like hind legs, and Jack clung close and hit at the creature’s body, hit, hit, hit. It was like hitting living wire bands. Somebody was roaring, or else it was his own consciousness shouting: “Don’t let the hind claw get to work.” — How horrible a wild thing was, when you were mixed up with it! The terrible nausea of its powerful, furry, violent-blooded contact. Its unnatural, almost obscene power! Its different consciousness! Its overpowering smell!
The others were coming back up the stream-bed, jumping the rocks, towards this place where Jack had fallen and Lennie had come down after him. Easu was calling off the dogs, ferociously. Tom rushed in and got the ‘roo by the head.
Lennie was lying on the gravel laughing so hard he couldn’t stand on his legs.
III
Jack wrote a letter to his old friend, the vet with the “weakness,” in England.
“We are out at a place back of beyond, at a place called Gum Tree Valley, so I take up my pen to write as I have time. — Tom Ellis is here bossing the clearing gang, and he has a lot of Aunts, whom he rightly calls ants. One of them has a place near here, and we go to dinner on Sundays, and to help when wanted. We stayed all last week and helped muster in the sheep for the shearing. We rode all round their paddock boundaries and rounded in the sheep that had strayed and got lost. They had run off from the main — about a score of flocks — and were feeding in little herds and groups miles apart. It’s a grand sight to see them all running before you, their woolly backs bobbing up and down like brown water. I can tell you I know now the meaning of the Lost Sheep, and the sort of joy you have in cursing him when you find him.
“You told me to let you know if I heard any first hand news of gold finding. Well, I haven’t heard much. But a man rode into Greenlow’s — that’s Tom’s Aunt — place on Sunday, and he said to Tom: ‘Are those the Stirling Ranges?’ Tom said: ‘No, they’re not. They’re the Darling Ranges.’ He said: ‘Are you sure?’ — and got very excited. The black-fellows came and stood by and they were vastly amused, grinning and looking away. He got out a compass and said: ‘You are wrong, Mr. Ellis, they are the Stirling Ranges.’ Tom said: ‘Call ‘em what you choose, chum. We call ‘em Darling — and them others forty mile south west we call the Stirling.’ The man groaned. Minnie Greenlow called us to come in to tea, and he came along as well. His manners were awful. He fidgetted and pushed his hat back on his head and leant forward and spat in the fire at a long shot, and tipped his cup so that his tea swobbed in his saucer, then drank it out of the saucer. Then he pushed the cake back when handed to him, and leaned his head on his arms on the table and groaned. You’d have thought he was drunk, but he wasn’t, because he said to Tom, ‘Are ye sure them’s not the Stirling Ranges? I can’t drink my tea for thinkin’ about it.’ And Tom said: ‘Sure.’ and then he seemed more distracted than ever, and blew through his teeth and mopped his head, and was upset to a degree.
“When we had finished tea and we all went outside he said: ‘Well, I think I’ll get back now. It’s no use when the compass turns you down. I’ll never find it.’ We didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he’d got into his buggy and drove away the blacks told us: ‘Master lookin’ for big lump yellow dirt — He think that very big fish, an’ he bury him longa time. Comin’ back no finda him.’ — While the boys were talking who should shout to have the slip rail let down but this same stranger and he drove right past us and away down the long paddock. When he got to the gate there he turned round and came back and drew up by us muttering, and said: ‘Where did you tell me the Stirling Ranges were?’ — Tom pointed it out, and he said, ‘So long!’ and drove off. We didn’t see him again. We didn’t want to. But Tom is almost sure he found a lump of gold some time back and buried it for safety’s sake and now can’t find it.
“That’s all the gold I’ve heard about out here.
“Now for news. One day I went out with tucker to old Jack Moss. He’s keeping a bit of land warm for the Greenlows, shepherds sheep down there, about forty miles from everywhere. He talked and talked, and when he didn’t talk he didn’t listen to me. He looked away over the scrub and sucked his cutty. They say he’s hoarded wealth but I didn’t see any signs. He was in tatters and wore rags round his feet for boots, which were like a gorilla’s. Another day we had a kangaroo hunt. We all chased an Old Man for miles and at last he turned and faced us. I was so close I had no time to think and was on him before I had time to pull up. I jumped to the ground and grappled, and we rolled over and over down the gully. They couldn’t shoot him because of me, but they fought him off and killed him. And then we saw his mate standing near among the stones, on her hind legs, with her front paws hanging like a helpless woman. Then Tom, who was tying up my cuts, called out: ‘Look at her pouch! It’s plum full of little nippers!’ and so it was. You never saw such a trick. So we let her go. But we got the Old Man.
“Another day we rode round the surveyed area here, which Mr. Ellis is taking up for the twins Og and Magog. I asked Tom a lot of questions about taking up land. I think I should like to try. Perhaps if I do you will come out. You would like the horses. There are quite a lot wild. We hunt them in and pick out the best and use them. That’s how lots of people raise their horse-flesh. They are called brumbies. Excuse me for not ending properly, the mailman is coming along, he comes once a fortnight. We are lucky.
Jack.”
IV
To his friend, the pugilist, he wrote:
“Dear Pug:
“You ask me what I think about sending Ned out here. Well, there’s no opening that I can see for a gym. But work, that’s another question, there’s more than enough. I am at work at a place called Gum Tree Valley, clearing, but we came up to Tom’s Aunt’s place last week, to help, and we’ve been shearing. At least I haven’t. I’ve been the chap who tars. You splash tar on like paint when the shearers make a misfire and gash the poor brutes and curse you. Lord, don’t they curse, if the boss isn’t round. He’s got a grey beard and dribbles on it, and the flies get caught in it and buzz as if it was a spider’s web. He makes everyone work from morn till night like the Devil. Gosh, if it wasn’t that it is only for a short spell, I’d get. Don’t you worry, up-country folk know how to get your tucker’s worth out of you all right. Today the Sabbath we had a rest. — I don’t think! We washed our clothes. Talk about a goodly pile! Only a rumour. For the old man fetched along his vests and pants, and greasy overalls and aprons, his socks, his slimy hanks and night-shirt. Imagine our horror. He’s Tom’s Aunt’s husband, and has no sons only herds of daughters, so we had to do it. We scrubbed ‘em with horse-brushes on the stones. Jinks, but I rubbed some holes in ‘em!
“But cheer up. I’m not grumbling. I like getting experience as it is called.
“I mean to take up land and have a place of my own some day, then you and Ned could visit me and we could have some fun with the gloves. Lennie says I’m like a kangaroo shaping and punching at nothing, so I got a cow’s bladder and blew it up and tied it to a branch, and I batter on it. Must have something to hit. You know kangaroos shape up and make a punch. They are pretty doing that. We have a baby one, Joey, and it takes a cup in its little hands and drinks. Honest to God it’s got hands, you never saw such a thing.
“Kindest regards to your old woman and Ned. Lord only knows how I’ve missed you, and pray that some day I will be fortunate enough to meet you again. Until then
“Farewell.
“A Merry Xmas and a Glad New Year, by the time you get this. Think of me in the broiling heat battling with sheep, their Boss, and the flies, and you’ll think of me true.
“Ev
er your sincere friend
Jack.”
V
As the time for returning from camp drew near, Jack dwelt more and more on this question of the future — of taking up land. He wished so often that life could always be a matter of camping, land-clearing, kangaroo hunting, shearing, and generally messing about. But deep underneath himself he knew it couldn’t: not for him at least. Plenty of fellows lived all their life messing from camp to camp and station to station. But himself — sooner or later he would have to bite on to something. He’d have to plunge in to that cold water of responsible living, some time or other.
He asked Tom about it.
“You must make up y’ mind what you want to go in for, cattle, sheep, horses, wheat, or mixed farming like us,” said Tom. “Then you can go out to select. But it’s no good before you know what you want.”
Jack was surprised to find how little information he got from the men he mixed with. They knew their jobs: teamsters knew about teams, and jobs on the mill; the timber workers knew hauling and sawing; township people knew trading; the general hands knew about hunting and bush-craft and axe handling; and farmers knew what was under their nose, but nothing of the laws of the land, or how he himself was to get a start.
At last he found a small holder who went out as a hired man after he had put in the seed on his own land. And this, apparently, was how Jack would have to start. The man brought out various grubby Government papers, and handed them over.
Jack had a bad time with them: Government reports, blue books, narratives of operations. But he swotted grimly. And he made out so much:
1. Any reputable immigrant over 21 years could procure 50 acres of unimproved rural Crown land open for selection; if between the ages of 14 and 21, 25 acres.
2. Such land must be held by “occupation certificate,” deemed transferable only in case of death, etc.
3. The occupation certificate would be exchanged for a grant at the end of five years, or before that time, providing the land had been enclosed with a substantial fence and at least a quarter cultivated. But if at the end of the five years the above conditions, or any of them, had not been observed, the lots should revert to the Crown.
4. Country land was sub-divided into agricultural and pastoral, either purchasable at the sum of 10/- an acre, or leased: the former for eight years at the nominal sum of 1/- an acre, with the right of purchase, the latter for one year at annual rental of 2/- per hundred acres, with presumptive renewal; or five pounds per 1000 acres with rights.
Jack got all this into his mind, and at once loathed it. He loathed the thought of an “occupation certificate.” He loathed the thought of being responsible to the Government for a piece of land. He almost loathed the thought of being tied to land at all. He didn’t want to own things; especially land, that is like a grave to you as soon as you do own it. He didn’t want to own anything. He simply couldn’t bear the thought of being tied down. Even his own unpacked luggage he had detested.
But he started in with this taking-up land business, so he thought he’d try an easy way to get through with it.
“Dear Father,
“I could take up land on my own account now if you sent a few hundred pounds for that purpose per Mr. George. He would pay the deposit and arrange it for me. I have my eye on one or two improved farms falling idle shortly down this Gum Valley district, which is very flourishing. When they fall vacant on account of settlers dropping them, they can be picked up very cheap.
“I hope you are quite well, as I am at present
“Your affec. Son
Jack.”
Jack spent his sixpence on this important document, and forgot all about it. And in the dead end of the hot summer, just in the nick of time, he got his answer:
Sea View Terrace,
Bournemouth.
2. 2. ‘83.
“Dear Jack:
“Thank you for your most comprehensive letter of 30/11/82. It is quite impossible for me to raise several hundreds of pounds, or for the matter of that, one hundred pounds, in this offhand manner. I don’t want to be hard on you, but we want you to be independent as soon as possible. We have so many expenses, and I have no intention of sinking funds in the virgin Australian wild, at any rate until I see a way clear to getting some return for my money, in some form of safe interest accruing to you at my death. — You must not expect to run before you can walk. Stay where you are and learn what you can till your year is up, and then we will see about a jackeroo’s job, at which your mother tells me you will earn £1. a week, instead of our having to pay it for you.
“We all send felicitations
Your affectionate father
G. B. Grant.”
But this is running ahead. — It is not yet Christmas, 1882.
CHAPTER VIII
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
I
It was a red hot Christmas that year — ’ot, ‘ot, ‘ot, all day long. Good Lord, how hot it was! — till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings in its trail. After six o’clock you would sense the breeze coming from the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was. Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one’s life.
It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one’s bed. To have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It lifted you up.
Mr. Ellis had taken Gran away for the time, so the place seemed freer, noisier. There was nothing to keep quiet for. It was holiday — pinkie, the natives called it; the fierce midsummer Christmas. Everybody was allowed to “spell” a great deal.
Tom and Jack were roasted like Red Indians, rather uncouth, and more manly. At first they seemed rather bumptious, thinking themselves very much men. Jack could now ride his slippery saddle in fine style, and handle a rope or an axe, and shoot straight. He knew jarrah, karri, eucalyptus, sandal, wattle, peppermint, banksia, she-oaks, pines, paper-back and gum trees; he had learned to tan a kangaroo hide, pegging it on to a tree; he had looked far into the wilderness, and seen the beyond, and been seized with a desire to explore it; he had made excursions over “likely places,” with hammer and pick, looking for gold. He had hunted and brought home meat, had trapped and destroyed many native cats and dingoes. He had lain awake at night and listened to the more-porks, and in the early morning had heard with delight the warbling of the timeline and thickhead thrushes that abounded round the camp, mingled with the noises of magpies, tits, and wrens. He had watched the manoeuvres of willy-wagtails, and of a brilliant variety of birds: weavers, finches, parrots, honeyeaters, and pigeons. But the banded wrens and blue-birds were his favourites in the bush world.
Well, on such a hero as this, the young home-hussies Monica and Grace had better not look too lightly. He was so grand they could hardly reach him with a long pole.
“An’ how many emus did y’ see?” asked Og. For lately at Wandoo they had had a plague of emus, which got into the paddocks and ate down the sheeps’ food-stuffs, and then got out again by running at the fences and bashing a way through.
Jack had never seen one.
“Never seen an emu!” — Even little Ellie shrilled in derisive amazement. “Monica, he’s never seen an emu!”
Already they had snipped the tip off the high feather he had in his cap.
But he was still a hero, and Lennie followed him round like a satellite, while the girls were obviously thrilled at having Tom and him back again. They would giggle and whisper behind Bow’s back, and wherever he was, they were always sauntering out to stand not far off from him. So that, of course, their thrill entered also into Jack’s veins, he felt a cocky young lord, a young life-master. This suited him very well.
But there was no love-making, of course. They all laughed and joked together over the milking and pail-carrying and feeding and butt
er-making and cheese-making and-everything, and life was a happy delirium.
They had waited for Tom to come home, to rob the bees. Tom hated the bees and they hated him, but he was staunch. Veils, bonnets, gloves, gaiters were produced, and off they all set, in great joy at their own appearance, with gong, fire, and endless laughter. Tom was to direct from a distance: he stood afar, “Smoking them off.” Grace and Monica worked merrily among the hives, manipulating the boxes which held the comb, lifting them on to the milk pans to save the honey, and handing the pans to the boys to carry in.
“Oooh!” yelled Tom suddenly, “Oooh!”
A cloud of angry bees was round his head. Down went his fire-protector — a tin full of smouldering chips — down went flappers and bellows as with a shriek he beat the air. The more he beat the darker the venomous cloud. Crippled with terror, he ran on shaking legs. The girls and youngsters were paralysed with joy. They swarmed after him shrieking with laughter. His head was completely hidden by bees; but his arms like windmills waved wildly to and fro. He dashed into the cubby, but the bees went with him. He appeared at the window for a moment, showing a demented face, then he jumped out, and the bees with him. Leaping the drain gap and yelling in terror, he made for the house. The bees swung with him and the children after. Jack and the girls stood speechless, looking at one another. Monica had on man’s trousers with an old uniform buttoned close to her neck, workmen’s socks over her shoes and trouser-ends, and a Chinaman’s hat with a veil over it, netted round her head like a meat-safe. Jack noticed that she was funny. Suddenly, somehow, she looked mysterious to him, and not just the ordinary image of a girl. Suddenly a new cavern seemed to open before his eyes: the mysterious, fascinating cavern of the female unknown. He was not definitely conscious of this. But seeing Monica there in the long white flannel trousers and the Chinaman’s-hat meat-safe over her face, something else awoke in him, a new awareness of a new wonder. He had but lately stood on the inward ranges and looked inland into the blue, vast mystery of the Australian interior. And now with another opposite vision he saw an opposite mystery opposing him: the mystery of the female, the young female there in her grotesque garb.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 395