But he had to gauge Mary’s disposition. He saw how much she was a social thing: how much, even, she was Lord Haworth’s granddaughter. And how little she was that other thing.
But it was a battle, a long, slow subtle battle. And he loved a fight, even a long, invisible one.
In the ballroom the A.D.C. pounced on him.
When he was free again, he looked round for Mary. It was the sixteenth dance, and she was being well nursed. When the dance was over, he went calmly and sat between her and Aunt Matilda on a red gilt sofa. Things were a little stiff. Even Mary was stiff.
He looked at her programme. The next dance was a polka, and she was not engaged.
“You are free for this dance?” he said.
“Yes, because of my foot,” she said firmly. He could see she too was on Aunt Matilda’s side, for the moment.
“I can dance a polka. Come and dance it with me,” he said.
“And my foot?”
He didn’t answer, merely looked her in the face. And she rose.
They neither of them ever forgot that absurd, jogging little dance.
“I must speak to you, Mary,” he said.
“What about?”
“Would you really like to live on a farm?”
“I think I should.”
The conversation was rather jerky and breathless.
“In two years I can have a farm,” he said.
She was silent for some time. Then she looked into his eyes, with her queer, black, humble-seeming eyes. She was thinking of all the grandeur of being Mrs. Boyd Blessington. It attracted her a great deal. At the same time, something in her soul fell prostrate, when Jack looked straight into her. Something fell prostrate, and she couldn’t help it. His eyes had a queer power in them.
“In two years I can have a farm — a good one,” he said.
She only gazed into his eyes with her queer, black, fascinated gaze.
The dance was over. Aunt Matilda was tapping Jack’s wrist with her fan and saying:
“Yes, Mr. Blessington, do be so good as to take Mary down to supper.”
Supper was over. It was the twentieth dance. Jack had been introduced to a sporting girl in her late twenties. She treated him like a child, and talked quite amusingly. Tom called her a “barrack hack.”
Mr. Blessington went by with Mary on his arm.
“Mary,” said Jack, “do you know Miss Brackley?”
Mary stopped and was smilingly introduced. Miss Brackley at once pounced amusingly upon Mr. Blessington.
“I want to speak to you,” Jack said once more to Mary. “Behind the curtain of the third window.”
He glanced at the red, ponderous plush curtain he meant. Mary looked frightened into his eyes, then glanced too, Mr. Blessington, extricating himself, walked on with Mary.
Jack looked round for Tom. That young man was having a drink, at the supper extra. Jack left the Barrack Hack for a moment.
“Tom,” he said. “Will you stand by me in anything I say or do?”
“I will,” said the glistening, scarlet-faced Tom, who was away on the gay high seas of exaltation.
“Get up a rubber of whist for Aunt Matilda. I know she’d like one. Will you?”
“Before you c’n say Wiggins,” replied Tom, laughing as he always did when he was tipsy.
“And I say, Tom, you care for Mary, don’t you? Would you provide a home for her if she was wanting one?”
“I’d marry Mary if she’d ‘ave me ‘n I hadn’t got a wife.”
“Shut up!”
Tom broke into a laugh.
“Don’t go back on me, Tom.”
“Never, s’elp me bob.”
“Get a move on then, and arrange that whist.”
He sent him off with the Barrack Hack. And then he watched Mary. She still was walking with Mr. Blessington They were not dancing. She knew Jack was watching her, and she was nervous. He watched her more closely.
And at the third window she fluttered, staggered a little, let go Mr. Blessington’s arm, and turned round to gather up her skirt behind. She pretended she had torn a hem. She pretended she couldn’t move without a pin. She asked to be steered into the alcove. She sent Mr. Blessington away into the ladies’ dressing-room, for a pin.
And when he came back with it, she was gone.
Jack, outside in the night, was questioning her.
“Has Mr. Blessington proposed to you yet?”
“No.”
“Don’t let him. Would you really be happy on a farm, — even if it was rather hard work?”
He had to look down on her very steadfastly as he asked this. And she was slow in answering, and the tears came into her eyes before she murmured:
“Yes.”
He was touched, and the same dominating dark desire came over him again. He held her fast in his arms, fast and silent. The desire was dark and powerful and permanent in him.
“Can you wait for me, even two years?” he asked.
“Yes,” she murmured faintly.
His will was steady and black. He knew he could wait.
“In two years I shall have a farm for you to live on,” he said. And he kissed her again, with the same dark, permanent passion.
Then he sent her off again.
He went and found Mr. George, in the card room. There was old Aunt Matilda, playing for her life, her diamonds twinkling but her fan laid aside.
“We’re going to Wandoo to-morrow morning, Sir,” said Jack.
“That’s right, lad,” said Mr. George.
“I say, Sir, won’t you do Tom a kindness?” said Jack, “You’re coming down yourself one day-this week, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I shall be down on Wednesday or Thursday.”
“Bring Mary down with you. Make her Aunt Matilda let her come. Tom’s awfully gone on her, and when he sees her with Boyd Blessington he straightway goes for a drink. I don’t think she’s suited for Mr. Blessington, do you, Sir? He’s nearly old enough to be her father. And Tom’s the best fellow in the world, and Mary’s the one he cares for. If nothing puts him out and sends him wrong, there’s not a better fellow in the world.”
Mr. George blew nose, prrhed! and bahed! and was in a funk. He feared Aunt Matilda. He was very fond of Mary, might even have married her himself, but for the ridicule. He liked Tom Ellis. He didn’t care for men like Blessington. And he was an emotional old Australian.
“That needs thinking about! That needs thought!” he said. Not the next day, but the day following that, the boys drove away from Perth in a new sulky, with a horse bought from Jimmie Short. And Mr. George had promised to come on the coach the day after, with Mary.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WELCOME AT WANDOO
“Things change,” said Jack, as he and Tom drove along in the sulky, “and they never go back to what they were before.”
“Seems like they don’t,” said Tom uneasily.
“And men change,” continued Jack. “I have changed, and I shall never go back to what I was before.”
“Oh dry up,” said the nervous Tom. “You’re just the blanky same.”
Both boys felt a load on their spirits, now they were actually on the road home. They hated the load too.
“We’re going to make some change at Wandoo,” said Tom. “I wish I could leave Ma on the place. But Mr. George says she absolutely refuses to stay, and he says I’ve not got to try an’ force her. He sortta winked at me, and told me I should want to be settlin’ down myself. I wondered what ‘n hell he meant. Y’aven’t let on nothing about that Honeysuckle trip, have y’? I don’t mean to insult you by askin’, but it seemed kinder funny like.”
“No,” said Jack. “I’ve not breathed Honeysuckle to a soul, and never will. You get it off your mind — it’s nothing.”
“Well, then, I dunno what he meant. I told him I hadn’t made a bean anyhow. An’ I asked him what ‘n hell Ma was goin’ ter live on. He seemed a bit down in the mouth about ‘er himself, old George did. Fair ga
ve me the bally hump. Wisht I was still up north, strike me lucky I do.
“We’ve been gone over two years, yet I feel I’ve never been away, an’ yet I feel the biggest stranger in the world, comin’ back to what’s supposed to be me own house. I hate havin’ ter come, because o’ the bloomin’ circumstances. Why ‘n hell couldn’t Ma have had the place for while she lived, an’ me be comin’ back to her and the kids? Then I shouldn’t feel sortta sick about it. But as it is — it fair gets me beat. Lennie’ll resent me, an’ Katie an’ Monica’ll hate havin’ ter get inter a smaller house, an’ the twins an’ Harry an’ the little ones don’ matter so much, but I do worry over pore ol’ Ma.”
There he was with a blank face, driving the pony homewards. He hadn’t worried over pore ol’ Ma till this very minute, on the principle “out of sight, out of mind.” Now he was all strung up.
“Y’ know, Jack,” he said, “I kinder don’ want Wandoo. I kinder don’ want to be like Dad, settlin’ down with a heap o’ responsibilities an’ kids an’ all that. I kinder don’ want it.”
“What do you want?” said Jack.
“I’d rather knock about with you for me mate, Jack, I’d a sight rather do that.”
“You can’t knock about forever,” said Jack.
“I don’ know whether you can or you can’t. I only know I never knew my own mother. I only know she never lived at Wandoo. She never raised me there. I bet she lugged me through the bush. An’ when all comes to all, I’d rather do the same. I don’ want Dad’s property. I don’ want that Ellis property. Seems ter me bad luck. What d’ yer think?”
“I should think it depends on you,” said Jack.
“I should think it does. Anyhow shall you stop with me, an’ go shares in the blinkin’ thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack.
He was thinking that soon he would see Monica. He was wondering how she would be. He was wondering if she was ready for him, or if she would have a thousand obstacles around her. He was wondering if she would want him to plead and play the humble and say he wasn’t good enough for her. Because he wouldn’t do it. Not if he never saw her again. All that flummery of love he would not subscribe to. He would not say he adored her, because he didn’t adore her. He was not the adoring sort. He would not make up to her, and play the humble to her, because it insulted his pride. He didn’t feel like that, and he never would feel like that, not towards any woman on earth. Even Mary, once he had declared himself, would fetch up her social tricks and try to bring him to his knees. And he was not going down on his knees, not for half a second, not to any woman on earth, nor to any man either. Enough of this kneeling flummery.
He stood fast and erect on his two feet, that had travelled many wild miles. And fast and erect he would continue to stand. Almost he wished he could be clad in iron armour, inaccessible. Because the thought of women bringing him down and making him humble himself, before they would give themselves to him, this turned his soul black.
Monica! He didn’t love her. He didn’t feel the slightest bit of sentimental weakening towards her. Rather when he thought of her his muscles went stiffer and his soul haughtier. It was not he who must bow the head. It was she.
Because he wanted her. With a deep, arrowy desire, and a long, lasting dark desire, he wanted her. He wanted to take her apart from all the world, and put her under his own roof.
But he didn’t want to plead with her, or weep before her, or adore her, or humbly kiss her feet. The very thought of it made his blood curdle and go black. Something had happened to him in the Never-Never. Before he went over the border he might have been tricked into a surrender to this soft and hideous thing they called love. But now, he would have love in his own way, haughtily, passionately, and darkly, with dark, arrowy desire, and a strange, arrowly-submissive woman: either this, or he would not have love at all.
He thought of Monica and sometimes the thought of her sent him black with anger. And sometimes, as he thought of her wild, delicate, reckless, lonely little profile, a hot tenderness swept over him, and he felt he would envelop her with a fierce and sheltering tenderness, like a scarlet mantle.
So long as she would not fight against him, and strike back at him. Jeer at him, play with Easu in order to insult him. Not that, my God, not that.
As for Mary, a certain hate of her burned in him. The queer heavy stupid conceit with which she had gone off to dance with Boyd Blessington, because he was an important social figure. Mary, wanting to live on a farm, but at the same time absolutely falling before the social glamour of a Blessington, and becoming conceited on the strength of it. Inside herself, Mary thought she was very important, thought that all sorts of eternal destinies depended on her choice and her actions. Even Jack was nothing more than an instrument of her divine importance.
He had sensed this clearly enough. And it was this that made Aunt Matilda a bit spiteful against her, when she said that Mary was “heavy” and wouldn’t easily get a man.
But there was also the queer black look in Mary’s eyes, that was outside her conceit and her social importance. The queer, almost animal dark glisten, that was full of fear and wonder, and vulnerability. Like the look in the eyes of a caught wild animal. Or the look in the shining black eyes of one of the aborigines, especially the black woman looking askance in a sort of terror at a white man, as if a white man was a sort of devil that might possess her.
Where had Mary got that queer aboriginal look, she the granddaughter of an English earl?
“Y’re real lively to-day, aintcher, Jack? Got a hundred quid for your birthday, and my, some talk!”
“Comes to that,” said Jack, rousing himself with difficulty. “We’ve come fifteen or twenty miles without you opening your mouth either.”
Tom laughed shortly and relapsed into silence.
“Well,” he said, “let’s wake up now, there’s the outlying paddock.” He pointed with his whip. — ”And there’s the house through the dip in the valley!” Then suddenly in a queer tone: “Say, matey, don’t it look lovely from here, with all that afternoon sun falling over it like snow . . . You think I’ve never seen snow: but I have, in my dream.”
Jack’s heart contracted as he jumped down to open the first gate. For him too, the strange fulness of the yellow afternoon light was always unearthly, at Wandoo. But the day was still early, just after dinner-time, for they had stayed the night half way.
“Looks in good trim, eh?” said Jack.
“So it does! A1!” replied Tom. “Mr. George says Ma done wonders. Made it pay hand over fist. Y’remember that fellow, Pink-eye Percy, what come from Queensland, and had studied agriculture an’ was supposed to be a bad egg an’ all that? At that ‘roo hunt, you remember? Well, he bought land next to Wandoo, off-side from the Reds. An’ Ma sortta broke wi’ the Reds over something, an’ went in wi’ him, an’ t’ seems they was able to do wonders. Anyway Old George says Ma’s been able to buy a little place near her own old home in Beverley, to go to. — But seems to me — ”
“What?”
“Funny how little anyone tells you, Jack.”
“How?”
“I felt I couldn’t get to th’ bottom of what old George was tellin’ me. I took no notice then. But it seems funny now. An’ I say — ”
“What?”
“You’d ‘a thought Monica or Katie might ha’ driven to the Cross Roads for us, like we used to in Dad’s days.”
“Yes, I thought one of them would have been there.”
The boys drove on, in tense silence, through the various gates. They could see the house ahead.
“There’s Timothy,” said Tom.
The old black was holding open the yard gate. He seemed to have almost forgotten Jack, but the emotion in his black, glistening eyes was strange, as he stared with strange adoration at the young master. He caught Tom’s hand in his two wrinkled dark hands, as if clinging to life itself.
The twins ran out, waved, and ran back. Katie appeared, looking bigger, h
eavier, more awkward than ever. Tom patted Timothy’s hands again, then went across and kissed Katie, who blushed with shyness.
“Where’s Ma, Katie?”
“In the parlour.”
Tom broke away, leaving Katie blushing in front of Jack. Jack was thinking how queer and empty the house seemed. And he felt an outsider again. He stayed outside, sat down on the bench.
A boy much bigger than Harry, but with the same blue eyes and curly hair, appeared chewing a haystalk, and squatted on a stone near by. Then Og and Magog, a bit taller, but no thinner, came and edged on to the seat. Then Ellie, a long-legged little girl, came running to his knees. And then what had been Baby, but was now a fat, toddling little girl, came racing out, fearless and inconsequential as the twins had been.
“Where’s Len?” said Jack.
“He’s in the paddock seein’ to th’ sheep,” said Harry.
There was a queer tense silence. The children seemed to cling round Jack for male protection.
“We’re goin’ to’ live nearer in to th’ township now,” said Harry, “in a little wee sortta house.”
He stared with bold blue eyes, unwinking and yet not easy, straight into Jack’s eyes.
“Well Harry,” said Jack, “You’ve grown quite a man.”
“I hev so!” said Harry: “Quite the tyke! I ken kill birds for Ma to put in th’ pot. I ken skin a kangaroo. I ken — ”
But Jack didn’t hear what else, because Tom was calling him from the doorway. He went slowly across.
“Say, mate,” said Tom in a low tone. “Stand by me. Things is not all right.” Aloud he said: “Ma wants t’ see ye, Jack.”
Jack followed through the back premises, down the three steps into the parlour. It all seemed forlorn.
Ma sat with her face buried in her hands. Jack knitted his brows. Tom put his hand on her shoulder.
“What is it, Ma? What is it? I wouldn’t be anything but good to yer, Ma, ye know that. Here’s Jack Grant.”
“Ye were always a good boy, Tom. I’m real glad t’ see ye back. And Jack,” said Ma through her hands.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 413