Tom looked at Jack in dismay. Then he stooped and kissed her hair.
“You look to me,” he said. “We’ll fix everything all right, for Lennie ‘n everybody.”
But Ma still kept her face between her hands.
“There’s nothing t’ worry about, Ma, sure there isn’t,” persisted the distracted Tom. “I want y’ t’ have everything you want, I do, you an’ Lennie an’ the kids.”
Mrs. Ellis took her hands from her face. She looked pale and worn. She would not turn to the boys, but kept her face averted.
“I know you’re as good a boy as ever lived,” she faltered. Then she glanced quickly at Tom and Jack, the tears began to run down her face, and she threw her apron over her head.
“God’s love!” gasped the bursting Tom, sinking on a chair.
They all waited in silence. Mrs. Ellis suddenly wiped her face on her apron and turned with a wan smile to the boys.
“I’ve saved enough to buy a little place near Beverley, which is where I belong,” she said. “So me and the children are all right. And I’ve got my eye, at least Lennie’s got his on a good selection east of here, between this and my little house, for Lennie. But we want cash for that, I’m afraid. Only it’s not that. That’s not it.”
“Lennie’s young yet to take up land, Ma!” Tom plunged in. “Why won’t he stop here and go shares with me?”
“He wants to get married,” said the mother wanly. “Get married! Len! Why he’s only seventeen!”
At this very natural exclamation, Ma threw her apron over her head, and began to cry once more.
“He’s been so good,” she sobbed. “He’s been so good! And his Ruth is old enough and sensible enough for two. Better anything — ” with more sobbing — ”than another scandal in the family.”
Tom rubbed his head. Gosh! It was no joke being the head of a family!
“Well, Ma, if you wish it, what’s the odds? But I’m afraid it’ll have to wait a bit. Jack’ll tell you I haven’t any cash. Not a stiver, Ma! Blown out! It takes it outter yer up North. We never struck it rich.”
Mrs. Ellis, under her apron, wept softly.
“Poor little Lennie! Poor little Lennie! He’s been so good, Tom, working day and night. And never spending a shilling. All his learning gone for nought, Tom, and him a little slave, at his years, old and wise enough to be his father, Tom. And he wants to get married. If we could start him out fair! The new place has only four rooms and an out-kitchen, and there’s not enough to keep him, much less a lady wife. She’s a lady earning her bread teaching. He could go to Grace’s. Alec Rice would have him. But — ”
She had taken her apron off her face, and was staring averted at the door leading into Gran’s old room.
The two boys listened mystified and a little annoyed. Why all this about Lennie? Jack was wondering where Monica was. Why didn’t she come? Why wasn’t she mentioned? And why was Ma so absolutely downcast, on the afternoon of Tom’s home-coming? It wasn’t fair on Tom.
“Where is Monica?” asked Jack shyly at last.
But Mrs. Ellis only shook her head faintly and was mute, staring across at Gran’s door.
“Lennie married!” Tom was brooding. “Y’ll have to put it out of y’r mind for a bit, Ma. Why, it wouldn’t hardly be decent.”
“Let him marry if he’s set on it — an’ the girl’s a good girl,” said Mrs. Ellis, her eyes swamping with tears again, and her voice breaking as she rocked herself again.
“Yes, if we could afford it,” Tom hastily put in. And he raised his stunned eyes to Jack. Jack shrugged, and looked in the empty fireplace, and thought of the little fires Gran used to have.
Money! Money! Money! The moment you entered within four walls it was the word money, and your mouth full of ashes.
And then again something hardened in his soul. All his life he had been slipping away from the bugbear of money. It was no good. You had to turn round and get a grip on the miserable stuff. There was nothing else for it. Though money nauseated him, he now accepted the fact that he must have control over money, and not try just to slip by.
He began to repent of having judged Gran. That little old witch of a Gran, he had hated the way she had seemed to hoard money and gloat in the secret possession of it. But perhaps she knew, somebody must control it, somebody must keep a hand over it. Like a deadly weapon. Money! Property! Gran fighting for them, to bequeath them to the man she loved.
Perhaps she too had really hated money. She wouldn’t make a will. Neither would Dad. Their secret repugnance for money and possessions. But you had to have property, else you were down and out. The men you loved had to have property, or they were down and out. Like Lennie!
Poor old plucky Gran, fighting for her man. It was all a terrible muddle anyhow. But he began to understand her motive.
Yes, if Len had got a girl into trouble and wanted to marry her, the best he could do would be to have money and buy himself a little place. Otherwise, heaven knows what would happen to him. With their profound indifference to the old values, these Australians seemed either to exaggerate the brutal importance of money, or they wanted to waste money altogether, and themselves along with it. This was what Gran feared: that her best male heirs would go and waste themselves, as Jacob had begun to waste himself. The generous ones would just waste themselves, because of their profound mistrust of the old values.
Better rescue Lennie for the little while it was still possible to rescue him. Jack’s mind turned to his own money. And then, looking at that inner door, he seemed to see Gran’s vehement figure, pointing almost viciously with her black stick. She had tried so hard to drive the wedge of her meaning into Jack’s consciousness. And she had failed. He had refused to take her meaning.
But now with a sigh that was almost a groan, he took up the money burden. The “stocking” she had talked about, and which he had left in the realms of unreality, was an actuality. That witch Gran, with her uncanny, hateful second sight, had put by a stocking for Lennie, and entrusted the secret of it to Jack. And he had refused the secret. He hated those affairs.
Now he must assume the mysterious responsibility for this money. He got up and went to the chimney, and peered into the black opening. Then he began to feel carefully along the side of the chimney-stack inside, where there was a ledge. His hand went deep in soot and charcoal and grey ash.
He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve.
“Gone off y’r bloomin’ nut; Jack?” asked Tom, mystified.
“Gran told me she had put a stocking for Len in here,” said Jack.
“Stocking be blowed!” said Tom testily. “We’ve heard that barm-stick yarn before. Leave it alone, boy.”
He was looking at Jack’s bare, brown, sinewy arm. It reminded him of the great North-West, and the heat, and the work, and the absolute carelessness. This money and stocking business was like a mill-stone round his neck. He felt he was gradually being drowned in soot, as Jack continued to fumble up inside the chimney, and the soot poured down over the naked arm.
“Oh, God’s love, leave it alone, Jack!” he cried.
“Let him try,” said Mrs. Ellis quietly. “If Gran told him. I wonder he didn’t speak before.”
“I never really thought about it,” said Jack.
“Don’t think about it now!” shouted Tom.
Jack could feel nothing in the chimney. He looked contemplatively at the fireplace. Something drew him to the place near Gran’s arm-chair . . . He began feeling, while the other two watched him in a state of nervous tension. Tom hated it. “She pointed here with her stick,” said Jack.
There was a piece of tin fastened over the side of the fireplace, and black-leaded.
“Mind if we try behind this?” he asked.
“Leave it alone!” cried Tom.
But Jack pulled it out, and the ash and dirt and soot poured down over the hearth. Behind the sheet of thin iron was the naked stone of the chimney-piece. Various stones were loose: that was why Gran had had the tin sheet put ov
er.
He got out of the cavity behind the stones, where the loose mortar had all crumbled, a little square dusty box that had apparently been an old tea-caddy. It was very heavy for its size, and very dirty. He put it on the table in front of Mrs. Ellis. Tom got up excitedly to look in. He opened the lid. It was full to the brim of coins, gold coins and silver coins and dust and dirt, and a sort of spider filament. He shook his head over it.
“Isn’t that old Gran to a T!” he exclaimed, and poured out the dust and the money on the table.
Ma began eagerly to pick out the gold from the silver, saying:
“I remember when she made Dad put that iron plate up. She said insects came out and worried her.”
Ma only picked out the gold pieces, the sovereigns and half-sovereigns. She left Tom to sort the silver crowns and half-crowns into little piles. Jack watched in silence. There was a smell of soot and old fire-dust, and everybody’s hands were black.
Mrs. Ellis was putting the sovereigns in piles of ten. She had a queer sort of satisfaction, but her gloom did not really lift. Jack stayed to know how much it was. Mentally he counted the piles of gold she made: the pale washy gold of Australia, most of it. She counted and counted again.
“Two hundred and fourteen pounds!” she said in a low voice.
“And ten in silver,” said Tom.
“Two hundred and twenty-four pounds,” she said.
“It’s not the world,” said Tom, “but it’s worth having. It’s a start, Ma. And you can’t say that isn’t Lennie’s.”
Jack went out and left them. He listened in all the rooms downstairs. What he wanted to know about was Monica. He hated this family and family money business, it smelled to him of death. Where was Monica? Probably, to add to the disappointment, she was away, staying with Grace.
The house sounded silent. Upstairs all was silent. It felt as if nobody was there.
He went out and across the yard to the stable. Lucy whinnied. Jack felt she knew him. The nice, natural old thing: Tom would have to christen her afresh. At least this Lucy wouldn’t leave a stocking behind her when she was dead. She was much too clean. Ah, so much nicer than that other Lucy with her unpleasant perspiration, away in Honeysuckle.
Jack stood a long while with the sensitive old horse. Then he went round the out-buildings, looking for Lennie. He drifted back to the house, where Harry was chopping something with a small hatchet.
“Where’s Monica, Harry?” he asked.
“She’s not home,” said Harry.
“Where’s she gone?”
“Dunno.”
And the resolute boy went on with his chopping.
Tom came out, calling. “I’m going over to have a word wi’ th’ Reds, Jack. Comin’ with me?”
Tom didn’t care for going anywhere alone, just now. Jack joined him.
“Where’s Monica, Tom?” he asked.
“Ay, where is she?” said Tom, looking round as if he expected her to appear from the thin air.
“She’s not at home, anyhow,” said Jack.
“She’s gone off to Grace’s, or to see somebody, I expect,” said Tom, as they walked across the yard. “And Len is out in the paddocks still. He don’t seem in no hurry to come an’ meet us, neither. The little cuss! Fancy that nipper wantin’ to be spliced. Gosh, I’ll bet he’s old for his age, the little old wallaby! An’ that bloomin’ teacher woman, Ruth, why she’s older’n me. She oughtta be ashamed of herself, kidnappin’ that nipper.”
The two went side by side across the pasture, almost as if they were free again. They came to a stile.
“Gosh!” said Tom. “They’ve blocked up this gate, ‘n put a stile over, see! Think o’ that!”
They climbed the stile and continued their way.
“God’s love, boy, didn’t we land in it over our heads! Ever see Ma like that? I never! Good for you, Jack, lad, findin’ that tea-caddy. That’s how the Ellises are — ain’t it the devil! ‘Spect I take after my own mother, f’r I’m not in the tea-caddyin’ line. Ma’s cheered up a bit. She’ll be able to start Lennie in a bit of a way, now, ‘n the twins can wait for a bit, thank goodness! My, but ain’t families lively! Here I come back to be boss of this bloomin’ place, an’ I feel as if I was goin’ to be shot. Say, boy, dye think I’m really spliced to that water-snake in Honeysuckle? Because I s’ll have to have somebody on this outfit. Alone I will not face it. Say, matey, promise me you won’t leave me till I’m fixed up a bit. Give me your word you’ll stand by me here for a time, anyhow.”
“I’ll stay for a time,” said Jack.
“Righto! an’ then if I’m not copped by the Honeysuckle bird — ’appen Mary might have me, what d’you think? I shall have to have somebody. I simply couldn’t stand this place, all by my lonesome. What d’you think about Mary? D’you think she’d like it, here?”
“Ask her,” said Jack grimly.
CHAPTER XX
THE LAST OF EASU
I
They knew that Easu was married, but they were hardly prepared for the dirty baby crawling on the verandah floor. Easu had seen them come through the gate, and was striding across to meet them, after bawling something in his bullying way to someone inside the house: presumably his wife.
Outwardly, he was not much altered. Yet there was an undefinable change for the worse. He was one of those men whom marriage seems to humiliate, and to make ugly. As if he despised himself for being married.
Easu ignored the baby as if it were not there, striding past into the house, leading the newcomers into the parlour. It was darkened in there, to keep out the flies; but he pulled up the blind: “t’see their blanky fisogs.” And he called out to the missus to bring glasses.
The parlour was like most parlours. Enlarged photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, the Red parents, in large pine frames, on the wall. A handsome china clock under a glass case on the mantelpiece, with flanking vases to match, on fawn-and-red woollen crochet mats. An oval, rather curvy table in the middle of the room, with the family Bible, and the meat under a fly-proof wire cover. The parlour was the coolest place for the meat.
Easu shifted the red obnoxity, wire cover and all, to the top of a cupboard where some cups and saucers were displayed, and drew forth a demijohn of spirit from the back of the horsehair sofa, in front of the window.
Mrs. Easu came in with the glasses. She was a thin, pale-faced young woman with big dark eyes and her hair in huge curling pins, and a hostile bearing. She took no notice of the visitors: only let her big what-do-you-want eye pass over them with distaste beneath her bald forehead. It was her fixed belief that whoever came to the house came to get something, if they could. And they were not going to get it out of her. She made an alliance with Easu so far. But her rather protruding teeth and her vindictive mouth showed that Easu would get as many bites as kisses.
She set the glasses from her hands on to the table, and looked down at Easu under her pale lashes.
“What else d’ye want?” she asked rudely. “Nothing. If I want anything I’ll holloa.”
They seemed to be on terms of mutual rudeness. She had been quite an heiress: brought Easu a thousand pounds. But the way she said it — a tharsand parnds! — as if it was something absolutely you couldn’t get beyond, made even Easu writhe. She was common, to put it commonly. She spoke in a common way, she thought in a common way, and she acted in a common way. But she had energy, and even a vulgar suffisance. She thought herself as good as anybody, and a bit better, on the strength of the tharsand parnds!
“‘S not eddication as matters, it’s munney!” she said blatantly to Lennie. “At your age y’ought t’ave somethink in th’ bank.”
He of course hated the sight of her after that. She had looked at him with a certain superciliousness and contempt in her conceited brown eyes, because he had no money and was supposed to be clever. He never forgave her.
But what did she care! She jerked up her sharp-toothed mouth, and sailed away. She wasn’t going to be put down by any p
enniless snobs. The Ellises! Who were the Ellises? Yes, indeed! They thought themselves so superior. Could they draw a tharsand parnd? Pah!
She felt a particularly spiteful, almost vindictive, scorn of Jack. He was somebody, was he? Ha! What was he worth? That was the point. How much munney did he reckon he’d got? “If yer want me ter think anythink of yer, yer mun show me yer bank-book,” she said.
Easu listened and grinned, and said nothing to all this. But she had a fiery temper of her own, and they went for one another like two devils. She wasn’t going to be daunted, she wasn’t. She had her virtues too. She had no method, but she was clean. The place was forever in a muddle, but she was always cleaning it, almost vindictively, as if the shine on the door-knob reflected some of the tharsand parnd. Even the baby was turned out and viciously cleaned once a day. But in the intervals it groped where it would. As for herself, she was a sight this morning, with her hair in huge iron waving-pins, and her forehead and her teeth both sticking out. She looked a sight to shudder at. But wait. Wait till she was dressed up and turning out in the buggy, in a coat and skirt of thick brown cord silk with orange and black braiding, and a hugely feathered hat, with huge floating ostrich feathers, an orange one and a brown one. And her teeth sticking out and a huge brooch of a lump of gold set with pearls and diamonds, and a great gold chain. And the baby, in a silk cape with pink ribbons, and a frilled silk bonnet of alternate pink and white ruches, mercilessly held against her chains and brooches! Wait!
Therefore when Jack glanced at her from a strange distance, she tossed her bald forehead with the curling-irons, and thought to herself: “You can look, Master Jack Nobody. And you can look again, next Sunday, when I’ve got my proper things on. Then you’ll see who’s got the munney!”
She seemed to think that her Sunday gorgeousness absolutely obliterated the grimness of her week of curling pins. “Six days shall thou labour in thy curling-irons.” She lived in them. They kept her hair out of the way and saved her having to do it up all the time.
And it may be that Easu never really looked at her in her teeth and pins. That was not the real Sarah Ann. The real Sarah Ann swayed with ostrich feathers; brown silk, brown and orange feathers, reddish hair, brown eyes, pale skin, and a stiff, militant, vulgar bearing that wasn’t going to let anybody put it over her. “They can’t put me down, whoever they are!” she asserted. “I consider myself equal to the best, and perhaps a little better.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 414