This Easu heard and saw with curious gratification. This was his Sarah Ann.
None the less, he was no fool. He saw the baffled, surprised look Jack turned upon this grisly young woman in curlers and teeth, as if he could not quite enter her in the class of human beings. And Easu was enough of an Ellis to know what that look meant. It was a silent “Good God!” And no man, when his wife enters the room, cares to hear another man’s horrified ejaculation: “Good God!” at the sight of her.
Easu wanted his wife to be common. Nevertheless, with the anomalousness of human beings, it humiliated him and put acid in his blood.
“Have a jorum!” said Easu to Tom.
“I s’d think you’re not goin’ to set down drinkin’ at this time of day,” she said, in her loud, common, interfering voice.
“What’s the time of the day to you?” asked Easu acidly, as he filled Tom’s glass.
“We can’t stop. Ma’ll be expecting us back,” said Tom.
Easu silently filled Jack’s glass, and the wife went out, banging the door. Immediately she fell upon the baby and began to vituperate the little animal for its dirt. The men couldn’t hear themselves speak.
But Easu lifted up his chin and poured the liquor down his throat. He had shaved his beard, and had only three days of yellowish stubble. He smacked his lips as he set down his glass, and looked at the two boys with a sarcastic, gloating look.
“Find a few changes, eh?” he observed.
“Just a few.”
“How’s the place look?”
“All right.”
“Make a pile up North?”
“No.”
Easu grinned slowly.
“Thought you didn’t need to, eh?” he asked maliciously.
“Didn’t worry myself,” said Tom.
“Jack Grant come in for a fortune?” Easu asked, looking at Jack.
“No,” said Jack coldly. There was something about Easu’s vulgar, taunting eyes, which he couldn’t stand.
“Oh, you ‘aven’t!” The pleased sneer was unbearable.
“How’s Ma?” asked Easu.
“All right,” said Tom, surprised.
“Don’t see much of her now,” said Easu.
“No, I saw the gate was blocked up,” said Tom. “Looks like she blocked the wrong gate up.”
“How?”
“How? Well don’t you think she’d better have blocked up the gate over to Pink-eye Percy’s place?” — Easu was smiling with thin, gloating lips.
“Why?”
“Why? Don’t y’ know?”
“What?”
“Don’t ye know about Monica?”
Jack’s blood stood still for a moment, and death entered his soul again, to stay.
“No. What?”
“Didn’t Old George say nothing to y’ in Perth?”
“No!” said Tom, becoming sullen and dangerous.
“Well, that’s funny now! And Aunt Alice said nothing?”
“No! What about?”
Easu was smiling gloatingly, in silence, as if he had something very good.
“Well that’s funny now! Think of your getting right here, and not having heard a thing! I shouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Tom was going white under his tan.
“What’s amiss, Red?” he said curtly.
“To think as you haven’t heard! Why it was the talk of the place. Ross heard all about it in Perth. Didn’t you come across him there? He’s been in the Force quite a while now.”
“No! What was it he heard about?”
“Why, about Monica.”
“What about her?”
“D’y’ mean to say you don’t know?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
“Well!” and Easu smiled with curious, poisonous satisfaction. “I don’t know as I want to be the one to tell you.”
There was a moment’s dead silence. The sun was setting.
“What have you got to say?” asked Tom, his face set and blank, and his mouth taking on the lipless, Australian look.
“Funny thing nobody has told you. Why it happened six or seven months since.”
This was received in dead silence.
“She went off with Percy when the baby was a month old.”
Again there was nothing but dead silence.
“Mean she married Pink-eye Percy?” asked Tom, in a muffled tone.
“I dunno about marryin’ him. They say he’s got a wife or two already: legal and otherwise. All I know is they cleared out a month after the baby was born, and went down south.”
Still dead silence from the other two. The room was full of golden light. Jack was looking at the fly-dirts and the lampblack on the ceiling. He was sitting in a horse-hair arm-chair, and the broken springs were uncomfortable, and the horsehair scratched his wrist. Otherwise he felt vacant, and in a deathly way, remote.
“You’re minding what you’re saying?” came Tom’s empty voice.
“Minding what I’m saying!” echoed Easu rejoicingly. “I didn’t want to tell you. It was you who asked me.”
“Was the baby Percy’s baby?” asked Jack.
“I should say so,” Easu replied, stumbling. “I never asked her, myself. They were all thick with Percy at that time, and I was married with a family of my own. Why I’ve not been over to Wandoo for — for — for close on two years, I should think.”
“That’s what was wrong with Ma!” Tom was saying, in a dull voice, to himself.
“I wonder Old George or Mary didn’t prepare ye,” said Easu. “They both came down before the baby came. But seemingly Old George couldn’t do nothing. Percy confessing he was married, and trying to say he wasn’t to blame. However, he’s run off with Monica all right. Ma had a letter from her from Albany, to say there was no need to worry, Percy was playin’ the gentleman.”
“She never cared for him,” Jack cried.
“I dunno about that. Seems she’s been mad about him all the time. Maybe she waited for you to come back. I dunno! I tell you, I’ve never been over to Wandoo for nigh on two years.”
Jack could not bear any more. The golden light had gone out of the room, the sun was under the ridge — that ridge — —
“Let’s get, Tom!” said Jack rising to his feet.
They stumbled out of the house, and went home in silence, through the dusk. Again the world had caved in, and they were walking through the ruins.
Ma was upstairs when they got home, but Katie had got the tea on the table, and Lennie was in. He was a tall, thin, silent, sensitive youth.
“Hullo, you two wanderin’ Jews!” he said.
“Hello, Len!”
“Come an’ ‘ave y’ teas.”
Lennie was like the head of the house. They ate their meal in silence.
II
Tom and Jack and Lennie still slept in the cubby, but Og and Magog had moved indoors. The three of them lay in the dark, without sleeping.
“Say, young Len,” said Tom at length, “what was you after, letting Monica get mixed up with that Pink-eye Percy?”
“Me? What was I after? How could I be after ‘er every minute. She snapped my ‘ead off if I looked at ‘er. What for did you an’ Jack stop away all that time, an’ never write a word to nobody? Blame me, all right! But you go ‘avin’ ‘igh jinks in the Never-Never, and nobody says a word to you. You never did nothing wrong, did you? An’ you kep’ an eye on the fam’ly, didn’t you? An’ it’s only me to blame. ‘F course! ‘Twould be! But what about yourselves?”
This outburst was received in silence. Then a queer, sullen snake reared its head haughtily in Jack’s soul.
“I shouldn’t have thought she’d have cared for Percy,” said he.
“No more would nobody,” replied Len. “You never know what women’s up to. Give me a steady woman, Lord, I pray. Because for the last year Monica wasn’t right in ‘er mind, that’s what I say. It wasn’t Percy’s fault. It was she made ‘im. She made ‘im as soft as gre
ase about ‘er. Percy’s not bad, he’s not. But women can make him as soft as grease. An’ I knows what that means myself. Either there shouldn’t be no men an’ women, or they should be kept apart till they’re pitched into the same pen, to breed.”
Tom, with Honeysuckle Lucy on his conscience, said never a word.
“Is it true that Percy’s got a wife already out east?” asked Jack.
“He say he has. But he wrote to find out if she was dead. At first he said he wasn’t to blame. Then he said he was, but he couldn’t marry her. An’ Monica like a wild cat at us all. She would let nobody write an’ tell you. She went over to Reds, but Easu had just got married, an’ Sarah Ann threatened to lay her out. Then she turned on Percy. I tell you, she skeered me. The phosphorus came out of her eyes like a wildcat’s. She’s bewitched or something. Or else possessed of a devil. That’s what I think she is. Though I needn’t talk, for maybe I am myself. Oh, mates, leave me alone, I’m sick of it all. Lemme go to sleep.”
“What did she go over to Easu’s for?”
“God knows. She’d been nosing round with Easu, till Ma got mad and put a stop to it. But that’s a good while since. A good while afore Easu married the lovely Sarah Ann, with her rows o’ cartridges on her forehead. Oh Cripes, marriage! Leave m’alone, I tell you.”
“Funny she should go to Easu’s, if she was struck on Percy,” said Jack.
“Don’t make me think of it, sonny!” came Len’s voice. “She went round like a cat who’s goin’ t’ have kittens, an’ nobody knew what was amiss with her. Oh Jehosaphat! Talk about bein’ born in sin. I should think we are. But say, Jack! Do you suppose the Lord gets awful upset, whether Monica has a baby or not? I don’t believe He does. An’ I don’t believe Jesus either turns a hair. I don’t believe He turns half a hair. Yet we get into all this stew. Tell you what, makes a chap sick of bein’ a humin bein’. Wish I grew feathers, an’ was an emu.”
“Don’t you bother,” said Jack.
“Not me,” said Len. “I don’t bother! Anyhow I know all about the parsley bed, ‘n I don’t care, I’d rather know an’ have done with it. ‘S got to come some time. I’m a collarhorse, I am, like ol’ Rackett said. All right, let me be one. Let me be one, an’ pull me guts out. Might just as well do that, as be a sick outlaw like Rackett, or a softy like Percy. Leave m’alone! I’ve got the collar on, an’ the load behind, an’ I’ll pull it out if I pulls me guts out. That’s the past, present an’ future of Lennie.”
“Where is Rackett?”
“Hanged if I know. Don’t matter where he is. He wanted to educate me an’ make a gentleman of me. Else I’d be nothing but a cart-’oss, he said. Well, I am nothing but a cart-’oss. But if I enjoys pullin’ me guts out, let me. I enjoys it all right.”
Tom lay in silence in the dark, and felt scared. He hated having to face things. He hated taking a long view. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, was his profound conviction. He hated even to look round the next corner.
“Say, Jack,” came Lennie’s voice again. “You always turns up like a silver lining. I got your cheques all right. Fifty-seven pound. That’s only a pair o’ socks, that is, compared to Gran’s store. I had to have a laugh over that stockin’, you’re the angel that stood in Jacob’s doorway an’ looked like a man, you are. I’d love it if you’d come an’ live with me an’ Ruthie.”
But Jack was thinking his own thoughts. It had come over him that it was Easu who had betrayed Monica. The picture of her wandering across like a cat that is going to have kittens, to the Red’s place, and facing that fearful, common Sarah Ann, and Easu grinning and looking on, made his spirit turn to steel. Pink-eye Percy was not the father of that baby. Percy was as soft as wax. Monica would never have fallen for him. She had simply made use of him. The baby was Easu’s.
“Was the baby a girl or a boy?” he asked.
“A girl.”
“Did it look like Percy?”
“Not it. It didn’t have any of Percy’s goo-goo brown eyes or anything. Ma said it was the spitten image of Harry when he was born.”
III
Jack decided what he would do. In the morning he would take the new horse and set off south, to Albany. He would see Monica and ask her. Anyhow he would see her.
He was up at dawn, saddling his horse. He told Tom of his plan, and Tom merely, remarked:
“It’s up to you, mate.”
Tom was relapsing at once into the stiff-faced, rather taciturn Australian he had been before. The settled life on the farm at once pulled him to earth, the various calamities had brought him down with a bump.
So Jack rode off almost unnoticed, with a blanket strapped behind his saddle, and a flat water-bottle, a pistol in his belt, and a hatchet and a little bag of food tied to the front saddle-strings. Something made him turn his horse past the place where he had fought Easu, and along the bush trail to the Reds’ place.
The sun had come up hot out of a pink, dusty dawn. In an hour it would be blazing like a fiend out of the bare blue heavens. Meanwhile it was still cool, there was still a faint coolness on the parched dry earth, whose very grass was turning into yellowish dust. Jack jogged along slowly, at a slow morning jog-trot. He was glad to be in the saddle again.
As he came down the track, he saw the blue smoke rising out of the chimneys of Easu’s house, and a dark movement away in one of the home paddocks. He got down for the gates, then rode on, over to the paddock fence, and sat there on his horse, watching Easu and Herbert and three blacks, sorting out some steers from a bunch of about thirty cattle. They were running the steers through a gate to a smaller enclosure.
There was a good deal of yelling and shouting and running and confusion, as the bunch of young cattle, a mixed little mob of all colours, blacks and black-and-white and red and red-and-white, tossed and swayed, the young cows breaking away and running nimbly on light feet, excited by the deep, powerful lowing of the stock bull, which had wandered up to the outer corner of the fence under a group of ragged gum-trees, and there stood bellowing at the excitement that was going on in the next paddock.
Jack kept an eye on the bull, as he sat on his uneasy horse outside the shut gate, watching. Near by, two more horses stood saddled and waiting. One of them was Easu’s big black mare with the two white forefeet. The other was a thin roan, probably Herbert’s horse.
Herbert was quite a man, now: tall and thin and broad, with a rather small red face and dull fairish hair that stood up straight from his brow. He was the only one of the brothers left with Easu. He was patient and didn’t pay any attention to that scorpion of a Sarah Ann. Sam and Ross had cleared out at the first sight of her.
It was Herbert who did most of the running. Easu, who stood with his feet apart, did most of the bossing — he was never happy unless he was bossing, and finding fault with somebody — and the blacks did most of the halloaing. Easu didn’t move much. He seemed to have gone heavier, and where he stood, with his feet apart and his bare arm waving, he seemed stuck, as if he were inert. This was unlike him. He was always stiffish, but he used to be quick. Now he seemed slow and wooden in his movements, his body had gone inert, the life had gone out of it, and he could only shout and jeer. He used to have a certain flame of life, that made him handsome, even if you hated him. A certain conceit and daring, inside all his bullying. Now the flame had gone, the conceit and daring had sunk, he was only ugly and defeated, common, and a little humiliated. He was getting fat, and it didn’t suit him at all.
He had glanced round, when Jack rode up, and it was evident that he hated the intrusion. Herbert had waved his arm. Herbert still felt a certain gratitude — and the blacks had all stopped for a moment to stare. But Easu shouted them on.
At last the sorting out was done, and the bars put up. The bull went bellowing along the far fence. Herbert came striding to the gate, his smallish red face shining, and Jack got down to greet him. The two shook hands, and Herbert said:
“Glad to see you back.”
; He was the first to say he was glad to see Jack back. Even Len had not said it. The two men stood exchanging awkward sentences beside the horse.
Easu too came through the gate. He looked grudgingly at Jack and at Jack’s horse. Jack thought how ugly he was, now his face had gone fatter and his mouth with its thin, jeering line looked mean. The alert bird-look had gone, he was heavy, and consumed with grudging. His very healthiness looked heavy, a bit dead. His light blue eyes stared and pretended to smile, but the smile was a grudging sneer.
“Where ‘d you get y’ ‘oss?”
“From Jimmie Short, in Perth.”
“Bit long in the barrel. Making a trip, are y’?”
And Easu looked with his pale-blue eyes straight and sneering into Jack’s eyes, and smiled with his grudging, mean mouth. Jack noticed that Easu had begun to belly, inside his slack black trousers. He was no longer the spruce, straight fellow. Easu saw the glance, and was again humiliated. He himself hated his growing belly. He looked a second time, into Jack’s eyes, furtively, before he said:
“Find out if it was right what I was tellin’ y’?”
Jack was ready for the insult, and did not answer. He turned to Herbert asking about Joe Low, who had been a pal of Herbert’s. Joe Low also was married, and had gone down Busselton way. Jack asked for his directions, saying perhaps he might be able to call on him.
“What, are y’ goin’ south?” put in Easu.
Jack looked at him. It was impossible not to see the slack look of defeat in Easu’s face. Something had defeated him, leaving him all sneering and acid and heavy. Again Jack did not answer.
“What did you say?” Easu persisted, advancing a little insolently.
“What about?”
“I asked if y’ was goin’ south.”
“That’s my business, where I’m going.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 415