“Of course it is,” said Easu with a sneer and a grin. “You don’t think anyone wants to get ahead of you, do you?” He stood with a faint, sneering smile on his face, malevolent with impotence. “You’ll do Percy a lot o’ hurt, I’ll bet. I wouldn’t like to be Percy, when you turn up.” And he looked with a grin at Herbert. Herbert grinned faintly in echo.
“I should think, whatever Percy is, he wouldn’t want to be you,” said Jack, going white at the gills with anger, but speaking with calm superiority, because he knew that enraged Easu most.
“What’s that?” cried Easu, the grin flying out of his face at once, and leaving it stiff and dangerous.
“I should think Percy wouldn’t want to be you, let him be what he may in himself,” said Jack, in the cold, clear, English voice which he knew infuriated Easu unbearably.
Easu searched Jack’s face intently with his pale-blue eyes.
“How’s that?” he asked curtly.
Jack stared at the red, heavy face with the smallish eyes, and thought to himself: “You pig! You intolerable white fat pig!” But aloud he said nothing.
Easu smiled a defeated grin, and strode away heavily to his horse. He unhitched, swung heavily into the saddle, and moved away, then at a little distance reined in to hear what Jack and Herbert were talking about. He couldn’t go.
Herbert was giving Jack directions, how to find Joe Low down Busselton way. Then he sent various items of news to his old pal. But he asked Jack no questions, and was careful to avoid any kind of enquiry concerning Jack’s business.
Easu sat on his black horse a little way off, listening. He had a rope and an axe tied to his saddle. Presumably he was going into the bush. Herbert was asking questions about the North-West, about the cattle stations and the new mines. He talked as if he would like to talk all day. And Jack answered freely, laughing easily and making a joke of everything. They spoke of Perth, and Jack told how Tom and he had been at the Governor’s ball a few nights ago, and what a change it was from the North-West, and how Tom enjoyed himself. Herbert listened, impressed.
“Gosh! That’s something to rag old Tom about!” he said.
“When you’ve done gassing there!” called Easu.
Jack turned and looked at him.
“You don’t have to wait,” he said easily, as if to a servant.
There was really something about Easu now that suggested a servant. He went suddenly yellow with anger.
“What’s that?” he said, moving his horse a few paces forward.
And Jack, also white at the gills, but affecting the same ease, repeated distinctly and easily, as if to a man-servant:
“We’re talking, you don’t have to wait.”
There was no answer to this insult. Easu remained stock motionless on his horse for a few moments. Was he going to have to swallow it?
Jack turned laughing to Herbert, saying:
“I’ve got several things to tell you about old Tom.”
But he glanced up quickly. Easu was kicking his horse, and it was dancing before it would take a direction. Herbert gave a loud, inarticulate cry. Jack turned quickly to his own horse, to put his foot in the stirrup. Just as quickly he refrained, swung round, drew his pistol, and cocked it. Easu, once more a horseman, was kicking his restive horse forward, holding the small axe in his right hand, the reins in his left. His face was livid, and looked like the face of one returning from the dead. He came bearing down on Jack and Herbert, like Death returning from the dead, the axe held back at arm’s length, ready for the swing, half urging, half holding his horse, so that it danced strangely nearer. Jack stood with the pistol ready, his back to his own horse, that was tossing its head nervously.
“Look out!” cried Herbert, suddenly jumping at the bit of Jack’s horse, in terror, and making it start back, with a thudding of hoofs.
But Jack did not move. He stood with his pistol ready, his eyes on Easu. Easu’s horse was snaffling and jerking, twisting, trying to get round, and Easu was forcing it slowly forward. He had on his death-face. He held the axe at arm’s length, backward, and with his pale-blue, fixed death-eyes he watched Jack, who stood there on the ground. So he advanced, waiting for the moment to swing the axe, fixing part of his will on the curvetting horse, which he forced on.
Jack, in a sort of trance, fixed Easu’s death-face in the middle of the forehead. But he was watching with every pore of his body.
Suddenly he saw him begin to heave in the stirrups, and on that instant he fired at the mystic place in Easu’s forehead, under his old hat, at the same time springing back. And in that self-same instant he saw two things: part of Easu’s forehead seemed to shift mystically open, and the axe, followed by Easu’s whole body, crashed at him as he sprang back. He went down in the universal crash, and for a moment his consciousness was dark and eternal. Then he wriggled to his feet, and ran, as Herbert was running, to the black horse, which was dancing in an agony of terror, Easu’s right foot having caught in the stirrup, the body rolling horribly on the ground.
He caught the horse, which was shying off from Herbert, and raised his right hand to take the bridle. To his further horror and astonishment, he saw his hand all blood, and his fore-finger gone. But he clutched the bridle of the horse with his maimed hand, then changed to his left hand, and stood looking in chagrin and horror at the bloody stump of his finger, which was just beginning, in a distant sort of way, to hurt.
“My God, he’s dead!” came the high, hysterical yell from Herbert, on the other side of the horse, and Jack let go the bridle again, to look.
It was too obvious. The big, ugly, inert bulk of Easu lay crumpled on the ground, part of the forehead shot away. Jack looked twice, then looked away again. A black had caught his horse, and tied it to the fence. Another black was running up. A dog came panting excitedly up, sniffing and licking the blood. Herbert, beside himself, stood helpless, repeating: “He’s dead! He’s dead! My God, he’s dead! He is.”
Then he gave a yell, and swooped at the dog, as it began to lick the blood.
Jack, after once more looking round, walked away. He saw his pistol lying on the ground, so he picked it up and put it in his belt, although it was bloody, and had a cut where the axe had struck it. Then he walked across to his horse, and unhitched the bridle from the fence. But before he mounted, he took his handkerchief and tied it round his bleeding hand, which was beginning to hurt with a big aching hurt. He knew it, and yet he hardly heeded it. It was hardly noticeable.
He got into the saddle, and rode calmly away, going on his journey southward just the same. The world about him seemed faint and unimportant. Inside himself was the reality and the assurance. Easu was dead. It was a good thing.
He had one definite feeling. He felt as if there had been something damming life up, as a great clot of weeds will dam a stream and make the water spread marshily and dead over the surrounding land. He felt he had lifted this clod out of the stream, and the water was flowing on clear again.
He felt he had done a good thing. Somewhere inside himself he felt he had done a supremely good thing. Life could flow on to something beyond. Why question further?
He rode on, down the track. The sun was very hot, and his body was re-echoing with the pain from his hand. But he went on calmly, monotonously, his horse travelling in a sort of sleep, easy in its single-step. He didn’t think where he was going, or why; he was just going.
CHAPTER XXI
LOST
At evening he was still riding. But his horse lagged, and would not be spurred forward. Darkness came with swift persistence. He was looking anxiously for water, a burning thirst had made him empty his bottle.
As if directed by God, he felt the horse rousing up and pressing eagerly forward. In a few minutes it stopped. Darkness had fallen. He found the horse nosing a timber-lined Government well.
He got down and awkwardly drew water, for the well was low. He drank and the horse drank. Then with some difficulty he unsaddled, tied the reins round a sapli
ng and removed the bit. The horse snorted, nosed round, and began to crop in the dark. Jack sat on the ground and looked up at the stars. Then he drank more water, and ate a piece of bread and dry cheese.
Then he began to go to sleep. He saw Easu coming at him with the axe. Ugh, how good it was Easu was dead. Dead, to go in the earth to manure the soil. Hadn’t Old George said it? The land wanted dead men dug into it, to manure it. Men like Easu, dead and turned to manure. And men like old Dad Ellis. Poor old Dad.
Jack thought of Monica, Monica with her little flower-face. All messed up by that nasty dog of an Easu. He should be twice dead. Jack felt she was a little repulsive too. To let herself be pawed over and made sticky by that heavy dog of an Easu! Jack felt he could never follow where Easu had been messing. Monica was no good now. She had taken on some of Easu’s repulsiveness.
Aunt Matilda had said, “Another scandal in the family!” Well, the death of Easu should make a good scandal.
How lonely it was in the bush! How big and weapon-like the stars were. One great star very flashing.
“I have dipped my hand in blood!” he thought to himself. And looking at his own bloody, hurting hand, in the starlight, he didn’t realise whether it was Easu’s blood or his own.
“I have dipped my hand in blood! So be it. Let it be my testament.”
And he lifted up his hand to the great flashing star, his wounded hand, saying aloud:
“Here! Here is my hand in blood! Take it then. There is blood between us forever.”
The blood was between him and his mysterious Lord, forever. Like a sort of pledge, or baptism, or a sacrifice: a bond between them. He was speaking to his mysterious Lord.
“There is blood between us forever,” he said to the star.
But the sound of his own hoarse, rather deep voice, reminded him of his surroundings. He looked round. He heard his horse, and called to it. It nickered in the loneliness, still cropping. He started up to see if it was all right, to stroke it and speak to it. The bush was very lonely.
“Hello, you!” he said to it. “In the midst of life we are in death. There’s death in the spaces between the stars. But somehow it seems all right. I like it. I like to be lord of Death. Who do they call the lords of Death? I am a lord of Death.”
He patted the horse’s neck as he talked.
“I can’t bear to think of Monica messy with Easu,” he said. “But I suppose it’s my destiny. I suppose it means I am a lord of death. I hope if I have any children they’ll have that look in their eyes, like soldiers from the dark kingdom. I don’t want children that aren’t warriors. I don’t want little love children for my children. When I beget children I want to sow dragon’s teeth, and warriors will spring up. Easu hadn’t one grain nor spark of a warrior in him. He was absolutely a groping civilian, a bully. That’s why he wanted to spoil Monica. She is the wife for a fighting man. So he wanted to spoil her. . . . Funny, my father isn’t a fighting man at all. He’s an absolute civilian. So he became a general. And I’m not a civilian. I know the spaces of death between the stars, like spaces in an Egyptian temple. And at the end of life I see the big black door of death, and the infinite black labyrinth beyond. I like to think of going in, and being at home and one of the masters in the black halls of death, when I am dead. I hope I die fighting, and go into the black halls of death as a master: not as a scavenger servant, like Easu, or a sort of butler, like my father. I don’t want to be a servant in the black house of death. I want to be a master.”
He sat down again, with his back to the tree, looking at the sharp stars, and the fume of stars, and the great black gulfs between the stars. His hand and arm were aching and paining a great deal. But he watched the gulfs between the stars.
“I suppose my Lord meant me to be like this,” he said. “Think if I had to be tied up and a gentleman, like that Blessington. Or a lawyer like Old George. Or a politician dropping his aitches, like that Mr. Watson. Or empty and important like that A.D.C. Or anything that’s successful and goes to church and sings hymns and has supper after church on the best linen table cloth! What Lord is it that likes these people? What God can it be that likes success and Sunday dinners? Oh God! It must be a big, fat, rusty sort of God.
“My God is dark and you can’t see him. You can’t even see his eyes, they are so dark. But he sits and bides his time and smiles, in the spaces between the stars. And he doesn’t know himself what he thinks. But there’s deep, powerful feelings inside him, and he’s only waiting his time to upset this pigsty full of white fat pigs. I like my Lord. I like his dark face, that I can’t see, and his dark eyes, that are so dark you can’t see them, and his dark hair that is blacker than the night on his forehead, and the dark feelings he has, which nobody will ever be able to explain. I like my Lord, my own Lord, who is not Lord of pigs.”
He slept fitfully, feverishly, with dreams, and rose at daylight to drink water, and dip his head in water. His horse came, he tended it and with great difficulty got the saddle on. Then he left it standing, and when he came again, it wasn’t where he had left it.
He called, and it whinnied, so he went into the scrub for it. But it wasn’t where the sound of whinnying came from. He went a few more steps forward, and called. The scrub wasn’t so very thick either, yet you couldn’t see that horse. He was sure it was only a couple of yards away. So he went forward, coaxing, calling. But nothing . . . Queer!
He looked round. The track wasn’t there. The well wasn’t there. Only the silent, vindictive, scattered bush.
He couldn’t be lost. That was impossible. The homestead wasn’t more than twenty miles away — and the settlement.
Yet, as he tramped on, through the brown, heath-like undergrowth, past the ghost-like trunks of the scattered gum-trees, over the fallen, burnt-out trunks of charred trees, past the bushes of young gum-trees, he gradually realised he was lost. And yet it was impossible. He would come upon a cabin, or pick up the track of a woodcutter, or a ‘roo hunter. He was so near to everywhere.
There is something mysterious about the Australian bush. It is so absolutely still. And yet, in the near distance, it seems alive. It seems alive, and as if it hovered round you to maze you and circumvent you. There is a strange feeling, as if invisible, hostile things were hovering round you and heading you off.
Jack stood still and coo-eed! long and loud. He fancied he heard an answer, and he hurried forward. He felt lightheaded. He wished he had eaten something. He remembered he had no water. And he was walking very fast, the sweat pouring down him. Silly this. He made himself go slower. Then he stood still and looked around. Then he coo-eed! again, and was afraid of the ringing sound of his own cry.
The changeless bush, with scattered, slender tree-trunks everywhere. You could see between them into the distance, to more open bush: a few brown rocks: two great dead trees as white as bone: burnt trees with their core charred out: and living trees hanging their motionless clusters of brown, dagger-like leave. And the permanent soft blue of the sky overhead.
Nothing was hidden. It was all open and fair. And yet it was haunted with a malevolent mystery. You felt yourself so small, so tiny, so absolutely insignificant, in the still, eternal glade. And this again is the malevolence of the bush, that it reduces you to your own absolute insignificance, go where you will.
Jack collected his wits and began to make a plan.
“First look at the sky, and get your bearing.” Then he would go somewhere straight west from the Reds. The sun had been in his eyes as he rode last evening.
Or had he better go east, and get back? There were scores of empty miles, uninhabited, west. It was settled, he would go east. Perhaps someone would find his horse, and come to look for him.
He walked with the sun straight bang in his eyes. It was very hot, and he was tired. He was thirsty, his arm hurt and throbbed. Why did he imagine he was hungry? He was only thirsty. And so hot! He took off his coat and threw it away. After a while his waistcoat followed. He felt a little lighter. But he w
as an intolerable burden to himself.
He sat down under a bush and went fast asleep. How long he slept he did not know. But he woke with a jerk, to find himself lying on the ground in his shirt and trousers, the sun still hot in the heavens, and the mysterious bush all around. The sun had come round and was burning his legs. What was the matter? Fear, that was the first thing. The great, resounding fear. Then, a second, he was terribly thirsty. For a third, his arm was aching horribly. He took off his shirt and made a sling of it, to carry his arm in.
For a fourth thing, he realised he had killed Easu, and something was gnawing at his soul.
He heard himself sob, and this surprised him very much. It even brought him to his senses.
“Well!” he thought. “I have killed Easu.” It seemed years and years ago. “And the bush has got me, Australia has got me, and now it will take my life from me. Now I am going to die. Well, then, so be it. I will go out and haunt the bush, like all the other lost dead. I shall wander in the bush throughout eternity, with my bloody hand. Well, then, so be it. I shall be a lord of death hovering in the bush, and let the people who come beware.”
But suddenly he started to his feet in terror and horror. The face of death had really got him this time. It was as if a second wakening had come upon him, and his life, which had been sinking, suddenly flared up in a frenzy of struggle and fear. He coo-eeed! again and again, and once more plunged forward in mad pursuit of an echo.
He might certainly run into a ‘roo hunter’s camp, any minute. The place was alive with them, great big boomers! Their silly faces! Their silly complacency, almost asking to be shot. There were a lot of wallabies out here too. You might make a fortune hunting skins.
Christ! how one could want water.
But no matter. On and on! His soul dropped to its own sullen level. If he was to die, die he would. But he would hold out through it all.
On and on in a persistent dogged stupor. Why give in?
Then suddenly he dropped on a log, in weariness. Suddenly he had thought of Monica. Why had she betrayed him? Why had they all betrayed him, betrayed him and the thing he wanted from life. He leaned his head down on his arms and wept hoarsely and dryly, and went silent again even as he sat, realising the futility of weeping. His heart, the heart he wept from, went utterly dark. He had no more heart of torn sympathy. That was gone. Only a black, deep male volition. And this was all there was left of him. He would carry the same into death. Young or old, death sooner or later, he would carry just this one thing into the further darkness, his deep, black, undying male volition.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 416