Aunt Matilda dear-boyed him more than ever. But now he was not a dear boy, he didn’t feel a dear boy, and she was put out.
“Dear boy! and how does Monica stand that drying climate?”
“She is quite well again, Marm.”
“Poor child! Poor child! I hope you will bring her into a suitable home here in Perth, and have the children suitably brought up. It is so fortunate for you your mine is so successful. Now you can build a home here by the river, among us all, and be charming company for us, like your dear father.”
Mary was watching him with black eyes, and Miss Blessington with her wide, quick, round, dark-grey eyes. There was a frail beauty about that odd young woman; frail, highly-bred, sensitive, with an uncanny intelligence.
“No, Marm,” said Jack cheerfully. “I shall not come and live In Perth.”
“Dear boy, of course you will! You won’t forsake us and take your money and your family and your attractive self far away to England? No, don’t do that. It is just what your dear father did. Robbed us of one of our sweetest girls, and never came back.”
“No, I shan’t go to England either,” smiled Jack.
“Then what will you do?”
“Stay at the mine for the time being.”
“Oh, but the mine won’t last forever. And dear boy, don’t waste your talents and your charm mining, when it is no longer necessary! Oh, do come down to Perth, and bring your family. Mary is pining to see your twins: and dear Monica. Of course we all are.” Jack smiled to himself. He would no longer give in a hair’s breadth to any of these dreary world-people.
“A la bonne heure!” he said, using one of his mother’s well-worn tags. But then his mother could rattle bad colloquial French, and he couldn’t.
Mary asked him many questions about the mine and Monica, and Hilda Blessington listened with lowered head, only occasionally fixing him with queer searching eyes, like some odd creature not quite human. Jack was something of a hero. And he was pleased. He wanted to be a hero.
But he was no hero any more for Aunt Matilda. Now that the cherub look had gone forever, and the shy, blushing, blurting boy had turned into a hard-boned, healthy young man, with a half haughty aloofness and a little reckless smile that made you feel uncomfortable, she was driven to venting some venom on him.
“That is the worst of the colonies,” she said from her bluish powdered face. “Our most charming, cultured young men go out to the back of beyond, and they come home quite — quite — ”
“Quite what, Marm?”
“Why I was going to say uncouth, but that’s perhaps a little strong.”
“I should say not at all,” he answered. He disliked the old lady, and enjoyed baiting her. Great stout old hen, she had played cock-o’-the-walk long enough.
“How many children have you got out there?” she suddenly asked, rudely.
“We have only the twins of my own,” he answered. “But of course there is Jane.”
“Jane! Jane! Which is Jane?”
“Jane is Easu’s child. Monica’s first.”
Everybody started. It was as if a bomb had been dropped in the room. Miss Blessington coloured to the roots of her fleecy brown hair. Mary studied her fingers, and Aunt Matilda sat in a Queen Victoria statue pose, outraged.
“What is she like?” asked Mary softly, looking up.
“Who, Jane? She’s a funny little urchin. I’m fond of her. I believe she’d always stand by me.”
Mary looked at him. It was a curious thing to say.
“Is that how you think of people — whether they would always stand by you or not?” she asked softly.
“I suppose it is,” he laughed. “Courage is the first quality in life, don’t you think? And fidelity the next.”
“Fidelity?” asked Mary.
“Oh, I don’t mean automatic fidelity. I mean faithful to the living spark,” he replied a little hastily.
“Don’t you try to be too much of a spark, young man,” snapped Aunt Matilda, arousing from her statuesque offence in order to let nothing pass by her.
“I promise you I won’t try,” he laughed.
Mary glanced at him quickly — then down at her fingers.
“I think fidelity is a great problem,” she said softly.
“Pray, why?” bounced Aunt Matilda. “You give your word, and you stick to it.”
“Oh, it’s not just simple word-faithfulness, Mrs. Watson,” said Jack. He had Mary in mind.
“Well, I suppose I have still to live and learn,” said Aunt Matilda.
“What’s that you have still to live and learn, Matilda?” said Mr. George, coming in again with papers.
“This young man is teaching me lessons about life. Courage is the first quality in life, if you please.”
“Well, why not?” said Old George amiably. “I like spunk myself.”
“Courage to do the right thing!” said Aunt Matilda.
“And who’s going to decide which is the right thing?” asked the old man, teasing her.
“There’s no question of it,” said Aunt Matilda.
“Well,” said the old lawyer, rubbing his head, “there often is, my dear woman, a very big question!”
“And fidelity is the second virtue,” said Mary, looking up at him with trustful eyes, enquiringly.
“A man’s no good unless he can keep faith,” said the old man.
“But what is it one must remain faithful to?” came the quiet cool voice of Hilda Blessington.
“Do you know what old Gran Ellis said?” asked Jack. “She said a man’s own true self is God in him. She was a queer old bird.”
“His true self,” said Aunt Matilda. “His true self! And I should say old Mrs. Ellis was a doubtful guide to young people, judging from her own family.”
“She made a great impression on me, Marm,” said Jack politely.
Mr. George had brought the papers referring to the new property. Jack read various documents, rather absently. Then the title deeds. Then he studied a fascinating little green-and-red map, “delineating and setting forth,” with “easements and encumbrances,” whatever they were. There was a bank-book showing a balance of four hundred pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, in the West Australian Bank. Jack told about his visit to Grant Farm, and the man under the umbrella. They all laughed.
“The poor fellow had a bad start,” said Mr. George. “But he was a good farmer and a good business man, in his right times. Oh, he knew who he was leaving the place to, when Rackett drew up that will.”
“Gran Ellis told me about him,” said Jack. “She told me about all the old people. She told me about my mother’s old sister. And she told me about the father of this crazy man as well, but — ”
Mr. George was looking at him coldly and fiercely.
“The poor fellow’s father,” said the old man, “was an Englishman who thought himself a swell, but wasn’t too much of a high-born gentleman to abandon a decent girl and go round to the east side and marry another woman, and flaunt round in society with women he hadn’t married.”
Jack remembered. It was Mary’s father: seventh son of old Lord Haworth. What a mix-up! How bitter Old George sounded!
“It seems to have been a mighty mix-up out here, fifty years ago, sir,” he said mildly.
“It was a mix-up then — and is a mix-up now.”
“I suppose,” said Jack, “if the villain of a gentleman had never abandoned my Aunt — I can’t think of her as an Aunt — he’d never have gone to Sydney, and his children that he had there would never have been born.”
“I suppose not,” said Mr. George drily. But he started a little and involuntarily looked at Mary.
“Do you think it would have been better if they had never been born?” Jack asked pertinently.
“I don’t set up to judge,” said the old man.
“Does Mrs. Watson?”
“I certainly think it would be better,” said Mrs. Watson, “if that poor half-idiot cousin of yours had neve
r been born.”
“I’ve got Gran Ellis on my mind,” said Jack. “She was funny, what she condemned and what she didn’t. I used to think she was an old terror. But I can understand her better now. She was a wise woman, seems to me.”
“Indeed!” said Aunt Matilda. “I never put her and wisdom together.”
“Yes, she was wise. I can see now. She knew that sins are as vital a part of life as virtues, and she stuck up for the sins that are necessary to life.”
“What’s the matter with you, Jack Grant, that you go and start moralising?” said Old George.
“Why sir, it must be that my own sinful state is dawning on my mind,” said Jack, “and I’m wondering whether to take Mrs. Watson’s advice and repent and weep, etc., etc. Or whether to follow old Gran Ellis’ lead, and put a sinful feather in my cap.”
“Well,” said Old George, smiling, “I don’t know. You talk about courage and fidelity. Sin usually means doing something rather cowardly, and breaking your faith in some direction.”
“Oh I don’t know, sir. Tom and Lennie are faithful to me. But that doesn’t mean they are not free. They are free to do just what they like, so long as they are faithful to the spark that is between us. As I am faithful to them. It seems to me, Sir, one is true to one’s word in business, in affairs. But in life one can only be true to the spark.”
“I’m afraid there’s something amiss with you, son, that’s set you off arguing and splitting hairs.”
“There is. Something is always amiss with most of us. Old Gran Ellis was a lesson to me, if I’d known. Something is always wrong with the lot of us. And I believe in thinking before I act.”
“Let us hope so,” said Mr. George. “But it sounds funny sort of thinking you do.”
“But,” said Hilda Blessington, with wide, haunted eyes, “what is the spark that one must be faithful to? How are we to be sure of it?”
“You just feel it. And then you act upon it. That’s courage. And then you always live up to the responsibility of your act. That’s faithfulness. You have to keep faith in all kinds of ways. I have to keep faith with Monica and the babies, and young Jane, and Lennie and Tom and dead Gran Ellis: and — and more — yes, more.”
He looked with clear hard eyes at Mary, and at the young girl. They were both watching him, puzzled and perturbed. The two old people in the background were silent but hostile.
“Do you know what I am faithful to?” he said, still to the two young women, but letting the elders hear. “I am faithful to my own inside, when something stirs in me. Gran Ellis said that was God in me. I know there’s a God outside of me. But he tells me to go my own way, and never be frightened of people and the world, only be frightened of Him. And if I felt I really wanted two wives, for example, I would have them and keep them both. If I really wanted them, it would mean it was the God outside of me bidding me, and it would be up to me to obey, world or no world.”
“You describe exactly the devil driving you,” said Aunt Matilda.
“Doesn’t he!” laughed Mr. George, who was oddly impressed. “I hope there isn’t a streak of madness in the family.”
“No, there’s not. The world is all so tame, it’s a bit imbecile, in my opinion. Really a dangerous idiot. If I do want two wives — or even three — I do. Why should I mind what the idiot says.”
“Sounds like you’d gone cracked, out there in that mining settlement,” said Mr. George.
“If I said I wanted two fortunes instead of one, you wouldn’t think it cracked,” said Jack, with a malicious smile.
“No, only greedy,” said Old George.
“Not if I could use them. And the same if I have real use for two wives — or even three — ” said Jack, grinning, but with a queer bright intention, at Hilda Blessington. “Well, three wives would be three fortunes for my blood and spirit.”
“You are not allowed to say such things, even as a joke,” said Aunt Matilda, with ponderous disapproval. “It is no joke to me.”
“Surely I say them in dead earnest,” persisted Jack mischievously. He was aware of Mary and Hilda Blessington listening, and he wanted to throw a sort of lasso over them.
“You’ll merely find yourself in gaol for bigamy,” said Mr. George.
“Oh,” said Jack, “I wouldn’t risk that. It would really be a Scotch marriage. Monica is my legal wife. But what I pledged myself to, I’d stick to, as I stick to Monica, I’d stick to the others the same.”
“I won’t hear any more of this nonsense,” said Aunt Matilda, rising.
“Nonsense it is,” said Old George testily.
Jack laughed. Their being bothered amused him. He was a little surprised at himself breaking out in this way. But the sight of Mary, and the sense of a new, different responsibility, had struck it out of him. His nature was ethical, inclined to be emotionally mystical. Now, however, the sense of foolish complacency and empty assurance in Aunt Matilda, and in all the dead-certain people of this world struck out of him a hard, sharp, non-emotional opposition. He felt hard and mischievous, confronting them. Who were they, to judge and go on judging? Who was Aunt Matilda, to judge the dead fantastic soul of the fierce Gran? The Ellises, the Ellises, they all had some of Gran’s fierce pagan uneasiness about them, they were all a bit uncanny. That was why he loved them so.
And Mary! Mary had another slow, heavy, mute mystery that waited and waited forever, like a lode-stone. And should he therefore abandon her, abandon her to society and a sort of sterility? Not he. She was his. His, and no other man’s. She knew it herself. He knew it. Then he would fight them all. Even the good Old George. For the mystery that was his and Mary’s.
Let it be an end of popular goodness. Let there be another deeper, fiercer, untamed sort of goodness, like in the days of Abraham and Samson and Saul. If Jack was to be good he would be good with these great old men, the heroic fathers, not with the saints. The Christian goodness had gone bad, decayed almost into poison. It needed again the old heroic goodness of untamed men, with the wild great God who was forever too unknown to be a paragon.
Old George was a little afraid of Jack, uneasy about him. He thought him not normal. The boy had to be put in a category by himself, like a madman in a solitary cell. And at the same time, the old man was delighted. He was delighted with the young man’s physical presence. Bewildered by the careless, irrational things Jack would say, the old bachelor took off his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes again and again, as if he were going blind, and as if he were losing his old dominant will.
He had been a dominant character in the colony so long. And now this young fellow was laughing at him and stealing away his power of resistance.
“Don’t make eyes at me, sir,” said Jack, laughing. “I know better than you what life means.”
“You do, do you? Oh you do?” said the old man. And he laughed too. Somehow it made him feel warm and easy. “A fine crazy affair it would be if it were left to you.” And he laughed loud at the absurdity.
II
Jack persuaded Mary to go with Mr. George and himself to look at Grant Farm. Mary and the old lawyer went in a buggy, Jack rode his own horse. And it seemed to him to be good to be out again in the bush and forest country. It was rainy season, and the smell of the earth was delicious in his nostrils.
He decided soon to leave the mine. It was running thin. He could leave it in charge of Tom. And then he must make some plans for himself. Perhaps he would come and live on the Grant Farm. It was not too far from Perth, or from Wandoo, it was in the hills, the climate was balmy and almost English, after the goldfields, and there were trees. He really rejoiced again, riding through strong, living trees.
Sometimes he would ride up beside Mary. She sat very still at Mr. George’s side, talking to him in her quick, secret-seeming way. Mary always looked as if the things she was saying were secrets.
And her upper lip with its down of fine dark hair, would lift and show her white teeth as she smiled with her mouth. She only smiled with her mouth
: her eyes remained dark and glistening and unchanged. But she talked a great deal to Mr. George, almost like lovers, they were so confidential and so much in tune with one another. It was as if Mary was happy with an old man’s love, that was fatherly, warm, and sensuous, and wise and talkative, without being at all dangerous.
When Jack rode up, she seemed to snap the thread of her communication with Mr. George, her ready volubility failed, and she was a little nervous. Her eyes, her dark eyes, were afraid of the young man. Yet they would give him odd, bright, corner-wise looks, almost inviting. So different from the full, confident way she looked at Mr. George. So different from Monica’s queer yellow glare. Mary seemed almost to peep at him, while her dark face, like an animal’s muzzle with its slightly heavy mouth, remained quite expressionless.
It amused him. He remembered how he had kissed her, and he wondered if she remembered. It was impossible, of course, to ask her. And when she talked, it was always so seriously. That again amused Jack. She was so voluble, especially with Mr. George, on all kinds of deep and difficult subjects. She was quite excited, just now about authoritarianism. She was being drawn by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Oh,” she was saying, “I am an authoritarian. Don’t you think that the whole natural scheme is a scheme of authority, one rank having authority over another?”
Mr. George couldn’t quite see it. Yet it tickled his paternal male conceit of authority, so he didn’t contradict her. And Jack smiled to himself. “She runs too much to talk,” he thought. “She runs too much in her head.” She seemed, indeed, to have forgotten quite how he kissed her. It seemed that “questions of the day” quite absorbed her.
They came through the trees in the soft afternoon sunshine. Jack remembered the place well. He remembered the jamboree, and that girl who had called him Dearie! His first woman! And insignificant enough; but not bad. He thought kindly of her. She was a warm-hearted soul. But she didn’t belong to his life at all. He remembered too how he had kicked Tom. The faithful Tom! Mary would never marry Tom, that was a certainty. And it was equally certain, Tom would never break his heart.
Jack was thinking to himself that he would build a new house on this place, and ask Mary to live in the old house. That was a brilliant idea.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 420