“I wouldn’t take it if I was starving,” she asserted.
“You’re in no danger of starving, so don’t talk,” said the old man, testily. “It’s a nice little place. I should enjoy coming out here and spending a few months of the year myself. Should like nothing better.”
“But I won’t take it,” said Mary.
Jack went grinning off to his stable. He was angry, but it was the kind of anger that made him feel sarcastic.
Damn her! She was in love with him. She had a passion for him. What did she want? Did she want him to make love to her, and run away with her, and abandon Monica and Jane and the twin babies? — No doubt she would listen to such a proposition hard enough. But he was never going to make it her. He had married Monica, and he would stick to her. She was his first and chief wife, and whatever happened, she should remain it. He detested and despised divorce; a shifty business. But it was nonsense to pretend that Monica was the beginning and end of his marriage with woman. Woman was the matrix, the red earth, and he wanted his roots in this earth. More than one root, to keep him steady and complete. Mary instinctively belonged to him. Then why not belong to him completely? Why not? And why not make a marriage with her too? The legal marriage with Monica, his own marriage with Mary. It was a natural thing. The old heroes, the old fathers of red earth, like Abraham in the Bible, like David even, they took the wives they needed for their own completeness, without this nasty chop-and-change business of divorce. Then why should he not do the same?
He would have all the world against him. But what would it matter, if he were away in the Never-Never, where the world just faded out? Monica could have the chief house. But Mary should have another house, with garden and animals if she wanted them. And she should have her own children: his children. Why should she be only Auntie to Monica’s children? Mary, with her black, glistening eyes and her short, dark, secret body, she was asking far children. She was asking him for his children, really. He knew it, and secretly she knew it; and Aunt Matilda, and even Old George knew it, somewhere in themselves. And Old George was funny. He wouldn’t really have minded an affair between Jack and Mary, provided it had been kept dark. He would even have helped them to it, so long as they would let nothing be known.
But Jack was too wilful and headstrong, and too proud, for an intrigue. An intrigue meant a certain cringing before society, and this he would never do. If he took Mary, it was because he felt she instinctively belonged to him. Because, in spite of the show she kept up, her womb was asking for him. And he wanted her for himself. He wanted to have her and to answer her. And he would be judged by nobody.
He rose quickly, returning to the house. Mary and the old man were in the kitchen, getting their candles to go to bed.
“Mary,” said Jack, “come out and listen to the night-bird.”
She started slightly, glanced at him, then at Mr. George.
“Go with him a minute, if you want to,” said the old man.
Rather unwillingly she went out of the door with Jack. They crossed the yard in silence, towards the stable. She hesitated outside, in the thin moonlight.
“Come to the stable with me,” he said, his heart beating thick, and his voice strange and low.
“Oh Jack!” she cried, with a funny little lament; “you’re married to Monica! I can’t! You’re Monica’s.”
“Am I?” he said. “Monica’s mine, if you like, but why am I all hers? She’s certainly not all mine. She belongs chiefly to her babies just now. Why shouldn’t she? She’s their red earth. But I’m not going to shut my eyes. Neither am I going to play the mild Saint Joseph. I don’t feel that way. At the present moment I’m not Monica’s, any more than she is mine. So what’s the good of your telling me? I shall love her again, when she is free. Everything in season, even wives. Now I love you again, after having never thought of it for a long while. But it was always slumbering inside me, just as Monica is asleep inside me this minute. The sun goes, and the moon comes. A man isn’t made up of only one thread. What’s the good of keeping your virginity! It’s really mine. Come with me to the stable, and then afterwards come and live in the North-West, in one of my houses, and have your children there, and animals or whatever you want.”
“Oh God!” cried Mary. “You must really be mad. You don’t love me, you can’t, you must love Monica. Oh God, why do you torture me!”
“I don’t torture you. Come to the stable with me. I love you too.”
“But you love Monica.”
“I shall love Monica again; another time. Now I love you. I don’t change. But sometimes it’s one, then the other. Why not?”
“It can’t be! It can’t be!” cried Mary.
“Why not? Come into the stable with me, with me and the horses.”
“Oh don’t torture me! I hate my animal nature. You want to make a slave of me,” she cried blindly.
This struck him silent. Hate her animal nature? What did she mean? Did she mean the passion she had for him? And make a slave of her? How?
“How make a slave of you?” he asked. “What are you now? You are a sad thing as you are. I don’t want to leave you as you are. You are a slave now, to Aunt Matilda and all the conventions. Come with me into the stable.”
“Oh, you are cruel to me! You are wicked! I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? You can. I am not wicked. To me it doesn’t matter what the world is. You really want me, and nothing but me. It’s only the outside of you that’s afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of, now we have enough money. You will come with me to the North-West, and be my other wife, and have my children, and I shall depend on you as a man has to depend on a woman.”
“How selfish you are! You are as selfish as my father, who betrayed your mother’s sister and left this skull-and-crossbones son,” she cried. “No, it’s dreadful, it’s horrible. In this horrible place, too, proposing such a thing to me. It shows you have no feelings.”
“I don’t care about feelings. They’re what people have because they feel they ought to have them. But I know my own real feelings. I don’t care about your feelings.”
“I know you don’t,” she said. “Good-night!” She turned abruptly and hurried away in the moonlight, escaping to the house.
Jack watched the empty night for some minutes. Then he turned away into the stable.
“That’s that!” he said, seeing his little plans come to nought.
He went into the stable and sat down on his bed, near the horses. How good it was to be with the horses! How good animals were, with no “feelings” and no ideas. They just straight felt what they’ felt, without lies and complications.
Well, so be it! He was surprised. He had not expected Mary to funk the issue, since the issue was clear. What else was the right thing to do? Why, nothing else!
It seemed to him so obvious. Mary obviously wanted him, even more, perhaps, than he wanted her. Because she was only a part thing, by herself. All women were only parts of some whole, when they were by themselves: let them be as clever as they might. They were creatures of earth, and fragments, all of them. All women were only fragments; fragments of matrix at that.
No, he was not wrong, he was right. If the others didn’t agree, they didn’t, that was all. He still was right. He still hated the nauseous one-couple-in-one-cottage domesticity. He hated domesticity altogether. He loathed the thought of being shut up with one woman and a bunch of kids in a house. Several women, several houses, several bunches of kids: it would then be like a perpetual travelling, a camp, not a home. He hated homes. He wanted a camp.
He wanted to pitch his camp in the wilderness: with the faithful Tom, and Lennie, and his own wives. Wives, not wife. And the horses, and the come-and-go, and the element of wildness. Not to be tamed. His men, men by themselves. And his women never to be tamed. And the wilderness still there. He wanted to go like Abraham under the wild sky, speaking to a fierce wild Lord, and having angels stand in his doorway.
Why not? Even
if the whole world said No! Even then, why not?
As for being ridiculous, what was more ridiculous than men wheeling perambulators and living among a mass of furniture in a tight house?
Anyhow it was no good talking to Mary at the moment. She wasn’t a piece of the matrix of red earth. She was a piece of the upholstered world. Damn the upholstered world! He would go back to the goldfields, to Tom and Lennie and Monica, back to camp. Back to camp, away from the upholstery.
No, he wasn’t a man who had finished when he had got one wife.
And that damned Mary, by the mystery of fate, was linked to him.
And damn her, she preferred to break that link, and turn into an upholstered old maid. Of all the hells!
Then let her marry Blessington and a houseful of furniture. Or else marry Old George, and gas to him while he could hear. She loved gassing. Talk, talk, talk, Jack hated a talking woman. But Mary would rather sit gassing with Old George than be with him, Jack. Of all the surprising hells!
At least Tom wasn’t like that. And Monica wasn’t. But Monica was wrapped up in her babies, she seemed to swim in a sea of babies, and Jack had to let her be. And she too had a hankering after furniture. He knew she’d be after it, if he didn’t prevent her. Well, it was no good preventing people, even from stuffed plush furniture and knick-knacks. But he’d keep the brake on. He would do that.
CHAPTER XXV
TROT, TROT BACK AGAIN
But as he rode back to Perth, with Mary rather stiff and silent, and Mr. George absorbed in his own thoughts; and as they greeted people on the road, and passed by settlements; and as they saw far off the pale-blue sea with a speck of a steamer smoking, and the dim fume of Perth down at sea-level, he thought to himself: “I had better be careful. I had better be wary. The world is cold and cautious, it has cold blood, like ants and centipedes. They, all the men in the world, they hardly want one wife, let alone two. And they would take any excuse to destroy me. They would like to destroy me, because I am not cold and like an ant, as they are. Mary would like me to be killed. Look at her face. She would feel a real deep satisfaction if my horse threw me against those stones and smashed my skull in. She would feel vindicated. And Old George would think it served me right. And practically everybody would be glad. Not Tom and Len. But practically everybody else. Even Monica, though she is my wife. Even she feels a judgment ought to descend upon me. Because I’m not what she wants me to be. Because I’m not as she thinks I ought to be. And because she can’t get beyond me. Because something inside her knows she can’t get past me. Therefore, in one corner of her she hates me, like a scorpion lurking. If I’m unaware, and put my hand unthinking in that corner, she’ll sting me and hope to kill me. How curious it is! And since I have found the gold it is more emphatic than before. As if they grudged me something. As if they grudged me my very being. Because I’m not one of them, and just like they are, they would like me destroyed. It has always been so ever since I was born. My Aunts, my own father. And my mother didn’t want me destroyed as they secretly did, but even my mother would not have tried to prevent them from destroying me. Even when they like me, as Old George does, they grudge their own liking, they take it back whenever they can. He defended me over Easu because he thought I was defending Monica, and going the good way of the world. Now he scents that I am going my own way, he feels as if I were a sort of snake that should be put out of existence. That’s how Mary feels too: and Mary loves me, if loving counts for anything. Tom and Len don’t wish me destroyed. But if they saw the world destroying me they’d acquiesce. Their fondness for me is only passive, not active. I believe, if I ransacked earth and heaven, there’s nobody would fight for me as I am, not a soul, except that little Jane of Easu’s. The others would fight like cats and dogs for me as they want me to be. But for me as I am, they think I ought to be destroyed.
“And I, I am a fool, talking to them, giving myself away to them, as to Mary. Why, Mary ought to go down on her knees before the honour, if I want to take her. Instead of which she puffs herself up, and spits venom in my face like a cobra.
“Very well, very well. Soon I can go out of her sight again, for I loathe the sight of her. I can ride down Hay Street without yielding a hair’s breadth to any man or woman on earth. And I can ride out of Perth without leaving a vestige of myself behind, for them to work mischief on.
“God, but it’s a queer thing, to know that they all want to destroy me as I am, even out here in this far-off colony. I thought it was only my Aunts, and my father because of his social position. But it is everybody. Even, passively, my mother, and Tom and Len. Because inside my soul I don’t conform: can’t conform. They would all like to kill the nonconforming me. Which is me myself.
“And at the same time they all love me exceedingly the moment they think I am in line with them. The moment they think I am in line with them, they’re awfully fond of me. Monica, Mary, Old George, even Aunt Matilda, they’re almost all of them in love with me then, and they’d give me anything. If I asked Mary to sin with me as something I shouldn’t do, but I went down on my knees and asked for it, unable to help myself, she’d give in to me like anything. And Monica, if I was willing to be forgiven, would forgive me with unction.
“But since I refuse the sin business, and I never go down on my knees; and since I say that my way is better than theirs, and that I should have my two wives, and both of them know that it is an honour for them to be taken by me, an honour for them to be put into my house and acknowledged there, they would like to kill me. It is I who must grovel, I who must submit to judgment. If I would but submit to their judgment, I could do all the wicked things I like, and they would only love me better. But since I will never submit to them, they would like to destroy me off the face of the earth, like a rattlesnake.
“They shall not do it. But I must be wary. I must not put out my hand to ask them for anything, or they will strike my hand like vipers out of a hole. I must take great care to ask them for nothing, and to take nothing from them. Absolutely I must have nothing from them, not so much as to let them carry the cup of tea for me, unpaid. I must be very careful. I should not have let that brown snake of a Mary see I wanted her. As for Monica, I married her, so that makes them all allow me certain rights, as far as she is concerned. But she has her rights too, and the moment she thinks I trespass on them, she will unsheath her fangs.
“As for me, I refuse their social rights, they can keep them. If they will give me no rights, to the man I am, to me as I am, they shall give me nothing.
“God, what am I going to do? I feel like a man whom the snake-worshipping savages have thrown into one of their snake-pits. All snakes, and if I touch a single one of them, it will bite me. Man or woman, wife or friend, every one of them is ready for me since I am rich. Daniel in the den of lions was a comfortable man in comparison. These are all silent, damp, creeping snakes, like that yellow-faced Mary there, and that little whip-snake of a Monica, whom I have loved. ‘Now they bite me where I most have sinned,’ says old Don Rodrigo, when the snakes of the Inferno bite him. So they shall not bite me. God in heaven, no, so they, shall not bite me. Snakes they are, and the world is a snake-pit into which one is thrown. But still they shall not bite me. As sure as God is God, they shall not bite me. I will crush their heads rather.
“Why did I want that Mary? How unspeakably repulsive she is to me now! Why did I ever want Monica so badly? God, I shall never want her again. They shall not bite me as they bit Don Rodrigo, or Don Juan. My name is John, but I am no Don. God forbid that I should take a title from them.
“And the soft, good Tom and Lennie, they shall live their lives, but not with my life.
“Am I not a fool! Am I not a pure crystal of a fool! I thought they would love me for what I am, for the man I am, and they only love me for the me as they want me to be. They only love me because they get themselves glorified out of me.
“I thought at least they would give me a certain reverence, because I am myself and because
I am different, in the name of the Lord. But they have all got their fangs full and surcharged with insult, to vent it on me the moment I stretch out my hand.
“I thought they would know the Lord was with me, and a certain new thing with me on the face of the earth. But if they know the Lord is with me, it is only so that they can intensify and concentrate their poison, to drive Him out again. And if they guess a new thing in me, on the face of the earth, it only makes them churn their bile and secrete their malice into a poison that would corrode the face of the Lord.
“Lord! Lord! That I should ever have wanted them, or even wanted to touch them! That ever I should have wanted to come near them, or to let them come near me. Lord, as the only boon, the only blessedness, leave me intact, leave me utterly isolate and out of the reach of all men.
“That I should have wanted! That I should have wanted Monica so badly! Well, I got her, and she saves her fangs in silent readiness for me, for the me as I am, not the me that is hers. That I should have wanted this Mary, whom I now despise. That I should have thought of a new little world of my own!
“What a fool! To think of Abraham, and the great men in the early days. To think that I could take up land in the North, a big wild stretch of land, and build my house and raise my cattle and live as Abraham lived, at the beginning of time, but myself at another, late beginning. With my wives and the children of my wives, and Tom and Lennie with their families, my right hand and my left hand, and absolutely fearless. And the men I would have work for me, because they were fearless and hated the world. Each one having his share of the cattle, and the horses, at the end of the year. Men ready to fight for me and with me, no matter against what. A little world of my own, in the North-West. And my children growing up like a new race on the face of the earth, with a new creed of courage and sensual pride, and the black wonder of the halls of death ahead, and the call to be lords of death, on earth. With my Lord, as dark as death and splendid with lustrous doom, a sort of spontaneous royalty, for the God of my little world. The spontaneous royalty of the dark Overlord, giving me earth-royalty, like Abraham or Saul, that can’t be quenched and that moves on to perfection in death. One’s last and perfect lordliness in the halls of death, when slaves have sunk as carrion, and only the serene in pride are left to judge the unborn.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 422