CHAPTER II. The Twin Lambs
CHAPTER III. Driving to Wandoo
CHAPTER IV. Wandoo
CHAPTER V. The Lambs Come Home
CHAPTER VI. In the Yard
CHAPTER VII. Out Back and Some Letters
CHAPTER VIII. Home for Christmas
CHAPTER IX. New Year's Eve
CHAPTER X. Shadows Before
CHAPTER XI. Blows
CHAPTER XII. The Great Passing
CHAPTER XIII. Tom and Jack Ride Together
CHAPTER XIV. Jamboree
CHAPTER XV. Uncle John Grant
CHAPTER XVI. On the Road
CHAPTER XVII. After Two Years
CHAPTER XVIII. The Governor's Dance
CHAPTER XIX. The Welcome at Wandoo
CHAPTER XX. The Last of Easu
CHAPTER XXI. Lost
CHAPTER XXII. The Find
CHAPTER XXIII. Gold
CHAPTER XXIV. The Offer to Mary
CHAPTER XXV. Trot, Trot Back Again
CHAPTER XXVI. The Rider on the Red Horse
THE BOY IN THE BUSH
CHAPTER I
JACK ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA
I
He stepped ashore, looking like a lamb. Far be it from me to say he was
the lamb he looked. Else why should he have been sent out of England?
But a good-looking boy he was, with dark blue eyes and the complexion of
a girl and a bearing just a little too lamb-like to be convincing.
He stepped ashore in the newest of new colonies, glancing quickly
around, but preserving his lamb-like quietness. Down came his elegant
kit, and was dumped on the wharf: a kit that included a brand-new
pigskin saddle and bridle, nailed up in a box straight from a smart shop
in London. He kept his eye on that also, the tail of his well-bred eye.
Behind him was the wool ship that had brought him from England. This
nondescript port was Fremantle, in West Australia; might have been
anywhere or nowhere. In his pocket he had a letter of introduction to a
well-known colonial lawyer, in which, as he was aware, was folded also a
draft on a West Australian bank. In his purse he had a five-pound note.
In his head were a few irritating memories. In his heart he felt a
certain excited flutter at being in a real new land, where a man could
be _really_ free. Though what he meant by "free" he never stopped to
define. He left everything suitably vague.
Meanwhile, he waited for events to develop, as if it were none of his
business.
This was forty years ago, when it was still a long, long way to
Australia, and the land was still full of the lure of promise. There
were gold and pearl findings, bush and bush-ranging, the back of beyond
and everything desirable. Much misery, too, ignored by all except the
miserable.
And Jack was not quite eighteen, so he ignored a great deal. He didn't
pay much attention even to his surroundings, yet from the end of the
wharf he saw pure sky above, the pure, unknown, unsullied sea to
westward; the ruffled, tumbled sand glistened like fine silver, the air
was the air of a new world, unbreathed by man.
The only prize Jack had ever won at school was for Scripture. The Bible
language exerted a certain fascination over him, and in the background
of his consciousness the Bible images always hovered. When he was moved,
it was Scripture that came to his aid. So now he stood, silent with the
shyness of youth, thinking over and over: "There shall be a new heaven
and a new earth."
Not far off among the sand near the harbour mouth lay the township, a
place of strong, ugly, oblong houses of white stone with unshuttered
bottle-glass windows and a low white-washed wall going round, like a
sort of compound; that there was a huge stone prison with a high
whitewashed wall. Nearer the harbour, a few new tall warehouse
buildings, and sheds, long sheds, and a little wooden railway station.
Further out again, windmills for milling flour, the mill-sails turning
in the transparent breeze from the sea. Right in the middle of the
township was a stolid new Victorian church with a turret: and this was
the one thing he knew he disliked in the view.
On the wharf everything was busy. The old wool steamer lay important in
dock, people were crowding on deck and crowding the wharf in a very
informal manner, porters were running with baggage, a chain was
clanking, and little groups of emigrants stood forlorn, looking for
their wooden chests, swinging their odd bundles done up in coloured
kerchiefs. The uttermost ends of the earth! All so lost, and yet so
familiar. So familiar, and so lost. The people like provincial people at
home. The railway running through the sand hills. And the feeling of
remote unreality.
This was his mother's country. She had been born and raised here, and
she had told him about it, many a time, like a fable. And this was what
it was like! How could she feel she actually _belonged_ to it? Nobody
could belong to it.
Himself, he belonged to Bedford, England. And Bedford College. But his
mind turned away from this in repugnance. Suddenly he turned desirously
to the unreality of place.
Jack was waiting for Mr. George, the lawyer to whom his letter of
introduction was addressed. Mr. George had shaken hands with him on
deck: a stout and breezy gentleman, who had been carried away again on
the gusts of his own breeze, among the steamer crowd, and had forgotten
his young charge. Jack patiently waited. Adult and responsible people
with stout waistcoats had a habit, he knew, of being needed elsewhere.
Mr. George! And all his mother's humorous stories about him! This
notable character of the Western lonely colony, this rumbustical old
gentleman who had a "terrific memory," who was "full of quotations" and
who "never forgot a face"--Jack waited the more calmly, sure of being
recognised again by him--was to be seen in the distance with his thumbs
hooked in his waistcoat armholes, passively surveying the scene with a
quiet, shrewd eye, before hailing another acquaintance and delivering
another sally. He had a "tongue like a razor" and frightened the women
to death. Seeing him there on the wharf, elderly, stout and decidedly
old-fashioned, Jack had a little difficulty in reconciling him with the
hearty colonial hero of his mother's stories.
How he had missed a seat on the bench, for example. He was to become a
judge. But while acting on probation, or whatever it is called, a man
came up before him charged with wife-beating, and serious maltreatment
of his better half. A verdict of "not guilty" was returned. "Two years
hard labour," said Mr. George, who didn't like the looks of the fellow.
There was a protest. "Verdict stands!" said Mr. George. "Two years hard
labour. Give it him for _not_ beating her and breaking her head. He
should have done. He should have done. 'Twas fairly proved!"
So Mr. George had remained a lawyer, instead of becoming a judge. A
stout, shabby, provincial-looking old man with baggy trousers that
seemed as if they were slipping down. Jack had still to get used to that
sort of trousers. One of his mother's heroes!
But the whole scene was still outside the boy's vague, almost trancelike
state. The commotion of unloading went on--people stood in groups, the
lumpers were already at work with the winches, bringing bales and boxes
from the hold. The Jewish gentleman standing just there had a red nose.
He swung his cane uneasily. He must be well-off, to judge by his links
and watch-chain. But then why did his trousers hang so low and baggy,
and why was his waistcoat of yellow cloth--that cloth cost a guinea a
yard, Jack knew it from his horsey acquaintances--so dirty and frayed?
Western Australia in the year 1882. Jack had read all about it in the
official report on the steamer. The colony had three years before
celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Many people still remembered the
fiasco of the first attempt at the Swan River Settlement. Captain
Stirling brought the first boatload of prospective settlers. The
Government promised not to defile the land with convicts. But the
promise was broken. The convicts had come: and that stone
prison-building must have been the convict station. He knew from his
mother's stories. But he also knew that the convicts were now gone
again. The "Establishment" had been closed down already for ten years or
more.
A land must have its ups and downs. And the first thing the old world
had to ship to the new world was its sins, and the first shipments were
of sinners. That was what his mother said. Jack felt a certain sympathy.
He felt a sympathy with the empty "Establishment" and the departed
convicts. He himself was mysteriously a "sinner." He felt he was born
such: just as he was born with his deceptive handsome look of innocence.
He was a sinner, a Cain. Not that he was aware of having committed
anything that seemed to himself particularly sinful. No, he was not
aware of having "sinned." He was not aware that he ever would "sin."
But that wasn't the point. Curiously enough, that wasn't the point. The
men who commit sins and who know they commit sins usually get on quite
well with the world. Jack knew he would never get on well with the
world. He was a sinner. He knew that as far as the world went, he was a
sinner, born condemned. Perhaps it had come to him from his mother's
careless, rich, uncanny Australian blood. Perhaps it was a recoil from
his father's military-gentleman nature. His father was an officer in Her
Majesty's Army. An officer in Her Majesty's Army. For some reason, there
was always a touch of the fantastic and ridiculous, to Jack, in being an
officer in Her Majesty's Army. Quite a high and responsible officer,
usually stationed in command in one or other of Her Britannic Majesty's
Colonies.
Why did Jack find his father slightly fantastic? Why was that gentleman
in uniform who appeared occasionally, very resplendent and somehow very
"good," why was he always unreal and fantastic to the little boy left at
home in England? Why was he even more fantastic when he wore a black
coat and genteel grey trousers? He was handsome and pleasant, and
indisputably "good." Then why, oh, why should he have appeared fantastic
to his own little boy, who was so much like him in appearance?
"The spitten image!" one of his nurses had said. And Jack never forgave
it. He thought it meant a spat-upon image, or an image in spit. This he
resented and repudiated absolutely, though it remained vague.
"Oh, you little sinner!" said the same nurse, half caressingly. And this
the boy had accepted as his natural appellation. He was a little sinner.
As he grew older, he was a young sinner. Now, as he approached manhood,
he was a sinner without modification.
Not, we repeat, that he was ever able to understand wherein his
sinfulness lay. He knew his father was a "good man."--"The colonel, your
father, is such a _good man_, so you must be a _good little boy_ and
grow up like him."--"There is no better example of an English gentleman
than your father, the general. All you have to do is to grow up like
him."
Jack knew from the start that he wouldn't. And therein lay the sin,
presumably. Or the root of the sin.
He did not dislike his father. The general was kind and simple and
amiable. How could anyone dislike him? But to the boy he was always just
a little fantastic, like the policeman in a Punch-and-Judy show.
Jack loved his mother with a love that could not but be intermittent,
for sometimes she stayed in England and "lived" with him, and more often
she left him and went off with his father to Jamaica or some such
place--or to India or Khartoum, names that were in his blood--leaving
the boy in the charge of a paternal Aunt. He didn't think much of the
Aunt.
But he liked the warm, flushed, rather muddled delight of his mother.
She was a handsome, ripe Australian woman with warm colouring and soft
flesh, absolutely kindly in a humorous, off-hand fashion, warm with a
jolly sensuousness, and good in a wicked sort of way. She sat in the sun
and laughed and refused to quarrel, refused also to weep. When she had
to leave her little boy a spasm would contract her face and make her
look ugly, so the child was glad if she went quickly. But she was in
love with her husband, who was still more in love with her, so off she
went laughing sensuously across seven seas, quarrelling with nobody,
pitching her camp in true colonial fashion wherever she found herself,
yet always with a touch of sensuous luxury, Persian rugs and silk
cushions and dresses of rich material. She was the despair of the true
English wives, for you couldn't disapprove of her, she was the dearest
thing imaginable, and yet she introduced a pleasant, semi-luxurious
sense of--of what? Why, almost of sin. Not positive sin. She was really
the dearest thing imaginable. But the feeling that there was no fence
between sin and virtue. As if sin were, so to speak, the unreclaimed
bush, and goodness were only the claims that the settlers had managed to
fence in. And there was so much more bush than settlement. And the one
was as good as the other, save that they served different ends. And that
you always had the wild and endless bush all round your little claim,
and coming and going was always through the wild and innocent, but
non-moral bush. Which non-moral bush had a devil in it. Oh, yes! But a
wild and comprehensible devil, like bush-rangers who did brutal and
lawless things. Whereas the tame devil of the settlement, drunkenness
and greediness and foolish pride, he was more scaring.
"My dear, there's tame innocence and wild innocence, and tame devils and
wild devils, and tame morality and wild morality. Let's camp in the bush
and be good." That was her attitude, always. "Let's camp in the bush and
be good." She was an Australian from a wild Australian homestead. And
she was like a wild sweet animal. Always the sense of space and lack of
restrictions, and it didn't matter _what_ you did, so long as you were
good inside yourself.
Her husband was in love with her, completely. To him it mattered very
much what you did. So perhaps her easy indifference to English
rail-fences satisfied in him the iconoclast that lies at the bottom of
all men.
She was not well-bred. There was a certain "cottage" geniality about
her. But also a sense of great, unfenced spaces, that put the ordinary
ladylikeness rather at a loss. A real colonial, from the newest,
wildest, remotest colony.
She loved her little boy. But also she loved her husband, and she loved
the army life. She preferred, really, to be with her husband. And you
can't trail a child about. And she lived in all the world, and she
couldn't bear to be poked in a village in England. Not for long. And she
was used to having men about her. Mostly men. Jolly men.
So her heart smarted for her little boy. But she had to leave him. And
he loved her, but did not dream of depending on her. He knew it as a
tiny child. He would never have to depend on anybody. His father would
pay money for him. But his father was rather jealous of him. Jealous
even of his beauty as a tiny child, in spite of the fact that the child
was the "spitten" image of the father: dark blue eyes, curly hair,
peach-bloom skin. Only the child had the easy way of accommodating
himself to life and circumstances, like his mother, and a certain
readiness to laugh, even when he was by himself. The easy laugh that
made his nurse say "You little sinner!"
He knew he was a little sinner. It rather amused him.
Jack's mind jolted awake as he made a grab at his hat, nearly knocking
it off, realizing that he was being introduced to two men: or that two
men were being introduced to him. They shook hands very casually,
giggling at the same time to one another in a suppressed manner. Jack
blushed furiously, embarrassed, not knowing what they were laughing at.
Just beside him, the Jewish gentleman was effusively greeting another
Jewish gentleman. In fact, they were kissing: which made Jack curl with
disgust. But he couldn't move away, because there were bales behind him,
people on two sides, and a big dog was dancing and barking in front of
him, at something which it saw away below through a crack in the wharf
timbers. The dog seemed to be a mixture of wolf and greyhound. Queer
specimen! Later, he knew it was called a kangaroo dog.
"Mr. A. Bell and Mr. Swallow. Mr. Jack Grant from England." This was Mr.
George introducing him to the two men, and going on without any change,
with a queer puffing of the lips: "Prh! Bah! Wolf and Hider! Wolf and
Hider!"
This left Jack, completely mystified. And why were Mr. Bell and Mr.
Swallow laughing so convulsedly? Was it the dog?
"You remember his father, Bell, out here in '59.--Captain Grant. Married
Surgeon-Captain Reid's youngest daughter, from Woolamooloo Station."
The gentleman said: "Pleased to make your acquaintance," which was a
phrase that embarrassed Jack because he didn't know what to answer.
Should one say, "Thank you!"--or "The pleasure is mine!" or "So am I to
make yours!" He mumbled: "How do you do!"
However, it didn't matter, for the two men kept the laugh between
themselves, while Mr. George took on a colonial _distrait_ look, then
blew out his cheeks and ejaculated: "Mercy and truth have met together:
righteousness and peace have kissed each other." This was said in a
matter-of-fact way. Jack knew it was a quotation from the Psalms, but
not what it was aimed at. The two men were laughing more openly at the
joke.
Was the joke against himself? Was it his own righteousness that was
funny? He blushed furiously once more.
II
But Mr. George ignored the boy's evident embarrassment, and strolled off
with one of the gentlemen--whether Bell or Swallow, Jack did not
know--towards the train.
The remaining gentleman--either Bell or Swallow--clapped the
uncomfortable youth comfortably on the shoulder.
"New chum, eh?--Not in the know? I'll tell you."--They set off after the
other two.
"By gad, 's a funny thing! You've got to laugh if old George is about,
though he never moves a muscle. Dry as a ship's biscuit. D'y'see the
Jews kissing? They've been at law for two years, those two blossoms.
One's name is Wolf and the other's Hider, and Mr. George is Wolf's
attorney. Never able to do anything, because you couldn't get Hider into
the open.--See the joke? Hider! Sneak Hider! Hider under the rafters!
Hider hidden! And the Wolf couldn't unearth him. Though George showed up
Wolf for what he is: a mean, grasping, contentious mongrel of a man. Now
they meet to kiss. See them? The suit ended in a mush. But that dog
there hunting a rat right under their feet--wasn't that beautiful? Old
George couldn't miss it.--'Mercy and truth have met together,' ha! ha!
However he finds his text for everything, beats me--"
Jack laughed, and walked in a daze beside his new acquaintance. He felt
he had fallen overhead into Australia, instead of arriving naturally.
The wood-eating little engine was gasping in front of a little train of
open carriages. Jack remarked on her tender piled high with chunks of
wood.
"Yes, we stoke 'er with timber. We carry all we can. And if we're going
a long way, to York, when she's burned up all she can carry she stops in
the bush and we all get down, passengers and all, to chop a new supply.
See the axe there? She carries half a dozen on a long trip."
The three men, all wearing old-fashioned whiskers, pulled out tobacco
pouches the moment they were seated, and started their pipes. They were
all stout, and their clothes were slack, and they behaved with such
absolute unconcern that it made Jack self-conscious.
He sat rather stiffly, remembering the things his mother had told him.
Her father, Surgeon-Captain Reid, had arrived at the Swan River on a
man-of-war, on his very first voyage. He had landed with Captain
Fremantle from H. M. S. "Challenger," when that officer took formal
possession of the country in the name of His Majesty King George IV. He
had seen the first transport, the "Parmelia," prevented by heavy gales
from landing her goods and passengers on the mainland, disembark all on
Garden Island, where the men of the "Challenger" were busy clearing
ground and erecting temporary houses. That was in midwinter, June 1827:
and Jack's grandfather! Now it was midwinter, June 1882: and mere Jack.
Midwinter! A pure blue sky and a warm, crystal air. The brush outside
green, rather dull green, the sandy country dry. It was like English
June, English midsummer. Why call it midwinter? Except for a certain
dull look of the bushes.
They were passing the convict station. The "Establishment" had not
lasted long; from about 1850 to 1870. Not like New South Wales, which
had a purely convict origin. Western Australia was more respectable.
He remembered his mother always praised the convicts, said they had been
a blessing to the colony. Western Australia had been too big and barren
a mouthful for the first pioneers to chew, even though they were
gentlemen of pluck and education and bit off their claims bravely. Came
the rush that followed occupation, a rush of estimable and highly
respectable British workmen. But even these were unprepared for the
hardships that awaited them in Western Australia. The country was too
much for them.
It needed the convicts to make a real impression: the convicts with
their law, and discipline, and all their governmental outfit: and their
forced labour. Soldiers, doctors, lawyers, spiritual pastors and earthly
masters . . . and the convicts condemned to obey. This was the beginning
of the colony.
Thought speaks! Mr. Swallow, identified as the gentleman with the long,
lean ruddy face and large nose and vague brown eye, leaned forward and
jerked his pipe stem towards the open window.
"See that beautiful road running through the sand, sir? That road
extends to Perth and over the Causeway and away up country, branching in
all directions, like the arteries of the human body. Built by the
sappers and miners with _convict labour_, sir. Yes with _convict_
labour. Also the bridge over which we are crossing."
Jack looked out at the road, but was much more enchanted by the full,
soft river of heavenly blue water, on whose surface he looked eagerly
for the black swans. He didn't see any.
"Oh yes! Oh yes! You'll find 'em wild in their native state a little way
up," said Mr. Swallow.
Beyond the river were sheets of sand again, white sand, stretching
around on every side.
"It must have been here that the Carpenter wept--" Jack said in his
unexpected young voice that was still slightly hoarse, as he poked his
face out of the window.
The three gentlemen were silent in passive consternation, till Mr.
George swelled his cheeks and continued:
"Like anything to see such quantities of sand." Then he snorted and blew
his nose.
Mr. Bell at once recognized the Westralian joke, which had been handed
on to Jack by his mother.
"Hit it, my son!" he cried, clapping his hands on his knees. "In the
first five minutes. Useless! Useless! A gentleman of discernment, that's
what you are. Just the sort we want in this colony--a gentleman of
discernment. A gentleman without it planted us here, fifty years ago in
the blank, blank sand. What's the consequence? Clogged, cloyed, cramped,
sand-smothered, that's what we are."
"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Swallow.
"Sorrow, Sin, and Sand," repeated Mr. Bell.
Jack was puzzled and amused by their free and easy, confidential way,
which was still a little ceremonious. Slightly ceremonious, and in their
shirt-sleeves, so to speak. The same with their curious, Cockney
pronunciation, their accurate grammar and their slight pomposity. They
never said "you," merely "y'"--"That's what y'are." And their drawling,
almost sneering manner was very odd, contrasting with the shirtsleeves
familiarity, the shabby clothes and the pleasant way they had of nodding
at you when they talked to you.
"Yes, yes, Mr. Grant," continued Mr. Bell, while Jack wished he wouldn't
Mister him--"A gentleman without discernment induced certain politicians
in the British Cabinet to invest in these vast areas. This same
gentleman got himself created King of Groperland, and came out here with
a small number of fool followers. These fool followers, for every three
quid's worth of goods they brought with them, were given forty acres of
land apiece--"
"Of sand," said Mr. George.
"--and a million acres of fine promises," continued Mr. Bell unmoved.
"Therefore the fool followers, mostly younger sons of good family,
anxious to own property--"
"In parties of five females to one male--Prrrh!" snorted Mr. George.
"--came. They were informed that the soil was well adapted to the
cultivation of tobacco! Of cotton! Of sugar! Of flax! And that cattle
could be raised to supply His Majesty's ships with salt beef--and horses
could be reared to supply the army in India--"
"With Kangaroos and Wallabies."
"--the cavalry, that is. So they came and were landed in the sand--"
"And told to stick their head in it, so they shouldn't see death staring
at 'em."
"--along with the goods they had brought."
"A harp!" cried Mr. George. "My mother brought a harp and a Paisley
shawl and got five hundred acres for 'em--estimated value of harp being
twenty guineas. She'd better have gone straight to heaven with it."
"Yes, sir!" continued Mr. Bell, unheeding.
"No, sir!" broke in Mr. George. "Do you wish me unborn?"
Mr. Bell paused to smile, then continued:
"Mr. Grant, sir, these gentle ladies and gentlemen were dumped in the
sand along with their goods. Well, there were a few cattle and sheep and
horses. But what else? Harps. Paisley shawls. Ornamental glass cases of
wax fruit, for the mantelpiece; family Bibles and a family coach, sir.
For that family coach, sir, the bringer got a thousand acres of land.
And it ended its days where they landed it, on the beach, for there
wasn't an inch of road to drive it over, nor anywhere to drive it to.
They took off its wheels and there it lay. I myself have sat in it."
"Ridden in his coach," smiled Mr. George.
"My mother," continued Mr. Bell, "was a clergyman's daughter. I myself
was born in a bush humpy, and my mother died shortly after--"
"Of chagrin! Of chagrin!" muttered Mr. George.
"We will draw a veil over the sufferings of those years--"
"Oh, but we made good! We made good!" put in Mr. Swallow comfortably.
"What are you grousing about? We made good. There you sit, Bell, made of
money, and grousing, anybody would think you wanted a loan of two bob."
"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down--" said Mr. George.
"Did we! No we didn't. We rowed up the Swan River. That's what my father
did. A sturdy British yeoman, Mr. Grant."
"Where did he get the boat from?" asked Mr. Bell.
"An old ship. I was a baby, sir, in a tartan frock. Remember it to this
day, sitting in my mother's lap. My father got that boat off a whaler.
It had been stove in, and wasn't fit for the sea. But he made it fit for
the river, and they rowed up the Swan--my father and a couple of
'indented' servants, as we called them. We landed in the Upper Swan
valley. I remember that camp fire, sir, as well as I remember anything."
"Better than most things," put in Mr. George.
"We cleared off the scrub, we lifted the stones into heaps, we planted
corn and wheat--"
"The babe in the tartan frock steering the plough."
"Yes, sir, later on.--Our flocks prospered, our land bore fruit, our
family flourished--"
"On milk and honey--"
"Oh, cry off, Swallow!" ejaculated Mr. Bell. "Your father fought flood
and drought for forty odd years. The floods of '62 broke his heart, and
the floods in '72 ruined you. And this is '82, so don't talk too loud."
"Ruined! When was I ever ruined?" cried Mr. Swallow. "Sheep
one-hundred-and-ten per cent--for some herds, as you know, gentlemen,
throw twins and triplets. Cattle ninety per cent, horses fifty: and a
ready market for 'em all."
"Pests," Mr. Bell was saying, "one million per cent. Rust destroys
fourteen thousand acres of wheat crop, just as the country is getting on
its feet. Dingoes breed 135 per cent, and kill sheep to match. Cattle
run wild and are no more seen. Horses cost the eyes out of your head
before you can catch 'em, break 'em, train 'em and ship 'em to the
Indian market."
"Moth and rust! Moth and rust!" murmured Mr. George absently.
III
Jack, with the uncomfortable philosophy of youth, sat still and let the
verbal waters rage. Until he was startled by a question from Mr. George.
"Well, sir, what were you sent out for?"
This was a colonial little joke at the "Establishment" identity's
expense. But unfortunately it hit Jack too. He had been sent gut,
really, because he was too tiresome to keep at home. Too fond of "low"
company. Too often a frequenter of the stables. Too indifferent to the
higher claims of society. They feared a waster in the bud. So they
shipped the bud to the antipodes, to let it blossom there upside down.
But Jack was not going to give himself away.
"To go on the land, sir," he replied. Which was true.--But what had his
father said in the letter? He flushed and looked angry, his dark blue
eyes going very dark, "I was expelled from school," he added calmly.
"And I was sent down from the Agricultural College. That's why I have
come out a year before my time. But I was coming--to go on the
land--anyway--"
He ended in a stammer. He rather hated adults: he definitely hated them
in tribunal.
Mr. George held up his hand deprecatingly.
"Say nothing! Say nothing! Your father made no mention of anything. Tell
us when you know us, if y'like. But you aren't called on to indict
yourself.--That was a silly joke of mine. Forget it.--You came to go on
the land, as your father informs me.--I knew your father, long before
you were born. But I knew your mother better."
"So did I," said Mr. Swallow. "And grieved the day that ever a military
gentleman carried her away from Western Australia. She was one of our
home-grown flowers, was Katie Reid, and I never saw a Rose of England
that could touch her."
Jack now flushed deeper than ever.
"Though," said Mr. George slyly, "if you've got a prank up y'r sleeve,
that you can tell us about--come on with it, my son. We've none of us
forgotten being shipped to England for a schooling."
"Oh well!" said Jack. He always said "Oh well!" when he didn't know what
to say. "You mean at the Agricultural College? Oh well!--Well, I was the
youngest there, stableboy and harness-cleaner and all that. Oh well! You
see there'd been a chivoo the night before. The lads had a grudge
against the council, because they gave us bread and cheese, and
no butter, for supper, and cocoa with no milk. And we weren't
just little nippers. We were--Oh well! Most of the chaps were men,
really--eighteen--nineteen--twenty. As much as twenty-three. I was the
youngest. I didn't care. But the chaps were different. There were many
who had failed at the big entrance exams for the Indian Civil, or the
Naval or Military, and they were big, hungry chaps, you can bet--"
"I should say so," nodded Mr. George approvingly.
"Well, there was a chivoo. They held me on their shoulders and I smashed
the Principal's windows."
You could see by Jack's face how he had enjoyed breaking those windows.
"What with?" asked Mr. George.
"With a wooden gym club."
"Wanton destruction of property. Prrrh!"
"The boss was frightened. But he raised Old Harry and said he'd go up to
town and report us to the council. So he ordered the trap right away, to
catch the nine o'clock train. And I had to take the trap round to the
front door--"
Here Jack paused. He didn't want to go further.
"And so--" said Mr. George.
"And so, when I stepped away from the horse's head, the Principal jerked
the reins in the nasty way he had and the horse bolted."
"Couldn't the fellow pull her up? Man in a position like that ought to
know how to drive a horse."
Jack watched their faces closely. On his own face was that subtle look
of innocence, which veiled a look of life-and-death defiance.
"The reins weren't buckled into the bit, sir. No man could drive that
horse," he said quietly.
A look of amusement tinged with misgiving spread over Mr. George's face.
But he was a true colonial. He had to hear the end of a story against
powers-that-be.
"And how did it end?" he asked.
"I'm sorry," said Jack. "He broke his leg in the accident."
The three Australians burst into a laugh. Chiefly because when Jack
said, "I'm sorry," he really meant it. He was really sorry for the hurt
man. But for the hurt Principal he wasn't sorry. As soon as the
Principal was on the ground with a broken leg, Jack saw only the hurt
man, and none of the office. And his heart was troubled for the hurt
man.
But if the mischief was to do again, he would probably do it. He
couldn't repent. And yet his feelings were genuinely touched. Which made
him comical.
"You're a corker!" said Mr. George, shaking his head with new misgiving.
"So you were sent down," said Mr. Bell. "And y'r father thought he'd
better ship you straight out here, eh? Best thing for you, I'll be
bound. I'll bet you never learned a ha'porth at that place."
"Oh well! I think I learned a lot."
"When to sow and when to reap and a latin motto attached!"
"No, sir, not that. I learned to vet."
"Vet?"
"Well sir, you see, the head groom was a gentleman veterinary surgeon
and he had a weakness, as he called it. So when he was strong he taught
me to vet, and when he had his attacks, I'd go out with the cart and
collect him at a pub and bring him home under the straw, in return for
kindness shown."
"A nice sort of school! Prrrh! Bahl" snorted Mr. George.
"Oh, that wasn't on the curriculum, sir. My mother says there'll be
rascals in heaven, if you look for them."
"And you keep on looking, eh?--Well--I wouldn't, if I were you.
Especially in this country, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go vetting any more
for any drunken groom in the world, if I were you. Nor breaking windows,
nor leaving reins unbuckled either. And I'll tell you for why. It
becomes a habit. You get a habit of going with rascals, and then you're
done. Because in this country you'll find plenty of scamps, and plenty
of wasters. And the sight of them is enough--nasty, low-down lot.--This
is a great big country, where an honest man can go his own way into the
back of beyond, if he likes. But the minute he begins to go crooked, or
slack, the country breaks him. It breaks him, and he's neither fit for
God nor man any more. You beware of this country, my boy, and don't try
to play larks with it. It's all right playing a prank on an old fool of
a fossil out there in England. They need a few pranks played on them,
they do. But out here--no! Keep all your strength and all your wits to
fight the bush. It's a great big country, and it needs men, _men_, not
wasters. It's a great big country, and it wants men. You can go your way
and do what you want: take up land, go on a sheep station, lumber, or
try the goldfields. But whatever you do, live up to your fate like a
man. And keep square with yourself. Never mind other people. But keep
square with _yourself._"
Jack, staring out of the window, saw miles of dull dark-green scrub
spreading away on every side to a bright sky-line. He could hear his
mother's voice:
"Earn a good opinion of yourself and never mind the world's opinion. You
know when there's the right glow inside you. That's the spirit of God
inside you."
But this "right glow" business puzzled him a little. He was inclined to
believe he felt it while he was smashing the Principal's window-glass,
and while he was "vetting" with the drunken groom. Yet the words
fascinated him: "The right glow inside you--the spirit of God inside
you."
He sat motionless on his seat, while the Australians kept on talking
about the colony.--"Have y'patience? Perseverance? Have ye that?--She
wants y' and y' offspring. And the bones y'll leave behind y'. All of y'
interests, y' hopes, y' life, and the same of y' sons and sons' sons.
An' she doesn't care if y' go nor stay, neither. Makes no difference to
her. She's waiting, drowsy. No hurry. Wants millions of yer. But she's
waited endless ages and can wait endless more. Only she must have
_men_--understand? If they're lazy derelicts and ne'er-do-wells, she'll
eat 'em up. But she's waiting for real men--British to the bone--"
"The lad's no more than a boy, yet, George. Dry up a bit with your
_men--British to the bone._"
"Don't toll at _me_, Bell.--I've been here since '31, so let me speak.
Came in old sailing-ship, 'Rockingham'--wrecked on coast--left nothing
but her name, township of Rockingham. Nice place to fish.--Was sent back
to London to school, '41--in another sailing-vessel and wasn't wrecked
this time. 'Shepherd,' laden colonial produce.--The first steam vessel
didn't come till '45--the 'Driver.' Wonderful advancement.--Wonderful
advancement in the colony too, when I came back. Came back a
notary.--Couple of churches, Mill Street Jetty, Grammar School opened,
Causeway built, lot of exploration done. Eyre had legged it from
Adelaide--all in my time, all in my time--"
IV
Jack felt it might go on forever. He was becoming stupefied. Mercifully,
the train jerked to a standstill beside a wooden platform, that was
separated from a sandy space by a picket fence. A porter put his hand to
his mouth and yelled, "Perth," just for the look of the thing--because
where else could it be? They all burst out of the train. The town stood
up in the sand: wooden houses with wooden platforms blown over with
sand.
And Mr. George was still at it.--"Yes, Bell, wait for the salty sand to
mature. Wait for a few of _us_ to die--and decay! Mature--manure, that's
what's wanted. Dead men in the sand, dead men's bones in the gravel.
That's what'll mature this country. The people you bury in it. Only good
fertilizer. Dead men are like seed in the ground. When a few more like
you and me, Bell, are worked in--"