THE TWIN LAMBS
I
Jack was tired and a little land-sick, after the long voyage. He felt
dazed and rather unhappy, and saw as through a glass, darkly. For he
could not yet get used to the fixed land under his feet, after the long
weeks on the steamer. And these people went on as if they were wound up,
curiously oblivious of him and his feelings. A dream world, with a dark
glass between his eyes and it. An uneasy dream.
He waited on the platform. Mr. George had again disappeared somewhere.
The train was already backing away.
It was evening, and the setting sun from the west, where the great empty
sea spread unseen, cast a radiance in the etherealized air, melting the
brick shops and the wooden houses and the sandy places in a sort of
amethyst glow. And again Jack saw the magic clarity of this new world,
as through a glass, darkly. He felt the cool snap of night in the air,
coming strange and crude out of the jewel sky. And it seemed to him he
was looking through the wrong end of a field-glass, at a far, far
country.
Where was Mr. George? Had he gone off to read the letter again, or to
inquire about the draft on the bank? Everyone had left the station, the
wagonette cabs had driven away. What was to be done? Ought he to have
mentioned an hotel? He'd better say something. He'd better say--
But here was Mr. George, with a serious face, coming straight up to say
something.
"That vet," he said, "did he think you had a natural gift for veterinary
work?"
"He said so, sir. My mother's father was a naval surgeon--if that has
anything to do with it."
"Nothing at all.--I knew the old gentleman--and another silly old fossil
he was, too.--But he's dead, so well make the best of him.--No, it was
your character I wanted to get at.--Your father wants you to go on a
farm or station for twelve months, and sends a pound a week for your
board. Suppose you know--?"
"Yes--I hope it's enough."
"Oh, it's enough, if you're all right yourself--I was thinking of Ellis'
place. I've got the twins here now. They're kinsmen of yours, the
Ellises--and of mine, too. We're all related, in clans and cliques and
gangs, out here in this colony. Your mother belongs to the Ellis
clan.--Well, now. Ellis' place is a fine home farm, and not too far.
Only he's got a family of fine young lambs, my step-sister's children
into the bargain. And y'see, if y're a wolf in sheep's clothing--for you
look mild enough--why, I oughtn't be sending you among them. Young
lasses and boys bred and reared out there in the bush, why--. Come now,
son--y' father protected you by silence.--But you're not in court, and
you needn't heed me. Tell me straight out what you were expelled from
your Bedford school for."
Jack was silent for a moment, rather pale about the nose. "I was
nabbed," he said in a colourless voice, "at a fight with fists for a
purse of sovereigns, laid either side. Plenty of others were there. But
they got away, and the police nabbed me for the school colours on my
cap. My father was just back from Ceylon, and he stood by me. But the
Head said for the sake of example and for the name of the school I'd
better be chucked out. They were talking about the school in the
newspapers. The Head said he was sorry to expel me."
Mr. George blew his nose into a large yellow red-spotted handkerchief,
and looked for a few moments into the distance.
"Seems to me you let yourself be made a bit of a cat's paw of," he said
dubiously.
"I suppose it's because I don't care," said Jack.
"But you ought to care.--Why don't y'?"
There was no answer.
"You'll have to care some day or other," the old man continued.
"Do you know, sir, which hotel I shall go to?" asked Jack.
"You'll go to no hotel. You'll come home with me.--But mind y'. I've got
my two young nieces, Ellis' twins, couple of girls, Ellis' daughters,
where I'm going to send you. They're at my house. And there's my other
niece, Mary, who I'm very fond of. She's not an Ellis, she's a Rath, and
an orphan, lives with her Aunt Matilda, my sister. They don't live with
me. None of 'em live with me. I live alone, except for a good, plain
cook, since my wife died.--But I tell you, they're visiting me. And I
shall look to you to behave yourself, now: both here and at Wandoo,
which is Ellis' station. I'll take you there in the morning.--But y'see
now where I'm taking you: among a pack of innocent sheep that's probably
never seen a goat to say Boh! to--or Baa! if you like--makes no
difference. We don't raise goats in Western Australia, as I'm aware
of.--But I'm telling you, if you're a wolf in sheep's clothing--. No,
you needn't say anything. You probably don't know what you are, anyhow.
So come on. I'll tell somebody to bring your bags--looks a rare jorum to
me--and we'll walk."
II
They walked off the timber platform into the sand, and Jack had his
first experience of "sand-groping." The sand was thick and fine and
soft, so he was glad to reach the oyster-shell path running up
Wellington Street, in front of the shops. They passed along the street
of brick cottages and two-storied houses, to Barrack Street, where Jack
looked with some surprise on the pretentious buildings that stood up in
the dusk: the handsome square red brick tower of the Town Hall, and on
the sandy hill to the left, the fine white edifice of the Roman Catholic
Church, which building was already older than Jack himself. Beyond the
Town Hall was the Church of England. "See it!" said Mr. George. "That's
where your father and mother were married. Slap-dash, military wedding,
more muslin and red jackets than would stock a shop."
Mr. George spoke to everybody he met, ladies and gentlemen alike. The
ladies seemed a bit old-fashioned, the gentlemen all wore nether
garments at least four sizes too large for them. Jack was much piqued by
this pioneering habit. And they all seemed very friendly and easy-going,
like men in a pub at home.
"What did the Bedford Headmaster say he was sorry to lose you for? Smart
at your books, were you?"
"I was good at Scripture and Shakespeare, but not at the other
things.--I expect he was sorry to lose me from the football eleven. I
was the cock there."
Mr. George blew his nose loudly, gasped, prrrhed, and said:
"You'd better say _rooster_, my son, here in Australia--especially in
polite society. We're a trifle more particular than they are in England,
I suppose.--Well, and what else have you got to crow about?"
If Jack had been the sulky sort, he would now have begun to get sulky.
As it was, he was tired of being continually pulled up. But he fell back
on his own peculiar callous indifference.
"I was captain of the first football eleven," he said in his indifferent
voice, "and not bad in front of the sticks. And I took the long distance
running cup a year under age. I tell you because you ask me."
Then Mr. George astonished Jack again by turning and planting himself in
front of him like Balaam's ass, in the middle of the path, standing with
feet apart in his big elephant trousers, snorting behind a walrus
moustache, glaring and extending a large and powerful hand. He shook
hands vigorously, saying, "You'll do, my son. You'll do for me."
Then he resumed his walk.
III
"Yes, sir, you'll do for me," resumed the old man. "For I can see you're
a gentleman."
Jack was rather taken aback. He had come to Australia to be a man, a
wild, bushy man among men. His father was a gentleman.
"I think I'd rather be a man than a gentleman," he said.
Mr. George stood still, feet apart, as if he had been shot.
"What's the difference?" he cried in a falsetto, sarcastic tone. "What's
the difference? Can't be a man unless you are a gentleman. Take that
from me. You might say I'm not a gentleman. Sense of the ridiculous runs
away with me, for one thing. But, in order to be the best man I could,
I've tried to be all the gentleman I could. No hanky-pankying about
it.--You're a gentleman born.--I'm not, not _altogether._ Don't you go
trying to upset what you are. But whether you're a bush-whacker or a
lumper you can be a gentleman. A gentleman's a man who never laughs to
wound, who's honest with himself and his own judge in the sight of the
Almighty.--That's the Government House down there among the trees, river
just beyond.--That's my house, there, see. I'm going to hand you over to
the girls, once we get there. So I shan't see you again, not to talk to.
I want to tell you then, that I put my confidence in you, and you're
going to play up like a gentleman. And I want you to know, as between
gentlemen, not merely between an old man and a boy: but as between
gentlemen, if you ever need any help, or a word of advice come to me.
Come to me, and I'll do my best."
He once more shook hands, this time in a conclusive manner.
Jack had looked to left and right as they walked, half listening to the
endless old man. He saw sandy blocks of land beside the road, and
scattered, ugly buildings, most of them new. He made out the turrets and
gables of the Government House, in the dusk among trees, and he imagined
the wide clear river below those trees.
Turning down an unmade road, they approached a two-storied brick house
with narrow verandahs, whose wooden supports rested nakedly on the sand
below. There was no garden, fence, or anything: just an oyster-shell
path across the sand, a pipe-clayed doorstep, a brass knocker, a narrow
wooden verandah, a few flower-pots.
Mr. George opened the door and showed the boy into the narrow wooden
hall. There was a delicious smell of cooking. Jack climbed the thin,
flimsy stairs, and was shown into his bedroom. A four-poster bed with a
crochet quilt and frilled pillows, a mahogany chest of drawers with
swivel looking-glass, a washstand with china set complete. England all
over again.--Even his bag was there, and his brushes were set out for
him.
He had landed!
IV
As he made his toilet, he heard a certain fluttering outside his door.
He waited for it to subside, and when all seemed still, opened to go
downstairs. There stood two girls, giggling and blushing, waiting arm in
arm to pounce on him.
"Oh, isn't he _beau!_" exclaimed one of the girls, in a sort of aside.
And the other broke into a high laugh.
Jack remained dumbfounded, reddening to the roots of his hair. But his
dark-blue eyes lingered for a moment on the two girlish faces. They were
evidently the twins. They had the same thin, soft, slightly-tanned,
warm-looking faces, a little wild, and the same marked features. But the
brows of one were level, and her fair hair, darkish fair, was all crisp,
curly round her temples, and she looked up at you from under her level
brows with queer yellow-grey eyes, shy, wild, and yet with a queer
effrontery, like a wild-cat under a bush. The other had blue eyes and a
bigger nose, and it was she who said, "Oh, isn't he _beau!_"
The one with the yellow eyes stuck out her slim hand awkwardly, gazing
at him and saying:
"I suppose you're cousin Jack, Beau."
He shook hands first with one, then with the other, and could not find a
word to say. The one with the yellow eyes was evidently the leader of
the two.
"Tea is ready," she said, "if you're coming down."
She spoke this over her shoulder. There was the same colour in her tawny
eyes as in her crisp tawny hair, but her brows were darker. She had a
forehead, Jack decided, like the plaster-cast of Minerva. And she had
the queerest way of looking at you under her brows, and over her
shoulder. Funny pair of lambs, these.
The two girls went downstairs arm in arm, at a run. This is quite a
feat, but evidently they were used to it.
Jack looked on life, social life inside a house, as something to be
borne in silence. These two girls were certainly a desperate addition.
He heard them burst into the parlour, the other one repeating:
"He's coming. Here comes Beau."
"I thought his name was Jack. _Bow_ is it!" exclaimed a voice.
He entered the parlour with his elbows at his sides, his starched collar
feeling very stiff. He was aware of the usual hideous room, rather barer
than at home: plush cushions on a horse-hair sofa, and a green carpet: a
large stout woman with reddish hair in a silk frock and gold chains, and
Mr. George introducing her as Mrs. Watson, otherwise Aunt Matilda. She
put diamond-ringed hands on Jack's shoulders and looked into his face,
which he thought a repellent procedure.
"So like your father, dear boy; how's your dear mother?"
And in spite of his inward fury of resistance, she kissed him. For she
was but a woman of forty-two.
"Quite well, thank you," said Jack: though considering he had been at
sea for six weeks, he knew as little about his mother's health as did
Aunt Matilda herself.
"Did y' blow y' candle out?" asked Mr. George.
"No he didn't," answered the tawny girl. "_I'll_ go and do it."
And she flashed away upstairs like a panther.
"I suppose the twins introduced themselves," said Mr. George.
"No they didn't," said the other one.
"Only christened you Bow.--You'll be somebody or other's beau before
very long, I'll warrant.--This is Grace, Grace Ellis, you know, where
you're going to live. And her sister who's gone upstairs to blow your
candle out, is Monica.--Can't be too careful of fire in these dry
places.--Most folks say they can't tell 'em apart, but I call it
nonsense."
"Ancien, beau, bon, cher, adjectives which precede," said the one called
Monica, jerking herself into the room, after blowing out the candle.
"There's your father," said Mr. George. And Aunt Matilda fluttered into
the hall, while the twins betrayed no interest at all. The tawny one
stared at Jack and kept slinking about like a lean young panther to get
a different view of him. For all the world as if she was going to pounce
on him, like a cat on a bird. He, permanently flushed, kept his
self-possession in a boyish and rather handsome, if stiff, manner.
Mr. Ellis was stout, clean-shaven, red-faced, and shabby and baggy, and
good-natured in appearance.
"This is the young gentleman--Mr. Grant--called in Westralia Bow, so
named by Miss Monica Ellis."
"By Miss Grace, if you please," snapped Monica.
"Tea's ready. Tea's ready."
They trooped into the dining room where a large table was spread. Aunt
Matilda seated herself behind the tea-kettle, Mr. George sat at the
other end, before the pile of plates and the carvers, and the others
took their places where they would. Jack modestly sat on Aunt Matilda's
left hand, so the tawny Monica at once pounced on the chair opposite.
Entered the Good Plain Cook with a dish covered with a pewter cover, and
followed by a small, dark, ugly, quiet girl carrying the vegetable
dishes.
"That's my niece Mary, Jack. Lives with Aunt Matilda here, who won't
spare her or I'd have her to live here with me. Now you know everybody.
What's for tea?"
He was dangerously clashing the knife on the steel. Then lifting the
cover, he disclosed a young pig roasted in all its glory of gravy. Mary
meanwhile had nodded her head at Jack and looked at him with her big,
queer, very black eyes. You might have thought she had native blood. She
sat down to serve the vegetables.
"Grace, there's a fly in the milk," said Aunt Matilda, who was already
pouring large cups of tea. Grace seized the milk jug and jerked from the
room.
"Do you take milk and sugar, as your dear father used to, John?" asked
Aunt Matilda of the youth on her left.
"Call him Bow. Bow's his name out here--John's too stiff and Jack's too
common!" exclaimed Mr. George, elbows deep in carving.
"Bow'll do for me," put in Mrs. Ellis, who said little.
"Mary, is there any mustard?" said Aunt Matilda.
Jack rose vaguely to go and get it, but Aunt Matilda seized him by the
arm and pushed him back.
"Sit still. She knows where it is."
"Monica, come and carry the cups, there's a good girl."
"Now which end of the pig do you like, Jack?" asked Mr. George.
"Matilda, will this do for you?" He held up a piece on the fork. Mary
arrived with a ponderous gyrating cruet-stand, which she made place for
in the middle of the table.
"What about bread?" said Aunt Matilda. "I'm sure John eats bread with
his meat. Fetch some bread, Grace, for your cousin John."
"Everybody did it," thought Jack in despair, as he tried to eat amid the
hustle. "No servants, nothing ever still. On the go all the time."
"Girls going to the concert tonight?" asked Mr. George.
"If anybody will go with us," replied Monica, with a tawny look at Jack.
"There's Bow," said Mr. George, "Bow'll like to go."
Under the she-lion peering of Monica, Jack was incapable of answer.
"Let the poor boy rest," said Aunt Matilda. "Just landed after a six
thousand mile voyage, and you rush him out next minute to a concert. Let
him stop at home quietly with me, and have a quiet chat about the dear
ones he's left behind.--Aren't _you_ going to the concert with the
girls, Jacob?"
This was addressed to Mr. Ellis, who took a gulp of tea and shook his
head mutely.
"I'd rather go to the concert, I think," said Jack under the queer
yellow glower of Monica's eyes, and the full black moons of Mary's.
"Good for you, my boy," said Mr. George. "Bow by name and Bow by nature.
And well set up, with three strings to his Bow already."
Monica once more peered tawnily, and Mary glanced a black, furtive
glance. Aunt Matilda looked down on him and Grace, at his side, peered
up.
For the first time since childhood, Jack found himself in a really
female setting. Instinctively he avoided women: but particularly he
avoided girls. With girls and women he felt exposed to some sort of
danger--as if something were going to seize him by the neck, from
behind, when he wasn't looking. He relied on men for safety. But
curiously enough, these two elderly men gave him no shelter whatever.
They seemed to throw him a victim to these frightful "lambs." In
England, there was an _esprit de corps_ among men. Man for man was a
tower of strength against the females. Here in this place men deserted
one another as soon as the women put in an appearance. They left the
field entirely to the females.
In the first half-hour Jack realised he was thrown a victim to these
tawny and black young cats. And there was nothing to do but bear up.
"Have you got an evening suit?" asked Grace, who was always the one to
ponder things out.
"Yes--a sort of a one," said Jack.
"Oh, good! Oh, put it on! Do put it on."
"Leave the lad alone," said Mr. George. "Let him go as he is."
"No," said Aunt Matilda. "He has his father's handsome presence. Let him
make the best of himself. I think I'll go to the concert after all."
After dinner there was a bustle. Monica flew up to light his candle for
him, and stood there peering behind the flame when he came upstairs.
"You haven't much time," she said, as if she were going to spear him.
"All right," he answered, in his hoarse young voice. And he stood in
torment till she left his room.
He was just tying his tie when there came a flutter and a tapping. Aunt
Matilda's voice saying: "Nearly time. Are you almost ready?"
"Half a minute!" he crowed hoarsely, like an unhappy young cock.
But the door stealthily opened, and Aunt Matilda peeped in.
"Oh, tying his tie!" she said, satisfactorily, when she perceived that
he was dressed as far as discretion demanded. And she entered in full
blow. Behind her hovered Grace--then Monica--and in the doorway Mary. It
seemed to Jack that Aunt Matilda was the most objectionable of the lot,
Monica the brazenest, Grace the most ill-mannered, and Mary the most
repulsive, with her dark face. He struggled in discomfort with his tie.
"Let Mary do it," said Aunt Matilda.
"No, no!" he barked. "I can do it."
"Come on, Mary. Come and tie John's tie."
Mary came quietly forward.
"Let me do it for you, Bow," she said in her quiet, insinuating voice,
looking at him with her inky eyes and standing in front of him till his
knees felt weak and his throat strangled. He was purple in the face,
struggling with his tie in the presence of the lambs.
"He'll never get it done," said Monica, from behind the yellow glare.
"Let me do it," said Mary, and lifting her hands decisively she took the
two ends of the tie from him.
He held his breath and lifted his eyes to the ceiling and felt as if the
front of his body were being roasted. Mary, the devil-puss, seemed
endless ages fastening the tie. Then she twitched it at his throat and
it was done, just as he was on the point of suffocation.
"Are those your best braces?" said Grace. "They're awfully pretty with
rose-buds." And she fingered the band.
"I suppose you put on evening dress for the last dinner on board," said
Aunt Matilda. "Nothing makes me cry like _Auld Lang Syne_, that last
night, before you land next day. But it's fifteen years since I went
over to England."
"I don't suppose we shall any of us ever go," said Grace longingly.
"Unless you marry Bow," said Monica abruptly.
"I can't marry him unless he asks me," said Grace.
"He'll ask nobody for a good many years to come," said Aunt Matilda with
satisfaction.
"Hasn't he got lovely eyelashes?" said Grace impersonally.
"He'd almost do for a girl," said Monica.
"Not if you look at his ears," said Mary, with odd decision. He felt
that Mary was bent on saving his manhood.
He breathed as if the air around him were red-hot. He would have to get
out, or die. He plunged into his coat, pulling down his shirt-cuffs with
a jerk.
"What funny green cuff-links," said Grace. "Are they pot?"
"Malachite," said Jack.
"What's malachite?"
There was no answer. He put a white silk muffler round his neck to
protect his collar.
"Oh, look at his initials in lavender silk!"
At last he was in his overcoat, and in the street with the bevy.
"Leave your overcoat open, so it shows your shirt-front as you walk,"
said Grace, forcibly unbuttoning the said coat. "I think that looks so
lovely. Doesn't he look lovely, Monica? Everybody will be asking who he
is."
"Tell them he's the son of General Grant," said Aunt Matilda, with
complete satisfaction, as she sailed at his side.
Life is principally a matter of endurance. This was the sum of Jack's
philosophy. He put it into practice this evening.
It was a benefit concert in the Town Hall, with the Episcopalian Choir
singing, "Angels Ever Bright and Fair," and a violinist from Germany
playing violin solos, and a lady vocalist from Melbourne singing "home"
solos, while local stars variously coruscated. Aunt Matilda filled up
the end of the seat--like a massive book-end: and the others like
slender volumes of romance were squeezed in between her and another
stout book-end. Jack had the heaving warmth of Aunt Matilda on his
right, the electric wriggle of Monica on his left, and he continued to
breathe red-hot air.
The concert was a ludicrous continuation of shameful and ridiculous
noise to him. Each item seemed inordinately long and he hoped for the
next, which when it came, seemed worse than the last. The people who
performed seemed to him in a ghastly humiliating position. One stout
mother-of-thousands leaned forward and simply gurgled about riding over
the brow of a hill and seeing a fair city beyond, and a young knight in
silver armour riding toward her with shining face, to greet her on the
spot as his lady fair and lady dear. Jack looked at her in pained
amazement. And yet when the songs-tress from Melbourne, in a rich
contralto, began to moan in a Scotch accent:
"And it's o-o-oh! that I'm longing for my ain folk,
Though the-e-ey be but lowly, puir and plain folk--
I am far across the sea
But my heart will ever be-e-e-e-e
At home in dear old Scotland with my ain folk,"
Jack suddenly wanted to howl. He had never been to Scotland and his
father, General Grant, with his mother, was at present in Malta. And he
hadn't got any "ain folk," and he didn't want any. Yet it was all he
could do to keep the tears from showing in his eyes, as his heart fairly
broke in him. And Aunt Matilda crowded him a little more suffocatingly
on the right, and Monica wriggled more hatefully than ever on the left,
and that beastly Mary leaned forward to glance appreciatively at him,
with her low-down black eyes. And he felt as if the front of his body
was scorched. And a smouldering desire for revenge awoke deep down in
him.
People were always trying to "do things" to you. Why couldn't they leave
you done? Dirty cads to sing "My Ain Folk," and then stare in your face
to see how it got you.
But life was a matter of endurance, with possible revenge later on.
When at last he got home and could go to bed, he felt he had gained a
brief respite. There was no lock to the door--so he put the arm-chair
against it, for a barricade.
And he felt he had been once more sold. He had thought he was coming to
a wild and woolly world. But all the way out he had been forced to play
the gentlemanly son of his father. And here it was hell on earth, with
these women let loose all over you, and these ghastly concerts, and
these hideous meals, and these awful flimsy, choky houses. Far better
the Agricultural College. Far better England.
He was sick with homesickness as he flung himself into bed. And it
seemed to him he was always homesick for some place which he had never
known and perhaps never would know. He was always homesick for somewhere
else. He always hated where he was, silently but deeply.
Different people. The place would be all right, but for the people.
He hated women. He hated the kind of nausea he felt after they had
crowded on him. The yellow cat-eyes of that deadly Monica! The inky eyes
of that low-down Mary! The big nose of that Grace: she was the most
tolerable. And the indecency of the red-haired Aunt Matilda, with her
gold chains.
He flung his trousers in one direction, and the loathsome starched shirt
in another, and his underwear in another. When he was quite clear of all
his clothing he clenched his fists and reached them up, and stretched
hard, hard as if to stretch himself clear of it all. Then he did a few
thoughtless exercises, to shake off the world. He wanted the muscles of
his body to move, to shake off the contact of the world. As a dog coming
out of the water shakes himself, so Jack stood there slowly, intensely
going through his exercises, slowly sloughing the contact of the world
from his young, resistant white body. And his hair fell loose into curl,
and the alert defiance came into his eyes as he threw apart his arms and
opened his young chest. Anything, anything to forget the world and to
throw the contact of people off his limbs and his chest. Keen and savage
as a Greek gymnast, he struck the air with his arms, with his legs.
Till at last he felt he had broken through the mesh. His blood was
running free, he had shattered the film that other people put over him,
as if snails had crawled over him. His skin was free and alive. He
glowered at the door, and made the barricade more safe.
Then he dived into his nightshirt, and felt the world was his own again.
At least in his own immediate vicinity. Which was all he cared about for
the moment.