DRIVING TO WANDOO
I
Jack started before dawn next morning, for Wandoo. Mr. George had
business which took him south, so he decided to carry the boy along on
the coach. Mr. Ellis also was returning home in the coach, but the
twins, those lambs, were staying behind. In the chilly dark, Jack
climbed the front of the buggy to sit on the seat beside the driver. He
was huddled in his overcoat, the happiest boy alive. For now at last he
was "getting away," as he always wanted to "get away." From what, he
didn't stop to consider, and still less did he realise _towards_ what.
Because however far you may get away from one thing, by so much do you
draw near to another.
And this is the Fata Morgana of Liberty, or Freedom. She may lead you
very definitely away from to-day's prison. But she also very definitely
leads you towards some other prison. Liberty is a changing of prisons,
to people who seek _only_ liberty.
Away went the buggy at a spanking trot, the driver pointing out the
phosphoric glow of the river, as they descended to the Causeway. Stars
still shone overhead, but the sky was beginning to open inland. The
buggy ran softly over the damp sand, the two horses were full of life.
There was an aroma of damp sand, and a fresh breeze from the river as
they crossed.
Jack didn't want to talk. But the driver couldn't miss the opportunity.
"I drives this coach backards and forrards to Albany week in week out,
years without end amen, and a good two hundred miles o' land to cover,
taking six days clear with two 'osses, and them in relays fifteen or
twenty miles, sometimes over, as on the outland reach past Wagin."
"Ever get held up?"
"No sir, can't say as I do. Who'd there be to hold me up in Western
Australia? And if there was, the mounted police'd soon settle 'em.
There's nobody to hold me up but my old woman, and she drives the coach
for me up Middle Swan way."
"Can she drive?"
"You back your life she can. Bred and born to it. Drive an' swear at the
'osses like a trooper, when she's a mind. Swear! I'd never ha' thought
it of 'er, when I rode behind 'er as a groom."
"How?"
"Oh, she took me in, she did, pretty. But after all, what's a lady but a
woman! Though far be it from me to say: 'What's a woman but a lady!' If
I'd gone down on my hands an' knees to her, in them days, I should have
expected her to kick me. And what does she do? Rode out of the park
gates and stopped. So she did. Turns to me. 'Grey,' she says, 'here's
money. You go to London and buy yourself clothes like what a grocer
would buy. Avoid looking like a butler or a groom. And when you've got
an outfit, dress and make yourself look like a grocer,' she said, though
I never had any connections with grocery in my life--'and go to the
office in Victoria Street and take two passages to Australia.' That was
what she said. Just Australia. When the man in the office asked me,
where to in Australia, I didn't know what to say. 'Oh, we'll go in at
the first gate,' I said. And so it was Fremantle. 'Yes,' she said,
'we're going to elope. Nice thing for me,' thinks I. But I says, 'All
right, Miss.' She was a pearl beyond price, was Miss Ethel. So she
seemed to me then. Now she's a termagant as ever was: in double 'arness,
collar-proud."
The coachman flicked the horses. Jack looked at him in amazement. He was
a man with a whitish-looking beard, in the dim light.
"And did she have any children?"
"She's got five."
"And does she regret it?"
"At times, I suppose. But as I say to her, if anybody was took in, it
was me. I always thought her a perfect lady. So when she lets fly at me:
'Call yourself a man?' I just say to her: 'Call yourself a lady?' And
she comes round all right."
Jack's consciousness began to go dim. He was aware of a strange dim
booming almost like guns in the distance, and the driver's voice saying,
"Frogs, sir. Way back in the days before ever a British ship came here,
they say the Dutchmen came, and was frightened off by the croaking of
the bull frogs: Couldn't make it out a-nohow!"--The horses' hoofs were
echoing on the boarded Causeway, and from the little islands alongside
came the amazing croaking, barking, booing and booming of the frogs.
II
When Jack looked round again it was day. And the driver's beard was
black. He was a man with a thin red face and black beard and queer grey
eyes that had a mocking sort of secret in them.
"I thought your beard was white," said Jack.
"Ay, with rime. With frost. Not with anything else."
"I didn't expect hoar-frost here."
"Well--it's not so very common. Not like the Old Country."
Jack realised they always spoke patronisingly of the Old Country, poor
old place, as if it couldn't help being what it was.
The man's grey eyes with the amused secret glanced quickly at Jack.
"Not quite awake yet?" he said.
"Oh, yes," said Jack.
"Coming out to settle, I hope," said the driver. "We can do with a few
spruce young lads. I've got five daughters to contend with. Why there's
six A1 families in Perth, maybe you've heard, and six in the country,
and possibly six round Fremantle, and nary one of 'em but's got seven
daughters. Seven daughters----"
Jack did not hear. He seemed to be saying, in reply to some question,
"I'm Jack Hector Grant."
"Contrairy," the servants had called him, and "naughty little boy," his
Aunts. Insubordinate, untrustworthy. Such things they said of him. His
soul pricked from all the things, but he guessed they were not far
wrong.
What did his mother think of him? And his father? He didn't know them
very well. They only came home sometimes, and then they seemed to him
reasonable and delightful people. The Wandering Grants, Lady Bewley had
called them.
Was he a liar? When they called him a liar, was it true? It was. And yet
he never really _felt_ a liar. "Don't ask, and you'll get no lies told
you." It was a phrase from his nurse, and he always wanted to use it to
his hateful Aunts. "Say you're sorry! Say you're sorry!" Wasn't that
forcing him to tell lies, when he _wasn't_ sorry? His Aunts always
seemed to him despicable liars. He himself was just an ordinary liar. He
lied because he _didn't_ want them to know what he'd done, even when
he'd done right.
So they threatened him with that loathsome "policeman." Or they dropped
him over the garden fence into the field beyond. There he sat in a sort
of Crusoe solitary confinement. A vast row of back fences, and a vast,
vast field. Himself squatting immovable, and an Aunt coming to demand
sharply through the fence: "Say you're sorry. Say you want to be a good
little boy. Say it, or you won't come in to dinner. You'll stay there
all night."
He wasn't sorry, he didn't want to be a good little boy, therefore he
wouldn't "say it"; so he got a piece of bread and butter pushed through
the fence. And then he faced the emptiness of the field and set off, to
find himself somehow in the kitchen-garden of the manor-house. A servant
had seen him, and brought him before her ladyship, who was herself
walking in the garden.
"Who are you, little boy?"
"I'm Jack Hector Grant"--a pause. "Who are you?"
"I'm Lady Bewley."
They eyed one another.
"And where were you wandering to, in my garden?"
"I wasn't wand'rin'. I was walkin'."
"Were you? Come, then, and walk with me, will you?"
She took his hand and led him along a path. He didn't quite know if he
was a prisoner. But her hand was gentle, and she seemed a quiet, sad
lady. She stepped with him through wide-open window-doors. He looked
uneasily round the drawing-room, then at the quiet lady.
"Where was _you_ born?" he asked her.
"Why, you funny boy, I was born in this house."
"My mother wasn't. She was born in Australia. And my father was born in
India. And I can't remember where I was born."
A servant had brought in the tea-tray. The child was sitting on a
foot-stool. The lady seemed not to be listening. There was a dark cake.
"My mother said I wasn't never to ask for cake, but if somebody was to
offer me some, I needn't say No fank you."
"Yes, you shall have some cake," said the lady. "So you are one of the
Wandering Grants, and you don't know where you were born?"
"But I think I was born in my mother's bed."
"I suppose you were.--And how old are you?"
"I'm four. How old are you?"
"A great deal older than that.--But tell me, what were you doing in my
garden."
"I don't know. Well, I comed by mistake."
"How was that?"
"'Cause I wouldn't say I was sorry I told a lie. Well, I wasn't sorry.
But I wasn't wandrin' in your garden. I was only walkin'. I was walkin'
out of the meadow where they put me----"
----"And I says, she may have been born in a 'all, but she'll die in a
wooden shack."
"Who? Who will?"
"I was tellin' you about my old woman.--Look! There's a joey runnin'
there along the track."
Jack looked, and saw a funny little animal half leaping, half running
along.
"We call them baby 'roos, joeys, you understand, and they make the
cutest little pets you ever did imagine."
They were still in sandy country, on a good road not far from the river,
and Jack saw the little chap jump to cover. The tall gum trees with
their brownish pale smooth stems and loose strips of bark stood tall and
straight and still, scattered like a thin forest that spread unending,
rising from a low, heath-like undergrowth. It seemed open, and yet
weird, enclosing you in its vast emptiness. This bush, that he had heard
so much of! The sun had climbed out of the mist, and was becoming gold
and powerful in a limpid sky. The leaves of the gum trees hung like
heavy narrow blades, inert and colourless, in a weight of silence. Save
when they came to a more open place, and a flock of green parrots flew
shrieking, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!" At least that was what the
driver said they cried.--The lower air was still somewhat chilly from
the mist. A number of black-and-white handsome birds, that they call
magpies, flew alongside in the bush, keeping pace for a time with the
buggy. And once a wallaby ran alongside for a while on the path, a
bigger 'roo than the joey, and very funny, leaping persistently
alongside with his little hands dangling.
It was a new country after all. It was different. A small exultance grew
inside the youth. After all, he _had_ got away, into a country that men
had not yet clutched into their grip. Where you could do as you liked,
without being stifled by people. He still had a secret intention of
doing as he liked, though what it was he would do when he could do as he
liked, he did not know. Nothing very definite. And yet something stirred
in his bowels as he saw the endless bush, and the noisy green parrots
and the queer, tame kangaroos: and no man.
"It's dingy country down here," the coachman was saying. "Not good for
much. No good for nothing except cemetery, though Mr. George says he
believes in it. And there's nothing you can do with it, seeing as how
many gents what come in the first place has gone away for ever, lock
stock and barrel, leaving nothing but their 'claims' on the land itself,
so nobody else can touch it." Here he shook the reins on the horses'
backs. "But I hopes you settles, and makes good, and marries and has
children, like me and my old woman, sir. She've put five daughters into
the total, born in a shack, though their mother was born in Pontesbeach
Hall----"
But Jack's mind drifted away from the driver. He was in that third
state, not uncommon to youth, which seems to intervene between reality
and dream. The bush, the coach, the wallabies, the coachdriver were not
very real to him. Neither was his own self and his own past very real to
him. There seemed to him to be another mute core to himself. Apart from
the known Jack Grant, and apart from the world as he had known it. Even
apart from this Australia which was so unknown to him.
As a matter of fact, he had not yet come-to in Australia. He had not yet
extricated himself from England and the ship. Half of himself was left
behind, and the other half was gone ahead. So there he sat, mute and
stupid.
He only knew he wanted something, and he resented something. He resented
having been so much found fault with. They had hated him because he
preferred to make friends among "good-for-nothings." But as he saw it,
"good-for-nothings" were the only ones that had any daring. Not
altogether tamed. He loathed the thought of harness. He hated tameness,
hated it, hated it. The thought of it made his innocent face take on a
really devilish look. And because of his hatred of harness, he hated
answering the questions that people put to him. Neither did he ask many,
for his own part. But now one popped out.
"There _are_ policemen here, are there?"
"Yes, sir, a good force of mounted police, a smart body of men. And
they're needed. Western Australia is full of old prisoners, black
fellers, and white ones too. The whites, born here, is called 'gropers,'
if you take me, sir. Sand-gropers. And they all need protection one from
the other. And there's half-pay officers, civil and military, and
clergy, scattered through the bush----"
"Need protecting from one another, and yet he says there's nobody to
hold up the coach," thought Jack to himself, cynically.
The bush had alternated with patches of wild scrub. But now came
clearings: a little wooden house, and an orchard of trees planted in
rows, with a grazing field beyond. Then more flat meadows, and ploughed
spaces, and a humpy or a shack here and there: children playing around,
and hens: then a regular homestead, with a verandah on either side, and
creepers climbing up, and fences about.
"The soil is red!" said Jack.
"Clay! That's clay! No more sand, except in patches, all the way to
Albany. This is Guildford where the roses grow."
They clattered across a narrow wooden bridge with a white railing, and
up to a wooden inn where the horses were to be changed. Jack got down in
the road, and saw Mr. George and Mr. Ellis both sleepily emerge and pass
without a word into the place marked BAR.
"I think I'll walk on a bit," said Jack, "if you'll pick me up."
But at that moment a fleecy white head peering out of the back of the
coach cried:
"Oh, Mr. Gwey! Oh, Mr. Gwey! They've frowed away a perfectly good cat."
The driver went over with Jack to where the chubby arm was pointing, and
saw the body of a cat stretched by the trodden grass. It was quite dead.
They stood looking at it, Grey explaining that it was a good skin and it
certainly was a pity to waste it, and he hoped someone would find it who
would tan it before it went too far, for as for him, he could not take
it along in the coach, the passengers might object before they reached
Albany, though the weather was cooling up a bit.
Jack laughed and went back to the coach to throw off his overcoat. He
loved the crazy inconsequence of everything. He stepped along the road
feeling his legs thrilling with new life. The thrill and exultance of
new life. And yet somewhere in his breast and throat tears were heaving.
Why? Why? He didn't know. Only he wanted to cry till he died. And at the
same time, he felt such a strength and a new power of life in his legs
as he strode the Australian way, that he threw back his head in a sort
of exultance.
Let the exultance conquer. Let the tears go to blazes.
When the coach came alongside, there was the old danger-look in his
eyes, a defiance, and something of the cat-look of a young lion. He did
not mount, but walked on up the hill. They were climbing the steep
Darling Ranges, and soon he had a wonderful view. There was the
wonderful clean new country spread out below him, so big, so soft, so
ancient in its virginity. And far beyond, the gleam of that strange
empty sea. He saw the grey-green bush ribboned with blue rivers, winding
to an unknown sea. And in his heart he was _determining_ to get what he
wanted. Even though he did not know what it was he wanted. In his heart
he clinched his determination to get it. To get it out of this ancient
country's virginity.
He waited at the top of the hill. The horses came clop-clopping up.
Morning was warm and full of sun. They had rolled up the flaps of the
wagonette, and there was the beaming face of Mr. George, and the purple
face of Mr. Ellis, and the back of the head of the floss-haired child.
Jack looked back again, when he had climbed to his seat and the horses
were breathing, to where the foot of the grey-bush hills rested in a
valley ribboned with rivers and patched with cultivation, all frail and
delicate in a dim ethereal light.
"A land of promise! A land of promise," said Mr. George. "When I was
young I bid £1080 for 2,700 acres of it. But Hammersley bid twenty
pounds more, and got it.--Take up land, Jack Grant, take up land. Buy,
beg, borrow or steal land, but get it, sir, get it."
"Hell have to go farther back to find it," said Mr. Ellis, from his blue
face. "He'll get none of what he sees there."
"Oh, if he means to stay, he can jump it.--The law is always bendin' and
breakin', bendin' and breakin'."
"Well, if he's going to live with me, Mr. George, don't put him on to
land-snatching," said Mr. Ellis. And the two men fell to a discussion of
Land Acts, Grants, Holdings, Claims, and Jack soon ceased to listen. He
thought the land looked lovely. But he had no desire to own any of it.
He never felt the possibility of "owning" land. There the land was, for
eternity. How could he own it?--Anyhow, it made no appeal to him along
those lines.
But Mr. Ellis loved "timber" and broke the spell by pointing and saying:
"See them trees, Jack my boy? Jarrah! Hills run one into the other way
to the Blackwood River. Hundreds of miles of beautiful jarrah timber.
The trees like this barren iron-stone formation. It's well they do, for
nothing else does."
"There's one o' the mud-brick buildings the convicts lived in, while
they were building the road," said the driver, not to be done out of his
say. "One of the convicts broke and got away. Mostly when they went off
they was driven in by the bush. But this one never. They say he's
wanderin' yet. I say, dead."
Mr. George was explaining the landscape.
"Down there, Darlington. Governor Darling went down and never came back.
Went home the quick way.--Boya, native word for rock. Mahogany Creek
just above there. They'll see us coming. Kids watch from the rise, run
back and holloa. Pa catches rooster, black girl blows fire, Ma mixes
paste, yardman peels spuds,--dinner when we get there."
"And, sir, Sam has a good brew, none better. Also, sir, though it looks
lonesome, he's mostly got company."
"How's that?"
"Well, sir, everyone comes for miles round to hear his missus play the
harmonium. Got it out from England, and if it doesn't break your heart
to hear it! The voice of the past! You'd love to hear it, Mr. Grant,
being new from home."
"I'm sure I should," said Jack, thinking of the concert.
The dinner at Mahogany Creek was as Mr. George had said. Afterwards, on
again through the bush.
Towards the end of the afternoon the coach pulled up at a little
by-road, where stood a basket-work shay, and a tall young fellow in very
old clothes lounging with loose legs.
"'Ere y'are!" said Grey, and walking the horses to the side of the road,
he scrambled down to pull water from a well. "Here we are!" said Mr.
Ellis from the back of the coach, where the tall youth was just
receiving the floss-haired baby between his big red hands. Fat Mr. Ellis
got down. The youth began pulling out Jack's bags and boxes, and Jack
hurried round to help him.
"This is Tom," said Mr. Ellis.
"Pleased to meet you," said Tom, holding out a big hand and clasping
Jack's hand hard for a moment. Then they went on piling the luggage on
the wicker shay.
"That's the lot!" called Mr. Ellis.
"Good-bye, Jack!" said Mr. George, leaning his grey head out of the
coach. "Be good and you'll be happy."
Over which speech Jack puzzled mutely. But the floss-haired baby girl
was embracing his trouser legs.
"I never knew you were an Ellis," he said to her.
"Ay, she's another of 'em," said Mr. Ellis.
The coach was going. Jack went over awkwardly and offered the driver a
two-shilling piece.
"Put it back in y'r pocket, lad, y'll want it more than I shall," said
Grey unceremoniously. "The best o' luck to you, an' I mean it."
They all packed into the shay, Jack sitting with his back to the horses,
the little girl tied in beside him, his smaller luggage bundled where it
could be stowed; and in absolute silence they drove through the silence
of the standing, motionless gum trees. Jack had never felt such silence.
At last they pulled up. Tom jumped down and drew a slip-rail, and they
passed a log fence, inside which there were many sheep, though it was
still bush. Tom got in again and they drove through bush, with
occasional sheep. Then Tom got down again--Jack could not see for what
purpose. The youth fetched an axe out of the cart and started chopping.
A tree was across the road: he was chopping at the broken part. There
came a sweet scent.
"Raspberry jam!" said Mr. Ellis. "That's _acacia acuminata_, a beautiful
wood, good for fences, posts, pipes, walking-sticks. And they're burning
it off by the million acres."
Tom pulled the trunk aside, and drove on again till he came to another
gate. Then they saw ahead a great clearing in the bush, and in the midst
of the clearing a "ginger-bread" house, made of wood slabs, with a
shingle roof running low all round to the verandahs. A woman in dark
homespun cloth with an apron and sunbonnet, and a young bearded man in
moleskins and blue shirt, came out with a cheery shout.
"You get along inside and have some tea," said the young bearded man.
"I'll change the horses."
The woman lifted down the baby, after having untied her.
There was a door in the front of the house, a window on each side. But
they all went round under the eaves to the mud-brick kitchen behind, and
had tea. The woman hardly spoke, but she smiled and passed the tea and
nursed Ellie. When the young bearded man came in, he smiled and said:
"I've got the mail out of the shay, Mr. Ellis."
"That's all right," said Mr. Ellis.
After which no one spoke again.
When they set off once more, there was a splendid pair of greys on
either side the pole.
"Bill and Lil," said Mr. Ellis. "My own breed. Angus lends us his for
the twenty miles to the cross roads. We've just changed them and got our
own. There's another twenty miles yet."
It now began to rain, and gradually grew dark and cold. The bush was
dree, the dreest thing Jack had ever known. Rugs and mackintoshes were
fetched out, the baby was fastened snug in a corner out of the wet, and
the horses kept up a steady pace. And then, as Nature went to roost, Mr.
Ellis woke up and pulled out his pipe, to begin a conversation.
"How's Ma?"
"Great!"
"How's Gran?"
"Same."
"All well?"
"Yes."
"He's come twenty miles," thought Jack, "and he only asks now!"
"See the doctor in town, Dad?" asked Tom.
"I did."
"What'd he say?"
"Oh, heart's wrong all right, just what Rackett said. But might live to
be older than he is. So I might too, lad."
"So you will an' all, Dad."
And then Mr. Ellis, as if desperate to change the conversation, pulling
hard at his pipe:
"Jersey cow calved?"
"Yes."
"Bull again?"
"No, heifer. Beauty."
They both smiled silently. Then Tom's tongue suddenly was loose.
"Little beauty, she is. And the Berkshire has farrowed nine little
prize-winners. Cowslip came on with 'er butter since she come on to the
barley. I cot them twins Og an' Magog peltin' the dogs with eggs, an'
them so scarce, so I wopped 'em both. That black spaniel bitch, I had to
kill her for she worried one o' the last batch o' sucking pigs, though I
don't know how she come to do such a thing. I've finished fallowin' in
the bottom meadow, an' I'm glad you're back to tell us what to get on
wif."
"How's clearing in th' Long Mile Paddock?"
"Only bin down there once. Sam's doin' all right."
"Hear anything of the Gum Tree Gully clearing gang?"
"Message from Spencer, an' y' t'go down some time--as soon's y' can."
"Well, I want the land reclaimed this year, an' I want it gone on with.
Never know what'll happen, Tom. I'd like for you to go down there, Tom.
You c'n take th' young feller behind here with you, soon's the girls
come home."
"What's he like?"
"Seems a likely enough young chap. Old George put in a good word for'm."
"Bit of a toff."
"Never you mind, s' long's his head's not toffy."
"Know anything?"
"Shouldn't say so."
"Some fool?"
"Don't know. You find out for y'self."
Silence.
Jack heard it all. But if he hadn't heard it, he could easily have
imagined it.
"Yes, you find out," he thought to himself, going dazed with fatigue and
indifference as he huddled under the blanket, hearing the horses' hoofs
clop-clop! and the rain splash on his shoulders. Sometimes the horses
pulled slow and hard in the dark, sometimes they bowled along. He could
see nothing. Sometimes there was a snort and jangle of harness, and the
wheels resounding hollow. "Bridging something," thought Jack. And he
wondered how they found their way in the utter dark, for there were no
lamps. The trees dripped heavily.
And then, at the end of all things, Tom jumped down and opened a gate.
Hope! But on and on and on. Stop!--hope!--another gate. On and on. Same
again. And so interminably.
Till at last some intuition seemed to communicate to Jack the presence
of home.--The rain had stopped, the moon was out. Ghostly and weird the
bush, with white trunks spreading like skeletons. There opened a
clearing, and a dog barked. A horse neighed near at hand. There were no
trees, a herd of animals was moving in the dusk. And then a dark house
loomed ahead, unlighted. The shay drove on, and round to the back. A
door opened, a woman's figure stood in the candle-light and firelight.
"All right, Ma!" called Tom.
"All right, dear!" called Mr. Ellis.
"All right!" shrilled a little voice----
Well, here they were, in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellis was a brown-haired
woman with a tired look in her eyes. She looked a long time at Jack,
holding his hand in her one hand and feeling his wet coat with the
other.
"You're wet. But you can go to bed when you've had your supper. I hope
you'll be all right. Tom'll look after you."
She was hoping that he would only bring good with him. She was all
mother: and mother of her own children first. She felt kindly towards
him. But he was another woman's son.
When they had eaten, Tom led the newcomer away out of the house, across
a little yard, threw open a door in the dark, and lit a candle stuck in
the neck of a bottle. Jack looked round at the mud floor, the windowless
window, the unlined wooden walls, the calico ceiling, and he was glad.
He was to share this cubby hole, as they called it, with the other Ellis
boys. His truckle bed was fresh and clean. He was content. It wasn't
stuffy, it was rough and remote.
When he opened his portmanteau to get out his nightshirt he asked Tom
where he was to put his clothes. For there was no cupboard or chest of
drawers or anything.
"On your back or under your bed," said Tom. "Or I might find y' an old
packing case, if y're decent.--But say, ol' bloke, lemme give y'a hint.
Don't y' get sidey or nosey up here, puttin' on jam an suchlike, f'r if
y'do y'll shame me in front of strangers, an' I won't stand it."
"Jam, did you say?"
"Yes, jam, macaroni, cockadoodle. We're plain people out here-aways, not
mantel ornaments nor dickey-toffs, an' we want no flash sparks round,
see?"
"_I'm_ no flash spark," said Jack. "Not enough for 'em at home. It's too
much fist and too little toff, that's the matter with me."
"C'n y' use y'r fists?"
"Like to try me?"
Jack shaped up to him.
"Oh for the love o' Mike," laughed Tom, "stow the haw-haw gab! You'll do
me though, I think."
"I'll try to oblige," said Jack, rolling into bed.
"Here!" said Tom sharply. "Out y' get an' say y' prayers."
"What sortta example for them kids of ours, gettin' into bed an'
forgettin' y'r prayers?"
Jack eyed the youth.
"You say yours?" he asked.
"Should say I do. Gran is on ter me right cruel if I don't see to it,
_whoever_ sleeps in this cubby. They has ter say their prayers, see?"
"All right!" said Jack laconically.
And he obediently got up, kneeled on the mud floor, and gabbled through
his quota. Somewhere in his heart he was touched by the simple honesty
of the boy. And somewhere else he was writhing with slow, contemptuous
repugnance at the vulgar tyranny.
But he called again to his aid that natural indifference of his,
grounded on contempt. And also a natural boyish tolerance, because he
saw that Tom had a naive, if rather vulgar, good-will.
He gabbled through his prayers wearily, but scrupulously to the last
Amen. Then rolled again into bed to sleep till morning, and forget,
forget, forget! He depended on his power of absolute forgetting.