WANDOO
I
Two things struggled in Jack's mind when he awoke in the morning. The
first was the brave idea that he had left everything behind, that he had
done with his boyhood and was going to enter into his own. The second
was a noise of somebody quoting Latin and clicking wooden dumb-bells.
Jack opened his eyes. There were four beds in the cubby hole. Between
two beds stood a thin boy of about thirteen, swinging dumb-bells, and
facing two small urchins who were faithfully imitating him, except that
they did not repeat the Latin tags. They were all dressed in short
breeches loosely held up by braces, and under-vests.
_Veni!_ up went their arms smartly,--_vidi!_ down came the dubs to
horizontal,--_vici!_ the clubs were down by their sides.
Jack smiled to himself and dozed again. It was scarcely dawn. He was
dimly aware of the rain pattering on the shingle roof.
"Ain't ye gettin' up this morning?"
It was Tom standing contemplating him. The children had run out barefoot
and bare-armed in the rain.
"Is it morning?" asked Jack, stretching.
"Not half. We've fed th' osses. Come on."
"Where do I wash?"
"At the pump. Look slippy and get your clothes on. Our men live over at
Red's, we have to look sharp in the morning."
Jack looked slippy, and went out to wash in the tin dish by the pump.
The rain was abating, but it seemed a damp performance.
By the time he was really awake, the day had come clear. It was a fine
morning, the air fresh with the smell of flowering shrubs: silver
wattle, spirea, daphne and syringa which Ellis grew in his garden.
Already the sun was coming warm.
The house was a low stone building with a few trees round it. But all
the life went on here at the back, here where the pump was, and the
various yards and wooden out-buildings. There was a vista of open
clearing, and a few huge gum-trees. The sky was already blue, a certain
mist lay below the great isolated trees.
In the yard a score of motherless lambs were penned, bleating, their
silly faces looking up at Jack confidently, expecting the milk bottle.
He walked with his hands in the pockets of his old English tweeds,
feeling over-dressed and a bit out of place. Cows were tethered to posts
or standing loose about the fenced yard, and the half-caste Tim, and
Lennie, the dumb-bell boy, and a girl, were silently milking. The heavy,
pure silence of the Australian morning.
Jack stood at a little distance. A cat whisked across the yard and ran
up a queer-looking pine-tree, a dissipated old cow moved about at
random. "Hey you!" shouted Tom impatiently, "Take hoult of that cart
toss nosin' his way inter th' chaff-house, and bring him here. An' see
to that grey's ropes: she's chewin' 'em free. Look slippy, make yourself
useful."
There was a tone of amiability and intimacy mixed with this bossy
shouting. Jack ran to the cart toss. He couldn't help liking Tom and the
rest. They were so queer and naive, and they seemed oddly forlorn, like
waifs lost in this new country. Jack had always had a leaning towards
waifs and lost people. They were the only people whose bossing he didn't
mind.
The children at their various tasks were singing in shrill, clear
voices, with a sort of street-arab abandon. Lennie, the boy, would break
the shrilling of the twin urchins with a sudden musical yell, from the
side of the cow he was milking. And they seemed to sing anything, songs,
poetry, nonsense, anything that came into their heads, like birds
singing variously and at random.
"The blue, the fresh, the ever free
I am where I would ever be
With the blue above, and the blue below--"
Then a yell from Lennie by the cows:
"And wherever thus in childhood's _our_--"
The twins:
"I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more--"
Again a sudden and commanding yell from Lennie.
"I never loved a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But, when it came to know me well
And love me--"
Here the twins, as if hypnotized, howled out--
"--it was sure to die."
They kept up this ragged yelling in the new, soft morning, like lost
wild things. Jack laughed to himself. But they were quite serious. The
elders were dumb-silent. Only the youngsters made all this noise. Was it
a sort of protest against the great silence of the country? Was it their
young, lost effort in the noiseless antipodes, whose noiselessness seems
like a doom at last? They yelled away like wild little lost things, with
an uncanny abandon. It pleased Jack.
II
They had all gone silent again, and collected under the peppermint tree
at the back door, where Ma ladled out tea into mugs for everybody. Ma
was Mrs. Ellis. She still had the tired, distant look in her eyes, and a
tired bearing, and she seemed to take no notice of anybody, either when
she was in the kitchen or when she came out with pie to the group
squatting under the tree. When anyone said: "Some more tea, Ma!" she
silently ladled out the brew. Jack was not a very intent observer. But
he was-struck by Mrs. Ellis' silence and her "drawn" look.
Tom came and hitched himself up against the trunk of the tree. Lennie
was sitting opposite on a log, holding his tin mug and eyeing the
stranger in silence. On another log sat the two urchins, sturdy, wild
little brats, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed, as Jack had first
seen them, their dress still consisting of a little pair of pants and a
cotton undervest: and a pair of braces. The last seemed by far the most
important garment. Lennie was clothed, or unclothed, the same, while Tom
had added a pair of boots. The bare arms out of the cotton vests were
brown and smooth, and they gave the boys and the youth a curiously naked
look. A girl of about twelve, in a dark-blue spotted pinafore and a rag
of red hair-ribbon, sat on a little stump near the twins. She was silent
like her mother--but not yet "drawn."
"What d'ye think of Og an' Magog?" said Tom, pointing with his mug at
the twins. "Called for giants 'cos they're so small."
Jack did not know what to think. He tried to smile benevolently.
"An' that's Katie," continued Tom, indicating the girl, who at once
looked foolish. "She's younger'n Lennie, but she's pretty near his size.
He's another little 'un. Little an' cheeky, that's what he is. Too much
cheek for his age--which is fourteen. You'll have to keep him in his
place, I tell you straight."
"Ef ye _ken!_" murmured Len with a sour face.
Then, chirping up with a real street-arab pertness, he seemed to ignore
Jack as he asked brightly of Tom:
"An' who's My Lord Duke of Early Risin', if I might be told?--For before
Gosh he sports a tidy raiment."
"Now, Len, none o' yer lingo!" warned Tom.
"Who is he, anyway, as you should go tellin' him to keep me in my
place?"
"No offence intended, I'm sure," said Jack pleasantly.
"_Taken_ though!" said Lennie, with such a black look that Jack's colour
rose in spite of himself.
"You keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll punch it for you," he
said. He and Lennie stared each other in the eye.
Lennie had a beautiful little face, with an odd pathos like some lovely
girl, and grey eyes that could change to black. Jack felt a certain pang
of love for him, and in the same instant remembered that she-lioness cub
of a Monica. Perhaps she too had the same odd, lovely pathos, like a
young animal that runs alert and alone in the wood. Why did these
children seem so motherless and fatherless, so much on their own?--It
was very much how Jack felt himself. Yet he was not pathetic.
Lennie suddenly smiled whimsically, and Jack knew he was let into the
boy's heart. Queer! Up till now they had all kept a door shut against
him. Now Len had opened the door. Jack saw the winsomeness and pathos of
the boy vividly, and loved him, too. But it was still remote. And still
mixed up in it was the long stare of that Monica.
"That's right, you tell 'im," said Tom. "What I say here--no back chat,
an' no tales told. That's what's the motto on this station."
"_Obey an' please my Lord Tom Noddy_,"
"_So God shall love and angels aid ye_----" said Lennie, standing
tip-toe on his log and balancing his bare feet, and repeating his rhyme
with an abstract impudence, as if the fiends of air could hear him.
"Aw, shut up, you!" said Tom. "You've got ter get them 'osses down to
Red's. Take Jack an' show him."
"I'll show him," said Len, munching a large piece of pie as he set off.
"Ken ye ride, Jack?"
Jack didn't answer, because his riding didn't amount to much.
III
Len unhitched four heavy horses, led them into the yard, and put the
ropes into Jack's hands. The child marched so confidently under the
noses of the great creatures, as they planted their shaggy feet. And he
was such a midget, and with his brown bare arms and bare legs and feet,
and his vivid face, he looked so "tender." Jack's heart moved with
tenderness.
"Don't you ever wear boots?" he asked.
"Not if I k'n help it. Them kids now, they won't neither, 'n I don't
blame 'em. Last boots Ma sent for was found all over the manure heap, so
the old man said he'd buy no more boots, an' a good job too. The only
thing as scares me is double-gees: spikes all roads and Satan's face on
three sides. Ever see double-gees?"
Len was leading three ponderous horses. He started peering on the road,
the horses marching just behind his quick little figure. Then he found a
burr with three queer sides and a sort of face on each side with
sticking-out hair.
He was a funny kid, with his scraps of Latin and tags of poetry. Jack
wondered that he wasn't self-conscious and ashamed to quote poetry. But
he wasn't. He chirped them off, the bits of verse, as if they were a
natural form of expression.
They had led the horses to another stable. Len again gave the ropes to
Jack, disappeared, and returned leading a saddled stock-horse. Holding
the reins of the saddle-horse, the boy scrambled up the neck of one of
the big draft-horses like a monkey.
"Which are you goin' to ride?" he asked Jack from the height. "I'm
taking three an' leading Lucy. You take the other three."
So he received the three halter ropes.
"I think I'll walk," said Jack.
"Please y'self. You k'n open the gates easy walkin'; and comin' back
I'll do it, 'n you k'n ride Lucy an I'll ride behind pinion so's I can
slip down easy."
Yes, Lennie was a joy. On the return journey, when Jack was in the
saddle riding Lucy, Len flew up behind him and stood on the horse's
crupper, his hands on Jack's shoulders, crying: "Let 'er go!" At the
first gate, he slid down like a drop of water, then up again, this time
sitting back to back with Jack, facing the horse's tail, and whistling
briskly. Suddenly he stopped whistling, and said:
"Y've seen everybody but Gran an' Doc. Rackett, haven' you? He teaches
me--a rum sortta dock he is, too, never there when he's wanted. But he's
a real doctor all right: signs death certificates an' no questions
asked. Y' c'd do a murder, 'n if you was on the right side of him, y'd
never be hung. He'd say the corpse died of natural causes."
"I didn't know a corpse died," said Jack laughing.
"Didn't yer? Well yer know now!--Gran's as good as a corpse, an' she
don't want her die. She put on Granfer's grave: 'Left desolate, but not
without hope.' So they all thought she'd get married again. But she
never.--Did y' go to one of them English schools?"
"Yes."
"Ever wear a bell-topper?"
"Once or twice."
"Gosh!--May I never go to school, God help me. I should die of shame and
disgrace. Arrayed like a little black pea in a pod, learnin' to be
useless. Look at Rackett. School, an' Cambridge, an' comes inter money.
Wastes it. Wastes his life. Now he's teachin' me, an' th' only useful
thing he ever did."
After a pause, Jack ventured.
"Who is Dr. Rackett?"
"A waster. Down and out waster. He's got a sin. I don't know what it is,
but it's wastin' his soul away."
IV
It was no use Jack's trying to thread it all together. It was a
bewilderment, so he let it remain so. It seemed to him, that right at
the very core of all of them was the same bewildered vagueness: Mr.
Ellis, Mrs. Ellis, Tom, the men--they all had that empty bewildered
vagueness at the middle of them. Perhaps Lennie was most on the spot.
The others just could attend to their jobs, no more.
Jack still had no acquaintance with anyone but Tom and Len. He never got
an answer from Og and Magog. They just grinned and wriggled. Then there
was Katie. Then Harry, a fat, blue-eyed small boy. And then that
floss-haired Ellie who had come from Perth. And smaller than her, the
baby. All very confusing.
The second morning, when they were at the proper breakfast, Dad suddenly
said:
"Ma! D'ye know where the new narcissus bulbs are gone? I was waiting to
plant 'em till I got back."
"I've not seen them since ye put them in the shed at the end of the
verandah, dear."
"Well, they're gone."
Dead silence.
"Is 'em like onions?" asked Og, pricking up intelligently.
"Yes. They are! Have you seen them?" asked Dad sternly.
"I see Baby eatin' 'em, Dad," replied Og calmly.
"What, my bulbs, as I got out from England! Why, what the dickens, Ma,
d'you let that mischievous monkey loose for? My precious narcissus
bulbs, the first I've ever had. An' besides--Ma! I'm not sure but what
they're poison."
The parents looked at one another, then at the gay baby. There is a
general consternation. Ma gets the long, evil blue bottle of castor oil
and forcibly administers a spoonful to the screaming baby. Dad hurries
away, unable to look on the torture of the baby--the last of his name.
He goes to hunt for the bulbs in the verandah shed. Tom says, "By Gosh!"
and sits stupefied. Katie jumps up and smacks Og for telling tales, and
Magog flies at Katie for touching Og. Jack, as a visitor, unused to
family life, is a little puzzled.
Lennie meanwhile calmly continues to eat his large mutton chop. The
floss-haired Ellie toddles off talking to herself. She comes back just
as intent, wriggles on her chair on her stomach, manages to mount, and
puts her two fists on the table, clutching various nibbled, onion-like
roots.
"Vem's vem, ain't they, Dad? She never ate 'em. She got 'em out vis
mornin' and was suckin' 'em, so I took 'em from her an' hid 'em for
you."
"Should Dad have said Narcissi or Narcissuses?" asked Len from over his
coffee mug, in the hollow voice of one who speaks out of his cups.
Nobody answered. The baby was shining with castor oil. Jack sat in a
kind of stupefaction. Everybody ate mutton chops in noisy silence,
oppressively, and chewed huge doorsteps of bread.
Then there entered a melancholy, well-dressed young fellow who looked
like a daguerreotype of a melancholy young gentleman. He sauntered in in
silence, and pulling out his chair, sat down at table without a word.
Katie ran to bring his breakfast, which was on a plate on the hearth,
keeping warm. Then she sat down again. The meal was even more
oppressive. Everybody was eating quickly, to get away.
And then Gran opened the door leading from the parlour, and stood there
like the portrait of an old, old lady, stood there immovable, just
looking on, like some ghost. Jack's blood ran cold. The boys, pushing
back their empty plates, went quietly out to the verandah, to the air.
Jack followed, clutching his cap, that he had held all the time on his
knee.
Len was pulling off his shirt. The boys had to wear shirts at meal
times.
This was the wild new country! Jack's sense of bewilderment deepened.
Also he felt a sort of passionate love for the family--as a savage must
feel for his tribe. He felt he would never leave the family. He must
always be near them, always in close physical contact with them. And yet
he was just a trifle horrified by it all.