HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
I
It was a red hot Christmas that year--'ot, 'ot, 'ot, all day long. Good
Lord, how hot it was!--till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings
in its trail. After six o'clock you would sense the breeze coming from
the sea. Whispering, sighing, hesitating. Then puff! there it was.
Delicious, sweet, it seemed to save one's life.
It had been splendid out back, but it was nice to get home again and sit
down to regular meals, have clean clothes and sheets to one's bed. To
have your ironing and cooking done for you, and sit down to dinner at a
big table with fresh, hailstorm-patterned tablecloth on it. There was a
sense almost of glory in a big, white, glossy, hailstorm table-cloth. It
lifted you up.
Mr. Ellis had taken Gran away for the time, so the place seemed freer,
noisier. There was nothing to keep quiet for. It was holiday--_pinkie_,
the natives called it; the fierce midsummer Christmas. Everybody was
allowed to "spell" a great deal.
Tom and Jack were roasted like Red Indians, rather uncouth, and more
manly. At first they seemed rather bumptious, thinking themselves very
much men. Jack could now ride his slippery saddle in fine style, and
handle a rope or an axe, and shoot straight. He knew jarrah, karri,
eucalyptus, sandal, wattle, peppermint, banksia, she-oaks, pines,
paper-back and gum trees; he had learned to tan a kangaroo hide, pegging
it on to a tree; he had looked far into the wilderness, and seen the
beyond, and been seized with a desire to explore it; he had made
excursions over "likely places," with hammer and pick, looking for gold.
He had hunted and brought home meat, had trapped and destroyed many
native cats and dingoes. He had lain awake at night and listened to the
more-porks, and in the early morning had heard with delight the warbling
of the timeline and thickhead thrushes that abounded round the camp,
mingled with the noises of magpies, tits, and wrens. He had watched the
manoeuvres of willy-wagtails, and of a brilliant variety of birds:
weavers, finches, parrots, honeyeaters, and pigeons. But the banded
wrens and blue-birds were his favourites in the bush world.
Well, on such a hero as this, the young home-hussies Monica and Grace
had better not look too lightly. He was so grand they could hardly reach
him with a long pole.
"An' how many emus did y' see?" asked Og. For lately at Wandoo they had
had a plague of emus, which got into the paddocks and ate down the
sheeps' food-stuffs, and then got out again by running at the fences and
bashing a way through.
Jack had never seen one.
"Never seen an emu!"--Even little Ellie shrilled in derisive amazement.
"Monica, he's _never seen an emu!_"
Already they had snipped the tip off the high feather he had in his cap.
But he was still a hero, and Lennie followed him round like a satellite,
while the girls were obviously _thrilled_ at having Tom and him back
again. They would giggle and whisper behind Bow's back, and wherever he
was, they were always sauntering out to stand not far off from him. So
that, of course, their thrill entered also into Jack's veins, he felt a
cocky young lord, a young life-master. This suited him very well.
But there was no love-making, of course. They all laughed and joked
together over the milking and pail-carrying and feeding and
butter-making and cheese-making and everything, and life was a happy
delirium.
They had waited for Tom to come home, to rob the bees. Tom hated the
bees and they hated him, but he was staunch. Veils, bonnets, gloves,
gaiters were produced, and off they all set, in great joy at their own
appearance, with gong, fire, and endless laughter. Tom was to direct
from a distance: he stood afar, "Smoking them off." Grace and Monica
worked merrily among the hives, manipulating the boxes which held the
comb, lifting them on to the milk pans to save the honey, and handing
the pans to the boys to carry in.
"Oooh!" yelled Tom suddenly, "Oooh!"
A cloud of angry bees was round his head. Down went his
fire-protector--a tin full of smouldering chips--down went flappers and
bellows as with a shriek he beat the air. The more he beat the darker
the venomous cloud. Crippled with terror, he ran on shaking legs. The
girls and youngsters were paralysed with joy. They swarmed after him
shrieking with laughter. His head was completely hidden by bees, but his
arms like windmills waved wildly to and fro. He dashed into the cubby,
but the bees went with him. He appeared at the window for a moment,
showing a demented face, then he jumped out, and the bees with him.
Leaping the drain gap and yelling in terror, he made for the house. The
bees swung with him and the children after. Jack and the girls stood
speechless, looking at one another. Monica had on man's trousers with an
old uniform buttoned close to her neck, workmen's socks over her shoes
and trouser-ends, and a Chinaman's hat with a veil over it, netted round
her head like a meat-safe. Jack noticed that she was funny. Suddenly,
somehow, she looked mysterious to him, and not just the ordinary image
of a girl. Suddenly a new cavern seemed to open before his eyes: the
mysterious, fascinating cavern of the female unknown. He was not
definitely conscious of this. But seeing Monica there in the long white
flannel trousers and the Chinaman's-hat meat-safe over her face,
something else awoke in him, a new awareness of a new wonder. He had but
lately stood on the inward ranges and looked inland into the blue, vast
mystery of the Australian interior. And now with another opposite vision
he saw an opposite mystery opposing him: the mystery of the female, the
young female there in her grotesque garb.
A new awareness of Monica began to trouble him.
"Oooh! Oooh! Ma! Ma! Ma!" Out rushed Tom straight from the kitchen door,
the bees still with him. Straight he dashed to the garden, and to the
well in the middle. He loosed the windlass and stood on the coping
screaming while the bucket clanged and clashed to the bottom. Then Tom
seized the rope, and turning his legs round it, slid silently into the
hidden, cool dark depths.
The children shrieked with bliss, Jack and the girls rocked with
helpless laughter, convulsed by this last exit.
The bees were puzzled. They poised buzzbee fashion above the well-head,
explored the mouth of the shaft, and rose again and hovered. Then they
began to straggle away. They melted into the hot air.
And now the girls and Jack drew up from the well a raging and soaking
Tom. Drew him up uncertainly, wobblingly, a terrible weight on the
straining, creaking windlass. Ma and Ellie took him in hand and daubed
him a sublime blue: like an ancient Briton, Grace said. Then they gave
him bread and jam and a cup of tea.
Then occurred another honey-bee tragedy. Ellie, who had done nothing at
all to the bees, suddenly shrieked loudly and ran pelting round,
screaming: "I've got a bee in my head! I've got a bee in my head!"
Monica caught and held her, while Jack took the bee, a big drone, out of
the silky meshes of her honey hair. And as he lifted his eyes he met the
yellow eyes of Monica. And the two exchanged a moment's look of intimacy
and communication and secret shame, so that they both went away avoiding
one another.
II
On New Year's Eve there was always a foregathering of the settlers at
the Wandoo homestead. They must foregather somewhere, and Wandoo was the
oldest and most flourishing place. It occupied the banks of the
so-called Avon River, which was mostly just a great dry bed of stones.
But it had plenty of fresh water in the soaks and wells, among the
scorched rocks, and these wells were fed by underground springs, not
brackish, as is so often the case. Wandoo was therefore a favoured
place.
"What am I to wear?" said Jack, aghast, when he heard of the affair.
"Anything," said Tom.
"Nothing," said Len.
"Your new riding suit," said Monica, who had begun to assume airs of
proprietorship over him.--"And you needn't say anything, young Len," she
continued venomously. "Because you've got to wear that new holland suit
Ma got you from England, and boots and socks as well."
"It's awful. Oo-er! It's awful!" groaned Lennie.
It was. A tight-fitting brown holland suit with pants halfway down the
shin and many pearl-buttons across the stomach, the coat with a stiff
stand-up collar and rigid seams. Harry had a similar rig, but the twins
out--did Solomon in sailor suits with gold braid and floppy legs. At
least they started in glory.
Tom, in his father's old tennis-flannels and a neat linen jacket, looked
quite handsome. But when he saw Jack in his real pukka riding rig, he
exclaimed.
"God Almighty, but you've got the goods!"
"A bit too dashing?" asked Jack anxiously.
"Not on your life! You'll do fine. Reds all go in for riding breeks and
coats as near sporting dog's yank as they k'n get'm. There's a couple o'
white washing suits o' Dad's as he's grown out of, as I'll plank up in
the loft to change into tonight. We can't come in this here cubby again.
Once we leave it, it'll be jumped by all the women and children from
round the country to put their things in."
"Won't they go into the house?"
"Hallelujah no! Only relations go upstairs. Quality into the dyin' room.
Yahoos anywhere, and the ladies always bag our cubby!"
"Lor!"
But it had to be so. For the New Year's chivoo the settlers all saved
up, and they all dressed up. By ten o'clock the place was like a fair
ground. Horses of all sorts nosing their feed-bags; conveyances of all
sorts unhitched; girls all muslin and ribbon; boys with hats on at an
angle, and boots on; men in clean shirts and brilliant ties, mothers in
frill and furbelow, with stiffly-starched little children half hidden
under sunbonnets; old dames and ancient patriarchs, young bearded
farmers, and shaven civilians ridden over from York. Children rushing
relentlessly in the heat, amid paper bags, orange peel,
concertina-playing, baskets of victuals and fruit, canvas, rubbish and
nuts all over the scorched grass. Christmas!
Tom had asked Jack to organise a cricket eleven to play against the
Reds. The Reds were dangerous opponents, and the dandies of the day. In
riding breeches made India fashion, with cotton gaiters, and
rubber-soled shoes, white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats, they looked a
handsome colonial set. And they had a complete eleven.
Tom was sitting on a bat bemoaning his fate. He had only five reliable
men.
"Aw, shut up!" said Lennie. "Somebody'll turn up.--Who's comin' in at
the gate now? Ain't it the parson from York, and five gents what can
handle a bat. Hell!--ain't my name cockadoodle!"
In top hats and white linen suits these gentlemen had ridden their
twenty-five miles for a game. What price the Reds now!
Tom's side was in first, Easu and Ross Ellis bowling, Easu, big, loose,
easy, looked strange and _native_, as if he belonged to the natural salt
of the earth there. He seemed at home, like an emu or a yellow mimosa
tree. He was a bowler of repute. But somehow Jack could not bear to see
him palm the ball before he bowled: could not bear to watch it. Whereas
fat Ross Ellis, the other bowler, spitting on his hand and rolling the
ball in elation after getting the wicket of the best man from York, Jack
didn't mind him.--But unable to watch Easu, he walked away across the
paddock, among the squatting mothers whose terror was the flying leather
ball.
"Your turn at the wickets, Mr. Grant," called the excited, red-faced
parson, who, Lennie declared, "Couldn't preach less or act more."
"We're eight men out for twenty-six rounds, so smack at 'em. If ye can
get the loose end on Ross, do it. I'll be in t'other end next and stop
'em off Easu. I come in right there as th' useful block."
Jack was excited. And when he was excited, phrases always came up in his
mind. He had the sun in his eyes, but the bat felt good.
"If a gentleman sees bad, he ignores it. He----"
Here comes the ball from that devil Easu!
How's that!
"Finds good and fans it to flame--fans it to----"
Joe Low, that stripling, had the other wicket.
Smack! Jack scored the first run off Easu, running for his life.
"You can be a gentleman even if you are a bush-whacker."
Nine wickets had fallen to Easu for twenty-seven runs, and Easu was
elated. Then the parson came forth and stood opposite Jack. He at once
whacked Ross' ball successfully, for three. Jack hitched his belt after
the run, and hit out for another.
Smack! no need to run that time. It was a boundary.
Lennie's voice outside yelling admiration roused his soul, as did Easu's
yelling agrily to Ross: "You give that ball to Sam, this over. You
blanky idjut!"
Ross picked up the returning leather, and sent down a sulky grubber
which Jack naturally skied. Herbert, placed at a point in the shade,
came out to catch it, and missed.
Somehow the parson had steadied Jack's spirit. And when, in a crisis,
Jack got his spirit steadied, it seemed to him he could get a
semi-magical grip over a situation. Almost as if he could alter the
swerve of the ball by his pure, clairvoyant will. So it seemed. And
keyed up against the weird, handsome, native Easu, as if by a magic of
will Jack held the wicket and got the runs. It was one of those subtle
battles which are beyond our understanding. And Jack won.
But Easu got him out in the end. In the first innings, a terrific full
pitch came down crash over his head on to the middle wicket, when he had
made his first half century; that was Easu; and Easu stumped him out in
the second innings, for twenty.
Nevertheless, the Reds were beaten by a margin of sixteen runs before
the parson and the gentlemen in top hats set off for their long and
dusty ride to York.
III
Jack hated the Reds with all the wholesale hatred of eighteen. There
they were, all of them, swaggering round as if the place belonged to
them, taking everything and giving nothing. Their peculiar air of
assertion was particularly maddening, in contrast with the complete lack
of assumption on the part of the other Australians. It was as if the
Reds had made up their minds, all of them, to leave a bruise on
everything they touched. They were all big men, and older than Jack.
Easu must have been over thirty, and unmarried, with a bad reputation
among the women of the colony. Yet, apparently, he could always find a
girl. That slow, laconic assurance of his, his peculiar, meaning smile
as he drifted up loose-jointed to a girl, seemed nearly always to get
through. The women watched him out of the corner of their eye. They
didn't like him. But they felt his power. And that was perhaps even more
effective.
For he had power. And this was what Jack felt lacking in himself. Jack
had quick, intuitive understanding, and a quick facility. But he had not
Easu's power. Sometimes Easu could look really handsome, strolling
slowly across to some girl with a peculiar rolling gait that
distinguished him, and smiling that little, meaningful, evil smile. Then
he looked handsome, and as if he belonged to another race of men, men
who were like small-headed demons out to destroy the world.
"I'm fighting him," thought Jack. "I wouldn't have a good opinion of
myself if I didn't."
For he saw in Easu a malevolent principle, a kind of venom.
Ross Ellis, the youngest of the Reds, was old enough to be joining the
mounted police force in a few days, and Mr. Ellis had sent up a strong
chestnut mount for him, from the coast. Easu, tall, broad, sinewy, with
sinewy powerful legs and small buttocks, was sitting close on the
prancing chestnut, showing off, his malevolence seeming to smile under
his blond beard, and his blue, rivet eyes taking in everything. All the
time he went fooling the simple farmers who had come to the sports,
raising a laugh where he could, and always a laugh of derision.
"Tom," said Jack at last, "couldn't you boss it a bit over those Reds?
It's your place, it's _your_ house, not theirs. Go on, put them down a
bit, do."
"Aw," said Tom. "They're older'n me, and the place by rights belongs to
them: leastways they think so. And they are crack sportsmen."
"Why, they're not! Look at Easu parading on that police horse your
father sent up from the coast! And look at all the other cockeys getting
ready to compete against him in the riding events. They haven't a
chance, and he knows it."
"He won't risk taking that police horse over the jumps, don't you fret."
"No, but he has the pick of your stable, and he'll beat all the others
while you stand idling by. Why should he be cock of the walk?"
"Why," cried Lennie breaking in, "I could beat anyfin' on Lucy. But Tom
won't let me go in against the other chaps, will you, Tom?"
Tom smiled. He had a plain brick-red face, patient and unchanging, with
white teeth, and brown, sensitive eyes. When he smiled he had a great
charm. But he did not often smile, and his mouth was marred by the look
so many men develop in Australia, facing the bush: that lipless look,
which Jack, as he grew more used to it, came to call the suffering look.
As if they had bitten and been bitten hard, perhaps too hard.
"Well, Nipper," he said after a moment's hesitation; "if you finds them
Waybacks has it between 'em, you stand out. But y'c'n have Lucy if you
like, an' if y' beat the _Reds_--y'c'n beat 'em."
"That's what I mean all right!" cried Lennie, capering. "I savvy O. K.
I'll give 'em googlies and sneaks an' leg-breaks, y' see if I don't, an'
even up for 'em."
IV
Monica came up and took Jack's arm with sudden impulsive affection, on
this very public day. Drawing him away, she said:
"Come and sit down a bit under the Bay Fig, Jack. I want to rest. All
these people tearing us in two from morning till night."
Jack found himself thrilling to the girl's touch, to his own surprise
and disgust. He flushed slowly, and went on stiff legs, hoping nobody
was looking at him. Nobody was looking specially, of course. But Monica
kept hold of his arm, with her light, tense girlish hand, and he found
it difficult to walk naturally. And again the queer electric thrills
went through him, from that light blade of her hand.
She was very lovely to-day, with a sort of winsomeness, a sort of fierce
appeal. As a matter of fact, she had been flirting dangerously with Red
Easu, till she was a bit scared. And she had been laughing and fooling
with Hal Stockley--otherwise Pink-eye Percy--whom all the girls were mad
about, but who didn't affect her seriously. Easu affected her, though.
And she didn't really like him. That was why she had come for Jack, whom
she liked very much indeed. She felt so safe and happy with him. And she
loved his delicate, English, virgin quality, his shyness and natural
purity. He was purer than she was. So she wanted to make him in love
with her. She was sure he was in love with her. But it was such a shy,
unwilling love, she was half annoyed.
So she leaned forward to him, with her fierce young face and her queer,
yellow, glowering eyes, not far from his, and she seemed to yearn to him
with a yearning like a young leopard. Sometimes she touched his hand,
and sometimes, laughing and showing her small, pointed teeth winsomely,
she would look straight into his eyes, as if searching for something.
And he flushed with a dazed sort of delight, unwilling to be overpowered
by the new delight, yet dazed by it, even to the point of forgetting the
other people and the party, and Easu on the chestnut horse.
But he made no move. When she touched his hand, though his eyes shone
with a queer suffused light, he would not take her hand in his. He would
not touch her. He would not make any definite response. To all she said,
he answered in simple monosyllables. And there he sat, suffused with
delight, yet making no move whatsoever.
Till at last Monica, who was used to defending herself, was niffed. She
thought him a muff. So she suddenly rose and left him. Went right away.
And he was very much surprised and chagrined, feeling that somehow it
wasn't possible, and feeling as if the sun had gone out of the sky.
V
The sun really was low in the heavens. The breeze came at last from the
sea and freshened the air and lifted the sweet crushed scent of the
trampled dry grass. It was time for the last events of the sports.
Everybody was eager, revived by the approach of evening, and Jack felt
the drunkenness of new delight upon him. He was still vague, however,
and unwilling even to think of Monica, much less seek her out.
The black-boys' event, with unbroken buckjumpers, was finishing down by
the river. Joe Low, with a serious face but sparkling eyes, went riding
by on a brumby colt he had caught and broken himself. Jack sat alone
under a tree, waiting for the flat race, in which he was entered, and
feeling sure of himself.
Easu came dancing up on the raw chestnut that had been sent up from the
coast along with the police horse. He wore spurs, and had a long
parrot-feather in his hat.
"Here you young Pommy Grant," he said to Jack. "Ketch hold of me bit
while I fix me girths a bit tighter, and then you c'n hold your breath
while I show them Cornseeds what."
He had a peculiarly insolent manner towards Jack. The latter
nevertheless held the frothy chestnut while Easu swung out of the saddle
and hitched up the girth. As he bent there beside the horse, Jack
noticed his broad shoulders and narrow waist and small hard, tense hips.
Yes, he was a man. But ugh! what an objectionable one! Especially the
slight hateful smile of derision on the red face and in the light-blue,
small-pupilled eyes.
But he dipped into the saddle again, and once more it was impossible not
to admire his seat, his close, fine, clean, small seat in the saddle.
There was no spread about him there. And the power of the long, muscular
thighs. Then once more he dismounted, leaving Jack to hold the bridle of
the chestnut whilst he himself strolled away.
The other farmers were waiting on their horses, so serious and quiet: in
their patience and unobtrusiveness, so gentlemanly, Jack thought. So
unlike the assertive, jeering Easu.
Lennie came up and whipped the pin out of Jack's favour. It was a
rosette of yellow ribbon, shiny as a buttercup, that Monica had made
him.
"Here, what're you doing!" he cried.
"Aw, shut it. Keep still!" said Lennie.
And slipping round, he pushed the pin, point downward, into the back
saddle-pad of the chestnut Jack was holding. That wasn't fair. But Jack
let be.
The judge called his warning, the Cornseeds lined up, along with Joe Low
and a young yellow-faced dairyman and a slender skin-hunter, and a
woolly old stockman. Easu came and took his chafing horse, but did not
mount.
"One!" Easu swung up, standing in his stirrups, scarce touching the
saddle-seat.
"Two! Three!" and the sharp crack of a pistol.
Away went the scraggy brumby and Joe, and like a torrent, the dairyman
and the skin-hunter and the stockman. But the chestnut had never heard a
pistol shot before, and was jumping round wildly.
"Blood and pace, mark you;" said the judge, waving towards the chestnut.
"Them cockeys does their best on what they got, but watch that chestnut
under Red Ellis. It's a pleasure to see good horse-flesh like them
Ellises brings up to these parts."
Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on
to the track at that minute, and sat down.
The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped
madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody
was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the
running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.
"Oh, Gawd my fathers!" murmured Tom in Jack's ear. "Think of Easu
getting a toss! Easu letting any horse get the soft side of him! Oh, my
Gawd, if I'm not sorry for Easu when that crowd o' Reds sets on to him
with their tongues to-morrow."
"I'm jolly glad," said Jack complacently.
"So am I," said Lennie. "An' I did it, an' I wish it had killed him. I
put a pin under the saddle-crease, Tom. Don't look at me, y'needn't.
I've had one up again 'im for a long time, for Jack's sake. D'y' know
what he did? He put Jack on that Stampede stallion, when Jack hadn't
been on our place a fortnight. So he did. An' if Jack had been killed,
who'd ha' called him a murderer? Zah, one of the blacks, told me. And
nobody durst tell you, cos they durstn't."
"On Stampede!" exclaimed Tom, going yellow, and hell coming into his
brown eyes. "An' a new chum my father trusted to him to show him round."
"Oh well," said Jack.
"The sod!" said Tom: and that was final.
Then after a moment:
"If the Reds is going over the jumps, you go and get Lucy, Len."
"I likes your sperrit, Tom. I was goin' to anyway, case they get that
dark 'oss." Lennie threw off his coat, hat, and tie, then sat on the
trodden brown grass to take off his boots and stockings. Thus stripped,
he stood up and hitched his braces looser, remarking:
"Jack Grant said he'd bash Easu's head for 'im if he said anything to me
after I beat 'im over the jumps, so I was goin' to risk it anyway."
Jack had said no such thing, but was prepared to take the hint.
The chestnut had been caught and tied up. Down the field they could see
Easu persuading Sept to ride a smart piebald filly that had been brought
in. Sept was the thinnest of the Reds. The jumping events continued away
on the left, the sun was almost setting.
"Hurry up there for the final!" called the judge.
Sept came up on the delicate piebald filly which they had brought over
from their own place. She was dark chestnut, and with flames of pure
white, she seemed dazzling.
"That's the dark 'oss I mentioned!" said Len. "Gosh, but me heart is
beatin'! It'll be a real match between me and him, for that there filly
can jump like a 'roo, I've watched 'er."
Joe Low rode up to the jumping yard, and lifted his brumby over. The
filly danced down and followed. Lennie was in the saddle like a cat and
Lucy went over the rail without effort.
When the rail was at five feet two, Joe Low's brumby was done. Lucy
clipped the rail and the filly cleared it. Sept brought his creature
round to the judge, with raised eyebrows.
"No y' don't," yelled Lennie, riding down the track hell for leather,
and Lucy went over like a swallow. Sept laughed, and came down to the
rail that was raised an inch. The filly sailed it, but hit the bar. Lucy
baulked. Len swung her round and came again. A perfect over.
Next! The filly, snorting and frothing, tore down, jibbed, and was sworn
at loudly by Easu standing near. Sept whipped and spurred her over.
But at that rail, raised to five feet nine, she would not be persuaded,
though Lucy cleared it with a curious casual ease. The filly would not
take it.
"Say, Mister!" called Lennie when he knew he was winner. "Raise that
barrier five inches and see us bound it."
He made his detour, brought Lucy along on twinkling feet, and cleared it
prettily.
The roar of delight from the crowd sent Easu mad. Jack kept an eye on
him, in case he meant mischief. But Easu only went away to where the
niggers were still trying out the buck jumpers. Taking hold of a huge
rogue of a mare, he sprang on her back and came bucking all along the
track, apparently to give a specimen of horsemanship. The crowd watched
the queer massive pulsing up and down of the man and the powerful
bucking horse, all in a whirl of long hair, like some queer fountain of
life. And there was Monica watching Easu's cruel, changeless face, that
seemed to have something fixed and eternal in it, amid all that heaving.
Jack felt he had a volcano inside him. He knew that Stampede had been
caught again, and was being led about down there, securely roped, as
part of the show. Down there among the outlaws.
Away ran Jack. Anything rather than be beaten by Easu. But as he ran, he
kept inside him that queer little flame of white-hot calm which was his
invincibility.
He patted Stampede's arching neck, and told Sam to saddle him. Sam
showed the whites of his eyes, but obeyed, and Stampede took it. Jack
stood by, intense in his own cool calmness. He didn't care what happened
to him. If he was to be killed he would be killed. But at the same time,
he was not reckless. He watched the horse with mystical closeness, and
glanced over the saddle and bridle to see if they were all right.
Then, swift and light, he mounted and knew the joy of being a horseman,
the thrill of being a real horseman. He had the gift, and he knew it. If
not the gift of sheer power, like Easu, who seemed to overpower his
horse as he rode it; Jack had the gift of adjustment. He adjusted
himself to his horse. Intuitively, he yielded to Stampede, up to a
certain point. Beyond that certain flexible point, there would be no
yielding, none, and never.
Jack came bucking along in Easu's wake, on a much wilder horse. But
though Stampede was wild and wicked, he never exerted his last efforts.
He bucked like the devil. But he never let himself altogether go. And
Jack seemed to be listening with an inward ear to the animal, listening
to its passion. After all it was a live creature, to be mastered, but
not to be overborne. Intuitively, the boy gave way to it as much as
possible. But he never for one moment doubted his own mastery over it.
In his mastery there must be a living tolerance. This his instinct told
him. And the stallion, bucking and sitting up, seemed somehow to accept
it.
For after all, if the horse had gone really wicked, absolutely wicked,
it would have been too much for Master Jack. What he depended on was the
bit of response the animal was capable of. And this he knew.
He found he could sit the stallion with much greater ease than before.
And that strange, powerful life beneath him and between his thighs,
heaving and breaking like some enormous alive wave, exhilarated him with
great exultance, the exultance in the power of life.
Monica's eyes turned from the red, fixed, overbearing face of Easu, to
the queer, abstract, radiant male face of Jack, and a great pang went
through her heart, and a cloud came over her brow. The boy balanced on
the trembling, spurting stallion, looking down at it with dark-blue,
wide, dark-looking eyes, and thinking of nothing, yet feeling so much;
his face looking soft and warm with a certain masterfulness that was
more animal than human, like a centaur, as if he were one blood with the
horse, and had the centaur's superlative horse-sense, its non-human
power, and wisdom of hot blood-knowledge. She watched the boy, and her
brow darkened and her face was fretted as if she were denied something.
She wanted to look again at Easu, with his fixed hard will that excited
her. But she couldn't. The queer soft power of the boy was too much for
her, she could not save herself.
So they rode, the two men, and all the people watched them, as the sun
went down in the wild empty sea westward from hot Australia.