SHADOWS BEFORE
I
But in the morning memory was back, and the unquenched smouldering of
passion. Easu had insulted him. Easu had insulted him, and that should
never be forgiven. And he had this new, half painful, more than half
painful desire to see Monica, to be near her, to touch her hand; a sort
of necessity upon him all the while which he was not used to. It made
him restless, uneasy, and for the first time in his life, a little
melancholy. He was used to feeling angry: a steady, almost blithe sort
of anger. And beyond that he had always been able to summon up an
indifference to things, cover them with oblivion: to retreat upon
himself and insulate himself from contact.
Now he could no longer do this, and it fretted him, made him accessible
to melancholy. The hot, hot January days, all dry flaming heat, and
flies, and mosquitoes, passed over him leaving him strange even to
himself. There was work, the drudging work of the farm, all the while.
And one just sweated. He learned to submit to it, to the sweating all
the time during the day, and the mosquitoes at night. It was like a
narcotic. The old, English alertness grew darker and darker. He seemed
to be moving, a dim consciousness and an unyielding will, in a dark
cloud of heat, in a perspiring, dissolving body. He could feel his body,
the English cool body of his being, slowly melting down and being
invaded by a new tropical quality. Sometimes, he said to himself, he was
sweating his soul away. That was how it felt: as if he were sweating his
soul away. And he let his soul go, let it slowly melt away out of his
wet, hot body.
Any man who has been in the tropics, unless he has kept all his mind and
his consciousness focussed homewards, fixed towards the old people of
home, will know how this feels. Now Jack did not turn homewards, back to
England. He never wanted to go back. There was in him a slow, abiding
anger against this same "home." Therefore he let himself go down the
dark tide of the heat. He did not cling on to his old English soul, the
soul of an English gentleman. He let that dissolve out of him, leaving
what residuum of a man it might leave. But out of very obstinacy he hung
on to his own integrity: a small, dark, obscure integrity.
Usually he was too busy perspiring, panting, and working to think about
anything. His mind also seemed dissolving away in perspiration and in
the curious eucalyptus solvent of the Australian air. He was too busy
and too much heat-oppressed even to think of Monica or of Easu, though
Monica was a live wire in his body. Only on Sundays he seemed to come
half out of his trance. And then everything went queer and strange, a
little uncanny.
Dad was back again for the harvest, but his heart was no better, and a
queer frightening cloud seemed over him. And Gran, they said, was
failing. Somehow Gran was the presiding deity of the house. Her queer
spirit controlled, even now. And she was failing. She adored Lennie, but
he was afraid of her.
"Gran's the limit," he asserted. "She's that wilful. Always the same
with them women when they gets well on in years. I clear out from her if
I can, she's that obstropulous--tells y't'wipe y'nose, pull up y'pants,
brush y'teeth, not sniff: golly, I can't stand it!"
Sunday was the day when you really came into contact with the family.
The rule was, that each one took it in turns to get up and make
breakfast, while everybody else stayed on in bed, for a much-needed
rest. If it was your turn, you rolled out of bed at dawn when Timothy
banged on the wall, you slipped on your shirt and pants and went to the
"everlasting" fire. Raking the ashes together with a handful of sticks,
you blew a blaze and once more smelt the burning eucalyptus leaves. You
filled the black iron kettle at the pump, and set it over the flame.
Then you washed yourself. After which you carved bread and butter: tiny
bits for Gran, moderate pieces for upstairs, and doorsteps for the
cubby. After which you made the tea, and _holloa'd!_ while you poured it
out. One of the girls, with a coat over her nighty and her hair in a
chignon, would come barefoot to carry the trays, to Gran and to the
upstairs. This was just the preliminary breakfast: the Sunday morning
luxury. Just tea in bed.
Later the boys were shouting for clean shirts and towels, and the women
were up. Proceeded the hair-cutting, nail-paring, button-sewing, and
general murmur, all under the supervision of Ma. Then down to the
sand-bagged pool for a dip. After which, clean and in clean raiment, you
went to the parlour to hear Dad read the lessons.
The family Bible was carefully kept warm in the parlour, during the
week, under a woollen crochet mat. A crochet mat above, and a crochet
mat below. Nothing must ever stand on that book, nothing whatever. The
children were quite superstitious about it.
Lennie, the Benjamin of his father Jacob, each Sunday went importantly
into the drawing-room, in a semi-religious silence, and fetched the
ponderous brass-bound book. He put it on the table in front of Dad. Gran
came in with her stick and her lace cap, and sat in the arm-chair near
the window. Mrs. Ellis and the children folded their hands like saints.
Mr. Ellis wiped his spectacles, cleared his throat, looked again at the
little church calendar of the lessons, found the place, and proceeded in
a droning voice. Nobody looked at him, except Mrs. Ellis. Everybody
looked another way. Gran usually gazed sideways at the floor. Tick,
tock! went the clock. It was a little eternity.
Jack knew the Bible pretty well, as a well-brought-up nephew of his
Aunts. He had no objection to the Bible. On the contrary it supplied his
imagination with a chief stock of images, his ear with the greatest
solemn pleasure of words, and his soul with a queer heterogeneous ethic.
He never really connected the Bible with Christianity proper, the
Christianity of Aunts and clergymen. He had no use for Christianity
proper: just dismissed it. But the Bible was perhaps the foundation of
his consciousness. Do what seems good to you in the sight of the Lord.
This was the moral he always drew from Bible lore. And since the Lord,
for him, was always the Lord Almighty, Almighty God, Maker of Heaven and
Earth, Jesus being only a side-issue; since the Lord was always Jehovah
the great and dark, for him, one might do as David did, in the sight of
the Lord, or as Jacob, or as Abraham or Moses or Joshua or Isaiah, in
the sight of the Lord. The sight of the Lord was a vast strange scope of
vision, in the semi-dark.
Gran always listened the same, leaning on her stick and looking sideways
to the ground, as if she did not quite see the stout and purple-faced
Jacob, her son, as the mouthpiece of the Word. As a matter of fact, the
way he read Scripture irritated her. She wished Lennie could have read
the lessons. But Dad was head of the house, and she was fond of him,
poor old Jacob.
And Jack always furtively watched Gran. She frightened him, and he had a
little horror of her: but she fascinated him too. She was like Monica,
at the great distance of her years. Her lace cap was snowy white, with
little lavender ribbons. Her face was pure ivory, with fine-shaped
features, that subtly arched nose, like Monica's. Her silver hair came
over her dead-looking ears. And her dry, shiny, blue-veined hand
remained fixed over the pommel of her black stick. How awful, how
unspeakably awful, Jack felt, to be so old! No longer human. And she
seemed so little inside her clothes. And one never knew what she was
thinking. But surely some strange, uncanny, dim non-human thoughts.
Sunday was full of strange, half-painful impressions of death and of
life. After lessons the boys would escape to the yards, and the stables,
and lounge about. Or they would try the horses, or take a gun into the
uncleared bush. Then came the enormous Sunday dinner, when everyone ate
himself stupid.
In the afternoon Tom and Jack wandered to the loft, to the old
concertina. Up there among the hay, they squeezed and pulled the old
instrument, till at last, after much practice, they could draw forth
tortured hymnal sounds from its protesting internals.
"Ha-a-appy Ho-ome! Ha-appy Ho-ome!
Oh Haa-py Ho-me! Oh Haa-py Ho-me!
In Paradise with thee!"
Over and over again the same tune, till Tom would drop off to sleep, and
Jack would have a go at it. And this yearning sort of hymn always sent a
chill to his bowels. They were like Gran, on the brink of the grave. In
fact the word Paradise made him shudder worse than the word coffin. Yet
he would grind away at the tune. Till he too fell asleep.
And then they would wake in the heat to the silence of the suspended,
fiercely hot afternoon. Only to feel their own sweat trickling, and to
hear the horses, the draft-horses which were in stable for the day,
chop-chopping underneath. So, in spite of sweat and heat, another go at
the fascinating concertina.
II
One Sunday Jack strolled in an hour early for tea. He had made a
mistake, as one does sometimes when one sleeps in the afternoon. Gran
was sitting by a little fire in the dark living room. She had to have a
little fire to look at. It was like life to her.
"Come here, Jack Grant," she said in her thin, imperious voice. He went
on reluctant feet, for he had a dread of her years and her strange
femaleness. What did she want of him?
"Did y'hear Mr. George get my son to promise to make a will, when y'were
in Perth?"
"No, marm," said Jack promptly.
"Well, take it from me, if he promised, he hasn't done it. He never
signed a paper in his life, unless it was his marriage register. And but
for my driving, he'd never have signed that. Sit down!"
Jack sat on the edge of a chair, his heart in his boots.
"I told you before I'd ha' married your grandfather, if he hadn't been
married already. I wonder where you'd ha' been then! Just as well I
didn't, for he wouldn't look at me after he took my leg off. Just come
here a minute."
Jack got up and went to her side. She put her soft, dry, dead old hand
on his face and stroked it, pressing on the cheekbones.
"Ay," she said. "I suppose those are his bones again. And my bones are
in Monica. Don't stand up, lad, take your seat."
Jack sat down in extreme discomfort.
"Well," she resumed, "I was very well off with old Ellis, so I won't
complain. But you've got your English father's eyes. You'd have been
better with mine. Those bones, those beautiful bones, and my sort of
eyes."
Gran's eyes were queer and remote now. But they had been perhaps like
Monica's, only a darker grey, and with a darker, subtler cat look in
them.
"I suppose it will be in the children's children," she resumed, her eyes
going out like a candle. "For I married old Ellis, though to this day I
never quite believe it. And one thing I do know. I won't die in the
dying room of his house. I won't do it, not if it was the custom of a
hundred families. Not if he was here himself to see me do it. I
wouldn't. Though he was kindness itself. But not if he was here himself,
and had the satisfaction of seeing me do it. A dreadful room! I'd be
frightened to death to die in it. I like me sheets sun-kissed, heat or
no heat, and no sun ever gets into that room. But it's better for a
woman to marry, even if she marries the wrong man. I allus said so. An
old maid, especially a decayed gentlewoman, is a blight on the face of
the earth."
"Why?" said Jack suddenly. The old woman was too authoritative.
"That's why! What do you know about it," she said contemptuously.
"I knew a nice old lady in England, who'd never been married," he said,
thinking of a really beautiful, gentle woman, Who had kept all her
perfume and her charm, in spite of her fifty-odd years of single
blessedness. But then she had a naturally deep and religious nature, not
like this pagan old cat of a Gran.
"_Did_ you!" said Gran, eying him severely. "What do _you_ know at your
age? I've got three unmarried daughters, and I'm ashamed of them. If I'd
married your grandfather I never should have had them. Self-centred, and
old as old boots, they are. I'd rather they'd gone wrong and died in the
bush, like your Aunt who had a child by Mary's father."
Jack made round, English eyes of amazement at this speech. He
disapproved thoroughly.
"You've got too much of your English father in you," she said, "and not
enough of your hard-hearted grandfather. Look at Lennie, what a
beautiful boy he is."
There was a pause. Jack sat in a torment while she baited him. He was
full of antagonism towards her and her years.
"But I tell you, you never realise you're old till you see your friends
slipping away. One by one they go--over the border. _That's_ what makes
you feel old. I tell you. Nothing else. Annie Brockman died the other
day. I was at school with her. She wasn't old, though _you'd_ have
thought so."
The way Gran said this was quite spiteful. And Jack thought to himself:
"What nonsense, she was old if she was at school with Gran. If she was
as old as Gran, she was awfully old."
"No, she wasn't old--school girls and fellows laughing in the ball room,
or breathing fast after a hard ride. You didn't know Sydney in those
days. And men grown old behind their beards for want of understanding;
because they're too dense to understand what living means. Men are
dense. Are ye listening?"
The question came with such queer aged force that Jack started almost
out of his chair.
"Yes, marm," he said.
"'Yes marm!' he says!" she repeated, with a queer little grin of
amusement. "Listen to this grandfather's chit saying 'Yes marm!' to me!
Well, they'll have their way. My friends are nearly all gone, so I
suppose I shall soon be going. Not but what there's plenty of amusement
here."
She looked round in an odd way, as if she saw ghosts. Jack would have
given his skin to escape her.
"Listen," she said with sudden secrecy. "I want ye to do something for
me. You love Lennie, don't ye?"
Jack nodded.
"So do I! I'm going to help him." Her voice became sharp with secrecy.
"I've put by a stocking for him," she hissed. "At least it's not a
stocking, it's a tin box, but it's the same thing. It's up there!" She
pointed with her stick at the wide black chimney. "D'ye understand?"
She eyed Jack with aged keenness, and he nodded, though his
understanding was rather vague. Truth to tell, nothing she said seemed
to him quite real. As if, poor Gran, her age put her outside of reason.
"That stocking is for Lennie. Tom's mother was nobody knows who, though
I'm not going to say Jacob never married her, if Jack says he did. But
Tom'll get everything. The same as Jacob did. That's how it hits back at
me. I wanted Jacob to have the place, and now it goes to Tom, and my
little Lennie gets nothing. Alice has been a good woman, and a good wife
to Jacob: better than he deserved. I'm going to stand by her. That
stocking in there is for Lennie because he's her eldest son. In a tin
box. Y'understand?"
And she pointed again at the chimney.
Jack nodded, though he didn't really take it in. He had a little horror
of Gran at all times; but when she took on this witch-like
portentousness, and whispered at him in a sharp, aged whisper, about
money, hidden money, it all seemed so abnormal to him that he refused to
take it for real. The queer, aged, female spirit that had schemed with
money for the menfolk she chose, scheming to oust those she had not
elected, was so strange and half-ghoulish, that he merely shrank from
taking it in. When she pointed with her white-headed stick at the wide
black mouth of the chimney, he glanced and looked quickly away again. He
did not want to think of a hoard of sovereigns in a stocking--or a tin
box--secreted in there. He did not want to think of the subtle,
scheming, vindictive old woman reaching up into the soot, to add more
gold to the hoard. It was all unnatural to him and to his generation.
But Gran despised him and his generation. It was as unreal to her as
hers to him.
"Old George couldn't even persuade that Jacob of mine to sign a marriage
settlement," she continued. "And I wasn't going to force him. Would you
believe a man could be such an obstinate fool?"
"Yes, marm," said Jack automatically.
And Gran stamped her stick at him in sudden vicious rage.
The stamping of the stick brought Grace, and he fled.
III
That evening they were all sitting in the garden. The drawing room was
thrown open, as usual on Sunday, but nobody even went in except to strum
the piano. Monica was strumming hymns now. Grace came along calling
Mary. Mary was staying on at Wandoo.
"Mary, Gran wants you. She feels faint. Come and see to her, will you?"
Ellie came and slipped her fat little hand into Jack's, hanging on to
him. Katie and Lennie sat surreptitiously playing cats'-cradle, on the
steps: forbidden act, on the Sabbath. The twin boys wriggled their backs
against the gate-posts and their toes into the earth, asking each other
riddles. Harry as usual aimed stones at birds. It was a close evening,
the wind had not come. And they all were uneasy, with that uncanny
uneasiness that attacks families, because Gran was not well.
Harry was singing profanely, profaning the Sabbath.
"A blue jay sat on a hickory limb,
He wink at me, I wink at him.
I up with a stone, an' hit him on the shin.
Says he, Little Nigger, don' do that agin!
Clar de kitchen, ol' folk, young folk!
Oar de kitchen, ol' folk, young folk!
An' let us dance till dawn O."
Harry shouted out these wicked words half loud to a tune of his own that
was no tune.
Jack did not speak. The sense of evening, Sunday evening, far away from
any church or bell, was strong upon him. The sun was slow in the sky,
and the light intensely strong, all fine gold. He went out to look. The
sunlight flooded the dry, dry earth till it glowed again, and the
gum-trees that stood up hung tresses of liquid shadow from trunks of
gold, and the buildings seemed to melt blue in the vision of light.
Someone was riding in from westward, and a cloud of pure gold-dust rose
fuming from the earth about the horse and the horseman, with a vast,
overwhelming gold glow of the void heavens above. The whole west was so
powerful with pure gold light, coming from immense space and the sea,
that it seemed like a transfiguration, and another horseman rode fuming
in a dust of light as if he were coming, small and Daniel-like, out of
the vast furnace-mouth of creation. Jack looked west, into the welter of
yellow light, in fear. He knew again, as he had known before, that his
day was not the day of all the world, there was a huger sunset than the
sunset of his race. There were vaster, more unspeakable gods than the
gods of his fathers. The god in this yellow fire was huger than the
white men could understand, and seemed to proclaim their doom.
Out of this immense power of the glory seemed to come a proclamation of
doom. Lesser glories must crumble to powder in this greater glow, as the
horsemen rode trotting in the glorified cloud of the earth, spuming a
glory all round them. They seemed like messengers out of the great West,
coming with a proclamation of doom, the small, trotting, aureoled
figures kicking tip dust like sun-dust, and gradually growing larger,
hardening out of the sea of light. Like sun-arrivals.
Though after all it was only Alec Rice and Tom. But they were gilded
men, dusty and sun-luminous, as they came into the yard, with their
brown faces strangely vague in shadow, unreal.
The sun was setting, huge and liquid, and sliding down at immense speed
behind the far-off molten, wavering, long ridge towards the coast.
Fearsome the great liquid sun was, stooping fiercely down like an enemy
stooping to hide his glory, leaving the sky hovering and pulsing above,
with a sense of wings, and a sense of proclamation, and of doom. It
seemed to say to Jack: I and my race are doomed. But even the doom is a
splendour.
Shadow lay very thin on the earth, pale as day, though the sun was gone.
Jack turned back to the house. The tiny twins were staggering home to
find their supper, their hands in the pockets of their Sunday breeches.
The pockets of everyday breeches were, for some mysterious reason,
always sewn up, so Sunday alone knew this swagger. Harry was being
called in to bed. And Len and Katie, rarely far off at meal times, were
converging towards supper too.
Monica was still drumming listlessly on the piano, and singing in a
little voice. She had a very sweet voice, but she usually sang "small."
She was not singing a hymn, Jack became aware of this. She was singing,
rather nervously, or irritably, and with her own queer yearning pathos:
"Oh Jane, Oh Jane, my pretty Jane, Oh Jane,
Ah never, never look so shy.
But meet me, meet me in the moonlight,
When the dew is on the rye."
Someone had lighted the piano candles, and she sat there strumming and
singing in a little voice, and looking queer and lonely. His heart went
hot in his breast, and then started pounding. He crossed silently, and
stood just behind her. For some moments she would not notice him, but
went on singing the same. And he stood perfectly still close behind her.
Then at last she glanced upward at him, and his heart stood still again
with the same sense of doom the sun had given him. She still went on
singing for a few moments. Then she stopped abruptly, and jerked her
hand from the piano.
"Don't you want to sing?" she asked sharply.
"Not particularly."
"What do you want then?"
"Let us go out."
She looked at him strangely, then rose in her abrupt fashion. She
followed him across the yard in silence, while he felt the curious sense
of doom settling down on him.
He sat down on the step of the back-door of the barn, outside, looking
southward into the vast, rapidly darkening country, and glanced up at
her. She, rather petulantly, sat down beside him. He felt for her cool
slip of a hand, and she let it lie in his hot one. But she averted her
face.
"Why don't you like me?" she asked petulantly.
"But I love you," he said thickly, with shame and the sense of doom
piercing his heart.
She turned swiftly and stared him in the face with a brilliant, oddly
triumphant look.
"Sure?" she said.
His heart seemed to go black with doom. But he turned away his face from
her glowing eyes, and put his arm round her waist, and drew her to him.
His whole body was trembling like a taut string, and she could feel the
painful plunging of his heart as he pressed her fast against him,
pressed the breath out of her.
"Monica!" he murmured blindly, in pain, like a man who is in the dark.
"What?" she said softly.
He hid his face against her shoulder, in the shame and anguish of
desire. He would have given anything, if this need never have come upon
him. But the strange fine quivering of his body thrilled her. She put
her cheek down caressingly against his hair. She could be very tender,
very, very tender and caressing. And he grew quieter.
He looked up at the night again, hot with pain and doom and necessity.
It had grown quite dark, the stars were out.
"I suppose we shall have to be married," he said in a dismal voice.
"Why?" she laughed. It seemed a very sudden and long stride to her. He
had not even kissed her.
But he did not answer, did not even hear her question. She watched his
fine young face in the dark, looking sullen and doomed at the stars.
"Kiss me!" she whispered, in the most secret whisper he had ever heard.
"Kiss me!"
He turned, in the same battle of unwillingness. But as if magnetised he
put forward his face and kissed her on the mouth: the first kiss of his
life. And she seemed to hold him. And the fierce, fiery pain of pleasure
which came with that kiss sent his soul rebelling in torment to hell. He
had never wanted to be given up, to be broken by the black hands of this
doom. But broken he was, and his soul seemed to be leaving him, in the
pain and obsession of this desire, against which he struggled so
fiercely.
She seemed to be pleased, to be laughing. And she was exquisitely sweet
to him. How could he be otherwise than caught, and broken.
After an hour of this love-making she blackened him again, by saying
they must go in to supper. But she meant it, so in he had to go.
Only when he was alone again in the cubby did he resume the fight to
recover himself from her again. To be free as he had been before. Not to
be under the torment of the spell of this desire. To preserve himself
intact. To preserve himself from her.
He lay awake in his bed in the cubby and thanked God he was away from
her. Thanked God he was alone, with a sufficient space of loneliness
around him. Thanked God he was immune from her, that he could sleep in
the sanctity of his own isolation. He didn't want even to think about
her.
IV
Gran did not leave her room that week, and Tom talked of fetching the
relations.
"What for?" asked Jack.
"They'd like to be present," said Tom.
Jack felt incredulous.
Lennie came out of her room, sniffing and wiping his eyes with his
knuckles.
"Poor ol' girl!" he sniffed. "She do look frail. She's almost like a
little girl again."
"You don't think she's dying, do you, Len?" asked Jack.
"I don't _think_, I knows," replied Len, with utmost scorn. "Sooner, or
later she's bound to go hence and be no more seen. But she'll be missed,
for many a day, she will."
"But Tom," said Jack. "Do you think Gran will like to have all the
relations sniffling round her when she gets worse?"
"I should think so," replied Tom. "Anyway, _I_ should like to die
respectable, whether you would or not."
Jack gave it up. Some things were beyond him, and dying respectable was
one of them.
"Like they do in books," said Len, seeing that Jack disapproved, and
trying to justify Tom's position. "Even ol' Nelson died proper. 'Kiss
me, 'Ardy,' he said, an' 'Ardy kissed him, grubby and filthy as he was.
He could do no less, though it was beastly."
Still the boys were not sent for the relations until the following
Sunday, which was a rest day. Jack went to the Gum Valley Homestead,
because he knew the way. He set off before dawn. The terrific heat of
the New Year had already passed, and the dawn came fresh and lovely. He
was happy on that ride, Gran or no Gran. And that's what he thought
would be the happiest: always to ride on at dawn, in a nearly virgin
country. Always to be riding away.
The Greenlows seemed to expect him. They had been "warned." After he had
been refreshed with a good breakfast, they were ready to start, in the
buggy. Jack rode in the buggy with them, his saddle under his seat and
the neck-rope of the horse in his hand. The hack ran behind, and nearly
jerked Jack's arms out of their sockets, with its halts and its
disinclination to trot. Almost it hauled him out of the buggy sometimes.
He would much rather have ridden the animal, but he had been requested
to take the buggy, to spare it.
Mr. and Mrs. Greenlow scarcely spoke on the journey; it would not have
been "showing sorrow." But Jack felt they were enjoying themselves
immensely, driving in this morning air instead of being cooped up in the
house, she cooking and he with the Holy Book. The sun grew furiously
hot. But Gum Valley Croft was seven miles nearer to Wandoo than the
Ellis' Gum Tree Selection, so they drove into the yard, wet with
perspiration, just before the mid-day meal was put on to the table. Mrs.
Ellis, aproned and bare-armed, greeted them as they drove up, calling
out that they should go right in, and Jack should take the horses out of
the buggy.
Quite a number of strange hacks were tethered here and there in the
yard, near odd, empty vehicles, sulkies dejectedly leaning forward on
empty shafts, or buggies and wagonettes sturdily important on four
wheels. Yet the place seemed strangely quiet.
Jack came back to the narrow verandah outside the parlour door, where
Mrs. Ellis had her fuchsias, ferns, cyclamens and musk growing in pots.
A table had been set there, and dinner was in progress, the girls coming
round from the kitchen with the dishes. Grace saw Jack hesitate, so she
nodded to him. He went to the kitchen and asked doubtfully:
"How is she?"
"Oh, bad! Poor old dear. They're all in there to say goodbye."
Lennie, who was sitting on the floor under the kitchen window, put his
head down on his arms and sobbed from a sort of nervousness, wailing:
"Oh, my poor ol' Gran! Oh, poor ol' dear!"
Jack, though upset, almost grinned. Poor Gran indeed, with that ghastly
swarm of relations. He sat there on a chair, his nerves all on edge,
noticing little things acutely, as he always did when he was strung up:
the flies standing motionless on the chopping-block just outside the
window, the smooth-tramped gravel walk, the curious surface of the mud
floor in the kitchen, the smoky rafters overhead, the oven set in brick
below the "everlasting" fire, the blackness of the pots and kettles
above the horizontal bars ...
"Do you mind sitting in the parlour, Jack, in case they want anything?"
Mrs. Ellis asked him.
Jack minded, but he went and sat in the parlour, like a chief lackey, or
a buffer between all the relations and the outer world.
The house had become more quiet. Monica had gone over to the Reds with
clean overalls for the little boys, who had been bundled off there. Jack
got this piece of news from Grace, who was constantly washing more
dishes and serving more relations. A certain anger burned in him as he
heard, but he took no notice. Mary was lying down upstairs: she had been
up all night with Gran. Tom was attending to the horses. Katie and Mrs.
Ellis had gone upstairs with Baby and Ellie, and Mr. Ellis was also
upstairs. Lennie had slipped away again. So Jack had track of all the
family. He was always like that, wanting to know where they all were.
Mrs. Greenlow came in from Gran's inner room.
"Mary? Where's Mary?" she asked hurriedly.
Jack shook his head, and she passed on. She had left the door of Gran's
room open, so Jack could see in. All the relations were there, horrible,
the women weeping and perspiring, and wiping tears and perspiration away
together, the men in their waistcoats and shirt-sleeves, perspiring and
looking ugly. A Methodist parson son-in-law was saying prayers in an
important monotone.
At last Mary came, looking anxious.
"Yes, Gran? Did you want me?" Jack heard her voice, and saw her by the
bed.
"I felt so overcome with all these people," said Gran, in a curiously
strong, yet frightened voice. "What do they all want?"
"They've come to see you. Come--" Mary hesitated "--to see if they can
do anything for you."
"To frighten the bit of life out of me that I've got. But they're not
going to. Get me some beef tea, Mary, and don't leave me alone with
them."
Mary went out for the beef tea. Then Jack saw Gran's white hand feebly
beckon.
"Ruth!" she said. "Ruth!"
The eldest daughter went over and took the hand, mopping her eyes. She
was the parson's wife.
"Well, Ruth, how are you!" said Gran's high, quavering voice in a
conversational tone.
"_I'm_ well, Mother. It's how are you?" replied Ruth dismally.
But Gran was again totally oblivious of her. So at length Ruth dropped
away embarrassed from the bedside, shaking her head.
Again Gran lifted her head on the pillow.
"Where's Jacob?"
"Upstairs, mother."
"The only one that has the decency to leave me alone." And she subsided
again. Then after a while she asked, without lifting her head from the
pillow, in a distant voice:
"And are the foolish virgins here?"
"Who, mother?"
"The foolish virgins. You know who I mean."
Gran lay with her eyes shut as she spoke.
There was an agitation among the family. It was the brothers-in-law who
pushed the three Miss Ellises forward. They, the poor things, wept
audibly.
Gran opened her eyes at the sound, and said, with a ghost of a smile on
her yellow, transparent old face:
"I hope virginity is its own reward."
Then she remained unmoved until Mary came with the soup, which she took
and slowly sipped, as Mary administered it in a spoon. It seemed to
revive her.
"Where's Lennie and his mother?" she asked, in a firmer tone.
These also were sent for. Mrs. Ellis sat by the bed and gently patted
Gran's arm; but Lennie, "skeered stiff," shivered at the door. His
mother held out her hand to him, and he came in, inch by inch, watching
the fragile old Gran, who looked transparent and absolutely unreal, with
a fascination of horror.
"Kiss me, Lennie," said Gran grimly: exactly like Nelson.
Lennie shrank away. Then, yielding to his mother's pressure he laid his
dark, smooth head and his brown face on the pillow next to Gran's face,
but he did not kiss her.
"There's my precious!" said Gran softly, with all the soft, cajoling
gentleness that had made her so lovely, at moments, to her men.
"Alice, you've been good to my Jacob," she said, as if remembering
something. "There's the stocking. It's for you and Lennie." She still
managed to say the last words with a caress, though she was fading from
consciousness again.
Lennie drew away and hid behind his mother. Gran lay still, exactly as
if dead. But the laces of her eternal cap still stirred softly, to show
she breathed. The silence was almost unbearable.
To break it, the Methodist son-in-law sank to his knees, the others
followed his example, and he prayed in a low, solemn, extinguished
voice. When he had said Amen the others whispered it and rose from their
knees. And by one consent they glided from the room. They had had enough
deathbed for the moment.
Mary closed the inner door when they had gone, and remained alone in the
room with Gran.
V
The sons-in-law all melted through the parlour and out on to the
verandah, where they helped themselves from the decanter on the table,
filling up from the canvas water-bag that swung in the draught to keep
cool. The daughters sat down by the table and wept, lugubriously and
rather angrily. The sons-in-law drank and looked afflicted. Jack
remained on duty in the parlour, though he would dearly have liked to
decamp.
But he was now interested in the relations. They began to weep less, and
to talk in low, suppressed, vehement voices. He could only catch
bits.--"It's a question if he ever married Tom's mother. I doubt if
Tom's legitimate. I don't even doubt it, I'm sure. We've suffered from
that before. Where's the stocking? Stocking! Stocking--saved up--bought
Easu out. Mother should know better. If she's made a will--Jacob's first
marriage--children to educate and provide for. Unmarried
daughters--first claim--stocking--" And then quite plainly from Ruth:
"It's hard on our husbands if they have to support mother's unmarried
daughters." This said with dignity.
Jack glanced at the three Miss Ellises, to see if they minded, and
inwardly he vowed that if he ever married Monica, for example, and Grace
was an unmarried sister, he'd find some suitable way of supporting her,
without making her feel ashamed. But the three Miss Ellises did not seem
to mind. They were busy diving into secret pockets among their clothing,
and fetching out secret little packages. Someone dropped the glass
stopper out of a bottle of smelling salts, and spilled the contents on
the floor. The pungent odour penetrated throughout the house. Jack never
again smelt lavender salts without having a foreboding of death, and
seeing mysterious little packets. The three Miss Ellises were
surreptitiously laying out bits and tags of black braid, crape, beading,
black doth, black lace; all black, wickedly black, on the table edge.
Smoothing them out. For as a matter of fact they kept a little shop. And
everybody was looking with interest. Jack felt quite nauseated at the
sight of these black blotches, the row of black patches.
Mary came out of Gran's room, going to the kitchen with the cup. She did
not pass the verandah, so nobody noticed her. They were all intent on
the muttering gloom of their investigation of those scraps of mourning
patterns.
Jack felt the door of Gran's room slowly open. Mary had left it just
ajar. He looked round and his hair rose on his head. There stood Gran,
all white save for her eyes, like a yellow figure of aged female Time,
standing with her hand on the door, looking across the parlour at the
afternoon and the preoccupied party on the verandah. Her face was
absolutely expressionless, timeless and awful. It frightened him very
much. The inexorable female! He uttered an exclamation, and they all
looked up, caught.