TOM AND JACK RIDE TOGETHER
These days Monica was fascinating to Jack's eyes. She wore a black
dress, and her slimness, her impulsive girlishness under this cloud were
wistful, exquisite. He would have liked to love her, soothingly,
protectively, passionately. He would have liked to cherish her, with
passion. Always he looked to her for a glance of intimacy, looked to see
if she wouldn't accept his passion and his cherishing. He wanted to
touch her, to kiss her, to feel the eternal lightning of her slim body
through the cloud of that black dress. He wanted to declare to her that
he loved her, as Alec Rice had declared to Grace; and he wanted to ask
her to marry him. To ask her to marry him at once.
But mostly he wanted to touch her and hold her in his arms. He watched
her all the time, hoping to get one of the old, long looks from her
yellow eyes, from under her bended brows. Her long, deep, enigmatic
looks, that used to worry him so. Now he longed for her to look at him
like that.
Or better still if she would let him see her trouble and her grief, and
love her so, with a passionate cherishing.
But she would do neither. She kept her grief and her provocation both
out of sight, as if neither existed. Her little face remained mute and
closed, like a shut-up bud. She only spoke to him with a vague distant
voice, and she never really looked at him. Or if she did glance at him,
it was in a kind of anger, and pain, as if she did not want to be
interfered with; didn't want to be pulled down.
He was completely puzzled. Her present state was quite incomprehensible
to him. She had nothing to reproach him with, surely. And if she had
loved him, even a little, she could surely love him that little still.
If she had so often taken his hand and clutched it, surely she could now
let him take _her_ hand, in real sympathy.
It was if she were angry with _him_ because Dad had died. Jack hadn't
wanted Dad to die. Indeed no. He was cut up by it as if he had been one
of the family. And it was as bad a blow to his destiny as to hers. He
was as sore and sorry as anybody. Yet she kept her face shut against
him, and avoided him, as if he were to blame.
Completely puzzled, Jack went on with his preparations for departure. He
had no choice. He was under orders from Mr. George, and with Mrs. Ellis'
approval, to quit Wandoo, to ride with Tom up to Geraldton, and to spend
at least a year on the sheep station up north. It had to be. It was the
wheel of fate. So let it be.
And as the last day drew near, the strange volcano of anger which
slumbered at the bottom of his soul--a queer, quiescent crater of anger
which churned its deep hot lava invisible--threw up jets of silver rage,
which hardened rapidly into a black, rocky indifference. And this was
characteristic of him: an indifference which was really congealed anger,
and which gave him a kind of innocent, remote, childlike quietness.
This was his nature. He was himself vaguely aware of the unplumbed
crater of silent anger which lay at the bottom of his soul. It was not
anger against any particular thing, or because of anything in
particular. It was just generic, inherent in him. It was himself. It did
not make him hate people, individually, unless they were hateful. It did
not make him hard or cruel. Indeed he was too yielding rather than
otherwise, too gentle and mindful of horses and cattle, for example,
unmindful of himself. Tom often laughed at him for it. If Lucy had a
will of her own, and a caprice she wanted to execute, he always let her
go ahead, take her way, as far as was reasonable. If she exceeded her
limits, his anger roused and there was no doing any more with him. But
he very rarely, very rarely got really angry. Only then in the long,
slow accumulation of hostility, as with Easu.
But anger! A deep, fathomless well-head of slowly-moving, invisible
fire. Somewhere in his consciousness he was aware of it, and in this
awareness it was as if he belonged to a race apart. He never felt
identified with the great humanity. He belonged to a race apart, like
the race of Cain. This he had always known.
Sometimes he met eyes that were eyes of his own outcast race. As a tiny
boy it had been so. Fairs had always fascinated him, because at the
fairs in England he met the eyes of gipsies who, in a glance, understood
him. His own people _could_ not understand. But in the black eyes of a
gipsy woman he had seen the answer, even as a boy of ten. And he had
thought: I ought to go away with her, run away with her.
It was the anger, the deep, burning _life-anger_ which was the kinship.
Not a deathly, pale, nervous anger. But an anger of the old blood. And
it was this which had attracted him to grooms, horsey surroundings, and
to pugilists. In them was some of this same deep, generous anger of the
blood. And now in Australia too, he saw it like a secret away at the
bottom of the black, full, strangely shining eyes of the aborigines.
There it lay, the secret, like an eternal, brilliant snake. And it
established at once a kind of free-masonry between him and the blacks.
They were curiously aware of him, when he came: aware of his coming,
aware of his going. As if in him were the same great Serpent of their
anger. And they were downcast now he was going away, as if their
strength were being taken from them. Old Tim, who had taken a great
fancy to Jack, relapsed into a sort of glumness as if he too, now, were
preparing to die.
Since Jack had come back from the Greenlows' farm, Monica had withdrawn
to a distance, a kind of luminous distance, and put a chasm between
herself and Jack. She moved mute and remote on the shining side of the
chasm. He stood on the dark side, looking across the blackness of the
gulf at her as if she were some kind of star. Surely the gulf would
close up. Surely they both would be on natural ground again.
But no! always that incomprehensible little face with fringed lashes,
and mouth that opened with a little smile, a vulnerable little smile, as
if asking them all to be kind to her, to be pitiful towards her, and not
try to touch her.
"Well, good-bye, Monica, for the present," he said, as he sat in the
saddle in the yard, and Tom started away riding towards the gate,
leading the bulky-looking pack-horse.
"Good-bye. Come back!" said Monica, looking up with a queer, hard little
question come into her eyes, but her face remote as ever.
Jack kicked his horse and started.
"I'll come back," he said over his shoulder. But he didn't look round at
her. His heart had gone hard and hot in his breast. He was glad to be
going.
Lennie had opened the gate. He stood there as Jack rode through.
"Why can't I never come?" he cried.
Jack laughed and rode on, after the faithful Tom. He was glad to go. He
was glad to leave Wandoo. He was glad to say no more good-byes, and to
feel no more pain. He was glad to be gone, since he was going, from the
unlucky place. He was glad to be gone from its doom. There was a doom
over it, a doom. And he was glad to be gone.
The morning was still orange and green. Winter had set in at last, the
rains had begun to be heavy. They might have trouble with drenchings and
hoggings, but that, Tom said, was better than drought and sunstrokes.
And anyhow the weather this morning was perfect.
The dark forest of karri that ran to the left of Wandoo away on the
distant horizon, cut a dark pattern on the egg-green sky. Good-bye!
Good-bye! to it. The sown fields they were riding through glittered with
tender blades of wheat. Good-bye! Good-bye! Somebody would reap it. The
bush was now full of sparks of the beautiful, uncanny flowers of Western
Australia, and bright birds started and flew. Sombre the bush was in
itself, but out of the heavy dullness came sharp scarlet, flame-spark
flowers, and flowers as lambent gold as sunset, and wan white flowers,
and flowers of a strange, darkish rich blue, like the vault of heaven
just after sundown. The scent of rain, of eucalyptus, and of the strange
brown-green shrubs of the bush!
They rode in silence, Tom ahead with the pack-horse, and they did not
draw near, but rode apart. They were travelling due west from York,
along a bush track toward Paddy's Crossing. And as they went they drew
nearer and nearer to the dark, low fringe of hills behind which, for the
last twelve months, Jack had seen the sun setting with its great golden
glow. Trees grew along the ridge of the hills, scroll-like and
mysterious. They had always seemed to Jack like the bar of heaven.
By noon the riders reached the ridge, and the bar of heaven was the huge
karri trees which went up aloft so magnificently. But the karri forest
ended here with a jerk. Beyond, the earth ran away down long, long
slopes, covered with scrub, down the greyness and undulation of
Australia, towards the great dimness where was the coast. The sun was
hot at noon. Jack was glad when Tom called a halt under the last trees,
facing the great, soft, open swaying of the land seaward, and they began
to make tea.
They had hardly sat down to drink their tea, when they heard a buggy
approaching. It was the mysterious Dr. Rackett, driven by the grinning
Sam. Rackett said nothing, just greeted the youths, pulled his tin mug
and tucker from under the buggy seat, and joined in, chatting casually
as if it had all been pre-arranged.
Tom was none too pleased, but he showed nothing. And when the tea was
finished, he made good by handing over the beast of a pack-horse to Sam.
Poor Sam sat in the back of the vehicle lugging the animal along,
jerking its reluctant neck. Rackett drove in lonely state on the driving
seat. Tom and Jack trotted quickly ahead, on the down-slope, and were
soon out of sight. They were thankful to ride free.
Over the ridge they felt Wandoo was left behind, and they were in the
open world again, away from care. Whenever man drives his tent-pegs
deep, to stay, he drives them into underlying water of sorrow. Best ride
tentless. So thought the boys.
They were going to a place called Paddy's Crossing, a settlement
new to Jack, but well known to Tom as the
place-where-men-went-when-they-wanted-a-private-jamboree. What a
jamboree was, Jack, being a gentleman, that is not a lady, would learn
in due course.
As the ground came to a rolling hollow, Tom set off at a good pace, and
away they went, galloping beautifully along the soft earth trail,
galloping, galloping, putting the miles between them and Wandoo and
women and care. They both rode in a kind of passion for riding, for
hurling themselves ahead down the new road. To be men out alone in the
world, away from the women and the dead stone of trouble.
They reached the river hours before Rackett's turn-out. Fording it they
rode into the mushroom settlement, a string of slab cabins with shingle
roofs and calico window-panes--or else shuttered-up windows. The stoves
were outside the chimney-less cabins, under brush shelters. One such
"kitchen," a fore-runner, had already a roof of flattened-out, rusty tin
cans.
But it was a cosy, canny nook, homely, nestling down in the golden
corner of the earth, the mimosa in bloom by the river. And it was
beautifully ephemeral. As transient, as casual as the bushes themselves.
Jack for the moment had a dread of solid houses of brick and stone and
permanence. There was always horror somewhere inside them.
He wanted the empty, timeless Australia, with nooks like this of flimsy
wooden cabins by a river with a wattle bush.
There was one older, white-washed cabin with vine trellises.
"That's Paddy's," said Tom. "He grows grapes, and makes wine out of the
little black ones. But the muscats is best. I'm not keen on wine,
anyhow. Something a drop more warming."
Jack was amazed at the good Tom. He had never known him to drink.
"There's nobody about," said Jack, as they rode up the incline between
the straggling cabins.
"All asleep," said Tom.
It was not so, however, because as they crested the slope and looked
into the little hollow beyond, they saw a central wooden building, hall
or mission or church, and people crowding like flies.
But Tom turned up to Paddy's white inn, up the side slope. He was
remorseful about having galloped the horses at the beginning of such a
long trip. The inn seemed deserted. Tom coo-eeed! but there was no
answer.
"All shut up!" he said. "What's that paper on the door?"
Jack got down and walked stiffly to the door, for the ride had been long
and hard and downhill, and his knees were hurting. "'Gone to the wedin
be ome soon P. O. T.'" he read. "What is P. O. T.?" he asked.
"What I stand in need of," said the amazing Tom.
They were just turning their horses towards the stable when, with a
racket and a canter, an urchin drove round from the yard in a
pitch-black wicker chaise, a bone-white, careworn horse slopping between
the shafts.
"You two blokes," yelled the urchin, "'d better get on th' trail for th'
church, else Father Prendy 'll be on y' tail, I tell y'."
"What's up?" shouted Tom.
"I'm just off fer th' bride. Ol' Nick 'ere 'eld me up runnin' away from
me in the paddock."
Tom grinned, the outfit swept past. Our heroes took their horses to the
stable and settled them down conscientiously. Then they set off, glad to
be on foot, down to the church.
The crowd was buzzing. It was half-past three. Father Prendy, the old
mission priest, who looked like a dusty old piece of furniture from a
loft, was peering up the road. The black wicker buggy still made no
appearance with the bride.
"Two o'clock's the legal limit for marriages," said Father Prendy. "But
praise God, we've half an hour yet."
And he showed his huge watch, which said half-past one, since he had
slipped away for a moment to put back the fingers.
The slab-building--hall, school, and church--was now a church, though
the oleographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort in Robes still glowed
on the walls, and a blackboard stood with its face to the wall, and one
of those wire things with coloured beads poked out from behind, and the
globe of the world could not be hidden entirely by the eucalyptus
boughs.
But it was a church. A table with a white cloth and a crucifix was the
altar. Crimson-flowering gum-blossom embowered the walls, the
blackboard, the windows, but left the Queen and Prince Consort in full
isolation. Forms were ranked on the mud floor, and these forms were
densely packed with settlers dressed in all kinds of clothes. It was not
only a church, it was a wedding. Just inside the door, like a figure at
Madame Tussaud's, sat an elderly creature in greenish evening suit with
white waistcoat, and copper-toed boots, waiting apparently for the Last
Trump. On the other side was a brown-whiskered man in frock-coat, a grey
bell-topper in his hand, leaning balanced on a stick. He was shod in
white socks and carpet slippers. Later on this gentleman explained to
Jack: "I suffer from corns, and shouldn't be happy in boots."
There was a great murmuring and staring, and shuffling and shifting as
Jack and Tom came up, as though one of them was the bride in disguise.
The wooden church buzzed like a cocoanut shell. A red-faced man seized
Tom's arm as if Tom were a long-lost brother, and Jack was being
introduced, shaking the damp, hot, trembling hand of the red-faced man,
who was called Paddy.
"It's fair come over me, so ut has!--praise be to the saints an' may the
devil run away with them two young termagants! Father Prendy makin' them
come to this pass all at onst! For mark my words, in his own mind he's
thinkin' the wrong they've done, neither of them speakin' to confess,
till he was driven to remark on the girl's unnatural figure. And not a
soul in the world, mark you, has seen 'em speak a word to one another
for the last year in or out. But she says it's he, an' Denny Mackinnon,
he payin', I'll be bound, that black priest of a Father Prendy to come
over me an' make me render up my poor innocent Pat to the hussy, in holy
matrimony. May the saints fly away with 'em."
He wiped away his sweat, speechless. And Denny Mackinnon, the hussy's
father--it could be no other than he--in moth-eaten scarlet coat and
overall trousers, and top-boots slashed for his bunions, and forage-cap
slashed for his increased head, stood bulging on the other side of the
door, compressed in his youthful uniform, and scarlet in the face with
the compression. He was a stout man with a black beard and a fixed,
fierce, solemn expression. Creator of this agitated occasion, he was
almost bursting with wrathful agitation as that hussy of a daughter of
his still failed to appear. By his side stood an ancient man, with a
long grey beard, anciently clad.
Patrick, the bridegroom to be, lurked near his father. He was a thin,
pale, freckled, small-faced youth with broad, brittle shoulders and
brittle limbs, who would no doubt, in time, fill out into a burly
fellow. As it was, he was agitated and unlovely in a new ready-made suit
and a black bomb of a hard hat that wouldn't stay on, and new boots that
stank to heaven of improperly dressed kangaroo hide: one of the
filthiest of stinks.
Poor Paddy, the father of the bridegroom, was a tall, thin, well set-up
man with trembling hands and a face like beetroot, garbed in a blue coat
with brass buttons, mole trousers, leggings, and a sideways-leaning top
hat. His tie was a flowing red with white spots. His eyes were light
blue and wickedly twinkling behind their slight wateriness.
"What's that yer sayin' about me?" said Father Prendy, coming up rubbing
his hands, bowing to the strangers, beaming with a cheerfulness that
could outlast any delay under the sun.
"'Twas black I was callin' ye, Father Prendy," said Paddy. "For the fine
pair of black eyes ye carry, why not? Isn't it a good drink ye'll be
havin' on me afore the day is out, eh? Isn't it a pretty penny ye're
costin' me, with your marrin' an' givin' in marriage? An' why isn't it
Danny what pays the wedding breakfast, eh?"
"Hold your peace, Paddy, my dear. I see a wagon comin', don't I?"
Sure enough the black wicker buggy rattling down hill, the white horse
seeming to swim, the urchin standing up, feet wide apart, elbows high
up, bending forward and urging the bone-white steed with curses
unnameable.
"What now! What now!" murmured the priest, feeling in his pocket for his
stole. "What now!"
"Where's Dad?" yelled the urchin, pulling the bone-white steed on its
bony haunches, in front of the church.
Dad had gone round the corner. But he came bustling and puffing and
bursting in his skin-tight scarlet coat, that almost cut his arms off,
his own ancient father, with a long grey beard, pushing him irritably,
propelling him towards the slippery boy. As if this family, generation
by generation, got more and more behindhand in its engagements.
"Gawd's sake!" blowed the scarlet Dad, as the old grey granddad shoved
him.
"Hold ye breath, Dad, 'n come 'ome!" said the urchin, subsiding
comfortably on to the seat, and speaking as if he enjoyed the utmost
privacy. "Sis can't get away. She's had a baby. An' Ma says I was to
tell Mr. O'Burk as it's a foine boy, an' would Father Prendy step up,
and Pat O'Burk can come 'n see with his own eyes."