THE OFFER TO MARY
I
They worked for months at the mine, and still it turned out richly.
Though they kept as quiet as possible, the fame spread. They had a
bonanza. They were all three going to be rich, and Jack was going to be
very rich. In the light of his luck, he was "the General" to everybody.
And in the midst of this flow of fortune, came another, rather comical
windfall. Again the news was forwarded by Mr. George, along with a word
of congratulation from that gentleman. The forwarded letter read:
"Dear Sir,
This come hopping to find you well as it leaves me at prisent thanks be
to almity God. You dear uncle Passed Away peaceful on Satterday nite And
though it be not my place to tell you of it I am Grateful to have the
oppertunity to offer my umble Respecs before the lord and Perlice I take
up my pen with pleashr to inform you that He passed without Pain and
even Drafts as he aloud the umberrela to be put down and the Book read.
The 24 salm and I kep the ink and paper by to rite of his sudden dismiss
but he lingered long years after the bote wint so was onable to Inform
you before he desist the doctor rote a butiful certicket of death saying
he did of sensible decay but I don no how he brote himself to rite it as
the pore master was wite as driven snow and no blemish. And being his
most umble and Dutiful servants we could not ave brout ourself to hever
ave rote as he was sensible Pecos god knows the pore sole was not. Be
that as it may we burned him proud under the prisent arrangements of
town councel the clerk who was prisent xpects the docters will he mad up
the nite you was hear in the cimetary and pending your Return Holds It
In Bond as Being rite for us we are Yor Respectable servants to Oblige
Hand Commend.
Emma and Amos Lewis."
Jack and Tom roared with laughter over this epistle, that brought back
so vividly the famous trip up North.
"Gloryanna, General, you've got your property at Coney Hatch all right,"
said Tom.
There was a letter from Mr. George saying that the defunct John Grant
was the son of Jack's mother's eldest sister, that he had been liable
all his life to bouts of temporary insanity, but that in a period of
sanity he had signed the will drawn up by Doctor Rackett, when the two
boys called at the place several years before, and that the will had
been approved. So that Jack, as legal heir and nearest male relative,
could now come down and take possession of the farm.
"I don't want that dismal place," said Jack. "Let it go to the Crown.
I've no need of it now."
"Don't be a silly cuckoo!" said Tom. "You saw it of a wet night with
Ally Sloper in bed under a green cart umbrella. Go an' look at it of a
fine day. An' then if you don't want it, sell it or lease it, but don't
let the Crown rake it in."
So in about a fortnight's time Jack rather reluctantly left the mine,
with its growing heaps of refuse, and departed from the mining
settlement which had become a sort of voluntary prison for him, and went
west to Perth. He was already a rich man and notorious in the colony. He
rode with two pistols in his belt, and that unchanging aloof look on his
face. But he carried himself with pride, rode a good horse, wore
well-made riding breeches and a fine bandanna handkerchief loose round
his neck, and looked, with a silver studded band round his broad felt
hat, a mixture of gold miner, a gentleman settler, and a bandit chief.
Perhaps he felt a mixture of them all.
Mr. George received him with a great welcome. And Jack was pleased to
see the old man. But he refused absolutely to go to the club or to the
Government House, or to meet any of the responsible people of the town.
"I don't want to see them, Mr. George. I don't want to see them."
And poor Old George, his nose a bit out of joint, had to submit to
leaving Jack alone.
Jack had his old room in Mr. George's house. The Good Plain Cook was
still going. And Aunt Matilda, rather older, stouter, with more lines in
her face, came to tea with Mary and Miss Blessington. Mary had not
married Mr. Blessington. But she had remained friends with the odd
daughter, who was now a self-contained young woman, shy, thin,
well-bred, and delicate. Mr. Blessington had not married again. In Aunt
Matilda's opinion, he was still waiting for Mary. And Mary had refused
Tom's rather doubtful offer. Tom was still nervous about Honeysuckle. So
there they all were.
When Jack shook hands with Mary, he had a slight shock. He had forgotten
her. She had gone out of his consciousness. But when she looked up at
him with her dark, clear, waiting eyes, as if she had been watching and
waiting for him afar off, his heart gave a queer dizzy lurch. He had
forgotten her. They say the heart has a short memory. But now, as a dark
hotness gathered in his heart, he realised that his blood had not
forgotten her. He had only forgotten her with his head. His blood, with
its strange submissiveness and its strange unawareness of time, had kept
her just the same.
The blood has an eternal memory. It neither forgets nor moves on ahead.
But it is quiescent and submits to the mind's oversway.
He had a certain blood-connection with Mary. He had utterly forgotten
it, in the stress and rage of other things. And now, the moment she
lifted her eyes to him, and he saw her dusky, quiet, heavy permanent
face, the dull heat started in his breast again, and he remembered how
he had told her he would come for her again.
Since his twins were born and he had been so busy with the mine, and he
had Monica, he had not given any thought to women. But the moment he saw
Mary and met her eyes, the dark thought struck home in him again: I want
Mary for my other woman. He didn't want to displace Monica. Monica was
Monica. But he wanted this other woman too.
Aunt Matilda dear-boyed him more than ever. But now he was not a dear
boy, he didn't feel a dear boy, and she was put out.
"Dear boy! and how does Monica stand that drying climate?"
"She is quite well again, Marm."
"Poor child! Poor child! I hope you will bring her into a suitable home
here in Perth, and have the children suitably brought up. It is so
fortunate for you your mine is so successful. Now you can build a home
here by the river, among us all, and be charming company for us, like
your dear father."
Mary was watching him with black eyes, and Miss Blessington with her
wide, quick, round, dark-grey eyes. There was a frail beauty about that
odd young woman; frail, highly-bred, sensitive, with an uncanny
intelligence.
"No, Marm," said Jack cheerfully. "I shall not come and live in Perth."
"Dear boy, of course you will! You won't forsake us and take your money
and your family and your attractive self far away to England? No, don't
do that. It is just what your dear father did. Robbed us of one of our
sweetest girls, and never came back."
"No, I shan't go to England either," smiled Jack.
"Then what will you do?"
"Stay at the mine for the time being."
"Oh, but the mine won't last forever. And dear boy, don't waste your
talents and your charm mining, when it is no longer necessary! Oh, do
come down to Perth, and bring your family. Mary is pining to see your
twins: and dear Monica. Of course we all are."
Jack smiled to himself. He would no longer give in a hair's breadth to
any of these dreary world-people.
"À la bonne heure!" he said, using one of his mother's well-worn tags.
But then his mother could rattle bad colloquial French, and he couldn't.
Mary asked him many questions about the mine and Monica, and Hilda
Blessington listened with lowered head, only occasionally fixing him
with queer searching eyes, like some odd creature not quite human. Jack
was something of a hero. And he was pleased. He wanted to be a hero.
But he was no hero any more for Aunt Matilda. Now that the cherub look
had gone forever, and the shy, blushing, blurting boy had turned into a
hard-boned, healthy young man, with a half haughty aloofness and a
little reckless smile that made you feel uncomfortable, she was driven
to venting some venom on him.
"That is the worst of the colonies," she said from her bluish powdered
face. "Our most charming, cultured young men go out to the back of
beyond, and they come home quite--quite--"
"Quite what, Marm?"
"Why I was going to say uncouth, but that's perhaps a little strong."
"I should say not at all," he answered. He disliked the old lady, and
enjoyed baiting her. Great stout old hen, she had played
cock-o'-the-walk long enough.
"How many children have you got out there?" she suddenly asked, rudely.
"We have only the twins of my own," he answered. "But of course there is
Jane."
"Jane! Jane! Which is Jane?"
"Jane is Easu's child. Monica's first."
Everybody started. It was as if a bomb had been dropped in the room.
Miss Blessington coloured to the roots of her fleecy brown hair. Mary
studied her fingers, and Aunt Matilda sat in a Queen Victoria statue
pose, outraged.
"What is she like?" asked Mary softly, looking up.
"Who, Jane? She's a funny little urchin. I'm fond of her. I believe
she'd always stand by me."
Mary looked at him. It was a curious thing to say.
"Is that how you think of people--whether they would always stand by you
or not?" she asked softly.
"I suppose it is," he laughed. "Courage is the first quality in life,
don't you think? And fidelity the next."
"Fidelity?" asked Mary.
"Oh, I don't mean automatic fidelity. I mean faithful to the living
spark," he replied a little hastily.
"Don't you try to be too much of a spark, young man," snapped Aunt
Matilda, arousing from her statuesque offence in order to let nothing
pass by her.
"I promise you I won't try," he laughed.
Mary glanced at him quickly--then down at her fingers.
"I think fidelity is a great problem," she said softly.
"Pray, why?" bounced Aunt Matilda. "You give your word, and you stick to
it."
"Oh, it's not just simple word-faithfulness, Mrs. Watson," said Jack. He
had Mary in mind.
"Well, I suppose I have still to live and learn," said Aunt Matilda.
"What's that you have still to live and learn, Matilda?" said Mr.
George, coming in again with papers.
"This young man is teaching me lessons about life. Courage is the first
quality in life, if you please."
"Well, why not?" said Old George amiably. "I like spunk myself."
"Courage to do the _right thing!_" said Aunt Matilda.
"And who's going to decide which is the right thing?" asked the old man,
teasing her.
"There's no question of it," said Aunt Matilda.
"Well," said the old lawyer, rubbing his head, "there often is, my dear
woman, a very big question!"
"And fidelity is the second virtue," said Mary, looking up at him with
trustful eyes, enquiringly.
"A man's no good unless he can keep faith," said the old man.
"But what is it one must remain faithful to?" came the quiet cool voice
of Hilda Blessington.
"Do you know what old Gran Ellis said?" asked Jack. "She said a man's
own true self is God in him. She was a queer old bird."
"His _true_ self," said Aunt Matilda. "His true self! And I should say
old Mrs. Ellis was a doubtful guide to young people, judging from her
own family."
"She made a great impression on me, Marm," said Jack politely.
Mr. George had brought the papers referring to the new property. Jack
read various documents, rather absently. Then the title deeds. Then he
studied a fascinating little green-and-red map, "delineating and setting
forth," with "easements and encumbrances," whatever they were. There was
a bank-book showing a balance of four hundred pounds nineteen shillings
and sixpence, in the West Australian Bank.
Jack told about his visit to Grant Farm, and the man under the umbrella.
They all laughed.
"The poor fellow had a bad start," said Mr. George. "But he was a good
farmer and a good business man, in his right times. Oh, he knew who he
was leaving the place to, when Rackett drew up that will."
"Gran Ellis told me about him," said Jack. "She told me about all the
old people. She told me about my mother's old sister. And she told me
about the father of this crazy man as well, but--"
Mr. George was looking at him coldly and fiercely.
"The poor fellow's father," said the old man, "was an Englishman who
thought himself a swell, but wasn't too much of a high-born gentleman to
abandon a decent girl and go round to the east side and marry another
woman, and flaunt round in society with women he hadn't married."
Jack remembered. It was Mary's father: seventh son of old Lord Haworth.
What a mix-up! How bitter Old George sounded!
"It seems to have been a mighty mix-up out hare, fifty years ago, sir,"
he said mildly.
"It was a mix-up then--and is a mix-up now."
"I suppose," said Jack, "if the villain of a gentleman had never
abandoned my Aunt--I can't think of her as an Aunt--he'd never have gone
to Sydney, and his children that he had there would never have been
born."
"I suppose not," said Mr. George drily. But he started a little and
involuntarily looked at Mary.
"Do you think it would have been better if they had never been born?"
Jack asked pertinently.
"I don't set up to judge," said the old man.
"Does Mrs. Watson?"
"I certainly think it would be better," said Mrs. Watson, "if that poor
half-idiot cousin of yours had never been born."
"I've got Gran Ellis on my mind," said Jack. "She was funny, what she
condemned and what she didn't. I used to think she was an old terror.
But I can understand her better now. She was a wise woman, seems to me."
"Indeed!" said Aunt Matilda. "I never put her and wisdom together."
"Yes, she was wise. I can see now. She knew that sins are as vital a
part of life as virtues, and she stuck up for the sins that are
necessary to life."
"What's the matter with you, Jack Grant, that you go and start
moralising?" said Old George.
"Why sir, it must be that my own sinful state is dawning on my mind,"
said Jack, "and I'm wondering whether to take Mrs. Watson's advice and
repent and weep, etc., etc. Or whether to follow old Gran Ellis' lead,
and put a sinful feather in my cap."
"Well," said Old George, smiling, "I don't know. You talk about courage
and fidelity. Sin usually means doing something rather cowardly, and
breaking your faith in some direction."
"Oh I don't know, sir. Tom and Lennie are faithful to me. But that
doesn't mean they are not free. They are free to do just what they like,
so long as they are faithful to the spark that is between us. As I am
faithful to them. It seems to me, Sir, one is true to one's _word_ in
_business_, in affairs. But in life one can only be true to the spark."
"I'm afraid there's something amiss with you, son, that's set you off
arguing and splitting hairs."
"There is. Something is always amiss with most of us. Old Gran Ellis was
a lesson to me, if I'd known. Something is always wrong with the lot of
us. And I believe in thinking before I act."
"Let us hope so," said Mr. George. "But it sounds funny sort of thinking
you do."
"But," said Hilda Blessington, with wide, haunted eyes, "what is the
spark that one must be faithful to? How are we to be sure of it?"
"You just feel it. And then you act upon it. That's courage. And then
you always live up to the responsibility of your act. That's
faithfulness. You have to keep faith in all kinds of ways. I have to
keep faith with Monica and the babies, and young Jane, and Lennie and
Tom and dead Gran Ellis: and--and more--yes, more."
He looked with clear hard eyes at Mary, and at the young girl. They were
both watching him, puzzled and perturbed. The two old people in the
background were silent but hostile.
"Do you know what I am faithful to?" he said, still to the two young
women, but letting the elders hear. "I am faithful to my own inside,
when something stirs in me. Gran Ellis said that was God in me. I know
there's a God outside of me. But he tells me to go my own way, and never
be frightened of people and the world, only be frightened of _Him._ And
if I felt I really wanted two wives, for example, I would have them and
keep them both. If I really wanted them, it would mean it was the God
outside of me bidding me, and it would be up to me to obey, world or no
world."
"You describe exactly the devil driving you," said Aunt Matilda.
"Doesn't he!" laughed Mr. George, who was oddly impressed. "I hope there
isn't a streak of madness in the family."
"No, there's not. The world is all so tame, it's a bit imbecile, in my
opinion. Really a dangerous idiot. If I do want two wives--or even
three--I _do._ Why should I mind what the idiot says."
"Sounds like _you'd_ gone cracked, out there in that mining settlement,"
said Mr. George.
"If I said I wanted two fortunes instead of one, you wouldn't think it
cracked," said Jack, with a malicious smile.
"No, only greedy," said Old George.
"Not if I could use them. And the same if I have real use for two
wives--or even three--" said Jack, grinning, but with a queer bright
intention, at Hilda Blessington. "Well, three wives would be three
fortunes for my blood and spirit."
"You are not allowed to say such things, even as a joke," said Aunt
Matilda, with ponderous disapproval. "It is no joke to _me._"
"Surely I say them in dead earnest," persisted Jack mischievously. He
was aware of Mary and Hilda Blessington listening, and he wanted to
throw a sort of lasso over them.
"You'll merely find yourself in gaol for bigamy," said Mr. George.
"Oh," said Jack, "I wouldn't risk that. It would really be a Scotch
marriage. Monica is my legal wife. But what I pledged myself to, I'd
stick to, as I stick to Monica, I'd stick to the others the same."
"I won't hear any more of this nonsense," said Aunt Matilda, rising.
"Nonsense it is," said Old George testily.
Jack laughed. Their being bothered amused him. He was a little surprised
at himself breaking out in this way. But the sight of Mary, and the
sense of a new, different responsibility, had struck it out of him. His
nature was ethical, inclined to be emotionally mystical. Now, however,
the sense of foolish complacency and empty assurance in Aunt Matilda,
and in all the dead-certain people of this world struck out of him a
hard, sharp, non-emotional opposition. He felt hard and mischievous,
confronting them. Who were they, to judge and go on judging? Who was
Aunt Matilda, to judge the dead fantastic soul of the fierce Gran? The
Ellises, the Ellises, they all had some of Gran's fierce pagan
uneasiness about them, they were all a bit uncanny. That was why he
loved them so.
And Mary! Mary had another slow, heavy, mute mystery that waited and
waited forever, like a lode-stone. And should he therefore abandon her,
abandon her to society and a sort of sterility? Not he. She was his.
His, and no other man's. She knew it herself. He knew it. Then he would
fight them all. Even the good Old George. For the mystery that was his
and Mary's.
Let it be an end of popular goodness. Let there be another deeper,
fiercer, untamed sort of goodness, like in the days of Abraham and
Samson and Saul. If Jack was to be good he would be good with these
great old men, the heroic fathers, not with the saints. The Christian
goodness had gone bad, decayed almost into poison. It needed again the
old heroic goodness of untamed men, with the wild great God who was
forever too unknown to be a paragon.
Old George was a little afraid of Jack, uneasy about him. He thought him
not normal. The boy had to be put in a category by himself, like a
madman in a solitary cell. And at the same time, the old man was
delighted. He was delighted with the young man's physical presence.
Bewildered by the careless, irrational things Jack would say, the old
bachelor took off his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes again and
again, as if he were going blind, and as if he were losing his old
dominant will.
He had been a dominant character in the colony so long. And now this
young fellow was laughing at him and stealing away his power of
resistance.
"Don't make eyes at me, sir," said Jack, laughing. "I know better than
you what life means."
"You do, do you? Oh you do?" said the old man. And he laughed too.
Somehow it made him feel warm and easy. "A fine crazy affair it would be
if it were left to you." And he laughed loud at the absurdity.
II
Jack persuaded Mary to go with Mr. George and himself to look at Grant
Farm. Mary and the old lawyer went in a buggy, Jack rode his own horse.
And it seemed to him to be good to be out again in the bush and forest
country. It was rainy season, and the smell of the earth was delicious
in his nostrils.
He decided soon to leave the mine. It was running thin. He could leave
it in charge of Tom. And then he must make some plans for himself.
Perhaps he would come and live on the Grant Farm. It was not too far
from Perth, or from Wandoo, it was in the hills, the climate was balmy
and almost English, after the goldfields, and there were trees. He
really rejoiced again, riding through strong, living trees.
Sometimes he would ride up beside Mary. She sat very still at Mr.
George's side, talking to him in her quick, secret-seeming way. Mary
always looked as if the things she was saying were secrets.
And her upper lip with its down of fine dark hair, would lift and show
her white teeth as she smiled with her mouth. She only smiled with her
mouth: her eyes remained dark and glistening and unchanged. But she
talked a great deal to Mr. George, almost like lovers, they were so
confidential and so much in tune with tone another. It was as if Mary
was happy with an old man's love, that was fatherly, warm, and sensuous,
and wise and talkative, without being at all dangerous.
When Jack rode up, she seemed to snap the thread of her communication
with Mr. George, her ready volubility failed, and she was a little
nervous. Her eyes, her dark eyes, were afraid of the young man. Yet they
would give him odd, bright, corner-wise looks, almost inviting. So
different from the full, confident way she looked at Mr. George. So
different from Monica's queer yellow glare. Mary seemed almost to peep
at him, while her dark face, like an animal's muzzle with its slightly
heavy mouth, remained quite expressionless.
It amused him. He remembered how he had kissed her, and he wondered if
she remembered. It was impossible, of course, to ask her. And when she
talked, it was always so seriously. That again amused Jack. She was so
voluble, especially with Mr. George, on all kinds of deep and difficult
subjects. She was quite excited, just now about authoritarianism. She
was being drawn by the Roman Catholic Church.
"Oh," she was saying, "I am an authoritarian. Don't you think that the
whole natural scheme is a scheme of authority, one rank having authority
over another?"
Mr. George couldn't quite see it. Yet it tickled his paternal male
conceit of authority, so he didn't contradict her. And Jack smiled to
himself. "She runs too much to talk," he thought. "She runs too much in
her head." She seemed, indeed, to have forgotten quite how he kissed
her. It seemed that "questions of the day" quite absorbed her.
They came through the trees in the soft afternoon sunshine. Jack
remembered the place well. He remembered the Jamboree, and that girl who
had called him Dearie! His first woman! And insignificant enough; but
not bad. He thought kindly of her. She was a warm-hearted soul. But she
didn't belong to his life at all. He remembered too how he had kicked
Tom. The faithful Tom! Mary would never marry Tom, that was a certainty.
And it was equally certain, Tom would never break his heart.
Jack was thinking to himself that he would build a new house on this
place, and ask Mary to live in the old house. That was a brilliant idea.
But as he drove up, he thought: "The first money you spend on this
place, my boy, will be on a brand new five-barred white gate."
Emma and Amos came out full of joy. They too were a faithful old pair.
Jack handed Mary down. She wore a dark-blue dress and white silk gloves.
It was so like her, to put on white silk gloves. But he liked the touch
of them, as he handed her down. Her small, short, rather passive hands.
He and she walked round the place, and she was very much interested. A
new place, a new farm, a new undertaking always excited her, as if it
was she who was making the new move.
"Don't you think _that_ will be a good place for the new house," he was
saying to her. "Down there, near that jolly bunch of old trees. And the
garden south of the trees. If you dig in that flat you'll find water,
sure to."
She inspected the place most carefully, and uttered her mature
judgments.
"You'll have to help think it out," he said. "Monica's as different as
an opossum. Would you like to build yourself a house here, and tend to
things? I'll build you one if you like. Or give you the old one."
She looked at him with glowing eyes.
"Wouldn't that be splendid!" she said. "Oh, wouldn't that be splendid!
If I had a house and a piece of land of my own! Oh yes!"
"Well I can easily give it you," he said. "Just whatever you like."
"Isn't that lovely!" she exclaimed.
But he could tell she was thinking merely of the house and the bit of
land, and herself a sort of Auntie to his and Monica's children. She was
fairly jumping into old-maidom, both feet first. Which was not what he
intended. He didn't want her as an Auntie for his children.
They went back to the house, and inspected there. She liked it. It was a
stone one-storey house with a great kitchen and three other rooms, all
rather low and homely. The dead cousin had wanted his house to be
exactly like the houses of other respectable farmers. And he had not
been prevented.
The place was a bit tumble-down, but clean. Emma was baking scones, and
the sweet smell of scorched flour filled the house. Mary lit the lamp in
the little parlour, and set it on the highly-polished but rather
ricketty rosewood table, next the photograph album. The family Bible had
been removed to the bedroom. But the old man had a photograph album,
like any other respectable householder.
Mary drew up one of the green-rep chairs, and opened the book. Jack,
looking over her shoulder, started a little as he saw the first
photograph: an elderly lady in lace cap and voluminous silken skirts was
seated reading a book, while negligently leaning with one hand on her
chair was a gentleman, with long white trousers and old-fashioned coat
and side-whiskers, obviously having his photograph taken.
This was the identical photograph which held place of honour in Jack's
mother's album; being the photograph of her father and mother.
"See!" said Jack. "That's my grandfather and grand-mother. And he must
have been the man who took Gran Ellis' leg off. Goodness!"
Mary gazed at them closely.
"He looks a domineering man!" she said. "I hope you're not like him."
Jack didn't feel at all like him. Mary turned over, and they beheld two
young ladies of the Victorian period. Somebody had marked a cross, in
ink, over the head of one of the young ladies. They must be his own
Aunts, both of them many years older than his own mother, who was a late
arrival.
"Do you think that was his mother?" said Mary, looking up at Jack, who
stood at her side. "She was beautiful."
Jack studied the photograph of the young woman. She looked like nobody's
mother on earth, with her hair curiously rolled and curled, and a great
dress flouncing round her. And her beauty was so photographic and
abstract, he merely gazed seeking for it.
But Mary, looking up at him, saw his silent face in the glow of the
lamp, his rather grim mouth closed ironically under his moustache, his
open nostrils, and the long, steady, self-contained look of his eyes
under his lashes. He was not thinking of her at all, at the moment. But
his calm, rather distant, unconsciously imperious face was something
quite new and startling, and rather frightening to her. She became
intensely aware of his thighs standing close against her, and her heart
went faint. She was afraid of him.
In agitation, she was going to turn the leaf. But he put his
work-hardened hand on the page, and turned back to the first photograph.
"Look!" he said. "_He_----" pointing to his grandfather, "disowned
her----" turning to the Aunt marked with a cross, "----and she died an
outcast, in misery, and her son burrowed here, half crazy. Yet their two
faces are rather alike. Gran Ellis told me about them."
Mary studied them.
"They are both a bit like yours," she said, "their faces."
"Mine!" he exclaimed. "Oh no! I look like my father's family."
He could see no resemblance at all to himself in the handsome,
hard-mouthed, large man, with the clean face and the fringe of fair
whiskers, and the black cravat, and the overbearing look.
"Your eyes are set in the same way," she said. "And your brows are the
same. But your mouth is not so tight."
"I don't like what I heard of him, anyhow," said Jack. "A puritanical
surgeon! Turn over."
She turned over and gave a low cry. There was a photograph of a young
elegant with drooping black moustachios, and mutton-chop side whiskers,
and large, languid, black eyes, leaning languidly and swinging a cane.
Over the top was written, in a weird handwriting: _The Honourable George
Rath, blasted father of_
[Illustration]
This skull and cross-bones was repeated on the other margins of the
photograph.
"Oh!" said Mary, covering her face with her hands.
Jack's face was a study. Mary had evidently recognised the photograph of
her father as a young man. Yet Jack could not help smiling at the skull
and cross-bones, in connection with the Bulwer Lytton young elegant, and
the man under the green umbrella.
"My God!" he thought to himself. "All that happens in a generation! From
that sniffy young dude to that fellow here who made this farm, and Mary
with her face in her hands!"
He could not help smiling to himself.
"Had you seen that photograph before?" he asked her.
She, unable to answer, kept her face in her hands.
"Don't worry," he said. "We're all more or less that way. We're none of
us perfect."
Still she did not answer. Then he went on, almost without thinking, as
he studied the rather fetching young gentleman with the long black hair
and bold black eyes, and the impudent, handsome, languid lips:
"You're a bit like him, too. You're a bit like him in the look of your
eyes. I bet he wasn't tall either. I bet he was rather small."
Mary took her hands from her face and looked up fierce and angry.
"You have no feeling," she said.
"I have," he replied, smiling slightly. "But life seems to me too rummy
to get piqued about it. Think of him leaving a son like the fellow I saw
under the umbrella! Think of it! Such a dandy! And that his son! And
then having you for a daughter when he was getting quite on in years. Do
you remember him?"
"How can you talk to me like that?" she said.
"But why? It's life. It's how it was. Do you remember your father?"
"Of course I do."
"Did he dye his whiskers?"
"I won't answer you."
"Well, don't then. But this man under the umbrella here--you should have
seen him--was your half-brother and my cousin. It makes us almost
related."
Mary left the room. In a few minutes Mr. George came in.
"What's wrong with Mary?" he asked, suspiciously, angrily. Jack shrugged
his shoulders, and pointed to the photograph. The old man bent over and
stared at it: and laughed. Then he took the photograph out of the book,
and put it in his pocket.
"Well, I'm damned!" he said. "Signs himself skull and cross-bones! Think
of that now!"
"Was the Honourable George a smallish-built man?" asked Jack.
"Eh!" The old man started. Then startled, he began to remember back.
"Ay!" he said. "He was. He was smallish-built, and the biggest little
dude you ever set eyes on. Something about his backside always reminded
me of a woman. But all the women were wild about him. Ay, even when he
was over fifty, Mary's mother was wild in love with him. And he married
her because she was going to be a big heiress. But she died a bit too
soon, an' he got nothing, nor Mary neither, because she was his
daughter." The old man made an ironic grimace. "He only died a few years
back, in Sydney," he added. "But I say, that poor lass is fair cut up
about it. We'd always kept it from her. I feel bad about her."
"She may as well get used to it," said Jack, disliking the old man's
protective sentimentalism.
"Eh! Get used to it! Why? How can she get used to it?"
"She's got to live her own life some time."
"How d'y' mean, live her own life? She's never going to live _that_ sort
of a life, as long as I can see to it!" He was quite huffed.
"Are you going to leave her to be an old maid?" said Jack.
"Eh? Old maid? No! She'll marry when she wants to."
"You bet," said Jack with a slow smile.
"She's a child yet," said Mr. George.
"An elderly child--poor Mary!"
"Poor Mary! Poor Mary! Why poor Mary? Why so?"
"Just poor Mary," said Jack, slowly smiling.
"I don't see it. Why is she poor? You're growing into a real young
devil, you are." And the old man glanced into the young man's eyes in
mistrust, and fear, and also in admiration.
They went into the kitchen, the late tea was ready. It was evident that
Mary was waiting for them to come in. She had recovered her composure,
but was more serious than usual. Jack laughed at her, and teased her.
"Ah, Mary," he said, "do you still believe in the Age of Innocence?"
"I still believe in good feeling," she retorted.
"So do I. And when good feeling's comical, I believe in laughing at it,"
he replied.
"There's something wrong with you," she replied.
"Quoth Aunt Matilda," he echoed.
"Aunt Matilda is very often right," she said.
"Never, in my opinion. Aunt Matilda is a wrong number. She's one of
life's false statements."
"Hark at him!" laughed Old George.
As soon as the meal was over, he rose, saying he would see to his horse.
Mary looked up at him as he put his hat on his head and took the
lantern. She didn't want him to go.
"How long will you be?" she asked.
"Why, not long," he answered, with a slight smile.
Nevertheless he was glad to be out and with his horse. Somehow those
others made a false atmosphere, Mary and Old George. They made Jack's
soul feel sarcastic. He lingered about the stable in the dim light of
the lantern, preparing himself a bed. There were only two bedrooms in
the house. The old couple would sleep on the kitchen floor, or on the
sofa. He preferred to sleep in the stable. He had grown so that he did
not like to sleep inside their fixed, shut-in houses. He did not mind a
mere hut, like his at the camp. But a shut-in house with fixed furniture
made him feel sick. He was sick of the whole pretence of it.
And he knew he would never come to live on this farm. He didn't want to.
He didn't like the atmosphere of the place. He felt stifled. He wanted
to go North, or West, or North-West once more.
Suddenly he heard footsteps: Mary picking her way across.
"Is your horse all right?" she asked. "I was afraid something was wrong
with him. And he is so beautiful. Or is it a mare?"
"No," he said. "It is a horse. I don't care for a mare, for riding."
"Why?"
"She has so many whims of her own, and wants so much attention paid to
her. And then ten to one you can't trust her. I prefer a horse to ride."
She saw the rugs spread on the straw.
"Who is going to sleep here?" she asked.
"Why--but----"
He cut short her expostulations.
"Oh, but do let me bring you sheets. Do let me make you a proper bed!"
she cried.
But he only laughed at her.
"What's a _proper_ bed?" he said. "Is this an improper one, then?"
"It's not a comfortable one," she said with dignity.
"It is for me. I wasn't going to ask you to sleep on it too, was I,
now?"
She went out and stood looking at the Southern Cross.
"Weren't you coming indoors again?" she asked.
"Don't you think it's nicer out here? Feels a bit tight in there. I say,
Mary, I don't think I shall ever come and live on this place."
"Why not?"
"I don't like it."
"Why not?"
"It feels a bit heavy--and a bit tight to me."
"What shall you do then?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'll decide When I'm back at the camp. But I say,
wouldn't you like this place? I'll give it you if you would. You're next
of kin really. If you'll have it, I'll give it you."
Mary was silent for some time.
"And what do you think you'll do if you don't live here?" she asked.
"Will you stay always on the goldfields?"
"Oh dear no! I shall probably go up to the Never-Never, and raise
cattle. Where there aren't so many people, and photo albums, and good
old Georges and Aunt Matildas and all that."
"You'll be yourself, wherever you are."
"Thank God for that, but it's not quite true. I find I'm less myself
down here, with all you people."
Again she was silent for a time.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, that's how it makes me feel, that's all."
"Are you more yourself on the goldfields?" she asked rather
contemptuously.
"Oh yes."
"When you are getting money, you mean?"
"No. But I've got so that Aunt Matilda-ism and Old-Georgism don't agree
with me. They make me feel sarcastic, they make me feel out of sorts all
over."
"And I suppose you mean Mary-ism too," she said.
"Yes, a certain sort of Mary-ism does it to me as well. But there's a
Mary without the ism that I said I'd come back for.--Would you like this
place?"
"Why?"
"To cultivate your Mary-ism. Or would you like to come to the
North-West?"
"But why do you trouble about me?"
"I've come back for you. I said I'd come back for you. I am here."
There was a moment of tense silence.
"You have married Monica, now," said Mary in a low voice.
"Of course I have. But the leopard doesn't change his spots when he goes
into a cave with a she-leopard. I said I'd come back for you as well,
and I've come."
A dead silence.
"But what about Monica?" Mary asked, with a little curl of irony.
"Monica?" he said. "Yes, she's my wife, I tell you. But she's not my
only wife. Why should she be? She will lose nothing."
"Did she say so? Did you tell her?" Mary asked insidiously.
Slowly an anger suffused thick in his chest, and then seemed to break in
a kind of explosion. And the curious tension of his desire for Mary
snapped with the explosion of his anger.
"No," he said. "I didn't tell her. I had to ask you first. Monica is
thick with her babies now. She won't care where I am. That's how women
are. They are more creatures than men are. They're not separated out of
the earth. They're like black ore. The metal's in them, but it's still
part of the earth. They're all part of the matrix, women are, with their
children clinging to them."
"And men are pure gold?" said Mary sarcastically.
"Yes, in streaks. Men are the pure metal, in streaks. Women never are.
For my part, I don't want them to be. They _are_ the mother-rock. They
are the matrix. Leave them at that. That's why I want more than one
wife."
"But why?" she asked.
He realised that, in his clumsy fashion, he had taken the wrong tack.
The one thing he should never have done, he had begun to do: explain and
argue. Truly, Mary put up a permanent mental resistance. But he should
have attacked elsewhere. He should have made love to her. Yet, since she
had so much mental resistance, he had to make his position clear.--Now
he realised he was angry and tangled.
"Shall we go in?" he said abruptly.
And she returned with him in silence back to the house. Mr. George was
in the parlour, looking over some papers. Jack and Mary went in to him.
"I have been thinking, Sir," said Jack, "that I shall never come and
live on this place. I want to go up to the North-West and raise cattle.
That'll suit me better than wheat and dairy. So I offer this place to
Mary. She can do as she likes with it. Really, I feel the property is
naturally hers."
Now Old George had secretly cherished this thought for many years, and
it had riled him a little when Jack calmly stepped into the inheritance.
"Oh, you can't be giving away a property like this," he said.
"Why not? I have all the money I want. I give the place to Mary. I'd
much rather give it to her than sell it. But if she won't have it, I'll
ask you to sell it for me."
"Why! Why!" said Old George fussily, stirring quite delighted in his
chair, and looking from one to the other of the young people, unable to
understand their faces. Mary looked sulky and unhappy, Jack looked
sarcastic.
"I won't take it, anyhow," exclaimed Mary.
"Eh? Why not? If the young millionaire wants to throw it away----" said
the old man ironically.
"I won't! I won't take it!" she repeated abruptly.
"Why--what's amiss?"
"Nothing! I won't take it."
"Got a proud stomach from your aristocratic ancestors, have you?" said
Old George. "Well, you needn't have; the place is your father's son's
place, you needn't be altogether so squeamish."
"I wouldn't take it if I was starving," she asserted.
"You're in no danger of starving, so don't talk," said the old man,
testily. "It's a nice little place. I should enjoy coming out here and
spending a few months of the year myself. Should like nothing better."
"But I won't take it," said Mary.
Jack went grinning off to his stable. He was angry, but it was the kind
of anger that made him feel sarcastic.
Damn her! She was in love with him. She had a passion for him. What did
she want? Did she want him to make love to her, and run away with her,
and abandon Monica and Jane and the twin babies?--No doubt she would
listen to such a proposition hard enough. But he was never going to make
it her. He had married Monica, and he would stick to her. She was his
first and chief wife, and whatever happened, she should remain it. He
detested and despised divorce; a shifty business. But it was nonsense to
pretend that Monica was the beginning and end of his marriage with
woman. Woman was the matrix, the red earth, and he wanted his roots in
this earth. More than one root, to keep him steady and complete. Mary
instinctively belonged to him. Then why not belong to him completely?
Why not? And why not make a marriage with her too? The legal marriage
with Monica, his own marriage with Mary. It was a natural thing. The old
heroes, the old fathers of red earth, like Abraham in the Bible, like
David even, they took the wives they needed for their own completeness,
without this nasty chop-and-change business of divorce. Then why should
he not do the same?
He would have all the world against him. But what would it matter, if he
were away in the Never-Never, where the world just faded out? Monica
could have the chief house. But Mary should have another house, with
garden and animals if she wanted them. And she should have her own
children: his children. Why should she be only Auntie to Monica's
children? Mary, with her black, glistening eyes and her short, dark,
secret body, she was asking for children. She was asking him for his
children, really. He knew it, and secretly she knew it; and Aunt
Matilda, and even Old George knew it, somewhere in themselves. And Old
George was funny. He wouldn't really have minded an affair between Jack
and Mary, provided it had been kept dark. He would even have helped them
to it, so long as they would let nothing be known.
But Jack was too wilful and headstrong, and too proud, for an intrigue.
An intrigue meant a certain cringing before society, and this he would
never do. If he took Mary, it was because he felt she instinctively
belonged to him. Because, in spite of the show she kept up, her womb was
asking for him. And he wanted her for himself. He wanted to have her and
to answer her. And he would be judged by nobody.
He rose quickly, returning to the house. Mary and the old man were in
the kitchen, getting their candles to go to bed.
"Mary," said Jack, "come out and listen to the night-bird."
She started slightly, glanced at him, then at Mr. George.
"Go with him a minute, if you want to," said the old man.
Rather unwillingly she went out of the door with Jack. They crossed the
yard in silence, towards the stable. She hesitated outside, in the thin
moonlight.
"Come to the stable with me," he said, his heart beating thick, and his
voice strange and low.
"Oh Jack!" she cried, with a funny little lament; "you're married to
Monica! I can't! You're Monica's."
"Am I?" he said. "Monica's mine, if you like, but why am I all hers?
She's certainly not all mine. She belongs chiefly to her babies just
now. Why shouldn't she? She's their red earth. But I'm not going to shut
my eyes. Neither am I going to play the mild Saint Joseph. I don't feel
that way. At the present moment I'm not Monica's, any more than she is
mine. So what's the good of your telling me? I shall love her again,
when she is free. Everything in season, even wives. Now I love you
again, after having never thought of it for a long while. But it was
always slumbering inside me, just as Monica is asleep inside me this
minute. The sun goes, and the moon comes. A man isn't made up of only
one thread. What's the good of keeping your virginity! It's really mine.
Come with me to the stable, and then afterwards come and live in the
North-West, in one of my houses, and have your children there, and
animals or whatever you want."
"Oh God!" cried Mary. "You must really be mad. You don't love me, you
can't, you must love Monica. Oh God, why do you torture me!"
"I don't torture you. Come to the stable with me. I love you too."
"But you love Monica."
"I shall love Monica again, another time. Now I love you. I don't
change. But sometimes it's one, then the other. Why not?"
"It can't be! It can't be!" cried Mary.
"Why not? Come into the stable with me, with me and the horses."
"Oh don't torture me! I hate my animal nature. You want to make a slave
of me," she cried blindly.
This struck him silent. Hate her animal nature? What did she mean? Did
she mean the passion she had for him? And make a slave of her? How?
"How make a slave of you?" he asked. "What are you now? You are a sad
thing as you are. I don't want to leave you as you are. You are a slave
now, to Aunt Matilda and all the conventions. Come with me into the
stable."
"Oh, you are cruel to me! You are wicked! I can't. You know I can't."
"Why can't you? You can. I am not wicked. To me it doesn't matter what
the world is. You _really_ want me, and nothing but me. It's only the
outside of you that's afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of, now we
have enough money. You will come with me to the North-West, and be my
other wife, and have my children, and I shall depend on you as a man has
to depend on a woman."
"How selfish you are! You are as selfish as my father, who betrayed your
mother's sister and left this skull-and-cross-bones son," she cried.
"No, it's dreadful, it's horrible. In this horrible place, too,
proposing such a thing to me. It shows you have no feelings."
"I don't care about feelings. They're what people have because they feel
they ought to have them. But I know my own real feelings. I don't care
about your feelings."
"I know you don't," she said. "Good-night!" She turned abruptly and
hurried away in the moonlight, escaping to the house.
Jack watched the empty night for some minutes. Then he turned away into
the stable.
"That's that!" he said, seeing his little plans come to nought.
He went into the stable and sat down on his bed, near the horses. How
good it was to be with the horses! How good animals were, with no
"feelings" and no ideas. They just straight felt what they felt, without
lies and complications.
Well, so be it! He was surprised. He had not expected Mary to funk the
issue, since the issue was clear. What else was the right thing to do?
Why, nothing else!
It seemed to him so obvious. Mary obviously wanted him, even more,
perhaps, than he wanted her. Because she was only a part thing, by
herself. All women were only parts of some whole, when they were by
themselves: let them be as clever as they might. They were creatures of
earth, and fragments, all of them. All women were only fragments;
fragments of matrix at that.
No, he was not wrong, he was right. If the others didn't agree, they
didn't, that was all. He still was right. He still hated the nauseous
one-couple-in-one-cottage domesticity. He hated domesticity altogether.
He loathed the thought of being shut up with one woman and a bunch of
kids in a house. Several women, several houses, several bunches of kids:
it would then be like a perpetual travelling, a camp, not a home. He
hated homes. He wanted a camp.
He wanted to pitch his camp in the wilderness: with the faithful Tom,
and Lennie, and his own wives. Wives, not wife. And the horses, and the
come-and-go, and the element of wildness. Not to be tamed. His men, men
by themselves. And his women never to be tamed. And the wilderness still
there. He wanted to go like Abraham under the wild sky, speaking to a
fierce wild Lord, and having angels stand in his doorway.
Why not? Even if the whole world said No! Even then, why not?
As for being ridiculous, what was more ridiculous than men wheeling
perambulators and living among a mass of furniture in a tight house?
Anyhow it was no good talking to Mary at the moment. She wasn't a piece
of the matrix of red earth. She was a piece of the upholstered world.
Damn the upholstered world! He would go back to the goldfields, to Tom
and Lennie and Monica, back to camp. Back to camp, away from the
upholstery.
No, he wasn't a man who had finished when he had got one wife.
And that damned Mary, by the mystery of fate, was linked to him.
And damn her, she preferred to break that link, and turn into an
upholstered old maid. Of all the hells!
Then let her marry Blessington and a houseful of furniture. Or else
marry Old George, and gas to him while he could hear. She loved gassing.
Talk, talk, talk, Jack hated a talking woman. But Mary would rather sit
gassing with Old George than be with him, Jack. Of all the surprising
hells!
At least Tom wasn't like that. And Monica wasn't. But Monica was wrapped
up in her babies, she seemed to swim in a sea of babies, and Jack had to
let her be. And she too had a hankering after furniture. He knew she'd
be after it, if he didn't prevent her.
Well, it was no good preventing people, even from stuffed plush
furniture and knick-knacks. But he'd keep the brake on. He would do
that.