TROT, TROT BACK AGAIN
But as he rode back to Perth, with Mary rather stiff and silent, and Mr.
George absorbed in his own thoughts; and as they greeted people on the
road, and passed by settlements; and as they saw far off the pale-blue
sea with a speck of a steamer smoking, and the dim fume of Perth down at
sea-level, he thought to himself: "I had better be careful. I had better
be wary. The world is cold and cautious, it has cold blood, like ants
and centipedes. They, all the men in the world, they hardly want one
wife, let alone two. And they would take any excuse to destroy me. They
would like to destroy me, because I am not cold and like an ant, as they
are. Mary would like me to be killed. Look at her face. She would feel a
real deep satisfaction if my horse threw me against those stones and
smashed my skull in. She would feel vindicated. And Old George would
think it served me right. And practically everybody would be glad. Not
Tom and Len. But practically everybody else. Even Monica, though she is
my wife. Even she feels a judgment ought to descend upon me. Because I'm
not what she wants me to be. Because I'm not as she thinks I ought to
be. And because she can't get beyond me. Because something inside her
knows she can't get past me. Therefore, in one corner of her she hates
me, like a scorpion lurking. If I'm unaware, and put my hand unthinking
in that corner, she'll sting me and hope to kill me. How curious it is!
And since I have found the gold it is more emphatic than before. As if
they grudged me something. As if they grudged me my very being. Because
I'm not one of them, and just like they are, they would like me
destroyed. It has always been so ever since I was born. My Aunts, my own
father. And my mother didn't want me destroyed as they secretly did, but
even my mother would not have tried to prevent them from destroying me.
Even when they like me, as Old George does, they grudge their own
liking, they take it back whenever they can. He defended me over Easu
because he thought I was defending Monica, and going the good way of the
world. Now he scents that I am going my own way, he feels as if I were a
sort of snake that should be put out of existence. That's how Mary feels
too: and Mary loves me, if loving counts for anything. Tom and Len don't
wish me destroyed. But if they saw the world destroying me they'd
acquiesce. Their fondness for me is only passive, not active. I believe,
if I ransacked earth and heaven, there's nobody would fight for me as I
am, not a soul, except that little Jane of Easu's. The others would
fight like cats and dogs for me _as they want me to be._ But for me as I
am, they think I ought to be destroyed.
"And I, I am a fool, talking to them, giving myself away to them, as to
Mary. Why, Mary ought to go down on her knees before the honour, if I
want to take her. Instead of which she puffs herself up, and spits venom
in my face like a cobra.
"Very well, very well. Soon I can go out of her sight again, for I
loathe the sight of her. I can ride down Hay Street without yielding a
hair's breadth to any man or woman on earth. And I can ride out of Perth
without leaving a vestige of myself behind, for them to work mischief
on.
"God, but it's a queer thing, to know that they all want to destroy me
as I am, even out here in this far-off colony. I thought it was only my
Aunts, and my father because of his social position. But it is
everybody. Even, passively, my mother, and Tom and Len. Because inside
my soul I don't conform: can't conform. They would all like to kill the
non-conforming me. Which is me myself.
"And at the same time they all love me exceedingly the moment they think
I am in line with them. The moment they think I am in line with them,
they're awfully fond of me. Monica, Mary, Old George, even Aunt Matilda,
they're almost all of them in love with me then, and they'd give me
anything. If I asked Mary to sin with me as something I shouldn't do,
but I went down on my knees and asked for it, unable to help myself,
she'd give in to me like anything. And Monica, if I was willing to be
forgiven, would forgive me with unction.
"But since I refuse the sin business, and I never go down on my knees;
and since I say that my way is better than theirs, and that I should
have my two wives, and both of them know that it is an honour for them
to be taken by me, an honour for them to be put into my house and
acknowledged there, they would like to kill me. It is I who must grovel,
I who must submit to judgment. If I would but submit to their judgment,
I could do all the wicked things I like, and they would only love me
better. But since I will never submit to them, they would like to
destroy me off the face of the earth, like a rattlesnake.
"They shall not do it. But I must be wary. I must not put out my hand to
ask them for anything, or they will strike my hand like vipers out of a
hole. I must take great care to ask them for nothing, and to take
nothing from them. Absolutely I must have nothing from them, not so much
as to let them carry the cup of tea for me, unpaid. I must be very
careful. I should not have let that brown snake of a Mary see I wanted
her. As for Monica, I married her, so that makes them all allow me
certain rights, as far as she is concerned. But she has her rights too,
and the moment she thinks I trespass on them, she will unsheath her
fangs.
"As for me, I refuse their social rights, they can keep them. If they
will give me no rights, to the man I am, to me as I am, they shall give
me nothing.
"God, what am I going to do? I feel like a man whom the
snake-worshipping savages have thrown into one of their snake-pits. All
snakes, and if I touch a single one of them, it will bite me. Man or
woman, wife or friend, every one of them is ready for me since I am
rich. Daniel in the den of lions was a comfortable man in comparison.
These are all silent, damp, creeping snakes, like that yellow-faced Mary
there, and that little whip-snake of a Monica, whom I have loved. 'Now
they bite me where I most have sinned,' says old Don Rodrigo, when the
snakes of the Inferno bite him. So they shall not bite me. God in
heaven, no, so they shall not bite me. Snakes they are, and the world is
a snake-pit into which one is thrown. But still they shall not bite me.
As sure as God is God, they shall not bite me. I will crush their heads
rather.
"Why did I want that Mary? How unspeakably repulsive she is to me now!
Why did I ever want Monica so badly? God, I shall never want her again.
They shall not bite me as they bit Don Rodrigo, or Don Juan. My name is
John, but I am no Don. God forbid that I should take a title from them.
"And the soft, good Tom and Lennie, they shall live their lives, but not
with my life.
"Am I not a fool! Am I not a pure crystal of a fool! I thought they
would love me for what I am, for the man I am, and they only love me for
the me as they want me to be. They only love me because they get
themselves glorified out of me.
"I thought at least they would give me a certain reverence, because I am
myself and because I am different, in the name of the Lord. But they
have all got their fangs full and surcharged with insult, to vent it on
me the moment I stretch out my hand.
"I thought they would know the Lord was with me, and a certain new thing
with me on the face of the earth. But if they know the Lord is with me,
it is only so that they can intensify and concentrate their poison, to
drive Him out again. And if they guess a new thing in me, on the face of
the earth, it only makes them churn their bile and secrete their malice
into a poison that would corrode the face of the Lord.
"Lord! Lord! That I should ever have wanted them, or even wanted to
touch them! That ever I should have wanted to come near them, or to let
them come near me. Lord, as the only boon, the only blessedness, leave
me intact, leave me utterly isolate and out of the reach of all men.
"That I should have wanted! That I should have wanted Monica so badly!
Well, I got her, and she saves her fangs in silent readiness for me, for
the me as I am, not the me that is hers. That I should have wanted this
Mary, whom I now despise. That I should have thought of a new little
world of my own!
"What a fool! To think of Abraham, and the great men in the early days.
To think that I could take up land in the North, a big wild stretch of
land, and build my house and raise my cattle and live as Abraham lived,
at the beginning of time, but myself at another, late beginning. With my
wives and the children of my wives, and Tom and Lennie with their
families, my right hand and my left hand, and absolutely fearless. And
the men I would have work for me, because they were fearless and hated
the world. Each one having his share of the cattle, and the horses, at
the end of the year. Men ready to fight for me and with me, no matter
against what. A little world of my own, in the North-West. And my
children growing up like a new race on the face of the earth, with a new
creed of courage and sensual pride, and the black wonder of the halls of
death ahead, and the call to be lords of death, on earth. With my Lord,
as dark as death and splendid with lustrous doom, a sort of spontaneous
royalty, for the God of my little world. The spontaneous royalty of the
dark Overlord, giving me earth-royalty, like Abraham or Saul, that can't
be quenched and that moves on to perfection in death. One's last and
perfect lordliness in the halls of death, when slaves have sunk as
carrion, and only the serene in pride are left to judge the unborn.
"A little world of my own! As if I could make it with the people that
are on earth to-day! No, no, I can do nothing but stand alone. And then,
when I die, I shall not drop like carrion on the earth's earth. I shall
be a lord of death, and sway the destinies of the life to come."