A new awareness of Monica began to trouble him.
“Oooh! Oooh! Ma! Ma! Ma!” Out rushed Tom straight from the kitchen door, the bees still with him. Straight he dashed to the garden, and to the well in the middle. He loosed the windlass and stood on the coping screaming while the bucket clanged and clashed to the bottom. Then Tom seized the rope, and turning his legs round it, slid silently into the hidden, cool dark depths.
The children shrieked with bliss, Jack and the girls rocked with helpless laughter, convulsed by this last exit.
The bees were puzzled. They poised buzzbee fashion above the well-head, explored the mouth of the shaft, and rose again and hovered. Then they began to straggle away. They melted into the hot air.
And now the girls and Jack drew up from the well a raging and soaking Tom. Drew him up uncertainly, wobblingly, a terrible weight on the straining, creaking windlass. Ma and Ellie took him in hand and daubed him a sublime blue: like an ancient Briton, Grace said. Then they gave him bread and jam and a cup of tea.
Then occurred another honey-bee tragedy. Ellie, who had done nothing at all to the bees, suddenly shrieked loudly and ran pelting round, screaming: “I’ve got a bee in my head! I’ve got a bee in my head!” Monica caught and held her, while Jack took the bee, a big drone, out of the silky meshes of her honey hair. And as he lifted his eyes he met the yellow eyes of Monica. And the two exchanged a moment’s look of intimacy and communication and secret shame, so that they both went away avoiding one another.
II
On New Year’s Eve there was always a foregathering of the settlers at the Wandoo homestead. They must foregather somewhere, and Wandoo was the oldest and most flourishing place. It occupied the banks of the so-called Avon River, which was mostly just a great dry bed of stones. But it had plenty of fresh water in the soaks and wells, among the scorched rocks, and these wells were fed by underground springs, not brackish, as is so often the case. Wandoo was therefore a favoured place.
“What am I to wear?” said Jack, aghast, when he heard of the affair.
“Anything,” said Tom.
“Nothing,” said Len.
“Your new riding suit,” said Monica, who had begun to assume airs of proprietorship over him. — ”And you needn’t say anything, young Len,” she continued venomously. “Because you’ve got to wear that new holland suit Ma got you from England, and boots and socks as well.”
“It’s awful. Oo-er! It’s awful!” groaned Lennie.
It was. A tight-fitting brown holland suit with pants halfway down the shin and many pearl-buttons across the stomach, the coat with a stiff stand-up collar and rigid seams. Harry had a similar rig, but the twins out-did Solomon in sailor suits with gold braid and floppy legs. At least they started in glory.
Tom, in his father’s old tennis-flannels and a neat linen jacket, looked quite handsome. But when he saw Jack in his real pukka riding rig, he exclaimed,
“God Almighty, but you’ve got the goods!”
“A bit too dashing?” asked Jack anxiously.
“Not on your life! You’ll do fine. Reds all go in for riding breeks and coats as near sporting dog’s yank as they k’n get ‘m. There’s a couple o’ white washing suits o’ Dad’s as he’s grown out of, as I’ll plank up in the loft to change into tonight. We can’t come in this here cubby again. Once we leave it, it’ll be jumped by all the women and children from round the country to put their things in.”
“Won’t they go into the house?”
“Hallelujah no! Only relations go upstairs. Quality into the dyin’ room. Yahoos anywhere, and the ladies always bag our cubby!”
“Lor!”
But it had to be so. For the New Year’s chivoo the settlers all saved up, and they all dressed up. By ten o’clock the place was like a fair ground. Horses of all sorts nosing their feed-bags; conveyances of all sorts unhitched; girls all muslin and ribbon; boys with hats on at an angle, and boots on; men in clean shirts and brilliant ties, mothers in frill and furbelow, with stiffly-starched little children half hidden under sunbonnets; old dames and ancient patriarchs, young bearded farmers, and shaven civilians ridden over from York. Children rushing relentlessly in the heat, amid paper bags, orange peel, concertina-playing, baskets of victuals and fruit, canvas, rubbish and nuts all over the scorched grass. Christmas!
Tom had asked Jack to organise a cricket eleven to play against the Reds. The Reds were dangerous opponents, and the dandies of the day. In riding breeches made India fashion, with cotton gaiters, and rubber-soled shoes, white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats, they looked a handsome colonial set. And they had a complete eleven.
Tom was sitting on a bat bemoaning his fate. He had only five reliable men.
“Aw, shut up!” said Lennie. “Somebody’ll turn up. — Who’s comin’ in at the gate now? Ain’t it the parson from York, and five gents what can handle a bat. Hell! — ain’t my name cockadoodle!”
In top hats and, white linen suits these gentlemen had ridden their twenty-five miles for a game. What price the Reds now!
Tom’s side was in first, Easu and Ross Ellis bowling, Easu, big, loose, easy, looked strange and native, as if he belonged to the natural salt of the earth there. He seemed at home, like an emu or a yellow mimosa tree. He was a bowler of repute. But somehow Jack could not bear to see him palm the ball before he bowled: could not bear to watch it. Whereas fat Ross Ellis, the other bowler, spitting on his hand and rolling the ball in elation after getting the wicket of the best man from York, Jack didn’t mind him. — But unable to watch Easu, he walked away across the paddock, among the squatting mothers whose terror was the flying leather ball.
“Your turn at the wickets, Mr. Grant,” called the excited, red-faced parson, who, Lennie declared, “Couldn’t preach less or act more.”
“We’re eight men out for twenty-six rounds, so smack at ‘em. If ye can get the loose end on Ross, do it. I’ll be in t’other end next and stop ‘em off Easu. I come in right there as th’ useful block.”
Jack was excited. And when he was excited, phrases always came up in his mind. He had the sun in his eyes, but the bat felt good.
“If a gentleman sees bad, he ignores it. He — — ”
Here comes the ball from that devil Easu!
How’s that!
“Finds good and fans it to flame — fans it to — — ”
Joe Low, that stripling, had the other wicket.
Smack! Jack scored the first run off Easu, running for his life.
“You can be a gentleman even if you are a bush-whacker.”
Nine wickets had fallen to Easu for twenty-seven runs, and Easu was elated. Then the parson came forth and stood opposite Jack. He at once whacked Ross’ ball successfully, for three. Jack hitched his belt after the run, and hit out for another.
Smack! no need to run that time. It was a boundary. Lennie’s voice outside yelling admiration roused his soul, as did Easu’s yelling agrily to Ross: “You give that ball to Sam, this over. You blanky idjut!”
Ross picked up the returning leather, and sent down a sulky grubber which Jack naturally skied. Herbert, placed at a point in the shade, came out to catch it, and missed.
Somehow the parson had steadied Jack’s spirit. And when, in a crisis, Jack got his spirit steadied, it seemed to him he could get a semi-magical grip over a situation. Almost as if he could alter the swerve of the ball by his pure, clairvoyant will. So it seemed. And keyed up against the weird, handsome, native Easu, as if by a magic of will Jack held the wicket and got the runs. It was one of those subtle battles which are beyond our understanding. And Jack won.
But Easu got him out in the end: In the first innings, a terrific full pitch came down crash over his head on to the middle wicket, when he had made his first half century; that was Easu; and Easu stumped him out in the second innings, for twenty.
Nevertheless, the Reds were beaten by a margin of sixteen runs before the parson and the gentlemen in top hats set off for their long and dusty ride t
o York.
III
Jack hated the Reds with all the wholesale hatred of eighteen. There they were, all of them, swaggering round as if the place belonged to them, taking everything and giving nothing. Their peculiar air of assertion was particularly maddening, in contrast with the complete lack of assumption on the part of the other Australians. It was as if the Reds had made up their minds, all of them, to leave a bruise on everything they touched. They were all big men, and older than Jack. Easu must have been over thirty, and unmarried, with a bad reputation among the women of the colony. Yet, apparently, he could always find a girl. That slow, laconic assurance of his, his peculiar, meaning smile as he drifted up loose-jointed to a girl, seemed nearly always to get through. The women watched him out of the corner of their eye. They didn’t like him. But they felt his power. And that was perhaps even more effective.
For he had power. And this was what Jack felt lacking in himself. Jack had quick, intuitive understanding, and a quick facility. But he had not Easu’s power. Sometimes Easu could look really handsome, strolling slowly across to some girl with a peculiar rolling gait that distinguished him, and smiling that little, meaningful, evil smile. Then he looked handsome, and as if he belonged to another race of men, men who were like small-headed demons out to destroy the world.
“I’m fighting him,” thought Jack. “I wouldn’t have a good opinion of myself if I didn’t.”
For he saw in Easu a malevolent principle, a kind of venom.
Ross Ellis, the youngest of the Reds, was old enough to be joining the mounted police force in a few days, and Mr. EIlis had sent up a strong chestnut mount for him, from the coast. Easu, tall, broad, sinewy, with sinewy powerful legs and small buttocks, was sitting close on the prancing chestnut, showing off, his malevolence seeming to smile under his blond beard, and his blue, rivet eyes taking in everything. All the time he went fooling the simple farmers who had come to the sports, raising a laugh where he could, and always a laugh of derision.
“Tom,” said Jack at last, “couldn’t you boss it a bit over those Reds? It’s your place, it’s your house, not theirs. Go on, put them down a bit, do.”
“Aw,” said Tom. “They’re older’n me, and the place by rights belongs to them: leastways they think so. And they are crack sportsmen.”
“Why, they’re not! Look at Easu parading on that police horse your father sent up from the coast! And look at all the other cockeys getting ready to compete against him in the riding events. They haven’t a chance, and he knows it.”
“He won’t risk taking that police horse over the jumps, don’t you fret.”
“No, but he has the pick of your stable, and he’ll beat all the others while you stand idling by. Why should he be cock of the walk?”
“Why,” cried Lennie breaking in, “I could beat anyfin’ on Lucy. But Tom won’t let me go in against the other chaps, will you, Tom?”
Tom smiled. He had a plain brick-red face, patient and unchanging, with white teeth, and brown, sensitive eyes. When he smiled he had a great charm. But he did not often smile, and his mouth was marred by the look so many men develop in Australia, facing the bush: that lipless look, which Jack, as he grew more used to it, came to call the suffering look. As if they had bitten and been bitten hard, perhaps too hard.
“Well, Nipper,” he said after a moment’s hesitation; “if you finds them Waybacks has it between ‘em, you stand out. But y’c’n have Lucy if you like, an’ if y’ beat the Reds — y’c’n beat ‘em.”
“That’s what I mean all right!” cried Lennie, capering. “I savvy O. K. I’ll give ‘em googlies and sneaks an’ legbreaks, y’ see if I don’t, an’ even up for ‘em.”
IV
Monica came up and took Jack’s arm with sudden impulsive affection, on this very public day. Drawing him away, she said:
“Come and sit down a bit under the Bay Fig, Jack. I want to rest. All these people tearing us in two from morning till night.”
Jack found himself thrilling to the girl’s touch, to his own surprise and disgust. He flushed slowly, and went on stiff legs, hoping nobody was looking at him. Nobody was looking specially, of course. But Monica kept hold of his arm, with her light, tense girlish hand, and he found it difficult to walk naturally. And again the queer electric thrills went through him, from that light blade of her hand.
She was very lovely to-day, with a sort of winsomeness, a sort of fierce appeal. As a matter of fact, she had been flirting dangerously with Red Easu, till she was a bit scared. And she had been laughing and fooling with Hal Stockley — otherwise Pink-eye Percy — whom all the girls were mad about, but who didn’t affect her seriously. Easu affected her, though. And she didn’t really like him. That was why she had come for Jack, whom she liked very much indeed. She felt so safe and happy with him. And she loved his delicate, English, virgin quality, his shyness and natural purity. He was purer than she was. So she wanted to make him in love with her. She was sure he was in love with her. But it was such a shy, unwilling love, she was half annoyed.
So she leaned forward to him, with her fierce young face and her queer, yellow, glowering eyes, not far from his, and she seemed to yearn to him with a yearning like a young leopard. Sometimes she touched his hand, and sometimes, laughing and showing her small, pointed teeth winsomely, she would look straight into his eyes, as if searching for something. And he flushed with a dazed sort of delight, unwilling to be overpowered by the new delight, yet dazed by it, even to the point of forgetting the other people and the party, and Easu on the chestnut horse.
But he made no move. When she touched his hand, though his eyes shone with a queer suffused light, he would not take her hand in his. He would not touch her. He would not make any definite response. To all she said, he answered in simple monosyllables. And there he sat, suffused with delight, yet making no move whatsoever.
Till at last Monica, who was used to defending herself, was niffed. She thought him a muff. So she suddenly rose and left him. Went right away. And he was very much surprised and chagrined, feeling that somehow it wasn’t possible, and feeling as if the sun had gone out of the sky.
V
The sun really was low in the heavens. The breeze came at last from the sea and freshened the air and lifted the sweet crushed scent of the trampled dry grass. It was time for the last events of the sports. Everybody was eager, revived by the approach of evening, and Jack felt the drunkenness of new delight upon him. He was still vague, however, and unwilling even to think of Monica, much less seek her out.
The black-boys’ event, with unbroken buckjumpers, was finishing down by the river. Joe Low, with a serious face but sparkling eyes, went riding by on a brumby colt he had caught and broken himself. Jack sat alone under a tree, waiting for the flat race, in which he was entered, and feeling sure of himself.
Easu came dancing up on the raw chestnut that had been sent up from the coast along with the police horse. He wore spurs, and had a long parrot-feather in his hat.
“Here you young Pommy Grant,” he said to Jack. “Ketch hold of me bit while I fix me girths a bit tighter, and then you c’n hold your breath while I show them Cornseeds what.”
He had a peculiarly insolent manner towards Jack. The latter nevertheless held the frothy chestnut while Easu swung out of the saddle and hitched up the girth. As he bent there beside the horse, Jack noticed his broad shoulders and narrow waist and small hard, tense hips. Yes, he was a man. But ugh! what an objectionable one! Especially the slight hateful smile of derision on the red face and in the light-blue, small-pupilled eyes.
But he clipped into the saddle again, and once more it was impossible not to admire his seat, his close, fine, clean, small seat in the saddle. There was no spread about him there. And the power of the long, muscular thighs. Then once more he dismounted, leaving Jack to hold the bridle of the chestnut whilst he himself strolled away.
The other farmers were waiting on their horses, so serious and quiet: in their patience and unobtrusivenes
s, so gentlemanly, Jack thought. So unlike the assertive, jeering Easu.
Lennie came up and whipped the pin out of Jack’s favour. It was a rosette of yellow ribbon, shiny as a buttercup, that Monica had made him.
“Here, what’re you doing!” he cried.
“Aw, shut it. Keep still!” said Lennie.
And slipping round, he pushed the pin, point downward, into the back saddle-pad of the chestnut Jack was holding. That wasn’t fair. But Jack let be.
The judge called his warning, the Cornseeds lined up, along with Joe Low and a young yellow-faced dairyman and a slender skin-hunter, and a woolly old stockman. Easu came and took his chafing horse, but did not mount.
“One!” Easu swung up, standing in his stirrups, scarce touching the saddle-seat.
“Two! Three!” and the sharp crack of a pistol.
Away went the scraggy brumby and Joe, and like a torrent, the dairyman and the skin-hunter and the stockman. But the chestnut had never heard a pistol shot before, and was jumping round wildly.
“Blood and pace, mark you;” said the judge, waving towards the chestnut. “Them cockeys does their best on what they got, but watch that chestnut under Red Ellis. It’s a pleasure to see good horse-flesh like them Ellises brings up to these parts.”
Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on to the track at that minute, and sat down.
The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 396
