“We’re no police,” said Tom. “I’m Tom Ellis, from Wandoo, over York way.”
“Ellis! I heared th’ name. Well, master’s sick, an’ skeered to death o’ th’ police. They’re ready to drop in on the place, that they are, rot ‘em, the minute he breathes his last. And he’s skeered he’s dyin’ this time. Oh, he’s skeered o’ t. So I have me doubts of all strangers. I have me doubts, no matter what they be. Master he’ve sent a letter to his only relation upon earth, to his nephew, which thank the Lord he’s writ for to come an’ lay hold on the place, against he dies. If there’s no one to lay hold, the police steps in, without a word. That’s how they do it. They lets the places in grants like — lets a man have a grant — and when the poor man dies, his place is locked up by the Government. They takes it all.”
“Gawd’s sake!” murmured Tom aside. “The man’s potty!”
“Bush mad,” supplemented Rackett, who was sitting in the buggy with his chin in his hand, intently listening to the queer, furtive, garrulous individual.
“Say, friend,” he added aloud. “Go and ask your master if we harmless strangers can camp in the barn out of the wet.”
“What might your names be, Mister?” asked the man.
“Mine’s Dr. Rackett. This is Tom Ellis. And this is Jack Grant. And no harm in any of us.”
“D’y’ say Jack Grant? Would that be Mr. John Grant?” asked the man, galvanised by sudden excitement.
“None other!” said Rackett.
“Then he’s come!” cried the man.
“He certainly has,” replied Rackett.
“Oh, Glory, Glory! Why didn’t ye say so afore? Come in. Come in all of ye, come in! Come in, Mr. Grant! Come in!”
They got down, gave the reins to Sam, and were ready to follow the bearded man, looking one another in the face in amazement, and shaking their heads.
“Gawd Almighty, I’d rather keep out o’ this!” murmured Tom, standing by his horse and keeping the rope of the packhorse.
“Case of mistaken identity,” said Rackett coolly. “Hang on, boys. We’ll get a night’s shelter.”
A woman came out of the dilapidated stone house, clutching her hands in distress and agitation.
“Missus! Missus! Here he is at last. God be praised!” cried the bearded man. She ran up in sudden effusion of welcome, but he ordered her into the house to brighten up the fire, while he waved the way to the stables, knowing that horse comes before man, in the bush.
When they had shaken down in the stable, they left Sam to sleep there, while the three went across to the house. Tom was most unwilling.
The man was at the door, to usher them in.
“I’ve broke the news to him, sir!” he said in a mysterious voice to Jack, as he showed them into the parlour.
“What’s your Master’s name?” asked Rackett.
“Don’t y’ know y’re at your destination?” whispered the man. “This is Mr. John Grant’s. This is the place ye’re looking for.”
A melancholy room! The calico ceiling drooped, the window and front door were hermetically sealed, an ornate glass lamp shone in murky, lonely splendour upon a wool mat on a ricketty round table. Six chairs stood against the papered walls. Nothing more.
Tom wanted to beat it back to the kitchen, through which they had passed to get to this sarcophagus, and where a fire was burning and a woman was busy. But the man was tapping at another door, and listening anxiously before entering.
He went into the dark room beyond, where a candle shone feebly, and they heard him say:
“Your nephew’s come, Mr. Grant, and brought a doctor and another gentleman, the Lord be praised.”
“The Lord don’t need to be praised on my behalf, Amos,” came a querulous voice. “And I ain’t got no nephew, if I did send him a letter. I’ve got nobody. And I want no doctor, because I died when I left my mother’s husband’s house.”
“They’re in the parlour.”
“Tell ‘em to walk up.”
The man appeared in the doorway. Rackett walked up, Jack followed, and Tom hung nervously and disgustedly in the rear.
“Here they are! Here’s the gentry,” said Amos.
In the candle-light they saw a thin man in red flannel night-cap with a blanket round his shoulders, sitting up in bed under an old green cart-umbrella. He was not old, but his face was thin and wasted, and his long colourless beard seemed papery. He had cunning, shifty eyes with red rims, and looked as mad as his setting.
Rackett had shoved Jack forward. The sick man stared at him and seemed suddenly pleased. He held out a thin hand. Rackett nudged Jack, and Jack had to shake. The hand seemed wet and icy, and Jack shuddered.
“How d’you do!” he mumbled. “I’m sorry, you know; I’m not your nephew.”
“I know ye’re not. But are y’ Jack Grant?”
“Yes,” said Jack.
The man under the umbrella seemed hideously pleased. Jack heard Tom’s ill-suppressed, awful chuckle from behind. The sick man peered irritably at the other two. Then he nodded slowly, under the green baldachino of the old cart-umbrella.
“Jack Grant! Jack Grant! Jack Grant!” he murmured, to himself. He was surely mad, obviously mad.
“I’m right glad you’ve come, Cousin,” he said suddenly, looking again very pleased. “I’m surely glad you’ve come in time. I’ve a nice tidy place put together for you, Jack, a small proposition of three thousand acres, five hundred cleared and cropped, fifty fenced — dog-leg fences, broke MacCullen’s back putting ‘em up. But I’ll willingly put in five hundred more, for a gentleman like young master. Meaning old master will soon be underground. Well, who cares, now young master’s come to light, and the place doesn’t go out of the family! I am determined the place shall not go out of the family, Cousin Jack. Aren’t you pleased?”
“Very,” said Jack soothingly.
“Call me Cousin John. Or Uncle John if you like. I’m more like your uncle, I should think. Shake hands, and say, Right you are, Uncle John. Call me Uncle John.”
Jack shook hands once more, and dutifully, as to a crazy person, he said:
“Right you are, Uncle John.”
Tom, in the background, was going into convulsions. But Rackett remained quite serious.
Uncle John closed his eyes muttering, and fell back under the cart-umbrella.
“Mr. Grant,” said Dr. Rackett, “I think Jack would like to eat something after his ride.”
“All right, let him go to the kitchen with yon buck wallaby as can’t keep a straight face. Stop with me a minute yourself, Mister, if you will.”
The two boys bundled away into the kitchen. The woman had a meal ready, and they sat down at the table.
“I thank my stars,” said Tom impressively, “he’s not my Uncle John.”
“Shut up,” said Jack, because the woman was there.
They ate heartily, the effects of the jamboree having passed. After the meal they strolled to the door to look out, away from that lugubrious parlour and bedroom. They found a stiff wind blowing, the sky clear with running clouds and vivid stars in the spaces.
“Let’s get!” said Tom. It was his constant craving.
“We can’t leave Rackett.”
“We can. He pushed us in. Let’s get. Why can’t we?”
“Oh well, we can’t,” said Jack.
Rackett had entered the kitchen, and was eating his meal. He asked the woman for ink.
“There’s no ink,” she said.
“Must be somewhere,” said Amos, her husband. “Jack Grant’s letter was written in ink.”
“I never got a letter,” said Jack, turning.
“Eh, hark ye! How like old master over again! Ye’ve come, haven’t ye?”
“By accident,” said Jack. “I’m not Mr. Grant’s nephew.”
“Hark ye! Hark ye! It runs in the family, father to son, uncle to nephew. All right! All right! Have it your own way,” cried Amos. He had been struggling with crazy contradictions too long.
Tom was in convulsions. Rackett put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry him. Leave it to me.” And to the woman he said, if there was no ink she was to kill a fowl and bring it to him, and he’d make ink with lamp-black and gall.
“You two boys had better be off to bed,” he said. “You have to be off in good time in the morning.”
“Oh, not going, not going so soon, surely! The young master’s not going so soon! Surely! Surely! Master’s so weak in the head and stomach, we can’t cope with him all by ourselves,” cried the old man and woman.
“Perhaps I’ll stay,” said Rackett. “And Jack will come back one day, don’t you worry. Now let me make that ink.”
The boys were shown into a large, low room — the fourth room of the house — that opened off the kitchen. It contained a big bed with clean sheets and white crochet quilt. Jack Surmised it was the old couple’s bed, and wanted to go to the barn. But Tom said, since they offered it, there was nothing to do but to take it.
Tom was soon snoring. Jack lay in the great feather bed feeling that life was all going crazy. Tom was already snoring. He cared about nothing. Out of sight, out of mind. But Jack had a fit of remembering. His head was hot, and he could not sleep. The wind was blowing, it was raining again. He could not sleep, he had to remember.
It was always so with him. He could go on careless and unheeding, like Tom, for a while. Then came these fits of reckoning and remembering. Life seemed unhinged in Australia. In England there was a strong central pivot to all the living. But here the centre pin was gone, and the lives seemed to spin in a weird confusion.
He felt that for himself. His life was all unhinged. What was he driving at? What was he making for? Where was he going? What was his life, anyhow?
In England, you knew. You had your purpose. You had your profession and your family and your country. But out here you had no profession. You didn’t do anything for your country except boast of it to strangers, and leave it to get along as best it might. And as for your family, you cared for that, but in a queer, centreless fashion.
You didn’t really care for anything. The old impetus of civilisation kept you still going, but you were just rolling to rest. As Mr. Ellis had rolled to rest, leaving everything stranded. There was no grip, no hold.
And yet, what Jack had rebelled against in England was the tight grip, the fixed hold over everything. He liked this looseness and carelessness of Australia. Till it seemed to him crazy. And then it scared him.
Tonight everything seemed to him crazy. He didn’t pay any serious attention to Uncle John Grant: he was obviously out of his mind. But then everything seemed crazy. Mr. Ellis’ death, and Gran’s death, and Monica and Easu Ellis — it all seemed crazy as crazy. And the jamboree, and that girl who called him Dearie! And the journey, and this mad house in the rain. What did it all mean? What did it all stand for?
Everything seemed to be spinning to a darkness of death. Everybody seemed to be dancing a crazy dance of death. He could understand that the blacks painted themselves like white bone skeletons, and danced in the night, light skeletons dancing, in their corrobees. That was how it was. The night, dark and fleshly, and skeletons dancing a clicketty dry dance in it.
Tom, so awfully upset at his father’s death! And now as careless as a lark, just spinning his way along the road, in a sort of weird dance, dancing humorously to the black verge of oblivion. That was how it was. To dance humorously to the black verge of oblivion. The children of death. With a sort of horror of death around them. Wandoo suddenly grim and grisly with the horror of death.
Death, the great end and goal. Death, the black, void, pulsating reality which would swallow them all up, like a black lover finally possessing them. The great black fleshliness of the end, the huge body of death reeling to swallow them all. And for this they danced, and for this they loved and reared families and made farms: to provide good meat and white, pure bones for the black, avid horror of death.
Something of the black, aboriginal horror came over him. He realised, to his amazement, the actuality of the great, grinning black demon of death. The vast, infinite demon that eats our flesh and cracks our bones in the last black potency of the end. And for this, for this demon one seeks for a woman, to lie with her and get children for the Moloch. Children for the Moloch! Lennie, Monica, the twins, Og and Magog! Children for the Moloch.
One God or the other must take them at the end. Either the dim white god of the heavenly infinite. Or else the great black Moloch of the living death. Devoured and digested in the living death.
Satan, Moloch, Death itself, all had been unreal to him before. But now, suddenly, he seemed to see the black Moloch grinning huge in the sky, while human beings danced towards his grip, and he gripped and swallowed them into the black belly of death. That was their end.
Dance! Dance! Death has its deep delights! And ever-recurring. Be careless, ironical, stoical and reckless. And go your way to death with a will. With a dark handsomeness, and a dark lustre of fatality, and a splendour of recklessness. Oh, God, the Lords of Death! The big, darkly-smiling, heroic men who are Lords of Death! And they too go on splendidly towards death, the great goal of unutterable satisfaction, and consummated fear.
“I am going my way the same,” Jack thought to himself. “I am travelling in a reckless, slow dance, darker and darker, into the black, hot belly of death, where is my end. Oh, let me go gallantly, let me have the black joy of the road. Let me go with courage, and a bit of splendour and dark lustre, down to the great depths of death, that I am so frightened of, but which I long for in the last consummation. Let death take me in a last black embrace. Let me go on as the niggers go, with the last convulsion into the last black embrace. Since I am travelling the dark road, let me go in pride. Let me be a Lord of Death, since the reign of the white Lords of Life, like my father, has become sterile and a futility. Let me be a Lord of Death. Let me go that other great road, that the blacks go.”
The bed was soft and hot, and he stretched his arms fiercely. If he had Monica! Oh, if he had Monica! If that girl last night had been Monica!
That girl last night! He didn’t even know her name. She had stroked his head — like — like — Mary! The association flashed into his mind. Yes, like Mary. And Mary would be humble and caressive and protective like that. So she would. And dark! It would be dark like that if one loved Mary. And brief! Brief! But sharp and good in the briefness. Mary! Mary!
He realised with amazement it was Mary he was now wanting. Not Monica. Or was it Monica? Her slim keen hand. Her slim body like a slim cat, so full of life. Oh, it was Monica! First and foremost, most intensely, it was Monica, because she was really his, and she was his destiny. He dared not think of her.
He rolled in the bed in misery. Tom slept unmoving. Oh, why couldn’t he be like Tom, slow and untormented. Why couldn’t he? Why was his body tortured? Why was he travelling this road? Why wasn’t Monica there like a gipsy with him. Why wasn’t Monica there?
Or Mary! Why wasn’t Mary in the house? She would be so soft and understanding, so yielding. Like the girl of the long-armed man. The long-armed man didn’t mind that he had taken his girl, for once.
Why was he himself rolling there in torment? Pug had advised him to “punch the ball,” when he was taken with ideas he wanted to get rid of. There was no ball to punch. “Train the body hard, but train the mind hard too.” Yes, all very well. He could think, now for example, of fighting Easu, or of building up a place and raising fine horses. But the moment his mind relaxed for sleep, back came the other black flame. The women! The women! The women! Even the girl of last night.
What was a man born for? To find a mate, a woman, isn’t it? Then why try to think of something else? To have a woman — to make a home for her — to have children. — And other women in the background, down the long, dusky, strange years towards death. So it seemed to him. And to fight the men that stand in one’s way. To fight them. Always a new on
e cropping up, along the strange dusky road of the years, where you go with your head up, and your eyes open, and your spine sharp and electric, ready to fight your man and take your woman, on and on down the years, into the last black embrace of death. Death that stands grinning with arms open and black breast ready. Death, like the last woman you embrace. Death, like the last man you die fighting with. And he beats you. But somehow you are not beaten, if you are a Lord of Death.
Jack hoped he would die a violent death. He hoped he would live a defiant, unsubmissive life, and die a violent death. A bullet, or a knife piercing home. And the women he left behind — his women, enveloped in him as in a dark net. And the children he left, laughing already at death.
And himself! He hoped never to be downcast, never to be melancholy, never to yield. Never to yield. To be a Lord of Death, and go on to the black arms of death, still laughing. To laugh, and bide one’s time, and leap at the right moment.
CHAPTER XVI
ON THE ROAD
I
“My dear nephew, I haven’t sent you a letter since the last one which I never wrote, yet you have come in answer to the one you never got. I wrote because I wanted you to come and receive the property, and I never posted it because I didn’t know your address, and you couldn’t come if I did, because you don’t exist. Yet here you are and I think you look very pleased to receive the property which you haven’t got yet. I was so afraid I should die sudden after this long lingering illness, but it’s you who has come suddenly and the illness hasn’t begun yet. So here am I speechless, but you are doing a lot of talking to your dear uncle who never had a nephew. What does it matter to me if you are Jack Grant because I am not, but took the name into the grant of land given me on the land grant system at a shilling an acre. So like a bad shilling the name turns up again on the register, so that the land goes back to the grant and the Grant to the land. But a better-looking nephew I never wish to see, being as much like me as an ape is like meat. So when I’m dead I won’t be alive to trouble you, and I’ll trouble no further about you since you might as well be dead for all I care.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 408
