He went on working at his claim. It was now more than a year he had spent at this game of looking for gold, and he had hardly found a cent’s worth. They were very poor, in debt to the keeper of the store. But everybody had a queer respect for Jack. They dared not be very familiar with him, but they didn’t resent him. He had a good aura. The other men might jeer sometimes at his frank but unapproachable aloofness, his subtle delicacy, and his simple sort of pride. Yet when he was spoken to, his answer was so much in the spirit of the question, so frank, that you couldn’t resent him. In ordinary things he was gay and completely one of themselves. The self that was beyond them he never let intrude. Hence their curious respect for him.
Because there was something unordinary in him. The biggest part of himself he kept entirely to himself, and a curious sombre steadfastness inside him made shifty men uneasy with him. He could never completely mix in, in the vulgar way, with men. He would take a drink with the rest, and laugh and talk half an hour away. Even get a bit tipsy and talk rather brilliantly. But always, always at the back of his eyes was this sombre aloofness, that could never come forward and meet and mingle, but held back, apart, waiting.
They called him, after his father, the General. But never was a General with so small an army at his command. He was playing a lone hand. The mate he was working with suddenly chucked up the job, and travelled away, and the General went on alone. He moved about the camp at his ease. When he sat in the bar drinking his beer with the other men, he was really alone, and they knew it. But he had a good aura, so they felt a certain real respect for his loneliness. And when he was there, they talked and behaved as if in the aura of a certain blood-purity, although he was in rags, for Monica hated sewing and couldn’t bear, simply couldn’t bear, to mend his old shirts and trousers. And there was no money to buy new.
He held on. He did not get depressed or melancholy. When he got absolutely stumped, he went away and did hired work for a spell. Then he came back to the goldfield. He was now nothing but a miner. The miner’s instinct had developed in him. He had to wait for his instinct to perfect itself. He knew that. He knew he was not a man to be favoured by blind luck. Whatever he won, he must win by mystic conquest.
If he wanted gold he must master it in the veins of the earth. He knew this. And for this reason he gave way neither to melancholy nor to impatience. “If I can’t win,” he said to himself, “it’s because I’m not master of the thing I’m up against.”
“If I can’t win, I’ll die fighting,” he said to himself. “But in the end I will win.”
There was nothing to do but to fight, and fight on. This was his creed. And a fighter has no use for melancholy and impatience.
He saw the fight his boyhood had been, against his Aunts, and school and college. He didn’t want to be made quite tame, and they had wanted to tame him, like all the rest. His father was a good man and a good soldier: but a tame one. He himself was not a soldier, nor even a good man. But also he was not tame. Not a tame dog, like all the rest.
For this reason he had come to Australia, away from the welter of vicious tameness. For tame dogs are far more vicious than wild ones. Only they can be brought to heel.
In Australia, a new sort of fight. A fight with tame dogs that were playing wild. Easu was a tame dog, playing the wolf in a mongrel, back-biting way. Tame dogs escaped and became licentious. That was Australia. He knew that.
But they were not all quite tame. Tom, the safe Tom, had salt of wild savour still in his blood. And Lennie had his wild streak. So had Monica. So, somewhere had the à terre Mary. Some odd freakish wildness of the splendid, powerful, wild old English blood.
Jack had escaped the tamers: they couldn’t touch him now. He had escaped the insidious tameness, the slight degeneracy, of Wandoo. He had learned the tricks of the escaped tame dogs who played at licentiousness. And he had mastered Monica, who had wanted to be a domestic bitch playing wild. He had captured her wildness, to mate his own wildness.
It was no good playing wild. If he had any real wildness in him, it was dark, and wary, and collected, self-responsible, and of unbreakable steadfastness: like the wildness of a wolf or a fox, that knows it will die if it is caught.
If you had a tang of the old wildness in you, you ran with the most intense wariness, knowing that the good tame dogs are really turning into licentious, vicious tame dogs. The vicious tame dogs, pretending to be wild, hate the real clean wildness of an unbroken thing much more than do the respectable tame people.
No, if you refuse to be tamed, you have to be most wary, most subtle, on your guard all the time. You can’t afford to be licentious. If you are, you will die in the trap. For the world is a great trap set wide for the unwary.
Jack had learned all these things. He refused to be tamed. He knew that the dark kingdom of death ahead had no room for tame dogs. They merely were put into the earth as carrion. Only the wild, untamed souls walked on after death over the border into the porch of death, to be lords of death and masters of the next living. This he knew. The tame dogs were put into the earth as carrion, like Easu and Percy’s poor little baby, and Jacob Ellis. He often wondered if that courageous old witch-cat of a Gran had slipped into the halls of death, to be one of the ladies of the dark. The lords of death, and the ladies of the dark. He would take his own Monica over the border when she died. She would sit unbroken, a quiet, fearless bride in the dark chambers of the dead, the dead who order the goings of the next living.
That was the goal of the afterwards, that he had at the back of his eyes. But meanwhile here on earth he had to win. He had to make room again on earth for those who are not unbroken, those who are not tamed to carrion. Some place for those who know the dark mystery of being royal in death (so that they can enact the shadow of their own royalty on earth). Some place for the souls that are in themselves dark and have some of the sumptuousness of proud death, no matter what their fathers were. Jack’s father was tame, as kings and dukes to-day are almost mongrelly tame. But Jack was not tame. And Easu’s weird baby was not tame. She had some of the eternal fearlessness of the aristocrat whose bones are pure. But a weird sort of aristocrat.
Jack wanted to make a place on earth for a few artistocrats-to-the-bone. He wanted to conquer the world.
And first he must conquer gold. As things are, only the tame go out and conquer gold, and make a lucrative tameness: The untamed forfeit their gold.
“I must conquer gold!” said Jack to himself. “I must open the veins of the earth and bleed the power of gold into my own veins, for the fulfilling of the aristocrats-of-the-bone. I must bring the great stream of gold flowing in another direction, away from the veins of the tame ones, into the veins of the lords of death. I must start the river of the wealth of the world rolling in a new course, down the sombre, quiet, proud valleys of the lords of death and the ladies of the dark, the aristocrats of the afterwards.”
So he talked to himself, as he wandered alone in his search, or sat on the bench with a pot of beer, or stepped into Monica’s hot little hut. And when he failed he knew it was because he had not fought intensely enough, and subtly enough.
The bad food, the climate, the hard life gave him a sort of fever and an eczema. But it was no matter. That was only the pulp of him paying the penalty. The powerful skeleton he was was powerful as ever. The pulp of him, his belly, his heart, his muscle seemed not to be able to affect his strength, or at least his power, for more than a short time. Sometimes he broke down. Then he would think what he could do with himself, do for himself, for his flesh and blood. And what he could do, he would do. And when he could do no more, he would go and lie down in the mine, or hide in some shade, lying on the earth, alone, away from anything human. Till the earth itself gave him back his power. Till the powerful living skeleton of him resumed its sway and serenity and fierce power.
He knew he was winning, winning slowly, even in his fight with the earth, his fight for gold. It was on the cards he might die before his victory. Then it would
be death, he would have to accept it. He would have to go into death, and leave Monica and Jane and the coming baby to fate.
Meanwhile he would fight, and fight on. The baby was near, there was no money. He had to stay and watch Monica. She, poor thing, went to bed with twins, two boys. There was nothing hardly left of her. He had to give up everything, even his thoughts, and bend his whole life to her, to help her through, and save her and the two quite healthy baby boys. For a month he was doctor and nurse and housewife and husband, and he gave himself absolutely to the work, without a moment’s failing. Poor Monica, when she couldn’t bear herself, he held her hips together with his arm, and she clung to his neck for life.
This time he almost gave up. He almost decided to go and hire himself out to steady work, to keep her and the babies in peace and safety. To be a hired workman for the rest of his days.
And as he sat with his eyes dark and unchanging, ready to accept this fate, since this his fate must be, came a letter from Mr. George with an enclosure from England, and a cheque for fifty pounds, a legacy from one of the Aunts, who had so benevolently died at the right moment. He decided his dark Lord did not intend him to go and hire himself out for life, as a hired labourer. He decided Monica and the babies did not want the peace and safety of a hired labourer’s cottage. Perhaps better die and be buried in the sand, and leave their skeletons like white messengers in the ground of this Australia.
So he went back to his working. And three days later struck gold, so that there was gold on his pick-point. He was alone, and he refused at first to get excited. But his trained instinct knew that it was a rich lode. He worked along the vein, and felt the rich weight of the yellow-streaked stuff he fetched out. The light-coloured softish stuff. He sat looking at it in his hand, and the glint of it in the dark earth-rock of the mine, in the light of the lamp. And his bowels leaped in him, knowing that the white gods of tameness would wilt and perish as the pale gold flowed out of their veins.
There would be a place on earth for the lords of death. His own Lord had at last spoken.
Jack sent quickly for Lennie to come and work with him. For Lennie, with a wife and a child, was struggling very hard.
Len and Tom both came. Jack had not expected Tom. But Tom lifted his brown eyes to Jack and said:
“I sortta felt I couldn’t stand even Len being mates with you, an’ me not there. I was your first mate, Jack. I’ve never been myself since I parted with you.”
“All right,” laughed Jack. “You’re my first mate.”
“That’s what I am, General,” said Tom.
Jack had showed Monica some of the ore, and told her the mine seemed to be turning out fairly. She was getting back her own strength, that those two monstrous young twins had almost robbed from her entirely. Jack was very careful of her. He wanted above all things that she should become really strong again.
And she, with her rare vitality, soon began to bloom once more. And as her strength came back she was very much taken up with her babies. These were the first she had enjoyed. The other two she had never really enjoyed. But with these she was as fussy as a young cat with her kittens. She almost forgot Jack entirely. Left him to be busy with Tom and Lennie and his mine. Even the gold failed to excite her.
And she had rather a triumph. She was able to be queenly again with Tom and Lennie. As a girl, she had always been a bit queenly with the rest of them at Wandoo. And she couldn’t bear to be humiliated in their eyes.
Now she needn’t. She had the General for her husband, she had his twins. And he had gold in his mine. Hadn’t she a perfect right to be queenly with Tom and Lennie? She even got into the habit, right at the beginning, of speaking of Jack as “the General” to them.
“Where’s the General? Didn’t he come down with you?” she would snap at them, in her old sparky fashion.
“He’s reviewing his troops,” Lennie sarcastically answered.
Whereupon Jack appeared in the door, still in rags. And it was Lennie who mended his shirt for him, when it was torn on the shoulder and showed the smooth man underneath. Monica still couldn’t bring herself to these fiddling bothering jobs.
CHAPTER XXIV
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 burried 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, r
ather 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.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 419
