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 grandmother. 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 across, “ — — 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
Skull and crossbones
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.
“I”
“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.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 421
