“No, but I mean it. Suppose Herbert had died. I want to know what God is.”
Jack still had the inner darkness of that room in his eyes.
“I’ll tell y’,” said Len briskly. “God is a Higher Law than the Constitution.”
Jack thought about it. A higher law than the law of the land. Maybe! — The answer left him cold.
“And what is self?” he asked.
“Crikey! Stop up another night! It ‘ud make ye sawney. — But I’ll tell y’ what self is.
“Self is a wilderness of sweets. And selves
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy.”
Len was pleased with this. But Jack heard only words.
“Ask me one, Jack! Ask me one!” pleaded Og.
“All right. What’s success, Og? asked Jack, smiling.
“Success! Success! Why, success — ”
“Success is t’grow a big bingy like a bloke from town, ‘n a watch-chain acrost it with a gold dial in y’ fob, and ter be allowed ter spout as much gab as y’ve got bref left over from y’ indigest,” cut in Lennie, with delight.
“That was my riddle,” yelled Og, rushing at him.
“Ask me one! Ask me one, Jack! Ask me one,” yelled Magog.
“What’s failure?” asked Jack, laughing.
“T’ be down on y’ uppers an’ hev no visible means of supportin’ y’r pants up whilst y’ slog t’ the’ nearest pub t’cadge a beer spot,” crowed Lennie in delight, while he fenced off Og.
Both twins made an assault and battery upon him.
“D’ye know y’r own answers?” yelled Len at Jack.
“No.”
The brazenness of the admission flabbergasted the twins. They stalked off. Len drew up a three-legged stool, and sat down to milk, explaining impatiently that success comes to those that work and don’t drink.
“But” — he reverted to his original thought — ”ye’ve gotta work, not go wastin’ y’r time as you generally do of a morning — boundin’ about makin’ a kangaroo of y’self; tippin’ y’ elbows and holdin’ back y’ nut as if y’ had a woppin’ fine drink in both hands, and gone screwed with joy afore you drained it; lyin’ flat on y’ hands an’ toes, an’ heavin’ up an’ down, up an’ down, like a race-horse iguana frightened by a cat; an’ stalkin’ an’ stoopin’ as if y’wanted ter catch a bird round a corner; or roundin’ up on imaginary things, makin’ out t’hit ‘em slap-bang-whizz on the mitts they ain’t got; whippin’ round an’ bobbin’ like a cornered billy-goat; skippin’ up an’ down like sis wif a rope, an’ makin’ a general high falutin’ ass of y’self.”
“I see you and the twins with clubs,” said Jack.
“Oh, that! That’s more for music an’ one-two-three-four,” said Len.
“You see I’m in training,” said Jack.
“What for? Want ter teach the old sows to start dancin’ on th’ corn-bin floor?”
“No, I want to keep in training, for if I ever have a big fight.”
“Who with?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But I love a round with the fists. I’ll teach you.”
“All right. But why don’t y’ chuck farmin’ an’ go in f’ prize fightin’?”
“I wish I could. But my father said no. An’ perhaps he’s right. But the best thing I know is to fight a fair round. I’ll teach you, Len.”
“Huh! What’s the sense! If y’ want exercise, y’ c’n rub that horse down a bit cleaner than y’ are doin’.”
“Stop y’ sauce, nipper, or I’ll be after y’ with a strap!” called Tom. “Come on, Jack. Tea! Timothy’s bangin’ the billy-can. And just you land that nipper a clout.”
“Let him ‘it me! Garn, let him!” cried Len, scooting up with his milk-stool and pail and looking like David skirmishing before Goliath. He wasn’t laughing. There was a demonish little street-arab hostility in his face.
“Don’t you like me, Len?” Jack asked, a bit soft this morning. Len’s face at once suffused with a delightful roguishness.
“Aw, yes — if y’ like! — -I’ll be dressin’ up in Katie’s skirts n’ spoonin’ y’ one of these bright nights.”
He whipped away with his milk-pail, like a young lizard.
II
“Look at Bow, he looks like an owl,” said Grace at breakfast.
“What d’y call ‘im Bow for?” asked Len.
“Like a girl, with his eyes double size,” said Monica.
“You’d better go to sleep, Jack,” said Mrs. Ellis.
“Take a nap, lad,” said Mr. Ellis. “There’s nothin’ for y’ to do this morning.”
Jack was going stupefied again, as the sun grew warm. He didn’t hear half that was said. But the girls were very attentive to him. Mary was not there: she was sitting with Herbert. But Monica and Grace waited on him as if he had been their lord. It was a new experience for him: Monica jumping up and whipping away his cup with her slim hand, to bring it back filled, and Grace insisting on opening a special jar of jam for him. Drowsy as he was, their attention made his blood stir. It was so new to him.
Mary came in from the sitting room: they were still in the kitchen.
“Herbert is awake,” she said. “He wants to be untied. Bow, do you think he ought to?”
Jack rose in silence and went through to Gran’s room. Herbert lay quite still, but he was himself. Only shattered and wordless. He looked at Jack and murmured:
“Can’t y’ untie me?”
Jack went at once to unfasten the linen bands. The twins, Monica and Grace, stood watching from the doorway. Mary was at his side to help.
“Don’t let ‘em come in,” said Herbert, looking into Jack’s face.
Jack nodded and went to the door.
“He wants to be left alone,” he said.
“Mustn’t we come, Bow?” said Monica, making queer yellow eyes at him.
“Best not,” he said. “Don’t let anybody come. He wants absolute quiet.”
“All right.” She looked at him with a heavy look of obedience, as if making an offering. They were not going to question his authority. She drew Grace away: both the girls humble. Jack slowly and unconsciously flushed. Then he went back to the bed.
“I want something,” murmured Herbert wanly. “Send that other away.”
“Go away, Mary. He wants a man to attend to him,” said Jack.
Mary looked a long, dark look at Jack. Then she, too, submitted.
“All right,” she said, turning darkly away.
And it came into his mind, with utter absurdity, that he ought to kiss her for this submission. And he hated the thought.
Herbert was a boy of nineteen, uncouth, and savagely shy. Jack had to do the menial offices for him.
The sick man went to sleep again almost immediately, and Jack returned to the kitchen. He heard voices from outside. Ma and Grace were washing up at the slab. Dad was sitting under the photosphorum tree, with Effie on one knee, cutting up tobacco in the palm of his hand. Tom was leaning against the tree, the children sat about. Lennie skipped up and offered a seat on a stump.
“Sit yourself down, Bow,” he said, using the nickname. “I’d be a knot instead of a bow if I had to nurse Red Herbert.”
Monica came slinking up from the shade, and stood with her skirt touching Jack’s arm. Mary was carrying away the dishes.
“I’ve been telling Tom,” said Mr. Ellis, “that he can take the clearing gang over to his A’nt Greenlow’s for the shearing, an’ then get back an’ clear for all he’s worth, till Christmas. Y’might as well go along with him, Jack. We can get along all right here without y’, now th’ girls are back. Till Christmas, that is. We s’ll want y’ back for the harvest.”
There was a dead silence. Jack didn’t want to go.
“Then y’ can go back to the clearing, and burn off. I need that land reclaimed, over against the little chaps grows up and wants to be farmers. Besides” — and he looked round at Ma — ”we’
re a bit overstocked in’ the house just now, an’ we’ll be glad of the cubby for Herbert, if he’s on the mend.”
Dad resumed cutting up his tobacco in the palm of his hand.
“Jack can’t leave Herbert, Uncle,” said Mary quietly, “he won’t let anybody else do for him.”
“Eh?” said Mr. Ellis, looking up.
“Herbert won’t let me do for him,” said Mary. “He’ll only let Bow.”
Mr. Ellis dropped his head in silence.
“In that case,” he said slowly, “in that case, we must wait a bit. — Where’s that darned Rackett put himself? This is his job.”
There was still silence.
“Somebody had best go an’ look for him,” said Tom.
“Ay,” said Mr. Ellis.
There was more silence. Monica, standing close to Jack, seemed to be fiercely sheltering him from this eviction. And Mary, at a distance, was like Moses’ sister watching over events. It made Jack feel queer and thrilled, the girls all concentrating on him. It was as if it put power in his chest, and made a man of him.
Someone was riding up. It was Red Easu. He slung himself off his horse, and stalked slowly up.
“Herbert dead?” he asked humorously.
“Doing nicely,” said Dad, very brief.
“I’ll go an’ have a look at ‘m,” said Easu, sitting on the step and pulling off his boots.
“Don’t wake him if he’s asleep. Don’t frighten him, whatever you do,” said Jack, anxious for his charge.
Easu looked at Jack with an insolent stare: a curious stare.
“Frighten him?” he said. “What with?”
“Jack’s been up with him all night,” put in Monica fiercely.
“He nearly died in the night,” said Jack.
There was dead silence. Easu stared, poised like some menacing bird. Then he went indoors in his stocking feet.
“Did he nearly die, Jack?” asked Tom.
Jack nodded. His soul was feeling bleached.
“If Dr. Rackett isn’t coming — see if you can trail him up, Tom. And Len, can you go on Lucy and fetch Dr. Mallett?”
“‘Course I can,” said Len, jumping up.
“You go and get a nap in the cubby, son,” said Mr. Ellis. They were now all in motion. Jack followed vaguely into the kitchen. Lennie was the centre of excitement for the moment.
“Well, Ma, I has no socks fitta wear. If y’ll fix me some, I’ll go.” For he was determined to go to York in decent raiment, as he said.
“Find me a decent shirt, Ma; decent! None o’ your creases down th’ front for me. ‘N a starch collar, real starch.”
And so on. He was late. Lennie was always late.
“Ma, weer’s my tie — th’ blue one wif gold horseshoes? Grace — there’s an angel — me boots. Clean ‘em up a bit, go on — Monica! Oh, Monica! there y’arel Fix this collar on for me, proper, do! Y’re a bloke at it, so y’are, an’ I’m no good.-Gitt outta th’ way, you nips — how k’n I get dressed with you buzzin’ round me feet! — Ma! Ma! come an’ brush me ‘air with that dinkey nice-smellin’ stuff. — There, Ma, don’t your Lennie look a dream now?-Ooha, Ma, don’t kiss me, Ma, I ‘ate it.”
“Lennie love, don’t drop your aitches.”
“I never, Ma. I said I ‘ate it. Y’ kissed me, did y or didn’t y’? Well, I ‘ate it.”
He was gone on Lucy, like a little demon. Jack, sitting stupid on a chair, felt part of his soul go with him.
“Come on, Bow!” said Monica, taking him by the arm, “Come and go to sleep. Mary will wake you if Herbert wants you.”
And she led him off to the door of the cubby, while he submitted and Easu stood in his stocking feet on the verandah watching.
“He saved Herbert’s life,” said Monica, looking up at Easu with a kind of defiance, when she came back.
“Who asked him,” said Easu.
III
Tom and Jack were to leave the next day. The girls brought out a lot of stores from the cupboard, and blankets and billies and a lantern. They packed the sacks standing there.
“Get y’ swag f’y’selves,” said Dad. “The men have everything for themselves. Take an axe an’ a gun apiece.”
“Gun! Gee! K’n I go, Dad?”
“Shut up, Len. Destroy all the dingoes y’ can. I’ll give y’ sixpence a head, an’ the Government gives another. Haven’t y’ a saddle, Jack Grant, somewhere in a box? Because I’d be short of one off the place, if you took one from here.”
“It must be somewhere,” said Jack.
“Get it unpacked. An’ you can have Lucy to put it across. It’s forty mile from here to virgin forest: real forest. If you get strayed, ever, all you have to do is to drop th’ reins on Lucy’s neck, ‘n she’ll bring y’ in.”
The saddle came out of the dusty box. All were there in a circle to look on. Jack expected deep admiration. But he was hurt to feel Monica laughing derisively. Everybody was laughing, but he minded Monica most. She could jeer cruelly.
“Jolly good saddle,” said Jack.
“Mighty little of it,” said Len.
“What’s wrong with it, Tom?” said Jack.
“Slithery. No knee-pads, saddle bags, strap holder, scooped seat, or any sortta comfort. It’s a whale, on the wrong side.”
Lennie closely examined the London ticket. The unpacking continued in silence, under Tom’s majestic eye. Whip, yellow horse-rug, bridle, leathers, a heavy bar bit with double rings and curb, saddle cloths, reins, extra special blue-and-gold girths wrapped in tissue paper, nickel cross rowell jockey spurs, and glittering steel stirrup-irons. Cord breeches, Assam silk coat, white water-proof linen stocks, leather gaiters, and a pair of leather gauntlets completed the amazing disclosure. It was all a mighty gift from one of the unforgiven Aunts.
Half way through the unpacking Tom gave a groan and walked away; but walked back. Og and Magog stole the saddle, slung it across a bar, and slid off and on rapturously. Monica was laughing at him disagreeably: strange and brutal, as if she hated him: rather like Easu. And Lennie was tittering with joy.
“Oh, Og! Here! Y’re missin’ it. Leave that hog’s back saddle, No. 1 Grade — picked material — hand forged — tree mounted, guaranteed — a topper off; see this princess palfrey bridle for you, rosettes ornamented, periwinkle an’ all. An’ oh, look you! a canary belly-band f’r Dada t’strap round th’ heifer’s neck when she gets first prize at the Royal York show. Look at that crush-bone cage to put round Stampede’s mouth when the niggers catches him again. Oh, Lor’ oh my — — ”
“Shut up!” said Tom abruptly, catching the boy by the back of his pants and tossing him out of the barn. “Now roll up y’r bluey” — meaning the new rug, which was yellow. “Fix them stirrup leathers, take the bridle off that bit an’ we’ll find you something decent to put the reins on. An’ kick th’ rest t’gether. What a gear. Glad it’s you, not me, as has got to ride that leather, me boy. But ride on’t y’ll have to, for there’s nought else. Now, Monica, close down that mirth of yours. You’re not asked for it.” “Let brotherly love continue,” said Monica spitefully. “Wonder if it will, even unto camp.”
She went, leaving Jack feeling suddenly tired.
CHAPTER VII
OUT BACK AND SOME LETTERS
I
Jack was absolutely happy, in camp with Tom. Perhaps the most completely happy time in his life. He had escaped the strange, new complications that life was weaving round him. Yet he had not left the beloved family. He was with Tom: who, after all, was the one that mattered most. Tom was the growing trunk of the tree.
All real living hurts as well as fulfils. Happiness comes when we have lived and have a respite for sheer forgetting. Happiness, in the vulgar sense, is just a holiday experience. The lifelong happiness lies in being used by life; hurt by life, driven and goaded by life, replenished and overjoyed with life, fighting for life’s sake. That is real happiness. In the undergoing, a large part of it is pain. But the end is like Jack’s c
amping expedition, a time of real happiness.
Perhaps death, after a life of real courage, is like a happy camping expedition in the unknown, before a new start.
It was spring in Western Australia, and a wonder of delicate blueness, of frail, unearthly beauty. The earth was full of weird flowers, star-shaped, needle-pointed, fringed, scarlet, white, blue, a whole world of strange flowers. Like being in a new Paradise from which man had not been cast out.
The trees in the dawn, so ghostly still. The scent of blossoming eucalyptus trees: the scent of burning eucalyptus leaves and sticks, in the camp fire. Trailing blossoms wet with dew; the scrub after the rain; the bitter-sweet fragrance of fresh-cut timber.
And the sounds! Magpies calling, parrots chattering, strange birds flitting in the renewed stillness. Then kangaroos calling to one another out of the frail, paradisal distance. And the birr! of crickets in the heat of the day. And the sound of axes, the voices of men, the crash of falling timber. The strange slobbering talk of the blacks! The mysterious night coming round the camp fire.
Red gum everywhere! Fringed leaves dappling, the glowing new sun coming through, the large, feathery, honey-sweet blossoms flowering in clumps, the hard, rough-marked, red-bronze trunks rising like pillars of burnt copper, or lying sadly felled, giving up the ghost. Everywhere scattered the red gum, making leaves and herbage underneath seem bestrewed with blood.
And it was spring: the short, swift, fierce, flower-strange spring of Western Australia, in the month of August.
Then evening came, and the small aromatic fire was burning amid the felled trees. Tom stood hands on hips, giving directions, while the blackened billy-can hung suspended from a cross-bar over the fire. The water bubbling, a handful of tea is thrown in. It sinks. It rises. “Bring it off!” yells Tom. Jack balances the cross-stick, holding the wobbling can, until it rests safely on the ground. Then snatching the handle, holds the can aloft. Tea is made.
The clearing gang had a hut with one side for the horses, the other for the men’s sleeping place. Inside were stakes driven into the ground, bearing cross-bars with sacks fastened across, for beds. On the partition-poles hung the wardrobes, and in a couple of boxes lay the treasures, in the shape of watches, knives, razors, looking-glasses, etc., safe from the stray thief. But the men were always tormenting one another, hiding away a razor, or a strop, or a beloved watch.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 393
