THE GREAT PASSING
I
Jack soon got better. Soon he was sitting in the old armchair by the parlour fire. There was a little fire, against the damp. This was Gran’s place. But Gran did not leave her bed.
He had been in to see her, and she frightened him. The grey, dusky skin round the sunken mouth and sharpened nose, the eyes that were mostly shut, and never really open, the harsh breathing, the hands lying like old translucent stone on the bed-cover: it frightened him, and gave him a horror of dissolution and decay. He wanted terribly to be out again with the healthy Tom, among the horses. But not yet — he must wait yet awhile. So he took his turn sitting by Gran, to relieve Mary, who got little rest. And he became nervous, fanciful, frightened as he had never been before in his life. The family seemed to abandon him as they abandoned Gran. The cold isolation and horror of death.
The first rains had set in. All night the water had thundered down on the slab roof of the cubby, as if the bottom had fallen out of some well above. Outside was cloudy still, and a little chill. A wind was hush-sh-shing round the house. Mary was sitting with Gran, and he was in the parlour, listening to that clock — Tick-tock! Tick-tock! He sat in the armchair with a shawl over his shoulders, trying to read. Curiously enough, in Australia he could not read. The words somehow meant nothing to him.
It was Sunday afternoon, and the smell of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, cabbage, apple pie and cinnamon custard still seemed to taint the house. Jack had come to loathe Sunday dinners. They seemed to him degrading. They hung so heavy afterwards. And now he was sick, it seemed to him particularly repulsive. The peculiar Sundayness of it. The one thing that took him in revulsion back to England: Sunday dinner. The England he didn’t want to be taken back to. But it had been a quiet meal. Monica and Grace and the little boy twins had all been invited to York, by Alec Rice’s parents, and they had gone away from the shadowed house, leaving a great emptiness. It seemed to Jack they should all have stayed, so that their young life could have united against this slow dissolution.
Everything felt very strange. Tom and Lennie were out, Mrs. Ellis and the children were upstairs, Mr. Ellis had gone to look at some sheep that had got into trouble in the rain. There seemed a darkness, a chill, a deathliness in the air. It is like that in Australia: usually so sunny and absolutely forgetful. Then comes a dark day, and the place seems like an immemorial grave. More gruesome than ever England was, on her dark days. Mankind forever entombed in dissolution, in an endless grave.
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord; or who shall stand
in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart,
Who hath not yielded up himself unto vanity, nor sworn
deceitfully.”
Jack was thinking over the words Mr. Ellis had read in the morning, as near as he remembered them. He looked at his own hands: already they seemed pale and soft and very clean. What had the Lord intended hands for? So many things hands must do, and still they remain clean. Clean hands! His left was still discoloured and out of shape. Was it unclean?
No, it was not unclean. Not unclean like the great paw of Easu’s hiking Monica out of the saddle.
Clean hands and a pure heart! A pure heart! Jack thought of his own, with two heavy new desires in it: the sudden, shattering desire for Monica, that would rip through him sometimes like a flame. And the slow, smouldering desire to kill Easu. He had to be responsible for them both.
And he was not going to try to pluck them out. They both belonged to his heart, they were sacred even while they were shocking in his blood. Only, driven back on himself, he gave the old pledge: Lord, if you don’t want me to have Monica and kill Easu, I won’t. But if you want me to, I will. Somewhere he was inclined to cry out to be delivered from the cup. But that would be cowardice towards his own blood. It would be yielding himself up to vanity, if he pretended he hadn’t got the desires. And if he swore to eradicate them, it would be swearing deceitfully. Sometimes the hands must move in the darkest acts, if they are to remain really clean, not deathly like Gran’s now. And the heart must beat hard in the storm of darkest desires, if it is to keep pure, and not go pale-corrupt.
But always subject to the will of the Lord.
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord; or who shall stand
in His holy place.”
The Seraphim and the Cherubim knew strange, awful secrets of the Lord. That was why they covered their faces with their wings, for the wings of glory also had a dark side.
The fire was burning low. Jack stooped to put on more wood. Then he blew the red coals to make the wood catch. A yellow flame came, and he was glad.
“Forsake me not, Oh God, in mine old age; when I am grey-
headed; until I have sown my strength to this generation, and Thy
power to all them that are yet to come.”
Jack was always afraid of those times when the mysterious sayings of the Bible invaded him. He seemed to have no power against them. And his soul was always a little afraid, as if the walls of life grew thin, and he could hear the great everlasting wind of the mysterious going of the Lord, on the other side.
“Forsake me not, Oh, God, in mine old age; when I am grey-
headed.”
Jack wished Gran would say this, so that the Lord would stay with her, and she would not look so awful. How could Mary stand it, sitting with her day after day.
“Until I have shown my strength to this generation, and Thy
power to all them that are yet to come.”
And again his stubborn strength of life arose. What was he for, but to show his strength to the generation, and a sign of the power of the Lord for all them that were yet to come.
The clock was ticking steadily in the room. But the yellow flames were bunching up in the grate. He wondered where Gran’s “stocking” really was? But the thought of stockings, of concealed money, of people hankering for money, always made him feel sick.
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon
and another glory of the stars. . . . There is a natural body and
a spiritual body. . . .”
“There is one glory of the sun — — ”
But men don’t all realise the same glory. In England the sun had seemed to him to move with a domestic familiarity. It wasn’t till he was out here that he had been struck to the soul with the immense assertive vigour and sacred handsomeness of the sun. He knew it now: the wild, immense, fierce, untamed sun, fiercer than a glowing-eyed lion with a vast mane of fire, crouching on the western horizon, staring at the earth as if to pounce on it, the mouse-like earth. He had seen this immense sun, fierce and powerful beyond all human considerations, glaring across the southern sea, as all men may see it if they go there.
“There is one glory of the sun — — ”
And it is a glory vast and fierce, of a Lord who is more than our small lives.
“And another glory of the moon — — ”
That too he knew. And he had not known, till the full moon had followed him through the empty bush, in Australia, in the night. The immense, liquid gleam of the far-south moon, following, following with a great, miraculous, liquid smile. That vast, white, liquid smile, so vindictive! And himself, hurrying back to camp on Lucy, had known a terrible fear. The fear that the broad, liquid fire of the cold moon would capture him, capture him and destroy him, like some white demon that slowly and coldly tastes and devours its prey. The moon had that power, he knew, to dissolve him, tissue, heart, body and soul, dissolve him away. The immense, gleaming, liquid, lusting white moon, following inexorably, and the bush like white charred moon-embers.
“There is another glory of the moon — — ”
And he was afraid of it. “The sun is thy right hand, and the moon is thy left hand.” The two gleaming, immense living orbs, moving like weapons in the two hands of the Lord.
“And there is another glory of the stars — — ”
The strange stars of the southern night, all in unfamiliar crowds and tufts and drooping clusters, with strange black wells in the sky. He never got used to the southern stars. Whenever he stood and looked up at them, he felt as if his soul were leaving him, as if he belonged to another species of life, not to man as he knew man. As if there were a metamorphosis, a terrible metamorphosis to take place.
“There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” This phrase had haunted his mind from the earliest days. And he had always had a sort of hatred of the thing his Aunts, and the parson, and the poets, called The Spirit, with a capital S. It had always, with him, been connected with his Sunday clothes, and best behaviour, and a certain exalted falseness. Part of his natural naughtiness had arisen from his vindictive dislike and contempt of The Spirit, and things of The Spirit.
Now it began to seem different to him. He knew, he always had known, that the Bible really meant something absolutely different from what the Aunts, and the parson, and even the poets meant by the Spirit, or the spiritual body.
Since he had seen the Great God in the roaring of the yellow sun, and the frightening vast smile in the gleaming full-moon following him, the new moon like a delicate weapon-thrust in the western sky, and the stars in disarray, like a scattered flock of sheep bunching and communing together in a strange bush, in the vast heavens, he had gradually come to know the difference between the natural body and the spiritual body. The natural body was like in England, where the sun rises naturally to make day, and passes naturally at sunset, owing to the earth’s revolving; where the moon “raises her lamp above,” on a clear night, and the stars are “candles” in heaven. That is the natural body: all the cosmos just a natural fact. And a man loves a woman so that they can propagate their species. The natural body.
And the spiritual body is supposed to be something thin and immaterial, that can float through a brick wall and subsist on mere thought. Jack had always hated this thin, wafting object. He preferred his body solid. He loved the beautiful weight and transfigured solidity of living limbs. He had no use whatsoever for the gossamer stuff of the supposed “ethereal,” or “pure,” spirit: like evaporated alcohol. He had a natural dislike of Shelley, and vegetarians, and socialists, and all advocates of “spirit.” He hated Blake’s pictures, with people waving like the wrong kind of sea-weed, in the sky, instead of under water.
Hated it all. Till hating it had almost made him wicked.
Now he had a new understanding. He had always known that the Old Testament never meant any of this Shelley stuff, this Hindu Nirvana business. “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” And his natural body got up in the morning to eat food, and tend sheep, and earn money, and prepare for having a family; to see the sun usefully making day and setting, owing to the earth’s revolution: the new moon so shapen because the earth’s shadow fell on her; the stars being other worlds, other lumps in space, shining according to their various distances, coloured according to their chemical composition. Well and good.
That is man very cleverly finding out all about it, like a little boy pulling his toy to pieces.
But, willy-nilly, in this country he had another sun and another moon. He had seen the glory of the sun and the glory of the moon, and both these glories had had a powerful sensual effect on him. There had been a great passional reaction in himself, in his own body. And as the strange new passion of fear, and the sense of gloriousness burned through him, like a new intoxication, he knew that this was his real spiritual body. This glowing, intoxicated body, drunk with the sun and the moon, drunk from the cup in the hand of the Lord, this was his spiritual body.
And when the flame came up in him, tearing from his bowels, in the sudden new desire for Monica, this was his spiritual body, the body transfigured with fire. And that steady dark vibration which made him want to kill Easu — Easu seemed to him like the Antichrist — that was his own spiritual body. And when he had hit Easu with his broken left hand, and the white sheet of flame going through him had made him scream aloud, leaving him strange and distant, but super-conscious and powerful, this too was his spiritual body. The sun in his right hand and the moon in his left hand. When he drank from the burning right hand of the Lord, and wanted Monica in the same fire, it was his body spiritual burning from the right hand of the Lord. And when he knew he must destroy Easu, in the sheet of white pain, it was his body spiritual transfigured from the left hand of the Lord. And when he ate and drank, and the food tasted good, it was the dark cup of life he was drinking, drinking the life of the dead ox from the meat. And this was the body spiritual communing with the sacrificed body of natural life: like a tiger glowing at evening and lapping blood. And when he rode after the sheep through the bush, and the horse between his knees went quick and delicate, it was the Lord tossing him in his spiritual body down the maze of living.
But when Easu ground down his horse and shoved it after the sheep, it was the natural body fiendishly subjugating the spiritual body. For the horse too is a spiritual body and a natural body, and may be ridden as the one or as the other. And when Easu wanted Monica, it was the natural body malignantly degrading the spiritual body. Monica also half wanted it.
For Easu knew the spiritual body. And like a fallen angel, he hated it, he wanted always to overthrow it more, in this day when it is so abjectly overthrown. Monica too knew the spiritual body: the body of straight fire. And she too seemed to have a grudge against it. It thwarted her “natural” will; which “natural” will is the barren devil of to-day.
Gran, that old witch, she also knew the spiritual body. But she loved spiting it. And she was dying like clay.
Mary, who was so spiritual and so self-sacrificing, she didn’t know the body of straight fire at all. Her spirit was all natural. She was so “good,” and so heavily “natural,” she would put out any fire of the glory of the burning Lord. She was more “natural” even than Easu.
And Jack’s father was the same. So good! So nice! So kind! So absolutely well-meaning! And he would bank out the fire of the burning Lord with shovelfuls of kindness.
They would, none of them, none of them, let the fire burn straight. None of them. There were no people at all who dared have the fire of the Lord, and drink from the cup of the fierce glory of the Lord, the sun in one hand and the moon in the other.
Only this strange, wild, ash-coloured country with its undiminished sun and its unblemished moon, would allow it. There was a great death between the two hands of the Lord; between the sun and the moon. But let there be a great death. Jack gave himself to it.
He was almost asleep, in the half-trance of inner consciousness, when Dad came in. Jack opened his eyes and made to rise, but Dad waved him to sit still, while he took the chair on the other side of the fire, and sat down inert. He seemed queer. Dad seemed queer. The same dusky look over his face as over Gran’s. And a queer, pinched, far-away look. Jack wondered over it. And he could see Dad didn’t want to be spoken to. The clock tick-tocked. Jack went into a kind of sleep.
He opened his eyes. Dad was very slowly, very slowly fingering the bowl of his pipe. How quiet it was!
Jack dozed again, and wakened to a queer noise. It was Dad’s breathing: and perhaps the falling of his pipe. He had dropped his pipe. And his body had dropped over sideways, very heavy and uncomfortable, and he was breathing hoarsely, unnaturally in his sleep. Save for the breathing, it was dreadfully quiet. Jack picked up the pipe and sat down again. He felt tired: awfully tired, for no reason at all.
He woke with a start. The afternoon was passing, there was a shower, the room seemed dark. The firelight flickered on Mr. Ellis’ watchguard. He wore his unbuttoned waistcoat as ever, with the gold watchchain showing. He was very stout, and very still. Terribly still and sagging sideways, the hoarse breathing had ceased. Jack would have liked to wake him from that queer position.
How quiet it was. Upstairs someone had dragged a chair, and that had made him realise! Far away, very far away, he could hear Harry and Ellie and Baby, playing. “There’s a quiet of the sun, and another quiet of the moon, and another quiet of the stars; for one star differs from another in quiet. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
Was that Scripture? or wasn’t it? There is a quiet of the sun. This was the quiet of the sun. He was sitting in the cold, dead quiet of the sun. For one star differs from another in quiet. The sun had abstained from radiating, this was the quiet of the sun, and the strange, shadowy crowding of the stars’ differing quietness seemed to infest the weak daylight.
It is sown a natural body! Oh, bother the words! He didn’t want them. He wanted the sun to shine, and every thing to be normal. If he didn’t feel so weak, and if it weren’t raining, he’d go out to the stable to the horses. To the hot-blooded animals.
Mr. Ellis’ head hung sagging on his chest. Jack wished he would wake up and change his position, it looked horrible.
The inner door suddenly opened, and Mary came swiftly out. She started, seeing Mr. Ellis asleep in the chair. Then she went to Jack’s side and took his arm, and leaned whispering in his ear.
“Jack! She’s gone! I think she’s gone. I think she passed in her sleep. We shall have to wake uncle.”
Jack stood up trembling. There was a queer smell in the room. He walked across and touched the sleeping man on the sleeve.
“Dad!” he said. “Dad! Mr. Ellis.”
There was no response: They both waited. Then Jack shook the arm more vigorously. It felt very inert. Mary came across, and put her hand on her uncle’s sunken forehead, to lift his head. She gave a little scream.
“Something’s the matter with him,” she said, whimpering.
II
Thank goodness, Dr. Rackett was upstairs. They fetched him, and Timothy and Tom, and carried Mr. Ellis into the dying room.
“Better leave me alone with him now,” said Rackett.
After ten minutes he came out of the dying room and closed the door behind him. Tom was standing there. He looked at Rackett enquiringly. Rackett shook his head.
“Dad’s not dead?” said Tom.
Rackett nodded.
Tom’s face went to pieces for a moment. Then he composed it, and that Australian mouth of his, almost like a scar, shut close. He went into the dying room.
Someone had to fetch the Methodist son-in-law from York. Jack went in the sulky. Better die in the cart than stop in that house. And he could drive the sulky quietly.
The Methodist son-in-law, though he was stout and wore black, and Jack objected to him on principle, wasn’t really so bad, in his own home. His wife Ruth of course burst into tears and ran upstairs. Her husband kept his face straight, brought out the whiskey tantalus, and poured some for Jack and himself. This they both drank with befitting gravity.
“I must be in chapel in fifteen minutes; that will be five minutes late,” said the parson. “But they can’t complain, under the circumstances. Mrs. Blogg of course will stay at home. Er — is anyone making arrangements out at Wandoo?”
“What arrangements?”
“Oh, seeing to things . . . the personal property, too.”
“I was sent for you,” said Jack. “I suppose they thought you’d see to things.”
“Yes! Certainly! Certainly! I’ll be out with Mrs. Blogg directly after Meeting. Let me see.”
He went to a table and laboriously wrote two notes. Twisting them into cocked hats, he handed them one after the other to Jack, saying:
“This is to the Church of England parson. Leave it at his house. I’ve made it Toosday, Toosday at half-past ten. I suppose that’ll do. And this — this is to the joiner.”
He looked at Jack meaningly, and Jack looked vague.
“Joshua Jenkins, at the joiner’s shop. Third house from the end of the road. And you’ll find him in the loft over the stable, Sunday or not, if he isn’t in the house.”
It was sunset, and the single bells of the church and chapel were sounding their last ping! Ping! ping-ping! as Jack drove slowly down the straggling street of York. People were going to church, the women in their best shawls and bonnets, hurrying a little along the muddy road, where already the cows were lying down to sleep, and the loose horses straggled uncomfortably. Occasionally a muddy buggy rattled up to the brick Church of England, people passed shadow-shape into the wooden Presbyterian Church, or waited outside the slab Meeting House of the Methodists. The choir band was already scraping fiddles and tooting cornets in the church. Lamps were lighted within and one feeble lamp at the church gate. It was a cloudy evening. Odd horsemen went trotting through the mud, going out into the country again as night fell, rather forlorn.
Jack always felt queer, in York on Sundays. The attempt at Sunday seemed to him like children’s make-believe. The churches weren’t real churches, the parsons weren’t real parsons, the people weren’t real worshippers. It was a sort of earnest make-believe, where people felt important like actors. And the pub, with its extra number of lamps, seemed to feel extra wicked. And the men riding home, often tipsy, seemed vague as to what was real, this York acting Sunday, or their dark, rather dreary farms away out, or some other third unknown thing. Was anything quite real? That was what the shadows, the people, the buildings seemed all to be asking. It was like children’s games, real and not real, actual and yet unsubstantial, and the people seemed to feel as children feel, very earnest, very sure, very sure that they were very real, but having to struggle all the time to keep up the conviction. If they didn’t keep up the conviction, the dark, strange Australian night might clear them and their little town all away into some final cupboard, and leave the aboriginal bush again.
Joshua Jenkins the godless, was in the loft with a chisel, working by lantern light. He peered at the twisted note, and his face brightened.
“Two of ‘em!” he exclaimed, with a certain gusto. “Well, think o’ that, think o’ that! And I’ve not had a job o’ this sort for over a month. Well, I never, t’be sure! ‘T never rains but it comes down cats and dogs, seemingly. Toosday! Toosday! Toosday! Let’s see — ” and he scratched his head behind the ear. “Pretty quick work that, pretty quick work. But can be done, oh, yes, can be done. I’s’ll have t’ send somebody t’ measure the Boss. How deep should you say he was in the barrel? Never mind though, I’ll send Sam over with the measure, come morning. But I can start right away on the old lady. Let’s see! Let’s see! Let’s see! She wouldn’t be-e-e — she wouldn’t be over five foot two or three now, would she?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack hoarsely. “Do you mean for her coffin?” He was filled with horror.
“Well, I should say I do. I should say so. You don’t see no sewing-machine here, do you, for sewing her shroud. I suppose I do mean her coffin, being joiner and carpenter, and J. P. and coroner as well when required.”
Jack fled, horrified. But as he lit his sulky candles, and set off at a slow trot out of the town, he laughed a bit to himself. He felt it was rather funny. Why shouldn’t it be rather funny? He hoped it would be a bit funny when he was dead too, to relieve matters. He sat in the easy sulky driving slowly down the washed-out road, in the dark, alien night. The night was dark and strange. An animal ran along the road in front of him, just discernible, at the far edge of the dim yellow candle glow. It was a wild grey thing, running ahead into the dark. On into the dark.
Why should one care? Beyond a certain point, one didn’t care about anything, life or death. One just felt it all. Up to a certain point, one had to go through the mill, caring and feeling bad. One had to cry out to the Lord, and fight the ugly brutes of life. And then for a time it was over, and one didn’t care, good or bad, Lord or no Lord. One paid one’s whack of caring and then one was let off for a time. When one was dead, one didn’t care any more. And that was death. But life too had its own indifference, its own deep, strong indifference: as the ocean is calm way down, under the most violent storm.
When he got home, Tom came out to the sulky. Tom’s face was set with that queer Australian look, as if he were caught in a trap, and it wasn’t any use complaining about it. He unharnessed the horse in a rough, flinging fashion. Jack didn’t know what to say to him, so he thought he’d better keep quiet.
Lennie came riding in on Lucy. He slid to the ground and dragged the mare’s bridle roughly.
“Come on, yer blasted old idjut, can’t ye!” he blubbed, dragging her to the stable door. “Blasted idjut, my Uncle Joe!” he continued, between the sniffs and gulps of his blubbing. “Questions! Questions! How c’n I answer questions when I don’t know myself!” A loud blub as he dragged the saddle down on top of himself, in his frenzy of untackling Lucy. “Rackett says to me, ‘Len,’ he says,” — blub and a loud sniff — ”‘y’ father’s took bad and pore ol’ Gran’s gone,’ he says” — blub! Blub! Blub — ”‘Be off an’ fetch y’ Uncle Joe an’ tell him to come at onst’ — an’ he can go to hell.” Lennie ended on a shout of defiance as he staggered into the stable with the saddle. And from the dark his voice came: “An’ when I ask our Tom what’s amiss wi’ m’ Dad,” blub! blub! “blasted idjut looks at me like a blasted owl — like a blasted owl!” And Lennie sobbed before he sniffed and came out for the bridle.
“Don’t y’ cry, Lennie,” said Jack, who was himself crying for all he was worth, under the cover of the dark.
“I’m not crying, y’ bloomin’ fool, you!” shouted Len. “I’m goin’ in to see Ma, I am. Get some sense outta her.”
He walked off towards the house, and then came back.
“Why don’ you go in, Tom, an’ see?” he cried. “What d’yer stan’ there like that for, what do yer?”
There was a dead and horrible silence, outside the stable door in the dark. A silence that went to the core of the night, having no word to say.
The lights of a buggy were seen at the gate. The three waited. It was the unmarried Aunts. One of them ran and took Len in her arms.
“Oh, you poor little lamb!” she cried. “Oh, your poor Ma! Your Ma! Your poor Ma!”
“Ma’s not bad! She’s all right,” yelped Len in a new fear. Then there was a pause, and he became super-conscious. Then he drew away from the Aunts.
“Is Dad dead?” he asked in a queer, quizzical little voice, looking from Tom to Jack, in the dim buggy light. Tom stood as if paralysed.
Lennie at last gave a queer, animal “Whooo,” like a dog dazed with pain, and flung himself into Tom’s arms. The only sounds in the night were Tom’s short, dry sobs, as he held Lennie, and the whimpering of the Aunts.
“Come to your poor Mother, come to comfort her,” said one of the Aunts gently.
“Tom! Tom!” cried Lennie. “I’m skeered! I’m skeered, Tom, o’ them two corpses! I’m skeered of ‘em, Tom.” Tom, who was a little skeered too, gave a short, dry bark of a sob.
“They won’t hurt you, precious!” said the Aunt. “They won’t hurt you. Come to your poor Mother.”
“No-o-o!” wailed Lennie in terror, and he flung away to Timothy’s cabin, where he slept all night.
When the horses were fixed up, Tom and Jack went to the cubby. Tom flung himself on the bed without undressing, and lay there in silence. Jack did the same. He didn’t know what else to do. At last he managed to say:
“Don’t take it too hard, Tom! Dad’s lived his life, and he’s got all you children. We have to live. We all have to live. An’ then we’ve got to die.”
There was unresponsive silence for a time.
“What’s the blasted use of it all, anyhow?” said Tom.
“There’s no such thing as use,” said Jack. “Dad lived, and he had his life. He had his life. You’ll have yours. And I shall have mine. It’s just your life, and you live it.”
“What’s the good of it?” persisted Tom heavily.
“Neither good nor bad. You live your life because it’s your own, and nobody can live it for you.”
“What good is it to me?” said Tom dully, drearily. “I don’t care if people live their lives or not.”
Jack felt for the figure on the bed.
“Shake hands, though, Tom,” he said. “You are alive, and so am I. Shake hands on it, then.”
He found the hand and got a faint response, sulky, heavy. But for very shame Tom could not withhold all response.
Tim came in the morning with tea and bread and butter, saying Tom was wanted inside, and would Jack go with him to attend to the grave. Poor Tim was very much upset, and wept and wailed unrestrainedly. Which perhaps was good, because it spared the others the necessity to weep and wail.
They hitched up the old buggy, and set off with a pick and a couple of spades. Old black Timothy on the driving-box occasionally startled Jack by breaking forth into a new sudden wail, like a dog suddenly remembering again. It was fine day. The earth had already dried up, and a hot, dry, gritty wind was blowing from inland, from the east. They drove out of the paddocks and along an overgrown trail, then they crossed the river, heaving and floundering through the slough, for at this season it was no more. The excitement of the driving here made Timothy forget to wail.
Rounding a steep little bluff, they came to a lonely, forlorn little enclosed graveyard, which Jack had never seen. Tim wailed, then asked where the grave should be. The sun grew very hot. They nosed around the little, lonely, parched acre.
Jack could not dig, so he unharnessed the outfit and put a box of chaff before the horses. Tim flung his spade over against a little grey headstone, and climbed in with the pick. Even then they weren’t quite sure how big to make the grave, so Jack lay on the ground while Tim picked out a line around him. They got a straight line with a rope.
The soil was as hard as cement. Tim toiled and moiled, and forgot all wailing. But he made little impression on the cement-like earth.
“What we goin’ to do?” he asked, scratching his sweating head. “What ‘n hell’s name we goin’ t’ do, sir? Gotta bury ‘m Toosday, gotta.” And he looked at the blazing sun. “Gotta dig him hole sevenfut deep grave, gotta do ‘t.”
He set to again. Then two of the Reds came, sent to help. But the work was killing. The day became so hot, you forgot it, you passed into a kind of spell. But that work was heart-breaking.
Jack went off for dynamite, and Rackett came along, with Lennie, who would never miss a dynamiting show. Tim wrung his wet hair like a mop. The Reds, in their vests, were scarlet, and the vests were wet and grimy.
Much more fun with dynamite. Boom! Bang! Then somebody throwing out the dirt. Somebody going for a ladder. Boom! Bang! The explosions seemed enormous.
“Oh, for the love o’ Mike!” cried the excited Lennie. “Ye’ll blow me ol’ grandfather sky high, if y’ don’t mind. For the love of Mike, don’t let me see his bones.”
But the grandfather Ellis was safe in the next grave. Rackett laid another fuse. They all stood back. Bang! Boom! Pouf! went the dust.
III
Jack would have done anything to escape the funeral, but Timothy, for some reason, kept hold of him. He wanted him to help replace the turf: moral support rather than physical assistance.
The two of them hid behind the pinch. At last they saw the cortège approaching. Easu Ellis held the reins of the first team, and chewed the end of the whip. Beside him sat Joshua Jenkins, as a mute, fearful in black and like a scarecrow with loose danglings of crape. In the buggy behind them, on the floor-boards, was Gran’s coffin, shaking wofully, covered with a black cloth. Joe Low drove the second buggy, which was the second hearse, and he looked strained and anxious as the heavy coffin bumped when the buggy dropped into holes on the track. Then came the family shay with the chief male mourners. Then a little crowd on foot.
The horses were behaving badly, not liking the road. It was hot, the vile east wind was blowing. Easu’s horse jibbed at the slough of the stream: would not take it. He was afraid the horses would jump, and toss the coffin out of the buggy. He had to get bearers to carry Gran’s poor remains across the mud and up the pinch to their last house. The bearers sunk almost to their knees in mud. The whole cortège was at a standstill.
Joe Low’s horses, mortally frightened, were jumping round till they were almost facing the horses in the mourners’ shay. Easu ran to their heads. More bearers, strong men, came forward to lift out Dad’s heavy coffin. Everybody watched in terror as they staggered through the slough of the stream with that unnatural burden. Was it going to fall?
No, they were through. Men were putting branches and big stones for the foot-mourners to cross, everybody sweating and sweltering. The sporting parson, his white surplice waving in the hateful, gritty hot wind, came striding over, holding his book. Then Tom, with a wooden, stupid face. Then Lennie, cracking nuts between his teeth and spitting out the shells, in an agony of nervousness. Then the other mourners, some carrying a few late, weird bush-flowers, picking their way over like a train of gruesome fowls, staggering and clutching on the stones and boughs, landing safe on the other bank. Jack watched from a safe distance above.
There were two coffins, one on either side of the grave. Some of the uncles had top hats with dangling crape. Nearly everybody was black. Poor Len, what a black little crow he looked! The sporting parson read the service manfully. Then he announced hymn number 225.
Jack could feel the hollow place below, with the black mourners, simmer with panic, when the parson in cold blood asked them to sing a hymn. But he read the first verse solemnly, like an overture:
“Oh sweet and blessed country
The home of God’s elect!
Oh sweet and blessed country
That eager hearts expect . . .”
There was a deadly pause. There was going to be no answer from the uncomfortable congregation, under that hot sun.
But Uncle Blogg was not to be daunted. He struck up in a rather fat, wheezy, Methodist voice, and Aunt Ruth piped feebly. The maiden Aunts, who had insisted on following their mother, though women were not expected to attend, listened to this for an awful minute or two, then they waveringly “tried” to join in. It was really only funny. And Tom in all his misery, suddenly started to laugh. Lennie looked up at him with wide eyes, but Tom’s shoulders shook, shook harder, especially when Aunt Minnie “tried” to sing alto. That alto he could not bear.
The Reds were beginning to grin sheepishly and to turn their heads over their shoulders, as if the open country would not object to their grins. It was becoming a scandal.
Lennie saved the situation. His voice came clear and pure, like a chorister’s, rising above the melancholy “trying” of the relations, a clear, pure singing, that seemed to dominate the whole wild bush.
“Oh sweet and blessed country
That eager hearts expect.
Jesu in mercy bring us
To that dear land of rest;
Who art with God the Father,
And Spirit ever blessed.”
At the sound of Lennie’s voice, Tom turned white as a sheet, and looked as if he were going to die too. But the boy’s voice soared on, with that pure quality of innocence that was sheer agony to the elder brother.
IV
Jack, who was looking sick again, was sent away to the Greenlows’ next day. And he was glad to go, thankful to be out of it. He loathed death, he loathed death, and Wandoo had suddenly become full of death.
The first cool days of the year, golden and blue, were at hand. The Greenlow girls made much of him. He rode with them after sheep, inspecting fences, examining far-off wells. They were not bad girls at all. They taught him to play solitaire at evening, to hold worsted, even to spin. Real companionable girls, thankful to have a young man in the house, spoiling him completely. Pa was home after the first day, and acted as a sort of hairy chimpanzee chaperone, but looking over his spectacles and hissing through his teeth was his severest form of reproof. He didn’t set Jack to wash that Sunday, but even gave him tit-bits from the joint, so that our young hero almost knew what it was to have a prospective father-in-law.
Jack left Gum Tree Croft with regret. For he knew his life at Wandoo was over. Now Dad was dead, everything was going to break up. This was bitter to him, for it was the first place he had ever loved, ever wanted to stay in, for ever and ever. He loved the family. He couldn’t bear to go away from them.
“Never mind!” he said to himself. “I shall always have them in some way or other, all my life.”
Things seemed different when he got back. There wasn’t much real difference, except a bit of raking and clearing up had been done for the funeral. But Wandoo itself seemed to have died. For the meantime, the homestead was as if dead.
Grace and Monica looked unnatural in black frocks. They felt unnatural.
Jack was told that Mr. George was having a conclave in the parlour, and that he was to go in.
Tom, Mrs. Ellis, and Mr. George and Dr. Rackett were there, seated round the table, on which were some papers. Jack shook hands, and sat uneasily in an empty chair on Dr. Rackett’s side of the table. Mr. George was explaining things simply.
Mr. Ellis left no will. But the first marriage certificate had been found. Tom was to inherit Wandoo, but not till he came legally of age, in a year and a half’s time. Meanwhile Mrs. Ellis could continue on the place, and carry on as best she might, on behalf of herself and all the children. For a year and a half.
She heard in silence. After a year and a half she would be homeless: or at least dependent on Tom, who was not her son. She sat silent in her black dress.
Tom cleared his throat and stared at the table. Then he looked up at Jack, and, scarlet in the face, said:
“I’ve been thinking, Ma, I don’t want the place. You have it, for Len. I don’t want it. You have it, for Len an’ the kids. I’d rather go away. Best if that certificate hadn’t never been found, if you’re going to feel you’re turned out.”
He dropped his head in confusion. Mr. George held up his hand.
“No more of that heroic talk,” he said. “When Jacob Ellis stored up that marriage certificate at the bottom of that box, he showed what he meant. And you may feel as you say to-day, but two years hence you might repent it.”
Tom looked up angrily.
“I don’t believe Tom would ever regret it,” put in Mrs. Ellis. “But I couldn’t think of it. Len wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. George. “We’ve got to be sensible, and the law’s the law. You can’t alter it yet, my boy, even if you want to. You’re not of age yet.
“So you listen to me. My plan is for you and Jack to go out into the colony and get some experience. Sow your wild oats if you’ve any to sow, or else pick up a bit of good oatseed. One or the other.
“My idea is for you and Jack to go up for a year to Lang’s Well station, out Roeburne way. Lang’ll give you your keep and a pound a week each, and your fare refunded if you stay a year.
“The ‘Rob Roy’ sails from Geraldton about a month from now; you can get passages on her. And I thought it would be just as well, Tom, if you and Jack rode up through that midland country. You’ve a hundred connections to see, who’ll change y’r horses for y’. And you’ll see the country. And y’ll be men of travel. We want men of experience, men of a wide outlook. Somebody’s got to be the head-piece of this colony, when men like me and the rest of us are gone. It’ll be a three hundred mile ride, but ye’ve nigh on a month to do it.
“Now, what do you say, my boy? Your mother will stop on here with the children. I’ll see she gets a good man to run the place. And meanwhile she’ll be able to fix something up for herself. Oh, we shall settle all right. I’ll see your mother through all right. No fear of that. And no fear of any deterioration to the place. I’ll watch that. You bet I Will.”
Tom twisted his fingers, white at the gills, and mumbled his thanks vaguely.
“Jack,” said Mr. George. “I know you’re game. And you will look after Tom.”
Dr. Rackett said he thought it a wise plan, and further, that if Mrs. Ellis would consent, he would like to bear the expenses of sending Lennie to school in England for the next three years.
Mrs. Ellis woke from her dream to say quickly:
“Although I thank you kindly, Dr. Rackett, I think you’ll understand if I say No.”
Her decision startled everybody.
“Prrh! Bah!” snorted Mr. George. “There’s one thing. I doubt if we could make Lennie go. But, with your permission, Alice, we’ll ask him. Jack, find Lennie for us.”
“I’ll not say a word,” said Mrs. Ellis, nervously clutching the edge of the table. “I won’t influence him. But if he goes it’ll be the death of me. Poor old Lennie! Poor old Lennie!”
“Prrh! Bah! That’s nonsense! Nonsense!” said Mr. George angrily. “Give the boy his chance, leave your fool emotions out, d’ye hear, Alice Ellis.”
Mrs. Ellis sat like a martyr stubborn at the stake. Jack brought the mistrustful Len, who stood like a prisoner at the bar. Mr. George put the case as attractively as possible.
Len slowly shook his head, with a grimace of distaste. “No, I don’t think!” he remarked. “Not fer mine, you bet! I stays alongside my pore ol’ Ma, here in Western Austrylia.”
Mr. George adjusted his eyeglasses severely.
“Your mother is neither poor nor old,” he said coldly.
“I never!” broke out Lennie.
“And this country, thank God, is called Australia, not Austrylia. When you open your mouth you give proof enough of your need for education. I should like to hear different language in your mouth, my son, and see different ideas working in your head.”
Lennie, rather pale and nervous, stared with wide eyes at him.
“You never — ” he said. “You never ketch me talkin’ like Jack Grant, not if y’ skin me alive.” And he shifted from one foot to the other.
“I wouldn’t take the trouble to skin you, alive or dead. Your skin wouldn’t be worth it. But come. You’re an intelligent boy. You need education. You need it. Your nature needs it, child. Your mother ought to see that. Your nature needs you to be educated, well-educated. You’ll be wasted afterwards — you will. And you’ll repent it. Mark me, you’ll repent it, when you’re older, and your spirit, which should be trained and equipped, is as clumsy and half-baked as any other cornseed’s. You’ll be a fretful, uneasy, wasted man, you will. Your mother ought to see that. You’ll be a half-baked, quarter-educated bush-whacker, instead of a well-equipped man.”
Len looked wonderingly at his mother. But she still sat like an obstinate martyr at the stake, and gave him no sign.
“Don’t he educate me?” asked Len, pointing to Rackett.
“As much as you’ll let him,” said Mr. George. “But — ”
Lennie’s face crumpled up with irritation.
“Oh, what for do you want me to be educated?” he cried testily. “I don’ want to be like Uncle Blogg. I don’ wantter be like Dr. Rackett even.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “‘N I don’ wantter be like Jack Grant neither. I don’ wantta. I don’ wantta, I tell y’ I don’ wantta.”
“Do you think they would want to be like you?” asked Mr. George.
Lennie looked from him to Rackett, and then to Jack.
“Jack’s not so very diff’rent,” he said slowly. And he shook his head. “But can’t y’ believe me,” he cried. “I don’ wantta go to England. I don’ wantta talk fine and be like them. Can’t ye see I don’t? I don’ wantta. What’s the good! What’s the mortal use of it, anyhow? Aren’t I right as I am?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I wants to work. I wants to milk an’ feed, and plough, and reap and lay out irrigation, like Dad. An’ I wants to look after Ma an’ the kids. An’ then I’ll get married and be on a place of me own with kids of me own, an’ die, like Dad, an’ be done for. That’s what I wants. It is.”
He looked desperately at his mother.
Mr. George slowly shook his head, staring at the keen, beautiful, but reluctant boy.
“I suppose that’s what we’ve come to,” said Rackett.
“Didn’t you learn me!” cried Lennie defiantly. And striking a little attitude, like a naive earnest actor, he repeated:
“‘Here rests, his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth of fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.
“‘Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send.
He gave to misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from heaven, ‘twas all he wished, a friend.’
“There,” he continued. “That’s me! An’ I’ve got a friend already.”
“You’re a little fool,” said Mr. George. “Much mark of melancholy there is on you! And do you think misery is going to thank you for your idiotic tear? As for your friend, he’s going away. And you’re a fool, putting up a headstone to yourself while you’re alive still. Damn you, you little fool, and be damned to you.”
Mr. George was really cross. He flounced his spectacles off his nose. Len was frightened. Then he said, rather waveringly, turning to his mother:
“We’re all right, Ma, ain’t we?”
Mrs. Ellis looked at him with her subtlest, tenderest smile. And in Lennie’s eyes burned a light of youthful indignation against these old men.