Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 406
Sometimes he met eyes that were eyes of his own outcast race. As a tiny boy it had been so. Fairs had always fascinated him, because at the fairs in England he met the eyes of gipsies who, in a glance, understood him. His own people could not understand. But in the black eyes of a gipsy woman he had seen the answer, even as a boy of ten. And he had thought: I ought to go away with her, run away with her.
It was the anger, the deep, burning life-anger which was the kinship. Not a deathly, pale, nervous anger. But an anger of the old blood. And it was this which had attracted him to grooms, horsey surroundings, and to pugilists. In them was some of this same deep, generous anger of the blood. And now in Australia too, he saw it like a secret away at the bottom of the black, full, strangely shining eyes of the aborigines. There it lay, the secret, like an eternal, brilliant snake. And it established at once a kind of free-masonry between him and the blacks. They were curiously aware of him, when he came: aware of his coming, aware of his going. As if in him were the same great Serpent of their anger. And they were downcast now he was going away, as if their strength were being taken from them. Old Tim, who had taken a great fancy to Jack, relapsed into a sort of glumness as if he too, now, were preparing to die.
Since Jack had come back from the Greenlows’ farm, Monica had withdrawn to a distance, a kind of luminous distance, and put a chasm between herself and Jack. She moved mute and remote on the shining side of the chasm. He stood on the dark side, looking across the blackness of the gulf at her as if she were some kind of star. Surely the gulf would close up. Surely they both would be on natural ground again.
But no! always that incomprehensible little face with fringed lashes, and mouth that opened with a little smile, a vulnerable little smile, as if asking them all to be kind to her, to be pitiful towards her, and not try to touch her.
“Well, good-bye, Monica, for the present,” he said, as he sat in the saddle in the yard, and Tom started away riding towards the gate, leading the bulky-looking pack-horse.
“Good-bye. Come back!” said Monica, looking up with a queer, hard little question come into her eyes, but her face remote as ever.
Jack kicked his horse and started.
“I’ll come back,” he said over his shoulder. But he didn’t look round at her. His heart had gone hard and hot in his breast. He was glad to be going.
Lennie had opened the gate. He stood there as Jack rode through.
“Why can’t I never come?” he cried.
Jack laughed and rode on, after the faithful Tom. He was glad to go. He was glad to leave Wandoo. He was glad to say no more good-byes, and to feel no more pain. He was glad to be gone, since he was going, from the unlucky place. He was glad to be gone from its doom. There was a doom over it, a doom. And he was glad to be gone.
The morning was still orange and green. Winter had set in at last, the rains had begun to be heavy. They might have trouble with drenchings and boggings, but that, Tom said, was better than drought and sunstrokes. And anyhow the weather this morning was perfect.
The dark forest of karri that ran to the left of Wandoo away on the distant horizon, cut a dark pattern on the egg-green sky. Good-bye! Good-bye! to it. The sown fields they were riding through glittered with tender blades of wheat. Good-bye! Good-bye! Somebody would reap it. The bush was now full of sparks of the beautiful, uncanny flowers of Western Australia, and bright birds started and flew. Sombre the bush was in itself, but out of the heavy dullness came sharp scarlet, flame-spark flowers, and flowers as lambent gold as sunset, and wan white flowers, and flowers of a strange, darkish rich blue, like the vault of heaven just after sundown. The scent of rain, of eucalyptus, and of the strange brown-green shrubs of the bush!
They rode in silence, Tom ahead with the pack-horse, and they did not draw near, but rode apart. They were travelling due west from York, along a bush track toward Paddy’s Crossing. And as they went they drew nearer and nearer to the dark, low fringe of hills behind which, for the last twelve months, Jack had seen the sun setting with its great golden glow. Trees grew along the ridge of the hills, scroll-like and mysterious. They had always seemed to Jack like the bar of heaven.
By noon the riders reached the ridge, and the bar of heaven was the huge karri trees which went up aloft so magnificently. But the karri forest ended here with a jerk. Beyond, the earth ran away down long, long slopes, covered with scrub, down the greyness and undulation of Australia, towards the great dimness where was the coast. The sun was hot at noon. Jack was glad when Tom called a halt under the last trees, facing the great, soft, open swaying of the land seaward, and they began to make tea.
They had hardly sat down to drink their tea, when they heard a buggy approaching. It was the mysterious Dr. Rackett, driven by the grinning Sam. Rackett said nothing, just greeted the youths, pulled his tin mug and tucker from under the buggy seat, and joined in, chatting casually as if it had all been pre-arranged.
Tom was none too pleased, but he showed nothing. And when the tea was finished, he made good by handing over the beast of a pack-horse to Sam. Poor Sam sat in the back of the vehicle lugging the animal along, jerking its reluctant neck. Rackett drove in lonely state on the driving seat. Tom and Jack trotted quickly ahead, on the down-slope, and were soon out of sight. They were thankful to ride free.
Over the ridge they felt Wandoo was left behind, and they were in the open world again, away from care. Whenever man drives his tent-pegs deep, to stay, he drives them into underlying water of sorrow. Best ride tentless. So thought the boys.
They were going to a place called Paddy’s Crossing, a settlement new to Jack, but well known to Tom as the place-where-men-went-when-they-wanted-a-private-jamboree. What a jamboree was, Jack, being a gentleman, that is not a lady, would learn in due course.
As the ground came to a rolling hollow, Tom set off at a good pace, and away they went, galloping beautifully along the soft earth trail, galloping, galloping, putting the miles between them and Wandoo and women and care. They both rode in a kind of passion for riding, for hurling themselves ahead down the new road. To be men out alone in the world, away from the women and the dead stone of trouble.
They reached the river hours before Rackett’s turn-out. Fording it they rode into the mushroom settlement, a string of slab cabins with shingle roofs and calico window-panes — or else shuttered-up windows. The stoves were outside the chimney-less cabins, under brush shelters. One such “kitchen,” a fore-runner, had already a roof of flattened-out, rusty tin cans.
But it was a cosy, canny nook, homely, nestling down in the golden corner of the earth, the mimosa in bloom by the river. And it was beautifully ephemeral. As transient, as casual as the bushes themselves.
Jack for the moment had a dread of solid houses of brick and stone and permanence. There was always horror somewhere inside them.
He wanted the empty, timeless Australia, with nooks like this of flimsy wooden cabins by a river with a wattle bush.
There was one older, white-washed cabin with vine trellises.
“That’s Paddy’s,” said Tom. “He grows grapes, and makes wine out of the little black ones. But the muscats is best. I’m not keen on wine, anyhow. Something a drop more warming.”
Jack was amazed at the good Tom. He had never known him to drink.
“There’s nobody about,” said Jack, as they rode up the incline between the straggling cabins.
“All asleep,” said Tom.
It was not so, however, because as they crested the slope and looked into the little hollow beyond, they saw a central wooden building, hall or mission or church, and people crowding like flies.
But Tom turned up to Paddy’s white inn, up the side slope. He was remorseful about having galloped the horses at the beginning of such a long trip. The inn seemed deserted. Tom coo-eeed! but there was no answer.
“All shut up!” he said. “What’s that paper on the door?” Jack got down and walked stiffly to the door, for the ride had been long and hard and downhill, and his knees were hurting. “‘Gone to the wedin be ome soon P. O. T.’“ he read.
“What is P. O. T.?” he asked.
“What I stand in need of,” said the amazing Tom.
They were just turning their horses towards the stable when, with a racket and a canter, an urchin drove round from the yard in a pitch-black wicker chaise, a bone-white, careworn horse slopping between the shafts.
“You two blokes,” yelled the urchin, “‘d better get on th’ trail for th’ church, else Father Prendy ‘ll be on y’ tail, I tell y’.”
“What’s up?” shouted Tom.
“I’m just off fer th’ bride. Ol’ Nick ‘ere ‘eld me up runnin’ away from me in the paddock.”
Tom grinned, the outfit swept past. Our heroes took their horses to the stable and settled them down conscientiously. Then they set off, glad to be on foot, down to the church.
The crowd was buzzing. It was half-past three. Father Prendy, the old mission priest, who looked like a dusty old piece of furniture from a loft, was peering up the road. The black wicker buggy still made no appearance with the bride.
“Two o’clock’s the legal limit for marriages,” said Father Prendy. “But praise God, we’ve half an hour yet.”
And he showed his huge watch, which said half-past one, since he had slipped away for a moment to put back the fingers.
The slab-building — hall, school, and church — was now a church, though the oleographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort in Robes still glowed on the walls, and a blackboard stood with its face to the wall, and one of those wire things with coloured beads poked out from behind, and the globe of the world could not be hidden entirely by the eucalyptus boughs.
But it was a church. A table with a white cloth and a crucifix was the altar. Crimson-flowering gum-blossom embowered the walls, the blackboard, the windows, but left the Queen and Prince Consort in full isolation. Forms were ranked on the mud floor, and these forms were densely packed with settlers dressed in all kinds of clothes. It was not only a church, it was a wedding. Just inside the door, like a figure at Madame Tussaud’s, sat an elderly creature in greenish evening suit with white waistcoat, and copper-toed boots, waiting apparently for the Last Trump. On the other side was a brown-whiskered man in frock-coat, a grey bell-topper in his hand, leaning balanced on a stick. He was shod in white socks and carpet slippers. Later on this gentleman explained to Jack: “I suffer from corns, and shouldn’t be happy in boots.”
There was a great murmuring and staring, and shuffling and shifting as Jack and Tom came up, as though one of them was the bride in disguise. The wooden church buzzed like a cocoanut shell. A red-faced man seized Tom’s arm as if Tom were a long-lost brother, and Jack was being introduced, shaking the damp, hot, trembling hand of the red-faced man, who was called Paddy.
“It’s fair come over me, so ut has! — praise be to the saints an’ may the devil run away with them two young termagants! Father Prendy makin’ them come to this pass all at onst! For mark my words, in his own mind he’s thinkin’ the wrong they’ve done, neither of them speakin’ to confess, till he was driven to remark on the girl’s unnatural figure. And not a soul in the world, mark you, has seen ‘em speak a word to one another for the last year in or out. But she says it’s he, an’ Denny Mackinnon, he payin’, I’ll be bound, that black priest of a Father Prendy to come over me an’ make me render up my poor innocent Pat to the hussy, in holy matrimony. May the saints fly away with ‘em.”
He wiped away his sweat, speechless. And Denny Mackinnon, the hussy’s father — it could be no other than he — in moth-eaten scarlet coat and overall trousers, and top-boots slashed for his bunions, and forage-cap slashed for his increased head, stood bulging on the other side of the door, compressed in his youthful uniform, and scarlet in the face with, the compression. He was a stout man with a black beard and a fixed, fierce, solemn expression. Creator of this agitated occasion, he was almost bursting with wrathful agitation as that hussy of a daughter of his still failed to appear. By his side stood an ancient man, with a long grey beard, anciently clad.
Patrick, the bridegroom to be, lurked near his father. He was a thin, pale, freckled, small-faced youth with broad, brittle shoulders and brittle limbs, who would no doubt, in time, fill out into a burly fellow. As it was, he was agitated and unlovely in a new ready-made suit and a black bomb of a hard hat that wouldn’t stay on, and new boots that stank to heaven of improperly dressed kangaroo hide: one of the filthiest of stinks.
Poor Paddy, the father of the bridegroom, was a tall, thin, well set-up man with trembling hands and a face like beet-root, garbed in a blue coat with brass buttons, mole trousers, leggings, and a sideways-leaning top hat. His tie was a flowing red with white spots. His eyes were light blue and wickedly twinkling behind their slight wateriness.
“What’s that yer sayin’ about me?” said Father Prendy, coming up rubbing his hands, bowing to the strangers, beaming with a cheerfulness that could outlast any delay under the sun.
“‘Twas black I was callin’ ye, Father Prendy,” said Paddy. “For the fine pair of black eyes ye carry, why not? Isn’t it a good drink ye’ll be havin’ on me afore the day is out, eh? Isn’t it a pretty penny ye’re costin’ me, with your marrin’ an’ givin’ in marriage? An’ why isn’t it Danny what pays the wedding breakfast, eh?”
“Hold your peace, Paddy, my dear. I see a wagon comin’, don’t I?”
Sure enough the black wicker buggy rattling down hill, the white horse seeming to swim, the urchin standing up, feet wide apart, elbows high up, bending forward and urging the bone-white steed with curses unnameable.
“What now! What now!” murmured the priest, feeling in his pocket for his stole. “What now!”
“Where’s Dad?” yelled the urchin, pulling the bone-white steed on its bony haunches, in front of the church.
Dad had gone round the corner. But he came bustling and puffing and bursting in his skin-tight scarlet coat, that almost cut his arms off, his own ancient father, with a long grey beard, pushing him irritably, propelling him towards the slippery boy. As if this family, generation by generation, got more and more behindhand in its engagements.
“Gawd’s sake!” blowed the scarlet Dad, as the old grey granddad shoved him.
“Hold ye breath, Dad, ‘n come ‘ome!” said the urchin, subsiding comfortably on to the seat, and speaking as if he enjoyed the utmost privacy. “Sis can’t get away. She’s had a baby. An’ Ma says I was to tell Mr. O’Burk as it’s a foine boy, an’ would Father Prendy step up, and Pat O’Burk can come ‘n see with his own eyes.”
CHAPTER XIV
JAMBOREE
“Let’s get along,” said Jack uncomfortably, in Tom’s ear. “Get! Not for mine! We’re in luck’s way, if ever we were.”
“There’s no fun under the circumstances.”
“Oh, Lord my, ain’t there! What’s wrong? They’re all packing into the buggy. Father Prendy’s putting his watch back a few more minutes. He’ll have ‘em married before you can betcher life. It’s a wedding, this is, boy!”
The people now came crowding, nudging, whispering, giggling, stumbling out of the church. The gentleman in the carpet slippers rakishly adjusted his grey bell-topper over his left brow, and came swaggering forward.
“Major Brownlee — Mr. Jack Grant,” Tom introduced them.
“Retired and happy in the country,” the Major explained, and he continued garrulously to explain his circumstances, his history and his family history. This continued all the way to the inn: a good half-hour, for the Major walked insecurely on his tender feet.
When they arrived at Paddy’s white, trellised house, all was in festivity. Paddy had thrown open the doors, disclosing the banquet spread in the bar parlour. Large joints of baked meat, ham, tongue, fowls, cakes and bottles and bunches of grapes and piles of apples: these Jack saw in splendid confusion.
“Come along in, come along in!” cried Paddy, as the Major and his young companions hesitated under the vine-trellis. “I guess ye’re the last. Come along in — all welcome! — an’ wet the baby’s eye. Sure, she’s a clever girl to get a baby an’ a man the same fine afternoon. A fine child, let me tell you. Father Prendy named him for me, Paddy O’Burk Tracy, on the spot, the minute the wedding was tied up. So yer can please yerselves whether it’s a christening ye’re coming to, or a wedding. I offer ye the choice. Come in.”
“P. O. T.” thought Jack. He still did not feel at ease. Perhaps Paddy noticed it. He came over and slapped him on the back.
“It’s yerself has brought good luck to the house, sir. Sit ye down an’ help y’self. Sit ye down an’ make y’self at home.”
Jack sat down along with the rest of the heterogeneous company. Paddy went round pouring red wine into glasses.
“Gentlemen!” he announced from the head of the table. “We are all here, for the table’s full up. The first toast is: The stranger within our gates!”
Everybody drank but Jack. He was uncomfortably uncertain whether the baby was meant, or himself. At the last moment he hastily drank, to transfer the honour to the baby.
Then came “The Bride!” then “The Groom!” then “The Priest! Father Prendy, that black limb o’ salvation!” Dozens of toasts, it didn’t seem to matter to whom. And everybody drank and laughed, and made clumsy jokes. There were no women present, at least no women seated. Only the women who went round the table, waiting. One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Westminster chimes from the Grandfather’s clock behind Jack. Seven o’clock! He had not even noticed them bring in the lights. Father Prendy was on his feet blessing the bride: “at the moment absent on the high mission of motherhood.” He then blessed the bridegroom, at the moment asleep with his head on the table.
The table had been cleared, save for bottles, fruit, and terrible cigars. The air was dense with smoke, bitter in the eyes, thick in the head. Everything seemed to be turning thick and swimmy, and the people seemed to move like living oysters in a natural, live liquor. A girl was sitting on Jack’s chair, putting her arm surreptitiously round his waist, sipping out of his glass. But he pushed her a little aside, because he wanted to watch four men who had started playing euchre.
