VII
It was late, and the noise of rain outside, and weird wind blowing. Mrs. Ellis had been in and whispered that Dr. Rackett was not home yet—that he had probably waited somewhere for the shay. And that she had told the Reds to keep away.
There was dead silence save for the weather outside, and a noise of the fire. The candles were all blown out.
He was startled by hearing Gran’s voice:
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings—”
“She’s reading,” thought Jack, though there was no light to read by. And he wondered why the old lady wasn’t asleep.
“I knew y’r mother’s father, Jack Grant,” came the thin, petulant voice. “He cut off my leg. Devil of a fella wouldn’t let me die when I wanted to. Cut it off without a murmur, and no chloroform.”
The thin voice was so devilishly awake, in the darkness of the night, like a voice out of the past piercing the inert present.
“What did he care! What did he care! Not a bit,” Gran went on. “And y’re another. You take after him. You’re such another. You’re a throw-back, to your mother’s father. I was wondering what I was going to do with those great galoots in my room all night. I’m glad it’s you.”
Jack thought: “Lord, have I got to sit here all night!”
“You’ve got the night before you,” said Gran’s demonishly wakeful voice, uncanny in its thin alertness, in the deep night. “So come round here to the fireside an’ make y’self comfortable.”
Jack rose obediently and went round the screen. After all, an arm-chair would be welcome.
“Well, say something,” said Gran.
The boy peered at her in the dusk, in a kind of fear.
“Then light me a candle, for the land’s sake,” she said pettishly.
He took a tin candle-stick with a tallow candle, blew the fire and made a yellow light. She looked like a carved ivory Chinese figure, almost grotesque, among her pillows.
“Yes, y’r like y’r grandfather: a stocky, stubborn man as didn’t say much, but dare do anything. And never had a son.—Hard as nails the man was.”
“More family!” thought Jack wearily, disapproving of Gran’s language thoroughly.
“Had two daughters though, and disowned the eldest. Your mother was the youngest. The eldest got herself into trouble and he turned her out. Regular obstinate fool, and no bowels of compassion. That’s how men are when y’ let ’em. You’re the same.”
Jack was so sleepy, so sleepy, and the words of the old woman seemed like something pricking him.
“I’d have stood by her—but I was her age, and what could I do? I’d have married her father if I could, for he was a widower. But he married another woman for his second, and I went by ship to Melbourne, and then I took poor old Ellis.”
What on earth made her say these things, he didn’t know, for he was dead sleepy, and if he’d been wide awake he wouldn’t have wanted her to unload this sort of stuff on him. But she went on, like the old demon she was:
“Men are fools, and women make ’em what they are. I followed your Aunt Lizzie up, years after. She married a man in the mounted police, and he sent the boy off. The boy was a bit weak-minded, and the man wouldn’t have him. So the lad disappeared into the bush. They say he was canny enough about business and farming, but a bit off about people. Anyway he was Mary’s half-brother: you met Mary in Perth. Her scamp of a father was father of that illegitimate boy. But she’s an orphan now, poor child: like that illegitimate half-brother of hers.”
Jack looked up pathetically. He didn’t want to hear. And Gran suddenly laughed at him, with the sudden daring, winsome laugh, like Lennie.
“Y’re a bundle of conventions, like y’r grandfather,” she said tenderly. “But y’ve got a kinder heart. I suppose that’s from y’r English father. Folks are tough in Australia: tough as whit-leather.—Y’ll be tempted to sin, but y’wont be tempted to condemn. And never you mind. Trust yourself, Jack Grant. Earn a good opinion of yourself, and never mind other folks. You’ve only got to live once. You know when you’re spirit glows—trust that. That’s you! That’s the spirit of God in you. Trust in that, and you’ll never grow old. If you knuckle under, you’ll grow old.”
She paused for a time.
“Though I don’t know that I’ve much room to talk,” she ruminated on. “There was my son Esau, he never knuckled under, and though he’s dead, I’ve not much good to say of him. But then he never had a kind heart: never. Never a woman loved Esau, though some feared him. I was not among ’em. Not I. I feared no man, not even your grand-father: except a little. But look at Dad here now. He’s got a kind heart: as kind a heart as ever beat. And he’s gone old. And he’s got heart disease. And he knuckled under. Ay, he knuckled under to me, he did, poor lad. And he’ll go off sudden, when his heart gives way. That’s how it is with kind-hearted men. They knuckle under, and they die young. Like Dad here. He’ll never make old bones. Poor lad!”
She mused again in silence.
“There’s nothing to win in life, when all’s said and done, but a good opinion of yourself. I’ve watched and I know. God is y’rself. Or put it the other way if you like: y’rself is God. So win a good opinion of yourself, and watch the glow inside you.”
Queer, thought Jack, that this should be an old woman’s philosophy. Yourself is God! Partly he believed it, partly he didn’t. He didn’t know what he believed.—Watch the glow inside you. That he understood.
He liked Gran. She was so alone in life, amid all her children. He himself was a lone wolf too: among the lambs of the family. And perhaps Red Easu was a lone wolf.
“But what was I telling you?” Gran resumed. “About your illegitimate cousin. I followed him up too. He went back beyond Atherton, and took up land. He’s got a tidy place now, and he’s never married. He’s wrong in his head about people, but all right about the farm. I’m hoping that place’ll come to Mary one day, for the child’s got nothing. She’s a good child—a good child. Her mother was a niece of mine.”
She seemed to be going to sleep. But like Herbert, she roused again.
“Y’d better marry Mary. Make up your mind to it,” she said.
And instantly he rebelled against the thought. Never.
“Perhaps I’d ought to have said: ‘The best in yourself is God,’” she mused. “Perhaps that’s more it. The best in yourself is God. But then who’s going to say what is the best in yourself. A kind man knuckles under, and thinks it’s the best in himself. And a hard man holds out, and thinks that’s the best in himself. And its not good for a kind man to knuckle under, and it’s not good for a hard-hearted man to hold out. What’s to be done, deary-me, what’s to be done. And no matter what we say, people will be as they are.—You can but watch the glow.”
She really did doze off. And Jack stole away to the other side of the screen to escape her, leaving the candle burning.