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 blub-bing. “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 gain’ 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 a 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. “Yell 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.