Chapter XX — The Last of Easu
I
They knew that Easu was married, but they were hardly prepared for the dirty baby crawling on the verandah floor. Easu had seen them come through the gate, and was striding across to meet them, after bawling something in his bullying way to someone inside the house: presumably his wife.
Outwardly, he was not much altered. Yet there was an undefinable change for the worse. He was one of those men whom marriage seems to humiliate, and to make ugly. As if he despised himself for being married.
Easu ignored the baby as if it were not there, striding past into the house, leading the newcomers into the parlour. It was darkened in there, to keep out the flies; but he pulled up the blind: “t’see their blanky fisogs.” And he called out to the missus to bring glasses.
The parlour was like most parlours. Enlarged photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, the Red parents, in large pine frames, on the wall. A handsome china clock under a glass case on the mantelpiece, with flanking vases to match, on fawn-and-red woollen crochet mats. An oval, rather curvy table in the middle of the room, with the family Bible, and the meat under a fly-proof wire cover. The parlour was the coolest place for the meat.
Easu shifted the red obnoxity, wire cover and all, to the top of a cupboard where some cups and saucers were displayed, and drew forth a demijohn of spirit from the back of the horse-hair sofa, in front of the window.
Mrs. Easu came in with the glasses. She was a thin, pale-faced young woman with big dark eyes and her hair in huge curling pins, and a hostile bearing. She took no notice of the visitors: only let her big what-do-you-want eye pass over them with distaste beneath her bald forehead. It was her fixed belief that whoever came to the house came to get something, if they could. And they were not going to get it out of her. She made an alliance with Easu so far. But her rather protruding teeth and her vindictive mouth showed that Easu would get as many bites as kisses.
She set the glasses from her hands on to the table, and looked down at Easu under her pale lashes.
“What else d’ye want?” she asked rudely.
“Nothing. If I want anything I’ll holloa.”
They seemed to be on terms of mutual rudeness. She had been quite an heiress: brought Easu a thousand pounds. But the way she said it—a tharsand parnds!—as if it was something absolutely you couldn’t get beyond, made even Easu writhe. She was common, to put it commonly. She spoke in a common way, she thought in a common way, and she acted in a common way. But she had energy, and even a vulgar suffisance. She thought herself as good as anybody, and a bit better, on the strength of the tharsand parnds!
“‘S not eddication as matters, it’s munney!” she said blatantly to Lennie. “At your age y’ought t’ave somethink in th’ bank.”
He of course hated the sight of her after that. She had looked at him with a certain superciliousness and contempt in her conceited brown eyes, because he had no money and was supposed to be clever. He never forgave her.
But what did she care! She jerked up her sharp-toothed mouth, and sailed away. She wasn’t going to be put down by any penniless snobs. The Ellises! Who were the Ellises? Yes, indeed! They thought themselves so superior. Could they draw a tharsand parnd? Pah!
She felt a particularly spiteful, almost vindictive, scorn of Jack. He was somebody, was he? Ha! What was he worth? That was the point. How much munney did he reckon he’d got? “If yer want me ter think anythink of yer, yer mun show me yer bank-book,” she said.
Easu listened and grinned, and said nothing to all this. But she had a fiery temper of her own, and they went for one another like two devils. She wasn’t going to be daunted, she wasn’t. She had her virtues too. She had no method, but she was clean. The place was forever in a muddle, but she was always cleaning it, almost vindictively, as if the shine on the door-knob reflected some of the tharsand parnd. Even the baby was turned out and viciously cleaned once a day. But in the intervals it groped where it would. As for herself, she was a sight this morning, with her hair in huge iron waving-pins, and her forehead and her teeth both sticking out. She looked a sight to shudder at. But wait. Wait till she was dressed up and turning out in the buggy, in a coat and skirt of thick brown cord silk with orange and black braiding, and a hugely feathered hat, with huge floating ostrich feathers, an orange one and a brown one. And her teeth sticking out and a huge brooch of a lump of gold set with pearls and diamonds, and a great gold chain. And the baby, in a silk cape with pink ribbons, and a frilled silk bonnet of alternate pink and white ruches, mercilessly held against her chains and brooches! Wait!
Therefore when Jack glanced at her from a strange distance, she tossed her bald forehead with the curling-irons, and thought to herself: “You can look, Master Jack Nobody. And you can look again, next Sunday, when I’ve got my proper things on. Then you’ll see who’s got the munney!”
She seemed to think that her Sunday gorgeousness absolutely obliterated the grimness of her week of curling pins. “Six days shall thou labour in thy curling-irons.” She lived in them. They kept her hair out of the way and saved her having to do it up all the time.
And it may be that Easu never really looked at her in her teeth and pins. That was not the real Sarah Ann. The real Sarah Ann swayed with ostrich feathers; brown silk, brown and orange feathers, reddish hair, brown eyes, pale skin, and a stiff, militant, vulgar bearing that wasn’t going to let anybody put it over her. “They can’t put me down, whoever they are!” she asserted. “I consider myself equal to the best, and perhaps a little better.”
This Easu heard and saw with curious gratification. This was his Sarah Ann.
None the less, he was no fool. He saw the baffled, surprised look Jack turned upon this grisly young woman in curlers and teeth, as if he could not quite enter her in the class of human beings. And Easu was enough of an Ellis to know what that look meant. It was a silent “Good God!” And no man, when his wife enters the room, cares to hear another man’s horrified ejaculation: “Good God!” at the sight of her.
Easu wanted his wife to be common. Nevertheless, with the anomalousness of human beings, it humiliated him and put acid in his blood.
“Have a jorum!” said Easu to Tom.
“I s’d think you’re not goin’ to set down drinkin’ at this time of day,” she said, in her loud, common, interfering voice.
“What’s the time of the day to you?” asked Easu acidly, as he filled Tom’s glass.
“We can’t stop. Mall be expecting us back,” said Tom.
Easu silently filled Jack’s glass, and the wife went out, banging the door. Immediately she fell upon the baby and began to vituperate the little animal for its dirt. The men couldn’t hear themselves speak.
But Easu lifted up his chin and poured the liquor down his throat. He had shaved his beard, and had only three days of yellowish stubble. He smacked his lips as he set down his glass, and looked at the two boys with a sarcastic, gloating look.
“Find a few changes, eh?” he observed.
“Just a few.”
“How’s the place look?”
“All right.”
“Make a pile up North?”
“No.”
Easu grinned slowly.
“Thought you didn’t need to, eh?” he asked maliciously.
“Didn’t worry myself,” said Tom.
“Jack Grant come in for a fortune?” Easu asked, looking at Jack.
“No,” said Jack coldly. There was something about Easu’s vulgar, taunting eyes, which he couldn’t stand.
“Oh, you ’aven’t!” The pleased sneer was unbearable.
“How’s Ma?” asked Easu.
“All right,” said Tom, surprised.
“Don’t see much of her now,” said Easu.
“No, I saw the gate was blocked up,” said Tom.
“Looks like she blocked the wrong gate up.”
“How?”
“How? Well don’t you think she’d better have blocked up the gate over to Pink-eye Percy’s place?”—Easu was smiling with thin, gloating lips.
“Why?”
“Why? Don’t y’ know?”
“What?”
“Don’t ye know about Monica?”
Jack’s blood stood still for a moment, and death entered his soul again, to stay.
“No. What?”
“Didn’t Old George say nothing to y’ in Perth?”
“No!” said Tom, becoming sullen and dangerous.
“Well, that’s funny now! And Aunt Alice said nothing?”
“No! What about?”
Easu was smiling gloatingly, in silence, as if he had something very good.
“Well that’s funny now! Think of your getting right here, and not having heard a thing! I shouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Tom was going white under his tan.
“What’s amiss, Red?” he said curtly.
“To think as you haven’t heard! Why it was the talk of the place. Ross heard all about it in Perth. Didn’t you come across him there? He’s been in the Force quite a while now.”
“No! What was it he heard about?”
“Why, about Monica.”
“What about her?”
“D’y’ mean to say you don’t know?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
“Well!” and Easu smiled with curious, poisonous satisfaction. “I don’t know as I want to be the one to tell you.”
There was a moment’s dead silence. The sun was setting.
“What have you got to say?” asked Tom, his face set and blank, and his mouth taking on the lipless, Australian look.
“Funny thing nobody has told you. Why it happened six or seven months since.”
This was received in dead silence.
“She went off with Percy when the baby was a month old.”
Again there was nothing but dead silence.
“Mean she married Pink-eye Percy?” asked Tom, in a muffled tone.
“I dunno about marryin’ him. They say he’s got a wife or two already: legal and otherwise. All I know is they cleared out a month after the baby was born, and went down south.”
Still dead silence from the other two. The room was full of golden light. Jack was looking at the fly-dirts and the lamp-black on the ceiling. He was sitting in a horse-hair arm-chair, and the broken springs were uncomfortable, and the horse-hair scratched his wrist. Otherwise he felt vacant, and in a deathly way, remote.
“You’re minding what you’re saying?” came Tom’s empty voice.
“Minding what I’m saying!” echoed Easu rejoicingly. “I didn’t want to tell you. It was you who asked me.”
“Was the baby Percy’s baby?” asked Jack.
“I should say so,” Easu replied, stumbling. “I never asked her, myself. They were all thick with Percy at that time, and I was married with a family of my own. Why I’ve not been over to Wandoo for—for—for close on two years, I should think.”
“That’s what was wrong with Ma!” Tom was saying, in a dull voice, to himself.
“I wonder Old George or Mary didn’t prepare ye,” said Easu. “They both came down before the baby came. But seemingly Old George couldn’t do nothing. Percy confessing he was married, and trying to say he wasn’t to blame. However, he’s run off with Monica all right. Ma had a letter from her from Albany, to say there was no need to worry, Percy was playin’ the gentleman.”
“She never cared for him,” Jack cried.
“I dunno about that. Seems she’s been mad about him all the time. Maybe she waited for you to come back. I dunno! I tell you, I’ve never been over to Wandoo for nigh on two years.”
Jack could not bear any more. The golden light had gone out of the room, the sun was under the ridge—that ridge——
“Let’s get, Tom!” said Jack rising to his feet.
They stumbled out of the house, and went home in silence, through the dusk. Again the world had caved in, and they were walking through the ruins.
Ma was upstairs when they got home, but Katie had got the tea on the table, and Lennie was in. He was a tall, thin, silent, sensitive youth.
“Hullo, you two wanderin’ Jews!” he said.
“Hello, Len!”
“Come an’ ’ave y’ teas.”
Lennie was like the head of the house. They ate their meal in silence.