Chapter XXIV — The Offer to Mary
I
They worked for months at the mine, and still it turned out richly. Though they kept as quiet as possible, the fame spread. They had a bonanza. They were all three going to be rich, and Jack was going to be very rich. In the light of his luck, he was “the General” to everybody.
And in the midst of this flow of fortune, came another, rather comical windfall. Again the news was forwarded by Mr. George, along with a word of congratulation from that gentleman. The forwarded letter read:
“Dear Sir,
This come hopping to find you well as it leaves me at prisent thanks be to almity God. You dear uncle Passed Away peaceful on Satterday nite And though it be not my place to tell you of it I am Grateful to have the oppertunity to offer my umble Respecs before the lord and Perlice I take up my pen with pleashr to inform you that He passed without Pain and even Drafts as he aloud the umberrela to be put down and the Book read.
The 24 salm and I kep the ink and paper by to rite of his sudden dismiss but he lingered long years after the bote wint so was onable to Inform you before he desist the doctor rote a butiful certicket of death saying he did of sensible decay but I don no how he brote himself to rite it as the pore master was wite as driven snow and no blemish. And being his most umble and Dutiful servants we could not ave brout ourself to hever ave rote as he was sensible Pecos god knows the pore sole was not. Be that as it may we burned him proud under the prisent arrangements of town councel the clerk who was prisent xpects the docters will he mad up the nite you was hear in the cimetary and pending your Return Holds It In Bond as Being rite for us we are Yor Respectable servants to Oblige Hand Commend.
Emma and Amos Lewis.”
Jack and Tom roared with laughter over this epistle, that brought back so vividly the famous trip up North.
“Gloryanna, General, you’ve got your property at Coney Hatch all right,” said Tom.
There was a letter from Mr. George saying that the defunct John Grant was the son of Jack’s mother’s eldest sister, that he had been liable all his life to bouts of temporary insanity, but that in a period of sanity he had signed the will drawn up by Doctor Rackett, when the two boys called at the place several years before, and that the will had been approved. So that Jack, as legal heir and nearest male relative, could now come down and take possession of the farm.
“I don’t want that dismal place,” said Jack. “Let it go to the Crown. I’ve no need of it now.”
“Don’t be a silly cuckoo!” said Tom. “You saw it of a wet night with Ally Sloper in bed under a green cart umbrella. Go an’ look at it of a fine day. An’ then if you don’t want it, sell it or lease it, but don’t let the Crown rake it in.”
So in about a fortnight’s time Jack rather reluctantly left the mine, with its growing heaps of refuse, and departed from the mining settlement which had become a sort of voluntary prison for him, and went west to Perth. He was already a rich man and notorious in the colony. He rode with two pistols in his belt, and that unchanging aloof look on his face. But he carried himself with pride, rode a good horse, wore well-made riding breeches and a fine bandanna handkerchief loose round his neck, and looked, with a silver studded band round his broad felt hat, a mixture of gold miner, a gentleman settler, and a bandit chief. Perhaps he felt a mixture of them all.
Mr. George received him with a great welcome. And Jack was pleased to see the old man. But he refused absolutely to go to the club or to the Government House, or to meet any of the responsible people of the town.
“I don’t want to see them, Mr. George. I don’t want to see them.”
And poor Old George, his nose a bit out of joint, had to submit to leaving Jack alone.
Jack had his old room in Mr. George’s house. The Good Plain Cook was still going. And Aunt Matilda, rather older, stouter, with more lines in her face, came to tea with Mary and Miss Blessington. Mary had not married Mr. Blessington. But she had remained friends with the odd daughter, who was now a self-contained young woman, shy, thin, well-bred, and delicate. Mr. Blessington had not married again. In Aunt Matilda’s opinion, he was still waiting for Mary. And Mary had refused Tom’s rather doubtful offer. Tom was still nervous about Honeysuckle. So there they all were.
When Jack shook hands with Mary, he had a slight shock. He had forgotten her. She had gone out of his consciousness. But when she looked up at him with her dark, clear, waiting eyes, as if she had been watching and waiting for him afar off, his heart gave a queer dizzy lurch. He had forgotten her. They say the heart has a short memory. But now, as a dark hotness gathered in his heart, he realised that his blood had not forgotten her. He had only forgotten her with his head. His blood, with its strange submissiveness and its strange unawareness of time, had kept her just the same.
The blood has an eternal memory. It neither forgets nor moves on ahead. But it is quiescent and submits to the mind’s oversway.
He had a certain blood-connection with Mary. He had utterly forgotten it, in the stress and rage of other things. And now, the moment she lifted her eyes to him, and he saw her dusky, quiet, heavy permanent face, the dull heat started in his breast again, and he remembered how he had told her he would come for her again.
Since his twins were born and he had been so busy with the mine, and he had Monica, he had not given any thought to women. But the moment he saw Mary and met her eyes, the dark thought struck home in him again: I want Mary for my other woman. He didn’t want to displace Monica. Monica was Monica. But he wanted this other woman too.
Aunt Matilda dear-boyed him more than ever. But now he was not a dear boy, he didn’t feel a dear boy, and she was put out.
“Dear boy! and how does Monica stand that drying climate?”
“She is quite well again, Marm.”
“Poor child! Poor child! I hope you will bring her into a suitable home here in Perth, and have the children suitably brought up. It is so fortunate for you your mine is so successful. Now you can build a home here by the river, among us all, and be charming company for us, like your dear father.”
Mary was watching him with black eyes, and Miss Blessington with her wide, quick, round, dark-grey eyes. There was a frail beauty about that odd young woman; frail, highly-bred, sensitive, with an uncanny intelligence.
“No, Marm,” said Jack cheerfully. “I shall not come and live in Perth.”
“Dear boy, of course you will! You won’t forsake us and take your money and your family and your attractive self far away to England? No, don’t do that. It is just what your dear father did. Robbed us of one of our sweetest girls, and never came back.”
“No, I shan’t go to England either,” smiled Jack.
“Then what will you do?”
“Stay at the mine for the time being.”
“Oh, but the mine won’t last forever. And dear boy, don’t waste your talents and your charm mining, when it is no longer necessary! Oh, do come down to Perth, and bring your family. Mary is pining to see your twins: and dear Monica. Of course we all are.”
Jack smiled to himself. He would no longer give in a hair’s breadth to any of these dreary world-people.
“À la bonne heure!” he said, using one of his mother’s well-worn tags. But then his mother could rattle bad colloquial French, and he couldn’t.
Mary asked him many questions about the mine and Monica, and Hilda Blessington listened with lowered head, only occasionally fixing him with queer searching eyes, like some odd creature not quite human. Jack was something of a hero. And he was pleased. He wanted to be a hero.
But he was no hero any more for Aunt Matilda. Now that the cherub look had gone forever, and the shy, blushing, blurting boy had turned into a hard-boned, healthy young man, with a half haughty aloofness and a little reckless smile that made you feel uncomfortable, she was driven to venting some venom on him.
“That is the worst of the colonies,” she said from her bluish powdered face. “Our most charming, cultured young men go out to the back of beyond, and they come home quite—quite—”
“Quite what, Marm?”
“Why I was going to say uncouth, but that’s perhaps a little strong.”
“I should say not at all,” he answered. He disliked the old lady, and enjoyed baiting her. Great stout old hen, she had played cock-o’-the-walk long enough.
“How many children have you got out there?” she suddenly asked, rudely.
“We have only the twins of my own,” he answered. “But of course there is Jane.”
“Jane! Jane! Which is Jane?”
“Jane is Easu’s child. Monica’s first.”
Everybody started. It was as if a bomb had been dropped in the room. Miss Blessington coloured to the roots of her fleecy brown hair. Mary studied her fingers, and Aunt Matilda sat in a Queen Victoria statue pose, outraged.
“What is she like?” asked Mary softly, looking up.
“Who, Jane? She’s a funny little urchin. I’m fond of her. I believe she’d always stand by me.”
Mary looked at him. It was a curious thing to say.
“Is that how you think of people—whether they would always stand by you or not?” she asked softly.
“I suppose it is,” he laughed. “Courage is the first quality in life, don’t you think? And fidelity the next.”
“Fidelity?” asked Mary.
“Oh, I don’t mean automatic fidelity. I mean faithful to the living spark,” he replied a little hastily.
“Don’t you try to be too much of a spark, young man,” snapped Aunt Matilda, arousing from her statuesque offence in order to let nothing pass by her.
“I promise you I won’t try,” he laughed.
Mary glanced at him quickly—then down at her fingers.
“I think fidelity is a great problem,” she said softly.
“Pray, why?” bounced Aunt Matilda. “You give your word, and you stick to it.”
“Oh, it’s not just simple word-faithfulness, Mrs. Watson,” said Jack. He had Mary in mind.
“Well, I suppose I have still to live and learn,” said Aunt Matilda.
“What’s that you have still to live and learn, Matilda?” said Mr. George, coming in again with papers.
“This young man is teaching me lessons about life. Courage is the first quality in life, if you please.”
“Well, why not?” said Old George amiably. “I like spunk myself.”
“Courage to do the right thing!” said Aunt Matilda.
“And who’s going to decide which is the right thing?” asked the old man, teasing her.
“There’s no question of it,” said Aunt Matilda.
“Well,” said the old lawyer, rubbing his head, “there often is, my dear woman, a very big question!”
“And fidelity is the second virtue,” said Mary, looking up at him with trustful eyes, enquiringly.
“A man’s no good unless he can keep faith,” said the old man.
“But what is it one must remain faithful to?” came the quiet cool voice of Hilda Blessington.
“Do you know what old Gran Ellis said?” asked Jack. “She said a man’s own true self is God in him. She was a queer old bird.”
“His true self,” said Aunt Matilda. “His true self! And I should say old Mrs. Ellis was a doubtful guide to young people, judging from her own family.”
“She made a great impression on me, Marm,” said Jack politely.
Mr. George had brought the papers referring to the new property. Jack read various documents, rather absently. Then the title deeds. Then he studied a fascinating little green-and-red map, “delineating and setting forth,” with “easements and encumbrances,” whatever they were. There was a bank-book showing a balance of four hundred pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, in the West Australian Bank.
Jack told about his visit to Grant Farm, and the man under the umbrella. They all laughed.
“The poor fellow had a bad start,” said Mr. George. “But he was a good farmer and a good business man, in his right times. Oh, he knew who he was leaving the place to, when Rackett drew up that will.”
“Gran Ellis told me about him,” said Jack. “She told me about all the old people. She told me about my mother’s old sister. And she told me about the father of this crazy man as well, but—”
Mr. George was looking at him coldly and fiercely.
“The poor fellow’s father,” said the old man, “was an Englishman who thought himself a swell, but wasn’t too much of a high-born gentleman to abandon a decent girl and go round to the east side and marry another woman, and flaunt round in society with women he hadn’t married.”
Jack remembered. It was Mary’s father: seventh son of old Lord Haworth. What a mix-up! How bitter Old George sounded!
“It seems to have been a mighty mix-up out hare, fifty years ago, sir,” he said mildly.
“It was a mix-up then—and is a mix-up now.”
“I suppose,” said Jack, “if the villain of a gentleman had never abandoned my Aunt—I can’t think of her as an Aunt—he’d never have gone to Sydney, and his children that he had there would never have been born.”
“I suppose not,” said Mr. George drily. But he started a little and involuntarily looked at Mary.
“Do you think it would have been better if they had never been born?” Jack asked pertinently.
“I don’t set up to judge,” said the old man.
“Does Mrs. Watson?”
“I certainly think it would be better,” said Mrs. Watson, “if that poor half-idiot cousin of yours had never been born.”
“I’ve got Gran Ellis on my mind,” said Jack. “She was funny, what she condemned and what she didn’t. I used to think she was an old terror. But I can understand her better now. She was a wise woman, seems to me.”
“Indeed!” said Aunt Matilda. “I never put her and wisdom together.”
“Yes, she was wise. I can see now. She knew that sins are as vital a part of life as virtues, and she stuck up for the sins that are necessary to life.”
“What’s the matter with you, Jack Grant, that you go and start moralising?” said Old George.
“Why sir, it must be that my own sinful state is dawning on my mind,” said Jack, “and I’m wondering whether to take Mrs. Watson’s advice and repent and weep, etc., etc. Or whether to follow old Gran Ellis’ lead, and put a sinful feather in my cap.”
“Well,” said Old George, smiling, “I don’t know. You talk about courage and fidelity. Sin usually means doing something rather cowardly, and breaking your faith in some direction.”
“Oh I don’t know, sir. Tom and Lennie are faithful to me. But that doesn’t mean they are not free. They are free to do just what they like, so long as they are faithful to the spark that is between us. As I am faithful to them. It seems to me, Sir, one is true to one’s word in business, in affairs. But in life one can only be true to the spark.”
“I’m afraid there’s something amiss with you, son, that’s set you off arguing and splitting hairs.”
“There is. Something is always amiss with most of us. Old Gran Ellis was a lesson to me, if I’d known. Something is always wrong with the lot of us. And I believe in thinking before I act.”
“Let us hope so,” said Mr. George. “But it sounds funny sort of thinking you do.”
“But,” said Hilda Blessington, with wide, haunted eyes, “what is the spark that one must be faithful to? How are we to be sure of it?”
“You just feel it. And then you act upon it. That’s courage. And then you always live up to the responsibility of your act. That’s faithfulness. You have to keep faith in all kinds of ways. I have to keep faith with Monica and the babies, and young Jane, and Lennie and Tom and dead Gran Ellis: and—and more—yes, more.”
He looked with clear hard eyes at Mary, and at the young girl. They were both watching him, puzzled and perturbed. The two old people in the background were silent but hostile.
“Do you know what I am faithful to?” he said, still to the two young women, but letting the elders hear. “I am faithful to my own inside, when something stirs in me. Gran Ellis said that was God in me. I know there’s a God outside of me. But he tells me to go my own way, and never be frightened of people and the world, only be frightened of Him. And if I felt I really wanted two wives, for example, I would have them and keep them both. If I really wanted them, it would mean it was the God outside of me bidding me, and it would be up to me to obey, world or no world.”
“You describe exactly the devil driving you,” said Aunt Matilda.
“Doesn’t he!” laughed Mr. George, who was oddly impressed. “I hope there isn’t a streak of madness in the family.”
“No, there’s not. The world is all so tame, it’s a bit imbecile, in my opinion. Really a dangerous idiot. If I do want two wives—or even three—I do. Why should I mind what the idiot says.”
“Sounds like you’d gone cracked, out there in that mining settlement,” said Mr. George.
“If I said I wanted two fortunes instead of one, you wouldn’t think it cracked,” said Jack, with a malicious smile.
“No, only greedy,” said Old George.
“Not if I could use them. And the same if I have real use for two wives—or even three—” said Jack, grinning, but with a queer bright intention, at Hilda Blessington. “Well, three wives would be three fortunes for my blood and spirit.”
“You are not allowed to say such things, even as a joke,” said Aunt Matilda, with ponderous disapproval. “It is no joke to me.”
“Surely I say them in dead earnest,” persisted Jack mischievously. He was aware of Mary and Hilda Blessington listening, and he wanted to throw a sort of lasso over them.
“You’ll merely find yourself in gaol for bigamy,” said Mr. George.
“Oh,” said Jack, “I wouldn’t risk that. It would really be a Scotch marriage. Monica is my legal wife. But what I pledged myself to, I’d stick to, as I stick to Monica, I’d stick to the others the same.”
“I won’t hear any more of this nonsense,” said Aunt Matilda, rising.
“Nonsense it is,” said Old George testily.
Jack laughed. Their being bothered amused him. He was a little surprised at himself breaking out in this way. But the sight of Mary, and the sense of a new, different responsibility, had struck it out of him. His nature was ethical, inclined to be emotionally mystical. Now, however, the sense of foolish complacency and empty assurance in Aunt Matilda, and in all the dead-certain people of this world struck out of him a hard, sharp, non-emotional opposition. He felt hard and mischievous, confronting them. Who were they, to judge and go on judging? Who was Aunt Matilda, to judge the dead fantastic soul of the fierce Gran? The Ellises, the Ellises, they all had some of Gran’s fierce pagan uneasiness about them, they were all a bit uncanny. That was why he loved them so.
And Mary! Mary had another slow, heavy, mute mystery that waited and waited forever, like a lode-stone. And should he therefore abandon her, abandon her to society and a sort of sterility? Not he. She was his. His, and no other man’s. She knew it herself. He knew it. Then he would fight them all. Even the good Old George. For the mystery that was his and Mary’s.
Let it be an end of popular goodness. Let there be another deeper, fiercer, untamed sort of goodness, like in the days of Abraham and Samson and Saul. If Jack was to be good he would be good with these great old men, the heroic fathers, not with the saints. The Christian goodness had gone bad, decayed almost into poison. It needed again the old heroic goodness of untamed men, with the wild great God who was forever too unknown to be a paragon.
Old George was a little afraid of Jack, uneasy about him. He thought him not normal. The boy had to be put in a category by himself, like a madman in a solitary cell. And at the same time, the old man was delighted. He was delighted with the young man’s physical presence. Bewildered by the careless, irrational things Jack would say, the old bachelor took off his spectacles and rubbed his tired eyes again and again, as if he were going blind, and as if he were losing his old dominant will.
He had been a dominant character in the colony so long. And now this young fellow was laughing at him and stealing away his power of resistance.
“Don’t make eyes at me, sir,” said Jack, laughing. “I know better than you what life means.”
“You do, do you? Oh you do?” said the old man. And he laughed too. Somehow it made him feel warm and easy. “A fine crazy affair it would be if it were left to you.” And he laughed loud at the absurdity.