"Yes, if we could afford it," Tom hastily put in. And he raised his stunned eyes to Jack. Jack shrugged, and looked in the empty fireplace, and thought of the little fires Gran used to have.
Money! Money! Money! The moment you entered within four walls it was the word money, and your mouth full of ashes.
And then again something hardened in his soul. All his life he had been slipping away from the bugbear of money. It was no good. You had to turn round and get a grip on the miserable stuff. There was nothing else for it. Though money nauseated him, he now accepted the fact that he must have control over money, and not try just to slip by.
He began to repent of having judged Gran. That little old witch of a Gran, he had hated the way she had seemed to hoard money and gloat in the secret possession of it. But perhaps she knew, somebody must control it, somebody must keep a hand over it. Like a deadly weapon. Money! Property! Gran fighting for them, to bequeath them to the man she loved.
Perhaps she too had really hated money. She wouldn't make a will. Neither would Dad. Their secret repugnance for money and possessions. But you had to have property, else you were down and out. The men you loved had to have property, or they were down and out. Like Lennie!
Poor old plucky Gran, fighting for her man. It was all a terrible muddle anyhow. But he began to understand her motive.
Yes, if Len had got a girl into trouble and wanted to marry her, the best he could do would be to have money and buy himself a little place. Otherwise, heaven knows what would happen to him. With their profound indifference to the old values, these Australians seemed either to exaggerate the brutal importance of money, or they wanted to waste money altogether, and themselves along with it. This was what Gran feared: that her best male heirs would go and waste themselves, as Jacob had begun to waste himself. The generous ones would just waste themselves, because of their profound mistrust of the old values.
Better rescue Lennie for the little while it was still possible to rescue him. Jack's mind turned to his own money. And then, looking at that inner door, he seemed to see Gran's vehement figure, pointing almost viciously with her black stick. She had tried so hard to drive the wedge of her meaning into Jack's consciousness. And she had failed. He had refused to take her meaning.
But now with a sigh that was almost a groan, he took up the money burden. The "stocking" she had talked about, and which he had left in the realms of unreality, was an actuality. That witch Gran, with her uncanny, hateful second sight, had put by a stocking for Lennie, and entrusted the secret of it to Jack. And he had refused the secret. He hated those affairs.
Now he must assume the mysterious responsibility for this money. He got up and went to the chimney, and peered into the black opening. Then he began to feel carefully along the side of the chimney-stack inside, where there was a ledge. His hand went deep in soot and charcoal and grey ash.