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My Brilliant Career

by Miles Franklin · English · Gutenberg #11620 · 499,963 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: My Brilliant Career

Author: Miles Franklin


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11620]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11620


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY BRILLIANT CAREER ***

My Brilliant Career

by Miles Franklin

1901




Contents

 INTRODUCTION
 CHAPTER ONE. I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER
 CHAPTER TWO. AN INTRODUCTION TO POSSUM GULLY
 CHAPTER THREE. A LIFELESS LIFE
 CHAPTER FOUR. A CAREER WHICH SOON CAREERED TO AN END
 CHAPTER FIVE. DISJOINTED SKETCHES AND CRUMBLES
 CHAPTER SIX. REVOLT
 CHAPTER SEVEN. WAS E’ER A ROSE WITHOUT ITS THORN?
 CHAPTER EIGHT. POSSUM GULLY LEFT BEHIND. HURRAH! HURRAH!
 CHAPTER NINE. AUNT HELEN’S RECIPE
 CHAPTER TEN. EVERARD GREY
 CHAPTER ELEVEN. YAH!
 CHAPTER TWELVE. ONE GRAND PASSION
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN. HE
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN. PRINCIPALLY LETTERS
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN. WHEN THE HEART IS YOUNG
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN. WHEN FORTUNE SMILES
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. IDYLLS OF YOUTH
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. AS SHORT AS I WISH HAD BEEN THE MAJORITY OF SERMONS TO WHICH I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO GIVE EAR
 CHAPTER NINETEEN. THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER 1896
 CHAPTER TWENTY. SAME YARN (Cont.)
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. MY UNLADYLIKE BEHAVIOUR AGAIN
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. SWEET SEVENTEEN
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. AH, FOR ONE HOUR OF BURNING LOVE, ’TIS WORTH AN AGE OF COLD RESPECT!
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. THOU KNOWEST NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. BECAUSE?
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. BOAST NOT THYSELF OF TOMORROW
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN MY JOURNEY
 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. TO LIFE
 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. TO LIFE (Cont.)
 CHAPTER THIRTY. WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS, ’TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE
 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. MR M’SWAT AND I HAVE A BUST-UP
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. TA-TA TO BARNEY’S GAP
 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. BACK AT POSSUM GULLY
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR. BUT ABSENT FRIENDS ARE SOON FORGOT
 CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. THE 3RD OF DECEMBER 1898
 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN THE DAYS WERE LONG AND HOT
 CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. HE THAT DESPISETH LITTLE THINGS, SHALL FALL LITTLE BY LITTLE
 CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT. A TALE THAT IS TOLD AND A DAY THAT IS DONE




PREFACE


A few months before I left Australia I got a letter from the bush
signed “Miles Franklin”, saying that the writer had written a novel,
but knew nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and
advise. Something about the letter, which was written in a strong
original hand, attracted me, so I sent for the MS., and one dull
afternoon I started to read it. I hadn’t read three pages when I saw
what you will no doubt see at once—that the story had been written by a
girl. And as I went on I saw that the work was Australian—born of the
bush. I don’t know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book—I
leave that to girl readers to judge; but the descriptions of bush life
and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me, and I know that, as
far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia—the truest I
ever read.

I wrote to Miles Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw
her before leaving Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely
twenty-one yet, and has scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life.
She has lived her book, and I feel proud of it for the sake of the
country I came from, where people toil and bake and suffer and are
kind; where every second sun-burnt bushman is a sympathetic humorist,
with the sadness of the bush deep in his eyes and a brave grin for the
worst of times, and where every third bushman is a poet, with a big
heart that keeps his pockets empty.

HENRY LAWSON
England, April 1901




INTRODUCTION


Possum Gully, near Goulburn,
N.S. Wales, Australia, 1st March, 1899


MY DEAR FELLOW AUSTRALIANS,


Just a few lines to tell you that this story is all about myself—for no
other purpose do I write it.

I make no apologies for being egotistical. In this particular I attempt
an improvement on other autobiographies. Other autobiographies weary
one with excuses for their egotism. What matters it to you if I am
egotistical? What matters it to you though it should matter that I am
egotistical?

This is not a romance—I have too often faced the music of life to the
tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies
and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn—a _real_ yarn. Oh!
as real, as really real—provided life itself is anything beyond a
heartless little chimera—it is as real in its weariness and bitter
heartache as the tall gum-trees, among which I first saw the light, are
real in their stateliness and substantiality.

My sphere in life is not congenial to me. Oh, how I hate this living
death which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my
youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed
with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the
long toil-laden days with its agonizing monotony, narrowness, and
absolute uncongeniality, how my spirit frets and champs its unbreakable
fetters—all in vain!

SPECIAL NOTICE

You can dive into this story head first as it were. Do not fear
encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and
whisperings of wind. We (999 out of every 1000) can see nought in
sunsets save as signs and tokens whether we may expect rain on the
morrow or the contrary, so we will leave such vain and foolish
imagining to those poets and painters—poor fools! Let us rejoice that
we are not of their temperament!

Better be born a slave than a poet, better be born a black, better be
born a cripple! For a poet must be companionless—alone! _fearfully_
alone in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul
is as far above common mortals as common mortals are above monkeys.

There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life
or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a
class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life,
but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in
such a luxury.

MILES FRANKLIN
Australia




CHAPTER ONE
I Remember, I Remember


“Boo, hoo! Ow, ow; Oh! oh! Me’ll die. Boo, hoo. The pain, the pain!
Boo, hoo!”

“Come, come, now. Daddy’s little mate isn’t going to turn Turk like
that, is she? I’ll put some fat out of the dinner-bag on it, and tie it
up in my hanky. Don’t cry any more now. Hush, you must not cry! You’ll
make old Dart buck if you kick up a row like that.”

That is my first recollection of life. I was barely three. I can
remember the majestic gum-trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on
their straight white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked
stream, which disappeared beneath a steep scrubby hill on our left. It
was an hour past noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant
part of the run, where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left
home early in the dewy morning, carrying me in front of him on a little
brown pillow which my mother had made for the purpose. We had put the
lumps of rock-salt in the troughs on the other side of the creek. The
stringybark roof of the salt-shed which protected the troughs from rain
peeped out picturesquely from the musk and peppercorn shrubs by which
it was densely surrounded, and was visible from where we lunched. I
refilled the quart-pot in which we had boiled our tea with water from
the creek, father doused our fire out with it, and then tied the quart
to the D of his saddle with a piece of green hide. The green-hide bags
in which the salt had been carried were hanging on the hooks of the
pack-saddle which encumbered the bay pack-horse. Father’s saddle and
the brown pillow were on Dart, the big grey horse on which he generally
carried me, and we were on the point of making tracks for home.

Preparatory to starting, father was muzzling the dogs which had just
finished what lunch we had left. This process, to which the dogs
strongly objected, was rendered necessary by a cogent reason. Father
had brought his strychnine flask with him that day, and in hopes of
causing the death of a few dingoes, had put strong doses of its
contents in several dead beasts which we had come across.

Whilst the dogs were being muzzled, I busied myself in plucking ferns
and flowers. This disturbed a big black snake which was curled at the
butt of a tree fern.

“Bitey! bitey!” I yelled, and father came to my rescue, despatching the
reptile with his stock-whip. He had been smoking, and dropped his pipe
on the ferns. I picked it up, and the glowing embers which fell from it
burnt my dirty little fat fists. Hence the noise with which my story
commences.

In all probability it was the burning of my fingers which so indelibly
impressed the incident on my infantile mind. My father was accustomed
to take me with him, but that is the only jaunt at that date which I
remember, and that is all I remember of it. We were twelve miles from
home, but how we reached there I do not know.

My father was a swell in those days—held Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East, and
Bin Bin West, which three stations totalled close on 200,000 acres.
Father was admitted into swelldom merely by right of his position. His
pedigree included nothing beyond a grandfather. My mother, however, was
a full-fledged aristocrat. She was one of the Bossiers of Caddagat, who
numbered among their ancestry one of the depraved old pirates who
pillaged England with William the Conqueror.

“Dick” Melvyn was as renowned for hospitality as joviality, and our
comfortable, wide-veranda’ed, irregularly built, slab house in its
sheltered nook amid the Timlinbilly Ranges was ever full to
overflowing. Doctors, lawyers, squatters, commercial travellers,
bankers, journalists, tourists, and men of all kinds and classes
crowded our well-spread board; but seldom a female face, except
mother’s, was to be seen there, Bruggabrong being a very out-of-the-way
place.

I was both the terror and the amusement of the station. Old
boundary-riders and drovers inquire after me with interest to this day.

I knew everyone’s business, and was ever in danger of publishing it at
an inopportune moment.

In flowery language, selected from slang used by the station hands, and
long words picked up from our visitors, I propounded unanswerable
questions which brought blushes to the cheeks of even tough old
wine-bibbers.

Nothing would induce me to show more respect to an appraiser of the
runs than to a boundary-rider, or to a clergyman than a drover. I am
the same to this day. My organ of veneration must be flatter than a
pancake, because to venerate a person simply for his position I never
did or will. To me the Prince of Wales will be no more than a shearer,
unless when I meet him he displays some personality apart from his
princeship—otherwise he can go hang.

Authentic record of the date when first I had a horse to myself has not
been kept, but it must have been early, as at eight I was fit to ride
anything on the place. Side-saddle, man-saddle, no-saddle, or astride
were all the same to me. I rode among the musterers as gamely as any of
the big sunburnt bushmen.

My mother remonstrated, opined I would be a great unwomanly tomboy. My
father poohed the idea.

“Let her alone, Lucy,” he said, “let her alone. The rubbishing
conventionalities which are the curse of her sex will bother her soon
enough. Let her alone!”

So, smiling and saying, “She should have been a boy,” my mother let me
alone, and I rode, and in comparison to my size made as much noise with
my stock-whip as any one. Accidents had no power over me, I came
unscathed out of droves of them.

Fear I knew not. Did a drunken tramp happen to kick up a row, I was
always the first to confront him, and, from my majestic and roly-poly
height of two feet six inches, demand what he wanted.

A digging started near us and was worked by a score of two dark-browed
sons of Italy. They made mother nervous, and she averred they were not
to be trusted, but I liked and trusted them. They carried me on their
broad shoulders, stuffed me with lollies and made a general pet of me.
Without the quiver of a nerve I swung down their deepest shafts in the
big bucket on the end of a rope attached to a rough windlass, which
brought up the miners and the mullock.

My brothers and sisters contracted mumps, measles, scarlatina, and
whooping-cough. I rolled in the bed with them yet came off scot-free. I
romped with dogs, climbed trees after birds’ nests, drove the bullocks
in the dray, under the instructions of Ben, our bullocky, and always
accompanied my father when he went swimming in the clear, mountain,
shrub-lined stream which ran deep and lone among the weird gullies,
thickly carpeted with maidenhair and numberless other species of ferns.

My mother shook her head over me and trembled for my future, but father
seemed to consider me nothing unusual. He was my hero, confidant,
encyclopedia, mate, and even my religion till I was ten. Since then I
have been religionless.

Richard Melvyn, you were a fine fellow in those days! A kind and
indulgent parent, a chivalrous husband, a capital host, a man full of
ambition and gentlemanliness.

Amid these scenes, and the refinements and pleasures of Caddagat, which
lies a hundred miles or so farther Riverinawards, I spent the first
years of my childhood.




CHAPTER TWO
An Introduction to Possum Gully


I was nearly nine summers old when my father conceived the idea that he
was wasting his talents by keeping them rolled up in the small napkin
of an out-of-the-way place like Bruggabrong and the Bin Bin stations.
Therefore he determined to take up his residence in a locality where he
would have more scope for his ability.

When giving his reason for moving to my mother, he put the matter
before her thus: The price of cattle and horses had fallen so of late
years that it was impossible to make much of a living by breeding them.
Sheep were the only profitable article to have nowadays, and it would
be impossible to run them on Bruggabrong or either of the Bin Bins. The
dingoes would work havoc among them in no time, and what they left the
duffers would soon dispose of. As for bringing police into the matter,
it would be worse than useless. They could not run the offenders to
earth, and their efforts to do so would bring down upon their employer
the wrath of the duffers. Result, all the fences on the station would
be fired for a dead certainty, and the destruction of more than a
hundred miles of heavy log fencing on rough country like Bruggabrong
was no picnic to contemplate.

This was the feasible light in which father shaded his desire to leave.
The fact of the matter was that the heartless harridan, discontent, had
laid her claw-like hand upon him. His guests were ever assuring him he
was buried and wasted in Timlinbilly’s gullies. A man of his
intelligence, coupled with his wonderful experience among stock, would,
they averred, make a name and fortune for himself dealing or
auctioneering if he only liked to try. Richard Melvyn began to think so
too, and desired to try. He did try.

He gave up Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East and Bin Bin West, bought Possum
Gully, a small farm of one thousand acres, and brought us all to live
near Goulburn. Here we arrived one autumn afternoon. Father, mother,
and children packed in the buggy, myself, and the one servant-girl, who
had accompanied us, on horseback. The one man father had retained in
his service was awaiting our arrival. He had preceded us with a
bullock-drayload of furniture and belongings, which was all father had
retained of his household property. Just sufficient for us to get along
with, until he had time to settle and purchase more, he said. That was
ten years ago, and that is the only furniture we possess yet—just
enough to get along with.

My first impression of Possum Gully was bitter disappointment—an
impression which time has failed to soften or wipe away.

How flat, common, and monotonous the scenery appeared after the rugged
peaks of the Timlinbilly Range!

Our new house was a ten-roomed wooden structure, built on a barren
hillside. Crooked stunted gums and stringybarks, with a thick
underscrub of wild cherry, hop, and hybrid wattle, clothed the spurs
which ran up from the back of the detached kitchen. Away from the front
of the house were flats, bearing evidence of cultivation, but a drop of
water was nowhere to be seen. Later, we discovered a few round, deep,
weedy waterholes down on the flat, which in rainy weather swelled to a
stream which swept all before it. Possum Gully is one of the best
watered spots in the district, and in that respect has stood to its
guns in the bitterest drought. Use and knowledge have taught us the
full value of its fairly clear and beautifully soft water. Just then,
however, coming from the mountains where every gully had its limpid
creek, we turned in disgust from the idea of having to drink this
water.

I felt cramped on our new run. It was only three miles wide at its
broadest point. Was I always, always, always to live here, and never,
never, never to go back to Bruggabrong? That was the burden of the
grief with which I sobbed myself to sleep on the first night after our
arrival.

Mother felt dubious of her husband’s ability to make a living off a
thousand acres, half of which were fit to run nothing but wallabies,
but father was full of plans, and very sanguine concerning his future.
He was not going to squat henlike on his place as the cockies around
him did. He meant to deal in stock making of Possum Gully merely a
depot on which to run some of his bargains until reselling.

Dear, oh dear! It was terrible to think he had wasted the greater part
of his life among the hills where the mail came but once a week, and
where the nearest town, of 650 inhabitants, was forty-six miles
distant. And the road had been impassable for vehicles. Here, only
seventeen miles from a city like Goulburn, with splendid roads, mail
thrice weekly, and a railway platform only eight miles away, why, man,
my fortune is made! Such were the sentiments to which he gave birth out
of the fullness of his hopeful heart.

Ere the diggings had broken out on Bruggabrong, our nearest neighbour,
excepting, of course, boundary-riders, was seventeen miles distant.
Possum Gully was a thickly populated district, and here we were
surrounded by homes ranging from half a mile to two and three miles
away. This was a new experience for us, and it took us some time to
become accustomed to the advantage and disadvantage of the situation.
Did we require an article, we found it handy, but decidedly the reverse
when our neighbours borrowed from us, and, in the greater percentage of
cases, failed to return the loan.




CHAPTER THREE
A Lifeless Life


Possum Gully was stagnant—stagnant with the narrow stagnation prevalent
in all old country places.

Its residents were principally married folk and children under sixteen.
The boys, as they attained manhood, drifted outback to shear, drove, or
to take up land. They found it too slow at home, and besides there was
not room enough for them there when they passed childhood.

Nothing ever happened there. Time was no object, and the days slid
quietly into the river of years, distinguished one from another by name
alone. An occasional birth or death was a big event, and the biggest
event of all was the advent of a new resident.

When such a thing occurred it was customary for all the male heads of
families to pay a visit of inspection, to judge if the new-comers were
worthy of admittance into the bosom of the society of the
neighbourhood. Should their report prove favourable, then their wives
finished the ceremony of inauguration by paying a friendly visit.

After his arrival at Possum Gully father was much away on business, and
so on my mother fell the ordeal of receiving the callers, male and
female.

The men were honest, good-natured, respectable, common bushmen farmers.
Too friendly to pay a short call, they came and sat for hours yarning
about nothing in particular. This bored my gentle mother excessively.
She attempted to entertain them with conversation of current literature
and subjects of the day, but her efforts fell flat. She might as well
have spoken in French.

They conversed for hours and hours about dairying, interspersed with
pointless anecdotes of the man who had lived there before us. I found
them very tame.

After graphic descriptions of life on big stations outback, and the
dashing snake yarns told by our kitchen-folk at Bruggabrong, and the
anecdotes of African hunting, travel, and society life which had often
formed our guests’ subject of conversation, this endless fiddle-faddle
of the price of farm produce and the state of crops was very fatuous.

Those men, like everyone else, only talked shop. I say nothing in
condemnation of it, but merely point out that it did not then interest
us, as we were not living in that shop just then.

Mrs Melvyn must have found favour in the eyes of the specimens of the
lords of creation resident at Possum Gully, as all the matrons of the
community hastened to call on her, and vied with each other in a
display of friendliness and good-nature. They brought presents of
poultry, jam, butter, and suchlike. They came at two o’clock and stayed
till dark. They inventoried the furniture, gave mother cookery recipes,
described minutely the unsurpassable talents of each of their children,
and descanted volubly upon the best way of setting turkey hens. On
taking their departure they cordially invited us all to return their
visits, and begged mother to allow her children to spend a day with
theirs.

We had been resident in our new quarters nearly a month when my parents
received an intimation from the teacher of the public school, two miles
distant, to the effect that the law demanded that they should send
their children to school. It upset my mother greatly. What was she to
do?

“Do! Bundle the nippers off to school as quickly as possible, of
course,” said my father.

My mother objected. She proposed a governess now and a good
boarding-school later on. She had heard such dreadful stories of public
schools! It was terrible to be compelled to send her darlings to one;
they would be ruined in a week!

“Not they,” said father. “Run them off for a week or two, or a month at
the outside. They can’t come to any harm in that time. After that we
will get a governess. You are in no state of health to worry about one
just now, and it is utterly impossible that I can see about the matter
at present. I have several specs. on foot that I must attend to. Send
the youngsters to school down here for the present.”

We went to school, and in our dainty befrilled pinafores and light
shoes were regarded as great swells by the other scholars. They for the
most part were the children of very poor farmers, whose farm earnings
were augmented by road-work, wood-carting, or any such labour which
came within their grasp. All the boys went barefooted, also a moiety of
the girls. The school was situated on a wild scrubby hill, and the
teacher boarded with a resident a mile from it. He was a man addicted
to drink, and the parents of his scholars lived in daily expectation of
seeing his dismissal from the service.

It is nearly ten years since the twins (who came next to me) and I were
enrolled as pupils of the Tiger Swamp public school. My education was
completed there; so was that of the twins, who are eleven months
younger than I. Also my other brothers and sisters are quickly getting
finishedwards; but that is the only school any of us have seen or
known. There was even a time when father spoke of filling in the free
forms for our attendance there. But mother—a woman’s pride bears more
wear than a man’s—would never allow us to come to that.

All our neighbours were very friendly; but one in particular, a James
Blackshaw, proved himself most desirous of being comradely with us. He
was a sort of self-constituted sheik of the community. It was usual for
him to take all new-comers under his wing, and with officious
good-nature endeavour to make them feel at home. He called on us daily,
tied his horse to the paling fence beneath the shade of a sallie-tree
in the backyard, and when mother was unable to see him he was content
to yarn for an hour or two with Jane Haizelip, our servant-girl.

Jane disliked Possum Gully as much as I did. Her feeling being much
more defined, it was amusing to hear the flat-out opinions she
expressed to Mr Blackshaw, whom, by the way, she termed “a mooching hen
of a chap”.

“I suppose, Jane, you like being here near Goulburn, better than that
out-of-the-way place you came from,” he said one morning as he
comfortably settled himself on an old sofa in the kitchen.

“No jolly fear. Out-of-the-way place! There was more life at
Bruggabrong in a day than you crawlers ’ud see here all yer lives,” she
retorted with vigour, energetically pommelling a batch of bread which
she was mixing.

“Why, at Brugga it was as good as a show every week. On Saturday
evening all the coves used to come in for their mail. They’d stay till
Sunday evenin’. Splitters, boundary-riders, dogtrappers—every manjack
of ’em. Some of us wuz always good fer a toon on the concertina, and
the rest would dance. We had fun to no end. A girl could have a fly
round and a lark or two there I tell you; but here,” and she emitted a
snort of contempt, “there ain’t one bloomin’ feller to do a mash with.
I’m full of the place. Only I promised to stick to the missus a while,
I’d scoot tomorrer. It’s the dead-and-alivest hole I ever seen.”

“You’ll git used to it by and by,” said Blackshaw.

“Used to it! A person ’ud hev to be brought up onder a hen to git used
to the dullness of this hole.”

“You wasn’t brought up under a hen, or it must have been a big Bramer
Pooter, if you were,” replied he, noting the liberal proportions of her
figure as she hauled a couple of heavy pots off the fire. He did not
offer to help her. Etiquette of that sort was beyond his ken.

“You oughter go out more and then you wouldn’t find it so dull,” he
said, after she had placed the pots on the floor.

“Go out! Where ’ud I go to, pray?”

“Drop in an’ see my missus again when you git time. You’re always
welcome.”

“Thanks, but I had plenty of goin’ to see your missus last time.”

“How’s that?”

“Why, I wasn’t there harf an hour wen she had to strip off her clean
duds an’ go an’ milk. I don’t think much of any of the men around here.
They let the women work too hard. I never see such a tired wore-out set
of women. It puts me in mind ev the time wen the black fellers made the
gins do all the work. Why, on Bruggabrong the women never had to do no
outside work, only on a great pinch wen all the men were away at a fire
or a muster. Down here they do everything. They do all the milkin’, and
pig-feedin’, and poddy-rarin’. It makes me feel fit to retch. I don’t
know whether it’s because the men is crawlers or whether it’s dairyin’.
I don’t think much of dairyin’. It’s slavin’, an’ delvin’, an’ scrapin’
yer eyeballs out from mornin’ to night, and nothink to show for your
pains; and now you’ll oblige me, Mr Blackshaw, if youll lollop
somewhere else for a minute or two. I want to sweep under that sofer.”

This had the effect of making him depart. He said good morning and went
off, not sure whether he was most amused or insulted.




CHAPTER FOUR
A Career Which Soon Careered To An End


While mother, Jane Haizelip, and I found the days long and life slow,
father was enjoying himself immensely.

He had embarked upon a lively career—that gambling trade known as
dealing in stock.

When he was not away in Riverina inspecting a flock of sheep, he was
attending the Homebush Fat Stock Sales, rushing away out to Bourke, or
tearing off down the Shoalhaven to buy some dairy heifers.

He was a familiar figure at the Goulburn sale-yards every Wednesday,
always going into town the day before and not returning till a day, and
often two days, afterwards.

He was in great demand among drovers and auctioneers; and in the stock
news his name was always mentioned in connection with all the principal
sales in the colony.

It takes an astute, clear-headed man to keep himself off shore in stock
dealing. I never yet heard of a dealer who occasionally did not
temporarily, if not totally, go to the wall.

He need not necessarily be downright unscrupulous, but if he wishes to
profit he must not be overburdened with niceties in the point of
honour. That is where Richard Melvyn fell through. He was crippled with
too many Utopian ideas of honesty, and was too soft ever to come off
anything but second-best in a deal. He might as well have attempted to
make his fortune by scraping a fiddle up and down Auburn Street,
Goulburn. His dealing career was short and merry. His vanity to be
considered a socialistic fellow, who was as ready to take a glass with
a swaggie as a swell, and the lavish shouting which this principle
incurred, made great inroads on his means. Losing money every time he
sold a beast, wasting stamps galore on letters to endless auctioneers,
frequently remaining in town half a week at a stretch, and being
hail-fellow to all the spongers to be found on the trail of such as he,
quickly left him on the verge of bankruptcy. Some of his contemporaries
say it was grog that did it all.

Had he kept clear-headed he was a smart fellow, and gave promise of
doing well, but his head would not stand alcohol, and by it he was
undermined in no time. In considerably less than a twelvemonth all the
spare capital in his coffers from the disposal of Bruggabrong and the
Bin Bins had been squandered. He had become so hard up that to pay the
drovers in his last venture he was forced to sell the calves of the few
milch-cows retained for household uses.

At this time it came to my father’s knowledge that one of our bishops
had money held in trust for the Church. On good security he was giving
this out for usury, the same as condemned in the big Bible, out of
which he took the text of the dry-hash sermons with which he bored his
fashionable congregations in his cathedral on Sundays.

Father took advantage of this Reverend’s inconsistency and mortgaged
Possum Gully. With the money thus obtained he started once more and
managed to make a scant livelihood and pay the interest on the bishop’s
loan. In four or five years he had again reached loggerheads. The price
of stock had fallen so that there was nothing to be made out of dealing
in them.

Richard Melvyn resolved to live as those around him—start a dairy; run
it with his family, who would also rear poultry for sale.

As instruments of the dairying trade he procured fifty milch-cows, the
calves of which had to be “poddied”, and a hand cream-separator.

I was in my fifteenth year when we began dairying; the twins Horace and
Gertie were, as you already know, eleven months younger. Horace, had
there been any one to train him, contained the makings of a splendid
man; but having no one to bring him up in the way he should go, he was
a churlish and trying bully, and the issue of his character doubtful.

Gertie milked thirteen cows, and I eighteen, morning and evening.
Horace and mother, between them, milked the remaining seventeen.

Among the dairying fraternity little toddlers, ere they are big enough
to hold a bucket, learn to milk. Thus their hands become inured to the
motion, and it does not affect them. With us it was different. Being
almost full grown when we started to milk, and then plunging heavily
into the exercise, it had a painful effect upon us. Our hands and arms,
as far as the elbows, swelled, so that our sleep at night was often
disturbed by pain.

Mother made the butter. She had to rise at two and three o’clock in the
morning, in order that it would be cool and firm enough to print for
market.

Jane Haizelip had left us a year previously, and we could afford no one
to take her place. The heavy work told upon my gentle, refined mother.
She grew thin and careworn, and often cross. My father’s share of the
work was to break in the wild cows, separate the milk, and take the
butter into town to the grocer’s establishment where we obtained our
supplies.

Dick Melvyn of Bruggabrong was not recognizable in Dick Melvyn, dairy
farmer and cocky of Possum Gully. The former had been a man worthy of
the name. The latter was a slave of drink, careless, even dirty and
bedraggled in his personal appearance. He disregarded all manners, and
had become far more plebeian and common than the most miserable
specimen of humanity around him. The support of his family, yet not,
its support. The head of his family, yet failing to fulfil the
obligations demanded of one in that capacity. He seemed to lose all
love and interest in his family, and grew cross and silent, utterly
without pride and pluck. Formerly so kind and gentle with animals, now
he was the reverse.

His cruelty to the young cows and want of patience with them I can
never forget. It has often brought upon me the threat of immediate
extermination for volunteering scathing and undesired opinions on his
conduct.

The part of the dairying that he positively gloried in was going to
town with the butter. He frequently remained in for two or three days,
as often as not spending all the money he got for the butter in a
drunken spree. Then he would return to curse his luck because his dairy
did not pay as well as those of some of our neighbours.

The curse of Eve being upon my poor mother in those days, she was
unable to follow her husband. Pride forbade her appealing to her
neighbours, so on me devolved the duty of tracking my father from one
pub to another and bringing him home.

Had I done justice to my mother’s training I would have honoured my
paternal parent in spite of all this, but I am an individual ever doing
things I oughtn’t at the time I shouldn’t.

Coming home, often after midnight, with my drunken father talking
maudlin conceited nonsense beside me, I developed curious ideas on the
fifth commandment. Those journeys in the spring-cart through the soft
faint starlight were conducive to thought. My father, like most men
when under the influence of liquor, would allow no one but himself to
handle the reins, and he was often so incapable that he would keep
turning the horse round and round in the one place. It is a marvel we
never met with an accident. I was not nervous, but quite content to
take whatever came, and our trusty old horse fulfilled his duty, ever
faithfully taking us home along the gum-tree-lined road.

My mother had taught me from the Bible that I should honour my parents,
whether they were deserving of honour or not.

Dick Melvyn being my father did not blind me to the fact that he was a
despicable, selfish, weak creature, and as such I despised him with the
relentlessness of fifteen, which makes no allowance for human frailty
and weakness. Disgust, not honour, was the feeling which possessed me
when I studied the matter.

Towards mother I felt differently. A woman is but the helpless tool of
man—a creature of circumstances.

Seeing my father beside me, and thinking of his infant with its mother,
eating her heart out with anxiety at home, this was the reasoning which
took possession of me. Among other such inexpressible thoughts I got
lost, grew dizzy, and drew back appalled at the spirit which was
maturing within me. It was a grim lonely one, which I vainly tried to
hide in a bosom which was not big or strong enough for its comfortable
habitation. It was as a climbing plant without a pole—it groped about
the ground, bruised itself, and became hungry searching for something
strong to which to cling. Needing a master-hand to train and prune, it
was becoming rank and sour.




CHAPTER FIVE
Disjointed Sketches And Grumbles


It was my duty to “rare the poddies”. This is the most godless
occupation in which it has been my lot to engage. I did a great amount
of thinking while feeding them—for, by the way, I am afflicted with the
power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and
inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things,
when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and
doubly, trebly so, for her.

Poor little calves! Slaves to the greed of man! Bereft of the mothers
with which Nature has provided them, and compelled to exist on milk
from the separator, often thick, sour, and icy cold.

Besides the milking I did, before I went to school every morning, for
which I had to prepare myself and the younger children, and to which we
had to walk two miles. I had to feed thirty calves and wash the
breakfast dishes. On returning from school in the afternoon, often in a
state of exhaustion from walking in the blazing sun, I had the same
duties over again, and in addition boots to clean and home lessons to
prepare for the morrow. I had to relinquish my piano practice for want
of time.

Ah, those short, short nights of rest and long, long days of toil! It
seems to me that dairying means slavery in the hands of poor people who
cannot afford hired labour. I am not writing of dairy-farming, the
genteel and artistic profession as eulogized in leading articles of
agricultural newspapers and as taught in agricultural colleges. I am
depicting practical dairying as I have lived it, and seen it lived, by
dozens of families around me.

It takes a great deal of work to produce even one pound of butter fit
for market. At the time I mention it was 3d. and 4d. per lb., so it was
much work and small pay. It was slaving and delving from morning till
night—Sundays, week-days, and holidays, all alike were work-days to us.

Hard graft is a great leveller. Household drudgery, woodcutting,
milking, and gardening soon roughen the hands and dim the outside
polish. When the body is wearied with much toil the desire to cultivate
the mind, or the cultivation it has already received, is gradually
wiped out. Thus it was with my parents. They had dropped from swelldom
to peasantism. They were among and of the peasantry. None of their
former acquaintances came within their circle now, for the iron ungodly
hand of class distinction has settled surely down upon Australian
society—Australia’s democracy is only a tradition of the past.

I say naught against the lower life. The peasantry are the bulwarks of
every nation. The life of a peasant is, to a peasant who is a peasant
with a peasant’s soul, when times are good and when seasons smile, a
grand life. It is honest, clean, and wholesome. But the life of a
peasant to me is purgatory. Those around me worked from morning till
night and then enjoyed their well-earned sleep. They had but two states
of existence—work and sleep.

There was a third part in me which cried out to be fed. I longed for
the arts. Music was a passion with me. I borrowed every book in the
neighbourhood and stole hours from rest to read them. This told upon me
and made my physical burdens harder for me than for other children of
my years around me. That third was the strongest part of me. In it I
lived a dream-life with writers, artists, and musicians. Hope, sweet,
cruel, delusive Hope, whispered in my ear that life was long with much
by and by, and in that by and by my dream-life would be real. So on I
went with that gleaming lake in the distance beckoning me to come and
sail on its silver waters, and Inexperience, conceited, blind
Inexperience, failing to show the impassable pit between it and me.

To return to the dairying.

Old and young alike we earned our scant livelihood by the heavy sweat
of our brows. Still, we _did_ gain an honest living. We were not
ashamed to look day in the face, and fought our way against all odds
with the stubborn independence of our British ancestors. But when 1894
went out without rain, and ’95, hot, dry, pitiless ’95, succeeded it,
there came a time when it was impossible to make a living.

The scorching furnace-breath winds shrivelled every blade of grass,
dust and the moan of starving stock filled the air, vegetables became a
thing of the past. The calves I had reared died one by one, and the
cows followed in their footsteps.

I had left school then, and my mother and father and I spent the days
in lifting our cows. When our strength proved inadequate, the help of
neighbours had to be called in, and father would give his services in
return. Only a few of our more well-to-do neighbours had been able to
send their stock away, or had any better place to which to transfer
them. The majority of them were in as tight a plight as ourselves. This
cow-lifting became quite a trade, the whole day being spent in it and
in discussing the bad prospect ahead if the drought continued.

Many an extra line of care furrowed the brows of the disheartened
bushmen then. Not only was their living taken from them by the drought,
but there is nothing more heartrending than to have poor beasts,
especially dairy cows, so familiar, valued, and loved, pleading for
food day after day in their piteous dumb way when one has it not to
give.

We shore ourselves of all but the bare necessaries of life, but even
they for a family of ten are considerable, and it was a mighty tussle
to get both ends within cover of meeting. We felt the full force of the
heavy hand of poverty—the most stinging kind of poverty too, that which
still holds up its head and keeps an outside appearance. Far more
grinding is this than the poverty inherited from generations which is
not ashamed of itself, and has not as an accompaniment the wounded
pride and humiliation which attacked us.

Some there are who argue that poverty does not mean unhappiness. Let
those try what it is to be destitute of even one companionable friend,
what it means to be forced to exist in an alien sphere of society, what
it is like to be unable to afford a stamp to write to a friend; let
them long as passionately as I have longed for reading and music, and
be unable to procure it because of poverty; let poverty force them into
doing work against which every fibre of their being revolts, as it has
forced me, and then see if their lives will be happy.

My school life had been dull and uneventful. The one incident of any
note had been the day that the teacher, better known as old Harris,
“stood up” to the inspector. The latter was a precise, collar-and-cuffs
sort of little man. He gave one the impression of having all his ideas
on the subjects he thought worthy of attention carefully culled and
packed in his brain-pan, and neatly labelled, so that he might without
fluster pounce upon any of them at a moment’s warning. He was
gentlemanly and respectable, and discharged his duties punctiliously in
a manner reflecting credit on himself and his position, but, comparing
the mind of a philanthropist to the Murrumbidgee in breadth, his, in
comparison, might be likened to the flow of a bucket of water in a
dray-rut.

On the day in question—a precious hot one it was—he had finished
examining us in most subjects, and was looking at our copy-books. He
looked up from them, ahemed! and fastidiously straightened his
waistcoat.

“Mr Harris!

“Yes, sir.”

“Comparisons are odious, but, unfortunately, I am forced to draw one
now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This writing is much inferior to that of town scholars. It is very
shaky and irregular. Also, I notice that the children seem stupid and
dull. I don’t like putting it so plainly, but, in fact, ah, they seem
to be possessed with the proverbial stupidity of country people. How do
you account for this?”

Poor old Harris! In spite of his drunken habits and inability to
properly discharge his duties, he had a warm heart and much
fellowshiply humanity in him. He understood and loved his pupils, and
would not have aspersions cast upon them. Besides, the nip he had taken
to brace himself to meet the inspector had been two or three, and they
robbed him of the discretion which otherwise might have kept him
silent.

“Si-r-r-r, I can and will account for it. Look you at every one of
those children. Every one, right down to this little tot,” indicating a
little girl of five, “has to milk and work hard before and after
school, besides walk on an average two miles to and from school in this
infernal heat. Most of the elder boys and girls milk on an average
fourteen cows morning and evening. You try that treatment for a week or
two, my fine gentleman, and then see if your fist doesn’t ache and
shake so that you can’t write at all. See if you won’t look a trifle
dozy. Stupidity of country people be hanged! If you had to work from
morning till night in the heat and dust, and get precious little for it
too, I bet you wouldn’t have much time to scrape your finger-nails,
read science notes, and look smart.” Here he took off his coat and
shaped up to his superior.

The inspector drew back in consternation.

“Mr Harris, you forget yourself!”

At this juncture they went outside together. What happened there we
never knew. That is all we heard of the matter except the numerous
garbled accounts which were carried home that afternoon.

A DROUGHT IDYLL

“Sybylla, what are you doing? Where is your mother?”

“I’m ironing. Mother’s down at the fowl-house seeing after some
chickens. What do you want?”

It was my father who addressed me. Time, 2 o’clock p.m. Thermometer
hung in the shade of the veranda registering 105 1/2 degrees.

“I see Blackshaw coming across the flat. Call your mother. You bring
the leg-ropes—I’ve got the dog-leg. Come at once; we’ll give the cows
another lift. Poor devils—might as well knock ’em on the head at once,
but there might be rain next moon. This drought can’t last for ever.”

I called mother, got the leg-ropes, and set off, pulling my sun-bonnet
closely over my face to protect my eyes from the dust which was driving
from the west in blinding clouds. The dog-leg to which father had
referred was three poles about eight or ten feet long, strapped
together so they could be stood up. It was an arrangement father had
devised to facilitate our labour in lifting the cows. A fourth and
longer pole was placed across the fork formed by the three, and to one
end of this were tied a couple of leg-ropes, after being placed round
the beast, one beneath the flank and one around the girth. On the other
end of this pole we would put our weight while one man would lift with
the tail and another with the horns. New-chum cows would sulk, and we
would have great work with them; but those used to the performance
would help themselves, and up they’d go as nice as a daisy. The only
art needed was to draw the pole back quickly before the cows could
move, or the leg-ropes would pull them over again.

On this afternoon we had six cows to lift. We struggled manfully, and
got five on their feet, and then proceeded to where the last one was
lying, back downwards, on a shadeless stony spot on the side of a hill.
The men slewed her round by the tail, while mother and I fixed the
dog-leg and adjusted the ropes. We got the cow up, but the poor beast
was so weak and knocked about that she immediately fell down again. We
resolved to let her have a few minutes’ spell before making another
attempt at lifting. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, and the
ground was too dusty to sit on. We were too overdone to make more than
one-worded utterances, so waited silently in the blazing sun, closing
our eyes against the dust.

Weariness! Weariness!

A few light wind-smitten clouds made wan streaks across the white sky,
haggard with the fierce relentless glare of the afternoon sun.
Weariness was written across my mother’s delicate careworn features,
and found expression in my father’s knitted brows and dusty face.
Blackshaw was weary, and said so, as he wiped the dust, made mud with
perspiration, off his cheeks. I was weary—my limbs ached with the heat
and work. The poor beast stretched at our feet was weary. All nature
was weary, and seemed to sing a dirge to that effect in the
furnace-breath wind which roared among the trees on the low ranges at
our back and smote the parched and thirsty ground. All were weary, all
but the sun. He seemed to glory in his power, relentless and untiring,
as he swung boldly in the sky, triumphantly leering down upon his
helpless victims.

Weariness! Weariness!

This was life—my life—my career, my brilliant career! I was
fifteen—fifteen! A few fleeting hours and I would be old as those
around me. I looked at them as they stood there, weary, and turning
down the other side of the hill of life. When young, no doubt they had
hoped for, and dreamed of, better things—had even known them. But here
they were. This had been their life; this was their career. It was, and
in all probability would be, mine too. My life—my career—my brilliant
career!

Weariness! Weariness!

The summer sun danced on. Summer is fiendish, and life is a curse, I
said in my heart. What a great dull hard rock the world was! On it were
a few barren narrow ledges, and on these, by exerting ourselves so that
the force wears off our finger-nails, it allows us to hang for a year
or two, and then hurls us off into outer darkness and oblivion, perhaps
to endure worse torture than this.

The poor beast moaned. The lifting had strained her, and there were
patches of hide worn off her the size of breakfast-plates, sore and
most harrowing to look upon.

It takes great suffering to wring a moan from the patience of a cow. I
turned my head away, and with the impatience and one-sided reasoning
common to fifteen, asked God what He meant by this. It is well enough
to heap suffering on human beings, seeing it is supposed to be merely a
probation for a better world, but animals—poor, innocent animals—why
are they tortured so?

“Come now, we’ll lift her once more,” said my father. At it we went
again; it is surprising what weight there is in the poorest cow. With
great struggling we got her to her feet once more, and were careful
this time to hold her till she got steady on her legs. Father and
mother at the tail and Blackshaw and I at the horns, we marched her
home and gave her a bran mash. Then we turned to our work in the house
while the men sat and smoked and spat on the veranda, discussing the
drought for an hour, at the end of which time they went to help someone
else with their stock. I made up the fire and we continued our ironing,
which had been interrupted some hours before. It was hot unpleasant
work on such a day. We were forced to keep the doors and windows closed
on account of the wind and dust. We were hot and tired, and our feet
ached so that we could scarcely stand on them.

Weariness! Weariness!

Summer is fiendish and life is a curse, I said in my heart.

Day after day the drought continued. Now and again there would be a few
days of the raging wind before mentioned, which carried the dry grass
off the paddocks and piled it against the fences, darkened the air with
dust, and seemed to promise rain, but ever it dispersed whence it came,
taking with it the few clouds it had gathered up; and for weeks and
weeks at a stretch, from horizon to horizon, was never a speck to mar
the cruel dazzling brilliance of the metal sky.

Weariness! Weariness!

I said the one thing many times but, ah, it was a weary thing which
took much repetition that familiarity might wear away a little of its
bitterness!




CHAPTER SIX
Revolt


In spite of our pottering and lifting, with the exception of five, all
our cows eventually died; and even these and a couple of horses had as
much as they could do to live on the whole of the thousand acres which,
without reserve, were at their disposal. They had hardly any grass—it
was merely the warmth and water which kept them alive. Needless to say,
we were on our beam-ends financially. However, with a little help from
more fortunate relatives, and with the money obtained from the sale of
the cowhides and mother’s poultry, we managed to pay the interest on
the money borrowed from the bishop, and keep bread in our mouths.

Unfortunately for us, at this time the bishop’s agent proved a
scoundrel and absconded. My father held receipts to show that to this
agent he had regularly paid the interest of the money borrowed; but
through some finicking point of law, because we had not money to
contend with him, his lordship the bishop now refused to acknowledge
his agent and one-time pillar of the cathedral, and, having law on his
side, served a writ on us. In the face of our misfortunes this was too
much: we begged for time, which plea he answered by putting in the
bailiff and selling everything we possessed. Our five cows, two horses,
our milk separator, plough, cart, dray, buggy, even our cooking
utensils, books, pictures, furniture, father’s watch—our very beds,
pillows, and blankets. Not a thing besides what we stood up in was left
us, and this was money for the payment of which my father held
receipts.

But for the generosity of our relatives we would have been in a pretty
plight. They sent us sufficient means to buy in everything, and our
neighbours came to our rescue with enthusiasm and warm-hearted genuine
sympathy. The bailiff—a gentleman to the core—seeing how matters stood,
helped us to the utmost of his power.

Our goods were disposed of on the premises, and the neighbours arranged
a mock sale, at which the bailiff winked. Our friends had sent the
money, and the neighbours did the bidding—none bidding against each
other—and thus our belongings went for a mere trifle. Every cloud has
its silver lining, and the black cloud of poverty has a very bright
silver lining.

In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do
if rich. People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not
from sponging self-interestedness. It is worth being poor once or twice
in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heartrestfulness of a
little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship. Not that it
is impossible for opulence to have genuine friends, but rich people, I
fear, must ever have at their heart cankering suspicion to hint that
the friendship and love lavished upon them is merely
self-interestedness and sham, the implements of trade used by the
fawning toadies who swarm around wealth.

In conjunction with the bishop’s name, the approaching sale of our
goods had been duly advertised in the local papers, and my father
received several letters of sympathy from the clergy deploring the
conduct of the bishop. These letters were from men unknown to father,
who were unaware that Richard Melvyn was being sold off for a debt
already paid.

By the generosity of relatives and the goodness of neighbours as kind
as ever breathed, our furniture was our own again, but what were we to
do for a living? Our crops were withering in the fields for want of
rain, and we had but five cows—not an over-bright outlook. As I was
getting to bed one night my mother came into my room and said
seriously, “Sybylla, I want to have a talk with you.”

“Talk away,” I responded rather sullenly, for I expected a long
sing-song about my good-for-nothingness in general—a subject of which I
was heartily tired.

“Sybylla, I’ve been studying the matter over a lot lately. It’s no use,
we cannot afford to keep you at home. You’ll have to get something to
do.”

I made no reply, and my mother continued, “I am afraid we will have to
break up the home altogether. It’s no use; your father has no idea of
making a living. I regret the day I ever saw him. Since he has taken to
drink he has no more idea of how to make a living than a cat. I will
have to give the little ones to some of the relatives; the bigger ones
will have to go out to service, and so will your father and I. That’s
all I can see ahead of us. Poor little Gertie is too young to go out in
the world (she was not twelve months younger than I); she must go to
your grandmother, I think.”

I still made no reply, so my mother inquired, “Well, Sybylla, what do
you think of the matter?”

“Do you think it absolutely necessary to break up the home?” I said.

“Well, you suggest something better if you are so clever,” said mother,
crossly. “That is always the way; if I suggest a thing it is
immediately put down, yet there is never any one to think of things but
me. What would you do? I suppose you think you could make a living on
the place for us yourself.”

“Why can’t we live at home? Blackshaw and Jansen have no bigger places
than we, and families just as large, and yet they make a living. It
would be terrible for the little ones to grow up separated; they would
be no more to each other than strangers.”

“Yes; it is all very well for you to talk like that, but how is your
father to start again with only five cows in the world? It’s no use,
you never talk sense. You’ll find my way is always the best in the
end.”

“Would it not be easier,” I replied, “for our relations to each give a
little towards setting us up again, than to be burdened with the whole
responsibility of rearing a child? I’m sure they’d much prefer it.”

“Yes, perhaps it would be better, but I think _you_ will have to get
your own living. What would they say about having to support such a big
girl as you are?”

“I will go and earn my own living, and when you get me weeded out of
the family you will have a perfect paradise. Having no evil to copy,
the children will grow up saints,” I said bitterly.

“Now, Sybylla, it is foolish to talk like that, for you know that you
take no interest in your work. If you’d turn to and help me rear
poultry and make dresses—and why don’t you take to cooking?”

“Take to cooking!” I retorted with scorn. “The fire that a fellow has
to endure on that old oven would kill a horse, and the grit and dirt of
clearing it up grinds on my very nerves. Besides, if I ever do want to
do any extra fancy cooking, we either can’t afford the butter or the
currants, or else the eggs are too scarce! Cook, be grannied!”

“Sybylla! Sybylla, you are getting very vulgar!”

“Yes, I once was foolish enough to try and be polite, but I’ve given it
up. My style of talk is quite good enough for my company. What on earth
does it matter whether I’m vulgar or not. I can feed calves and milk
and grind out my days here just as well vulgar as unvulgar,” I answered
savagely.

“There, you see you are always discontented about your home. It’s no
use; the only thing is for you to earn your own living.”

“I will earn my own living.”

“What will you do? Will you be examined for a pupil-teacher? That is a
very nice occupation for girls.”

“What chance would I have in a competitive exam. against Goulburn
girls? They all have good teachers and give up their time to study. I
only have old Harris, and he is the most idiotic old animal alive;
besides, I loathe the very thought of teaching. I’d as soon go on the
wallaby.”

“You are not old enough to be a general servant or a cook; you have not
experience enough to be a housemaid; you don’t take to sewing, and
there is no chance of being accepted as a hospital nurse: you must
confess there is nothing you can do. You are really a very useless girl
for your age.”

“There are heaps of things I could do.”

“Tell me a few of them.”

I was silent. The professions at which I felt I had the latent power to
excel, were I but given a chance, were in a sphere far above us, and to
mention my feelings and ambitions to my matter-of-fact practical mother
would bring upon me worse ridicule than I was already forced to endure
day by day.

“Mention a few of the things you could do.”

I might as well have named flying as the professions I was thinking of.
Music was the least unmentionable of them, so I brought it forward.

“Music! But it would take years of training and great expense before
you could earn anything at that! It is quite out of the question. The
only thing for you to do is to settle down and take interest in your
work, and help make a living at home, or else go out as a nurse-girl,
and work your way up. If you have any ability in you it would soon
show. If you think you could do such strokes, and the home work is not
good enough for you, go out and show the world what a wonderful
creature you are.”

“Mother, you are unjust and cruel!” I exclaimed. “You do not understand
one at all. I never thought I could do strokes. I cannot help being
constituted so that grimy manual labour is hateful to me, for it is
hateful to me, and I hate it more and more every day, and you can
preach and preach till you go black in the face, and still I’ll hate it
more than ever. If I have to do it all my life, and if I’m cursed with
a long life, I’ll hate it just as much at the end as I do now. I’m sure
it’s not any wish of mine that I’m born with inclinations for better
things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I’d
be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I
could find plenty of companionship, or I’d be born an idiot, which
would be better still.”

“Sybylla!” said my mother in a shocked tone. “It is a wonder God
doesn’t strike you dead; I never heard—”

“I don’t believe there is a God,” I said fiercely, “and if there is,
He’s not the merciful being He’s always depicted, or He wouldn’t be
always torturing me for His own amusement.”

“Sybylla, Sybylla! That I should ever have nurtured a child to grow up
like this! Do you know that—”

“I only know that I hate this life. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it,” I
said vehemently.

“Talk about going out to earn your own living! Why, there’s not a woman
living would have you in her house above a day. You are a perfect
she-devil. Oh God!” And my mother began to cry. “What have I done to be
cursed with such a child? There is not another woman in the district
with such a burden put upon her. What have I done? I can only trust
that my prayers to God for you will soften your evil heart.”

“If your prayers are answered, it’s more than ever mine were,” I
retorted.

“_Your_ prayers!” said my mother, with scorn. “The horror of a child
not yet sixteen being so hardened. I don’t know what to make of you,
you never cry or ask forgiveness. There’s dear little Gertie now, she
is often naughty, but when I correct her she frets and worries and
shows herself to be a human being and not a fiend.”

So saying my mother went out of the room.

“I’ve asked forgiveness once too often, to be sat upon for my pains,” I
called out.

“I believe you’re mad. That is the only feasible excuse I can make for
your conduct,” she said as a parting shot.

“Why the deuce don’t you two get to bed and not wrangle like a pair of
cats in the middle of the night, disturbing a man’s rest?” came in my
father’s voice from amid the bedclothes.

My mother is a good woman—a very good woman—and I am, I think, not
quite all criminality, but we do not pull together. I am a piece of
machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way,
setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.

She wondered why I did not cry and beg forgiveness, and thereby give
evidence of being human. I was too wrought up for tears. Ah, that tears
might have come to relieve my overburdened heart! I took up the
home-made tallow candle in its tin stick and looked at my pretty
sleeping sister Gertie (she and I shared the one bed). It was as mother
had said. If Gertie was scolded for any of her shortcomings, she
immediately took refuge in tears, said she was sorry, obtained
forgiveness, and straightaway forgot the whole matter. She came within
the range of mother’s understanding, I did not; she had feelings,
mother thought, I had none. Did my mother understand me, she would know
that I am capable of more depths of agony and more exquisite heights of
joy in one day than Gertie will experience in her whole life.

Was I mad as mother had said? A fear took possession of me that I might
be. I certainly was utterly different to any girl I had seen or known.
What was the hot wild spirit which surged within me? Ah, that I might
weep! I threw myself on my bed and moaned. Why was I not like other
girls? Why was I not like Gertie? Why were not a new dress, everyday
work, and an occasional picnic sufficient to fill my mind? My movements
awakened Gertie.

“What is the matter, dear Sybylla? Come to bed. Mother has been
scolding you. She is always scolding some one. That doesn’t matter. You
say you are sorry, and she won’t scold any more. That’s what I always
do. Do get into bed. You’ll be tired in the morning.”

“What does it matter if I will be. I wish I would be dead. What’s the
good of a hateful thing like I am being alive. No one wants or cares
for me.”

“I love you, Sybylla, better than all the rest. I could not do without
you,” and she put her pretty face to mine and kissed me.

What a balm to the tempest-tossed soul is a little love, though it may
be fleeting and fickle! I was able to weep now, with wild hot tears,
and with my sister’s arms around me I fell asleep without undressing
further.




CHAPTER SEVEN
Was E’er a Rose Without Its Thorn?


I arose from bed next morning with three things in my head—a pair of
swollen eyes, a heavy pain, and a fixed determination to write a book.
Nothing less than a book. A few hours’ work in the keen air of a late
autumn morning removed the swelling from my eyes and the pain from my
temples, but the idea of relieving my feelings in writing had taken
firm root in my brain. It was not my first attempt in this direction.
Two years previously I had purloined paper and sneaked out of bed every
night at one or two o’clock to write a prodigious novel in point of
length and detail, in which a full-fledged hero and heroine performed
the duties of a hero and heroine in the orthodox manner. Knowing our
circumstances, my grandmother was accustomed, when writing to me, to
enclose a stamp to enable me to reply. These I saved, and with them
sent my book to the leading Sydney publisher. After waiting many weeks
I received a polite memo to the effect that the story showed great
ability, but the writer’s inexperience was too much in evidence for
publication. The writer was to study the best works of literature, and
would one day, no doubt, take a place among Australian novelists.

This was a very promising opinion of the work of a child of thirteen,
more encouraging than the great writers got at the start of their
literary career; but it seemed to even my childish intelligence that
the memo was a stereotyped affair that the publisher sent in answer to
all the MSS. of fameless writers submitted to him, and also sent in all
probability without reading as much as the name of the story. After
that I wrote a few short stories and essays; but now the spirit moved
me to write another book—not with any hope of success, as it was
impossible for me to study literature as advised. I seldom saw a book,
and could only spare time in tiny scraps to read them when I did.

However, the few shillings I had obtained at odd times I spent on
paper, and in secret robbed from much-needed rest a few hours weekly
wherein to write. This made me very weary and slow in the daytime, and
a sore trial to my mother. I was always forgetting things I should not
have forgotten, because my thoughts were engaged in working out my
story. The want of rest told upon me. I continually complained of
weariness, and my work was a drag to me.

My mother knew not what to make of it. At first she thought I was lazy
and bad, and punished me in various ways; but while my book occupied my
mind I was not cross, gave her no impudence, and did not flare up. Then
she began to fear I must be ill, and took me to a doctor, who said I
was much too precocious for my years, and would be better when the
weather got warmer. He gave me a tonic, which I threw out the window. I
heard no more of going out as nurse-girl: father had joined a neighbour
who had taken a road contract, and by this means the pot was kept, if
not quite, at least pretty near, boiling.

Life jogged along tamely, and, as far as I could see, gave promise of
going to the last slip-rails without a canter, until one day in July
1896 mother received a letter from her mother which made a pleasant
change in my life, though, like all sweets, that letter had its bitter
drop. It ran as follows:—


My dear daughter, Lucy,

Only a short letter this time. I am pressed for time, as four or five
strangers have just come and asked to stay for the night, and as one of
the girls is away, I have to get them beds. I am writing about Sybylla.
I am truly grieved to hear she is such a source of grief and annoyance
to you. The girl must surely be ill or she would never act as you
describe. She is young yet, and may settle down better by and by. We
can only entrust her to the good God who is ever near. Send her up to
me as soon as you can. I will pay all expenses. The change will do her
good, and if her conduct improves, I will keep her as long as you like.
She is young to mention in regard to marriage, but in another year she
will be as old as I was when I married, and it might be the makings of
her if she married early. At any rate she will be better away from
Possum Gully, now that she is growing into womanhood, or she may be in
danger of forming ties beneath her. She might do something good for
herself up here: not that I would ever be a matchmaker in the least
degree, but Gertie will soon be coming on, and Sybylla, being so very
plain, will need all the time she can get.


Your loving mother,
L. Bossier.


My mother gave me this letter to read, and, when I had finished
perusing it, asked me would I go. I replied coldly:

“Yes. Paupers and beggars cannot be choosers, and grandmother might as
well keep me at Caddagat as at Possum Gully”—for my grandmother
contributed greatly to the support of our family.

As regards scenery, the one bit of beauty Possum Gully possessed was
its wattles. Bowers of grown and scrubs of young ones adorned the hills
and gullies in close proximity to the house, while groves of different
species graced the flats. Being Sunday, on this afternoon I was at
liberty for a few hours; and on receiving the intelligence contained in
the letter, I walked out of the house over a low hill at the back into
a gully, where I threw myself at the foot of a wattle in a favourite
clump, and gave way to my thoughts.

So mother had been telling my grandmother of my faults—my grandmother
whom I loved so dearly. Mother might have had enough honour and
motherly protection to have kept the tale of my sins to herself. Though
this intelligence angered, it did not surprise me, being accustomed to
mother telling every neighbour what a great trial I was to her—how
discontented I was, and what little interest I took in my work. It was
the last part of the letter which finished up my feelings. Oh heavens!
Surely if my mother understood the wild pain, the days and hours of
agony pure and complete I have suffered on account of my appearance,
she would never have shown me that letter.

I was to be given more time on account of being ugly—I was not a
valuable article in the marriage market, sweet thought! My grandmother
is one of the good old school, who believed that a girl’s only proper
sphere in life was marriage; so, knowing her sentiments, her purpose to
get me married neither surprised nor annoyed me. But I was plain. Ah,
bosh! Oh! Ah! I cannot express what kind of a feeling that fact gave
me. It sank into my heart and cut like a cruel jagged knife—not because
it would be a drawback to me in the marriage line, for I had an
antipathy to the very thought of marriage. Marriage to me appeared the
most horribly tied-down and unfair-to-women existence going. It would
be from fair to middling if there was love; but I laughed at the idea
of love, and determined never, never, never to marry.

The other side of the letter—the part which gave me joy—was the
prospect of going to Caddagat.

Caddagat, the place where I was born! Caddagat, whereat, enfolded in
grandmotherly love and the petting which accrued therefrom, I spent
some of my few sweet childish days. Caddagat, the place my heart fondly
enshrines as home. Caddagat, draped by nature in a dream of beauty.
Caddagat, Caddagat! Caddagat for me, Caddagat for ever! I say.

Too engrossed with my thoughts to feel the cold of the dull winter day,
I remained in my position against the wattle-tree until Gertie came to
inform me that tea was ready.

“You know, Sybylla, it was your turn to get the tea ready; but I set
the table to save you from getting into a row. Mother was looking for
you, and said she supposed you were in one of your tantrums again.”

Pretty little peacemaker! She often did things like that for me.

“Very well, Gertie, thank you. I will set it two evenings running to
make up for it—if I’m here.”

“If you are here! What do you mean?”

“I am going away,” I replied, watching her narrowly to see if she
cared, for I was very hungry for love.

“Going to run away becauses mother is always scolding you?”

“No, you little silly! I’m going up to Caddagat to live with grannie.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Honour bright?”

“Yes; really and truly and honour bright.”

“Won’t you ever come back again?”

“I don’t know about _never_ coming back again; but I’m going up for
always, as far as a person can lay out ahead of her. Do you care?”

Yes she cared. The childish mouth quivered, the pretty blue-eyed face
fell, the ready tears flowed fast. I noticed every detail with savage
comfort. It was more than I deserved, for, though I loved her
passionately, I had ever been too much wrapped in self to have been
very kind and lovable to her.

“Who will tell me stories now?”

It was a habit of mine to relate stories to her out of my own fertile
imagination. In return for this she kept secret the fact that I sat up
and wrote when I should have been in bed. I was obliged to take some
means of inducing her to keep silence, as she—even Gertie, who firmly
believed in me—on waking once or twice at unearthly hours and
discovering me in pursuit of my nightly task, had been so alarmed for
my sanity that I had the greatest work to prevent her from yelling to
father and mother on the spot. But I bound her to secrecy, and took a
strange delight in bringing to her face with my stories the laughter,
the wide-eyed wonder, or the tears—just as my humour dictated.

“You’ll easily get someone else to tell you stories.”

“Not like yours. And who will take my part when Horace bullies me?”

I pressed her to me.

“Gertie, Gertie, promise me you will love me a little always, and
never, never forget me. Promise me.”

And with a weakly glint of winter sunshine turning her hair to gold,
and with her head on my shoulder, Gertie promised—promised with the
soluble promise of a butterfly-natured child.

SELF-ANALYSIS

N.B.—This is dull and egotistical. Better skip it. That’s my advice—S.
P. M.

As a tiny child I was filled with dreams of the great things I was to
do when grown up. My ambition was as boundless as the mighty bush in
which I have always lived. As I grew it dawned upon me that I was a
girl—the makings of a woman! Only a girl—merely this and nothing more.
It came home to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take
the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women,
metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and
patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither,
battering and bruising without mercy. Familiarity made me used to this
yoke; I recovered from the disappointment of being a girl, and was
reconciled to that part of my fate. In fact, I found that being a girl
was quite pleasant until a hideous truth dawned upon me—I was ugly!
That truth has embittered my whole existence. It gives me days and
nights of agony. It is a sensitive sore that will never heal, a grim
hobgoblin that nought can scare away. In conjunction with this brand of
hell I developed a reputation of cleverness. Worse and worse! Girls!
girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore a wish for
happiness, homes, and husbands by and by, never develop a reputation of
being clever. It will put you out of the matrimonial running as
effectually as though it had been circulated that you had leprosy. So,
if you feel that you are afflicted with more than ordinary
intelligence, and especially if you are plain with it, hide your
brains, cramp your mind, study to appear unintellectual—it is your only
chance. Provided a woman is beautiful allowance will be made for all
her shortcomings. She can be unchaste, vapid, untruthful, flippant,
heartless, and even clever; so long as she is fair to see men will
stand by her, and as men, in this world, are “the dog on top”, they are
the power to truckle to. A plain woman will have nothing forgiven her.
Her fate is such that the parents of uncomely female infants should be
compelled to put them to death at their birth.

The next unpleasant discovery I made in regard to myself was that I was
woefully out of my sphere. I studied the girls of my age around me, and
compared myself with them. We had been reared side by side. They had
had equal advantages; some, indeed, had had greater. We all moved in
the one little, dull world, but they were not only in their world, they
were of it; I was not. Their daily tasks and their little pleasures
provided sufficient oil for the lamp of their existence—mine demanded
more than Possum Gully could supply. They were totally ignorant of the
outside world. Patti, Melba, Irving, Terry, Kipling, Caine, Corelli,
and even the name of Gladstone, were only names to them. Whether they
were islands or racehorses they knew not and cared not. With me it was
different. Where I obtained my information, unless it was born in me, I
do not know. We took none but the local paper regularly, I saw few
books, had the pleasure of conversing with an educated person from the
higher walks of life about once in a twelvemonth, yet I knew of every
celebrity in literature, art, music, and drama; their world was my
world, and in fancy I lived with them. My parents discouraged me in
that species of foolishness. They had been fond of literature and the
higher arts, but now, having no use for them, had lost interest
therein.

I was discontented and restless, and longed unendurably to be out in
the stream of life. “Action! Action! Give me action!” was my cry. My
mother did her best with me according to her lights. She energetically
preached at me. All the old saws and homilies were brought into
requisition, but without avail. It was like using common nostrums on a
disease which could be treated by none but a special physician.

I was treated to a great deal of harping on that tiresome old string,
“Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might.” It was
daily dinned into my cars that the little things of life were the
noblest, and that all the great people I mooned about said the same. I
usually retorted to the effect that I was well aware that it was noble,
and that I could write as good an essay on it as any philosopher. It
was all very well for great people to point out the greatness of the
little, empty, humdrum life. Why didn’t they adopt it themselves?

“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to the toad.”


I wasn’t anxious to patronize the dull kind of tame nobility of the
toad; I longed for a few of the triumphs of the butterfly, decried
though they are as hollow bubbles. I desired life while young enough to
live, and quoted as my motto:

“Though the pitcher that goes to the sparkling rill
Too oft gets broken at last,
There are scores of others its place to fill
When its earth to the earth is cast.
Keep that pitcher at home, let it never roam,
But lie like a useless clod;
Yet sooner or later the hour will come
When its chips are thrown to the sod.

“Is it wise, then, say, in the waning day,
When the vessel is crack’d and old,
To cherish the battered potter’s clay
As though it were virgin gold?
Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf,
Though prudent and sage you seem;
Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf,
And mine by the dazzling stream.”


I had sense sufficient to see the uselessness of attempting to be other
than I was. In these days of fierce competition there was no chance for
me—opportunity, not talent, was the main requisite. Fate had thought
fit to deny me even one advantage or opportunity, thus I was helpless.
I set to work to cut my coat according to my cloth. I manfully
endeavoured to squeeze my spirit into “that state of life into which it
has pleased God to call me”. I crushed, compressed, and bruised, but as
fast as I managed it on one side it burst out on another, and defied me
to cram it into the narrow box of Possum Gully.

“The restless throbbings and burnings
That hope unsatisfied brings,
The weary longings and yearnings
For the mystical better things,
Are the sands on which is reflected
The pitiless moving lake,
Where the wanderer falls dejected,
By a thirst he never can slake.”


In a vain endeavour to slake that cruel thirst my soul groped in
strange dark places. It went out in quest of a God, and finding one
not, grew weary.

By the unknown way that the atmosphere of the higher life penetrated to
me, so came a knowledge of the sin and sorrow abroad in the world—the
cry of the millions oppressed, downtrodden, God-forsaken! The wheels of
social mechanism needed readjusting—things were awry. Oh, that I might
find a cure and give it to my fellows! I dizzied my brain with the
problem; I was too much for myself. A man with these notions is a curse
to himself, but a woman—pity help a woman of that description! She is
not merely a creature out of her sphere, she is a creature without a
sphere—a lonely being!

Recognizing this, I turned and cursed God for casting upon me a burden
greater than I could bear—cursed Him bitterly, and from within came a
whisper that there was nothing there to curse. There was no God. I was
an unbeliever. It was not that I sought after or desired atheism. I
longed to be a Christian, and fought against unbelief. I asked the
Christians around me for help. Unsophisticated fool! I might as well
have announced that I was a harlot. My respectability vanished in one
slap. Some said it was impossible to disbelieve in the existence of a
God: I was only doing it for notoriety, and they washed their hands of
me at once.

Not believe in God! I was mad!

If there really was a God, would they kindly tell me how to find Him?

Pray! pray!

I prayed, often and ardently, but ever came that heart-stilling whisper
that there was nothing to pray to.

Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an
atheist can understand! Nothing to live for in life—no hope beyond the
grave. It plunged me into fits of profound melancholy.

Had my father occupied one of the fat positions of the land, no doubt
as his daughter my life would have been so full of pleasant occupation
and pleasure that I would not have developed the spirit which torments
me now. Or had I a friend—one who knew, who had suffered and
understood, one in whom I could lose myself, one on whom I could lean—I
might have grown a nicer character. But in all the wide world there was
not a soul to hold out a hand to me, and I said bitterly, “There is no
good in the world.” In softer moods I said, “Ah, the tangle of it!
Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have
the power have not the heart.”

Bad, like a too-strong opponent in a game of chess, is ever at the
elbow of good to checkmate it like a weakly managed king.

I am sadly lacking in self-reliance. I needed some one to help me over
the rough spots in life, and finding them not, at the age of sixteen I
was as rank a cynic and infidel as could be found in three days’ march.




CHAPTER EIGHT
Possum Gully Left Behind. Hurrah! Hurrah!


If a Sydney man has friends residing at Goulburn, he says they are up
the country. If a Goulburn man has friends at Yass, he says they are up
the country. If a Yass man has friends at Young, he says they are up
the country, and so on. Caddagat is “up the country”.

Bound thither on the second Wednesday in August 1896, I bought a ticket
at the Goulburn railway station, and at some time about 1 a.m. took my
seat in a second class carriage of the mail-train on its way to
Melbourne. I had three or four hours to travel in this train when I
would have to change to a branch line for two hours longer. I was the
only one from Goulburn in that carriage; all the other passengers had
been in some time and were asleep. One or two opened their eyes
strugglingly, stared glumly at the intruder, and then went to sleep
again. The motion of the train was a joy to me, and sleep never entered
my head. I stood up, and pressing my forehead to the cold window-pane,
vainly attempted, through the inky blackness of the foggy night, to
discern the objects which flew by.

I was too full of pleasant anticipation of what was ahead of me to
think of those I had left behind. I did not regret leaving Possum
Gully. Quite the reverse; I felt inclined to wave my arms and yell for
joy at being freed from it. Home! God forbid that my experiences at
Possum Gully should form the only food for my reminiscences of home. I
had practically grown up there, but my heart refused absolutely to
regard it as home. I hated it then, I hate it now, with its narrowing,
stagnant monotony. It has and had not provided me with one solitary
fond remembrance—only with dreary, wing-clipping, mind-starving
recollections. No, no; I was not leaving home behind, I was flying
homeward now. Home, home to Caddagat, home to ferny gullies, to the
sweet sad rush of many mountain waters, to the majesty of rugged
Borgongs; home to dear old grannie, and uncle and aunt, to books, to
music; refinement, company, pleasure, and the dear old homestead I love
so well.

All in good time I arrived at the end of my train journey, and was
taken in charge by a big red-bearded man, who informed me he was the
driver of the mail-coach, and had received a letter from Mrs Bossier
instructing him to take care of me. He informed me also that he was
glad to do what he termed “that same”, and I would be as safe under his
care as I would be in God’s pocket.

My twenty-six miles’ coach drive was neither pleasant nor eventful. I
was the only passenger, and so had my choice of seats. The weather
being cold and wet, I preferred being inside the box and curled myself
up on the seat, to be interrupted every two or three miles by the
good-natured driver inquiring if I was “all serene”.

At the Halfway House, where a change of the team of five horses was
affected, I had a meal and a warm, and so tuned myself up for the
remainder of the way. It got colder as we went on, and at 2.30 p.m. I
was not at all sorry to see the iron roofs of Gool-Gool township
disclosing to my view. We first went to the post office, where the
mail-bags were delivered, and then returned and pulled rein in front of
the Woolpack Hotel. A tall young gentleman in a mackintosh and cap, who
had been standing on the veranda, stepped out on the street as the
coach stopped, and lifting his cap and thrusting his head into the
coach, inquired, “Which is Miss Melvyn?”

Seeing I was the only occupant, he laughed the pleasantest of laughs,
disclosing two wide rows of perfect teeth, and turning to the driver,
said, “Is that your only passenger? I suppose it is Miss Melvyn?”

“As I wasn’t present at her birth, I can’t swear, but I believe her to
be that same, as sure as eggs is eggs,” he replied.

My identity being thus established, the young gentleman with the
greatest of courtesy assisted me to alight, ordered the hotel groom to
stow my luggage in the Caddagat buggy, and harness the horses with all
expedition. He then conducted me to the private parlour, where a
friendly little barmaid had some refreshments on a tray awaiting me,
and while warming my feet preparatory to eating I read the letter he
had given me, which was addressed in my grandmother’s handwriting. In
it she told me that she and my aunt were only just recovering from bad
colds, and on account of the inclemency of the weather thought it
unwise to come to town to meet me; but Frank Hawden, the jackeroo would
take every care of me, settle the hotel bill, and tip the coach-driver.
Caddagat was twenty-four miles distant from Gool-Gool, and the latter
part of the road was very hilly. It was already past three o’clock,
and, being rainy, the short winter afternoon would close in earlier; so
I swallowed my tea and cake with all expedition, so as not to delay Mr
Hawden, who was waiting to assist me into the buggy, where the groom
was in charge of the horses in the yard. He struck up a conversation
with me immediately.

“Seeing your name on yer bags, an’ knowin’ you was belonging to the
Bossiers, I ask if yer might be a daughter of Dick Melvyn, of
Bruggabrong, out by Timlinbilly.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, miss, please remember me most kindly to yer pa; he was a good
boss was Dick Melvyn. I hope he’s doin’ well. I’m Billy Haizelip,
brother to Mary and Jane. You remember Jane, I s’pose, miss?”

I hadn’t time to say more than promise to send his remembrances to my
father, for Mr Hawden, saying we would be in the dark, had whipped his
horses and was bowling off at a great pace, in less than two minutes
covering a rise which put Gool-Gool out of sight. It was raining a
little, so I held over us the big umbrella, which grannie had sent,
while we discussed the weather, to the effect that rain was badly
needed and was a great novelty nowadays, and it was to be hoped it
would continue. There had been but little, but the soil here away was
of that rich loamy description which little water turns to mud. It
clogged the wheels and loaded the break-blocks; and the near side horse
had a nasty way of throwing his front feet, so that he deposited soft
red lumps of mud in our laps at every step. But, despite these trifling
drawbacks, it was delightful to be drawn without effort by a pair of
fat horses in splendid harness. It was a great contrast to our poor
skinny old horse at home, crawling along in much-broken harness,
clumsily and much mended with string and bits of hide.

Mr Hawden was not at all averse to talking. After emptying our tongues
of the weather, there was silence for some time, which he broke with,
“So you are Mrs Bossier’s grand-daughter, are you?”

“Not remembering my birth, I can’t swear; but I believe myself to be
that same, as sure as eggs is eggs,” I replied.

He laughed. “Very good imitation of the coach-driver. But Mrs Bossier’s
grand-daughter! Well, I should smile!”

“What at?”

“Your being Mrs Bossier’s grand-daughter.”

“I fear, Mr Hawden, there is a suspicion reverse of complimentary in
your remark.”

“Well, I should smile! Would you like to have my opinion of you?”

“Nothing would please me more. I would value your opinion above all
things, and I’m sure—I feel certain—that you have formed a true
estimate of me.”

At any other time his conceit would have brought upon himself a fine
snubbing, but today I was in high feather, and accordingly very
pleasant, and resolved to amuse myself by drawing him out.

“Well, you are not a bit like Mrs Bossier or Mrs Bell; they are both so
good-looking,” he continued.

“Indeed!”

“I was disappointed when I saw you had no pretensions to prettiness, as
there’s not a girl up these parts worth wasting a man’s affections on,
and I was building great hopes on you. But I’m a great admirer of
beauty,” he twaddled.

“I am very sorry for you, Mr Hawden. I’m sure it would take quite a
paragon to be worthy of such affection as I’m sure yours would be,” I
replied sympathetically.

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. You’re not a bad sort, and think a
fellow could have great fun with you.”

“I’m sure, Mr Hawden, you do me too much honour. It quite exhilarates
me to think that I meet with your approval in the smallest degree,” I
replied with the utmost deference. “You are so gentlemanly and nice
that I was alarmed at first lest you might despise me altogether.”

“No fear. You needn’t be afraid of me; I’m not a bad sort of fellow,”
he replied with the greatest encouragement.

By his accent and innocent style I detected he was not a colonial, so I
got him to relate his history. He was an Englishman by birth, but had
been to America, Spain, New Zealand, Tasmania, etc.; by his own make
out had ever been a man of note, and had played Old Harry everywhere.

I allowed him to gabble away full tilt for an hour on this subject,
unconscious that I had taken the measure of him, and was grinning
broadly to myself. Then I diverted him by inquiring how long since the
wire fence on our right had been put up. It bore evidence of recent
erection, and had replaced an old cockatoo fence which I remembered in
my childhood.

“Fine fence, is it not? Eight wires, a top rail, and very stout posts.
Harry Beecham had that put up by contract this year. Twelve miles of
it. It cost him a lot: couldn’t get any very low tenders, the ground
being so hard on account of the drought. Those trees are Five-Bob
Downs—see, away over against the range. But I suppose you know the
places better than I do.”

We were now within an hour of our destination. How familiar were many
landmarks to me, although I had not seen them since I was eight years
old.

A river ran on our right, occasionally a glimmer of its noisy waters
visible through the shrubbery which profusely lined its banks. The
short evening was drawing to a close. The white mists brought by the
rain were crawling slowly down the hills, and settling in the hollows
of the ranges on our left. A V-shaped rift in them, known as Pheasant
Gap, came into view. Mr Hawden said it was well named, as it swarmed
with lyrebirds. Night was falling. The skreel of a hundred curlews
arose from the gullies—how I love their lonely wail!—and it was quite
dark when we pulled up before the front gate of Caddagat.

A score of dogs rushed yelping to meet us, the front door was thrown
open, lights and voices came streaming out.

I alighted from the buggy feeling rather nervous. I was a pauper with a
bad character. How would my grandmother receive me? Dear old soul, I
had nothing to fear. She folded me in a great warm-hearted hug, saying,
“Dear me, child, your face is cold. I’m glad you’ve come. It has been a
terrible day, but we’re glad to have the rain. You must be frozen. Get
in to the fire, child, as fast as you can. Get in to the fire, get in
to the fire. I hope you forgive me for not going to meet you.” And
there was my mother’s only sister, my tall graceful aunt, standing
beside her, giving me a kiss and cordial hand-clasp, and saying,
“Welcome, Sybylla. We will be glad to have a young person to brighten
up the old home once more. I am sorry I was too unwell to meet you. You
must be frozen; come to the fire.”

My aunt always spoke very little and very quietly, but there was
something in her high-bred style which went right home.

I could scarcely believe that they were addressing me. Surely they were
making a mistake. This reception was meant for some grand relative
honouring them with a visit, and not for the ugly, useless, bad little
pauper come to live upon their bounty.

Their welcome did more than all the sermons I had ever heard put
together towards thawing a little of the pitiless cynicism which
encrusted my heart.

“Take the child inside, Helen, as fast as you can,” said grannie,
“while I see that the boy attends to the horses. The plaguey fellow
can’t be trusted any further than the length of his nose. I told him to
tie up these dogs, and here they are yelp-yelping fit to deafen a
person.”

I left my wet umbrella on the veranda, and aunt Helen led me into the
dining-room, where a spruce maid was making a pleasant clatter in
laying the table. Caddagat was a very old style of house, and all the
front rooms opened onto the veranda without any such preliminary as a
hall, therefore it was necessary to pass through the dining-room to my
bedroom, which was a skillion at the back. While auntie paused for a
moment to give some orders to the maid, I noticed the heavy silver
serviette rings I remembered so well, and the old-fashioned
dinner-plates, and the big fire roaring in the broad white fireplace;
but more than all, the beautiful pictures on the walls and a table in a
corner strewn with papers, magazines, and several very new-looking
books. On the back of one of these I saw “Corelli”, and on
another—great joy!—was _Trilby_. From the adjoining apartment, which
was the drawing-room, came the sweet full tones of a beautiful piano.
Here were three things for which I had been starving. An impulse to
revel in them immediately seized me. I felt like clearing the table at
a bound, seizing and beginning to read both books, and rushing in to
the piano and beginning to play upon it there and then, and examine the
pictures—all three things at once. Fortunately for the reputation of my
sanity, however, aunt Helen had by this time conducted me to a pretty
little bedroom, and saying it was to be mine, helped me to doff my cape
and hat.

While warming my fingers at the fire my eyes were arrested by a
beautiful portrait hanging above the mantelpiece. It represented a
lovely girl in the prime of youth and beauty, and attired in floating
white dinner draperies.

“Oh, aunt Helen! isn’t she lovely? It’s you, isn’t it?”

“No. Do you not recognize it as your mother? It was taken just before
her marriage. I must leave you now, but come out as soon as you arrange
yourself—your grandmother will be anxious to see you.”

When aunt Helen left me I plastered my hair down in an instant without
even a glance in the mirror. I took not a particle of interest in my
attire, and would go about dressed anyhow. This was one symptom which
inclined my mother to the belief of my possible insanity, as to most
young girls dress is a great delight. I had tried once or twice to make
myself look nice by dressing prettily, but, by my own judgment,
considering I looked as ugly as ever, I had given it up as a bad job.

The time which I should have spent in arranging my toilet passed in
gazing at my mother’s portrait. It was one of the loveliest faces
imaginable. The features may not have been perfect according to rule of
thumb, but the expression was simply angelic—sweet, winning, gentle,
and happy. I turned from the contemplation of it to another
photograph—one of my father—in a silver frame on the dressing-table.
This, too, was a fine countenance, possessed of well-cut features and
refined expression. This was the prince who had won Lucy Bossier from
her home. I looked around my pretty bedroom—it had been my mother’s in
the days of her maidenhood. In an exclusive city boarding-school, and
amid the pleasant surroundings of this home, her youth had been spent.

I thought of a man and his wife at Possum Gully. The man was
blear-eyed, disreputable in appearance, and failed to fulfil his duties
as a father and a citizen. The woman was work-roughened and
temper-soured by endless care and an unavailing struggle against
poverty. Could that pair possibly be identical with this?

This was life as proved by my parents! What right had I to expect any
better yield from it? I shut my eyes and shuddered at the possibilities
and probabilities of my future. It was for this that my mother had
yielded up her youth, freedom, strength; for this she had sacrificed
the greatest possession of woman.

Here I made my way to the dining-room, where grannie was waiting for me
and gave me another hug.

“Come here, child, and sit beside me near the fire; but first let me
have a look at you,” and she held me at arm’s length.

“Dear, oh, dear, what a little thing you are, and not a bit like any of
your relations! I am glad your skin is so nice and clear; all my
children had beautiful complexions. Goodness me, I never saw such hair!
A plait thicker than my arm and almost to your knees! It is that
beautiful bright brown like your aunt’s. Your mother’s was flaxen. I
must see your hair loose when you are going to bed. There is nothing I
admire so much as a beautiful head of hair.”

The maid announced that dinner was ready, grannie vigorously rang a
little bell, aunt Helen, a lady, and a gentleman appeared from the
drawing-room, and Mr Hawden came in from the back. I discovered that
the lady and gentleman were a neighbouring squatter and a new governess
he was taking home. Grannie, seeing them pass that afternoon in the
rain, had gone out and prevailed upon them to spend the night at
Caddagat.

Mr Hawden took no notice of me now, but showed off to the others for my
benefit. After dinner we had music and singing in the drawing-room. I
was enjoying it immensely, but grannie thought I had better go to bed,
as I had been travelling since about midnight last night. I was neither
tired nor sleepy, but knew it useless to protest, so bade every one
good night and marched off. Mr Hawden acknowledged my salute with great
airs and stiffness, and aunt Helen whispered that she would come and
see me by and by, if I was awake.

Grannie escorted me to my room, and examined my hair. I shook it out
for her inspection. It met with her approval in every way. She
pronounced it beautifully fine, silky, and wavy, and the most wonderful
head of hair she had seen out of a picture.

A noise arose somewhere out in the back premises. Grannie went out to
ascertain the cause of it and did not return to me, so I extinguished
my lamp and sat thinking in the glow of the firelight.

For the first time my thoughts reverted to my leave-taking from home.
My father had kissed me with no more warmth than if I had been leaving
for a day only; my mother had kissed me very coldly, saying shortly,
“It is to be hoped, Sybylla, that your behaviour to your grandmother
will be an improvement upon what it has ever been to me.” Gertie was
the only one who had felt any sorrow at parting with me, and I knew
that she was of such a disposition that I would be forgotten in a day
or two. They would never miss me, for I had no place in their
affections. True, I was an undutiful child, and deserved none. I
possessed no qualities that would win either their pride or love, but
my heart cried out in love for them.

Would Gertie miss me tonight, as I would have missed her had our
positions been reversed? Not she. Would my absence from the noisy
tea-table cause a blank? I feared not.

I thought of poor mother left toiling at home, and my heart grew heavy;
I failed to remember my father’s faults, but thought of his great
patience with me in the years agone, and all my old-time love for him
renewed itself. Why, oh, why, would they not love me a little in
return! Certainly I had never striven to be lovable. But see the love
some have lavished upon them without striving for it! Why was I ugly
and nasty and miserable and useless—without a place in the world?




CHAPTER NINE
Aunt Helen’s Recipe


“Dear me, Sybylla, not in bed yet, and tears, great big tears! Tell me
what is the cause of them.”

It was aunt Helen’s voice; she had entered and lit the lamp.

There was something beautifully sincere and real about aunt Helen. She
never fussed over any one or pretended to sympathize just to make out
how nice she was. She was real, and you felt that no matter what wild
or awful rubbish you talked to her it would never be retailed for any
one’s amusement—and, better than all, she never lectured.

She sat down beside me, and I impulsively threw my arms around her neck
and sobbed forth my troubles in a string. How there was no good in the
world, no use for me there, no one loved me or ever could on account of
my hideousness.

She heard me to the end and then said quietly, “When you are fit to
listen I will talk to you.”

I controlled myself instantly and waited expectantly. What would she
say? Surely not that tame old yarn anent this world being merely a
place of probation, wherein we were allowed time to fit ourselves for a
beautiful world to come. That old tune may be all very well for old
codgers tottering on the brink of the grave, but to young persons with
youth and romance and good health surging through their veins, it is
most boresome. Would she preach that it was flying in the face of
providence to moan about my appearance? it being one of the greatest
blessings I had, as it would save me from countless temptations to
which pretty girls are born. That was another piece of old croaking of
the job’s comforter order, of which I was sick unto death, as I am sure
there is not an ugly person in the world who thinks her lack of beauty
a blessing to her. I need not have feared aunt Helen holding forth in
that strain. She always said something brave and comforting which made
me ashamed of myself and my selfish conceited egotism.

“I understand you, Sybylla,” she said slowly and distinctly, “but you
must not be a coward. There is any amount of love and good in the
world, but you must search for it. Being misunderstood is one of the
trials we all must bear. I think that even the most common-minded
person in the land has inner thoughts and feelings which no one can
share with him, and the higher one’s organization the more one must
suffer in that respect. I am acquainted with a great number of young
girls, some of them good and true, but you have a character containing
more than any three of them put together. With this power, if properly
managed, you can gain the almost universal love of your fellows. But
you are wild and wayward, you must curb and strain your spirit and
bring it into subjection, else you will be worse than a person with the
emptiest of characters. You will find that plain looks will not prevent
you from gaining the _friendship_ love of your fellows—the only real
love there is. As for the hot fleeting passion of the man for the maid,
which is wrongfully designated love, I will not tell you not to think
of it, knowing that it is human nature to demand it when arriving at a
certain age; but take this comfort: it as frequently passes by on the
other side of those with well-chiselled features as those with faces of
plainer mould.”

She turned her face away, sighed, and forgetful of my presence lapsed
into silence. I knew she was thinking of herself.

Love, not _friendship_ love, for anyone knowing her must give her love
and respect, but the other sort of love had passed her by.

Twelve years before I went to Caddagat, when Helen Bossier had been
eighteen and one of the most beautiful and lovable girls in Australia,
there had come to Caddagat on a visit a dashing colonel of the name of
Bell, in the enjoyment of a most extended furlough for the benefit of
his health. He married aunt Helen and took her to some part of America
where his regiment was stationed. I have heard them say she worshipped
Colonel Bell, but in less than a twelvemonth he tired of his lovely
bride, and becoming enamoured of another woman, he tried to obtain a
divorce. On account of his wife’s spotless character he was unable to
do this; he therefore deserted her and openly lived with the other
woman as his mistress. This forced aunt Helen to return to Caddagat,
and her mother had induced her to sue for a judicial separation, which
was easily obtained.

When a woman is separated from her husband it is the religion of the
world at large to cast the whole blame on the wife. By reason of her
youth and purity Mrs Bell had not as much to suffer in this way as some
others. But, comparatively speaking, her life was wrecked. She had been
humiliated and outraged in the cruellest way by the man whom she loved
and trusted. He had turned her adrift, neither a wife, widow, nor maid,
and here she was, one of the most estimably lovable and noble women I
have ever met.

“Come, Sybylla,” she said, starting up brightly, “I have a plan—will
you agree to it? Come and take one good long look at yourself in the
glass, then I will turn it to the wall, and you must promise me that
for three or four weeks you will not look in a mirror. I will put as
many as I can out of your way, and you must avoid the remainder. During
this time I will take you in hand, and you must follow my directions
implicitly. Will you agree? You will be surprised what a nice-looking
little girl I will make of you.”

Of course I agreed. I took a long and critical survey of myself in the
glass. There was reflected a pair of hands, red and coarsened with
rough work, a round face, shiny and swollen with crying, and a small
round figure enshrouded in masses of hair falling in thick waves to
within an inch or two of the knees. A very ugly spectacle, I thought.
Aunt Helen turned the face of the large mirror flat against the wall,
while I remarked despondently, “you can make me only middling ugly, you
must be a magician.”

“Come now, part of my recipe is that you must not think of yourself at
all. I’ll take you in hand in the morning. I hope you will like your
room; I have arranged it on purpose to suit you. And now good night,
and happy dreams.”

I awoke next morning in very fine spirits, and slithering out of my bed
with alacrity, revelled—literally wallowed—in the appointments of my
room. My poor old room at Possum Gully was lacking in barest
necessaries. We could not afford even a wash-hand basin and jug;
Gertie, the boys, and myself had to perform our morning ablutions in a
leaky tin dish on a stool outside the kitchen door, which on cold
frosty mornings was a pretty peppery performance: but this room
contained everything dear to the heart of girlhood. A lovely bed,
pretty slippers, dainty white China-matting and many soft skins on the
floor, and in one corner a most artistic toilet set, and a wash-stand
liberally supplied with a great variety of soap—some of it so
exquisitely perfumed that I felt tempted to taste it. There were pretty
pictures on the walls, and on a commodious dressing-table a big mirror
and large hand-glasses, with their faces to the wall at present.
Hairpins, fancy combs, ribbons galore, and a pretty work-basket greeted
my sight, and with delight I swooped down upon the most excruciatingly
lovely little writing-desk. It was stuffed full with all kinds of paper
of good quality—fancy, all colours, sizes, and shapes, plain, foreign
note, pens, ink, and a generous supply of stamps. I felt like writing a
dozen letters there and then, and was on the point of giving way to my
inclination, when my attention was arrested by what I considered the
gem of the whole turn-out. I refer to a nice little bookcase containing
copies of all our Australian poets, and two or three dozen novels which
I had often longed to read. I read the first chapters of four of them,
and then lost myself in Gordon, and sat on my dressing-table in my
nightgown, regardless of cold, until brought to my senses by the
breakfast-bell. I made great pace, scrambled into my clothes
helter-skelter, and appeared at table when the others had been seated
and unfolded their serviettes.

Aunt Helen’s treatment for making me presentable was the wearing of
gloves and a shady hat every time I went outside; and she insisted upon
me spending a proper time over my toilet, and would not allow me to
encroach upon it with the contents of my bookshelf.

“Rub off some of your gloomy pessimism and cultivate a little more
healthy girlish vanity, and you will do very well,” she would say.

I observed these rites most religiously for three days. Then I
contracted a slight attack of influenza, and in poking around the
kitchen, doing one of the things I oughtn’t at the time I shouldn’t, a
servant-girl tipped a pot of boiling pot-liquor over my right foot,
scalding it rather severely. Aunt Helen and grannie put me to bed,
where I yelled with pain for hours like a mad Red Indian, despite their
applying every alleviative possible. The combined forces of the burn
and influenza made me a trifle dicky, so a decree went forth that I was
to stay in bed until recovered from both complaints. This effectually
prevented me from running in the way of any looking-glasses.

I was not sufficiently ill to be miserable, and being a pampered
invalid was therefore fine fun. Aunt Helen was a wonderful nurse. She
dressed my foot splendidly every morning, and put it in a comfortable
position many times throughout the day. Grannie brought me every dainty
in the house, and sent special messengers to Gool-Gool for more. Had I
been a professional glutton I would have been in paradise. Even Mr
Hawden condescended so far as to express his regret concerning the
accident, and favoured me with visits throughout each day; and one
Sunday his gallantry carried him to a gully where he plucked a bouquet
of maidenhair fern—the first of the season—and put them in a bowl
beside my bed. My uncle Julius, the only other member of the family
besides the servants, was away “up the country” on some business or
another, and was not expected home for a month or so.

The Bossiers and Beechams were leaders of swelldom among the
squattocracy up the country, and firm and intimate friends. The
Beechams resided at Five-Bob Downs, twelve miles from Caddagat, and
were a family composed of two maiden ladies and their nephew, Harold.
One of these ladies was aunt Helen’s particular friend, and the other
had stood in the same capacity to my mother in days gone by, but of
late years, on account of her poverty, mother had been too proud to
keep up communication with her. As for Harold Beecham, he was nearly as
much at home at Caddagat as at Five-Bob Downs. He came and went with
that pleasant familiarity practised between congenial spirits among
squatterdom. The Bossiers and Beechams were congenial spirits in every
way—they lived in the one sphere and held the one set of ideas, the
only difference between them, and that an unnoticeable one, being that
the Bossiers, though in comfortable circumstances, were not at all
rich, while Harold Beecham was immensely wealthy. When my installation
in the role of invalid took place, one Miss Beecham was away in
Melbourne, and the other not well enough to come and see me, but Harold
came regularly to inquire how I was progressing. He always brought me a
number of beautiful apples. This kindness was because the Caddagat
orchard had been too infested with codlin moth for grannie to save any
last season.

Aunt Helen used to mischievously tease me about this attention.

“Here comes Harry Beecham with some more apples,” she would say. “No
doubt he is far more calculating and artful than I thought he was
capable of being. He is taking time by the forelock and wooing you ere
he sees you, and so will take the lead. Young ladies are in the
minority up this way, and every one is snapped up as soon as she
arrives.”

“You’d better tell him how ugly I am, auntie, so that he will carry
apples twelve miles on his own responsibility, and when he sees me
won’t be vexed that all his work has been for nothing. Perhaps, though,
it would be better not to describe me, or I will get no more apples,” I
would reply.

Aunt Helen was a clever needlewoman. She made all grannie’s dresses and
her own. Now she was making some for me, which, however, I was not to
see until I wore them. Aunt Helen had this as a pleasant surprise, and
went to the trouble of blindfolding me while I was being fitted. While
in bed, grannie and auntie being busy, I was often left hours alone,
and during that time devoured the contents of my bookshelf.

The pleasure, so exquisite as to be almost pain, which I derived from
the books, and especially the Australian poets, is beyond description.
In the narrow peasant life of Possum Gully I had been deprived of
companionship with people of refinement and education who would talk of
the things I loved; but, at last here was congeniality, here was
companionship.

The weird witchery of mighty bush, the breath of wide sunlit plains,
the sound of camp-bells and jingle of hobble chains, floating on the
soft twilight breezes, had come to these men and had written a tale on
their hearts as had been written on mine. The glory of the starlit
heavens, the mighty wonder of the sea, and the majesty of thunder had
come home to them, and the breathless fulness of the sunset hour had
whispered of something more than the humour of tomorrow’s weather. The
wind and rain had a voice which spoke to Kendall, and he too had
endured the misery of lack of companionship. Gordon, with his sad, sad
humanism and bitter disappointment, held out his hand and took me with
him. The regret of it all was I could never meet them—Byron, Thackeray,
Dickens, Longfellow, Gordon, Kendall, the men I loved, all were dead;
but, blissful thought! Caine, Paterson, and Lawson were still living,
breathing human beings—two of them actually countrymen, fellow
Australians!

I pored with renewed zeal over the terse realism and pathos of Lawson,
and enjoyed Paterson’s redolence of the rollicking side of the
wholesome life beneath these sunny skies, which he depicted with grand
touches of power flashing here and there. I learnt them by heart, and
in that gloriously blue receptacle, by and by, where many pleasant
youthful dreams are stowed, I put the hope that one day I would clasp
hands with them, and feel and know the unspeakable comfort and
heart-rest of congenial companionship.




CHAPTER TEN
Everard Grey


Uncle Julius had taken a run down to Sydney before returning to
Caddagat, and was to be home during the first week in September,
bringing with him Everard Grey. This young gentleman always spent
Christmas at Caddagat, but as he had just recovered from an illness he
was coming up for a change now instead. Having heard much of him, I was
curious to see him. He was grandmamma’s adopted son, and was the orphan
of very aristocratic English parents who had left him to the
guardianship of distant relatives. They had proved criminally
unscrupulous. By finding a flaw in deeds, or something which none but
lawyers understand, they had deprived him of all his property and left
him to sink or swim. Grannie had discovered, reared, and educated him.
Among professions he had chosen the bar, and was now one of Sydney’s
most promising young barristers. His foster-mother was no end proud of
him, and loved him as her own son.

In due time a telegram arrived from uncle Julius, containing
instructions for the buggy to be sent to Gool-Gool to meet him and
Everard Grey.

By this time I had quite recovered from influenza and my accident, and
as they would not arrive till near nightfall, for their edification I
was to be dressed in full-blown dinner costume, also I was to be
favoured with a look at my reflection in a mirror for the first time
since my arrival.

During the afternoon I was dispatched by grannie on a message some
miles away, and meeting Mr Hawden some distance from the house, he took
it upon himself to accompany me. Everywhere I went he followed after,
much to my annoyance, because grannie gave me many and serious
talkings-to about the crime of encouraging young men.

Frank Hawden had changed his tune, and told me now that it mattered not
that I was not pretty, as pretty or not I was the greatest brick of a
girl he had met. His idea for this opinion was that I was able to talk
theatres with him, and was the only girl there, and because he had
arrived at that overflowing age when young men have to be partial to
some female whether she be ugly or pretty, fat or lean, old or young.
That I should be the object of these puerile emotions in a fellow like
Frank Hawden, filled me with loathing and disgust.

It was late in the afternoon when Hawden and I returned, and the buggy
was to be seen a long way down the road, approaching at the
going-for-the-doctor pace at which uncle Julius always drove.

Aunt Helen hustled me off to dress, but I was only half-rigged when
they arrived, and so was unable to go out and meet them. Uncle Julius
inquired for that youngster of Lucy’s, and aunt Helen replied that she
would be forthcoming when they were dressed for dinner. The two
gentlemen took a nip, to put a little heart in them uncle Julius said,
and auntie Helen came to finish my toilet while they were making
theirs.

“There now, you have nothing to complain of in the way of looks,” she
remarked at the completion of the ceremony. “Come and have a good look
at yourself.”

I was decked in my first evening dress, as it was a great occasion. It
was only on the rarest occasion that we donned full war-paint at
Caddagat. I think that evening dress is one of the prettiest and most
idiotic customs extant. What can be more foolish than to endanger one’s
health by exposing at night the chest and arms—two of the most vital
spots of the body—which have been covered all day? On the other hand,
what can be more beautiful than a soft white bosom rising and falling
amid a dainty nest of silk and lace? Every woman looks more soft and
feminine in a _decollete_ gown. And is there any of the animal lines
known pleasanter to the eye than the contour of shapely arms? Some
there are who cry down evening dress as being immodest and indecent.
These will be found among those whose chest and arms will not admit of
being displayed, or among those who, not having been reared to the
custom, dislike it with many other things from want of use.

Aunt Helen took me into the wide old drawing-room, now brilliantly
lighted. A heavy lamp was on each of the four brackets in the corners,
and another swung from the centre of the ceiling, and candelabra threw
many lights from the piano. Never before had I seen this room in such a
blaze of light. During the last week or two aunt Helen and I had
occupied it every night, but we never lighted more than a single candle
on the piano. This had been ample light for our purpose. Aunt Helen
would sing in her sweet sad voice all the beautiful old songs I loved,
while I curled myself on a mat at her side and read books—the music
often compelling me to forget the reading, and the reading occasionally
rendering me deaf to the music; but through both ever came the solemn
rush of the stream outside in its weird melancholy, like a wind
ceaselessly endeavouring to outstrip a wild vain regret which
relentlessly pursued.

“Your uncle Julius always has the drawing-room lighted like this; he
does not believe in shadowy half light—calls it sentimental bosh,” said
aunt Helen in explanation.

“Is uncle like that?” I remarked, but my question remained unanswered.
Leaving a hand-mirror with me, aunt Helen had slipped away.

One wall of the drawing-room was monopolized by a door, a big bookcase,
and a heavy bevelled-edged old-fashioned mirror—the two last-mentioned
articles reaching from floor to ceiling. Since my arrival the face of
the mirror had been covered, but this evening the blue silken curtains
were looped up, and it was before this that I stood.

I looked, and looked again in pleased surprise. I beheld a young girl
with eyes and skin of the clearest and brightest, and lips of brilliant
scarlet, and a chest and pair of arms which would pass muster with the
best. If Nature had been in bad humour when moulding my face, she had
used her tools craftily in forming my figure. Aunt Helen had proved a
clever maid and dressmaker. My pale blue cashmere dress fitted my fully
developed yet girlish figure to perfection. Some of my hair fell in
cunning little curls on my forehead; the remainder, tied simply with a
piece of ribbon, hung in thick waves nearly to my knees. My toilet had
altered me almost beyond recognition. It made me look my age—sixteen
years and ten months—whereas before, when dressed carelessly and with
my hair plastered in a tight coil, people not knowing me would not
believe that I was under twenty. Joy and merriment lit up my face,
which glowed with youth, health, and happiness, which rippled my lips
in smiles, which displayed a splendid set of teeth, and I really
believe that on that night I did not look out of the way ugly.

I was still admiring my reflection when aunt Helen returned to say that
Everard and uncle Julius were smoking on the veranda and asking for me.

“What do you think of yourself, Sybylla?”

“Oh, aunt Helen, tell me that there is something about me not
completely hideous!”

She took my face between her hands, saying:

“Silly child, there are some faces with faultless features, which would
receive nothing more than an indifferent glance while beside other
faces which might have few if any pretensions to beauty. Yours is one
of those last mentioned.”

“But that does not say I am not ugly.”

“No one would dream of calling you plain, let alone ugly; brilliant is
the word which best describes you.”

Uncle Julius had the upper part of his ponderous figure arrayed in a
frock-coat. He did not take kindly to what he termed “those skittish
sparrow-tailed affairs”. Frock-coats suited him, but I am not partial
to them on every one. They look well enough on a podgy, fat, or broad
man, but on a skinny one they hang with such a forlorn, dying-duck
expression, that they invariably make me laugh.

Julius John Bossier, better known as J. J. Bossier, and better still as
Jay-Jay—big, fat, burly, broad, a jovial bachelor of forty, too fond of
all the opposite sex ever to have settled his affections on one in
particular—was well known, respected, and liked from Wagga Wagga to
Albury, Forbes to Dandaloo, Bourke to Hay, from Tumut to Monaro, and
back again to Peak Hill, as a generous man, a straight goer in business
matters, and a jolly good fellow all round.

I was very proud to call him uncle.

“So this is yourself, is it!” he exclaimed, giving me a tremendous hug.

“Oh, uncle,” I expostulated, “wipe your old kisses off! Your breath
smells horribly of whisky and tobacco.”

“Gammon, that’s what makes my kisses so nice!” he answered; and, after
holding me at arm’s-length for inspection, “By George, you’re a
wonderful-looking girl! You’re surely not done growing yet, though! You
are such a little nipper. I could put you in my pocket with ease. You
aren’t a scrap like your mother. I’ll give the next shearer who passes
a shilling to cut that hair off. It would kill a dog in the hot
weather.”

“Everard, this is my niece, Sybylla” (aunt Helen was introducing us).
“You will have to arrange yourselves—what relation you are, and how to
address each other.”

The admiration expressed in his clear sharp eyes gave me a sensation
different to any I had ever experienced previously.

“I suppose I’m a kind of uncle and brother in one, and as either
relationship entitles me to a kiss, I’m going to take one,” he said in
a very gallant manner.

“You may take one if you can,” I said with mischievous defiance,
springing off the veranda into the flower-garden. He accepted my
challenge, and, being lithe as a cat, a tremendous scamper ensued.
Round and round the flower-beds we ran. Uncle Jay-Jay’s beard opened in
a broad smile, which ended in a loud laugh. Everard Grey’s coat-tails
flew in the breeze he made, and his collar was too high for athletic
purposes. I laughed too, and was lost, and we returned to the
veranda—Everard in triumph, and I feeling very red and uncomfortable.

Grannie had arrived upon the scene, looking the essence of brisk
respectability in a black silk gown and a white lace cap. She cast on
me a glance of severe disapproval, and denounced my conduct as
shameful; but uncle Jay-Jay’s eyes twinkled as he dexterously turned
the subject.

“Gammon, mother! I bet you were often kissed when that youngster’s age.
I bet my boots now that you can’t count the times you did the same
thing yourself. Now, confess.”

Grannie’s face melted in a smile as she commenced a little anecdote,
with that pathetic beginning, “When I was young.”

Aunt Helen sent me inside lest I should catch cold, and I stationed
myself immediately inside the window so that I should not miss the
conversation. “I should think your niece is very excitable,” Mr Grey
was saying to aunt Helen.

“Oh, very.”

“Yes; I have never seen any but very highly strung temperaments have
that transparent brilliance of expression.”

“She is very variable—one moment all joy, and the next the reverse.”

“She has a very striking face. I don’t know what it is that makes it
so.”

“It may be her complexion,” said aunt Helen; “her skin is whiter than
the fairest blonde, and her eyebrows and lashes very dark. Be very
careful you do not say anything that would let her know you think her
not nice looking. She broods over her appearance in such a morbid
manner. It is a weak point with her, so be careful not to sting her
sensitiveness in that respect.”

“Plain-looking! Why, I think she has one of the most fascinating faces
I’ve seen for some time, and her eyes are simply magnificent. What
colour are they?”

“The grass is not bad about Sydney. I think I will send a truck of fat
wethers away next week,” said uncle Jay-Jay to grannie.

“It is getting quite dark. Let’s get in to dinner at once,” said
grannie.

During the meal I took an opportunity of studying the appearance of
Everard Grey. He had a typically aristocratic English face, even to the
cold rather heartless expression, which is as established a point of an
English blue blood as an arched neck is of a thoroughbred horse.

A ringer, whose wife had been unexpectedly confined, came for grannie
when dinner was over, and the rest of us had a delightful musical
evening. Uncle Jay-Jay bawled “The Vicar of Bray” and “Drink, Puppy,
Drink” in a stentorian bass voice, holding me on his knee, pinching,
tickling, pulling my hair, and shaking me up and down between whiles.
Mr Hawden favoured us by rendering “The Holy City”. Everard Grey sang
several new songs, which was a great treat, as he had a well-trained
and musical baritone voice. He was a veritable carpet knight, and
though not a fop, was exquisitely dressed in full evening costume, and
showed his long pedigreed blood in every line of his clean-shaven face
and tall slight figure. He was quite a champion on the piano, and
played aunt Helen’s accompaniments while he made her sing song after
song. When she was weary uncle Jay-Jay said to me, “Now it’s your turn,
me fine lady. We’ve all done something to keep things rolling but you.
Can you sing?”

“No,”

“Can this youngster sing, Helen?”

“She sings very nicely to herself sometimes, but I do not know how she
would manage before company. Will you try something, Sybylla?”

Uncle Jay-Jay waited to hear no more, but carrying me to the
music-stool, and depositing me thereon, warned me not to attempt to
leave it before singing something.

To get away to myself, where I was sure no one could bear me, and sing
and sing till I made the echoes ring, was one of the chief joys of my
existence, but I had never made a success in singing to company.
Besides losing all nerve, I had a very queer voice, which every one
remarked. However, tonight I made an effort in my old favourite, “Three
Fishers Went Sailing”. The beauty of the full-toned Ronisch piano, and
Everard’s clever and sympathetic accompanying, caused me to forget my
audience, and sing as though to myself alone, forgetting that my voice
was odd.

When the song ceased Mr Grey wheeled abruptly on the stool and said,
“Do you know that you have one of the most wonderful natural voices I
have heard. Why, there is a fortune in such a voice if it were,
trained! Such chest-notes, such feeling, such rarity of tone!”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Mr Grey,” I said shortly.

“Upon my word as a man, I mean every word I say,” he returned
enthusiastically.

Everard Grey’s opinion on artistic matters was considered worth having.
He dabbled in all the arts—writing, music, acting, and sketching, and
went to every good concert and play in Sydney. Though he was clever at
law, it was whispered by some that he would wind up on the stage, as he
had a great leaning that way.

I walked away from the piano treading on air. Would I really make a
singer? I with the voice which had often been ridiculed; I who had
often blasphemously said that I would sell my soul to be able to sing
just passably. Everard Grey’s opinion gave me an intoxicated sensation
of joy.

“Can you recite?” he inquired.

“Yes,” I answered firmly.

“Give us something,” said uncle Jay-Jay.

I recited Longfellow’s “The Slave’s Dream”. Everard Grey was quite as
enthusiastic over this as he had been about my singing.

“Such a voice! Such depth and width! Why, she could fill the Centennial
Hall without an effort. All she requires is training.”

“By George, she’s a regular dab! But I wish she would give us something
not quite so glum,” said uncle Jay-Jay.

I let myself go. Carried away by I don’t know what sort of a spirit, I
exclaimed, “Very well, I will, if you will wait till I make up, and
will help me.”

I disappeared for a few minutes, and returned made up as a fat old
Irish woman, with a smudge of dirt on my face. There was a general
laugh.

Would Mr Hawden assist me? Of course he was only too delighted, and
flattered that I had called upon him in preference to the others. What
would he do?

I sat him on a footstool, so that I might with facility put my hand on
his sandy hair, and turning to uncle, commenced:

“Shure, sir, seeing it was a good bhoy yez were afther to run errants,
it’s meself that has brought this youngsther for yer inspection. It’s a
jool ye’ll have in him. Shure I rared him meself, and he says his
prayers every morning. Kape sthill, honey! Faith, ye’re not afraid of
yer poor old mammy pullin’ yer beautiful cur-r-rls?”

Uncle Jay-Jay was laughing like fun; even aunt Helen deigned to smile;
and Everard was looking on with critical interest.

“Go on,” said uncle. But Mr Hawden got huffy at the ridicule which he
suspected I was calling down upon him, and jumped up looking fit to eat
me.

I acted several more impromptu scenes with the other occupants of the
drawing-room. Mr Hawden emitted “Humph!” from the corner where he
grumpily sat, but Mr Grey was full of praise.

“Splendid! splendid!” he exclaimed. “You say you have not had an hour’s
training, and never saw a play. Such versatility. Your fortune would be
made on the stage. It is a sin to have such exceptional talent wasting
in the bush. I must take her to Sydney and put her under a good
master.”

“Indeed, you’ll do no such thing,” said uncle. “I’ll keep her here to
liven up the old barracks. You’ve got enough puppets on the stage
without a niece of mine ever being there.”

I went to bed that night greatly elated. Flattery is sweet to youth. I
felt pleased with myself, and imagined, as I peeped in the
looking-glass, that I was not half bad-looking after all.




CHAPTER ELEVEN
Yah!


“Bah, you hideous animal! Ha ha! Your peerless conceit does you credit.
So you actually imagined that by one or two out of every hundred you
might be considered passable. You are the most uninteresting person in
the world. You are small and nasty and bad, and every other thing
that’s abominable. That’s what you are.”

This address I delivered to my reflection in the glass next morning. My
elation of the previous night was as flat as a pancake. Dear, oh dear,
what a fool I had been to softly swallow the flattery of Mr Grey
without a single snub in return! To make up for my laxity, if he
continued to amuse himself by plastering my vanity with the ointment of
flattery, I determined to serve up my replies to him red-hot and well
seasoned with pepper.

I finished my toilet, and in a very what’s-the-good-o’-anything mood
took a last glance in the glass to say, “You’re ugly, you’re ugly and
useless; so don’t forget that and make a fool of yourself again.”

I was in the habit of doing this; it had long ago taken the place of a
morning prayer. I said this, that by familiarity it might lose a little
of its sting when I heard it from other lips, but somehow it failed in
efficacy.

I was late for breakfast that morning. All the others were half through
the meal when I sat down.

Grannie had not come home till after twelve, but was looking as brisk
as usual.

“Come, Sybylla, I suppose this comes of sitting up too late, as I was
not here to hunt you to bed. You are always very lively at night, but
it’s a different tune in the morning,” she said, when giving me the
usual morning hug.

“When I was a nipper of your age, if I didn’t turn out like greased
lightning every morning, I was assisted by a little strap oil,”
remarked uncle Jay-Jay.

“Sybylla should be excused this morning,” interposed Mr Grey. “She
entertained us for hours last night. Little wonder if she feels languid
this morning.”

“Entertained you I What did she do?” queried grannie.

“Many things. Do you know, gran, that you are robbing the world of an
artist by keeping Sybylla hidden away in the bush? I must persuade you
to let me take her to Sydney and have her put under the best masters in
Sydney.”

“Under masters for what?”

“Elocution and singing.”

“I couldn’t afford it.”

“But I’d bear the expense myself. It would only be returning a trifle
of all you have done for me.”

“What nonsense! What would you have her do when she was taught?”

“Go on the stage, of course. With her talent and hair she would cause
quite a sensation.”

Now grannie’s notions are the stage were very tightly laced. All actors
and actresses, from the lowest circus man up to the most glorious
cantatrice, were people defiled in the sight of God, and utterly
outside the pale of all respectability, when measured with her code of
morals.

She turned energetically in her chair, and her keen eyes flashed with
scorn and anger as she spoke.

“Go on the stage! A grand-daughter of mine! Lucy’s eldest child! An
actress—a vile, low, brazen hussy! Use the gifts God has given her with
which to do good in showing off to a crowd of vile bad men! I would
rather see her struck dead at my feet this instant! I would rather see
her shear off her hair and enter a convent this very hour. Child,
promise you will never be a bold bad actress.”

“I will never be a _bold bad_ actress, grannie,” I said, putting great
stress on the adjectives, and bringing out the actress very faintly.

“Yes,” she continued, calming down, “I’m sure you have not enough bad
in you. You may be boisterous, and not behave with sufficient propriety
sometimes, but I don’t think you are wicked enough to ever make an
actress.”

Everard attempted to defend his case.

“Look here, gran, that’s a very exploded old notion about the stage
being a low profession. It might have been once, but it is quite the
reverse nowadays. There are, of course, low people on the stage, as
there are in all walks of life. I grant you that; but if people are
good they can be good on the stage as well as anywhere else. On account
of a little prejudice it would be a sin to rob Sybylla of the brilliant
career she might have.”

“Career!” exclaimed his foster-mother, catching at the word. “Career!
That is all girls think of now, instead of being good wives and mothers
and attending to their homes and doing what God intended. All they
think of is gadding about and being fast, and ruining themselves body
and soul. And the men are as bad to encourage them,” looking severely
at Everard.

“There is a great deal of truth in what you say, gran, I admit. You can
apply it to many of our girls, I am sorry to confess, but Sybylla could
not be brought under that classification. You must look at her in a
different way. If—”

“I look at her as the child of respectable people, and will not have
the stage mentioned in connection with her.” Here Grannie thumped her
fist down on the table and there was silence, complete, profound. Few
dared argue with Mrs Bossier.

Dear old lady, she was never angry long, and in a minute or two she
proceeded with her breakfast, saying quite pleasantly:

“Never mention such a subject to me again; but I’ll tell you what you
can do. Next autumn, some time in March or April, when the
fruit-preserving and jam-making are done with, Helen can take the child
to Sydney for a month or so, and you can show them round. It will be a
great treat for Sybylla as she has never been in Sydney.”

“That’s right, let’s strike a bargain on that, gran,” said Everard.

“Yes; it’s a bargain, if I hear no more about the stage. God intends
His creatures for a better life than that.”

After breakfast I was left to entertain Everard for some while. We had
a fine time. He was a perfect gentleman and a clever conversationalist.

I was always desirous of enjoying the company of society people who
were well bred and lived according to etiquette, and possessed of
leisure and culture sufficient to fill their minds with something more
than the price of farm produce and a hard struggle for existence.
Hitherto I had only read of such or seen them in pictures, but here was
a real live one, and I seized my opportunity with vim. At my
questioning and evident interest in his talk he told me of all the
latest plays, actors, and actresses with whom he was acquainted, and
described the fashionable balls, dinners, and garden-parties he
attended. Having exhausted this subject, we fell to discussing books,
and I recited snatches of poems dear to me. Everard placed his hands
upon my shoulders and said:

“Sybylla, do you know you are a most wonderful girl? Your figure is
perfect, your style refreshing, and you have a most interesting face.
It is as ever-changing as a kaleidoscope—sometimes merry, then stern,
often sympathetic, and always sad when at rest. One would think you had
had some sorrow in your life.”

Lifting my skirt at either side, I bowed several times very low in what
I called my stage bow, and called into requisition my stage smile,
which displayed two rows of teeth as white and perfect as any
twenty-guinea set turned out on a gold plate by a fashionable dentist.

“The handsome gentleman is very kind to amuse himself at the expense of
a little country bumpkin, but he would do well to ascertain if his
flattery would go down before administering it next time,” I said
sarcastically, and I heard him calling to me as I abruptly went off to
shut myself in my room.

“How dare anyone ridicule me by paying idle brainless compliments! I
knew I was ugly, and did not want any one to perjure his soul
pretending they thought differently. What right had I to be small? Why
wasn’t I possessed of a big aquiline nose and a tall commanding
figure?” Thus I sat in burning discontent and ill-humour until soothed
by the scent of roses and the gleam of soft spring sunshine which
streamed in through my open window. Some of the flower-beds in the
garden were completely carpeted with pansy blossoms, all colours, and
violets-blue and white, single and double. The scent of mignonette,
jonquils, and narcissi filled the air. I revelled in rich perfumes, and
these tempted me forth. My ruffled feelings gave way before the
delights of the old garden. I collected a number of vases, and, filling
them with water, set them on a table in the veranda near one of the
drawing-room windows. I gathered lapfuls of the lovely blossoms, and
commenced arranging them in the vases.

Part of the old Caddagat house was built of slabs, and one of the
wooden walls ran along the veranda side of the drawing-room, so the
songs aunt Helen and Everard Grey were trying to the piano came as a
sweet accompaniment to my congenial task.

Presently they left off singing and commenced talking. Under the same
circumstances a heroine of a story would have slipped away; or, if that
were impossible without discovery, she would have put her fingers in
her ears, and would have been in a terrible state of agitation lest she
should hear something not intended for her. I did not come there with a
view to eavesdropping. It is a degradation to which I never stoop. I
thought they were aware of my presence on the veranda; but it appears
they were not, as they began to discuss me (wonderfully interesting
subject to myself), and I stayed there, without one word of disapproval
from my conscience, to listen to their conversation.

“My word, didn’t gran make a to-do this morning when I proposed to
train Sybylla for the stage! Do you know that girl is simply reeking
with talent; I must have her trained. I will keep bringing the idea
before gran until she gets used to it. I’ll work the
we-should-use-the-gifts-God-has-given-us racket for all it is worth,
and you might use your influence too, Helen.”

“No, Everard; there are very few who succeed on the stage. I would not
use my influence, as it is a life of which I do not approve.”

“But Sybylla _would_ succeed. I am a personal friend of the leading
managers, and my influence would help her greatly.”

“Yes; but what would you do with her? A young gentleman couldn’t take
charge of a girl and bring her out without ruining her reputation.
There would be no end of scandal, as the sister theory would only be
nonsense.”

“There is another way; I could easily stop scandal.”

“Everard, what do you mean!”

“I mean marriage,” he replied deliberately.

“Surely, boy, you must be dreaming! You have only seen her for an hour
or two. I don’t believe in these sudden attachments.”

Perhaps she here thought of one (her own) as sudden, which had not
ended happily.

“Everard, don’t do anything rashly. You know you are very fickle and
considered a lady-killer—be merciful to my poor little Sybylla, I pray.
It is just one of your passing fancies. Don’t wile her passionate young
heart away and then leave her to pine and die.”

“I don’t think she is that sort,” he replied laughingly.

“No, she would not die, but would grow into a cynic and sceptic, which
is the worst of fates. Let her alone. Flirt as much as you will with
society belles who understand the game, but leave my country maiden
alone. I hope to mould her into a splendid character yet.”

“But, Helen, supposing I am in earnest at last, you don’t think I’d
make her a bad old hubby, do you?”

“She is not the girl for you. You are not the man who could ever
control her. What I say may not be complimentary but it is true.
Besides, she is not seventeen yet, and I do not approve of romantic
young girls throwing themselves into matrimony. Let them develop their
womanhood first.”

“Then I expect I had better hide my attractions under a bushel during
the remainder of my stay at Caddagat?”

“Yes. Be as nice to the child as you like, but mind, none of those
little ladies’-man attentions with which it is so easy to steal—”

I waited to hear no more, but, brimming over with a mixture of
emotions, tore through the garden and into the old orchard. Bees were
busy, and countless bright-coloured butterflies flitted hither and
thither, sipping from hundreds of trees, white or pink with bloom—their
beauty was lost upon me. I stood ankle-deep in violets, where they had
run wild under a gnarled old apple-tree, and gave way to my wounded
vanity.

“Little country maiden, indeed! There’s no need for him to bag his
attractions up. If he exerted himself to the utmost of his ability, he
could not make me love him. I’m not a child. I saw through him in the
first hour. There’s not enough in him to win my love. I’ll show him I
think no more of him than of the caterpillars on the old tree there.
I’m not a booby that will fall in love with every gussie I see. Bah,
there’s no fear of that! I hate and detest men!”

“I suppose you are rehearsing some more airs to show off with tonight,”
sneered a voice behind me.

“No, I’m realisticing; and how _dare_ you thrust your obnoxious
presence before me when I wish to be alone! Haven’t I often shown—”

“While a girl is disengaged, any man who is her equal has the right to
pay his addresses to her if he is in earnest,” interrupted Mr Hawden.
It was he who stood before me.

“I am well aware of that,” I replied. “But it is a woman’s privilege to
repel those attentions if distasteful to her. You seem disinclined to
accord me that privilege.”

Having delivered this retort, I returned to the house, leaving him
standing there looking the fool he was.

I do not believe in spurning the love of a blackfellow if he behaves in
a manly way; but Frank Hawden was such a drivelling mawkish style of
sweetheart that I had no patience with him.

Aunt Helen and Everard had vacated the drawing-room, so I plumped down
on the piano-stool and dashed into Kowalski’s galop, from that into
“Gaité de Coeur” until I made the piano dance and tremble like a thing
possessed. My annoyance faded, and I slowly played that saddest of
waltzes, “Weber’s Last”. I became aware of a presence in the room, and,
facing about, confronted Everard Grey.

“How long have you been here?” I demanded sharply.

“Since you began to play. Where on earth did you learn to play? Your
execution is splendid. Do sing ‘Three Fishers’, please.”

“Excuse me; I haven’t time now. Besides I am not competent to sing to
you,” I said brusquely, and made my exit.

“Mr Hawden wants you, Sybylla,” called aunt Helen. “See what he wants
and let him get away to his work, or your grannie will be vexed to see
him loitering about all the morning.”

“Miss Sybylla,” he began, when we were left alone, “I want to apologize
to you. I had no right to plague you, but it all comes of the way I
love you. A fellow gets jealous at the least little thing, you know.”

“Bore me with no more such trash,” I said, turning away in disgust.

“But, Miss Sybylla, what am I to do with it?”

“Do with what?”

“My love.”

“Love!” I retorted scornfully. “There is no such thing.”

“But there is, and I have found it.”

“Well, you stick to it—that’s my advice to you. It will be a treasure.
If you send it to my father he will get it bottled up and put it in the
Goulburn museum. He has sent several things there already.”

“Don’t make such a game of a poor devil. You know I can’t do that.”

“Bag it up, then; put a big stone to make it sink, and pitch it in the
river.”

“You’ll rue this,” he said savagely.

“I may or may not,” I sang over my shoulder as I departed.




CHAPTER TWELVE
One Grand Passion


I had not the opportunity of any more private interviews with Everard
Grey till one morning near his departure, when we happened to be alone
on the veranda.

“Well, Miss Sybylla,” he began, “when I arrived I thought you and I
would have been great friends; but we have not progressed at all. How
do you account for that?”

As he spoke he laid his slender shapely hand kindly upon my head. He
was very handsome and winning, and moved in literary, musical, and
artistic society—a man from my world, a world away.

Oh, what pleasure I might have derived from companionship with him! I
bit my lip to keep back the tears. Why did not social arrangements
allow a man and a maid to be chums—chums as two men or two maids may be
to each other, enjoying each other without thought beyond pure platonic
friendship? But no; it could not be. I understood the conceit of men.
Should I be very affable, I feared Everard Grey would imagine he had
made a conquest of me. On the other hand, were I glum he would think
the same, and that I was trying to hide my feelings behind a mask of
brusquerie. I therefore steered in a bee-line between the two manners,
and remarked with the greatest of indifference:

“I was not aware that you expected us to be such cronies—in fact, I
have never given the matter a thought.”

He turned away in a piqued style. Such a beau of beaux, no doubt he was
annoyed that an insignificant little country bumpkin should not be
flattered by his patronage, or probably he thought me rude or
ill-humoured.

Two mornings later uncle Jay-Jay took him to Gool-Gool _en route_ for
Sydney. When departing he bade me a kindly good-bye, made me promise to
write to him, and announced his intention of obtaining the opinion of
some good masters are my dramatic talent and voice, when I came to
Sydney as promised by my grandmother. I stood on the garden fence
waving my handkerchief until the buggy passed out of sight among the
messmate-trees about half a mile from the house.

“Well I hope, as that dandified ape has gone—and good riddance to
him—that you will pay more heed to my attentions now,” said Mr Hawden’s
voice, as I was in the act of descending from the fence.

“What do you mean by your attentions?” I demanded.

“What do I mean! That is something like coming to business. I’ll soon
explain. You know what my intentions are very well. When I am
twenty-four, I will come into my property in England. It is
considerable, and at the end of that time I want to marry you and take
you home. By Jove! I would just like to take you home. You’d surprise
some English girls I know.”

“There would be more than one person surprised if I married you,” I
thought to myself, and laughed till I ached with the motion.

“You infernal little vixen! What are you laughing at? You’ve got no
more sense than a bat if such a solemn thing only provokes your mirth.”

“Solemn—why, it’s a screaming farce!” I laughed more and more.

“What’s a farce?” he demanded fiercely.

“The bare idea of you proposing to me.”

“Why? Have I not as much right to propose as any other man?”

“Man!” I laughed. “That’s where the absurdity arises. My child, if you
were a man, certainly you could propose, but do you think I’d look at a
boy, a child! If ever I perpetrate matrimony the participant in my
degradation will be a fully developed man—not a hobbledehoy who falls
in love, as he terms it, on an average about twice a week. Love! Ho!”

I moved in the direction of the house. He barred my path.

“You are not going to escape me like that, my fine lady. I will make
you listen to me this time or you will hear more about it,” and he
seized me angrily by the wrist.

I cannot bear the touch of any one—it is one of my idiosyncrasies. With
my disengaged hand I struck him a vigorous blow on the nose, and
wrenching myself free sprang away, saying, “How dare you lay a finger
on me! If you attempt such a thing again I’ll make short work of you.
Mark my words, or you’ll get something more than a bleeding nose next
time, I promise you.”

“You’ll hear more of this! You’ll hear more of this! You fierce, wild,
touch-me-not thing,” he roared.

“Yes; my motto with men is touch-me-not, and it is your own fault if
I’m fierce. If children attempt to act the role of a man with adult
tools, they are sure to cut themselves. Hold hard a bit, honey, till
your whiskers grow,” I retorted as I departed, taking flying leaps over
the blossom-burdened flower-beds.

At tea that night, after gazing interestedly at Mr Hawden’s nose for
some time, uncle Julius inquired, “in the name of all that’s
mysterious, what the devil have you been doing to your nose? You look
as though you had been on the spree.”

I was quaking lest he would get me into a fine scrape, but he only
muttered, “By Jove!” with great energy, and glowered menacingly across
the table at me.

After tea he requested an interview with grannie, which aroused my
curiosity greatly. I was destined to hear all about it next morning.
When breakfast was over grannie called me into her room and interviewed
me about Mr Hawden’s interview. She began without any preliminaries:

“Mr Hawden has complained of your conduct. It grieves me that any young
man should have to speak to me of the behaviour of my own
grand-daughter. He says you have been flirting with him. Sybylla, I
scarcely thought you would be so immodest and unwomanly.”

On hearing this my thoughts of Frank Hawden were the reverse of
flattering. He had persecuted me beyond measure, yet I had not deigned
to complain of him to either uncle, grannie, or auntie, as I might
reasonably have done, and have obtained immediate redress. He had been
the one to blame in the case, yet for the rebuffs he had brought upon
himself, went tattling to my grandmother.

“Is that all you have to say, grannie?”

“No. He wants to marry you, and has asked my consent. I told him it all
rested with yourself and parents. What do you say?”

“Say,” I exclaimed, “grannie, you are only joking, are you not?”

“No, my child, this is not a matter to joke about.”

“Marry that creature! A boy!” I uttered in consternation.

“He is no boy. He has attained his majority some months. He is as old
as your grandfather was when we married. In three years you will be
almost twenty, and by that time he will be in possession of his
property which is very good—in fact, he will be quite rich. If you care
for him there is nothing against him as I can see. He is healthy, has a
good character, and comes of a high family. Being a bit wild won’t
matter. Very often, after they sow their wild oats, some of those
scampy young fellows settle down and marry a nice young girl and turn
out very good husbands.”

“It is disgusting, and you ought to be downright ashamed of yourself,
grannie! A man can live a life of bestiality and then be considered a
fit husband for the youngest and purest girl! It is shameful! Frank
Hawden is not wild, he hasn’t got enough in him to be so. I hate him.
No, he hasn’t enough in him to hate. I loathe and despise him. I would
not marry him or any one like him though he were King of England. The
idea of marriage even with the best man in the world seems to me a
lowering thing,” I raged; “but with him it would be pollution—the
lowest degradation that could be heaped upon me! I will never come down
to marry any one—” here I fell a victim to a flood of excited tears.

I felt there was no good in the world, especially in men—the hateful
creatures!—and never would be while it was not expected of them, even
by rigidly pure, true Christians such as my grandmother. Grannie, dear
old grannie, thought I should marry any man who, from a financial point
of view, was a good match for me. That is where the sting came in. No,
I would never marry. I would procure some occupation in which I could
tread my life out, independent of the degradation of marriage.

“Dear me, child,” said grannie, concernedly, “there is no need to
distress yourself so. I remember you were always fearfully passionate.
When I had you with me as a tiny toddler, you would fret a whole day
about a thing an ordinary child would forget inside an hour. I will
tell Hawden to go about his business. I would not want you to consider
marriage for an instant with anyone distasteful to you. But tell me
truly, have you ever flirted with him? I will take your word, for I
thank God you have never yet told me a falsehood!”

“Grannie,” I exclaimed emphatically, “I have discouraged him all I
could. I would scorn to flirt with any man.”

“Well, well, that is all I want to hear about it. Wash your eyes, and
we will get our horses and go over to see Mrs Hickey and her baby, and
take her something good to eat.”

I did not encounter Frank Hawden again till the afternoon, when he
leered at me in a very triumphant manner. I stiffened myself and drew
out of his way as though he had been some vile animal. At this
treatment he whined, so I agreed to talk the matter over with him and
have done with it once and for all.

He was on his way to water some dogs, so I accompanied him out to the
stables near the kennels, to be out of hearing of the household.

I opened fire without any beating about the bush.

“I ask you, Mr Hawden, if you have any sense of manliness, from this
hour to cease persecuting me with your idiotic professions of love. I
have two sentiments regarding it, and in either you disgust me.
Sometimes I don’t believe there is such a thing as love at all—that is,
love between men and women. While in this frame of mind I would not
listen to professions of love from an angel. Other times I believe in
love, and look upon it as a sacred and solemn thing. When in that
humour, it seems to me a desecration to hear you twaddling about the
holy theme, for you are only a boy, and don’t know how to feel. I would
not have spoken thus harshly to you, but by your unmanly conduct you
have brought it upon yourself. I have told you straight all that I will
ever deign to tell you on the subject, and take much pleasure in
wishing you good afternoon.”

I walked away quickly, heedless of his expostulations.

My appeal to his manliness had no effect. Did I go for a ride, or a
walk in the afternoon to enjoy the glory of the sunset, or a stroll to
drink in the pleasures of the old garden, there would I find Frank
Hawden by my side, yah, yah, yahing about the way I treated him, until
I wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea.

However, in those glorious spring days the sense of life was too
pleasant to be much clouded by the trifling annoyance Frank Hawden
occasioned me. The graceful wild clematis festooned the shrubbery along
the creeks with great wreaths of magnificent white bloom, which loaded
every breeze with perfume; the pretty bright green senna shrubs along
the river-banks were decked in blossoms which rivalled the deep blue of
the sky in brilliance; the magpies built their nests in the tall
gum-trees, and savagely attacked unwary travellers who ventured too
near their domain; the horses were rolling fat, and invited one to get
on their satin backs and have a gallop; the cry of the leather-heads
was heard in the orchard as the cherry season approached. Oh, it was
good to be alive!

At Caddagat I was as much out of the full flood of life for which I
craved as at Possum Gully, but here there were sufficient pleasant
little ripples on the stream of existence to act as a stop-gap for the
present.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He


Here goes for a full account of my first, my last, my only _real_
sweetheart, for I considered the professions of that pestiferous
jackeroo as merely a grotesque caricature on the genuine article.

On making my first appearance before my lover, I looked quite the
reverse of a heroine. My lovely hair was not conveniently escaping from
the comb at the right moment to catch him hard in the eye, neither was
my thrillingly low sweet voice floating out on the scented air in a
manner which went straight to his heart, like the girls I had read of.
On the contrary, I much resembled a female clown. It was on a day
towards the end of September, and I had been up the creek making a
collection of ferns. I had on a pair of men’s boots with which to walk
in the water, and was garbed in a most dilapidated old dress, which I
had borrowed from one of the servants for the purpose. A pair of gloves
made of basil, and a big hat, much torn in struggling through the
undergrowth, completed my make-up. My hair was most unbecomingly
screwed up, the short ends sticking out like a hurrah’s nest.

It was late in the day when, returning from my ramble, I was met on the
doorstep by aunt Helen.

“While you are in that trim, I wish you would pluck some lemons for me.
I’m sure there is no danger of you ruining your turn-out. A sketch of
you would make a good item for the _Bulletin_,” she said.

I went readily to do her bidding, and fetching a ladder with rungs
about two feet six apart, placed it against a lemon-tree at the back of
the house, and climbed up.

Holding a number of lemons in my skirt, I was making a most ungraceful
descent, when I heard an unknown footstep approaching towards my back.

People came to Caddagat at all hours of the day, so I was not in the
least disconcerted. Only a tramp, an agent, or a hawker, I bet, I
thought, as I reached my big boot down for another rung of the ladder
without turning my head to see whom it might be.

A pair of strong brown hands encircled my waist, I was tossed up a foot
or so and then deposited lightly on the ground, a masculine voice
saying, “You’re a mighty well-shaped young filly—‘a waist rather small,
but a quarter superb’.”

“How dare anyone speak to me like that,” I thought, as I faced about to
see who was parodying Gordon. There stood a man I had never before set
eyes on, smiling mischievously at me. He was a young man—a very young
man, a bushman tremendously tall and big and sunburnt, with an open
pleasant face and chestnut moustache—not at all an awe-inspiring
fellow, in spite of his unusual, though well-proportioned and carried,
height. I knew it must be Harold Beecham, of Five-Bob Downs, as I had
heard he stood six feet three and a half in his socks.

I hurriedly let down my dress, the lemons rolling in a dozen
directions, and turned to flee, but that well-formed figure bounded
before me with the agility of a cat and barred my way.

“Now, not a step do you go, my fine young blood, until you pick up
every jolly lemon and put them away tidily, or I’ll tell the missus on
you as sure as eggs.”

It dawned on me that he had mistaken me for one of the servant-girls.
That wasn’t bad fun. I determined not to undeceive but to have a lark
with him. I summed him up as conceited, but not with the disgusting
conceit with which some are afflicted, or perhaps blessed. It was
rather an air of
I-have-always-got-what-I-desire-and-believe,-if-people-fail-it-is-all-
their-own -fault, which surrounded him.

“If you please, sir,” I said humbly, “I’ve gathered them all up, will
you let me go now.”

“Yes, when you’ve given me a kiss.”

“Oh, sir, I couldn’t do that!”

“Go on, I won’t poison you. Come now, I’ll make you.”

“Oh, the missus might catch me.”

“No jolly fear; I’ll take all the blame if she does.”

“Oh don’t, sir; let me go, please,” I said in such unfeigned distress,
for I feared he was going to execute his threat, that he laughed and
said:

“Don’t be frightened, sissy, I never kiss girls, and I’m not going to
start at this time of day, and against their will to boot. You haven’t
been long here, have you? I haven’t seen you before. Stand out there
till I see if you’ve got any grit in you, and then I am done with you.”

I stood in the middle of the yard, the spot he indicated, while he
uncurled his long heavy stock-whip with its big lash and scented myall
handle. He cracked it round and round my head and arms, but I did not
feel the least afraid, as I saw at a glance that he was exceedingly
dexterous in the bushman’s art of handling a stock-whip, and knew, if I
kept perfectly still, I was quite safe. It was thanks to uncle Jay-Jay
that I was able to bear the operation with unruffled equanimity, as he
was in the habit of testing my nerves in this way.

“Well, I never! Not so much as blinked an eyelash! Thoroughbred!” He
said after a minute or so, “Where’s the boss?”

“In Gool-Gool. He won’t be home till late.”

“Is Mrs Bossier in?”

“No, she’s not, but Mrs Bell is somewhere around in front.”

“Thanks.”

I watched him as he walked away with an easy swinging stride, which
spoke of many long, long days in the saddle. I felt certain as I
watched him that he had quite forgotten the incident of the little girl
with the lemons.

“Sybylla, hurry up and get dressed. Put on your best bib and tucker,
and I will leave Harry Beecham in your charge, as I want to superintend
the making of some of the dishes myself this evening.”

“It’s too early to put on my evening dress, isn’t it, auntie?

“It is rather early; but you can’t spare time to change twice. Dress
yourself completely; you don’t know what minute your uncle and his
worship will arrive.”

I had taken a dip in the creek, so had not to bathe, and it took me but
a short time to don full war-paint—blue evening dress, satin slippers,
and all. I wore my hair flowing, simply tied with a ribbon. I slipped
out into the passage and called aunt Helen. She came.

“I’m ready, auntie. Where is he?”

“In the dining-room.”

“Come into the drawing-room and call him. I will take charge of him
till you are at leisure. But, auntie, it will be a long time till
dinner—how on earth will I manage him?”

“Manage him!” she laughed; “he is not at all an obstreperous
character.”

We had reached the drawing-room by this, and I looked at myself in the
looking-glass while aunt Helen went to summon Harold Augustus Beecham,
bachelor, owner of Five-Bob Downs, Wyambeet, Wallerawang West,
Quat-Quatta, and a couple more stations in New South Wales, besides an
extensive one in Queensland.

I noticed as he entered the door that since I had seen him he had
washed, combed his stiff black hair, and divested himself of his hat,
spurs, and whip—his leggings had perforce to remain, as his nether
garment was a pair of closely fitting grey cloth riding-breeches, which
clearly defined the shapely contour of his lower limbs.

“Harry, this is Sybylla. I’m sure you need no further introduction.
Excuse me, I have something on the fire which is likely to burn.” And
aunt Helen hurried off leaving us facing each other.

He stared down at me with undisguised surprise. I looked up at him and
laughed merrily. The fun was all on my side. He was a great big
man—rich and important. I was a chit—an insignificant nonentity—yet,
despite his sex, size, and importance, I was complete master of that
situation, and knew it: thus I laughed.

I saw that he recognized me again by the dusky red he flushed beneath
his sun-darkened skin. No doubt he regretted having called me a filly
above all things. He bowed stiffly, but I held out my hand, saying:

“Do shake hands. When introduced I always shake hands with anyone I
think I’ll like. Besides, I seem to know you well. Just think of all
the apples you brought me!”

He acceded to my request, holding my hand a deal longer than necessary,
and looking at me helplessly. It amused me greatly, for I saw that it
was he who did not know how to manage me, and not I that couldn’t
manage him.

“’Pon my honour, Miss Melvyn, I had no idea it was you, when I said—”
Here he boggled completely, which had the effect of reviving my
laughter.

“You had no right to be dressed like that—deceiving a fellow. It wasn’t
fair.”

“That’s the best of it. It shows what a larrikin Don Juan sort of
character you are. You can’t deceive me now if you pretend to be a
virtuous well-behaved member of society.”

“That is the first time I’ve ever meddled with any of the kitchen fry,
and, by Jove, it will be the last!” he said energetically. “I’ve got
myself into a pretty mess.”

“What nonsense you talk,” I replied. “If you say another word about it,
I’ll write a full account of it and paste it in my scrapbook. But if
you don’t worry about it, neither will I. You said nothing very
uncomplimentary; in fact, I was quite flattered.”

I was perched on the high end of a couch, and he was leaning with big
careless ease on the piano. Had grannie seen me, I would have been
lectured about unladylike behaviour.

“What is your uncle at today?” he inquired.

“He’s not at anything. He went to Gool-Gool yesterday on the jury.
Court finishes up today, and he is going to bring the judge home
tonight. That’s why I am dressed so carefully,” I answered.

“Good gracious! I never thought of court this time as I wasn’t called
on the jury, and for a wonder hadn’t so much as a case against a
Chinaman. I was going to stay tonight, but can’t if his worship is
going to dine here.”

“Why? You’re surely not afraid of Judge Fossilt? He’s a very simple old
customer.”

“Imagine dining with a judge in this toggery!” and he glanced down his
great figure at his riding gear.

“That doesn’t matter; he’s near-sighted. I’ll get you put at the far
end of the table under my wing. Men don’t notice dress. If you weren’t
so big uncle or Frank Hawden could oblige you.”

“Do you think I could pass muster?”

“Yes; after I brush you down you’ll look as spruce as a brass penny.

“I did brush myself,” he answered.

“You brush yourself!” I retorted. “There’s a big splash of mud on your
shoulder. You couldn’t expect to do anything decently, for you’re only
a man, and men are the uselessest, good-for-nothingest, clumsiest
animals in the world. All they’re good for is to smoke and swear.”

I fetched a clothes brush.

“You’ll have to stand on the table to reach me,” he said, looking down
with amused indulgence.

“As you are so impertinent you can go dusty,” and I tossed the brush
away.

The evening was balmy, so I invited him into the garden. He threw his
handkerchief over my chest, saying I might catch cold, but I scouted
the idea.

We wandered into an arbour covered with wistaria, banksia, and Marechal
Niel roses, and I made him a buttonhole.

A traveller pulled rein in the roadway, and, dismounting, threw his
bridle over a paling of the garden fence while he went inside to try
and buy a loaf of bread.

I jumped up, frightening the horse so that it broke away, pulling off
the paling in the bridle-rein. I ran to bring a hammer to repair the
damage. Mr Beecham caught the horse while I attempted to drive the nail
into the fence. It was a futile attempt. I bruised my fingers. He took
the hammer from me, and fixing the paling in its place with a couple of
well-aimed blows, said laughingly:

“You drive a nail! You couldn’t expect to do anything. You’re only a
girl. Girls are the helplessest, uselessest, troublesomest little
creatures in the world. All they’re good for is to torment and pester a
fellow.”

I had to laugh.

At this juncture we heard uncle Jay-Jay’s voice, so Mr Beecham went
towards the back, whence it proceeded, after he left me at the front
door.

“Oh, auntie, we got on splendidly! He’s not a bit of trouble. We’re as
chummy as though we had been reared together,” I exclaimed.

“Did you get him to talk?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did you really?” in surprise.

When I came to review the matter I was forced to confess that I had
done all the talking, and young Beecham the listening; moreover I
described him as the quietest man I had ever seen or heard of.

The judge did not come home with uncle Jay-Jay as expected so it was
not necessary for me to shelter Harold Beecham under my wing. Grannie
greeted him cordially as “Harold, my boy”, he was a great favourite
with her. She and uncle Julius monopolized him for the evening. There
was great talk of trucking sheep, the bad outlook as regarded the
season, the state of the grass in the triangle, the Leigh Spring, the
Bimbalong, and several other paddocks, and of the condition of the
London wool market. It did not interest me, so I dived into a book,
only occasionally emerging therefrom to smile at Mr Beecham.

He had come to Caddagat for a pair of bullocks which had been fattening
in grannie’s home paddock. Uncle gave him a start with them next
morning. When they came out on the road I was standing in a bed of
violets in a tangled corner of the garden, where roses climbed to kiss
the lilacs, and spiraea stooped to rest upon the wallflowers, and where
two tall kurrajongs stood like sentries over all. Harold Beecham
dismounted, and, leaning over the fence, lingered with me, leaving the
bullocks to uncle Jay-Jay. Uncle raved vigorously. Women, he asserted,
were the bane of society and the ruination of all men; but he had
always considered Harold as too sensible to neglect his business to
stand grinning at a pesky youngster in short skirts and a pigtail.
Which was the greatest idiot of the two he didn’t know.

His grumbling did not affect Harold in the least.

“Complimentary to both of us,” he remarked as he leisurely threw
himself across his great horse, and smiled his pleasant quiet smile,
disclosing two rows of magnificent teeth, untainted by contamination
with beer or tobacco. Raising his panama hat with the green fly-veil
around it, he cantered off. I wondered as I watched him if anything
ever disturbed his serenity, and desired to try. He looked too big and
quiet to be ruffled by such emotions as rage, worry, jealousy, or even
love. Returning to the house, I put aunt Helen through an exhaustive
catechism concerning him.

_Question._ Auntie, what age is Harold Beecham?

_Answer._ Twenty-five last December.

_Q._ Did he ever have any brothers or sisters?

_A._ No. His birth caused his mother’s death. Q. How long has his
father been dead?

_A._ Since Harold could crawl.

_Q._ Who reared him?

A. His aunts.

_Q._ Does he ever talk any more than that? A. Often a great deal less.

_Q._ Is he really very rich?

_A._ If he manages to pull through these seasons he will be second to
none but Tyson in point of wealth.

_Q._ Is Five-Bob a very pretty place?

_A._ Yes; one of the show places of the district. Q. Does he often come
to Caddagat?

_A._ Yes, he often drops in.

_Q._ What makes his hair so black and his moustache that light colour?

A. You’ll have to study science to find that out. I’m sure I can’t tell
you.

_Q._ Does he—?

“Now, Sybylla,” said auntie, laughing, “you are taking a suspicious
interest in my sunburnt young giant. Did I not tell you he was taking
time by the forelock when he brought the apples?”

“Oh, auntie, I am only asking questions because—”

“Yes, because, because, I understand perfectly. Because you are a girl,
and all the girls fall a victim to Harry’s charms at once. If you don’t
want to succumb meekly to your fate, ‘Heed the spark or you may dread
the fire.’ That is the only advice I can tender you.”

This was a Thursday, and on the following Sunday Harold Beecham
reappeared at Caddagat and remained from three in the afternoon until
nine at night. Uncle Julius and Frank Hawden were absent. The weather
had taken a sudden backward lurch into winter again, so we had a fire.
Harold sat beside it all the time, and interposed yes and no at the
proper intervals in grannie’s brisk business conversation, but he never
addressed one word to me beyond “Good afternoon, Miss Melvyn,” on his
arrival, and “Good night, Miss Melvyn,” when leaving.

I studied him attentively all the while. What were his ideas and
sentiments it were hard to tell: he never expressed any. He was
fearfully and wonderfully quiet. Yet his was an intelligent silence,
not of that wooden brainless description which casts a damper on
company, neither was it of the morose or dreaming order.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Principally Letters


Caddagat, 29th Sept., 1896


My dearest Gertie,

I have started to write no less than seven letters to you, but
something always interrupted me and I did not finish them. However,
I’ll finish this one in the teeth of Father Peter himself. I will
parenthesize all the interruptions. (A traveller just asked me for a
rose. I had to get up and give him one.) Living here is lovely.
(Another man inquired the way to Somingley Gap, and I’ve just finished
directing him.) Grannie is terribly nice. You could not believe. She is
always giving me something, and takes me wherever she goes. Auntie is
an angel. I wish you could hear the piano. It is a beauty. There are
dozens of papers and books to read. Uncle is a dear old fellow. You
should hear him rave and swear sometimes when he gets in a rage. It is
great fun. He brings me lollies, gloves, ribbons, or something every
time he comes from town. (Two Indian hawkers have arrived, and I am
going out to see their goods. There were nineteen hawkers here last
week. I am sitting on a squatter’s chair and writing on a table in the
veranda, and the road goes right by the flower-garden. That is how I
see everyone.) Have you had rain down there this week? They have great
squawking about the drought up here. I wish they could see Goulburn,
and then they’d know what drought means. I don’t know what sort of a
bobberie they would kick up. It’s pretty dry out on the run, but
everyone calls the paddocks about the house an oasis. You see there are
such splendid facilities for irrigation here. Uncle has put on a lot of
men. They have cut races between the two creeks between which the house
is situated. Every now and again they let the water from these over the
orchard gardens and about a hundred acres of paddock land around the
house. The grass therein is up to the horses’ fetlocks. There is any
amount of rhubarb and early vegetables in the garden. Grannie says
there is a splendid promise of fruit in the orchard, and the
flower-garden is a perfect dream. This is the dearest old place in the
world. Dozens of people plague grannie to be let put their horses in
the grass—especially shearers, there are droves of them going home
now—but she won’t let them; wants all the grass for her own stock.
Uncle has had to put another man on to mind it, or at night all the
wires are cut and the horses put in. (An agent, I think by the cut of
him, is asking for grannie. I’ll have to run and find her.) It is very
lively here. Never a night but we have the house full of agents or
travellers of one sort or another, and there are often a dozen swaggies
in the one day.

Harold Beecham is my favourite of all the men hereaway. He is
delightfully big and quiet. He isn’t good-looking, but I like his face.
(Been attending to the demands of a couple of impudent swaggies. Being
off the road at Possum Gully, you escape them.) For the love of life,
next time you write, fire into the news at once and don’t half-fill
your letter telling me about the pen and your bad writing. I am
scribbling at the rate of 365 miles an hour, and don’t care a jot
whether it is good writing or not.

Auntie, uncle, Frank Hawden and I, are going to ride to Yabtree church
next Sunday. It is four miles beyond Five-Bob Downs, so that is sixteen
miles. It is the nearest church. I expect it will be rare fun. There
will be such a crowd coming home, and that always makes the horses
delightfully frisky. (A man wants to put his horses in the paddock for
the night, so I will have to find uncle.) I never saw such a place for
men. It is all men, men, men. You cannot go anywhere outside the house
but you see men coming and going in all directions. It wouldn’t do to
undress without bothering to drop the window-blind like we used at
Possum Gully. Grannie and uncle say it is a curse to be living beside
the road, as it costs them a tremendous lot a year. There are seven
lemon-trees here, loaded (another hawker). I hope you think of me
sometimes. I am just as ugly as ever. (A traveller wants to buy a loaf
of bread.)

With stacks of love to all at home, and a whole dray-load for yourself,
from your loving sister,

Sybylla.


Remember me to Goulburn, drowsing lazily in its dreamy graceful hollow
in the blue distance.

Caddagat, 29th Sept., 1896


Dear Everard,

Thank you very much for the magazines and “An Australian Bush Track”. I
suppose you have quite forgotten us and Caddagat by this time. The sun
has sunk behind the gum-trees, and the blue evening mists are hanging
lazily in the hollows of the hills. I expect you are donning your
“swallow-tail” preparatory to leading some be-satined “faire ladye” in
to a gorgeous dinner, thence to the play, then to a dance probably. No
doubt all around you is bustle, glare of lights, noise, and fun. It is
such a different scene here. From down the road comes the tinkle of
camp-bells and jingle of hobble-chains. From down in that sheltered
angle where the creek meets the river comes the gleam of camp-fires
through the gathering twilight, and I can see several tents rigged for
the night, looking like white specks in the distance.

I long for the time to come when I shall get to Sydney. I’m going to
lead you and aunt Helen a pretty dance. You’ll have to keep going night
and day. It will be great. I must get up and dance a jig on the veranda
when I think of it. You’ll have to show me everything—slums and all. I
want to find out the truth of heaps of things for myself.

Save for the weird rush of the stream and the kookaburras’ good-night,
all is still, with a mighty far-reaching stillness which can be felt.
Now the curlews are beginning their wild moaning cry. From the rifts in
the dark lone ranges, far down the river, it comes like a hunted spirit
until it makes me feel—

At this point I said, “Bah! I’m mad to write to Everard Grey like this.
He would laugh and call me a poor little fool.” I tore the
half-finished letter to shreds, and consigned it to the kitchen fire. I
substituted a prim formal note, merely thanking him for the books and
magazine he had sent me. To this I never received an answer. I heard
through his letters to grannie that he was much occupied. Had been to
Brisbane and Melbourne on important cases, so very likely had not time
to be bothered with me; or, he might have been like the majority of his
fellows who make a great parade of friendship while with one, then go
away and forget one’s existence in an hour.

While at Caddagat there were a few duties allotted to me. One of these
was to attend to the drawing-room; another was to find uncle Jay-Jay’s
hat when he mislaid it—often ten times per day. I assisted my
grandmother to make up her accounts and write business letters, and I
attended to tramps. A man was never refused a bit to eat at Caddagat.
This necessitated the purchase of an extra ton of flour per year, also
nearly a ton of sugar, to say nothing of tea, potatoes, beef, and all
broken meats which went thus. This was not reckoning the consumption of
victuals by the other class of travellers with which the house was
generally full year in and year out. Had there been any charge for
their board and lodging, the Bossiers would surely have made a fortune.
I interviewed on an average fifty tramps a week, and seldom saw the
same man twice. What a great army they were! Hopeless, homeless,
aimless, shameless souls, tramping on from north to south, and east to
west, never relinquishing their heart-sickening, futile quest for
work—some of them so long on the tramp that the ambitions of manhood
had been ground out of them, and they wished for nothing more than
this.

There were all shapes, sizes, ages, kinds, and conditions of men—the
shamefaced boy in the bud of his youth, showing by the way he begged
that the humiliation of the situation had not yet worn off, and poor
old creatures tottering on the brink of the grave, with nothing left in
life but the enjoyment of beer and tobacco. There were strong men in
their prime who really desired work when they asked for it, and
skulking cowards who hoped they would not get it. There were the
diseased, the educated, the ignorant, the deformed, the blind, the
evil, the honest, the mad, and the sane. Some in real professional
beggars’ style called down blessings on me; others were morose and
glum, while some were impudent and thankless, and said to supply them
with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the
squatters—as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen
would have had plenty. A moiety of the last-mentioned—dirty, besotted,
ragged creatures—had a glare in their eyes which made one shudder to
look at them, and, while spasmodically twirling their billies or
clenching their fists, talked wildly of making one to “bust up the damn
banks”, or to drive all the present squatters out of the country and
put the people on the land—clearly showing that, because they had
failed for one reason or another, it had maddened them to see others
succeed.

In a wide young country of boundless resources, why is this thing? This
question worried me. Our legislators are unable or unwilling to cope
with it. They trouble not to be patriots and statesmen. Australia can
bring forth writers, orators, financiers, singers, musicians, actors,
and athletes which are second to none of any nation under the sun. Why
can she not bear sons, men of soul, mind, truth, godliness, and
patriotism sufficient to rise and cast off the grim shackles which
widen round us day by day?

I was the only one at Caddagat who held these silly ideas. Harold
Beecham, uncle Julius, grannie, and Frank Hawden did not worry about
the cause of tramps. They simply termed them a lazy lot of sneaking
creatures, fed them, and thought no more of the matter.

I broached the subject to uncle Jay-Jay once, simply to discover his
ideas thereon.

I was sitting on a chair in the veranda sewing; he, with his head on a
cushion, was comfortably stretched on a rug on the floor.

“Uncle Boss, why can’t something be done for tramps?”

“How done for ’em?”

“Couldn’t some means of employing them be arrived at?”

“Work!” he ejaculated. “That’s the very thing the crawling divils are
terrified they might get.”

“Yes; but couldn’t some law be made to help them?”

“A law to make me cut up Caddagat and give ten of ’em each a piece, and
go on the wallaby myself, I suppose?”

“No, uncle; but there was a poor young fellow here this morning who, I
feel sure, was in earnest when he asked for work.”

“Helen!” bawled uncle Jay-Jay.

“Well, what is it?” she inquired, appearing in the doorway.

“Next time Sybylla is giving a tramp some tucker, you keep a sharp eye
on her or she will be sloping one of these days. There was a young
fellow here today with a scarlet moustache and green eyes, and she’s
dean gone on him, and has been bullying me to give him half Caddagat.”

“What a disgusting thing to say! Uncle, you ought to be ashamed of
yourself,” I exclaimed.

“Very well, I’ll be careful,” said aunt Helen, departing.

“What with the damned flies, and the tramps, and a pesky thing called
Sybylla, a man’s life ain’t worth a penny to him,” said uncle.

We fell into silence, which was broken presently by a dirty red-bearded
face appearing over the garden gate, and a man’s voice:

“Good day, boss! Give us a chew of tobaccer?”

“I’m not the boss,” said uncle with assumed fierceness.

“Then who is?” inquired the man.

Uncle pointed his thumb at me, and, rolling out on the floor again as
though very sleepy, began to snore. The tramp grinned, and made his
request of me. I took him round to the back, served him with flour,
beef, and an inch or two of rank tobacco out of a keg which had been
bought for the purpose. Refusing a drink of milk which I offered, he
resumed his endless tramp with a “So long, little missy. God bless your
pleasant face.”

I watched him out of sight. One of my brothers—one of God’s children
under the Southern Cross. Did these old fellows really believe in the
God whose name they mentioned so glibly? I wondered. But I am thankful
that while at Caddagat it was only rarely that my old top-heavy
thoughts troubled me. Life was so pleasant that I was content merely to
be young—a chit in the first flush of teens, health, hope, happiness,
youth—a heedless creature recking not for the morrow.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the Heart is Young


About a week or so after I first met Harold Beecham, aunt Helen allowed
me to read a letter she had received from the elder of the two Misses
Beecham. It ran as follows:


“My dearest Helen,

“This is a begging letter, and I am writing another to your mother at
the same time. I am asking her to allow her grand-daughter to spend a
few weeks with me, and I want you to use your influence in the matter.
Sarah has not been well lately, and is going to Melbourne for a change,
and as I will be lonely while she is away Harold insists upon me having
someone to keep me company—you know how considerate the dear boy is. I
hardly like to ask you to spare your little girl to me. It must be a
great comfort to have her. I could have got Miss Benson to stay with
me, but Harold will not hear of her. He says she is too slow, and would
give us both the mopes. But he says your little niece will keep us all
alive. Julius was telling me the other day that he could not part with
her, as she makes ‘the old barracks’, as he always calls Caddagat, echo
with fun and noise. I am so looking forward to seeing her, as she is
dear Lucy’s child. Give her my love,” etc., etc.,


and as a postscript the letter had—“Harold will go up for Sybylla on
Wednesday afternoon. I do hope you will be able to spare her to me for
a while.”

“Oh, auntie, how lovely!” I exclaimed. “What are you laughing at?”

“For whom do you think Harry wants the companion? It is nice to have an
old auntie, as a blind, is it not? Well, all is fair in love and war.
You have permission to use me in any way you like.”

I pretended to miss her meaning.

Grannie consented to Miss Beecham’s proposal, and ere the day arrived I
had a trunk packed with some lovely new dresses, and was looking
forward with great glee to my visit to Five-Bob Downs.

One o’clock on Wednesday afternoon arrived; two o’clock struck, and I
was beginning to fear no one was coming for me, when, turning to look
out the window for the eighteenth time, I saw the straight blunt nose
of Harold Beecham passing. Grannie was serving afternoon tea on the
veranda. I did not want any, so got ready while my escort was having
his.

It was rather late when we bowled away at a tremendous pace in a red
sulky, my portmanteau strapped on at the back, and a thoroughbred
American trotter, which had taken prizes at Sydney shows, harnessed to
the front. We just whizzed! It was splendid! The stones and dust rose
in a thick cloud from the whirling wheels and flying hoofs, and the
posts of the wire fence on our left passed like magic as we went. Mr
Beecham allowed me to drive after a time while he sat ready to take the
reins should an emergency arise.

It was sunset—most majestic hour of the twenty-four—when we drove up to
the great white gates which opened into the avenue leading to the main
homestead of Five-Bob Downs station—beautiful far-reaching Five-Bob
Downs! Dreamy blue hills rose behind, and wide rich flats stretched
before, through which the Yarrangung river, glazed with sunset, could
be seen like a silver snake winding between shrubberied banks. The
odour from the six-acred flower-garden was overpowering and delightful.
A breeze gently swayed the crowd of trees amid the houses, and swept
over the great orchard which sloped down from the south side of the
houses. In the fading sunlight thirty iron roofs gleamed and glared,
and seemed like a little town; and the yelp of many dogs went up at the
sound of our wheels. Ah! beautiful, beautiful Five-Bob Downs!

It seemed as though a hundred dogs leapt forth to greet us when that
gate flew open, but I subsequently discovered there were but
twenty-three.

Two female figures came out to meet us—one nearly six feet high, the
other, a tiny creature, seemed about eighteen inches, though, of
course, was more than that.

“I’ve brought her, aunt Gussie,” said Harold, jumping out of the sulky,
though not relinquishing the reins, while he kissed the taller figure,
and the small one attached itself to his leg saying, “Dimme wide.”

“Hullo! Possum, why wasn’t old Spanker let go? I see he’s not among the
dogs,” and my host picked the tiny individual up in his arms and got
into the sulky to give her the desired ride, while after being embraced
by Miss Beecham and lifted to the ground by her nephew, I went with the
former over an asphalted tennis-court, through the wide garden, then
across a broad veranda into the great, spreading, one-storeyed house
from which gleamed many lights.

“I am so glad you have come, my dear. I must have a good look at you
when we get into the light. I hope you are like your mother.”

This prospect discomfited me. I knew she would find a very ugly girl
with not the least resemblance to her pretty mother, and I cursed my
appearance under my breath.

“Your name is Sybylla,” Miss Beecham continued, “Sybylla Penelope. Your
mother used to be very dear to me, but I don’t know why she doesn’t
write to me now. I have never seen her since her marriage. It seems
strange to think of her as the mother of eight—five boys and three
girls, is it not?”

Miss Beecham had piloted me through a wide hall and along an extended
passage out of which a row of bedrooms opened, into one of which we
went.

“I hope you will be comfortable here, child. You need not dress for
dinner while you are here; we never do, only on very special
occasions.”

“Neither do we at Caddagat,” I replied.

“Now, child, let me have a good look at you without your hat.”

“Oh, please don’t!” I exclaimed, covering my face with my hands. “I am
so dreadfully ugly that I cannot bear to have anyone look at me.”

“What a silly little girl! You are not like your mother, but you are
not at all plain-looking. Harold says you are the best style of girl he
has seen yet, and sing beautifully. He got a tuner up from Sydney last
week, so we will expect you to entertain us every night.”

I learnt that what Harold pronounced good no one dared gainsay at
Five-Bob Downs.

We proceeded direct to the dining-room, and had not been there long
when Mr Beecham entered with the little girl on his shoulder. Miss
Beecham had told me she was Minnie Benson, daughter of Harold’s married
overseer on Wyambeet, his adjoining station. Miss Beecham considered it
would have been more seemly for her nephew to have selected a little
boy as a play-thing, but his sentiments regarding boys were that they
were machines invented for the torment of adults.

“Well, O’Doolan, what sort of a day has it been?” Harold inquired,
setting his human toy upon the floor.

“Fine wezzer for yim duts,” she promptly replied.

“Harold, it is shameful to teach a little innocent child such
abominable slang; and you might give her a decent nickname,” said Miss
Beecham.

“O’Doolan, this is Miss Melvyn, and you have to do the same to her as
you do to me.”

The little thing held out her arms to me. I took her up, and she hugged
and kissed me, saying:

“I luz oo, I luz oo,” and turning to Mr Beecham, “zat anuff?

“Yes, that will do,” he said; and she struggled to be put down.

Three jackeroos, an overseer, and two other young men came in, were
introduced to me, and then we began dinner.

O’Doolan sat on a high chair beside Mr Beecham, and he attended to all
her wants. She did everything he did, even taking mustard, and was very
brave at quelling the tears that rose to the doll-like blue eyes. When
Mr Beecham wiped his moustache, it was amusing to see her also wipe an
imaginary one.

After dinner the jackeroos and the three other men repaired to a
sitting-room in the backyard, which was specially set apart for them,
and where they amused themselves as they liked. My host and hostess,
myself, and the child, spent the evening in a tiny sitting-room
adjoining the dining-room. Miss Beecham entertained me with
conversation and the family albums, and Harold amused himself entirely
with the child.

Once when they were absent for a few minutes, Miss Beecham told me it
was ridiculous the way he fussed with the child, and that he had her
with him more than half his time. She also asked me what I thought of
her nephew. I evaded the question by querying if he was always so quiet
and good-tempered.

“Oh dear, no. He is considered a particularly bad-tempered man. Not one
of the snarling nasty tempers, but—”

Here the re-entry of the owner of the temper put a stop to this
conversation.

Harold gave O’Doolan rides on his back, going on all-fours. She shouted
in childish glee, and wound up by curling her small proportions on his
broad chest, and going to sleep there.

Mrs Benson had sent for little O’Doolan, and Harold took her home next
day. He invited me to accompany him, so we set out in the sulky with
O’Doolan on my lap. It was a pleasant drive of twelve miles to and from
Wyambeet. O’Doolan was much distressed at parting from Mr Beecham, but
he promised to come for her again shortly.

“One little girl at a time is enough for me to care for properly,” he
said to me in the winning manner with which, and his wealth,
unintentionally and unconsciously made slaughter among the hearts of
the fair sex.




CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Fortune Smiles


“Now, Harold, you have compelled Sybylla to come here, you must not let
the time drag with her,” said Miss Beecham.

It was the second day after my arrival at Five-Bob. Lunch was over, and
we had adjourned to the veranda. Miss Beecha

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