My dear Sybylla,
I wish you would not write and worry your poor old grandmother, who has
been so good to you. You must try and put up with things; you cannot
expect to find it like holidaying at Caddagat. Be careful not to give
offence to any one, as it would be awkward for us. What is wrong with
the place? Have you too much work to do? Do you not get sufficient to
cat? Are they unkind to you, or what? Why don’t you have sense and not
talk of getting another place, as it is utterly impossible; and unless
you remain there, how are we to pay the interest on that money? I’ve
always been a good mother to you, and the least you might do in return
is this, when you know how we are situated. Ask God &c.
Full of contempt and hatred for my mother, I tore her letters into tiny
pieces and hurled them out the window. Oh, the hard want of sympathy
they voiced! She had forced me to this place: it would have been
different had I wanted to come of my own accord, and then sung out for
a removal immediately; but no, against my earnest pleadings she had
forced me here, and now would not heed my cry. And to whom in all the
world can we turn when our mother spurns our prayer?
There never was any sympathy between my mother and myself. We are too
unlike. She is intensely matter-of-fact and practical, possessed of no
ambitions or aspirations not capable of being turned into cash value.
She is very ladylike, and though containing no spice of either poet or
musician, can take a part in conversation on such subjects, and play
the piano correctly, because in her young days she was thus cultivated;
but had she been horn a peasant, she would have been a peasant, with no
longings unattainable in that sphere. She no more understood me than I
understand the works of a watch. She looked upon me as a discontented,
rebellious, bad child, possessed of evil spirits, which wanted
trouncing out of me; and she would have felt that she was sinning had
she humoured me in any way, so after cooling I did not blame her for
her letters. She was doing her duty according to her lights. Again, it
was this way, grannie did not come to my rescue on this occasion on
account of her attitude towards my father. The Bossiers were not at
enmity with him, but they were so disgusted with his insobriety that
they never visited Possum Gully, and did not assist us as much as they
would have done had my father’s failure been attributable to some cause
more deserving of sympathy.
After reading my letters I wept till every atom of my body writhed with
agonized emotion. I was aroused by Mrs M’Swat hammering at my door and
inquiring:
“What ails ye, child? Did ye git bad noos from home?”
I recovered myself as by a miracle, and replied, no; that I was merely
a little homesick, and would be out presently.
I wrote again to my mother, but as I could not truthfully say I was
hungry or ill-treated, for, according to their ability, the M’Swats
were very kind to me, she took no notice of my plaint, but told me that
instead of complaining of monotony, it would suit me better if I
cleared up the house a little.
Acting upon this advice, I asked Mr M’Swat to put a paling fence round
the house, as it was useless trying to keep the house respectable while
the fowls and pigs ran in every time the door was opened.—
He was inclined to look with favour upon this proposition, but his wife
sat upon it determinedly—said the fowls would lose the scraps. “Would
it not be possible to throw them over the fence to the fowls?” I asked;
but this would cause too much waste, she considered.
Next I suggested that the piano should be tuned, but they were united
in their disapproval of such a fearful extravagance. “The peeany makes
a good nise. What ails it?”
Then I suggested that the children should be kept tidier, for which I
was insulted by their father. I wanted them to be dressed up like
swells, and if he did that he would soon be a pauper like my father.
This I found was the sentiment of the whole family regarding me. I was
only the daughter of old hard-up Melvyn, consequently I had little
weight with the children, which made things very hard for me as a
teacher.
One day at lunch I asked my mistress if she would like the children to
be instructed in table-manners. “Certainly,” her husband replied, so I
commenced.
“Jimmy, you must never put your knife in your mouth.”
“Pa does at any rate,” replied Jimmy.
“Yes,” said pa; “and I’m a richer man today than them as didn’t do it.”
“Liza, do not put a whole slice of bread to your mouth like that, and
cram so. Cut it into small pieces.”
“Ma doesn’t,” returned Liza.
“Ye’ll have yer work cut out with ’em,” laughed Mrs M’Swat, who did not
know how to correct her family herself, and was too ignorant to uphold
my authority.
That was my only attempt at teaching manners there. In the face of such
odds it was a bootless task, and as there were not enough knives and
forks to go round, I could not inculcate the correct method of handling
those implements.
Mrs M’Swat had but one boiler in which to do all her cooking, and one
small tub for the washing, and there was seldom anything to eat but
bread and beef; and this was not because they were poor, but because
they did not know, or want to know, any better.
Their idea of religion, pleasure, manners, breeding, respectability,
love, and everything of that ilk, was the possession of money, and
their one idea of accumulating wealth was by hard sordid dragging and
grinding.
A man who rises from indigence to opulence by business capabilities
must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune
as M’Swat of Barney’s Gap was making his must be dirt mean, grasping,
narrow-minded, and soulless—to me the most uncongenial of my fellows.
I wrote once more to my mother, to receive the same reply. One hope
remained. I would write to aunt Helen. She understood me somewhat, and
would know how I felt.
Acting on this inspiration, I requested her to plead for me. Her answer
came as a slap in the face, as I had always imagined her above the
common cant of ordinary religionists. She stated that life was full of
trials. I must try and bear this little cross patiently, and at the end
of a year they might have me back at Caddagat. A year! A year at
Barney’s Gap! The possibility of such a thing made me frantic. I picked
up my pen and bitterly reproached my aunt in a letter to which she did
not deign to reply; and from that day to this she has rigidly ignored
me—never so much as sending me the most commonplace message, or
casually using my name in her letters to my mother.
Aunt Helen, is there such a thing as firm friendship when even
yours—best of women—quibbled and went under at the hysterical wail from
the overburdened heart of a child?
My predecessor, previous to her debut at Barney’s Gap, had spent some
time in a lunatic asylum, and being a curious character, allowed the
children to do as they pleased, consequently they knew not what it
meant to be ruled, and were very hold. They attempted no
insubordination while their father was about the house, but when he was
absent they gave me a dog’s life, their mother sometimes smiling on
their pranks, often lazily heedless of them, but never administering
any form of correction.
If I walked away from the house to get rid of them, they would follow
and hoot at me; and when I reproved them they informed me they were not
going “to knuckle under to old Melvyn’s darter, the damnedest fool in
the world, who’s lost all his prawperty, and has to borry money off of
pa.”
Did I shut myself in my room, they shoved sticks in the cracks and made
grimaces at me. I knew the fallacy of appealing to their father, as
they and their mother would tell falsehoods, and my word would not be
taken in contradiction of theirs. I had experience of this, as the
postmistress had complained of Jimmy, to be insulted by his father, who
could see no imperfection in his children.
M’Swat was much away from home at that time. The drought necessitated
the removal of some of his sheep, for which he had rented a place
eighty miles coastwards. There he left them under the charge of a man,
but he repaired thither frequently to inspect them. Sometimes he was
away from home a fortnight at a stretch. Peter would be away at work
all day, and the children took advantage of my defenceless position.
Jimmy was the ringleader. I could easily have managed the others had he
been removed. I would have thrashed him well at the start but for the
letters I constantly received from home warning me against offence to
the parents, and knew that to set my foot on the children’s larrikinism
would require measures that would gain their mother’s ill-will at once.
But when M’Swat left home for three weeks Jim got so bold that I
resolved to take decisive steps towards subjugating him. I procured a
switch—a very small one, as his mother had a great objection to
corporal punishment—and when, as usual, he commenced to cheek me during
lessons, I hit him on the coat-sleeve. The blow would not have brought
tears from the eyes of a toddler, but this great calf emitted a wild
yope, and opening his mouth let his saliva pour on to his slate. The
others set up such blood-curdling yells in concert that I was a little
disconcerted, but I determined not to give in. I delivered another tap,
whereupon he squealed and roared so that he brought his mother to his
rescue like a ton of bricks on stilts, a great fuss in her eyes which
generally beamed with a cowful calm.
Seizing my arm she shook me like a rat, broke my harmless little stick
in pieces, threw it in my face, and patting Jimmy on the shoulder,
said:
“Poor man! She sharn’t touch me Jimmy while I know. Sure you’ve got no
sense. You’d had him dead if I hadn’t come in.”
I walked straight to my room and shut myself in, and did not teach any
more that afternoon. The children rattled on my door-handle and jeered:
“She thought she’d hit me, but ma settled her. Old poor Melvyn’s darter
won’t try no more of her airs on us.”
I pretended not to hear. What was I to do? There was no one to whom I
could turn for help. M’Swat would believe the story of his family, and
my mother would blame me. She would think I had been in fault because I
hated the place.
Mrs M’Swat called me to tea, but I said I would not have any. I lay
awake all night and got desperate. On the morrow I made up my mind to
conquer or leave. I would stand no more. If in all the wide world and
the whole of life this was the only use for me, then I would die—take
my own life if necessary.
Things progressed as usual next morning. I attended to my duties and
marched my scholars into the schoolroom at the accustomed hour. There
was no decided insubordination during the morning, but I felt Jimmy was
waiting for an opportunity to defy me. It was a fearful day, possessed
by a blasting wind laden with red dust from Riverina, which filled the
air like a fog. The crockery ware became so hot in the kitchen that
when taking it into the dining-room we had to handle it with cloths.
During the dinner-hour I slipped away unnoticed to where some
quince-trees were growing and procured a sharp rod, which I secreted
among the flour-bags in the schoolroom. At half-past one I brought my
scholars in and ordered them to their work with a confident air. Things
went without a ripple until three o’clock, when the writing lesson
began. Jimmy struck his pen on the bottom of the bottle every time he
replenished it with ink.
“Jimmy,” I gently remonstrated, “don’t jab your pen like that—it will
spoil it. There is no necessity to shove it right to the bottom.”
Jab, jab, went Jimmy’s pen.
“Jimmy, did you hear me speak to you?”
Jab went the pen.
“James, I am speaking to you!”
Jab went the pen again.
“James,” I said sternly, “I give you one more chance.”
He deliberately defied me by stabbing into the ink-bottle with
increased vigour. Liza giggled triumphantly, and the little ones strove
to emulate her. I calmly produced my switch and brought it smartly over
the shoulders of my refractory pupil in a way that sent the dust in a
cloud from his dirty coat, knocked the pen from his fingers, and upset
the ink.
He acted as before—yelled ear-drum-breakingly, letting the saliva from
his distended mouth run on his copy-book. His brothers and sisters also
started to roar, but bringing the rod down on the table, I threatened
to thrash every one of them if they so much as whimpered; and they were
so dumbfounded that they sat silent in terrified surprise. Jimmy
continued to bawl. I hit him again.
“Cease instantly, sir.”
Through the cracks Mrs M’Swat could be seen approaching. Seeing her,
Jimmy hollered anew. I expected her to attack me. She stood five feet
nine inches, and weighed about sixteen stones; I measured five feet one
inch, and turned the scale at eight stones—scarcely a fair match; but
my spirit was aroused, and instead of feeling afraid, I rejoiced at the
encounter which was imminent, and had difficulty to refrain from
shouting “Come on! I’m ready, physically and mentally, for you and a
dozen others such.”
My curious ideas regarding human equality gave me confidence. My theory
is that the cripple is equal to the giant, and the idiot to the genius.
As, if on account of his want of strength the cripple is subservient to
the giant, the latter, on account of that strength, is compelled to
give in to the cripple. So with the dolt and the man of brain, so with
Mrs M’Swat and me.
The fact of not only my own but my family’s dependence on M’Swat—sank
into oblivion. I merely recognized that she was one human being and I
another. Should I have been deferential to her by reason of her age and
maternity, then from the vantage which this gave her, she should have
been lenient to me on account of my chit-ship and inexperience. Thus we
were equal.
Jimmy hollered with renewed energy to attract his mother, and I
continued to rain blows across his shoulders. Mrs M’Swat approached to
within a foot of the door, and then, as though changing her mind,
retraced her steps and entered the hot low-roofed kitchen. I knew I had
won, and felt disappointed that the conquest had been so easy. Jimmy,
seeing he was worsted, ceased his uproar, cleaned his copy-book on his
sleeve, and sheepishly went on with his writing.
Whether Mrs M’Swat saw she had been in fault the day before I know not;
certain it is that the children ever after that obeyed me, and I heard
no more of the matter; neither, as far as I could ascertain, did the
“ruction” reach the ears of M’Swat.
“How long, how long!” was my cry, as I walked out ankle-deep in the
dust to see the sun, like a ball of blood, sink behind the hills on
that February evening.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Where Ignorance is Bliss, ’Tis Folly to be Wise
When by myself, I fretted so constantly that the traces it left upon me
became evident even to the dull comprehension of Mrs M’Swat.
“I don’t hold with too much pleasure and disherpation, but you ain’t
had overmuch of it lately. You’ve stuck at home pretty constant, and ye
and Lizer can have a little fly round. It’ll do yous good,” she said.
The dissipation, pleasure, and flying round allotted to “Lizer” and me
were to visit some of the neighbours. Those, like the M’Swats, were
sheep-farming selectors. They were very friendly and kind to me, and I
found them superior to my employers, in that their houses were
beautifully clean; but they lived the same slow life, and their soul’s
existence fed on the same small ideas. I was keenly disappointed that
none of them had a piano, as my hunger for music could be understood
only by one with a passion for that art.
I borrowed something to read, but all that I could get in the way of
books were a few _Young Ladies’ Journals_, which I devoured ravenously,
so to speak.
When Lizer’s back would be turned, the girls would ask me how I managed
to live at Barney’s Gap, and expressed themselves of the opinion that
it was the most horrible hole in the world, and Mrs M’Swat the dirtiest
creature living, and that they would not go there for 50 pounds a week.
I made a point of never saying anything against Mrs M’Swat; but I fumed
inwardly that this life was forced upon me, when girls with no longings
or aspirations beyond being the wife of a Peter M’Swat recoiled from
the thought of it.
My mother insisted upon my writing to her regularly, so once a week I
headed a letter “Black’s Camp”, and condemned the place, while mother
as unfailingly replied that these bad times I should be thankful to God
that I was fed and clothed. I knew this as well as any one, and was
aware there were plenty of girls willing to jump at my place; but they
were of different temperament to me, and when one is seventeen, that
kind of reasoning does not weigh very heavily.
My eldest brother, Horace, twin brother of my sister Gertie, took it
upon himself to honour me with the following letter:
Why the deuce don’t you give up writing those letters to mother? We get
tongue-pie on account of them, and it’s not as if they did you any
good. It only makes mother more determined to leave you where you are.
She says you are that conceited you think you ought to have something
better, and you’re not fit for the place you have, and she’s glad it is
such a place, and it will do you the world of good and take the
nonsense out of you—that it’s time you got a bit of sense. Sullivan’s
Ginger. After she gets your letters she does jaw, and wishes she never
had a child, and what a good mother she is, and what bad devils we are
to her. You are a fool not to stay where you are. I wish I could get
away to M’Swat or Mack Pot, and I would jump at the chance like a good
un. The boss still sprees and loafs about town till some one has to go
and haul him home. I’m about full of him, and I’m going to leave home
before next Christmas, or my name ain’t what it is. Mother says the
kiddies would starve if I leave; but Stanley is coming on like a
haystack, I tell him, and he does kick up, and he ought to be able to
plough next time. I ploughed when I was younger than him. I put in
fourteen acres of wheat and oats this year, and I don’t think I’ll cut
a wheelbarrow-load of it. I’m full of the place. I never have a single
penny to my name, and it ain’t father’s drinking that’s all to blame;
if he didn’t booze it wouldn’t be much better. It’s the slowest hole in
the world, and I’ll chuck it and go shearing or droving. I hate this
dairying, it’s too slow for a funeral: there would be more life in
trapping ’possums out on Timlinbilly. Mother always says to have
patience, and when the drought breaks and good seasons come round again
things will be better, but it’s no good of trying to stuff me like
that. I remember when the seasons were wet. It was no good growing
anything, because every one grew so much that there was no market, and
the sheep died of foot-rot and you couldn’t give your butter away, and
it is not much worse to have nothing to sell than not be able to sell a
thing when you have it. And the long and short of it is that I hate
dairying like blue murder. It’s as tame as a clucking hen. Fancy a cove
sitting down every morning and evening pulling at a cow’s tits fit to
bust himself, and then turning an old separator, and washing it up in a
dish of water like a blooming girl’s work. And if you go to a picnic,
just when the fun commences you have to nick off home and milk, and
when you tog yourself on Sunday evening you have to undress again and
lay into the milking, and then you have to change everything on you and
have a bath, or your best girl would scent the cow-yard on you, and not
have you within cooee of her. We won’t know what rain is when we see
it; but I suppose it will come in floods and finish the little left by
the drought. The grasshoppers have eaten all the fruit and even the
bark off the trees, and the caterpillars made a croker of the few
tomatoes we kept alive with the suds. All the cockeys round here and
dad are applying to the Government to have their rents suspended for a
time. We have not heard yet whether it will be granted, but if Gov.
doesn’t like it, they’ll have to lump it, for none of us have a penny
to bless ourselves with, let alone dub up for taxes. I’ve written you a
long letter, and if you growl about the spelling and grammar I won’t
write to you any more, so there, and you take my tip and don’t write to
mother on that flute any more, for she won’t take a bit of notice.
Yr loving brother,
Horace.
So! Mother had no pity for me, and the more I pleaded with her the more
determined she grew upon leaving me to suffer on, so I wrote to her no
more. However, I continued to correspond with grannie, and in one of
her letters she told me that Harry Beecham (that was in February) was
still in Sydney settling his affairs; but when that was concluded he
was going to Queensland. He had put his case in the hands of squatters
he had known in his palmy days, and the first thing that turned up in
managing or overseeing he was to have; but for the present he had been
offered the charge of 1600 head of bullocks from a station up near the
Gulf of Carpentaria overland to Victoria. Uncle Jay-Jay was not home
yet: he had extended his tour to Hong Kong, and grannie was afraid he
was spending too much money, as in the face of the drought she had
difficulty in making both ends meet, and feared she would be compelled
to go on the banks. She grieved that I was not becoming more reconciled
to my place. It was dull, no doubt, but it would do my reputation no
harm, whereas, were I in a lively situation, there might be numerous
temptations hard to resist. Why did I not try to look at it in that
way?
She sent a copy of the _Australasian_, which was a great treat to me,
also to the children, as they were quite ignorant of the commonest
things in life, and the advent of this illustrated paper was an event
to be recorded in the diary in capital letters. They clustered round me
eagerly to see the pictures. In this edition there chanced to be a page
devoted to the portraits of eleven Australian singers, and our eyes
fell on Madame Melba, who was in the middle. As what character she was
dressed I do not remember, but she looked magnificent. There was a
crown upon her beautiful head, the plentiful hair was worn flowing, and
the shapely bosom and arms exposed.
“Who’s that?” they inquired.
“Madame Melba; did you ever hear her name?”
“Who’s Madame Melba? What’s she do? Is she a queen?”
“Yes, a queen, and a great queen of song;” and being inspired with
great admiration for our own Australian cantatrice, who was great among
the greatest prima-donnas of the world, I began to tell them a little
of her fame, and that she had been recently offered 40,000 pounds to
sing for three months in America.
They were incredulous. Forty thousand pounds! Ten times as much as “pa”
had given for a paid-up selection he had lately bought. They told me it
was no use of me trying to tell them fibs. No one would give a woman
anything to sing, not even one pound. Why, Susie Duffy was the best
singer on the Murrumbidgee, and she would sing for any one who asked
her, and free of charge.
At this juncture Jimmy, who had been absent, came to see the show.
After gazing for a few seconds he remarked what the others had failed
to observe, “Why, the woman’s naked!”
I attempted to explain that among rich people in high society it was
customary to dress like that in the evening, and that it looked very
pretty.
Mrs M’Swat admonished me for showing the children low pictures.
“She must be a very bold woman,” said Jimmy; and Lizer pronounced her
mad because, as she put it, “It’s a wonder she’d be half-undressed in
her photo; you’d think she oughter dress herself up complete then.”
Lizer certainly acted upon this principle, as a photo of her, which had
been taken by a travelling artist, bore evidence that for the occasion
she had arrayed herself in two pairs of ill-fitting cuffs, Peter’s
watch and chain, strings, jackets, flowers, and other gewgaws galore.
“There ain’t no such person as Madame Melber; it’s only a fairy-tale,”
said Mrs M’Swat.
“Did you ever hear of Gladstone?” I inquired.
“No; where is that place?”
“Did you ever hear of Jesus Christ?”
“Sure, yes; he’s got something to do with God, ain’t he?”
After that I never attempted to enlighten them regarding our
celebrities.
Oh, how I envied them their ignorant contentment! They were as ducks on
a duck-pond; but I was as a duck forced for ever to live in a desert,
ever wildly longing for water, but never reaching it outside of dreams.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Mr M’Swat and I Have a Bust-up
Men only, and they merely on business, came to Barney’s Gap—women
tabooed the place. Some of them told me they would come to see me, but
not Mrs M’Swat, as she always allowed the children to be as rude to
them as they pleased. With the few individuals who chanced to come
M’Swat would sit down, light his pipe, and vulgarly and profusely
expectorate on the floor, while they yarned and yarned for hours and
hours about the price of wool, the probable breeding capacity of the
male stock they kept, and of the want of grass—never a word about their
country’s politics or the events of the day; even the news of the
“Mountain Murders” by Butler had not penetrated here. I wondered if
they were acquainted with the names of their Governor and Prime
Minister.
It was not the poor food and the filthy way of preparing it that
worried me, or that Mr M’Swat used “damn” on an average twice in five
minutes when conversing, or that the children for ever nagged about my
father’s poverty and tormented me in a thousand other ways—it was the
dead monotony that was killing me.
I longed feveredly for something to happen. Agony is a tame word
wherewith to express what that life meant to me. Solitary confinement
to a gipsy would be something on a par.
Every night unfailingly when at home M’Swat sat in the bosom of his
family and speculated as to how much richer he was than his neighbours,
what old Recce lived on, and who had the best breed of sheep and who
was the smartest at counting these animals, until the sordidness of it
turned me dizzy, and I would steal out under the stars to try and cool
my heated spirit. This became a practice with me, and every night I
would slip away out of hearing of the household to sing the songs I had
heard at Caddagat, and in imagination to relive every day and hour
there, till the thing became too much for me, and I was scarcely
responsible for my actions. Often I knelt on the parched ground beneath
the balmy summer sky to pray—wild passionate prayers that were never
answered.
I was under the impression that my nightly ramble was not specially
noticed by any one, but I was mistaken. Mr M’Swat, it appears,
suspected me of having a lover, but was never able to catch me
red-handed.
The possibility of a girl going out at night to gaze at the stars and
dream was as improbable a thought for him as flying is to me, and
having no soul above mud, had I attempted an explanation he would have
considered me mad, and dangerous to have about the place.
Peter, junior, had a sweetheart, one Susie Duffy, who lived some miles
on the other side of the Murrumbidgee. He was in the habit of courting
her every Sunday and two or three nights during the week, and I often
heard the clang of his stirrup-irons and the clink of hobble-chain when
he returned late; but on one occasion I stayed out later than usual,
and he passed me going home. I stood still and he did not see me, but
his horse shied violently. I thought he would imagine I was a ghost, so
called out:
“It is I.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged! What are ye doin’ at this time ev night. Ain’t
yuz afraid of ghosts?”
“Oh dear no. I had a bad headache and couldn’t sleep, so came out to
try if a walk would cure it,” I explained.
We were a quarter of a mile or so from the house, so Peter slackened
his speed that I might keep pace with him. His knowledge of ‘etiquette
did not extend as far as dismounting. There is a great difference
between rudeness and ignorance. Peter was not rude; he was merely
ignorant. For the same reason he let his mother feed the pigs, clean
his boots, and chop wood, while he sat down and smoked and spat. It was
not that he was unmanly, as that this was the only manliness he had
known.
I was alone in the schoolroom next afternoon when Mr M’Swat sidled in,
and after stuttering and hawing a little, delivered himself of:
“I want to tell ye that I don’t hold with a gu-r-r-r-l going out of
nights for to meet young men: if ye want to do any coortin’ yuz can do
it inside, if it’s a decent young man. I have no objections to yer
hangin’ yer cap up to our Peter, only that ye have no prawperty—in
yerself I like ye well enough, but we have other views for Peter. He’s
almost as good as made it sure with Susie Duffy, an’ as ole Duffy will
have a bit ev prawperty I want him to git her, an’ wouldn’t like ye to
spoil the fun.”
Peter was “tall and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout”, and,
like Middleton’s rouse-about, “hadn’t any opinions, hadn’t any ideas”,
but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by
hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a moustache, and had a
“gu-r-r-r-l”; he wore tight trousers and long spurs; he walked with a
sidling swagger that was a cross between shyness and flashness, and
took as much pride in his necktie as any man; he had a kind heart,
honest principles, and would not hurt a fly; he worked away from
morning till night, and contentedly did his duty like a bullock in the
sphere in which God had placed him; he never had a bath while I knew
him, and was a man according to his lights. He knew there was such a
thing as the outside world, as I know there is such a thing as algebra;
but it troubled him no more than algebra troubles me.
This was my estimation of Peter M’Swat, junior. I respected him right
enough in his place, as I trust he respected me in mine, but though
fate thought fit for the present to place us in the one groove, yet our
lives were unmixable commodities as oil and water, which lay apart and
would never meet until taken in hand by the omnipotent leveller—death.
Marriage with Peter M’Swat!
Consternation and disgust held me speechless, and yet I was half
inclined to laugh at the preposterousness of the thing, when Peter’s
father continued:
“I’m sorry if you’ve got smitten on Peter, but I know you’ll be
sensible. Ye see I have a lot of children, and when the place is
divided among ’em it won’t be much. I tell ye wot, old Duffy has a good
bit of money and only two children, Susie and Mick. I could get you to
meet Mick—he mayn’t be so personable as our Peter,” he reflected, with
evident pride in his weedy firstborn, and he got no farther, for I had
been as a yeast-bottle bubbling up, and now went off bang!
“Silence, you ignorant old creature! How dare you have the incomparable
impertinence to mention my name in conjunction with that of your boor
of a son. Though he were a millionaire I would think his touch
contamination. You have fallen through for once if you imagine I go out
at night to meet any one—I merely go away to be free for a few minutes
from the suffocating atmosphere of your odious home. You must not think
that because you have grasped and slaved and got a little money that it
makes a gentleman of you; and never you _dare_ to again mention my name
in regard to matrimony with any one about here;” and with my head high
and shoulders thrown back I marched to my room, where I wept till I was
weak and ill.
This monotonous sordid life was unhinging me, and there was no
legitimate way of escape from it. I formed wild plans of running away,
to do what I did not care so long as it brought a little action,
anything but this torturing maddening monotony; but my love for my
little brothers and sisters held me back. I could not do anything that
would put me for ever beyond the pale of their society.
I was so reduced in spirit that had Harold Beecham appeared then with a
matrimonial scheme to be fulfilled at once, I would have quickly erased
the fine lines I had drawn and accepted his proposal; but he did not
come, and I was unacquainted with his whereabouts or welfare. As I
remembered him, how lovable and superior he seemed in comparison with
the men I met nowadays: not that he was any better than these men in
their place and according to their lights, but his lights—at least not
his lights, for Harold Beecham was nothing of a philosopher, but the
furniture of the drawing-room which they illuminated—was more artistic.
What a prince of gentlemanliness and winning gallantries he was in his
quiet way!
This information concerning him was in a letter I received from my
grandmother at Easter:
Who should surprise us with a visit the other day but Harold Beecham.
He was as thin as a whipping-post, and very sunburnt [I smiled,
imagining it impossible for Harold to be any browner than of yore]. He
has been near death’s door with the measles—caught them in Queensland
while droving, and got wet. He was so ill that he had to give up charge
of that 1600 head of cattle he was bringing. He came to say good-bye to
us, as he is off to Western Australia next week to see if he can mend
his fortunes there. I was afraid he was going to be like young
Charters, and swear he would never come back unless he made a pile, but
he says he will be back next Christmas three years for certain, if he
is alive and kicking, as he says himself. Why he intends returning at
that stipulated time I don’t know, as he never was very communicative,
and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his
feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He
seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set
you teaching, as it will take all the life and fun out of you, and that
is the first time I ever heard him express an opinion in any one’s
business but his own. Frank Hawden sends kind regards, &c.
Teaching certainly had the effect upon me anticipated by Harold
Beecham, but it was not the teaching but the place in which I taught
which was doing the mischief—good, my mother termed it.
I was often sleepless for more than forty-eight hours at a stretch, and
cried through the nights until my eyes had black rings round them,
which washing failed to remove. The neighbours described me as “a
sorrowful lookin’ delicate creetur’, that couldn’t larf to save her
life”—quite a different character to the girl who at Caddagat was
continually chid for being a romp, a hoyden, a boisterous tomboy, a
whirlwind, and for excessive laughter at anything and everything. I got
into such a state of nervousness that I would jump at the opening of a
door or an unexpected footfall.
When cooling down, after having so vigorously delivered Mr M’Swat a
piece of my mind, I felt that I owed him an apology. According to his
lights (and that is the only fair way of judging our fellows) he had
acted in a kind of fatherly way. I was a young girl under his charge,
and he would have in a measure been responsible had I come to harm
through going out in the night. He had been good-natured, too, in
offering to help things along by providing an eligible, and allowing us
to “spoon” under his surveillance. That I was of temperament and
aspirations that made his plans loathsome to me was no fault of
his—only a heavy misfortune to myself. Yes; I had been in the wrong
entirely.
With this idea in my head, sinking ankle-deep in the dust, and
threading my way through the pigs and fowls which hung around the back
door, I went in search of my master. Mrs M’Swat was teaching Jimmy how
to kill a sheep and dress it for use; while Lizer, who was nurse to the
baby and spectator of the performance, was volubly and ungrammatically
giving instructions in the art. Peter and some of the younger children
were away felling stringybark-trees for the sustenance of the sheep.
The fall of their axes and the murmur of the Murrumbidgee echoed
faintly from the sunset. They would be home presently and at tea; I
reflected it would be “The old yeos looks terrible skinny, but the
hoggets is fat yet. By crikey! They did go into the bushes. They chawed
up stems and all—some as thick as a pencil.”
This information in that parlance had been given yesterday, the day
before, would be given today, tomorrow, and the next day. It was the
boss item on the conversational programme until further orders.
I had a pretty good idea where to find Mr M’Swat, as he had lately
purchased a pair of stud rams, and was in the habit of admiring them
for a couple of hours every evening. I went to where they usually
grazed, and there, as I expected, found Mr M’Swat, pipe in mouth, with
glistening eyes, surveying his darlings.
“Mr M’Swat, I have come to beg your pardon.”
“That’s all right, me gu-r-r-r-l. I didn’t take no notice to anything
ye might spit out in a rage.”
“But I was not in a rage. I meant every word I said, but I want to
apologize for the rude way in which I said it, as I had no right to
speak so to my elders. And I want to tell you that you need not fear me
running away with Peter, even supposing he should honour me with his
affections, as I am engaged to another man.”
“By dad, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed, with nothing but curiosity on
his wrinkled dried tobacco-leaf-looking face. He expressed no
resentment on account of my behaviour to him.
“Are ye to be married soon? Has he got any prawperty? Who is he? I
suppose he’s respectable. Ye’re very young.”
“Yes; he is renowned for respectability, but I am not going to marry
him till I am twenty-one. He is poor, but has good prospects. You must
promise me not to tell anyone, as I wish it kept a secret, and only
mention it to you so that you need not be disturbed about Peter.”
He assured me that he would keep the secret, and I knew I could rely on
his word. He was greatly perturbed that my intended was poor.
“Never ye marry a man widout a bit er prawperty, me gu-r-r-r-l. Take my
advice—the divil’s in a poor match, no matter how good the man may be.
Don’t ye be in a hurry; ye’re personable enough in yer way, and there’s
as good fish in the seas as ever come out of ’em. Yer very small; I
admire a good lump of a woman meself—but don’t ye lose heart. I’ve
heerd some men say they like little girls, but, as I said, I like a
good lump of a woman meself.”
“And you’ve got a good lump of a squaw,” I thought to myself.
Do not mistake me. I do not for an instant fancy myself above the
M’Swats. Quite the reverse; they are much superior to me. Mr M’Swat was
upright and clean in his morals, and in his little sphere was as
sensible and kind a man as one could wish for. Mrs M’Swat was faithful
to him, contented and good-natured, and bore uncomplainingly, year
after year, that most cruelly agonising of human duties—childbirth, and
did more for her nation and her Maker than I will ever be noble enough
to do.
But I could not help it that their life was warping my very soul.
Nature fashions us all; we have no voice in the matter, and I could not
change my organisation to one which would find sufficient sustenance in
the mental atmosphere of Barney’s Gap.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Ta-ta to Barney’s Gap
It chanced at last, as June gave place to July and July to August, that
I could bear it no longer. I would go away even if I had to walk, and
what I would do I did not know or care, my one idea being to leave
Barney’s Gap far and far behind. One evening I got a lot of letters
from my little brothers and sisters at home. I fretted over them a good
deal, and put them under my pillow; and as I had not slept for nights,
and was feeling weak and queer, I laid my head upon them to rest a
little before going out to get the tea ready. The next thing I knew was
that Mrs M’Swat was shaking me vigorously with one hand, holding a
flaring candle in the other, and saying:
“Lizer, shut the winder quick. She’s been lyin’ here in the draught
till she’s froze, and must have the nightmare, the way she’s been
singin’ out that queer, an’ I can’t git her woke up. What ails ye,
child? Are ye sick?”
I did not know what ailed me, but learnt subsequently that I laughed
and cried very much, and pleaded hard with grannie and some Harold to
save me, and kept reiterating, “I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it,”
and altogether behaved so strangely that Mr M’Swat became so alarmed
that he sent seventeen miles for the nearest doctor. He came next
morning, felt my pulse, asked a few questions, and stated that I was
suffering from nervous prostration.
“Why, the child is completely run down, and in a fair way to contract
brain fever!” he exclaimed. “What has she been doing? It seems as
though she had been under some great mental strain. She must have
complete rest and change, plenty of diversion and nourishing food, or
her mind will become impaired.”
He left me a bottle of tonic and Mr and Mrs M’Swat many fears. Poor
kind-hearted souls, they got in a great state, and understood about as
much of the cause of my breakdown as I do of the inside of the moon.
They ascribed it to the paltry amount of teaching and work I had done.
Mrs M’Swat killed a fowl and stewed it for my delectation. There was
part of the inside with many feathers to flavour the dish, and having
no appetite, I did not enjoy it, but made a feint of so doing to please
the good-natured cook.
They intended writing at once to give my parents notice when I would be
put on the train. I was pronounced too ill to act as scribe; Lizer was
suggested, and then Jimmy, but M’Swat settled the matter thus:
“Sure, damn it! I’m the proper one to write on an important business
matther like this here.”
So pens, ink, and paper were laid on the dining-room table, and the
great proclamation went forth among the youngsters, “Pa is goin’ to
write a whole letter all by hisself.”
My door opened with the dining-room, and from my bed I could see the
proceeding. Mr M’Swat hitched his trousers well through the
saddle-strap which he always wore as a belt, took off his coat and
folded it on the back of a chair, rolled his shirt-sleeves up to his
elbows, pulled his hat well over his eyes, and “shaped up” to the
writing material, none of which met with his approval. The ink was
“warter”, the pens had not enough “pint”, and the paper was “trash”;
but on being assured it was the good stuff he had purchased especially
for himself, he buckled to the fray, producing in three hours a
half-sheet epistle, which in grammar, composition, and spelling quite
eclipsed the entries in his diary. However, it served its purpose, and
my parents wrote back that, did I reach Goulburn on a certain day, a
neighbour who would be in town then would bring me home.
Now that it was settled that I had no more to teach the dirty children,
out of dirty books, lessons for which they had great disinclination,
and no more to direct Lizer’s greasy fingers over the yellow keys of
that demented piano in a vain endeavour to teach her “choones”, of
which her mother expected her to learn on an average two daily, it
seemed as though I had a mountain lifted off me, and I revived
magically, got out of bed and packed my things.
I was delighted at the prospect of throwing off the leaden shackles of
Barney’s Gap, but there was a little regret mingled with my relief. The
little boys had not been always bold. Did I express a wish for a
parrot-wing or water-worn stone, or such like, after a time I would be
certain, on issuing from my bedroom, to find that it had been
surreptitiously laid there, and the little soft-eyed fellows would
squabble for the privilege of bringing me my post, simply to give me
pleasure. Poor little Lizer, and Rose Jane too, copied me in style of
dress and manners in a way that was somewhat ludicrous but more
pathetic.
They clustered round to say good-bye. I would be sure to write. Oh yes,
of course, and they would write in return and tell me if the bay mare
got well, and where they would find the yellow turkey-hen’s nest. When
I got well I must come back, and I wouldn’t have as much work to do,
but go for more rides to keep well, and so on. Mrs M’Swat very
anxiously impressed it upon me that I was to explain to my mother that
it was not her (Mrs M’Swat’s) fault that I “ailed” from overwork, as I
had never complained and always seemed well.
With a kindly light on his homely sunburnt face, M’Swat said, as he put
me on the train:
“Sure, tell yer father he needn’t worry over the money. I’ll never be
hard on him, an’ if ever I could help ye, I’d be glad.”
“Thank you; you are very good, and have done too much already.”
“Too much! Sure, damn it, wot’s the good er bein’ alive if we can’t
help each other sometimes. I don’t mind how much I help a person if
they have a little gratitood, but, damn it, I can’t abear ingratitood.”
“Good-bye, Mr M’Swat, and thank you.”
“Good-bye, me gu-r-r-r-l, and never marry that bloke of yours if he
don’t git a bit er prawperty, for the divil’s in a poor match.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Back at Possum Gully
They were expecting me on the frosty evening in September, and the
children came bounding and shouting to meet me, when myself and luggage
were deposited at Possum Gully by a neighbour, as he passed in a great
hurry to reach his own home ere it got too dark. They bustled me to a
glowing fire in no time.
My father sat reading, and, greeting me in a very quiet fashion,
continued the perusal of his paper. My mother shut her lips tightly,
saying exultingly, “It seems it was possible for you to find a worse
place than home”; and that little speech was the thorn on the rose of
my welcome home. But there was no sting in Gertie’s greeting, and how
beautiful she was growing, and so tall! It touched me to see she had
made an especial dainty for my tea, and had put things on the table
which were only used for visitors. The boys and little Aurora chattered
and danced around me all the while. One brought for my inspection some
soup-plates which had been procured during my absence; another came
with a picture-book; and nothing would do them but that I must, despite
the darkness, straightaway go out and admire a new fowl-house which
“Horace and Stanley built all by theirselves, and no one helped them
one single bit.”
After Mrs M’Swat it was a rest, a relief, a treat, to hear my mother’s
cultivated voice, and observe her lady-like and refined figure as she
moved about; and, what a palace the place seemed in comparison to
Barney’s Gap! simply because it was clean, orderly, and bore traces of
refinement; for the stamp of indigent circumstances was legibly
imprinted upon it, and many things which had been considered “done for”
when thirteen months before I had left home, were still in use.
I carefully studied my brothers and sisters. They had grown during my
absence, and were all big for their age, and though some of them not
exactly handsome, yet all pleasant to look upon—I was the only wanting
in physical charms—also they were often discontented, and wished, as
children will, for things they could not have; but they were natural,
understandable children, not like myself, cursed with a fevered
ambition for the utterly unattainable.
“Oh, were I seated high as my ambition,
I’d place this loot on naked necks of monarchs!”
At the time of my departure for Caddagat my father had been negotiating
with beer regarding the sale of his manhood; on returning I found that
he had completed the bargain, and held a stamped receipt in his
miserable appearance and demeanour. In the broken-down man, regardless
of manners, one would have failed to recognize Dick Melvyn, “Smart Dick
Melvyn”, “Jolly-good-fellow Melvyn” “Thorough Gentleman” and “Manly
Melvyn” of the handsome face and ingratiating manners, one-time holder
of Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East, and Bin Bin West. He never corrected his
family nowadays, and his example was most deleterious to them.
Mother gave me a list of her worries in private after tea that night.
She wished she had never married: not only was her husband a failure,
but to all appearances her children would be the same. I wasn’t worth
my salt or I would have remained at Barney’s Gap; and there was
Horace—heaven only knew where he would end. God would surely punish him
for his disrespect to his father. It was impossible to keep things
together much longer, etc., etc.
When we went to bed that night Gertie poured all her troubles into my
ear in a jumbled string. It was terrible to have such a father. She was
ashamed of him. He was always going into town, and stayed there till
mother had to go after him, or some of the neighbours were so good as
to bring him home. It took all the money to pay the publican’s bills,
and Gertie was ashamed to be seen abroad in the nice clothes which
grannie sent, as the neighbours said the Melvyns ought to pay up the
old man’s bills instead of dressing like swells; and she couldn’t help
it, and she was sick and tired of trying to keep up respectability in
the teeth of such odds.
I comforted her with the assurance that the only thing was to feel
right within ourselves, and let people say whatsoever entertained their
poor little minds. And I fell asleep thinking that parents have a duty
to children greater than children to parents, and they who do not
fulfil their responsibility in this respect are as bad in their morals
as a debauchée, corrupt the community as much as a thief, and are among
the ablest underminers of their nation.
On the morrow, the first time we were alone, Horace seized the
opportunity of holding forth on _his_ woes. It was no use, he was choke
full of Possum Gully: he would stick to it for another year, and then
he would chuck it, even if he had to go on the wallaby. He wasn’t going
to be slaving for ever for the boss to swallow the proceeds, and there
was nothing to be made out of dairying. When it wasn’t drought it was
floods and caterpillars and grasshoppers.
Among my brothers and sisters I quickly revived to a certain extent,
and mother asserted her opinion that I had not been ill at all, but had
made up my mind to torment her; had not taken sufficient exercise, and
might have had a little derangement of the system but nothing more. It
was proposed that I should return to Barney’s Gap. I demurred, and was
anathematized as ungrateful and altogether corrupt, that I would not go
back to M’Swat, who was so good as to lend my father money out of pure
friendship; but for once in my life I could not be made submit by
either coercion or persuasion. Grannie offered to take one of us to
Caddagat; mother preferred that Gertie should go. So we sent the pretty
girl to dwell among her kindred in a land of comfort and pleasure.
I remained at Possum Gully to tread the same old life in its tame
narrow path, with its never-ending dawn-till-daylight round of tasks;
with, as its entertainments, an occasional picnic or funeral or a day
in town, when, should it happen to be Sunday, I never fail to patronize
one of the cathedrals. I love the organ music, and the hush which
pervades the building; and there is much entertainment in various ways
if one goes early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in.
The costumes and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line,
the ability of the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular
attendants, of course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is
in classing the visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can
cull the commoners from the parvenu aristocrats, and put them in their
respective places as skilfully as an expert horse-dealer can draft his
stock at a sale. Then, when the audience is complete, in the middle and
front of the edifice are to be found they of the white hands and fine
jewels; and in the topmost seat of the synagogue, praying audibly, is
one who has made all his wealth by devouring widows’ houses; while
pushed away to the corners and wings are they who earn their bread by
the sweat of their brow; and those who cannot afford good linen are too
proud to be seen here at all.
“The choir sings and the organ rings,” the uninteresting prayers are
rattled off (“O come, let us worship, and fall down: and kneel before
the Lord, our Maker”); a sermon, mostly of the debts of the concern, of
the customs of the ancients, or of the rites and ceremonies of
up-to-date churchism, is delivered, and the play is done, and as I
leave the building a great hunger for a little Christianity fills my
heart.
Oh that a preacher might arise and expound from the Book of books a
religion with a God, a religion with a heart in it—a Christian
religion, which would abolish the cold legend whose centre is
respectability, and which rears great buildings in which the rich
recline on silken hassocks while the poor perish in the shadow thereof.
Through the hot dry summer, then the heartless winter and the scorching
summer again which have spent themselves since Gertie’s departure, I
have struggled hard to do my duty in that state of life unto which it
had pleased God to call me, and sometimes I have partially succeeded. I
have had no books or papers, nothing but peasant surroundings and
peasant tasks, and have encouraged peasant ignorance—ignorance being
the mainspring of contentment, and contentment the bed-rock of
happiness; but it is all to no purpose. A note from the other world
will strike upon the chord of my being, and the spirit which has been
dozing within me awakens and fiercely beats at its bars, demanding some
nobler thought, some higher aspiration, some wider action, a more
saturnalian pleasure, something more than the peasant life can ever
yield. Then I hold my spirit tight till wild passionate longing sinks
down, down to sickening dumb despair, and had I the privilege extended
to job of old—to curse God and die—I would leap at it eagerly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
But Absent Friends are Soon Forgot
We received a great many letters from Gertie for a little while after
she went up the country, but they grew shorter and farther between as
time went on.
In one of grannie’s letters there was concerning my sister: “I find
Gertie is a much younger girl for her age than Sybylla was, and not
nearly so wild and hard to manage. She is a great comfort to me. Every
one remarks upon her good looks.”
From one of Gertie’s letters:
Uncle Julius came home from Hong Kong and America last week, and
brought such a lot of funny presents for every one. He had a lot for
you, but he has given them to me instead as you are not here. He calls
me his pretty little sunbeam, and says I must always live with him.
I sighed to myself as I read this. Uncle Jay-Jay had said much the same
to me, and where was I now? My thoughts were ever turning to the people
and old place I love so well, but Gertie’s letters showed me that I was
utterly forgotten and unmissed.
Gertie left us in October 1897, and it was somewhere about January 1898
that all the letters from Caddagat were full to overflowing with the
wonderful news of Harold Beecham’s reinstatement at Five-Bob Downs,
under the same conditions as he had held sway there in my day.
From grannie’s letters I learnt that some old sweetheart of Harold’s
father had bequeathed untold wealth to this her lost love’s son. The
wealth was in bonds and stocks principally, and though it would be some
time ere Harold was actually in possession of it, yet he had no
difficulty in getting advancements to any amount, and had immediately
repurchased Five-Bob.
I had never dreamed of such a possibility. True, I had often said were
Harold a character in fiction instead of real life, some relative would
die opportunely and set him up in his former position, but, here, this
utterly unanticipated contingency had arisen in a manner which would
affect my own life, and what were my feelings regarding the matter?
I think I was not fully aware of the extent of my lack of wifely love
for Harold Beecham, until experiencing the sense of relief which stole
over me on holding in my hand the announcement of his return to the
smile of fortune.
He was rich; he would not need me now; my obligation to him ceased to
exist; I was free. He would no longer wish to be hampered with me. He
could take his choice of beauty and worth; he might even purchase a
princess did his ambition point that way.
One of Gertie’s letters ran:
That Mr Beecham you used to tell me so much about has come back to live
at Five-Bob. He has brought his aunts back. Every one went to welcome
them, and there was a great fuss. Aunt Helen says he (Mr B.) is very
conservative; he has everything just as it used to be. I believe he is
richer than ever. Every one is laughing about his luck. He was here
twice last week, and has just left this evening. He is very quiet. I
don’t know how you thought him so wonderful. I think he is too slow, I
have great work to talk to him, but he is very kind, and I like him. He
seems to remember you well, and often says you were a game youngster,
and could ride like old Nick himself.
I wrote to the owner of Five-Bob desiring to know if what I heard
concerning his good fortune was correct, and he replied by return post:
My dear little Syb,
Yes, thank goodness it is all true. The old lady left me nearly a
million. It seems like a fairy yarn, and I will know how to value it
more now. I would have written sooner, only you remember our bargain,
and I was just waiting to get things fixed up a little, when I’m off at
great tracks to claim you in the flesh, as there is no need for us to
wait above a month or two now if you are agreeable. I am just run to
death. It takes a bit of jigging to get things straight again, but it’s
simply too good to believe to be back in the same old beat. I’ve seen
Gertie a good many times, and find your descriptions of her were not at
all overdrawn. I won’t send any love in this, or there would be a “bust
up” in the post-office, because I’d be sure to overdo the thing, and
I’d have all the officials on to me for damages. Gather up your goods
and chattels, because I’ll be along in a week or two to take possession
of you.
—Yr devoted
Hal.