I knew Harold meant what he had said. He was a strong-natured man of
firm determinations, and having made up his mind to marry me would
never for an instant think of anything else; but I could see what he
could not see himself—that he had probably tired of me, and was
becoming enamoured of Gertie’s beauty.
The discordance of life smote hard upon me, and the letter I wrote was
not pleasant. It ran:
To H. A. BEECHAM, Esq.,
Five-Bob Downs Station,
Gool-Gool, N.S.W.
Sir,
Your favour duly to hand. I heartily rejoice at your good fortune, and
trust you may live long and have health to enjoy it. Do not for an
instant consider yourself under any obligations to me, for you are
perfectly free. Choose some one who will reflect more credit on your
taste and sense.
With all good wishes,
Faithfully yrs,
S. PENELOPE MELVYN.
As I closed and directed this how far away Harold Beecham seemed! Less
than two years ago I had been familiar with every curve and expression
of his face, every outline of his great figure, every intonation of his
strong cultivated voice; but now he seemed as the shadow of a former
age.
He wrote in reply: What did I mean? Was it a joke—just a little of my
old tormenting spirit? Would I explain immediately? He couldn’t get
down to see me for a fortnight at the least.
I explained, and very tersely, that I had meant what I said, and in
return received a letter as short as my own:
Dear Miss Melvyn,
I regret your decision, but trust I have sufficient manhood to prevent
me from thrusting myself upon any lady, much less you.
Your sincere friend,
HAROLD AUGUSTUS BEECHAM.
He did not demand a reason for my decision, but accepted it
unquestionably. As I read his words he grew near to me, as in the days
gone by.
I closed my eyes, and before my mental vision there arose an overgrown
old orchard, skirting one of the great stock-routes from Riverina to
Monaro. A glorious day was languidly smiling good night on abundance of
ripe and ripening fruit and flowers. The scent of stock and the merry
cry of the tennis-players filled the air. I could feel Harold’s wild
jolting heart-beats, his burning breath on my brow, and his voice husky
with rage in my ear. As he wrote that letter I could fancy the well-cut
mouth settling into a sullen line, as it had done on my birthday when,
by caressing, I had won it back to its habitual pleasant expression;
but on this occasion I would not be there. He would be angry just a
little while—a man of his strength and importance could not long hold
ill-will towards a woman, a girl, a child! as weak and insignificant as
I. Then when I should meet him in the years to come, when he would be
the faithful and loving husband of another woman, he would be a little
embarrassed perhaps; but I would set him at his case, and we would
laugh together re what he would term our foolish young days, and he
would like me in a brotherly way. Yes, that was how it would be. The
tiny note blackened in the flames.
So much for my romance of love! It had ended in a bottle of smoke, as
all my other dreams of life bid fair to do.
I think I was not fully aware how near I had been to loving Harold
Beecham until experiencing the sense of loss which stole over me on
holding in my hand the acceptance of his dismissal. It was a something
gone out of my life, which contained so few somethings, that I
crushingly felt the loss of any one.
Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an
individual to whom our existence is necessary—some one who is part of
our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel
assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. And who can be
this but a husband or wife? Our parents have other children and
themselves, our brothers and sisters marry and have lives apart, so
with our friends; but one’s husband would be different. And I had
thrown behind me this chance; but in the days that followed I knew that
I had acted wisely.
Gertie’s letters would contain: “Harold Beecham, he makes me call him
Harry, took me to Five-Bob last week, and it was lovely fun.”
Again it would be: “Harry says I am the prettiest little girl ever was,
Caddagat or anywhere else, and he gave me such a lovely bracelet. I
wish you could see it.”
Or this:
We all went to church yesterday. Harry rode with me. There is to be a
very swell ball at Wyambeet next month, and Harry says I am to keep
nearly all my dances for him. Frank Hawden sailed for England last
week. We have a new jackeroo. He is better-looking than Frank, but I
don’t like him as well.
Grannie’s and aunt Helen’s letters to my mother corroborated these
admissions. Grannie wrote:
Harry Beecham seems to be very much struck with Gertie. I think it
would be a good thing, as he is immensely rich, and a very steady young
fellow into the bargain. They say no woman could live with him on
account of his temper; but he has always been a favourite of mine, and
we cannot expect a man without some faults.
Aunt Helen remarked:
Don’t be surprised if you have young Beecham down there presently on an
“asking papa” excursion. He spends a great deal of time here, and has
been inquiring the best route to Possum Gully. Do you remember him? I
don’t think he was here in your day. He is an estimable and likeable
young fellow, and I think will make a good husband apart from his
wealth. He and Gertie present a marked contrast.
Sometimes on reading this kind of thing I would wax rather bitter.
Love, I said, was not a lasting thing; but knowledge told me that it
was for those of beauty and winsome ways, and not for me. I was ever to
be a lonely-hearted waif from end to end of the world of love—an alien
among my own kin.
But there were other things to worry me. Horace had left the family
roof. He averred he was “full up of life under the old man’s rule. It
was too slow and messed up.” His uncle, George Melvyn, his father’s
eldest brother, who had so often and so kindly set us up with cows, had
offered to take him, and his father had consented to let him go. George
Melvyn had a large station outback, a large sheep-shearing machine, and
other improvements. Thence, strong in the hope of sixteen years, Horace
set out on horseback one springless spring morning ere the sun had
risen, with all his earthly possessions strapped before him. Bravely
the horse stepped out for its week’s journey, and bravely its rider
sat, leaving me and the shadeless, wooden sun-baked house on the side
of the hill, with the regretlessness of teens—especially masculine
teens. I watched him depart until the clacking of his horse’s hoofs
grew faint on the stony hillside and his form disappeared amid the
she-oak scrub which crowned the ridge to the westward. He was gone.
Such is life. I sat down and buried my face in my apron, too miserable
even for tears. Here was another article I ill could spare wrenched
from my poorly and sparsely furnished existence.
True, our intercourse had not always been carpeted with rose-leaves.
His pitiless scorn of my want of size and beauty had often given me a
sleepless night; but I felt no bitterness against him for this, but
merely cursed the Potter who had fashioned the clay that was thus
described.
On the other hand, he was the only one who had ever stood up and said a
word of extenuation for me in the teeth of a family squall. Father did
not count; my mother thought me bad from end to end; Gertie, in
addition to the gifts of beauty and lovableness, possessed that of
holding with the hare and running with the hound; but Horace once had
put in a word for me that I would never forget. I missed his presence
in the house, his pounding of the old piano with four dumb notes in the
middle, as he bawled thereto rollicking sea and comic songs; I missed
his energetic dissertations on spurs, whips, and blood-horses, and his
spirited rendering of snatches of Paterson and Gordon, as he came in
and out, banging doors and gates, teasing the cats and dogs and
tormenting the children.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The 3rd of December 1898
It was a very hot day. So extreme was the heat that to save the lives
of some young swallows my father had to put wet bags over the iron roof
above their nest. A galvanized-iron awning connected our kitchen and
house: in this some swallows had built, placing their nest so near the
iron that the young ones were baking with the heat until rescued by the
wet bagging. I had a heavy day’s work before me, and, from my exertions
of the day before, was tired at the beginning. Bush-fires had been
raging in the vicinity during the week, and yesterday had come so close
that I had been called out to carry buckets of water all the afternoon
in the blazing sun. The fire had been allayed, after making a gap in
one of our boundary fences. Father and the boys had been forced to
leave the harvesting of the miserable pinched wheat while they went to
mend it, as the small allowance of grass the drought gave us was
precious, and had to be carefully preserved from neighbours’ stock.
I had baked and cooked, scrubbed floors and whitewashed hearths,
scoured tinware and cutlery, cleaned windows, swept yards, and
discharged numerous miscellaneous jobs, and half-past two in the
afternoon found me very dirty and very tired, and with very much more
yet to do.
One of my half-starved poddy calves was very ill, and I went out to
doctor it previous to bathing and tidying myself for my finishing
household duties.
My mother was busy upon piles and piles of wearying mending, which was
one of the most hopeless of the many slaveries of her life. This was
hard work, and my father was slaving away in the sun, and mine was
arduous labour, and it was a very hot day, and a drought-smitten and a
long day, and poddy calves ever have a tendency to make me moralize and
snarl. This was life, my life and my parents’ life, and the life of
those around us, and if I was a good girl and honoured my parents I
would be rewarded with a long stretch of it. Yah!
These pagan meditations were interrupted by a footfall slowly
approaching. I did not turn to ascertain who it might be, but trusted
it was no one of importance, as the poddy and I presented rather a
grotesque appearance. It was one of the most miserable and sickly of
its miserable kind, and I was in the working uniform of the Australian
peasantry. My tattered skirt and my odd and bursted boots, laced with
twine, were spattered with whitewash, for coolness my soiled cotton
blouse hung loose, an exceedingly dilapidated sun-bonnet surmounted my
head, and a bottle of castor-oil was in my hand.
I supposed it was one of the neighbours or a tea-agent, and I would
send them to mother.
The footsteps had come to a halt beside me.
“Could you tell me if—”
I glanced upwards. Horrors! There stood Harold Beecham, as tall and
broad as of yore, even more sunburnt than ever, and looking very
stylish in a suit of grey and a soft fashionable dinted-in hat; and it
was the first time I had ever seen him in a white shirt and high
collar.
I wished he would explode, or I might sink into the ground, or the calf
would disappear, or that something might happen.
On recognizing me his silence grew profound, but an unmistakable
expression of pity filled his eyes and stung me to the quick.
I have a faculty of self-pity, but my pride promptly refuses the
slightest offer of sympathy from another.
I could feel my heart grow as bitterly cold as my demeanour was icily
stiff, when I stood up and said curtly:
“This is a great surprise, Mr Beecham.”
“Not an unpleasant one, I hope,” he said pleasantly.
“We will not discuss the matter. Come inside out of the heat.”
“I’m in no hurry, Syb, and couldn’t I help you with that poor little
devil?”
“I’m only trying to give it another chance of life.”
“What will you do with it if it lives?”
“Sell it for half a crown when it’s a yearling.”
“It would pay better to shoot the poor little beggar now.”
“No doubt it would the owner of Five-Bob, but we have to be more
careful,” I said tartly.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not offended,” I returned, leading the way to the house, imagining
with a keen pain that Harold Beecham must be wondering how for an
instant he could have been foolish enough to fancy such an object two
years ago.
Thank goodness I have never felt any humiliation on account of my
mother, and felt none then, as she rose to greet Harold upon my
introduction. She was a lady, and looked it, in spite of the piles of
coarse mending, and the pair of trousers, almost bullet-proof with
patches, out of which she drew her hand, roughened and reddened with
hard labour, in spite of her patched and faded cotton gown, and the
commonest and most poverty-stricken of peasant surroundings, which
failed to hide that she had not been always thus.
Leaving them together, I expeditiously proceeded to relieve the
livery-stable horse, on which Harold had come, of the valise, saddle,
and bridle with which it was encumbered, and then let it loose in one
of the grassless paddocks near at hand.
Then I threw myself on a stool in the kitchen, and felt, to the bone,
the sting of having ideas above one’s position.
In a few minutes mother came hurrying out.
“Good gracious, what’s the matter? I suppose you didn’t like being
caught in such a pickle, but don’t get in the dumps about it. I’ll get
him some tea while you clean yourself, and then you’ll be able to help
me by and by.”
I found my little sister Aurora, and we climbed through the window into
my bedroom to get tidy. I put a pair of white socks and shoes and a
clean pinafore on the little girl, and combed her golden curls. She was
all mine—slept with me, obeyed me, championed me; while I—well, I
worshipped her.
There was a hole in the wall, and through it I could see without being
seen.
Mother was dispensing afternoon tea and talking to Harold. It was
pleasant to see that manly figure once again. My spirits rose
considerably. After all, if the place was poor, it was very clean, as I
had scrubbed it all that morning, and when I came to consider the
matter, I remembered that men weren’t such terrible creatures, and
never made one feel the sting of one’s poverty half as much as women
do.
“Aurora,” I said, I want you to go out and tell Mr Beecham something.
The little girl assented. I carefully instructed her in what she was to
say, and dispatched her. She placed herself in front of Harold—a
wide-eyed mite of four, that scarcely reached above his knee—and
clasping her chubby hands behind her, gazed at him fearlessly and
unwinkingly.
“Aurora, you mustn’t stand staring like that,” said mother.
“Yes, I must,” she replied confidently.
“Well, and what’s your name?” said Harold laughingly.
“Aurora and Roy. I belong to Sybyller, and got to tell you somesing.”
“Have you? Let’s hear it.”
“Sybyller says you’s Mr Beecher; when you’re done tea, you’d like me if
I would to ’scort you to farver and the boys, and ’duce you.”
Mother laughed. “That’s some of Sybylla’s nonsense. She considers Rory
her especial property, and delights to make the child attempt long
words. Perhaps you would care to take a stroll to where they are at
work, by and by.”
Harold said he would go at once, and accepting Rory’s escort, and with
a few directions from mother, they presently set out—she importantly
trudging beneath a big white sun-bonnet, and he looking down at her in
amusement. Presently he tossed her high above his head, and depositing
her upon his shoulder, held one sturdy brown leg in his browner hand,
while she held on by his hair.
“My first impressions are very much in his favour,” said mother, when
they had got out of hearing. “But fancy Gertie the wife of that great
man!”
“She is four inches taller than I am,” I snapped. “And if he was as big
as a gum-tree, he would be a man all the same, and just as soft on a
pretty face as all the rest of them.”
I bathed, dressed, arranged my hair, got something ready for tea, and
prepared a room for our visitor. For this I collected from all parts of
the house—a mat from one room, a toilet-set from another, and so
on—till I had quite an elaborately furnished chamber ready for my
one-time lover.
They returned at dusk, Rory again seated on Harold’s shoulder, and two
of the little boys clinging around him.
As I conducted him to his room I was in a different humour from that of
the sweep-like object who had met him during the afternoon. I laughed
to myself, for, as on a former occasion during our acquaintance, I felt
I was master of the situation.
“I say, Syb, don’t treat a fellow as though he was altogether a
stranger,” he said diffidently, leaning against the door-post.
Our hands met in a cordial grasp as I said, “I’m awfully glad to see
you, Hal; but, but——”
“But what?”
“I didn’t feel over delighted to be caught in such a stew this
afternoon.”
“Nonsense! It only reminded me of the first time we met,” he said with
a twinkle in his eye. “That’s always the way with you girls. You can’t
be civil to a man unless you’re dressed up fit to stun him, as though
you couldn’t make fool enough of him without the aid of clothes at
all.”
“You’d better shut up,” I said over my shoulder as I departed, “or you
will be saying something better left unsaid, like at our first meeting.
Do you remember?”
“Do I not? Great Scot, it’s just like old times to have you giving me
impudence over your shoulder like that!” he replied merrily.
“Like, yet unlike,” I retorted with a sigh.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Once Upon a Time, When the Days Were Long and Hot
Next day was Sunday—a blazing one it was too. I proposed that in the
afternoon some of us should go to church. Father sat upon the idea as a
mad one. Walk two miles in such heat for nothing! as walk we would be
compelled to do, horseflesh being too precious in such a drought to
fritter it away in idle jaunts. Surprising to say, however, Harold, who
never walked anywhere when he could get any sort of a horse, uttered a
wish to go. Accordingly, when the midday dinner was over, he, Stanley,
and I set out. Going to church was quite the event of the week to the
residents around Possum Gully. It was a small Dissenting chapel, where
a layman ungrammatically held forth at 3 p.m. every Sunday; but the
congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for
the sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of
butter, the continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before
and after the service, than for the service itself.
I knew the appearance of Harold Beecham, would make quite a miniature
sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter. In any
company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among
these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the
cruel effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry. I
felt proud of my quondam sweetheart. There was an unconscious air of
physical lordliness about him, and he looked such a swell—not the
black-clothed, clean-shaved, great display of white collar-and-cuffs
swell appertaining to the office and city street, but of the easy
sunburnt squatter type of swelldom, redolent of the sun, the saddle,
the wide open country—a man who is a man, utterly free from the least
suspicion of effeminacy, and capable of earning his bread by the sweat
of his brow—with an arm ready and willing to save in an accident.
All eyes were turned on us as we approached, and I knew that the
attentions he paid me out of simple courtesy—tying my shoe, carrying my
book, holding my parasol—would be put down as those of a lover.
I introduced him to a group of men who were sitting on a log, under the
shade of a stringybark, and leaving him to converse with them, made my
way to where the women sat beneath a gum-tree. The children made a
third group at some distance. We always divided ourselves thus. A young
fellow had to be very far gone ere he was willing to run the gauntlet
of all the chaff levelled at him had he the courage to single out a
girl and talk to her.
I greeted all the girls and women, beginning at the great-grandmother
of the community, who illustrated to perfection the grim sarcasm of the
fifth commandment. She had worked hard from morning till night, until
too old to do so longer, and now hung around with aching weariness
waiting for the grave. She generally poured into my ears a wail about
her “rheumatisms”, and “How long it do be waiting for the Lord”; but
today she was too curious about Harold to think of herself.
“Sure, Sybyller, who’s that? Is he yer sweetheart? Sure he’s as fine a
man as iver I clapped me eyes on.”
I proceeded to give his pedigree, but was interrupted by the arrival of
the preacher, and we all went into the weatherboard iron-roofed house
of prayer.
After service, one of the girls came up to me and whispered, “that is
your sweetheart, isn’t it, Sybyller? He was looking at you all the time
in church.”
“Oh dear, no! I’ll introduce him to you.”
I did so, and watched him as they made remarks about the heat and
drought. There was nothing of the cad or snob about him, and his short
season of adversity had rubbed all the little crudities off his
character, leaving him a man that the majority of both sexes would
admire: women for his bigness, his gentleness, his fine brown
moustache—and for his wealth; men, because he was a manly fellow.
I know he had walked to church on purpose to get a chance of speaking
to me about Gertie, before approaching her parents on the matter; but
Stanley accompanied us, and, boy-like, never relaxed in vigilance for
an instant, so there was no opportunity for anything but matter-of-fact
remarks. The heat was intense. We wiped the perspiration and flies from
our face frequently, and disturbed millions of grasshoppers as we
walked. They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had
even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were
stripping the briers of foliage. In one orchard we passed, the apricot,
plum, and peach-stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence
of their ravages. It was too hot to indulge in any but the most
desultory conversation. We dawdled along. A tiger-snake crossed our
path. Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on the
top wire of a fence which was near at hand. After this we discussed
snakes for a few yards.
A blue sea-breeze, redolent of the bush-fires which were raging at
Tocumwal and Bombala, came rushing and roaring over the ranges from the
cast, and enshrouded the scene in its heavy fog-like folds. The sun was
obscured, and the temperature suddenly took such a great drop that I
felt chilled in my flimsy clothing, and I noticed Harold draw his coat
together.
Stanley had to go after the cows, which were little better than walking
hides, yet were yarded morning and evening to yield a dribble of milk.
He left us among some sallie-trees, in a secluded nook, walled in by
briers, and went across the paddock to roundup the cows. Harold and I
came to a halt by tacit consent.
“Syb, I want to speak to you,” he said earnestly, and then came to a
dead stop.
“Very well; ‘tear into it,’ as Horace would say; but if it is anything
frightful, break it gently,” I said flippantly.
“Surely, Syb, you can guess what it is I have to say.”
Yes, I could guess, I knew what he was going to say, and the knowledge
left a dull bitterness at my heart. I knew he was going to tell me that
I had been right and he wrong—that he had found some one he loved
better than me, and that some one being my sister, he felt I needed
some explanation before he could go in and win; and though I had
refused him for want of love, yet it gave me pain when the moment
arrived that the only man who had ever pretended to love me was going
to say he had been mistaken, and preferred my sister.
There was silence save for the whirr of the countless grasshoppers in
the brier bushes. I knew he was expecting me to help him out, but I
felt doggedly savage and wouldn’t. I looked up at him. He was a tall
grand man, and honest and true and rich. He loved my sister; she would
marry him, and they would be happy. I thought bitterly that God was
good to one and cruel to another—not that I wanted this man, but why
was I so different from other girls?
But then I thought of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable,
so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could any one help
preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse—too
outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways?
It was my own misfortune and nobody’s fault that my singular
individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful
joyous-heartednesses, and why should I be nasty to these young people?
I was no heroine, only a common little bush-girl, so had to make the
best of the situation without any fooling. I raised my eyes from the
scanty baked wisps of grass at my feet, placed my hand on Hal’s arm,
and tiptoeing so as to bring my five-foot stature more on a level with
his, said:
“Yes, Hal, I know what you want to say. Say it all. I won’t be nasty.”
“Well, you see you are so jolly touchy, and have snubbed me so often,
that I don’t know how to begin; and if you know what I’m going to say,
won’t you give me an answer without hearing it?”
“Yes, Hal; but you’d better say it, as I don’t know what conditions—”
“Conditions!”—catching me up eagerly at the word. “If it is only
conditions that are stopping you, you can make your own conditions if
you will marry me.”
“Marry you, Harold! What do you mean? Do you know what you are saying?”
I exclaimed.
“There!” he replied: “I knew you would take it as an insult. I believe
you are the proudest girl in the world. I know you are too clever for
me; but I love you, and could give you everything you fancied.”
“Hal, dear, let me explain. I’m not insulted, only surprised. I thought
you were going to tell me that you loved Gertie, and would ask me not
to make things unpleasant by telling her of the foolish little bit of
flirtation there had been between us.”
“Marry Gertie! Why, she’s only a child! A mere baby, in fact. Marry
Gertie! I never thought of her in that light; and did you think I was
that sort of a fellow, Syb?” he asked reproachfully.
“No, Hal,” I promptly made answer. “I did not think you were that sort
of fellow; but I thought that was the only sort of fellow there was.”
“Good heavens, Syb! Did you really mean those queer little letters you
wrote me last February? I never for an instant looked upon them as
anything but a little bit of playful contrariness. And have you
forgotten me? Did you not mean your promise of two years ago, that you
speak of what passed between us as a paltry bit of flirtation? Is that
all you thought it?”
“No, I did not consider it flirtation; but that is what I thought you
would term it when announcing your affection for Gertie.”
“Gertie! Pretty little Gertie! I never looked upon the child as
anything but your sister, consequently mine also. She’s a child.”
“Child! She is eighteen. More than a year older than I was when you
first introduced the subject of matrimony to me, and she is very
beautiful, and twenty times as good and lovable as I could ever be even
in my best moments.”
“Yes, I know you are young in years, but there is nothing of the child
in you. As for beauty, it is nothing. If beauty was all a man required,
he could, if rich, have a harem full of it any day. I want some one to
be true.”
“The world is filled with folly and sin,
And love must cling where it can, I say;
For beauty is easy enough to win,
But one isn’t loved every day,”