My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

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 warmhearted 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 handclasp, 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