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

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 everyone. 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 flowerbeds we ran. Uncle Jay-Jay’s beard opened in a broad smile, which ended in a loud laugh. Everard Grey’s coattails 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