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

the garden fence while he went inside to try and buy a loaf of bread.

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

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

I had to laugh.

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

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

“Did you get him to talk?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did you really?” in surprise.

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

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

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

His grumbling did not affect Harold in the least.

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

Question. Auntie, what age is Harold Beecham?

Answer. Twenty-five last December.

Q. Did he ever have any brothers or sisters?

A. No. His birth caused his mother’s death.

Q. How long has his father been dead?

A. Since Harold could crawl.

Q. Who reared him?

A. His aunts.

Q. Does he ever talk any more than that?

A. Often a great deal less.

Q. Is he really very rich?

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

Q. Is Five-Bob a very pretty place?

A. Yes; one of the show places of the district.

Q. Does he often come to Caddagat?

A. Yes, he often drops in.

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

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

Q. Does he⁠—?

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

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

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

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

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

XIV Principally Letters

Caddagat, 29th Sept., 1896

My dearest Gertie,

I have started to write no less than seven letters to you, but something always interrupted me and I did not finish them. However, I’ll finish this one in the teeth of Father Peter himself. I will parenthesize all the interruptions. (A traveller