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

amused at and have admired your touch-me-not style. You only forgot you had something in your hand.”

He had taken it quite as a matter of fact, and was excusing me in the kindest possible terms.

“Good gracious, you mustn’t stew over such a trifling accident! It’s nothing. Just tie this handkerchief on for me, please, and then we’ll go back to the others or there will be a search-party after us.”

He could have tied the handkerchief just as well himself⁠—it was only out of kindly tact he requested my services. I accepted his kindness gratefully. He sank on his knee so that I could reach him, and I tied a large white handkerchief across the injured part. He could not open his eye, and hot water poured from it, but he made light of the idea of it paining. I was feeling better now, so we returned to the ballroom. The clock struck the half-hour after eleven as we left the room. Harold entered by one door and, I by another, and I slipped into a seat as though I had been there some time.

There were only a few people in the room. The majority were absent⁠—some lovemaking, others playing cards. Miss Beecham was one who was not thus engaged. She exclaimed at once:

“Good gracious, boy, what have you done to yourself?”

“Looks as if he had been interviewing a belligerent tramp,” said aunt Helen, smilingly.

“He’s run into the clothesline, that’s what he’s done,” said Miss Augusta confidently, after she had peeped beneath the bandage.

“You ought to get a bun for guessing, aunt Gus,” said Harold laughing.

“I told them to put the clotheslines up when they had done with them. I knew there would be an accident.”

“Perhaps they were put up high enough for ordinary purposes,” remarked her nephew.

“Let me do something for you, dear.”

“No, thank you, aunt Gus. It is nothing,” he said carelessly, and the matter dropped.

Harold Beecham was not a man to invite inquiry concerning himself.

Seeing I was unobserved by the company, I slipped away to indulge in my foolish habit of asking the why and the wherefore of things. Why had Harold Beecham (who was a sort of young sultan who could throw the handkerchief where he liked) chosen me of all women? I had no charms to recommend me⁠—none of the virtues which men demand of the woman they wish to make their wife. To begin with, I was small, I was erratic and unorthodox, I was nothing but a tomboy⁠—and, cardinal disqualification, I was ugly. Why, then, had he proposed matrimony to me? Was it merely a whim? Was he really in earnest?

The night was soft and dark; after being out in it for a time I could discern the shrubs dimly silhouetted against the light. The music struck up inside again. A step approached me on the gravelled walk among the flowers, and Harold called me softly by name. I answered him.

“Come,” he said, “we are going to dance; will you be my partner?”

We danced, and then followed songs and parlour games, and it was in the small hours when the merry goodnights were all said and we had retired to rest. Aunt Helen dropped to sleep in a short time; but I lay awake listening to the soft distant call of the mopokes in the scrub beyond the stables.

XXI My Unladylike Behaviour Again

Joe Archer was appointed to take us home on the morrow. When our host was seeing us off⁠—still with his eye covered⁠—he took opportunity of whispering to me his intention of coming to Caddagat on the following Sunday.

Early in the afternoon of that day I took a book, and, going down the road some distance, climbed up a broad-branched willow-tree to wait for him.

It was not long before he appeared at a smart canter. He did not see me in the tree, but his horse did, and propping, snorted wildly, and gave a backward run. Harold spurred him, he bucked spiritedly. Harold now saw me and sang out:

“I say, don’t frighten him any more or he’ll fling me, saddle and all. I haven’t got a crupper or a breastplate.”

“Why haven’t you, then? Hang on to him. I do like the look of you while the horse is going on like that.”

He had dismounted, and had thrown the bridle rein over a post of the fence.

“I came with nothing but a girth, and that loose, as it was so hot; and I was as near as twopence to being off, saddle and all. You might have been the death of me,” he said good-humouredly.

“Had I been, my fortune would have been made,” I replied.

“How do you make that out? You’re as complimentary as ever.”

“Everyone would be wanting to engage me as the great noxious weedkiller and poisonous insect exterminator if I made away with you,” I answered. I gave him an invitation to take a seat with me, and accepting, he swung up with easy grace. There was any amount of accommodation for the two of us on the good-natured branches of the old willow-tree.

When he had settled himself, my companion said, “Now, Syb, I’m ready for you. Fire away. But wait a minute, I’ve got something here for you which I hope you’ll like.”

As he searched in his pockets, I noticed that his eye had quite recovered, though there was still a slight mark on his cheek. He handed me a tiny morocco case, which on being opened disclosed a costly ring. I have about as much idea of the prices of things as a turkey would have. Perhaps that ring cost thirty pounds or possibly fifty guineas, for all I know. It was very heavy, and had a big diamond supported on either side by a large sapphire, and had many small gems surrounding it.

“Let me see if it fits,” he said, taking my hand; but I drew it away.

“No; don’t you put it on. That would make us irrevocably engaged.”

“Isn’t that what we intend