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

wonderful quick; and she uses them big words wot you couldn’t understand without bein’ eddicated.”

“She has tree brooches, and a necktie better than your best one wots you keeps to go seeing Susie Duffy in,” and Lizer giggled slyly.

“You shut up about Susie Duffy, or I’ll whack yuz up aside of the ear,” said Peter angrily.

“She ain’t like ma. She’s fat up here, and goes in like she’d break in the middle, Peter.”

“Great scissors! she must be a flyer,” said Peter. “I’ll bet she’ll make you sit up, Jimmy.”

“I’ll make her sit up,” retorted Jimmy, who came next to Lizer.⁠—“She thinks she’s a toff, but she’s only old Melvyn’s darter, that pa has to give money to.”

“Peter,” said another, “her face ain’t got them freckles on like yours, and it ain’t dark like Lizer’s. It’s reel wite, and pinky round here.”

“I bet she won’t make me knuckle down to her, no matter wot colour she is,” returned Peter, in a surly tone.

No doubt it was this idea which later in the afternoon induced him to swagger forward to shake hands with me with a flash insolent leer on his face. I took pains to be especially nice to him, treating him with deference, and making remarks upon the extreme heat of the weather with such pleasantness that he was nonplussed, and looked relieved when able to escape. I smiled to myself, and apprehended no further trouble from Peter.

The table for tea was set exactly as it had been before, and was lighted by a couple of tallow candles made from bad fat, and their odour was such as my jockey travelling companion of the day before would have described as a tough smell.

“Give us a toon on the peeany,” said Mrs. M’Swat after the meal, when the dishes had been cleared away by Lizer and Rose Jane. The tea and scraps, of which there was any amount, remained on the floor, to be picked up by the fowls in the morning.

The children lay on the old sofa and on the chairs, where they always slept at night until their parents retired, when there was an all-round bawl as they were wakened and bundled into bed, dirty as they were, and very often with their clothes on.

I acceded to Mrs. M’Swat’s request with alacrity, thinking that while forced to remain there I would have one comfort, and would spend all my spare time at the piano. I opened the instrument, brushed a little of the dust from the keys with my pocket-handkerchief, and struck the opening chords of Kowalski’s “Marche Hongroise.”

I have heard of pianos sounding like a tin dish, but this was not as pleasant as a tin dish by long chalks. Every note that I struck stayed down not to rise, and when I got them up the jarring, clanging, discordant clatter they produced beggars description. There was not the slightest possibility of distinguishing any tune on the thing. Worthless to begin with, it had stood in the dust, heat, and wind so long that every sign that it had once made music had deserted it.

I closed it with a feeling of such keen disappointment that I had difficulty in suppressing tears.

“Won’t it play?” inquired Mr. M’Swat.

“No; the keys stay down.”

“Then, Rose Jane, go ye an’ pick ’em up while she tries again.”

I tried again, Rose Jane fishing up the keys as I went along. I perceived instantly that not one had the least ear for music or idea what it was; so I beat on the demented piano with both hands, and often with all fingers at once, and the bigger row I made the better they liked it.

XXIX To Life (Continued)

Mr. M’Swat very kindly told me I need not begin my duties until Monday morning, and could rest during Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, which was sickeningly hot and sultry, and which seemed like an eternity, I spent in arranging my belongings, brushing the dust from my travelling dress, and in mending a few articles. Next morning rain started to fall, which was a great Godsend, being the first which had fallen for months, and the only rain I saw during my residence at Barney’s Gap.

That was a hideous Sabbath. Without a word of remonstrance from their parents, the children entertained themselves by pushing each other into the rain, the smaller ones getting the worst of it, until their clothing was saturated with water. This made them very cold, so they sat upon the floor and yelled outrageously.

It was the custom of Peter to spend his Sundays in riding about, but today, being deterred by the rain, he slept some of the time, and made a muzzle for one of his dogs, between whiles.

From breakfast to the midday meal I shut myself in my bedroom and wrote letters to my mother and grandmother. I did not rant, rave, or say anything which I ought not to have said to my elders. I wrote those letters very coolly and carefully, explaining things just as they were, and asked grannie to take me back to Caddagat, as I could never endure life at Barney’s Gap. I told my mother I had written thus, and asked her if she would not let grannie take me again, would she get me some other situation? What I did not care, so long as it brought emancipation from the M’Swat’s. I stamped and addressed these missives, and put them by till a chance of posting should arise.

Mr. M’Swat could read a little by spelling the long words and blundering over the shorter ones, and he spent the morning and all the afternoon in perusal of the local paper⁠—the only literature with which Barney’s Gap was acquainted. There was a long list of the prices of stock and farm produce in this edition, which perfectly fascinated its reader. The ecstasy of a man of fine, artistic, mental calibre, when dipping for the first time into the work of some congenial poet, would be completely