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

One day at lunch I asked my mistress if she would like the children to be instructed in table-manners. “Certainly,” her husband replied, so I commenced.

“Jimmy, you must never put your knife in your mouth.”

“Pa does at any rate,” replied Jimmy.

“Yes,” said pa; “and I’m a richer man today than them as didn’t do it.”

“Liza, do not put a whole slice of bread to your mouth like that, and cram so. Cut it into small pieces.”

“Ma doesn’t,” returned Liza.

“Ye’ll have yer work cut out with ’em,” laughed Mrs. M’Swat, who did not know how to correct her family herself, and was too ignorant to uphold my authority.

That was my only attempt at teaching manners there. In the face of such odds it was a bootless task, and as there were not enough knives and forks to go round, I could not inculcate the correct method of handling those implements.

Mrs. M’Swat had but one boiler in which to do all her cooking, and one small tub for the washing, and there was seldom anything to eat but bread and beef; and this was not because they were poor, but because they did not know, or want to know, any better.

Their idea of religion, pleasure, manners, breeding, respectability, love, and everything of that ilk, was the possession of money, and their one idea of accumulating wealth was by hard sordid dragging and grinding.

A man who rises from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M’Swat of Barney’s Gap was making his must be dirt mean, grasping, narrow-minded, and soulless⁠—to me the most uncongenial of my fellows.

I wrote once more to my mother, to receive the same reply. One hope remained. I would write to aunt Helen. She understood me somewhat, and would know how I felt.

Acting on this inspiration, I requested her to plead for me. Her answer came as a slap in the face, as I had always imagined her above the common cant of ordinary religionists. She stated that life was full of trials. I must try and bear this little cross patiently, and at the end of a year they might have me back at Caddagat. A year! A year at Barney’s Gap! The possibility of such a thing made me frantic. I picked up my pen and bitterly reproached my aunt in a letter to which she did not deign to reply; and from that day to this she has rigidly ignored me⁠—never so much as sending me the most commonplace message, or casually using my name in her letters to my mother.

Aunt Helen, is there such a thing as firm friendship when even yours⁠—best of women⁠—quibbled and went under at the hysterical wail from the overburdened heart of a child?

My predecessor, previous to her debut at Barney’s Gap, had spent some time in a lunatic asylum, and being a curious character, allowed the children to do as they pleased, consequently they knew not what it meant to be ruled, and were very bold. They attempted no insubordination while their father was about the house, but when he was absent they gave me a dog’s life, their mother sometimes smiling on their pranks, often lazily heedless of them, but never administering any form of correction.

If I walked away from the house to get rid of them, they would follow and hoot at me; and when I reproved them they informed me they were not going “to knuckle under to old Melvyn’s darter, the damnedest fool in the world, who’s lost all his prawperty, and has to borry money off of pa.”

Did I shut myself in my room, they shoved sticks in the cracks and made grimaces at me. I knew the fallacy of appealing to their father, as they and their mother would tell falsehoods, and my word would not be taken in contradiction of theirs. I had experience of this, as the postmistress had complained of Jimmy, to be insulted by his father, who could see no imperfection in his children.

M’Swat was much away from home at that time. The drought necessitated the removal of some of his sheep, for which he had rented a place eighty miles coastwards. There he left them under the charge of a man, but he repaired thither frequently to inspect them. Sometimes he was away from home a fortnight at a stretch. Peter would be away at work all day, and the children took advantage of my defenceless position. Jimmy was the ringleader. I could easily have managed the others had he been removed. I would have thrashed him well at the start but for the letters I constantly received from home warning me against offence to the parents, and knew that to set my foot on the children’s larrikinism would require measures that would gain their mother’s ill-will at once. But when M’Swat left home for three weeks Jim got so bold that I resolved to take decisive steps towards subjugating him. I procured a switch⁠—a very small one, as his mother had a great objection to corporal punishment⁠—and when, as usual, he commenced to cheek me during lessons, I hit him on the coat-sleeve. The blow would not have brought tears from the eyes of a toddler, but this great calf emitted a wild yope, and opening his mouth let his saliva pour on to his slate. The others set up such bloodcurdling yells in concert that I was a little disconcerted, but I determined not to give in. I delivered another tap, whereupon he squealed and roared so that he brought his mother to his rescue like a ton of bricks on stilts, a great fuss in her eyes which generally beamed with a cowful calm.

Seizing my arm she shook me like a rat, broke my harmless little stick in pieces, threw it in my face, and patting Jimmy on the shoulder, said:

“Poor man! She sharn’t touch me Jimmy while