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

Yr loving brother,

Horace.

So! Mother had no pity for me, and the more I pleaded with her the more determined she grew upon leaving me to suffer on, so I wrote to her no more. However, I continued to correspond with grannie, and in one of her letters she told me that Harry Beecham (that was in February) was still in Sydney settling his affairs; but when that was concluded he was going to Queensland. He had put his case in the hands of squatters he had known in his palmy days, and the first thing that turned up in managing or overseeing he was to have; but for the present he had been offered the charge of 1,600 head of bullocks from a station up near the Gulf of Carpentaria overland to Victoria. Uncle Jay-Jay was not home yet: he had extended his tour to Hong Kong, and grannie was afraid he was spending too much money, as in the face of the drought she had difficulty in making both ends meet, and feared she would be compelled to go on the banks. She grieved that I was not becoming more reconciled to my place. It was dull, no doubt, but it would do my reputation no harm, whereas, were I in a lively situation, there might be numerous temptations hard to resist. Why did I not try to look at it in that way?

She sent a copy of the Australasian, which was a great treat to me, also to the children, as they were quite ignorant of the commonest things in life, and the advent of this illustrated paper was an event to be recorded in the diary in capital letters. They clustered round me eagerly to see the pictures. In this edition there chanced to be a page devoted to the portraits of eleven Australian singers, and our eyes fell on Madame Melba, who was in the middle. As what character she was dressed I do not remember, but she looked magnificent. There was a crown upon her beautiful head, the plentiful hair was worn flowing, and the shapely bosom and arms exposed.

“Who’s that?” they inquired.

“Madame Melba; did you ever hear her name?”

“Who’s Madame Melba? What’s she do? Is she a queen?”

“Yes, a queen, and a great queen of song;” and being inspired with great admiration for our own Australian cantatrice, who was great among the greatest prima-donnas of the world, I began to tell them a little of her fame, and that she had been recently offered £40,000 to sing for three months in America.

They were incredulous. Forty thousand pounds! Ten times as much as “pa” had given for a paid-up selection he had lately bought. They told me it was no use of me trying to tell them fibs. No one would give a woman anything to sing, not even one pound. Why, Susie Duffy was the best singer on the Murrumbidgee, and she would sing for anyone who asked her, and free of charge.

At this juncture Jimmy, who had been absent, came to see the show. After gazing for a few seconds he remarked what the others had failed to observe, “Why, the woman’s naked!”

I attempted to explain that among rich people in high society it was customary to dress like that in the evening, and that it looked very pretty.

Mrs. M’Swat admonished me for showing the children low pictures.

“She must be a very bold woman,” said Jimmy; and Lizer pronounced her mad because, as she put it, “It’s a wonder she’d be half-undressed in her photo; you’d think she oughter dress herself up complete then.”

Lizer certainly acted upon this principle, as a photo of her, which had been taken by a travelling artist, bore evidence that for the occasion she had arrayed herself in two pairs of ill-fitting cuffs, Peter’s watch and chain, strings, jackets, flowers, and other gewgaws galore.

“There ain’t no such person as Madame Melber; it’s only a fairytale,” said Mrs. M’Swat.

“Did you ever hear of Gladstone?” I inquired.

“No; where is that place?”

“Did you ever hear of Jesus Christ?”

“Sure, yes; he’s got something to do with God, ain’t he?”

After that I never attempted to enlighten them regarding our celebrities.

Oh, how I envied them their ignorant contentment! They were as ducks on a duck-pond; but I was as a duck forced forever to live in a desert, ever wildly longing for water, but never reaching it outside of dreams.

Men only, and they merely on business, came to Barney’s Gap⁠—women tabooed the place. Some of them told me they would come to see me, but not Mrs. M’Swat, as she always allowed the children to be as rude to them as they pleased. With the few individuals who chanced to come M’Swat would sit down, light his pipe, and vulgarly and profusely expectorate on the floor, while they yarned and yarned for hours and hours about the price of wool, the probable breeding capacity of the male stock they kept, and of the want of grass⁠—never a word about their country’s politics or the events of the day; even the news of the “Mountain Murders” by Butler had not penetrated here. I wondered if they were acquainted with the names of their Governor and Prime Minister.

It was not the poor food and the filthy way of preparing it that worried me, or that Mr. M’Swat used “damn” on an average twice in five minutes when conversing, or that the children forever nagged about my father’s poverty and tormented me in a thousand other ways⁠—it was the dead monotony that was killing me.

I longed feveredly for something to happen. Agony is a tame word wherewith to express what that life meant to me. Solitary confinement to a gipsy would be something on a par.

Every night unfailingly when at home M’Swat sat in the bosom of his family and speculated as to how much richer he was than his neighbours, what old Recce