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

you dare to again mention my name in regard to matrimony with anyone about here;” and with my head high and shoulders thrown back I marched to my room, where I wept till I was weak and ill.

This monotonous sordid life was unhinging me, and there was no legitimate way of escape from it. I formed wild plans of running away, to do what I did not care so long as it brought a little action, anything but this torturing maddening monotony; but my love for my little brothers and sisters held me back. I could not do anything that would put me forever beyond the pale of their society.

I was so reduced in spirit that had Harold Beecham appeared then with a matrimonial scheme to be fulfilled at once, I would have quickly erased the fine lines I had drawn and accepted his proposal; but he did not come, and I was unacquainted with his whereabouts or welfare. As I remembered him, how lovable and superior he seemed in comparison with the men I met nowadays: not that he was any better than these men in their place and according to their lights, but his lights⁠—at least not his lights, for Harold Beecham was nothing of a philosopher, but the furniture of the drawing-room which they illuminated⁠—was more artistic. What a prince of gentlemanliness and winning gallantries he was in his quiet way!

This information concerning him was in a letter I received from my grandmother at Easter:

Who should surprise us with a visit the other day but Harold Beecham. He was as thin as a whipping-post, and very sunburnt [I smiled, imagining it impossible for Harold to be any browner than of yore]. He has been near death’s door with the measles⁠—caught them in Queensland while droving, and got wet. He was so ill that he had to give up charge of that 1,600 head of cattle he was bringing. He came to say goodbye to us, as he is off to Western Australia next week to see if he can mend his fortunes there. I was afraid he was going to be like young Charters, and swear he would never come back unless he made a pile, but he says he will be back next Christmas three years for certain, if he is alive and kicking, as he says himself.

Why he intends returning at that stipulated time I don’t know, as he never was very communicative, and is more unsociable than ever now. He is a man who never shows his feelings, but he must feel the loss of his old position deeply. He seemed surprised not to find you here, and says it was a pity to set you teaching, as it will take all the life and fun out of you, and that is the first time I ever heard him express an opinion in anyone’s business but his own. Frank Hawden sends kind regards, etc.

Teaching certainly had the effect upon me anticipated by Harold Beecham, but it was not the teaching but the place in which I taught which was doing the mischief⁠—good, my mother termed it.

I was often sleepless for more than forty-eight hours at a stretch, and cried through the nights until my eyes had black rings round them, which washing failed to remove. The neighbours described me as “a sorrowful lookin’ delicate creetur’, that couldn’t larf to save her life”⁠—quite a different character to the girl who at Caddagat was continually chid for being a romp, a hoyden, a boisterous tomboy, a whirlwind, and for excessive laughter at anything and everything. I got into such a state of nervousness that I would jump at the opening of a door or an unexpected footfall.

When cooling down, after having so vigorously delivered Mr. M’Swat a piece of my mind, I felt that I owed him an apology. According to his lights (and that is the only fair way of judging our fellows) he had acted in a kind of fatherly way. I was a young girl under his charge, and he would have in a measure been responsible had I come to harm through going out in the night. He had been good-natured, too, in offering to help things along by providing an eligible, and allowing us to “spoon” under his surveillance. That I was of temperament and aspirations that made his plans loathsome to me was no fault of his⁠—only a heavy misfortune to myself. Yes; I had been in the wrong entirely.

With this idea in my head, sinking ankle-deep in the dust, and threading my way through the pigs and fowls which hung around the back door, I went in search of my master. Mrs. M’Swat was teaching Jimmy how to kill a sheep and dress it for use; while Lizer, who was nurse to the baby and spectator of the performance, was volubly and ungrammatically giving instructions in the art. Peter and some of the younger children were away felling stringybark-trees for the sustenance of the sheep. The fall of their axes and the murmur of the Murrumbidgee echoed faintly from the sunset. They would be home presently and at tea; I reflected it would be “The old yeos looks terrible skinny, but the hoggets is fat yet. By crikey! They did go into the bushes. They chawed up stems and all⁠—some as thick as a pencil.”

This information in that parlance had been given yesterday, the day before, would be given today, tomorrow, and the next day. It was the boss item on the conversational programme until further orders.

I had a pretty good idea where to find Mr. M’Swat, as he had lately purchased a pair of stud rams, and was in the habit of admiring them for a couple of hours every evening. I went to where they usually grazed, and there, as I expected, found Mr. M’Swat, pipe in mouth, with glistening eyes, surveying his darlings.

“Mr. M’Swat, I have come to beg your pardon.”

“That’s all right, me gu-r-r-r-l. I didn’t take no notice