My curious ideas regarding human equality gave me confidence. My theory is that the cripple is equal to the giant, and the idiot to the genius. As, if on account of his want of strength the cripple is subservient to the giant, the latter, on account of that strength, is compelled to give in to the cripple. So with the dolt and the man of brain, so with Mrs. M’Swat and me.
The fact of not only my own but my family’s dependence on M’Swat—sank into oblivion. I merely recognized that she was one human being and I another. Should I have been deferential to her by reason of her age and maternity, then from the vantage which this gave her, she should have been lenient to me on account of my chitship and inexperience. Thus we were equal.
Jimmy hollered with renewed energy to attract his mother, and I continued to rain blows across his shoulders. Mrs. M’Swat approached to within a foot of the door, and then, as though changing her mind, retraced her steps and entered the hot, low-roofed kitchen. I knew I had won, and felt disappointed that the conquest had been so easy. Jimmy, seeing he was worsted, ceased his uproar, cleaned his copy book on his sleeve, and sheepishly went on with his writing.
Whether Mrs. M’Swat saw she had been in fault the day before I know not; certain it is that the children ever after that obeyed me, and I heard no more of the matter; neither, as far as I could ascertain, did the “ruction” reach the ears of M’Swat.
“How long, how long!” was my cry, as I walked out ankle-deep in the dust to see the sun, like a ball of blood, sink behind the hills on that February evening.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Where Ignorance Is Bliss, ’Tis Folly to Be Wise
When by myself, I fretted so constantly that the traces it left upon me became evident even to the dull comprehension of Mrs. M’Swat.
“I don’t hold with too much pleasure and disherpation, but you ain’t had overmuch of it lately. You’ve stuck at home pretty constant, and ye and Lizer can have a little fly round. It’ll do yous good,” she said.
The dissipation, pleasure, and flying round allotted to “Lizer” and me were to visit some of the neighbors. Those, like the M’Swats, were sheep-farming selectors. They were very friendly and kind to me, and I found them superior to my employers, in that their houses were beautifully clean; but they lived the same slow life, and their souls’ existence fed on the same small ideas. I was keenly disappointed that none of them had a piano, as my hunger for music could be understood only by one with a passion for that art.
I borrowed something to read, but all that I could get in the way of books were a few Young Ladies’ Journals, which I devoured ravenously, so to speak.
When Lizer’s back would be turned, the girls would ask me how I managed to live at Barney’s Gap, and expressed themselves of the opinion that it was the most horrible hole in the world, and Mrs. M’Swat the dirtiest creature living, and that they would not go there for fifty pounds a week. I made a point of never saying anything against Mrs. M’Swat; but I fumed inwardly that this life was forced upon me, when girls with no longings or aspirations beyond being the wife of a Peter M’Swat recoiled from the thought of it.
My mother insisted upon my writing to her regularly, so once a week I headed a letter “Black’s Camp,” and condemned the place, while mother as unfailingly replied that in these bad times I should be thankful to God that I was fed and clothed. I knew this as well as anyone, and was aware there were plenty of girls willing to jump at my place; but they were of different temperament from me, and when one is seventeen, that kind of reasoning does not weigh very heavily.
My eldest brother, Horace, twin brother of my sister Gertie, took it upon himself to honor me with the following letter:
Why the deuce don’t you give up writing those letters to Mother? We get tongue-pie on account of them, and it’s not as if they did you any good. It only makes Mother more determined to leave you where you are. She says you are that conceited you think you ought to have something better, and you’re not fit for the place you have, and she’s glad it is such a place, and it will do you the world of good and take the nonsense out of you—that it’s time you got a bit of sense. Sullivan’s Ginger. After she gets your letters she does jaw, and wishes she never had a child, and what a good mother she is, and what bad devils we are to her. You are a fool not to stay where you are. I wish I could get away to M’Swat or Mack Pot, and I would jump at the chance like a good un. The boss still sprees and loafs about town till some one has to go and haul him home. I’m about full of him, and I’m going to leave home before next Christmas, or my name ain’t what it is. Mother says the kiddies would starve if I leave; but Stanley is coming on like a haystack, I tell him, and he does kick up, and he ought to be able to plow next time. I plowed when I was younger than him. I put in fourteen acres of wheat and oats this year, and I don’t think I’ll cut a wheelbarrow-load of it. I’m full of the place. I never have a single penny to my name, and it ain’t father’s drinking that’s all to blame; if he didn’t booze, it wouldn’t be much better. It’s the slowest hole in the world, and I’ll chuck it and go shearing or droving. I hate this dairying, it’s too slow for a funeral: there would be more life in trapping ’possums out on Timlinbilly. Mother always says to have patience, and when the drought breaks and good seasons come round again things will be better, but it’s no good of trying to stuff me like that. I remember when the seasons were wet. It was no good growing anything, because everyone grew so much that there was no market, and the sheep died of foot rot and you couldn’t give your butter away, and it is not much worse to have nothing to sell than not be able to sell a thing when you have it. And the long and short of it is that I hate dairying like blue murder. It’s as tame as a clucking hen. Fancy a cove sitting down every morning and evening pulling at a cow’s tits fit to bust himself, and then turning an old separator, and washing it up in a dish of water like a blooming girl’s work. And if you go to a picnic, just when the fun commences you have to nick off home and milk, and when you tog yourself on Sunday evening you have to undress again and lay into the milking, and then you have to change everything on you and have a bath, or your best girl would scent the cow yard on you, and not have you within cooee of her. We won’t know what rain is when we see it; but I suppose it will come in floods and finish the little left by the drought. The grasshoppers have eaten all the fruit and even the bark off the trees, and the caterpillars made a croker of the few tomatoes we kept alive with the suds. All the cockeys round here and Dad are applying to the Government to have their rents suspended for a time. We have not heard yet whether it will be granted, but if Gov. doesn’t like it, they’ll have to lump it, for none of us have a penny to bless ourselves with, let alone dub up for taxes. I’ve written you a long letter, and if you growl about the spelling and grammar I won’t write to you anymore, so there, and you take my tip and don’t write to Mother on that flute anymore, for she won’t take a bit of notice.
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 t
o 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 pounds 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 traveling 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 fairy tale,” 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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Mr. M’Swat and I Have a Bust-up
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 gypsy 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 neighbors, what old Reece lived on, and who had the best breed of sheep and who was the smartest at counting these animals, until the sordidness of it turned me dizzy, and I would steal out under the stars to try to cool my heated spirit. This became a practice with me, and every night I would slip away out of hearing of the household to sing the songs I had heard at Caddagat, and in imagination to relive every day and hour there, till the thing became too much for me, and I was scarcely responsible for my actions. Often I knelt on the parched ground beneath the balmy summer sky to pray—wild passionate prayers that were never answered.
I was under the impression that my nightly ramble was not specially noticed by anyone, but I was mistaken. Mr. M’Swat, it appears, suspected me of having a lover, but was never able to catch me red-handed.
The possibility of a girl going out at night to gaze at the stars and dream was as improbable a thought for him as flying is to me, and having no soul above mud, had I attempted an explanation he would have considered me mad, and dangerous to have about the place.
Peter junior had a sweetheart, one Susie Duffy, who lived some miles on the other side of the Murrumbidgee. He was in the habit of courting her every Sunday and two or three nights during the week, and I often heard the clang of his stirrup irons and the clink of hobble chain when he returned late; but on one occasion I stayed out later than usual, and he passed me going home. I stood still and he did not see me, but his horse shied violently. I thought he would imagine I was a ghost, so called out: “It is I.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged! What are ye doin’ at this time ev night? Ain’t yuz afraid of ghosts?”
“Oh dear no. I had a bad headache and couldn’t sleep, so came out to try if a walk would cure it,” I explained.
We were a quarter of a mile or so from the house, so Peter slackened his speed that I might keep pace with him. His knowledge of etiquette did not extend as far as dismounting. There is a great difference between rudeness and ignorance. Peter was not rude; he was merely ignorant. For the same reason he let his mother feed the pigs, clean his boots, and chop wood, while he sat down and smoked and spat. It was not that he was unmanly, as that this was the only manliness he had known.
I was alone in the schoolroom next afternoon when Mr. M’Swat sidled in, and after stuttering and hawing a little, delivered himself of: “I want to tell ye that I don’t hold with a gu-r-r-r-1 going out of nights for to meet young men: if ye want to do any coortin’ yuz can do it inside, if it’s a decent young man. I have no objections to yer hangin’ yer cap up to our Peter, only that ye have no prawperty—in yerself I like ye well enough, but we have other views for Peter. He’s almost as good as made it sure with Susie Duffy, an’ as ole Duffy will have a bit ev prawperty I want him to git her, an’ wouldn’t like ye to spoil the fun.”
Peter was “tall and freckled and sandy, face of a country lout,” and, like Middleton’s rouse-about, “hadn’t any opinions, hadn’t any ideas,” but possessed sufficient instinct and common bushcraft with which, by hard slogging, to amass money. He was developing a mustache, and had a “gu-r-r-r-l”; he wore tight trousers and long spurs; he walked with a sidling swagger that was a cross between shyness and flashness, and took as much pride in his necktie as any man; he had a kind heart, honest principles, and would not hurt a fly; he worked away from morning till night, and contentedly did his duty like a bullock in the sphere in which God had placed him; he never had a bath while I knew him, and was a man according to his lights. He knew there was such a thing as the outside world, as I know there is such a thing as algebra; but it troubled him no more than algebra troubles me
.
This was my estimation of Peter M’Swat, junior. I respected him right enough in his place, as I trust he respected me in mine, but though fate thought fit for the present to place us in the one groove, yet our lives were unmixable commodities as oil and water, which lay apart and would never meet until taken in hand by the omnipotent leveller—death.
Marriage with Peter M’Swat!
Consternation and disgust held me speechless, and yet I was half inclined to laugh at the preposterousness of the thing, when Peter’s father continued, “I’m sorry if you’ve got smitten on Peter, but I know you’ll be sensible. Ye see I have a lot of children, and when the place is divided among ’em it won’t be much. I tell ye wot, old Duffy has a good bit of money and only two children, Susie and Mick. I could get you to meet Mick—he mayn’t be so personable as our Peter,” he reflected, with evident pride in his weedy firstborn, and he got no further, for I had been as a yeast bottle bubbling up, and now went off bang!
“Silence, you ignorant old creature! How dare you have the incomparable impertinence to mention my name in conjunction with that of your boor of a son. Though he were a millionaire I would think his touch contamination. You have fallen through for once if you imagine I go out at night to meet anyone—I merely go away to be free for a few minutes from the suffocating atmosphere of your odious home. You must not think that because you have grasped and slaved and got a little money that it makes a gentleman of you; and never 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.
My Brilliant Career Page 22