My Brilliant Career (32 page)

I have a faculty of self-pity, but my pride promptly refuses the slightest offer of sympathy from another.

I could feel my heart grow as bitterly cold as my demeanor was icily stiff, when I stood up and said curtly, “This is a great surprise, Mr. Beecham.”

“Not an unpleasant one, I hope,” he said pleasantly.

“We will not discuss the matter. Come inside out of the heat.”

“I'm in no hurry, Syb, and couldn't I help you with that poor little devil?”

“I'm only trying to give it another chance of life.”

“What will you do with it if it lives?”

“Sell it for half a crown when it's a yearling.”

“It would pay better to shoot the poor little beggar now.”

“No doubt it would, the owner of Five-Bob, but we have to be more careful,” I said tartly.

“I didn't mean to offend you.”

“I'm not offended,” I returned, leading the way to the house, imagining with a keen pain that Harold Beecham must be wondering how for an instant he could have been foolish enough to fancy such an object two years ago.

Thank goodness I have never felt any humiliation on account of my mother, and felt none then, as she rose to greet Harold upon my introduction. She was a lady, and looked it, in spite of the piles of coarse mending, and the pair of trousers, almost bulletproof with patches, out of which she drew her hand, roughened and reddened with hard labor, in spite of her patched and faded cotton gown, and the commonest and most poverty-stricken of peasant surroundings, which failed to hide that she had not been always thus.

Leaving them together, I expeditiously proceeded to relieve the livery-stable horse, on which Harold had come, of the valise, saddle, and bridle with which it was encumbered, and then let it loose in one of the grassless paddocks near at hand.

Then I threw myself on a stool in the kitchen, and felt, to the bone, the sting of having ideas above one's position.

In a few minutes Mother came hurrying out. “Good gracious, what's the matter? I suppose you didn't like being caught in such a pickle, but don't get in the dumps about it. I'll get him some tea while you clean yourself, and then you'll be able to help me by and by.”

I found my little sister Aurora, and we climbed through the window into my bedroom to get tidy. I put a pair of white socks and shoes and a clean pinafore on the little girl, and combed her golden curls. She was all mine—slept with me, obeyed me, championed me; while I—well, I worshiped her.

There was a hole in the wall, and through it I could see without being seen.

Mother was dispensing afternoon tea and talking to Harold. It was pleasant to see that manly figure once again. My spirits rose considerably. After all, if the place was poor, it was very clean, as I had scrubbed it all that morning, and when I came to consider the matter, I remembered that men weren't such terrible creatures, and never made one feel the sting of one's poverty half as much as women do.

“Aurora,” I said, “I want you to go out and tell Mr. Beecham something.”

The little girl assented. I carefully instructed her in what she was to say, and dispatched her. She placed herself in front of Harold—a wide-eyed mite of four, that scarcely reached above his knee—and clasping her chubby hands behind her, gazed at him fearlessly and unwinkingly.

“Aurora, you mustn't stand staring like that,” said Mother.

“Yes, I must,” she replied confidently.

“Well, and what's your name?” said Harold laughingly.

“Aurora and Rory. I belong to Sybyller, and got to tell you somesing.”

“Have you? Let's hear it.”

“Sybyller says you's Mr. Beecher; when you're done tea, you'd like me if I would to 'scort you to farver and the boys, and 'duce you.”

Mother laughed. “That's some of Sybylla's nonsense. She considers Rory her especial property, and delights to make the child attempt long words. Perhaps you would care to take a stroll to where they are at work, by and by.”

Harold said he would go at once, and accepting Rory's escort, and with a few directions from Mother, they presently set out—she importantly trudging beneath a big white sunbonnet, and he looking down at her in amusement. Presently he tossed her high above his head, and depositing her upon his shoulder, held one sturdy brown leg in his browner hand, while she held on by his hair.

“My first impressions are very much in his favor,” said Mother, when they had got out of hearing. “But fancy Gertie the wife of that great man!”

“She is four inches taller than I am,” I snapped. “And if he
was as big as a gum tree, he would be a man all the same, and just as soft on a pretty face as all the rest of them.”

I bathed, dressed, arranged my hair, got something ready for tea, and prepared a room for our visitor. For this I collected from all parts of the house—a mat from one room, a toilet set from another, and so on—till I had quite an elaborately furnished chamber ready for my one-time lover.

They returned at dusk, Rory again seated on Harold's shoulder, and two of the little boys clinging around him.

As I conducted him to his room I was in a different humor from that of the sweeplike object who had met him during the afternoon. I laughed to myself, for, as on a former occasion during our acquaintance, I felt I was master of the situation.

“I say, Syb, don't treat a fellow as though he was altogether a stranger,” he said diffidently, leaning against the door post.

Our hands met in a cordial grasp as I said, “I'm awfully glad to see you, Hal; but, but—”

“But what?”

“I didn't feel over-delighted to be caught in such a stew this afternoon.”

“Nonsense! It only reminded me of the first time we met,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “That's always the way with you girls. You can't be civil to a man unless you're dressed up fit to stun him, as though you couldn't make fool enough of him without the aid of clothes at all.”

“You'd better shut up,” I said over my shoulder as I departed, “or you will be saying something better left unsaid, like at our first meeting. Do you remember?”

“Do I not? Great Scot, it's just like old times to have you giving me impudence over your shoulder like that!” he replied merrily.

“Like, yet unlike,” I retorted with a sigh.

Next day was Sunday—a blazing one it was, too. I proposed that in the afternoon some of us should go to church. Father sat upon the idea as a mad one. Walk two miles in such heat for nothing! As walk we would be compelled to do, horseflesh being too precious in such a drought to fritter it away in idle jaunts. Surprising to say, however, Harold, who never walked anywhere when he could get any sort of a horse, uttered a wish to go. Accordingly, when the midday dinner was over, he, Stanley, and I set out. Going to church was quite the event of the week to the residents around Possum Gully. It was a small Dissenting chapel, where a layman ungrammatically held forth at three p.m. every Sunday; but the congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for the sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of butter, the continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before and after the service, than for the service itself.

I knew the appearance of Harold Beecham would make quite a miniature sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter. In any company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the cruel effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry. I felt proud of my quondam sweetheart. There was an unconscious air of physical lordliness about him, and he looked such a swell—not the black-clothed, clean-shaved, great display of white collar-and-cuffs swell appertaining to the office and city street, but of the easy sunburnt squatter type of swelldom, redolent of the sun, the saddle, the wide-open country—a man who is a man,
utterly free from the least suspicion of effeminacy, and capable of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow—with an arm ready and willing to save in an accident.

All eyes were turned on us as we approached, and I knew that the attentions he paid me out of simple courtesy—tying my shoe, carrying my book, holding my parasol—would be put down as those of a lover.

I introduced him to a group of men who were sitting on a log, under the shade of a stringybark, and leaving him to converse with them, made my way to where the women sat beneath a gum tree. The children made a third group at some distance. We always divided ourselves thus. A young fellow had to be very far gone ere he was willing to run the gauntlet of all the chaff levelled at him had he the courage to single out a girl and talk to her.

I greeted all the girls and women, beginning at the great-grandmother of the community, who illustrated to perfection the grim sarcasm of the fifth commandment. She had worked hard from morning till night, until too old to do so longer, and now hung around with aching weariness waiting for the grave. She generally poured into my ears a wail about her “rheumatisms,” and “How long it do be waiting for the Lord”; but today she was too curious about Harold to think of herself.

“Sure, Sybyller, who's that? Is he yer sweetheart? Sure he's as fine a man as iver I clapped me eyes on.”

I proceeded to give his pedigree, but was interrupted by the arrival of the preacher, and we all went into the weatherboard, iron-roofed house of prayer.

After service, one of the girls came up to me and whispered, “That is your sweetheart, isn't it, Sybyller? He was looking at you all the time in church.”

“Oh dear, no! I'll introduce him to you.”

I did so, and watched him as they made remarks about the heat and drought. There was nothing of the cad or snob about him, and his short season of adversity had rubbed all the little crudities off his character, leaving him a man that the majority of both sexes would admire: women for his bigness, his gentleness, his fine brown mustache—and for his wealth; men, because he was a manly fellow.

I know he had walked to church on purpose to get a chance of speaking to me about Gertie, before approaching her parents on the matter; but Stanley accompanied us, and, boylike, never relaxed in vigilance for an instant, so there was no opportunity for anything but matter-of-fact remarks. The heat was intense. We wiped the perspiration and flies from our face frequently, and disturbed millions of grasshoppers as we walked. They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briars of foliage. In one orchard we passed, the apricot, plum, and peach stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence of their ravages. It was too hot to indulge in any but the most desultory conversation. We dawdled along. A tiger-snake crossed our path. Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on the top wire of a fence which was near at hand. After this we discussed snakes for a few yards.

A blue sea breeze, redolent of the bush fires which were raging at Tocumwal and Bombala, came rushing and roaring over the ranges from the east, and enshrouded the scene in its heavy, foglike folds. The sun was obscured, and the temperature suddenly took such a great drop that I felt chilled in my flimsy clothing, and I noticed Harold draw his coat together.

Stanley had to go after the cows, which were little better than walking hides, yet were yarded morning and evening to yield a dribble of milk. He left us among some sallie trees, in a secluded nook, walled in by briars, and went across the paddock to round up the cows. Harold and I came to a halt by tacit consent.

“Syb, I want to speak to you,” he said earnestly, and then came to a dead stop.

“Very well; ‘tear into it,' as Horace would say; but if it is anything frightful, break it gently,” I said flippantly.

“Surely, Syb, you can guess what it is I have to say.”

Yes, I could guess, I knew what he was going to say, and the knowledge left a dull bitterness at my heart. I knew he was going to tell me that I had been right and he wrong—that he had found someone he loved better than me, and that someone being my sister, he felt I needed some explanation before he could go in and win; and though I had refused him for want of love,
yet it gave me pain when the moment arrived that the only man who had ever pretended to love me was going to say he had been mistaken, and preferred my sister.

There was silence save for the whirr of the countless grasshoppers in the briar bushes. I knew he was expecting me to help him out, but I felt doggedly savage and wouldn't. I looked up at him. He was a tall, grand man, and honest and true and rich. He loved my sister; she would marry him, and they would he happy. I thought bitterly that God was good to one and cruel to another—not that I wanted this man, but why was I so different from other girls?

But then I thought of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable, so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could anyone help preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse—too outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways? It was my own misfortune and nobody's fault that my singular individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful joyous-heartednesses, and why should I be nasty to these young people?

I was no heroine, only a common little bush girl, so had to make the best of the situation without any fooling. I raised my eyes from the scanty baked wisps of grass at my feet, placed my hand on Hal's arm, and tiptoeing so as to bring my five-foot stature more on a level with his, said, “Yes, Hal, I know what you want to say. Say it all. I won't be nasty.”

“Well, you see you are so jolly touchy, and have snubbed me so often, that I don't know how to begin; and if you know what I'm going to say, won't you give me an answer without hearing it?”