Page 33 of My Brilliant Career

‘Excuse me, Miss Melvyn, but your grannie has commissioned me to find you as we want to have lunch, and it appears you are the only one who knows the run of some of the tucker bags.’

‘How do you do, Mr Beecham? Where are they going to have lunch?’

‘Over in that clump of box-trees,’ he replied, pointing in the direction of a little rise at a good distance.

‘How are you enjoying yourself?’ he asked, looking straight at me.

‘Treminjous intoirely, sor,’ I replied.

‘I suppose you know the winner of every race,’ he remarked, quizzically watching Joe Archer, who was blushing and as uneasy as a schoolgirl when nabbed in the enjoyment of an illicit love-letter.

‘Really, Mr Beecham, Mr Archer and I have been so interested in ourselves that we quite forgot there was such a thing as a race at all,’ I returned.

‘You’d better see where old Boxer is. He might kick some of the other horses if you don’t keep a sharp look-out,’ he said, turning to his jackeroo.

‘Ladies before gentlemen,’ I interposed. ‘I want Mr Archer to take me to grannie, then he can go and look after old Boxer.’

‘I’ll escort you,’ said Beecham.

‘Thank you, but I have requested Mr Archer to do so.’

‘In that case, I beg your pardon, and will attend to Boxer while Joe does as you request.’

Raising his hat he walked swiftly away with a curious expression on his usually pleasant face.

‘By love, I’m in for it!’ ejaculated my escort. ‘The boss doesn’t get that expression on his face for nothing. You take my tip for it, he felt inclined to seize me by the scruff of the neck and kick me from here to Yabtree.’

‘Go on!’

‘It’s a fact. He did not believe in me not going to do his bidding immediately. He has a roaring derry on disobedience. Everyone has to obey him like winkie or they can take their beds up and trot off quick and lively.’

‘Mr Beecham has sufficient sense to see I was the cause of your disobedience,’ I replied.

‘That’s where it is. He would not have cared had it been some other lady, but he gets mad if anyone dares to monopolize you. I don’t know how you are going to manage him. He is a pretty hot member sometimes.’

‘Mr Archer, you presume! But throwing such empty banter aside, is Mr Beecham really bad-tempered?’

‘Bad-tempered is a tame name for it. You should have seen the dust he raised the other day with old Benson. He just did perform.’

I was always hearing of Harold Beecham’s temper, and wished I could see a little of it. He was always so imperturbably calm, and unfailingly good-tempered under the most trying circumstances, that I feared he had no emotions in him, and longed to stir him up.

Grannie greeted me with, ‘Sybylla, you are such a tiresome girl. I don’t know how you have packed these hampers, and we want to have lunch. Where on earth have you been?’

Miss Augusta Beecham saluted me warmly with a kiss, and presented me to her sister Sarah, who also embraced me. I went through an introduction to several ladies and gentlemen, greeted my acquaintances, and then set to work in dead earnest to get our provisions laid out — the Five-Bob Downs party had theirs in readiness. Needless to say, we were combining forces. I had my work completed when Mr Beecham appeared upon the scene with two young ladies. One was a bright-faced little brunette, and the other a tall light blonde, whom, on account of her much trimmed hat, I recognized as the lady who had been sitting on the box-seat of the Beecham drag that morning.

Joe Archer informed me in a whisper that she was Miss Blanche Derrick from Melbourne, and was considered one of the greatest beauties of that city.

This made me anxious to examine her carefully, but I did not get an opportunity of doing so. In the hurry to attend on the party, I missed the honour of an introduction, and when I was at leisure she was sitting at some distance on a log, Harold Beecham shading her in a most religious manner with a dainty parasol. In the afternoon she strolled away with him, and after I had attended to the remains of the feast, I took Joe Archer in tow. He informed me that Miss Derrick had arrived at Five-Bob three days before, and was setting her cap determinedly at his boss.

‘Was she really very handsome?’ I inquired.

‘By Jove, yes!’ he replied. ‘But one of your disdainful haughty beauties, who wouldn’t deign to say good-day to a chap with less than six or seven thousand a year.’

I don’t know why I took no interest in the races. I knew nearly all the horses running. Some of them were uncle’s; though he never raced horses himself, he kept some swift stock which he lent to his men for the occasion.

Of more interest to me than the races was the pair strolling at a distance. They were fit for an artist’s models. The tall, broad, independent figure of the bushman with his easy gentlemanliness, his jockey costume enhancing his size. The equally tall majestic form of the city belle, whose self-confident fashionable style spoke of nothing appertaining to girlhood, but of the full-blown rose — indeed, a splendid pair physically!

Then I thought of my lack of beauty, my miserable five-feet-one-inch stature, and I looked at the man beside me, small and round-shouldered, and we were both dependent children of indigence. The contrast we presented to the other pair struck me hard, and I laughed a short bitter laugh.