Page 54 of My Brilliant Career

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 to anything ye might spit out in a rage.’

‘But I was not in a rage. I meant every word I said, but I want to apologize for the rude way in which I said it, as I had no right to speak so to my elders. And I want to tell you that you need not fear me running away with Peter, even supposing he should honour me with his affections, as I am engaged to another man.’

‘By dad, I’ll be hanged!’ he exclaimed, with nothing but curiosity on his wrinkled dried tobacco-leaf-looking face. He expressed no resentment on account of my behaviour to him.

‘Are ye to be married soon? Has he got any prawperty? Who is he? I suppose he’s respectable. Ye’re very young.’

‘Yes; he is renowned for respectability, but I am not going to marry him till I am twenty-one. He is poor, but has good prospects. You must promise me not to tell any one, as I wish it kept a secret, and only mention it to you so that you need not be disturbed about Peter.’

He assured me that he would keep the secret, and I knew I could rely on his word. He was greatly perturbed that my intended was poor.

‘Never ye marry a man widout a bit er prawperty, me gu-r-r-r-l. Take my advice — the divil’s in a poor match, no matter how good the man may be. Don’t ye be in a hurry; ye’re personable enough in yer way, and there’s as good fish in the seas as ever come out of ’em. Yer very small; I admire a good lump of a woman meself — but don’t ye lose heart. I’ve heerd some men say they like little girls, but, as I said, I like a good lump of a woman myself.’

‘And you’ve got a good lump of a squaw,’ I thought to myself.

Do not mistake me. I do not for an instant fancy myself above the M’Swats. Quite the reverse; they are much superior to me. Mr M’Swat was upright and clean in his morals, and in his little sphere was as sensible and kind a man as one could wish for. Mrs M’Swat was faithful to him, contented and good-natured, and bore uncomplainingly, year after year, that most cruelly agonising of human duties — childbirth, and did more for her nation and her Maker than I will ever be noble enough to do.

But I could not help it that their life was warping my very soul. Nature fashions us all; we have no voice in the matter, and I could not change my organisation to one which would find sufficient sustenance in the mental atmosphere of Barney’s Gap.

32 TA-TA TO BARNEY’S GAP

It chanced at last, as June gave place to July and July to August, that I could bear it no longer. I would go away even if I had to walk, and what I would do I did not know or care, my one idea being to leave Barney’s Gap far and far behind. One evening I got a lot of letters from my little brothers and sisters at home. I fretted over them a good deal, and put them under my pillow; and as I had not slept for nights, and was feeling weak and queer, I laid my head upon them to rest a little before going out to get the tea ready. The next thing I knew was that Mrs M’Swat was shaking me vigorously with one hand, holding a flaring candle in the other, and saying:

‘Lizer, shut the winder quick. She’s been lyin’ here in the draught till she’s froze, and must have the nightmare, the way she’s been singin’ out that queer, an’ I can’t git her woke up. What ails ye, child? Are ye sick?’

I did not know what ailed me, but learnt subsequently that I laughed and cried very much, and pleaded hard with grannie and some Harold to save me, and kept reiterating, ‘I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it,’ and altogether behaved so strangely that Mr M’Swat became so alarmed that he sent seventeen miles for the nearest doctor. He came next morning, felt my pulse, asked a few questions, and stated that I was suffering from nervous prostration.

‘Why, the child is completely run down, and in a fair way to contract brain fever!’ he exclaimed. ‘What has she been doing? It seems as though she had been under some great mental strain. She must have complete rest and change, plenty of diversion and nourishing food, or her mind will become impaired.’

He left me a bottle of tonic and Mr and Mrs M’Swat many fears. Poor kind-hearted souls, they got in a great state, and understood about as much of the cause of my breakdown as I do of the inside of the moon. They ascribed it to the paltry amount of teaching and work I had done.

Mrs M’Swat killed a fowl and stewed it for my delectation. There was part of the inside with many feathers to flavour the dish, and having no appetite, I did not enjoy it, but made a feint of so doing to please the good-natured cook.

They intended writing at once to give my parents notice when I would be put on the train. I was pronounced too ill to act as scribe; Lizer was suggested, and then Jimmy, but M’Swat settled the matter thus:

‘Sure, damn it! I’m the proper one to write on an important business matther like this here.’

So pens, ink, and paper were laid on the dining-room table, and the great proclamation went forth among the youngsters, ‘Pa is goin’ to write a whole letter all by hisself.’

My door opened with the dining-room, and from bed I could see the proceeding. Mr M’Swat hitched his trousers well through the saddle-strap which he always wore as a belt, took off his coat and folded it on the back of a chair, rolled his shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, pulled his hat well over his eyes, and ‘shaped up’ to the writing material, none of which met with his approval. The ink was ‘warter’, the pens had not enough ‘pint’, and the paper was ‘trash’; but on being assured it was the good stuff he had purchased especially for himself, he buckled to the fray, producing in three hours a half-sheet epistle, which in grammar, composition, and spelling quite eclipsed the entries of his diary. However, it served its purpose, and my parents wrote back that, did I reach Goulburn on a certain day, a neighbour who would be in town then would bring me home.

Now that it was settled that I had no more to teach the dirty children, out of dirty books, lessons for which they had great disinclination, and no more to direct Lizer’s greasy fingers over the yellow keys of that demented piano in a vain endeavour to teach her ‘choones’, of which her mother expected her to learn on an average two daily, it seemed as though I had a mountain lifted off me, and I revived magically, got out of bed and packed my things.

I was delighted at the prospect of throwing off the leaden shackles of Barney’s Gap, but there was a little regret mingled with my relief. The little boys had not been always bold. Did I express a wish for a parrot-wing or water-worn stone, or such like, after a time I would be certain, on issuing from my bedroom, to find that it had been surreptitiously laid there, and the little soft-eyed fellows would squabble for the privilege of bringing me my post, simply to give me pleasure. Poor little Lizer, and Rose Jane too, copied me in style of dress and manners in a way that was somewhat ludicrous but more pathetic.