The mail was left three times a week in a battered kerosene can nailed on the fence of the main road two miles away—that is if the mailman was not too drunk to sort it. He liked to keep any special letter a day or two till he read it and then gummed it up again. Other times he was content with tearing a corner off so that he could look in. He enlivened monotony by a lively interest in his neighbours’ doings.

I was always hopeful of the mail. I don’t know why, for the mail box only gives back the fruit of what is sown in it, and I had nothing to sow. It was at least a channel of possibility, a Tattersall’s sweep that might throw up a prize, and I hungrily devoured the news of the great, reported in the newspapers.

There was no hope of any eruption in ‘Possum Gully, it would need to be an irruption. There was no public road nearer than two miles. There was no stream to attract anglers, nor scenery for a painter, nor rocks for a geologist. My chiefest grudge against it has always been its ugliness. It is ragged rather than rugged, and lacks grandeur. We are too much in the ranges for them to be blue. They are merely sombre. The one glory that I dote and gloat on is the sunset. I love the sinking sun red as a fire between the trunks of the trees upon the hillside, and by running a quarter of a mile up the track can catch the afterglow of the grandeur of transfigured clouds on a more distant horizon.

Great was my astonishment one dull day to find a letter and a large parcel both addressed to me, and with English stamps. The letter had the corner torn off but not enough to divulge the contents. The parcel had been untied, but I was so surprised that I was not resentful of this. In all my life I had not received so much as a post card written by a hand in another country. I had no idea of the what and why of the parcel, but I trembled with excitement. I galloped part of the way home and in a little gully where the hop scrub was thickest got off to investigate.

The parcel was books. Oh, joy! Had old Harris gone back to England without letting us know? But they were all the same book. Each had the same picture on the cover. I had never seen so many of one book except school readers. And the title of the book was my spoof autobiography—and there was my name printed below it!!!! It looked so different in print—so conspicuous somehow, that I was frightened.

The letter was from a man I did not know, a business letter, as his name was printed at the top of the stationery. This gentleman wrote that herewith under separate cover he had pleasure in sending me six presentation copies of my novel with the publishers’ compliments. He would be glad to have my acknowledgment in due course.

There in the hop scrub I faced the biggest crisis I have known to date. What on earth was I to do about this? What would Ma say? It was a shock that this thing written as a lark could come back to me as a real book like one written by a grownup educated person. I never in the world thought of an author as resembling myself, not even the feminine ones.

There was a dreadful fascination in peeping between the leaves. There it all was, all my irreverence about God and parents, and the make-believe reality that I had piled on with a grin in a spirit of “I’ll show ’em reality as it is in ‘Possum Gully.” I never had a book affect me like this one. It was as if the pages were on fire and the printing made of quicksilver. Was this because I knew what was in it, or was it just plain egotism, which no decent girl should have? I wished now that I had written a ladylike book that I could be pleased with. If only I had known it would be printed I should have done so. Those poor lost girls who have a baby without being married must feel like I did. There would be the baby but all the wild deep joy of it would be disgrace and trouble.

I thought of dropping the packet near home so that I could burn the books one by one secretly, but the mailman had opened them. He would ask Pa. No, I must face it. Ma and Pa were waiting for me, as I was late, and everyone looked forward to the mail, though the crop that Pa put in it mostly bore no fruit but bills.

Pa reached for the packet while Eusty took old Bandicoot’s bridle.

“What’s this?” asked Pa.

Ma came forward. She and Pa and Eusty each seized a book. Eusty and Pa regardless of evening jobs, there and then opened theirs.

“Golly!” screeched Eusty, inspecting the picture on the cover. “Is that meant to be you on old Bandicoot? Bandicoot looks as if he is going to have a foal, and you look as if you are going to fall off and your clothes blow up!”

“I don’t understand this,” said Ma dubiously. “Some confidence trick man must have got hold of you. How did this book get to the printer?”

I explained that I had sent my ream of paper, when written upon to the GREATEST AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR, and he had asked me to let him keep it, and I thought it was only to read.

“Your father will be getting a big bill for this, and we’ll be ruined. I wonder how much it has cost to print all this trash—it might be twenty pounds, or even fifty. You’ll find EXPERIENCE a bitter and expensive teacher, but you must pay the price of your own wilfulness. What is hard and unjust is that I have continually to be paying it with you.

“This is like a meteor falling in the paddock, let us investigate it,” said Pa.

Ma said, first things first; she must prepare the evening meal while I put the chooks to bed safe from the native cats: we couldn’t all chase the shadow while the substance escaped us.

Eusty speedily arrived at his opinion. He had no impediment to arriving at his opinion on any subject. Old Harris said that Eusty was a perfect example of the cocksure Australian youth, possessed of the irreverence which resulted from lack of culture.

“I reckon this is a slashing lark,” he grinned. “And crikey, if it doesn’t get people’s nark up, I’m a goanna with two tails.” Rusty further expressed himself as full up of it, as it was only a blooming girl’s book, and went about his jobs.

Pa wiped his pince-nez and looked thoughtfully into space and murmured half to himself, “Of course you are not to blame for inexperience, but it’s a very strange thing. I am tremendously interested in what you have done, but you must not expect anyone else to be. It has just a local interest because you make things seem so true, even things that have no relation to anyone we know, that it is like a looking glass. I really had no idea that you had anything like this in your head. It would have been wiser to consult me beforehand; I could have saved you disappointment.”

With his kindness to anyone in a scrape, he added, “You must try again and write something adventurous. Authors write many books before they succeed, so you needn’t worry that no one will take any notice of you. I have sometimes thought of describing the old pioneer life that is fast disappearing, but when I came to put pen on paper something always interrupted, or the experiences seemed such small potatoes compared with the Spanish Main or American pioneering, that they could not carry interest beyond those who actually knew them.”

Ma made sure that the pigs and fowls had been fed, the calves penned, the flowers watered, and kindling gathered ready for the morning fire before she read her copy.

She said she was relieved that it was not as had as she had expected, for how could a girl without EXPERIENCE write a book? She said it was lacking in discretion to have rung in such peculiar characters. There would be unpleasantness with worthy people who would think themselves ridiculed. She also said it was unfilial to concoct an uncomplimentary exaggerated fabrication in such a way that outsiders would think it represented Pa and her. This was very mild and very handsome of Ma, but she is superb in a real crisis, though often irritating in a trivial rumpus. And what kind of a mad notion was it to rig up such a headstrong unladylike girl to be mistaken for myself? Ma said it was hard enough for a girl whose father could not provide for her, without handicapping herself with false reports. I was in danger of being put down as unwomanly, and men liked none but womanly girls. I shall never be a lady and poor Ma will never be anything else. So I plucked up to contend that it was womanized girls that men craved, and that it did not matter what men thought of me, as what I thought of them would even things up. “What nonsense you talk,” said Ma, “You will find that in this world men have it all their own way. We won’t waste any more time on the silly book at present. I only hope it doesn’t involve us in any expense. The publishers must have little to do, or a peculiar taste. Put the copies away where no one will see them. A nine days wonder soon fades.”

I sent a copy to Old Harris. He wrote that it was surprising to see such a novel issuing from the stately house of McMurwood—this alone assured my status. “But my dear girl, I am troubled by the tenor of the book. Where is your radiance, your joyous sense of fun, your irrepressible high spirits? The pages seethe with discontents and pain. Have you been living alone in your spirit, suffering as we who had deepest affection for you did not dream? This distresses me. I cannot recognise you at all in these pages. Why not set our hearts at ease with a companion volume in which you give us your bright and illuminating self?”

Pa said Old Harris was a wonderful man. Ma said how was a man wonderful who had wasted all his opportunities. Pa said that Mr. Harris had understanding.

“Humph!” said Ma. “All men, and the older they grow the sillier they are, understand a young woman, but a mature mother of a family or an old woman burdened to the earth with real griefs and troubles—thrust upon her by other people—could drop under their feet without attention.”

Pa said that it was useless to quarrel with NATURE.

And that was the end of the book. We got on with the drought. It was a hummer that year and took all our attention.

“That Sybylla!”

It wasn’t the end of the book after all. Because of the drought, and the horses being poor, visiting among the neighbours practically ceased, and it was some time before we knew what was going on. We were further like ostriches, because hard times had suspended our subscriptions to the papers.

Eusty went to Stony Flat—the neighboring community centring in a school—with the Stringybark Hill boys who were meeting in a picnic and football match, and he came home with a briar bush of gossip.

“Golly, Sybylla, you’ve done it this time, I reckon,” announced he. “Everybody is snake-headed about your blooming old book.”

“Where did they get it?” asked Ma. My heart missed a beat in dismay.

“Old Foxall can’t keep enough on hand. They must have printed dozens more than those you had. Golly, I’m glad I’m not you. All the old blokes despise you and laugh at the idea of you trying to write a book.”

“That reminds me,” said Pa. “The other day when I went over to Blackshaw, he got as red in the face as if he had been popping his brand on my sheep, and hid a book behind his back. I knew what it was, as he never read another book in his life, I’ll swear. Poor old chap, he apologised and said he would put it on the fire, that he only got it to see if it was as wicked as people were saying. At any rate, my girl, you’ve made people read a book for the first time in their lives.”

“What did you say?” inquired Ma.

“I told him that a marvellous thing had happened in our midst, and they were too ignorant to know it. Then he got squiffy and thanked God that his daughters were different. It appears that the Wesleyan preacher last Sunday denounced you. He said that your attitude towards religion damns you.”

“People are flagging more about your book than the drought or the price of wool,” chimed Eusty. “Everybody is sorry for your Pa and Ma. They say you should have been kept under more.”

“Now you see what your policy of encouraging her has done,” said Ma.

“Agh! A lot of magpies chattering on the fence posts.”

I was in an agony of disgrace. I did not sleep that night. I lay awake shivering with ignominy and listening to the mopokes and plovers. I did not mind what people thought or were so silly as to mis-think about me, it was Ma. To have brought disgrace upon her and to be compelled to remain there and be tied to it in ‘Possum Gully was a deadly tribulation.

A prophet denounced where he is known often has a great innings among strangers. Sometimes things are thus and sometimes otherwise. In my case it was both thus and otherwise. Otherwise came later: I must continue about thus.

Following his next sorties Eusty reported that Mrs. Crispin had said to Mrs. Oxley that she had not been to see poor Mrs. Melvyn, as she did not know what to say about that Sybylla. “Then they cackled,” said Eusty, “and said something more about that Sybylla which I couldn’t hear.”

“I’m sure that was no fault of your ears,” remarked Pa, and smiled to himself. I wondered why. I thought it callous of Pa.

Ma took the whole thing calmly. She was disapproving but that was business as usual.

At anyrate Eusty had great pleasure in the affair. His eyes popped and he danced a can-can after each report. “You’ve done it, Sybylla,” he would giggle. “All the girls reckon they ain’t going to talk to any one so unwomanly. Elsie Blinder says her Ma says it is indelicate for a girl to write books at all.”

The trouble spread. It seemed to be more wide-spread than the drought, which that season was confined to the Southern Tableland. People arrived to condole with Pa about his hussy of a daughter, and had to scrunch on the brakes when they found Pa so lost to all ‘Possum Gully and Little Jimmy Dripping common sense as to be vainglorious. He enjoyed being my father much more than I enjoyed being myself.

Every house in the district had the book, though hitherto the only reading had been the “Penny Post” and the Bible or a circular from Tattersall’s. It was the sensation of the age and at least relieved dulness. People in other ‘Possum Gullies were equally excited, and not so annoyed. The mail bag grew fuller and fuller with the weeks. Girls from all over Australia wrote to say that I had expressed the innermost core of their hearts. Others attacked Pa for allowing his daughter to write such a book. As one man put it, “Malicious lies without cause, for it is not a bit like us.” Another wrote, “Of course she has altered little things here and there but everybody who reads the book will immediately know it is us because it is all so plain and true to life.”

Pa seemed to enjoy these outbursts. I could not see why. I was unnerved to have enraged people whom I had not thought of when writing, as well as others that I had not even heard of.

“You must answer these letters,” said Pa. “It will give you a balanced sense of responsibility.”

I had to chew my pen for quite a time. I wrote humbly that I had not known the specific people but had meant simply to make fun of general reality. Pa said it was a generous letter, that it could not do any harm, neither would it do any good.

So I read the copies and then something came up in me and I jabbed down a postscript: “I don’t know you and am sorry that you are angry, but if the cap fits you and you make a noise and wear it, I can’t help it.”

There was no reply to these letters.

Other letters to Ma put the cap on. The one from Grandma was a sizzler. To me she wrote that she had hoped her eyelids would be closed in death before such a disgrace had been brought upon her, but she did not blame me so much as my mother.

Ma got another letter, from an old neighbour when we had lived up the country, pitching into her and accusing her of aiding me in making fun of him because Ma had always been stuck up because she was a swell, and thought her family better than his.

It was dreadful that Ma, the one perfect member of our ménage, who was beautiful and good and clever, who had sacrificed her life for Pa and me, should have this to bear.

“I knew there was something wrong,” she remarked. “There has been no one near the place to borrow so much as a bottle of yeast or half a hundred of flour for weeks.”

Ma is the most wonderful housekeeper in the district. The result is that the neighbours for miles around come to her when they want anything. They send to her when there is an accident, and more than once she has set an arm or leg in such a way that the doctor coming later has highly commended her skill and left it untouched. She can make dresses like a picture, and her pastry is so light and flaky that Pa says one needs a nosebag to keep it from flying away during consumption. Her bread is always taken for that of the best bakery, and so on, and so on. It is a sore trial for Ma to have such a poor husband, but added to that having her daughter, whom she had hoped would be a comfort, turning out to be a wolf in the barn, was indeed tragedy for Ma. It wasn’t any pleasure to me, but I had brought it on myself. It was right that I should suffer, but Ma was suffering through no fault of her own. She was a genuine heroine.

I had to be utterly discredited. I stated that no one had known a thing about my writing a book. Pa was inculpated as far as supplying the paper, but had not suspected what I was to write. Ma was very generous and kind to everyone who complained. She wrote them nice letters explaining she entirely disapproved of me, that she had known nothing of my intentions, was grieved by my wicked wilfulness, which never came from her either by precept or example, and that she herself was the greatest victim to be mistaken for the mother in the foolish autobiography. “But ma,” I said, “I made up a woman with no resemblance to you on purpose, it is not my fault.”

But of course denial would not adjust matters. It showed the abnormal power of what was printed, and my first inkling that what was printed could be wide of the facts. EXPERIENCE taught me that, but those who had never tried to write anything but a letter could not learn by experience.

“If the child had known enough to take a nom-de-plume, her relatives and friends would have been able to remain silent when she failed and to boast if she succeeded, without this pillaloo,” said Pa. Parliament had taught him about human nature.

I lay awake night after night wondering what I could do. I made up my mind to commit suicide so that Ma could be rid of me, but when I had worked myself up to it one day, Pa asked me to help him draft and brand a flock of sheep, and it was such a relief that instead of suiciding I decided to run away. Even that was not immediately practicable as I hadn’t a railway fare, and if I left, Pa would not have had anyone to help with the place. I helped reap our bit of wheat that year, with a hook, and I milked the cows, so that Eusty could help Pa top the fences in the back paddock. I was awfully glad to keep to my own back yard. I did not want to give the girls the satisfaction of fumigating society by cutting me dead, as they all were threatening to do.

Then one day, who should come riding to the front gate but a strange gentleman in clerical attire. It was Father O’Toole who was in charge of the Roman Catholics of the parish. He told Ma that he would like to talk to that daughter of hers, if she did not object. Ma was hurt that a clergyman from another denomination should find it necessary to correct me, especially a Roman Catholic, as Catholics and Protestants have silly contentions concerning the copyright to heaven, but Ma is always a lady, so she invited Father O’Toole to come in.

Fortunately Pa had seen the arrival and came to my support. There was a great flow of geniality between them. Ma withdrew.

“Well, well, well,” said Father O’Toole, laughing so heartily that I smiled. “Ye’re a great girl and a right royal brave wan, but ye’re all wrong on wan or two points that I’d like to indicate.”

Here was a learned man of religious authority taking me seriously. I felt seasick. I just sat.

“Now, whoi on earth did ye set up to interfere with the birthrate?” He laughed again. “Arragh! Ye must have got yer ideas from that father of ye’rs.”

Pa rubbed his hands together as he does when really pleased, and said I formulated my ideas myself; but he added that if a young person had a mind made for ideas they came out of the air.

I did not know what Father O’Toole meant by interference with the birthrate, but he said my condemnation of large families for pioneer women. Why, bless him, the country is crying out for population. Pioneering and population, according to him, are two things that should go together like strawberries and cream.

It was inspiriting to have a real person to argue with. I put forward my pity for overburdened women dying worn-out before their time. I advanced cases where even the doctors said the women would die if they had any more babies. “And what for?” I demanded. “Just to delve away from week to week at a lot of dull tasks—some of them superfluous. No beauty but the sunset and the moonlight.”

His Reverence said that I was suffering from the divine discontent of genius, that it was a different matter with common people. If their noses weren’t kept to the grindstone—Ha! Ha! Ha!—rearing families and working, they would get into all the devil’s mischief in the world. Sure, we must fill up Australia and hold it from the Yellow Peril at our doors.

We must ourselves become a swarming menace to out-swarm the Yellow Peril! What a reason for spoiling our part of the earth! What a fate, to be driven to a competition in emulation of guinea pigs!

I pointed out to the Reverend gentleman that he didn’t add to the population himself, that he was safe from the burdens of both fathers and mothers, that if he were a woman he might think differently. No woman should be expected to have a big family in addition to drudging at a dozen different trades. I suggested that the unfortunate Yellow Peril women might be relieved to enter into an alliance with us to stem the swarming business.

“Ah, but ye’re all wrong, ye’re arguing against NATURE. Ye mustn’t interfere with Nature.”

“As for that,” interposed Pa, “All human civilization is a conquest of Nature.”

“Yes, but ye can’t change human nature.” Father O’Toole laughed loudly.

“I don’t think that to call an overdose of lust and verminous fecundity human nature is God’s will,” I contended, “and that I maintain, despite dads and the divils and all of divinity.”

“Whoi would ye set yourself up against all of theology?”

“And why not? If her thinking apparatus suggested it,” said Pa. “I often think myself that we have to take out a licence to keep a dog but the most undesirable man is not restricted in thrusting upon his fellows and his unfortunate wife, as many as a dozen repetitions of himself.”

“Ah, ’tis only the old head talking through the young voice,” laughed Father O’Toole. “It’s to be hoped she won’t be brought into too much trouble. Och, ye’re a fine girl, and a beauty to boot. The pity of it that ye’re not a boy! Then we could make a priest of ye, and the many theological arguments and disquisitions we could have would put a different complexion on these things entirely.”

Ma then brought in tea and the talk became ladylike and small. Our enlivening guest shook my hand kindly at parting as he said, “Ye can count me wan of ye’r friends and admirers though I think ye’re wrong, young woman, but ye must grow to years of discretion.”

Pa thanked him heartily for calling and invited him to come again which he promised to do, “To see what fresh mischief this young lady will be at.”

“There’s a man of the world,” observed Pa, as he went. “I like him for coming openly as a friend, not a snake behind our backs.”

“Huh!” said Ma. “He has the real old cackle like a political vote-catcher with his tongue in his cheek.”

 

The following day I got a horrifying letter. The signature was bold and plain, so were the contents. It was from old Mr. Grayling who lived ten or fifteen miles away to the east. He was one of the most intimate of our friends. His wife had died about a year since. His daughters were Ma’s great friends. He was seventy-two years of age—twenty-one years older than Pa.

I thought I was having a nightmare. It was a proposal of marriage. It sickened me to the core as something unclean.

Things were pretty bad for me, he said, when a blasted priest could think he had the right to denounce me, but that He (old Grayling) had faith in me. With his love and protection I could reinstate myself and be a very happy woman. He was a frantic Protestant and so set on his chart of the way to heaven that a cross drove him berserk as a symbol of popery rather than as the gallows on which Christ was crucified.

Old Grayling told me his age right out, but said he was younger at heart and otherwise than men half his age. Ugh! I cannot go on. UGH! UGH! UGH!

This was a desecration of all I had ever thought of love, of all the knights that were bold and heroes in lace and gold, and that sort of thing. Old Grayling was the most wrinkled man I know. He was stooped; he had only two or three barnacled fangs, and nothing gives a man such a mangy and impecunious appearance in the flesh as teeth like that. He had a BEARD. A straggly old-man one!

Petrified, sick, I hid behind the pig-sty for an hour or two. I had regarded him as a friendly grandfather. Why, he had three sons all with beards and bald heads and corporations! His granddaughters were older than I by years. It was as shocking as a case of indecent exposure against a bishop.

The pigs did not know what to think. They conversed to me and about me in the most friendly grunts. I love pigs. Observe how everyone cheers up at the mere mention or sight of pigs! In the animal kingdom one cannot ask for more engaging companions. They were my only refuge in that landscape. I couldn’t even tell Pa this. It was too disgusting a revelation about another man so old. I tried to comfort myself by thinking Old Grayling must be suffering from delirium tremens, and this the equivalent of seeing snakes; but there wasn’t really any comfort in it as I had never heard of his being drunk.

I tore the letter into bits and strewed it in the pigsty but every word was in my head. When I reappeared Ma asked me to explain my peculiar behaviour. I said I had been looking for the nest of a kangaroo rat. Ma said that was childish of me, but I got away with it because she was absorbed in Anthony Hordern’s catalogue that the mail had brought.

Another sleepless and tortured night. I was in a sorry pass if clergymen of divers denominations could preach against me and call to admonish me so that Old Grayling could think himself a rescuer. My former state when I had chafed against monotony and lack of opportunity to try my wings with birds of my own feather now seemed deliciously peaceful. I had written a yarn just for fun, and every sort of person took it seriously and it collected duds and freaks upon me. Here was something like one of those murders or fires or other disasters that happen to strangers. Disgrace had rained upon me as suddenly as a thunderstorm.

I was abashed with one side of me but with the other I wished that Father O’Toole had proposed to me too. That would have been a situation to turn one camp a yellow tinged with green and give the other that pea-green feeling trimmed with orange, which would have been jolly good for both.