Eusty came to meet me with old Bandicoot and the buggy. Mr. Blackshaw had come in with him to do a little business and save horse-flesh. The day was a horror. A western hurricane filled the world with wind gales, icy as winter, and fogged the air with dust. There had been no rain. There was no sign of spring.
I expected things to be rather desperate, remembering what they had been a month ago, arid letters from home had had but one theme, but coming from the green coastal belt, the city warmth, brightness and beauty, where people daintily dressed rode on the comfortable trams and enjoyed every other convenience and entertainment of existence, the contrast was shocking. The bare cooked paddocks by the way filled me with a feeling of despair.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t stay away any longer or I reckon you would have had to walk home. Old Bandicoot is almost too poor to draw you,” remarked Eusty, giving the brave old friend an unnecessary flick of the whip and raising the dust from his long shabby coat from which his bones protruded.
Pa was about the same. “Serve him right,” continued Eusty. “He oughter learn not to be pokin’ his nose so close into the baits. We can take a short cut through Burrawong, the gates ain’t locked.”
Burrawong was one of the larger stations in which much of the good land of the district was locked. The cockies usually had to follow the main road, but since the drought the owners had opened one of their permanent water-holes so that the poorer settlers could cart water to their homesteads. They were to be seen with a cask and a dray bucketing water into troughs to a few staggering animals which had been watered thus since January, now eight months past.
In a hot dust storm the sun shows as a ball of blood, this being a cold sirocco, it showed like a full moon. I shut my eyes against the whirling grit and wrapped my cape around me while Eusty urged poor old Bandicoot to keep toddling. In the paddocks of Burrawong, sheep skins lined the fences. The emaciated carcasses attracted flocks of black croakers and their dismal clamour filled the day.
“They’ve put on a couple of men to each paddock to skin the sheep as they die,” remarked Mr. Blackshaw. “They’ll have their work cut out after this wind. It topples the jumbucks over and they ain’t got strength to get up again. There were a few clouds knocking about yestiddy, but this wind has cooked their chances. Burrawong is about cooked, and so are we.”
“Like us,” chimed Eusty. “Nearly all the cows pegged out while you were away. Old Roany and Nellie went first, and we have to lift up old Taralga twice a day; she can’t hold out much longer.”
A dray passed loaded with wood and drawn by three horses. The tears came as I noted the condition of the animals. That morning they had been lifted on to their feet, and yet they struggled so gallantly for their incompetent masters—panting, trembling, staggering through their purgatory under lash and objurgation. My heart seemed to suffocate.
Eusty’s voice was crisp with cheerfulness. Drought and debt had no power to dispirit him—it took a stomach-ache or something personal. “What’s making you so flaming down in the mug, Sybylla? It’s us—who’ve been at home grafting away like fury while you were flying round among the toffs having a slashing time—that ought to hang our lip. Them city folks livin’ on us people on the land!”
Bandicoot came to a dead stop opposite a man who was mending a gate. “Hello! The old moke still alive and kicking,” he observed. “Might get rain next month,” he continued hopefully. “Pet of a day ain’t it?”
“We’re about drove off of the land,” said Mr. Blackshaw. “We’ll have to join the unemployed and get seven bob a day minimum.”
We dropped our passenger at the corner of his own fence and toiled on to our destination, Bandicoot’s old coat sopping with the sweat of weakness.
“Put the poor old chap in the stable till he cools, and give him a handful of straw,” commanded Pa.
Ma adjured us to get inside quickly and close the door. She had cleared the dust away twice that day, and was now going to desist until the wind subsided. Home was a dreary spectacle. Four-footed friends had died of their sufferings in my absence. Only the hardiest plants in the garden survived. Everything had a dirty grey film, irritating to the touch. Grit on the plates, grit between the teeth, grit on the pillow, grit in one’s soul, ugh! An all-pervading smell of dust—ugh!
Dear old Pa was cheerful. He greeted me like a real friend and said we were better off than the people out West, whose homes were sometimes entirely buried in sand. He wanted to hear of everyone I had met, especially his former associates. When we were settled for the evening before the fire—one thing that the dust could not spoil—Pa, by eager questioning, had me telling of everyone I had met and what they said—with certain reservations.
“You saw Goring Hardy, did you have any talk with him?”
“Oh, yes, he was quite chatty, and advised me to go to London.”
“How did he suggest finding the means?” inquired Ma.
“He dropped the suggestion when I told him how we are situated.” I did not add, and after he had found my maidenly citadel invulnerable.
“You’ve had a great holiday,” interposed Aunt Jane. “Times have changed since I was a girl. If I had acted as you have, flouting modesty and blaspheming God, I should have been locked up on bread and water instead of being flattered and entertained. I don’t know what the world is coming to with vulgarity and immorality.”
“People will give you a little adulation, when it costs them nothing,” remarked Ma with withering actuality, and got out the darning.
Bung went my Sydney career. I was back on the land at ‘Possum Gully.
The dust storm took three days to clear away, and left everything in a deplorable condition. It meant housecleaning from end to end. I hated the coarse work after a taste of city luxury and conveniences, but I did not dare let my feelings escape me. The great adventure to Sydney had ended in débacle. I sat amid the débris of hopes and expectations—only nebulous ones it is true, but all that I had had—and I had to grope my way out.
I produced the Lindsay drawings as a counter irritant. Ma dismissed them with one blast. She said that THAT was all that men cared for, but women soon had too much of it.
I left the book about just to see—well just to have the figures seen by Aunt Jane. Pa said that there was nothing immoral in the human body, that it was a work of NATURE. Aunt Jane agreed, but said that ******** **** * ***** ** God, but that delicacy should be maintained. She put on her specs and singled out an example. ***** *** Ma said Hhhh * *** ***** ******* ** ******* *****. I had not sufficient experience to refute such dicta. I hid the drawings at the bottom of a packing case.
No one mentioned Henry. He had not written to me lately, and was still away in Queensland. I hoped he had forgotten me, but should he have done so it would be one more nail in the coffin of AMOUR, another of Pan’s “Half told Tales”.
So many kiss today, and die tomorrow:
And is remembrance sweet, or sweet and sorrow?
For some say only sweet; and sweet and bitter some...
Ah, who can end the tale, when all the dead are dumb!
[Bulletin Verse.]
As the days passed the mail brought a newspaper with Lady Jane’s letter. She had a long paragraph about the departure of Mr. Goring Hardy, Australia’s greatest literary man. He had been in demand among smart hostesses, and there would be an ache in more than one heart, Lady Jane dared suggest, when his ship carried him away from his native shores. No Australian girl had been able to interest him, but one beauty of the glorious eyes and velvety shoulders...Easy to discern this as Edmée. She was surely destined for a brilliant career matrimonially unless she was too ambitious and stayed too long in the stable, as Big Checks put it.
Lady Jane’s letter kept me informed of those of her clients or victims whom I had met.
Aunt Jane asked me what I intended to do to help my parents. “You met Big Ears, why didn’t you improve your chances there? And what about Mrs. Crasterton’s brother?”
“I don’t think anyone would want either of those,” I murmured.
“Hadn’t Mrs. Crasterton a son too?”
“Yes, but he’s a terrible swell, wouldn’t look at anything but a SOCIETY girl.”
As the dreadful hot months dragged by, killing more and more suffering animals and pet plants and trees, I read that Big Ears had become engaged to a top notch SOCIETY girl who was also a tennis enthusiast. He was a valuable property as represented by Lady Jane. Glamour oozed from her tales of him. Yet I had discerned nought but a creature that I would have wilted to acknowledge as my mate. I hoped that Aunt Jane would miss the news of his wedding.
I found pluck to inquire of Pa what had happened to Old Grayling.
“Pillaloo!” grinned Pa. “He’s kept in hobbles now. The flash buggy has disappeared.” His daughters had come to see Pa and Ma specially to apologise for the old man’s dementia. Silly old toad had made such a noise that it was one of the jokes of the district by now!
Horrors!
Our stoical land suffered, and we and the animals with it. The year ran down to harvest, a poor pinched harvest, but sufficient for the few remaining animals. I received a cheque for my little book. The first instalment of three-pences had totted up to one hundred pounds. It was a lot of money to us. It saved us that year. There was also an editor on one of the big dailies who encouraged me to write prose sketches, and by these I sometimes made twenty-five shillings a week. He was gentle and kind and kept watch with his blue pencil against any originality that would have got me into trouble. At first I nearly sank through the boards because of the sentences he cut out—always those I had prized as my own discoveries. That they were deleted showed that I must be lacking in good form, but intuition quickly taught me what was acceptable.
I was able to write these articles at odd moments, and struggled more diligently with housewifery to offset the delinquency of attempting to write. An author enjoyed no prestige in ‘Possum Gully.
My rebellious discontent surged up more furiously than ever. I craved the pang and tang, the joys and struggles of life at the flood. I was willing to accept my share of tears and pains if I could have also some of the splendour and passion which were my temperamental right. Was all my power of emotion wrong?—something to be suppressed till it evaporated like youth itself—something ladled out to me for a span and passed on to another futile creature of an hour?
On being honest with myself I felt that any God set up, except by little Mr. David, was contrary to a sane conception of a just and omnipotent God worth the name of Creator. The rubbish about self-will, and wrongs being righted in some foggy heaven could not stand against even little Jimmy Dripping common sense. The voice of the wind urges the soul to deeper conceptions of spiritual wisdom. The magic in the wide sunlight cancels the trivial church image of a God fashioned on the pattern of an unprepossessing old man. The contentment preached by pastors and masters to the less fortunate in goods and opportunities sounds like an impudent assumption of betterism by those who are often in the worse collection of parasites. Why should Ma’s extraordinary skill and management, which enables her to excel a fashionable couturière and equal a chef and baker, be wasted, while poor old Lady Hobnob—to take one example—who cannot overcome B FLATS has a glorious mansion in a heavenly situation at Potts Point? Why should Pa, who had tried to help the struggling men by fearless and honest measures, have been robbed of his property while a vulgar old vulture like Sir James Hobnob, who had diverted to himself a fortune out of public funds, should have all the honours and be invited by the King to dine at Buckingham Palace and to sleep at Windsor Castle? I hated all the doctrines of ‘Possum Gully and its want of works, but had given up saying so aloud.
About Easter there was a bobbery in Lady Jane’s column. What do you guess? A SOCIETY WEDDING. A BEAUTY and a CONFIRMED BACHELOR. Most notable wedding of the year. OLD FAMILIES, SOCIETY, all were marshalled. Shower bouquets, a dozen bridesmaids—a big galanty show.
I laughed to picture Gaddy in the middle of bridal flutter. What would he do with his corporation—ah, what...
No; I did not envy Edmée her bridegroom. Quite the reverse. Nevertheless, I did seem a petty failure with my hands showing more glaringly than ever the effects of coarse manual toil, and my feet still unacquainted with silk stockings, while there was Edmée in satin and orange blossoms filling the newspapers with her success. I envied her her suitability to success, her disregard of consistency, her obliviousness of personal detractors.
I could not complain of lack of opportunities. I wondered how many other women Goring Hardy had practically kidnapped for a week just for their company and nothing but kisses—ardent but respectable? Yet I had not improved the shining hour.
I had fled from Gaddy in such a way that he had protected his vanity by pretending that his advances were spoof. In Big Ears, the catch of the previous season, I had discerned only a flap-eared weakling who stuttered prayers. He had offered to abrogate prayers until I was “saved”, but no, here I was back in ‘Possum Gully and he not yet returned from a tour in Spain, and I had nought but a dream tho’ it ne’er came true.
Bung! Bung! Pop! Pop! went all respect for romance. Edmée could put Gaddy in the position of the romantic lover and affinity that she had gushed about. Gaddy, who had scoffed at Edmée, succumbed to her. Big Ears, who was g............