One day old Bismarck yelped and I looked out of the kitchen window to see Old Grayling approaching with a tall black blood which was being broken before my eyes on the bridle track between our place and one or two neighbours. A dry creek was almost impassable and mess-mate stumps were dotted thickly on either side of a narrow wriggling track. Along this came a man of 72 in a new single buggy—a show-ring affair—with a horse that leapt and sidled resentfully.
“Flash old fool!” remarked Pa. “He is bursting out again now that the old woman is underground.”
“A wonder the family lets him run to such useless expense. He is mad to drive such a horse along that track,” said Ma.
The Graylings were mortgaged through the front door and out the back gate. I knew why that odious old man had that horse and a new vehicle. He had eschewed riding but had come in competition with the young men who headed in my direction on Sundays and holidays leading race horses and other prime specimens wearing a lady’s bridle. He had been a reckless young man. The district yielded yarns of his escapades. It was a feat, if I had not been so apprehensive of him, to see him bring that buggy and rampageous horse among the stumps and into that creek and up again at a dangerous angle and around our wood heap and over the garden drain to the side gate.
He was warmly welcomed by Pa and Ma. I kept near Ma while tea was being served. When Old Grayling began to jockey me aside, I fled. He followed me to the garden, to the dairy, to the kitchen. I took the direction of a building to which no lady would be seen going. Desperation drove me to such a ruse. It was successful. The Graylings were renowned for gallantry.
I ran from there to the pigs again, risking the fleas for an unsuspected retreat. After a time Ma called. After some more time Pa hailed me with rousing coo-ees. The pigs talked to me but did not betray me. At length, peeping between the logs of the sty, I saw Mr. Grayling departing at racing speed guiding his intractable horse safely along the difficult track. I slid up the back way and into the kitchen. Ma and Pa, who had lingered watching the driving skill, were talking about me.
“She must be mad,” it was Ma’s voice. “To disappear without rhyme or reason.”
“She shows no signs of madness,” said Pa. “She might want to think.”
At this I appeared. Ma demanded an explanation of my antics. I gave none.
“You make yourself very agreeable to the young men, but flout poor old Mr. Grayling. He waited till too late to drive home with that flighty horse just to say good-bye to you. Now is not the time to miss your manners if you want to live down the scandal and trouble you have caused.”
Pa came with me to feed the pigs. “Your mother is right, you know, my girl. When we are kind to fine young men, it is not hospitality, it is self-indulgence. I always feel that any welcome I can give the Graylings is feeble compared with the welcome they give me.”
The cause of my action seemed too indecent to tell Pa. As for telling Ma I would rather have had her report me to the doctor and clergyman as raving mad. She would blame me for Old Grayling’s sickening aberration, and constant misunderstanding hurt. “Oh, Pa,” I said, “I can’t bear any more scandalmongering and fuss. I would as soon go and live with the pigs like the Prodigal Son.”
This surprised Pa. He sat upon the pig-sty fence talking to me for a long time. “And you wanted to be famous,” he said banteringly. “What you are undergoing is fame, the thing you wanted, in a very mild form.”
“I didn’t want bad notoriety: it must have been fair renown that I dreamed about.”
“There is only one percent of that, mixed with exaggeration and scandal and envy. No one can make it otherwise, not even royalty, though it commands the press and the army. The smoking rooms are full of another story right around the world, always have been, even in days when one’s head could be cut off for a disrespectful word about those in authority.” Pa here quoted Byron.
“Why, my girl, it is wonderful at your age to be denounced by a preacher and argued with by a priest, though I can’t see what the stir is about, myself. I’m sorry that you did not write something much more rousing. Surely you are man enough to stand up to a little flutter like this. Use common sense. Think what you say about other people. You don’t like them any the less, but if they heard your private criticism of their clothes and persons there wouldn’t be a friend from Cape Otway to Cape Leeuwin. If you enter public life, you have to take all that as the chattering of magpies. As for people going to cut you dead, and that stuff that Eusty brings home; just walk out before them and smile, and they’ll all be running to lick your boots and gain your favour.”
Pa then went on to tell me of his experiences as a member of the Legislature. “Bless me, I was accused of being a traitor to the State when I tried to bring in measures to help the tinder dog. I was called the misappropriator of funds for trying to save a great public swindle, and the fellows who carried it through were knighted.”
Pa took me further into his confidence in a grown-up way.
“I was slandered—they even tried to defeat me by annoying your mother. They said she was a drunkard, which was madness, as you know.”
Poor Ma, herself perfect and circumspect, first to have suffered the backwash from Pa’s opponents and now to undergo a repetition through me! It made me understand Ma’s attitude.
“You are old enough to face these things now,” continued Pa and added in a whisper, “they even accused me of carrying on with other women.”
This completely cheered me. I laughed until the pigs went whoof! whoof! whoof! all around the sty expecting a second helping. Pa and other women! was atrociously absurd, and Ma being accused of drunkenness was so abnormal that I was henceforward prepared for any stories about myself. Dear old Pa! Pa and OTHER WOMEN!
The prating about nothing new under the sun (Solomon) and the impossibility of upsetting antecedents, which met me when I wished to try something different, was gaining weight with me. Dismal. Now I could see why people have written those self-praising, white-washing autobiographies. People don’t write autobiographies until they are old fogies. Otherwise they would have lacked time for EXPERIENCE, and EXPERIENCE had taught them before they started what it was teaching me now, that people can’t endure their reality in print and so create an uncomfortable situation for the realistic autobiographer with his family and all concerned. Pa is always saying that when you get up in years you want peace, that it is only while you are very young or haven’t any spiritual grist that you hanker for emotional tornadoes.
These lessons from Pa were a great help. Politics have seasoned him. He gives a whoof of contempt for gossip and scandal. He always turns what is said of him into a circus against the talebearer.
Things, all the same, are not simple. If I had stuck to my lords and ladies in England and a beautiful heroine who went through tophet to give the hero a chance to show-off as a deferred rescuer; if I had had the villain scrunching the gravel, and a jealous rival beauty biting her lips till the blood came and breaking the stern of a champagne glass between her jewelled fingers with rage (though I have not yet seen a champagne glass) I should have been acclaimed. My tale might have adorned the Supplement to the Goulburn Evening Penny Post. I love the tales in the Penny Post, full of mystery and glamour and castles and lords and gorgeous lovers. I don’t know why on earth I became afflicted with this foolish notion of showing how comical the ‘Possum Gully sort of reality would look by comparison. Aunt Jane is right, no doubt, when she says I was born contrary.
It was Old Harris who got me into this trouble by adjuring me to be Australian and thus add to culture. CULTURE! Talk about culture!!! I wrote to him on the subject.
There were fresh inconsistencies teasing me. Ma said that if I wasn’t womanly and all that sort of triffle-traffle, the men would not propose to me, and here I was beset with proposals from all over the place. Some of them were nearly as bad as Old Grayling’s, though he was the dean of the faculty, but men cannot help nearly all being duds from the lover angle. I suppose their delirium of egotism keeps them perpendicular. I should never have the front to try to get a man to marry me, but you should see the objects that booby up to me and think they can have me for the asking.
There are others, always young and sometimes desirable who are so shy that I know them only in letters in which they confess they have followed me all day, recording my least action, or have sat on the same seat in Belmore Square and have heard the sound of my voice. There now!
One Sunday afternoon old Bismarck made an unusual commotion and called our attention to another exhibition of driving on the tortuous back track. A pair of spirited trotters swung around the stumps, down into the creek at a dizzy angle and up over the mere footbridge of the garden drain to fetch-up at the side gate. The turn-out was too good for a tea agent: it must be a wool agent. All kinds of agents are rather regarded as parasites upon the squatters and selectors—middlemen who fatten on the profits of commodities which other men sweat to produce. He looked like someone who had got out of his way and had called for directions. I hoped he was not coming in. I used to long for any sort of caller, but that infernal book has resulted in my being a kind of puppet show, and I am heartily sick of it.
Pa went out shouting surprise and a boomer of a welcome. Ma followed corroborating him, and asking the man why they had not seen him all these years. Pa and he went to the stables, leading the lovely ponies with their saucy heads and wide red nostrils. Ma hastened to spread a hearthrug and a table cover, kept for high company, and said we’d have to prepare something for tea. We had tea on Sundays: other days Ma stuck to dinner at sundown instead of in the middle of the day. She was the only one in the neighborhood who did—a relic of her early social status.
It was Henry Beauchamp from Moongudgeonby, one of the big stations up the country, where Ma and Pa came from. He had been at their wedding and, since those days had been in Queensland and down the Murray. I did up my hair to look grown-up in readiness to meet him. Ma seemed delighted that he had come. As I came out he was saying she was the loveliest bride he had ever seen.
“Married life soon altered that,” said Ma. “You haven’t a bride of your own yet?”
“Can’t find one to come up to you,” said he. “Is your daughter like yourself?”
“Oh, dear me, no,” said Ma expressively.
“Takes after you from what I hear,” said Mr. Beauchamp, with a grin at Pa.
“They say so, but I think she is very much herself.” I loved Pa for that and took this moment to come in.
The typical Australian squatter, according to my idea, rose to meet me. He was a tall broad man, with a clipped black beard and two or three grey hairs around the temples. Quite old. I noticed at once. He was so tanned that his eyes, a sort of oyster grey, looked like white holes. He smiled, showing white teeth, without waiting to be introduced. It was trying to have to come out in contrast to Ma, but I did not think I was grown-up enough for him to notice me much. I hoped he would not miss my complexion, which is one of my unassailable points. Everyone raves about it. My admirers always wish they could eat it. Ma says I get it from her as Pa’s side have muddy skins and that mine will soon go, that a complexion is a fleeting thing.
I think Henry Beauchamp noticed it and every other detail. His glances were quick and penetrating as if they could see through one’s clothes.
There was a great flow of geniality and high company talk. Ma and Pa asked questions and Mr. Beauchamp replied in a soft cool voice. I liked looking at his teeth, but found his eyes on me wherever I went. This made me uneasy as I knew he was wondering how Ma, the perfect and unique, could have produced me. Pa and Ma had him in the evening while I did the work. I did not reappear until supper time at half past nine after which Ma showed Mr. Beauchamp to the spare room.
It was a wild windy night with tins rattling and rafters creaking and Pa hoped for rain, but the morning sky was bright and cold. At breakfast Ma suggested that Mr. Beauchamp should stay for the day. He accepted without quibble. He had had two big stages with his horses and a spell would do them good. They were a prize pair, had taken everything open to them at Bathurst, Junee, Cootamundra, Gool Gool and half a dozen other shows. He was to judge the horses at the Goulburn Show and had come a day or two in advance to visit Pa.
It was washing day and Ma and I wondered how he would put in the time. Moongudgeonby is a show place, and our cockatoo farm has nothing to exhibit. However, our guest seemed content to go about talking to Pa. They leant upon all the places possible and talked, even on the pigsty, while the pigs whoofed and seemed as pleased as they were to see me. They leant upon the sheep yards, and Ma said she would be ashamed for anyone who came from real sheep yards to see such makeshifts, but Mr. Beauchamp did not criticise. They leaned against the stable door, and on the cow-yard fence and over the garden gate and talked and talked, and talked and talked.
Ma and I had to pull foot to get the washing out and the lunch on and look like ladies who had nothing to do. Pa was so pleased with a chum from his original grade that he invited Mr. Beauchamp to stay until the Show. He accepted without pressing. He did not seem to need exciting company. At lunch he said he would like one of the ladies to run into town with him next morning. Ma refused. He turned to me, but Pa said he would go, and it was a single-seated buggy. That settled that.
“Well then, I should like to take Miss Sybylla with me to the Show. A man by himself in a buggy looks forlorn, but Miss Sybylla would repair that.”
I had promised to meet Billy Olliver but decided to ask him to let me off. He could come any day. This would be a thrilling jaunt with an escort so old and important. Twenty-six was the oldest I had yet, except Old Grayling. I went about my tasks like quicksilver hoping that Ruby and Nellie Blackshaw and the Crispin girls would see me driving with Mr. Beauchamp. They were going to look the other way when I came near. This would dish their airs.
The wind went out of my balloon while I was setting the table for dinner. Mr. Beauchamp was beside the fire while Ma was darning. It had come up cold. As I entered Ma was saying, “There seems to be no end to the annoyance caused by that silly book. I think it best to ignore all the scandal and it will die out. I assure you I knew nothing of it and have discouraged her all I can.”
As I put the tray down Ma continued pointedly. “You asked if Sybylla resembled me. I should not like to think so. She has given me a lot of vexation. I have had two mothers here bullying me because I have not restrained her from driving their sons mad. Men are foolish to think they can make any impression on her.”
I felt myself reddening right through to my heels. Why will Ma hurt me so that I cannot sleep? She might have given me a chance with Mr. Beauchamp. I was being most circumspect. An older man like that, what would he think? I could not go to the Show with him after this.
I made faces at Ma and tried to stop her, and I think Mr. Beauchamp caught me, he was much amused, and led Ma on to say more.
“So Sybylla is a bit wild, is she? You must have spoilt her.”
“She has spoilt herself. Men can’t see that they might as well try to catch the wind or that old hawk out there, but they giggle-gaggle around her and overlook the nice quiet girls who would make men happy.”
That was not fair of Ma. When I tried to escape Old Grayling, she said I was inhospitable. I treated everyone alike and they all admitted that I was friendly and full of fun.
I was so ashamed that I could not look Mr. Beauchamp in the eyes. I placed the lamp at his end of the table with a vase of flowers between me and him but he peeped around it and said I was getting lost so far away.
I disappeared to the kitchen for the evening to finish the ironing and to set bread. Ma was in the dining-room writing letters to send by the men in the morning. Mr. Blackshaw came over and he and Pa and Mr. Beauchamp were in the drawing-room or “front room” as the company room is called around ‘Possum Gully.
Eusty had gone to bed and I had started on the ironing when Mr. Beauchamp stood laughing at me from the doorway. I asked him if he wanted anything and he said, yes, a talk with me.
“I haven’t time to talk,” I said, fearing that Ma would blame me if she came out and found him there.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”
“I beg your pardon,” I said, setting a stool before the fire. “I thought Pa would be wanting to talk to you.”
I blithered away at the ironing. He placed the stool right before me.
“So you are a trouble to the lads of the district,” he said with a chuckle and a soft pedal in his voice. “And your mother does not advertise you as a little dove.”
I thumped like everything so that I couldn’t hear him, but he cupped his hands like coo-eeing. I was afraid that I’d laugh, so saying that I had forgotten the bread, I dashed away and collected the tub, the yeast, the flour and potatoes and began setting the sponge.
“You are the quickest human being I ever saw,” he remarked. “You are carrying on like this just because you are upset by what your mother was telling me.”
“I’m not like what Ma says.”
“Oh, ho, what about that book?”
“It’s not real.”
“I don’t believe you are either. I have never seen anyone like you, and I’ve been about a bit in my time. I’ve had a bit too much time to be about in too,” he added, and laughed so infectiously that I nearly joined in.
“In that case,” said I, “you had better not waste any more time here.”
“Oh, I don’t grudge a little time to see if I can do anything to help my dear old friends with such a terrible daughter.”
I worked furiously at the bread-setting.
“Well now, tell me about the book.”
“I never talk about it. They all can think what they like. At least it has shown me how silly everyone is.”
“I thought it had shown how silly you were. That’s what I gathered from your cousins as I came along. They said it was the silliest goat of a book they ever read, and just what they expected as you are the silliest goat of a girl they have ever known.”
I just stood and looked at him. I had not Pa’s seasoning in meeting condemnation, especially from my cousins of whom I was so fond. At length I steadied enough to say, “At anyrate the greatest writer in Australia says I could be great some day if I develop.”
“That poet fellow! Does his word count for anything? Writers are just spites, aren’t they—half their time drunk and the rest of it cadging for a bit to eat?”
I was familiar with this point of view. All of my relations had it. None but Pa ever wrote so much as a letter to the newspapers, which put him among those sneered at as windbags trying to be important. I made the coffee and said, “You will be wanting your supper,” and went to the dining-room.
Mr. Beauchamp went around the house and came in from the front pretending that he had been to the stables to let his horses out. Pa and Mr. Blackshaw were still talking. I went to bed, leaving Ma to dispense supper. Another tortured night. I was so fond of my cousins. I always defended them if anyone dared to say they were not the prettiest liveliest girls up the country.
Mr. Beauchamp and Pa left early in the morning and did not return until dinner time.
It was all real, but how much was true?
Mr. Beauchamp came straight to the kitchen after seeing about his horses.
“Last night you were quite put off your stride by what your mother and cousins think of you.”
“If you don’t mind, the subject is closed.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” he said with his provokingly contagious laugh. “You were afraid it would affect my opinion of you.”
“Your opinion...”
“Now, now, don’t try to break the bridle, or I’ll tell your mother that you have been rude to me, and she won’t permit that.”
I devoted myself to the washing-up.
“I’ll wait. You are so quick that you soon will be ready.”
I turned my back on him.
“You have the prettiest neck and cheek from the back I ever saw,” he remarked casually. “Don’t be squiffy. I’ll tell you something. Every word said against you weighs against those who say it. That sort of jealousy always works that way. All the girls from here to Timbuctoo are busy adoring you, and the one or two squeaks are pure jealousy.”
“I never was jealous of anyone in my life.”
“You have no one to be jealous of here. I wonder how you would shape among girls who could rival you.”
This was a new point of view to me—an idea. I began to examine it and was trapped into talking.
“There are only two kinds of parents,” he continued. “Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right. My old man was in the same class as your mother. Every word of disparagement by your mother made me more interested in you. I would never think of marrying anything but a jolly little flirt. That kind of girl knows her way about, and you know when you have her. The booby might go off the rails at the least strain. Besides she has no fire or style.”
“Yes, but I intend to be as annoying as I can in accordance with the family critics.”
“Very clever of you: makes you provokingly attractive.” He chortled again, “You are as full of mettle as a blood filly.”
“I’ll tell Ma that you are vulgar.”
“She’d blame you. When she began to warn me against you, my interest was aroused. I know how to take the praise of fond mas with daughters on their hands. I’m not having any. There is no use in your playing up: the breed is there. Your father is the whitest man in Australia and any daughter reared by your mother is the real stuff, in a class by herself. There are a lot of old maids in your mother’s family and that is another jolly good sign. Early marriage is often a sign of poor goods that have to be sold quickly.”
Here was another idea. An interesting man.
“I’m glad you approve of old maids because I have decided to be one.”
“But I shan’t let you.”
“What have you got to do with it?”
“Haven’t you noticed my influence with your mother? Do you suppose I’m here to talk about the pigs and old times to your father: nearly staked my pair coming up that track.”
“Aren’t you married already?”
“No fear.”
“Didn’t sell early—are you good material?”
“Better call me Henry,” he replied irrelevantly. “It will make me seem quite ten years younger.”
“What for?”
“Well—you see—what age are you—eighteen?”
“Nearly.”
“Whew! Only seventeen! You’ll make a delightful little wife when the nonsense is trained out of you. Any man would want to marry you because of your mother.”
“I don’t know your mother, so I don’t know if there is any reason at all why anyone would want to marry you.”
He laughed consumedly, I too; it was so silly.
“It is a serious consideration for a man of thirty-six to think of a girl of eighteen. Twenty years on I’ll be an old chap wanting to settle down and you’ll be just in your prime.”
“Why consider such silly things without foundation?”
“Must I shave off my beard?”
“Why do you tolerate such a monstrosity?”
“It can go any minute you say.”
“You might collapse like Samson and then need a winch to hoist you about.”
“Do you like beards?”
“As if anyone could like a beard!”
“I must go to the barber tomorrow.”
“Don’t shave it off just yet.”
“Why?”
“I shan’t tell you.” I had the laugh to myself now. After only thirty-five hours he seemed to be buckling like the young men, and what a trophy he would be, with his beard, like a big bear on a chain. This matter of beard was a lively test. I had applied it with the result that all my young men friends who had had moustaches were now clean-shaven, while those who had been clean-shaven were assiduously growing moustaches. Some of the latter were of the cricket style—eleven hairs a side.
“Well now, when I marry you I don’t think I’ll approve of any more of this writing. I’d be jealous of it. You’d want to be wasting your spare time on that when I wanted to play with you.”
I flashed out at this. “Supposing I said that you would have to give up breeding wool or horses and be hanging around ready to play with me.”
“That’s a different matter. You’re a woman, and Nature settled it long ago. I have nothing to do with it.”
“But I have, you conceited lord of creation!”
At this Ma came in the door looking trenchantly at me. “Do you know that your daughter has just called me a conceited lord of creation?”
“Men deserve what they get for being so foolish,” said Ma. “You are not going to be as silly as the boys, are you?”
I left him to Ma.
The following morning he again invited me to go to the Show with him in his buggy, drawn by the dashing pair that seemed to run above the road instead of on it.
Ma and Pa both said I could go, Ma adding the rider, “If you behave yourself”.
“I’ll see that she behaves,” said Mr. Beauchamp in his good-humoured drawl.
“And I’ll see that he behaves,” thinks I to myself, pricked to pay him out for his self-confidence. Billy Olliver was the instrument at hand. Billy’s horse, Captain Phillip, was the best hunter of the year, and I had promised to take my habit and ride him in the lady’s hack class. Well, my lord Henry could drive me to the door of the hotel, and when he came out I should be departing with Billy. There was time to send a letter and get the plot in train.
Then the Clerk of the Weather messed-up everything. We had suffered from a drought since Christmas, and it was now late in March. The sky was overcast. Henry received word to come in on the Wednesday for urgent business with the Show officials. He apologised, but said he would take charge of me the moment Pa and Ma arrived on Thursday morning, and would drive me to the Show Ground.
“Ha!” scoffed Ma. “You’ll find you won’t have your own way with a hard-shelled old lady-killer.”
The drought took a notion to break on Wednesday. It poured all the afternoon so that I could hardly make old Bandicoot face it when I went to meet Great-aunt Jane, who was arriving from Gool Gool; and the cattle went shivering campwards with humped backs and lowered heads. It was called a heavy thunderstorm, most opportune to lay the dust for the morrow, but rain fell again during the night. The morning was grey, but held up sufficiently for us to start. I shared the back seat with Aunt Jane.
The rain got heavier and heavier, obscuring the horizon, and Auburn Street was running creeks as we took refuge in the hotel yard. Mr. Beauchamp and Billy were both at the front door awaiting us. They did not know each other, but had been talking.
The rain was so torrential that there was no hope of going to the Show Ground. Ring events were impossible until it lifted. When we came into the hotel parlour, Billy and Mr. Beauchamp were both there. I introduced them. Billy immediately “turned dawg” and looked most bilious.
Mr. Beauchamp was in high spirits. Something seemed to so amuse him that he could not contain himself. I whispered to him that my plans, like his, had to be altered somewhat, that I was to be photographed on Mr. Olliver’s horse, but that Aunt Jane would companion him to the show. “She’s a dear,” I said. “Ma is never done singing her praises, and says she wishes I was only a quarter as good.”
Mr. Beauchamp’s eyes danced. I withdrew to Billy. He muttered a curse on the drought having taken this day to break and said that young Masters had a wonderful gramophone at the Royal and had invited me to come and hear it if the rain continued.
We set off at once, Billy carrying the handbag with my habit, as I could dress at the Royal later. I had friends there in mine host and his wards. Mr. Beauchamp came to the door and wished us well with unforced glee, but Billy looked angry and chapfallen.
“Is Beauchamp a married man?” he really hissed, as soon as we were safely in the street.
“No.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He’s the Show judge, and Ma and Pa knew him up the country.”
“AAAAH! He told me he was staying at ‘Possum Gully.”
I wondered what Mr. Beauchamp could have said to Billy to make him so queer. He turned quite wooden. He had no reason to be glum, as I went off with him, keeping my word under Mr. Beauchamp’s nose. Billy bought me the regulation chocolates—a huge box—and we proceeded to the gramophone until the clouds should break. One of the Masters from out our way was the proud possessor. It played “Arrah go on,” and some other songs. During the recital a messenger arrived with a note for me.
Mr. Beauchamp wrote that my Great-aunt Jane showed the breed I came from. He had been going to tell my mother how I had deserted him, but he was so pleased with Auntie that he would let me off this time. It was signed Harold Beecham.
Billy growled, “It’s from that mug with the beard I suppose.”
Daddy Royal overheard him and chipped in, “Miss Sybylla would get a hundred notes if the young men knew where to find her. If I put a notice on my door that she needed someone to drive her home this evening, the police would have to regulate the rush. If not, the young men of the district would be decaying; and they have eaten too much bull beef for that.”
Billy suggested we should go in a cab to see the pavilion exhibits. He was polite and thoughtful, helping me with my dress, and keeping the rain off me with a big new umbrella while we were getting in and out of the cab, but there was a sadness and quietness about him that I have not seen before. I hoped he was not catching a chill.
The rain kept on and on. There wasn’t a hope of a ring event, so we came back to the Royal. The messenger was waiting with another note. Harold Beecham reported that he and Auntie were getting on splendidly. He hoped that I and young Olliver were enjoying ourselves only half as much. If there was anything I would like him to do for me I had only to let him know. The postscript ran, “Ask young Olliver if he will grow a beard for you.”
The messenger said he had to wait for a reply. I was delighted to oblige: “Yes, there is something you can do, thank you very much. Propose to dear Aunt Jane. I should adore you for an uncle, and it is a pity to waste such an avuncular beard.”
I was pleased with the opportunity to use the word avuncular.
“Would you grow a beard for anyone you liked?” I asked Billy Olliver.
“I know what put that into your head,” he snorted, and fell into a deep gloom.
Daddy Royal invited me to lunch and put me on his right hand side and kept up a patter of teasing. Billy sat on the other side of me and had rather a bad time. He seemed unfledged in meeting it after Henry Beauchamp. Tame. The subject of beards came up among the girls of the house, and some wag asked Mine Host if he thought a man ought to grow a beard to please a lady.
“Of course he should. I’m a Methuselah and have a beard already, ‘but if I had the honour, now, say, of escorting Miss Sybylla for a day, I’d grow my hair and train it in a peruke. Billy Olliver, give an account of yourself. Why have you the privilege of sitting where you sit today, when all the upstanding young men of the district would eat their hats to be where you are at this moment?”
Poor Billy looked worse and worse. I tried to comfort him, but was puzzled by his behaviour. Perhaps he was a philanthropist and liked me while convention was against me, but hadn’t the know-how to act up to the situation which had suddenly overtaken us.
Another note arrived at the end of lunch.
“Your mischief is like a tonic. Never enjoyed myself more. Your father has invited me to spend a week with him after the Show, and then I’ll get my innings. I bet young Olliver’s cake is turning to dough already. Let me know your thoughts by the messenger.”
I wrote: “My thought is that you are very silly. Don’t blame me. I haven’t said a word, but everyone in town will know that the messenger is from you.”
The messenger was back in twenty minutes: “It’s downright unkind of you not to mention me. What do you suppose I’m sending a man back and forth for but to keep myself to the front. If my only object was to employ a messenger I could give him five bob and let him rest his corns.”
Billy growled, “You must be very spoony if you have to write to him every two minutes.”
Mr. Beauchamp had me on tip-toe to play ball with him, but I could not make him angry. He laughed with imperturbable good humour.
The rain never let-up for a moment. Everyone settled down to a comfortable day indoors. We had a jolly time at the Royal with flirtation and chocolates, badinage and so on, mingled in equal parts. The prospects of grass for the winter cheered everyone.
“The rain’ll do more good than the Show,” the publicans said, as they reaped an advance harvest.
As the afternoon deepened the messenger represented Pa, and I had to return to the Commercial. It was too wet to ride home with Billy, as we had intended, so I tucked in beside Aunt Jane.
Billy escorted me to the last and said good-bye with chocolates, the only backsheesh I was permitted to collect from admirers.
It was a long wet drive. In spite of macintoshes, umbrellas and rugs, the rain drove through cracks, and we reached home cold and damp. Eusty had a roaring fire and the tea set, and soon we were all comfortable around it, talking over the day.
“Dear me, what an interesting man Mr. Beauchamp has developed into,” remarked Aunt Jane. “Most of the young men are interesting until they begin to cackle with Sybylla and turn into perfect idiots.” Aunt Jane was disapproving of my disappearance all day, but Pa said I was as safe as in a church at the Royal.
I had received a letter from Old Harris in reply to my complaints of my woes. The sympathy in it rose to understanding and was as liberating as a new idea.
He stated that fowls would always peck at the wild swan that was hatched among them until it grew strong enough to escape. As to the excessive number of people who claimed that they had been caricatured, the more of these the greater the tribute to my gifts of characterisation: it was valuable evidence which should elate rather than depress. He went on to say that one should be magnanimous about misplaced censure as the day was swiftly coming when it would be reversed. The future boast of my associates would be that they had known me. He implored me to remember that I wore the mantle of genius—a royal mantle which should never be lined with rancour. He said he hoped to see me in London whither he was soon returning. I would find my rightful place there. I was as out of my element in ‘Possum Gully as a swan in the Sahara. “Your wings, my brave girl,” he concluded, “are fashioned for grand flight. Lift them up and soar, and if an old man who once knew the world overseas, to which you will soon gravitate, may venture a word of advice: think and wait, make no entanglements to cripple the power of long distance flight.”
He enclosed some English reviews. One of two columns in length compared my gifts with those of several immortals. The printed word was irrefutable, though I could not show the reviews abroad or I should be accused of blowing my own horn.
It was a stimulating letter. I brought it to Pa in triumph. It had been quite a heady day. Pa was more excited than I. “I knew, my girl! I knew!”
It seemed as if ‘Possum Gully might not have the last word about me. Aunt Jane had that: “It sounds as if poor Old Harris must be drinking more than ever.”
My balloon was pricked. Bang! BUNG! it went.