My Brilliant Career

“Boo, hoo! Ow, ow; Oh! oh! Me’ll die. Boo, hoo. The pain, the pain! Boo, hoo!”

“Come, come, now. Daddy’s little mate isn’t going to turn Turk like that, is she? I’ll put some fat out of the dinner-bag on it, and tie it up in my hanky. Don’t cry any more now. Hush, you must not cry! You’ll make old Dart buck if you kick up a row like that.”

That is my first recollection of life. I was barely three. I can remember the majestic gum-trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on their straight white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked stream, which disappeared beneath a steep scrubby hill on our left. It was an hour past noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant part of the run, where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left home early in the dewy morning, carrying me in front of him on a little brown pillow which my mother had made for the purpose. We had put the lumps of rock-salt in the troughs on the other side of the creek. The stringybark roof of the salt-shed which protected the troughs from rain peeped out picturesquely from the musk and peppercorn shrubs by which it was densely surrounded, and was visible from where we lunched. I refilled the quart-pot in which we had boiled our tea with water from the creek, father doused our fire out with it, and then tied the quart to the D of his saddle with a piece of green hide.

We were too overdone to make more than one-worded utterances, so waited silently in the blazing sun, closing our eyes against the dust.

Weariness! Weariness!

A few light wind-smitten clouds made wan streaks across the white sky, haggard with the fierce relentless glare of the afternoon sun. Weariness was written across my mother’s delicate careworn features, and found expression in my father’s knitted brows and dusty face. Blackshaw was weary, and said so, as he wiped the dust, made mud with perspiration, off his cheeks. I was weary⁠—my limbs ached with the heat and work. The poor beast stretched at our feet was weary. All nature was weary, and seemed to sing a dirge to that effect in the furnace-breath wind which roared among the trees on the low ranges at our back and smote the parched and thirsty ground. All were weary, all but the sun. He seemed to glory in his power, relentless and untiring, as he swung boldly in the sky, triumphantly leering down upon his helpless victims.

Weariness! Weariness!

This was life⁠—my life⁠—my career, my brilliant career! I was fifteen⁠—fifteen! A few fleeting hours and I would be old as those around me. I looked at them as they stood there, weary, and turning down the other side of the hill of life. When young, no doubt they had hoped for, and dreamed of, better things⁠—had even known them. But here they were. This had been their life; this was their career. It was, and in all probability would be, mine too. My life⁠—my career⁠—my brilliant career!

“Well, you are not a bit like Mrs. Bossier or Mrs. Bell; they are both so good-looking,” he continued.

“Indeed!”

“I was disappointed when I saw you had no pretensions to prettiness, as there’s not a girl up these parts worth wasting a man’s affections on, and I was building great hopes on you. But I’m a great admirer of beauty,” he twaddled.

“I am very sorry for you, Mr. Hawden. I’m sure it would take quite a paragon to be worthy of such affection as I’m sure yours would be,” I replied sympathetically.

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. You’re not a bad sort, and think a fellow could have great fun with you.”

“I’m sure, Mr. Hawden, you do me too much honour. It quite exhilarates me to think that I meet with your approval in the smallest degree,” I replied with the utmost deference. “You are so gentlemanly and nice that I was alarmed at first lest you might despise me altogether.”

“No fear. You needn’t be afraid of me; I’m not a bad sort of fellow,” he replied with the greatest encouragement.

Holding a number of lemons in my skirt, I was making a most ungraceful descent, when I heard an unknown footstep approaching towards my back.

People came to Caddagat at all hours of the day, so I was not in the least disconcerted. Only a tramp, an agent, or a hawker, I bet, I thought, as I reached my big boot down for another rung of the ladder without turning my head to see whom it might be.

A pair of strong brown hands encircled my waist, I was tossed up a foot or so and then deposited lightly on the ground, a masculine voice saying, “You’re a mighty well-shaped young filly⁠—‘a waist rather small, but a quarter superb.’ ”

“How dare anyone speak to me like that,” I thought, as I faced about to see who was parodying Gordon. There stood a man I had never before set eyes on, smiling mischievously at me. He was a young man⁠—a very young man, a bushman tremendously tall and big and sunburnt, with an open pleasant face and chestnut moustache⁠—not at all an awe-inspiring fellow, in spite of his unusual, though well-proportioned and carried, height. I knew it must be Harold Beecham, of Five-Bob Downs, as I had heard he stood six feet three and a half in his socks.

I hurriedly let down my dress, the lemons rolling in a dozen directions, and turned to flee, but that well-formed figure bounded before me with the agility of a cat and barred my way.

“Now, not a step do you go, my fine young blood, until you pick up every jolly lemon and put them away tidily, or I’ll tell the missus on you as sure as eggs.”

“It is no use of me making a long yarn about nothing. I’m sure you know what I want to say better than I do myself. You always are wonderfully smart at seeing through a fellow. Tell me, will it be yes or no?”

This was an experience in love. He did not turn red or white, or yellow or green, nor did he tremble or stammer, or cry or laugh, or become fierce or passionate, or tender or anything but just himself, as I had always known him. He displayed no more emotion than had he been inviting me to a picnic. This was not as I had pictured a man would tell his love, or as I had read of it, heard of it, or wished it should be. A curious feeling⁠—disappointment, perhaps⁠—stole over me. His matter-of-fact coolness flabbergasted me.

“Is this not rather sudden? You have given me no intimation of your intentions,” I stammered.

“I didn’t think it wise to dawdle any longer,” he replied. “Surely you have known what I’ve been driving at ever since I first clapped eyes on you. There’s plenty of time. I don’t want to hurry you, only I want you to be engaged to me for safety.”

He spoke as usual in his slow twangy drawl, which would have proclaimed his Colonial nationality anywhere. No word of love was uttered to me and none requested from me.