My Brilliant Career

by Miles Franklin

  The other side of the letter—the part which gave me joy—was the prospect of going to Caddagat.

  Caddagat, the place where I was born! Caddagat, whereat, enfolded in grandmotherly love and the petting which accrued therefrom, I spent some of my few sweet, childish days. Caddagat, the place my heart fondly enshrines as home. Caddagat, draped by nature in a dream of beauty. Caddagat, Caddagat! Caddagat for me, Caddagat forever! I say.

  Too engrossed with my thoughts to feel the cold of the dull winter day, I remained in my position against the wattle tree until Gertie came to inform me that tea was ready.

  “You know, Sybylla, it was your turn to get the tea ready; but I set the table to save you from getting into a row. Mother was looking for you, and said she supposed you were in one of your tantrums again.”

  Pretty little peacemaker! She often did things like that for me.

  “Very well, Gertie, thank you. I will set it two evenings running to make up for it—if I’m here.”

  “If you are here! What do you mean?”

  “I am going away,” I replied, watching her narrowly to see if she cared, for I was very hungry for love.

  “Going to run away because Mother is always scolding you?”

  “No, you little silly! I’m going up to Caddagat to live with Grannie.”

  “Always?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honor bright?”

  “Yes; really and truly and honor bright.”

  “Won’t you ever come back again?”

  “I don’t know about never coming back again; but I’m going up for always, as far as a person can lay out ahead of her. Do you care?”

  Yes, she cared. The childish mouth quivered, the pretty blue-eyed face fell, the ready tears flowed fast. I noticed every detail with savage comfort. It was more than I deserved, for, though I loved her passionately, I had ever been too much wrapped in self to have been very kind and lovable to her.

  “Who will tell me stories now?”

  It was a habit of mine to relate stories to her out of my own fertile imagination. In return for this she kept secret the fact that I sat up and wrote when I should have been in bed. I was obliged to take some means of inducing her to keep silence, as she—even Gertie, who firmly believed in me—on waking once or twice at unearthly hours and discovering me in pursuit of my nightly task, had been so alarmed for my sanity that I had the greatest work to prevent her from yelling to Father and Mother on the spot. But I bound her to secrecy, and took a strange delight in bringing to her face with my stories the laughter, the wide-eyed wonder, or the tears—just as my humor dictated.

  “You’ll easily get someone else to tell you stories.”

  “Not like yours. And who will take my part when Horace bullies me?”

  I pressed her to me. “Gertie, Gertie, promise me you will love me a little always, and never, never forget me. Promise me.”

  And with a weakly glint of winter sunshine turning her hair to gold, and with her head on my shoulder, Gertie promised—promised with the soluble promise of a butterfly-natured child.

  SELF-ANALYSIS:

  N.B.—This is dull and egotistical. Better skip it. That’s my advice—S. P. M.

  As a tiny child I was filled with dreams of the great things I was to do when grown-up. My ambition was as boundless as the mighty bush in which I have always lived. As I grew it dawned upon me that I was a girl—the makings of a woman! Only a girl—merely this and nothing more. It came home to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy. Familiarity made me used to this yoke; I recovered from the disappointment of being a girl, and was reconciled to that part of my fate. In fact, I found that being a girl was quite pleasant, until a hideous truth dawned upon me—I was ugly! That truth has embittered my whole existence. It gives me days and nights of agony. It is a sensitive sore that will never heal, a grim hobgoblin that naught can scare away. In conjunction with this brand of hell I developed a reputation of cleverness. Worse and worse! Girls! girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore a wish for happiness, homes, and husbands by and by, never develop a reputation of being clever. It will put you out of the matrimonial running as effectually as though it had been circulated that you had leprosy. So, if you feel that you are afflicted with more than ordinary intelligence, and especially if you are plain with it, hide your brains, cramp your mind, study to appear unintellectual—it is your only chance. Provided a woman is beautiful, allowance will be made for all her shortcomings. She can be unchaste, vapid, untruthful, flippant, heartless, and even clever; so long as she is fair to see, men will stand by her, and as men in this world are “the dog on top,” they are the power to truckle to. A plain woman will have nothing forgiven her. Her fate is such that the parents of uncomely female infants should be compelled to put them to death at their birth.

  The next unpleasant discovery I made in regard to myself was that I was woefully out of my sphere. I studied the girls of my age around me, and compared myself with them. We had been reared side-by-side. They had had equal advantages; some, indeed, had had greater. We all moved in the one little, dull world, but they were not only in their world, they were of it; I was not. Their daily tasks and their little pleasures provided sufficient oil for the lamp of their existence—mine demanded more than Possum Gully could supply. They were totally ignorant of the outside world. Patti, Melba, Irving, Terry, Kipling, Caine, Corelli, and even the name of Gladstone, were only names to them. Whether they were islands or racehorses they knew not and cared not. With me it was different. Where I obtained my information, unless it was born in me, I do not know. We took none but the local paper regularly, I saw few books, had the pleasure of conversing with an educated person from the higher walks of life about once in a twelvemonth, yet I knew of every celebrity in literature, art, music, and drama; their world was my world, and in fancy I lived with them. My parents discouraged me in that species of foolishness. They had been fond of literature and the higher arts, but now, having no use for them, had lost interest therein.

  I was discontented and restless, and longed unendurably to be out in the stream of life. “Action! Action! Give me action!” was my cry. My mother did her best with me according to her lights. She energetically preached at me. All the old saws and homilies were brought into requisition, but without avail. It was like using common nostrums on a disease which could be treated by none but a special physician.

  I was treated to a great deal of harping on that tiresome old string, “Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might.” It was daily dinned into my ears that the little things of life were the noblest, and that all the great people I mooned about said the same. I usually retorted to the effect that I was well aware that it was noble, and that I could write as good an essay on it as any philosopher. It was all very well for great people to point out the greatness of the little, empty, humdrum life. Why didn’t they adopt it themselves?

  The toad beneath the harrow knows exactly where each tooth point goes. The butterfly upon the road preaches contentment to the toad.

  I wasn’t anxious to patronize the dull kind of tame nobility of the toad; I longed for a few of the triumphs of the butterfly, decried though they are as hollow bubbles. I desired life while young enough to live, and quoted as my motto:

  Though the pitcher that goes to the sparkling rill

  Too oft gets broken at last,

  There are scores of others its place to fill

  When its earth to the earth is cast.

  Keep that pitcher at home, let it never roam,

  But lie like a useless clod;

  Yet sooner or later the hour will come

  When its chips are thrown to the sod.

  Is it wise, then, s
ay, in the waning day,

  When the vessel is crack’d and old,

  To cherish the battered potter’s clay

  As though it were virgin gold?

  Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf,

  Though prudent and sage you seem;

  Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf,

  And mine by the dazzling stream.

  I had sense sufficient to see the uselessness of attempting to be other than I was. In these days of fierce competition there was no chance for me—opportunity, not talent, was the main requisite. Fate had thought fit to deny me even one advantage or opportunity, thus I was helpless. I set to work to cut my coat according to my cloth. I manfully endeavored to squeeze my spirit into “that state of life into which it has pleased God to call me.” I crushed, compressed, and bruised, but as fast as I managed it on one side it burst out on another, and defied me to cram it into the narrow box of Possum Gully.

  The restless throbbings and burnings

  That hope unsatisfied brings,

  The weary longings and yearnings

  For the mystical better things,

  Are the sands on which is reflected

  The pitiless moving lake,

  Where the wanderer falls dejected,

  By a thirst he never can slake.

  In a vain endeavor to slake that cruel thirst my soul groped in strange dark places. It went out in quest of a god, and finding one not, grew weary.

  By the unknown way that the atmosphere of the higher life penetrated to me, so came a knowledge of the sin and sorrow abroad in the world—the cry of the millions oppressed, downtrodden, God-forsaken! The wheels of social mechanism needed readjusting—things were awry. Oh, that I might find a cure and give it to my fellows! I dizzied my brain with the problem; I was too much for myself. A man with these notions is a curse to himself, but a woman—pity help a woman of that description! She is not merely a creature out of her sphere, she is a creature without a sphere—a lonely being!

  Recognizing this, I turned and cursed God for casting upon me a burden greater than I could bear—cursed Him bitterly, and from within came a whisper that there was nothing there to curse. There was no God. I was an unbeliever. It was not that I sought after or desired atheism. I longed to be a Christian, and fought against unbelief. I asked the Christians around me for help. Unsophisticated fool! I might as well have announced that I was a harlot. My respectability vanished in one slap. Some said it was impossible to disbelieve in the existence of a God: I was only doing it for notoriety, and they washed their hands of me at once.

  Not believe in God! I was mad!

  If there really was a God, would they kindly tell me how to find Him?

  Pray! pray!

  I prayed, often and ardently, but ever came that heart-stilling whisper that there was nothing to pray to.

  Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand! Nothing to live for in life—no hope beyond the grave. It plunged me into fits of profound melancholy.

  Had my father occupied one of the fat positions of the land, no doubt as his daughter my life would have been so full of pleasant occupation and pleasure that I would not have developed the spirit which torments me now. Or had I a friend—one who knew, who had suffered and understood, one in whom I could lose myself, one on whom I could lean—I might have grown a nicer character. But in all the wide world there was not a soul to hold out a hand to me, and I said bitterly, “There is no good in the world.” In softer moods I said, “Ah, the tangle of it! Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have the power have not the heart.”

  Bad, like a too-strong opponent in a game of chess, is ever at the elbow of good to checkmate it like a weakly managed king.

  I am sadly lacking in self-reliance. I needed someone to help me over the rough spots in life, and finding them not, at the age of sixteen I was as rank a cynic and infidel as could be found in three days’ march.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Possum Gully Left Behind. Hurrah! Hurrah!

  If a Sydney man has friends residing at Goulburn, he says they are up the country. If a Goulburn man has friends at Yass, he says they are up the country. If a Yass man has friends at Young, he says they are up the country, and so on. Caddagat is “up the country.”

  Bound thither on the second Wednesday in August 1896, I bought a ticket at the Goulburn railway station, and at some time about one a.m. took my seat in a second-class carriage of the mail train on its way to Melbourne. I had three or four hours to travel in this train when I would have to change to a branch line for two hours longer. I was the only one from Goulburn in that carriage; all the other passengers had been in some time and were asleep. One or two opened their eyes strugglingly, stared glumly at the intruder, and then went to sleep again. The motion of the train was a joy to me, and sleep never entered my head. I stood up, and pressing my forehead to the cold windowpane, vainly attempted, through the inky blackness of the foggy night, to discern the objects which flew by.

  I was too full of pleasant anticipation of what was ahead of me to think of those I had left behind. I did not regret leaving Possum Gully. Quite the reverse; I felt inclined to wave my arms and yell for joy at being freed from it. Home! God forbid that my experiences at Possum Gully should form the only food for my reminiscences of home. I had practically grown up there, but my heart refused absolutely to regard it as home. I hated it then; I hate it now, with its narrowing, stagnant monotony. It has and had not provided me with one solitary fond remembrance—only with dreary, wing-clipping, mind-starving recollections. No, no; I was not leaving home behind, I was flying homeward now. Home, home to Caddagat, home to ferny gullies, to the sweet sad rush of many mountain waters, to the majesty of rugged Borgongs; home to dear old Grannie and Uncle and Aunt, to books, to music; refinement, company, pleasure, and the dear old homestead I love so well.

  All in good time I arrived at the end of my train journey, and was taken in charge by a big red-bearded man, who informed me he was the driver of the mail coach, and had received a letter from Mrs. Bossier, instructing him to take care of me. He informed me also that he was glad to do what he termed “that same,” and I would be as safe under his care as I would be in God’s pocket.

  My twenty-six miles’ coach drive was neither pleasant nor eventful. I was the only passenger, and so had my choice of seats. The weather being cold and wet, I preferred being inside the box and curled myself up on the seat, to be interrupted every two or three miles by the good-natured driver inquiring if I was “all serene.”

  At the Halfway House, where a change of the team of five horses was effected, I had a meal and a warm, and so tuned myself up for the remainder of the way. It got colder as we went on, and at two thirty p.m. I was not at all sorry to see the iron roofs of Gool-Gool township disclosing to my view. We first went to the post office, where the mail bags were delivered, and then returned and pulled rein in front of the Woolpack Hotel. A tall young gentleman in a mackintosh and cap, who had been standing on the veranda, stepped out on the street as the coach stopped, and lifting his cap and thrusting his head into the coach, inquired, “Which is Miss Melvyn?”

  Seeing I was the only occupant, he laughed the pleasantest of laughs, disclosing two wide rows of perfect teeth, and turning to the driver, said, “Is that your only passenger? I suppose it is Miss Melvyn?”

  “As I wasn’t present at her birth, I can’t swear, but I believe her to be that same, as sure as eggs is eggs,” he replied.

  My identity being thus established, the young gentleman with the greatest of courtesy assisted me to alight, ordered the hotel groom to stow my luggage in the Caddagat buggy, and harness the horses with all expedition. He then conducted me to the private parlor, where a friendly little barmaid had some refreshments on a tray awaiting me, and while warming my feet preparatory to eating I read the letter he had given me, which was addressed in my grandmother’s handwriting. In it she told me th
at she and my aunt were only just recovering from bad colds, and on account of the inclemency of the weather thought it unwise to come to town to meet me; but Frank Hawden, the jackeroo would take every care of me, settle the hotel bill, and tip the coach driver. Caddagat was twenty-four miles distant from Gool-Gool, and the latter part of the road was very hilly. It was already past three o’clock and, being rainy, the short winter afternoon would dose in earlier; so I swallowed my tea and cake with all expedition, so as not to delay Mr. Hawden, who was waiting to assist me into the buggy, where the groom was in charge of the horses in the yard. He struck up a conversation with me immediately.

  “Seeing your name on yer bags, an’ knowin’ you was belonging to the Bossiers, I ask if yer might be a daughter of Dick Melvyn, of Bruggabrong, out by Timlinbilly.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, miss, please remember me most kindly to yer pa; he was a good boss was Dick Melvyn. I hope he’s doin’ well. I’m Billy Haizelip, brother to Mary and Jane. You remember Jane, I s’pose, miss?”

  I hadn’t time to say more than promise to send his remembrances to my father, for Mr. Hawden, saying we would be in the dark, had whipped his horses and was bowling off at a great pace, in less than two minutes covering a rise which put Gool-Gool out of sight. It was raining a little, so I held over us the big umbrella, which Grannie had sent, while we discussed the weather, to the effect that rain was badly needed and was a great novelty nowadays, and it was to be hoped it would continue. There had been but little, but the soil here away was of that rich, loamy description which little water turns to mud. It clogged the wheels and loaded the break blocks; and the nearside horse had a nasty way of throwing his front feet so that he deposited soft red lumps of mud in our laps at every step. But despite these trifling drawbacks, it was delightful to be drawn without effort by a pair of fat horses in splendid harness. It was a great contrast to our poor, skinny old horse at home, crawling along in much-broken harness, clumsily and much mended with string and bits of hide.