My Brilliant Career

by Miles Franklin

  “Yes, I am queer. If you had any sense, you’d have nothing to do with me. I’m more queer, too. I am given to something which a man never pardons in a woman. You will draw away as though I were a snake when you hear.”

  “What is it?”

  “I am given to writing stories, and literary people predict I will yet be an authoress.”

  He laughed—his soft, rich laugh. “That’s just into my hand. I’d rather work all day than write the shortest letter; so if you will give me a hand occasionally, you can write as many yarns as you like. I’ll give you a study, and send for a truckload of writing gear at once, if you like. Is that the only horror you had to tell me?”

  I bowed my head.

  “Well, I can have you now,” he said gently, folding me softly in his arms with such tender reverence that I cried out in pain, “Oh, Hal, don’t, don’t!” and struggled free. I was ashamed, knowing I was not worthy of this.

  He flushed a dusky red. “Am I so hateful to you that you cannot bear my touch?” he asked half wistfully, half angrily.

  “Oh no; it isn’t that. I’m really very fond of you, if you’d only understand,” I said half to myself.

  “Understand! If you care for me, that is all I want to understand. I love you, and have plenty of money. There is nothing to keep us apart. Now that I know you care for me, I will have you, in spite of the devil.”

  “There will be a great tussle between you,” I said mischievously, laughing at him. “Old Nick has a great hold on me, and I’m sure he will dispute your right.”

  At any time Harold’s sense of humor was not at all in accordance with his size, and he failed to see how my remark applied now.

  He gripped my hands in a passion of pleading, as two years previously he had seized me in jealous rage. He drew me to him. His eyes were dark and full of entreaty; his voice was husky. “Syb, poor little Syb, I will be good to you! You can have what you like. You don’t know what you mean when you say no.”

  No; I would not yield. He offered me everything—but control. He was a man who meant all he said. His were no idle promises on the spur of the moment. But no, no, no, no, he was not for me. My love must know, must have suffered, must understand.

  “Syb, you do not answer. May I call you mine? You must, you must, you must!”

  His hot breath was upon my cheek. The pleasant, open, manly countenance was very near—perilously near. The intoxication of his love was overpowering me. I had no hesitation about trusting him. He was not distasteful to me in any way. What was the good of waiting for that other—the man who had suffered, who knew, who understood? I might never find him; and, if I did, ninety-nine chances to one he would not care for me.

  “Syb, Syb, can’t you love me just a little?”

  There was a winning charm in his manner. Nature had endowed him liberally with virile fascination. My hard, uncongenial life had rendered me weak. He was drawing me to him; he was irresistible. Yes; I would be his wife. I grew dizzy, and turned my head sharply backward and took a long, gasping breath, another and another, of that fresh cool air suggestive of the grand old sea and creak of cordage and bustle and strife of life. My old spirit revived, and my momentary weakness fled. There was another to think of than myself, and that was Harold. Under a master hand I would be harmless; but to this man I would be as a two-edged sword in the hand of a novice—gashing his fingers at every turn, and eventually stabbing his honest heart.

  It was impossible to make him see my refusal was for his good. He was as a favorite child pleading for a dangerous toy. I desired to gratify him, but the awful responsibility of the aftereffects loomed up and deterred me.

  “Hal, it can never be.”

  He dropped my hands and drew himself up.

  “I will not take your no till the morning. Why do you refuse me? Is it my temper? You need not be afraid of that. I don’t think I’d hurt you; and I don’t drink, or smoke, or swear very much; and I’ve never destroyed a woman’s name. I would not stoop to press you against your will if you were like the ordinary run of women; but you are such a queer little party, that I’m afraid you might be boggling at some funny little point that could easily be wiped out.”

  “Yes; it is only a little point. But if you wipe it out you will knock the end out of the whole thing—for the point is myself. I would not suit you. It would not be wise for you to marry me.”

  “But I’m the only person concerned. If you are not afraid for yourself, I am quite satisfied.”

  We faced about and walked homeward in unbroken silence—too perturbed to fall into our usual custom of chewing bush leaves as we went.

  I thought much that night when all the house was abed. It was tempting. Harold would be good to me, and would lift me from this life of poverty, which I hated, to one of ease. Should I elect to remain where I was, till the grave there was nothing before me but the life I was leading now: my only chance of getting above it was by marriage, and Harold Beecham’s offer was the one chance of a lifetime. Perhaps he could manage me well enough. Yes; I had better marry him.

  And I believe in marriage—that is, I think it the most sensible and respectable arrangement for the replenishing of a nation which has yet been suggested. But marriage is a solemn issue of life. I was as suited for matrimony as any of the sex, but only with an exceptional helpmeet—and Harold was not he. My latent womanliness arose and pointed this out so plainly that I seized my pen and wrote:

  Dear Harold,

  I will not get a chance of speaking to you in the morning, so write. Never mention marriage to me again. I have firmly made up my mind—it must be No. It will always be a comfort to me in the years to come to know that I was loved once, if only for a few hours. It is not that I do not care for you, as I like you better than any man I have ever seen; but I do not mean ever to marry. When you lost your fortune I was willing to accede to your request, as I thought you wanted me; but now that you are rich again you will not need me. I am not good enough to be your wife, for you are a good man; and better, because you do not know you are good. You may feel uncomfortable or lonely for a little while, because, when you make up your mind, you are not easily thwarted; but you will find that your fancy for me will soon pass. It is only a fancy, Hal. Take a look in the glass, and you will see reflected there the figure of a stalwart man who is purely virile, possessing not the slightest attribute of the weaker sex, therefore your love is merely a passing flame. I do not impute fickleness to you, but merely point out a masculine characteristic, and that you are a man, and only a man, pure and unadulterated. Look around, and from the numbers of good women to be found on every side choose one who will make you a fitter helpmeet, a more conventional comrade, than I could ever do. I thank you for the inestimable honor you have conferred upon me; but keep it till you find someone worthy of it, and by and by you will be glad that I have set you free.

  Good-bye, Hal!

  Your sincere and affec. friend, Sybylla Penelope Melvyn.

  Then I crept into bed beside my little sister, and though the air inside had not cooled, and the room was warm, I shivered so that I clasped the chubby, golden-haired little sleeper in my arms that I might feel something living and real and warm.

  “Oh, Rory, Rory!” I whispered, raining upon her lonely-hearted tears. “In all the world is there never a comrade strong and true to teach me the meaning of this hollow, grim little tragedy—life? Will it always be this ghastly aloneness? Why am I not good and pretty and simple like other girls? Oh, Rory, Rory, why was I ever born? I am of no use or pleasure to anyone in all the world!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  He That Despiseth Little Things, Shall Fall Little by Little

  I

  The morning came, breakfast, next Harold’s departure. I shook my head and slipped the note into his hand as we parted. He rode slowly down the road. I sat on the step of the garden gate, buried my face in my hands, and reviewed the situation. I could see my life, stretching out ahead of me, barren and monotonous as the
thirsty track along which Harold was disappearing. Today it was washing, ironing tomorrow, next day baking, after that scrubbing—thus on and on. We would occasionally see a neighbor or a tea agent, a tramp or an Assyrian hawker. By hard slogging against flood, fire, drought, pests, stock diseases, and the sweating occasioned by importation, we could manage to keep bread in our mouths. By training and education I was fitted for naught but what I was, or a general slavey, which was many degrees worse. I could take my choice. Life was too much for me. What was the end of it, what its meaning, aim, hope, or use?

  In comparison to millions, I knew that I had received more than a fair share of the goods of life; but knowing another has leprosy makes our cancer none the easier to bear.

  My mother’s voice, sharp and cross, roused me. “Sybylla, you lazy, unprincipled girl, to sit scheming there while your poor old mother is at the wash tub. You sit idling there, and then by and by you’ll be groaning about this terrible life in which there’s time for nothing but work.”

  How she fussed and bothered over the clothes was a marvel to me. My frame of mind was such that it seemed it would not signify if all our clothes went to the dogs, and the clothes of our neighbors, and the clothes of the whole world, and the world itself for the matter of that.

  “Sybylla, you are a dirty, careless washer. You’ve put Stanley’s trousers in the boil and the color is coming out of them, and your father’s best white handkerchief should have been with the first lot, and here it is now.”

  Poor Mother got crosser as she grew weary with the fierce heat and arduous toil, and as I in my abstraction continued to make mistakes, but the last straw was the breaking of an old cup which I accidentally pushed off the table.

  I got it hot. Had I committed an act of premeditated villainy I could not have received more lecturing. I deserved it—I was careless, cups were scarce with us, and we could not afford more; but what I rail against is the grindingly uneventful narrowness of the life in which the unintentional breaking of a common cup is good for a long scolding.

  Ah, my mother! In my life of nineteen years I can look back and see a time when she was all gentleness and refinement, but the polish has been worn off it by years and years of scrubbing and scratching, and washing and patching, and poverty and husbandly neglect, and the bearing of burdens too heavy for delicate shoulders. Would that we were more companionable, it would make many an oasis in the desert of our lives. Oh that I could take an all-absorbing interest in patterns and recipes, bargains and orthodoxy! Oh that you could understand my desire to feel the rolling billows of the ocean beneath, to hear the pealing of a great organ through dimly lit arches, or the sob and wail of a violin in a brilliant crowded hall, to be swept on by the human stream.

  Ah, thou cruel fiend—Ambition! Desire!

  Soul of the leaping flame, Heart of the scarlet fire, Spirit that hath for name Only the name—Desire!

  To hot young hearts beating passionately in strong breasts, the sweetest thing is motion.

  No, that part of me went beyond my mother’s understanding. On the other hand, there was a part of my mother—her brave cheerfulness, her trust in God, her heroic struggle to keep the home together—which went soaring on beyond my understanding, leaving me a coward-weakling, grovelling in the dust.

  Would that hot dreary day never close? What advantage when it did? The next and the next and many weeks of others just the same were following hard after.

  If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which naught but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin pot.

  Why do I write? For what does anyone write? Shall I get a hearing? If so—what then?

  I have voiced the things around me, the small-minded thoughts, the sodden round of grinding tasks—a monotonous, purposeless, needless existence. But patience, O heart, surely I can make a purpose! For the present, of my family I am the most suited to wait about common public-houses to look after my father when he is inebriated. It breaks my mother’s heart to do it; it is dangerous for my brothers; imagine Gertie in such a position! But me it does not injure; I have the faculty for doing that sort of thing without coming to harm, and if it makes me more bitter and godless, well, what matter?

  II

  The next letter I received from Gertie contained:

  Suppose you were glad to see Harry. He did not tell me he was going, or I would have sent some things by him. I thought he would be able to tell me lots about you that I was dying to hear, but he never said a word, only that you were all well. He went traveling some weeks ago. I missed him at first because he used to be so kind to me; but now I don’t, because Mr. Creyton, whom Harry left to manage Five-Bob, comes just as often as Harry used to, and is lots funnier. He brings me something nice every time. Uncle Jay-Jay teases me about him.

  Happy, butterfly-natured Gertie! I envied her. With Gertie’s letter came also one from Grannie, with further mention of Harold Beecham.

  We don’t know what to make of Harold Beecham. He was always such a steady fellow, and hated to go away from home even for a short time, but now he has taken an idea to rush away to America, and is not coming home till he has gone over the world. He is not going to see anything, because by cablegrams his aunts got he is one place today and hundreds of miles away tomorrow. It is some craze he has suddenly taken. I was asking Augusta if there was ever any lunacy in the family, and she says not that she knows of. It was a very unwise act to leave full management to Creyton and Benson in the face of such a drought. One warning and marvelous escape such as he has had ought to be enough for a man with any sense. I told him he’d be poor again if he didn’t take care, but he said he didn’t mind if all his property was blown into atoms, as it had done him more harm than good, whatever he means by talking that way. Insanity is the only reason I can see for his conduct. I thought he had his eye on Gertie, but I questioned her, and it appears he has never said anything to her. I wonder what was his motive for going to Possum Gully that time?

  Travel was indeed an unexpected development on the part of Harold Beecham. He had such a marked aversion to anything of that sort, and never went even to Sydney or Melbourne for more than a few days at a stretch, and that on business or at a time of stock shows.

  There were many conjectures re the motive of his visit to Possum Gully, but I held my peace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  A Tale That Is Told and a Day That Is Done

  There are others toiling and straining

  ’Neath burdens graver than mine;

  They are weary, yet uncomplaining,—

  I know it, yet I repine:

  I know it, how time will ravage,

  How time will level, and yet

  I long with a longing savage,

  I regret with a fierce regret.

  A. L. GORDON. Possum Gully, 25th March, 1899

  Christmas, only distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of homemade beer, has been once more; New Year, ushered in with sweet-scented midsummer wattle and bloom of gum and box tree has gone; February has followed, March is doing likewise, and my life is still the same.

  What the future holds I know not, and am tonight so weary that I do not care.

  Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not the thing we planned it out, ere hope was dead; And then, we women cannot choose our lot.

  Time is thorough in his work, and as that arch-cheat, Hope, gradually becomes a phantom of the past, the neck will grow inured to its yoke.

  Tonight is one of the times when the littleness—the abject littleness—of all things in life comes home to me.

  After all, what is there in vain ambition? King or slave, we all must die, and when death knocks at ou
r door, will it matter whether our life has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true—true with the truth that will bring rest to the soul?

  But the toughest lives are brittle, and the bravest and the best lightly fall—it matters little; Now I only long for rest.

  To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing is rest.

  And my heart is weary. Oh, how it aches tonight—not with the ache of a young heart passionately crying out for battle, but with the slow, dead ache of an old heart returning vanquished and defeated!

  Enough of pessimistic snarling and grumbling! Enough! Enough! Now for a lilt of another theme:

  I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the bloodsuckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls.

  Ah, my sunburnt brothers!—sons of toil and of Australia! I love and respect you well, for you are brave and good and true. I have seen not only those of you with youth and hope strong in your veins, but those with pathetic streaks of gray in your hair, large families to support, and with half a century sitting upon your work-laden shoulders. I have seen you struggle uncomplainingly against flood, fire, disease in stock, pests, drought, trade depression, and sickness, and yet have time to extend your hands and hearts in true sympathy to a brother in misfortune, and spirits to laugh and joke and be cheerful.

  And for my sisters a great love and pity fills my heart. Daughters of toil, who scrub and wash and mend and cook, who are dressmakers, paperhangers, milkmaids, gardeners, and candle-makers all in one, and yet have time to be cheerful and tasty in your homes, and make the best of the few oases to be found along the narrow, dusty track of your existence. Would that I were more worthy to be one of you—more a typical Australian peasant—cheerful, honest, brave!