31. Mr M’Swat and I Have a Bust-up #2
I was often sleepless for more than forty-eight hours at a stretch, and cried through the nights until my eyes had black rings round them, which washing failed to remove.
The neighbours described me as ‘a sorrowful lookin’ delicate creetur’, that couldn’t larf to save her life’ — quite a different character to the girl who at Caddagat was continually chid for being a romp, a hoyden, a boisterous tomboy, a whirlwind, and for excessive laughter at anything and everything.
I got into such a state of nervousness that I would jump at the opening of a door or an unexpected footfall.
When cooling down, after having so vigorously delivered Mr M’Swat a piece of my mind, I felt that I owed him an apology.
According to his lights (and that is the only fair way of judging our fellows) he had acted in a kind of fatherly way.
I was a young girl under his charge, and he would have in a measure been responsible had I come to harm through going out in the night.
He had been good-natured, too, in offering to help things along by providing an eligible, and allowing us to ‘spoon’ under his surveillance.
That I was of temperament and aspirations that made his plans loathsome to me was no fault of his — only a heavy misfortune to myself. Yes; I had been in the wrong entirely.
With this idea in my head, sinking ankle-deep in the dust, and threading my way through the pigs and fowls which hung around the back door, I went in search of my master.
Mrs M’Swat was teaching Jimmy how to kill a sheep and dress it for use; while Lizer, who was nurse to the baby and spectator of the performance, was volubly and ungrammatically giving instructions in the art.
Peter and some of the younger children were away felling stringybark-trees for the sustenance of the sheep.
The fall of their axes and the murmur of the Murrumbidgee echoed faintly from the sunset.
They would be home presently and at tea; I reflected it would be ‘The old yeos looks terrible skinny, but the hoggets is fat yet. By crikey! They did go into the bushes. They chawed up stems and all — some as thick as a pencil.’
This information in that parlance had been given yesterday, the day before, would be given today, tomorrow, and the next day. It was the boss item on the conversational programme until further orders.
I had a pretty good idea where to find Mr M’Swat, as he had lately purchased a pair of stud rams, and was in the habit of admiring them for a couple of hours every evening.
I went to where they usually grazed, and there, as I expected, found Mr M’Swat, pipe in mouth, with glistening eyes, surveying his darlings.
‘Mr M’Swat, I have come to beg your pardon.’
‘That’s all right, me gu-r-r-r-l. I didn’t take no notice to anything ye might spit out in a rage.’
‘But I was not in a rage. I meant every word I said, but I want to apologize for the rude way in which I said it, as I had no right to speak so to my elders. And I want to tell you that you need not fear me running away with Peter, even supposing he should honour me with his affections, as I am engaged to another man.’
‘By dad, I’ll be hanged!’ he exclaimed, with nothing but curiosity on his wrinkled dried tobacco-leaf-looking face. He expressed no resentment on account of my behaviour to him.
‘Are ye to be married soon? Has he got any prawperty? Who is he? I suppose he’s respectable. Ye’re very young.’
‘Yes; he is renowned for respectability, but I am not going to marry him till I am twenty-one. He is poor, but has good prospects. You must promise me not to tell any one, as I wish it kept a secret, and only mention it to you so that you need not be disturbed about Peter.’
He assured me that he would keep the secret, and I knew I could rely on his word. He was greatly perturbed that my intended was poor.
‘Never ye marry a man widout a bit er prawperty, me gu-r-r-r-l. Take my advice — the divil’s in a poor match, no matter how good the man may be.
Don’t ye be in a hurry; ye’re personable enough in yer way, and there’s as good fish in the seas as ever come out of ’em.
Yer very small; I admire a good lump of a woman meself — but don’t ye lose heart.
I’ve heerd some men say they like little girls, but, as I said, I like a good lump of a woman myself. ’
‘And you’ve got a good lump of a squaw,’ I thought to myself.
Do not mistake me. I do not for an instant fancy myself above the M’Swats.
Quite the reverse; they are much superior to me.
Mr M’Swat was upright and clean in his morals, and in his little sphere was as sensible and kind a man as one could wish for.
Mrs M’Swat was faithful to him, contented and good-natured, and bore uncomplainingly, year after year, that most cruelly agonising of human duties — childbirth, and did more for her nation and her Maker than I will ever be noble enough to do.
But I could not help it that their life was warping my very soul. Nature fashions us all; we have no voice in the matter, and I could not change my organisation to one which would find sufficient sustenance in the mental atmosphere of Barney’s Gap.