CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Mr M’Swat and I Have a Bust-up

Men only, and they merely on business, came to Barney’s Gap—­women tabooed the place.  Some of them told me they would come to see me, but not Mrs M’Swat, as she always allowed the children to be as rude to them as they pleased.  With the few individuals who chanced to come M’Swat would sit down, light his pipe, and vulgarly and profusely expectorate on the floor, while they yarned and yarned for hours and hours about the price of wool, the probable breeding capacity of the male stock they kept, and of the want of grass—­never a word about their country’s politics or the events of the day; even the news of the “Mountain Murders” by Butler had not penetrated here.  I wondered if they were acquainted with the names of their Governor and Prime Minister.

It was not the poor food and the filthy way of preparing it that worried me, or that Mr M’Swat used “damn” on an average twice in five minutes when conversing, or that the children for ever nagged about my father’s poverty and tormented me in a thousand other ways—­it was the dead monotony that was killing me.

I longed feveredly for something to happen.  Agony is a tame word wherewith to express what that life meant to me.  Solitary confinement to a gipsy would be something on a par.

Every night unfailingly when at home M’Swat sat in the bosom of his family and speculated as to how much richer he was than his neighbours, what old Recce lived on, and who had the best breed of sheep and who was the smartest at counting these animals, until the sordidness of it turned me dizzy, and I would steal out under the stars to try and cool my heated spirit.  This became a practice with me, and every night I would slip away out of hearing of the household to sing the songs I had heard at Caddagat, and in imagination to relive every day and hour there, till the thing became too much for me, and I was scarcely responsible for my actions.  Often I knelt on the parched ground beneath the balmy summer sky to pray—­wild passionate prayers that were never answered.

I was under the impression that my nightly ramble was not specially noticed by any one, but I was mistaken.  Mr M’Swat, it appears, suspected me of having a lover, but was never able to catch me red-handed.

The possibility of a girl going out at night to gaze at the stars and dream was as improbable a thought for him as flying is to me, and having no soul above mud, had I attempted an explanation he would have considered me mad, and dangerous to have about the place.

Peter, junior, had a sweetheart, one Susie Duffy, who lived some miles on the other side of the Murrumbidgee.  He was in the habit of courting her every Sunday and two or three nights during the week, and I often heard the clang of his stirrup-irons and the clink of hobble-chain when he returned late; but on one occasion I stayed out later than usual, and he passed me going home.  I stood still and he did not see me, but his horse shied violently.  I thought he would imagine I was a ghost, so called out: