Grif: A Story of Australian Life

by B. L. Farjeon

"All the better," he growled.

"Right you are!" she returned, recklessly. "I'm tired of my life. It's time I was dead! Look here, Flick; if you don't tell me where Jim is, I'll set the place about your ears."

"I don't know," he whined; "how should I know? What's the use of asking me where he is? I know nothing about him. He wrote me a letter, but you don't think he put his address in it, do you? You ought to know him better than that, Milly!"

"You miserable gray-head, ain't you afraid that your lies will choke you? Ain't you afraid of dying? What an old sinner you are! Do you ever think of the worms creeping over your ugly carcase, and gloating over you when you are in your grave? Do you ever think of the cold slimy earth falling on your face through the coffin, and sucking all the hope out of you, even after you are dead? Ain't you afraid when you think of it? I am! I am!" she exclaimed, with a shuddering shriek; "or I should have killed myself long ago!"

The drunken old man's face twitched with terror as she spoke these dreadful words, and he whined piteously, "Don't, Milly, there's a good girl. Talk of something pleasant."

"I haven't the courage to do it," she continued, in a musing tone, not heeding his remonstrance. "I have thought of it often--have dreamt of it often. I have woke up in the night and seen it looking at me, from the foot of the bed--my thought that seemed to be all eyes, and no shape. It speaks to me, and I can never hear it; it clings about me, and I can never feel it. It takes me through the dark streets to the water side, and I look down and see the stars bidding me come--I see the shadows of the trees moving about at the bottom--and then and then," she said, shudderingly, "I see myself lying in the mud, and things crawling over me--and I run away, I run away!"

Old Flick moved nearer to the wall, and regarded her with cowardly fear.

"If I wasn't afraid of that," she continued, "I should have been out of the world long before now. I bought some poison one day, and was very near taking it. But I got such a fit of shaking all at once, that I threw it on the floor, and stamped on it, and ran away, mad with fright. Did you ever try to take poison, Flick? Pour it in a glass, and look at it for a moment, and you see a lot of devils glaring at you and clutching at you, and you feel a lot of creeping things dancing in your brain, and stirring in your hair, and tingling at your fingers' ends!"

Old Flick shook with fear now, and not with ague. "Don't talk like that, Milly," he cried again, looking fearsomely about him; "do talk of something pleasant."

"Something pleasant!" Milly exclaimed. "What have I got pleasant to talk about? I wish the sun would burst through the ceiling, and strike me dead, and so put an end to it!" and she threw her hair from her face, and looked up wildly. "Do you know, Flick, I think something is going to happen to me! My head is whirling about strangely. I've an old father and mother at home, and I've been thinking of them at odd times, all the day. Father is an old man--a basket-maker--and I can see him as plainly as I see you, sitting down in our little room, weaving the canes, and thinking of me. Yes, I can see him thinking of me. He used to stroke my hair and my face, and call me his pretty Milly. Pretty Milly! That's what they called me at home. I was pretty--I had the prettiest hands!"--she put them close to her eyes, with a caressing motion, and hid her face in them. "I can see father with my eyes shut. He weaves the canes in the back room, sitting by the window. There is the little garden outside, and the two pots of mignonette on the window-sill. And there's the speckled hen that used to eat out of my hand. There is the picture of me on the wall, over the mantel-shelf, with my hair all in curls. Father is smiling at it. And now--now it is raining, and what do you think he is doing? He is looking at me, and crying, and I am lying dead in a basket cradle, with flowers all about me!" (She stood silent for a little while, with her face still buried in her hands, as if she could see the picture she had described.) "He was too fond of me, father was; he was so fond of me that he didn't look after me properly; he used to let me do as I liked."