The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd

Author:Martin Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction classic
ISBN: 9781921961717
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

8

Alice’s joy on being reunited to her children at Westhill, according to her diary, exceeded any of the sufficiently strong emotions she experienced in London and Rome, but she makes two adverse comments, one: ‘The house seems very small and overcrowded. Sarah has got the furniture all cluttered in the wrong places.’ The other: ‘Mildred has developed a dreadful voice, whining and nasal. I asked Sarah why she had not corrected it, and she said an Australian little girl should speak like an Australian. I was very angry at such nonsense. The other children speak nicely. Sarah seems to have made a particular pet of Mildred and calls her Mildy.’ There are other hints that in spite of her pleasure at being back with her family she was depressed by her surroundings and suffered from dreadful bouts of nostalgia for Europe. Westhill, compared with the palaces of Rome and even the ordered dignity of Waterpark, must have struck her as a dingy place to call her home, especially after it had been subjected for eighteen months to Cousin Sarah’s genius for creating a drab and impoverished atmosphere. In those days, too, the surroundings of the house were more wild. The oak trees in the long avenue were little more than two rows of twigs, and made no impression on the landscape, and the European trees round the house were the same size. Only the thin drooping leaves of the gum trees, designed by the Almighty more to let the light through than to provide shade, were a scanty protection from the scorching January sun. Also at that time the furniture of the house must have been undistinguished. It had been bought when they moved in, and when they had not much money and were worried with the whole business of the move, complicated by the approaching birth of Mildred. Lady Langton retained any really good furniture and prints which Sir William had owned, and the eighteenth-century portraits and old chests from Waterpark which are here now, were not brought out till about thirty years later. It is even possible that there were not yet any wire blinds on the doors and windows, to keep out the flies, without which life here in the summer would be a nightmare.

Apparently it was more than Alice could stand, and they had not been there a week before she set about finding another house in Melbourne. Again she took one in East St Kilda, but in Alma Road, further away from the little colony formed by the Bynghams, Lady Langton and the Dells. Neither Austin nor Alice wanted to be too close to Hetty. They could not avoid meeting her occasionally, and so it was not possible to make a complete break. Alice was fond of the little ‘Dell’ boys. They had always been welcome at Westhill, and she could not suddenly deny her affection to children, and as they were Austin’s she had a vague feeling that she was responsible for them. They continued to come and play with their half-brothers in the house in Alma Road.

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