A tiny incident, however, which happened when Missy had been some five or six weeks at the farm, told her more than Arabella had done, directly or indirectly, in any of their conversations. The girls were in the room with Mr. Teesdale, who was looking on the chimney-piece for a lost letter, when he exclaimed suddenly:
“What’s got that meerschaum pipe, Arabella?”
“Which one was that, father?” was the only answer, in a suspiciously innocent voice.
“The one I picked up by our slip-rails the night I took Missy back to Melbourne. It belonged to you man I told you I met on the road. I was saving it in case I ever set eyes on him again.”
“Oh, that one!” cried Arabella; then, after a pause, she added, with a nonchalance which Missy for one admired: “I gave it back to him the other day.”
“To whom?”
“Why, the man that lost it.”
“You gave it back — to the man that lost it?” cried David, in the greatest surprise, while Missy became buried in the Argus of that morning. “Dear me, where have you seen him, honey?”
“In the township.”
“In the township, eh? Now what sort of a man was it that you saw in the township? Tell me what he was like.”
“Like? Oh, he had — let’s see — he had very dark eyes; oh, yes, and a dark moustache and all; and he was very — well, rather handsome, I thought him.”
“Ay, that’s near enough,” said Mr. Teesdale, greatly puzzled; “quite near enough to satisfy me that he’s the same man; but how in the world did you know that he was? That’s what I can’t make out!”
“Why, he told me himself, to be sure!”
“Ay, but how came he to speak to you at all? That’s what I want to know.”
“Then I’m sure I can’t tell you,” said Arabella, with a toss of her head, not badly done. “I suppose he saw where I came from, and I dare say he’d been leaning again’ our slip-rails that night he lost his pipe. Anyhow, he asked me whether I’d found one, and I said you had, and he described the one he’d lost, and I knew that must be it. So I came back and got it for him. That was all.”
Mr. Teesdale seemed just a little put out. “I wonder you didn’t say anything about it at the time, my dear,” said he, in mild remonstrance.
“Me? Why, I never thought any more of it,” the young woman said, with a slightly superfluous laugh. “I — you see that was the first and last I’d seen of him,” added Arabella, as if to end the discussion; but her father had not finished his say.
“I’m glad it was the last, however — I am glad o’ that!” he exclaimed with unusual energy. “Why? Because, my dear, little as I saw of him, I didn’t like the cut of that man’s jib. No,” said Mr. Teesdale, letting his eyes travel through the window to the river-timber, and shaking his head decidedly, as he sat down in his accustomed seat; “no, I didn’t like it at all; and very sorry I should have been to think a man of that stamp was coming here after our Mary Jane!”
And Missy said never a word; but neither word, look nor tone had escaped her.
Her eyes were very wide open now. Arabella went out more evenings than one, but never, it appeared, on two consecutive evenings; so the man was not living in the district. And Missy said so much the worse; he was not merely passing his time. To clinch matters, the unhappy girl began to hang out signs of sleepless nights and perpetual nervous preoccupation by day; signs which Missy alone interpreted aright.
At length, a little before Christmas, there came a night when Arabella kissed them all round and went off to her room much earlier than usual. And the fever in her eyes and lips was noted by Missy, and by Missy alone.
It was a night of stars only. The moon by which Missy had killed her one native cat, and nursed an infant opossum, had waxed and waned. The night, when Mr. Teesdale took a breath of it last thing, looked black as soot. Twenty minutes later, the farmhouse was in utter darkness; not a single ray from a single window; and so it remained for nearly two hours.
Then suddenly a light shone in the parlour for a single instant only. The outer door of the little gun-room was now opened, as noiselessly as might be, and shut again, hairbreadth by hairbreadth. The odd thing was, that this happened not once, but twice within five minutes. And each time it was a woman’s figure that stood up under the stars, and then stole forth into the night.
There were two of them; and while the first went swiftly in a given direction (towards the timbered gully), the second made a quick circuit of the premises, and, as it happened, intercepted the first among the trees as though she had been lying in wait there for hours. Then it was “O Missy!” and Arabella uttered a stifled, terrified scream.
“Yes, it’s Missy,” said that young woman soberly. “And I wonder what we’re doing out here at this time of night, both of us?”
“I’m having a walk,” said Arabella, giggling half hysterically.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing; so we can walk together.”
“You’ve followed me out, you mean liar!” cried Arabella, with wholly hysterical wrath. She had, indeed, been for pushing forward after the first shock, but when Missy stepped out alongside there was nothing for it but a pitched battle on the spot.
“I have so,” said Missy. “I know all about it, you see.”
“All about what?”
“What you are after.”
“And what am I after, since you’re so mighty clever?”
“You’re meeting that man.”
“What man?” Arabella was quaking pitifully. “The man you’re always meeting; but to-night you meant to run away with him.”
“Spy!” said Arabella. “What makes you think that?”
“You have put on all your best things.”
“But what makes you think there is a man at all?”
“Oh, I saw that ages ago; though mind you, I have never seen him. It is the man with the meerschaum pipe, now isn’t it?”
Arabella’s first answer was a shaking fist. Next moment she was shaking all over, in a storm of tears during which Missy took hold of her with both arms, was thrown off, took a fresh hold, and was then suffered to keep it. At last she asked:
“Where were you to meet him, Arabella?”
The answer came with more sobs than words. “At the top corner of the Cultivation: the road corner: he is to wait there till I come.”
“Good!” said Missy. “That’s half a mile away, and where we are is out of hearing of the house. Not so sure, eh? Well, come a little further down the gully. That’s better! Now we’re safe as the bank, and you’ll stop and tell me something about him, won’t you, dear, before you go?”
Before she went! Could she ever go now? All the strength which this poor creature had imbibed from a man as masterful as the woman was weak — an imitative courage, never for a moment her honest own — had been rooted up easily enough from the soul where there was no soil for it, and was now as though it had never existed. Such nerve as she had summoned up was gone. Yes, she would stop and talk; that would be a relief. And Missy should hear all, all there was to tell; but this was very little, incredibly little indeed.
On that first evening, when Missy had come and gone, Arabella had taken a stroll by herself after supper; had been thinking more about the Family Cherub story, in which she was then engrossed, than of anything else that she could now remember; but it appeared her head had been full at the time of romantic stuff of one kind or another, so that when she came very suddenly upon a handsome stranger leaning over the slip-rails and smoking his pipe, it was readily revealed to Arabella that she had been waiting for that moment and that stranger all her life. She said as much now, in other words, but wasted time in unnecessary dilatation upon the man’s good looks before proceeding with her confession. He had spoken soft words to her in the soft night air. He had kissed her across the slip-rails. And Arabella had lived thirty years in her tiny corner of the world, but never before had she been kissed by the mouth of man not a Teesdale. Missy might stare as much as sh
e liked; it was the sacred truth, was that.
So much for the first meeting, which was a pure accident. There had been others which were nothing of the kind. Missy nodded, as much as to say she knew all about those other meetings, and hurried Arabella to the point. That the foolish girl knew less than nothing worth knowing about this man was only too evident; but it seemed his name was Stanborough. And to-morrow, said Arabella, with a sudden hauling at the slack of her nerves, this would be her name too.
Then she still meant to go?
Arabella fell to pieces again. She had promised. He was waiting. He would kill her if she broke her promise.
“Kill your grandmother!” said Missy. “Let him wait. Shall I tell you who’ll kill who if you do go?”
“Who?” said Arabella in a whisper.
“Why, you’ll kill your father, as sure as ever God made you, my girl.”
“But we should soon come back — and with money enough to help them here tremendously! He has promised that; and you don’t know how well off he is, Missy. Yes, yes, we should soon come back after we were married!”
“I dare say — after that,” said Missy dryly.
“Then you don’t think he — means—” —
“Of course he doesn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Never mind how I know. It’s enough that I do know, as sure as I’m standing under this tree. You’ve told me quite sufficient. I feel as if I knew your man as well as I’ve known two or three.
The brutes! And I tell you, ‘Bella, that if you go to him now, as you thought of doing, your life will be blasted from this night on. He will never marry you. He hasn’t gone the right way about that. No, but he’ll ruin you and leave you in your ruin; and when he does, may the Lord have mercy on your soul!”
She had said. And the extraordinary emotion which had gathered in her voice as she went on had the effect of taking Arabella out of herself even then.
“Missy,” she whispered—” Missy, you are crying! How can you know so much that is terrible? You seem to know all about it, Missy!”
“Never mind how much I know, or how I came to know it,” cried the other. “I know enough to want to save you from what some girls I’ve known have come to. To say nothing of saving your dear old father’s life. For kill him it would.”
Arabella had been marvelling; but now her own difficulty clutched her afresh.
“He will kill me if I don’t go to him. He has said so,” she moaned in her misery, “and he will.”
“Not he! He’s a coward. I feel as if I knew the beast — and precious soon I shall.”
Arabella started. “What do you mean?” said she.
“I mean that you’ve got to leave your friend to me. I’ll soon settle him.”
Missy spoke cheerily. Her new tone inspired confidence in the breast of Arabella, who whispered eagerly, “How can you? Ah, if you only could!”
“You would like it?”
“I should thank God! O Missy, I have been such a wicked, foolish girl, but you are so strong and brave! I shall love you for this all my life!”
“Will you? I wonder,” said Missy. “But never mind that now. Go you back to the house, and if I don’t come to your room in less than half an hour and tell you that I’ve sent Mr. Stanborough about his business—”
“Hush!” exclaimed the other in low alarm. “I hear him now. He is coming to look for me.”
It was a very faint sound, but terror had sharpened the girl’s ears. It was the sound of a walking-stick swishing the dry grass on the further slope of the gully. Missy heard it also when she bent her ear to listen, and the next moment she had her companion by the shoulders.
“Now run,” said she, “and run for your life. No, we’ve no time for any of that stuff now. Time enough to thank me when I come and tell you I’ve sent him to the right-about for good and all. Run quickly — keep behind the trees — and all will be well before you’re an hour older.”
And so they separated, Arabella hurrying upward to the farm, her heart drumming against her ribs, while Missy trudged down the hill at her full height, with a marble mouth, and both fists clenched.
CHAPTER IX.
FACE TO FACE.
FOR whatever else this wild girl may have been, she was obviously not a coward. That is the one thing to be said for Missy without any hesitation whatever. Alone, and in the night, she was going to pit herself against an unknown man, who was certainly a villain; yet on she went, with her chin in the air and her arms swinging free. The trees were thickest at the bottom of the low gully. The girl came through them with a brisk glance right and left, but never a lagging step. On the further slope the trees spread out again, and here, on comparatively open ground, she did stop, and suddenly. She could smell the man’s pipe in the sweet night air; the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
Missy filled her lungs slowly through her teeth, and emptied them with dilated nostrils. Then she went on, longing in her heart for a moon. In the starlight it was not possible to see clearly very many yards ahead. So far as she could see — and her eyes were good — there was no one in that paddock but herself. Yet a faint smell of tobacco still slightly fouled the air. And this was the very worst part of the whole business; it had brought Missy at last to a second stand-still, and to the determination of singing out, when, without warning sound, an arm was flung round her neck, soft words were being whispered in her ear, and Missy who was no coward felt the veins freezing in her body.
She flung herself free with a great effort, then reeled against the she-oak from behind which he had crept who now stood taking off his hat to her in the starlight. —
“I beg your pardon,” said a rich, suave voice in its suavest tones; “upon my word, I beg your pardon from the very bottom of my heart! I thought — I give you my word I thought you were another young lady altogether!”
Missy had recovered a measure of her customary self-control. “So I see — so I see,” she managed to say distinctly enough; but her voice was the voice of another person.
“Thank you, indeed! You are very generous,” said the man, raising his hat once more; “few women would have understood. The fact is, as I say, I took you for a certain young lady whom I quite expected to meet before this. Perhaps you have seen her, and could tell me where she is? For we have missed each other among these accursed gum-trees.”
The fellow’s impudence was good for Missy.
“Yes, I have seen her,” said she, as calmly as the other.
“And where may she be at this moment?”
“In her father’s house.”
The man stood twirling his moustache and showing the white teeth under it. Then he stuck in his mouth a meerschaum he had in his hand, and sucked silently at the pipe for some moments. “I beg your pardon once more; but I fear we are at cross-purposes,” said he presently. He had been considering.
“I don’t think it,” said Missy.
“And why not?” This with a smile.
“Because I have a message for you, Mr. Stanborough.”
“Ha!”
“A message from Arabella Teesdale,” said Missy, who had lowered her tone and drawn the other a pace nearer in his eagerness.
“And?” he asked; but he was made to wait. “Will you have the goodness to give me that message? Tell me what she says, can’t you?”
“Oh, certainly!” replied Missy, with a laugh. “I was to say that she had been very foolish, but has come to her senses in time; and that you will never see her any more, as she has thought better of it, and is done with you for good and all!”
There was a pause first, and then a short sardonic laugh.
“So you were to say all that! It isn’t the easiest thing in the world to take it in all at once. Do you mind saying some of it over again?”
“Once is enough. You’ve got your warning; it’s no good your coming after ‘Bella Teesdale no more. If you do, you look out for her brother, that’s all!”
“John William, eh
?” The man laughed again.
“Yes.”
“I know all about the family, you see. I know all about you too — in a way. I never knew you were ‘Bella’s keeper, I must admit. She merely told me you were a young English lady, of the name of Miss Miriam Oliver, who landed the other week in the Parramatta.”
“So I am,” said Missy, trembling violently. Her back was still to the good she-oak, but the man had come so close to her now that she could not have escaped him if she would.
“Now that’s very interesting,” he hissed, so that the moisture from his mouth struck her in the face. “If I’d been asked who you were, d’ye see, without first being told, d’ye know what I should have said? I should have said that the other week — just about the time the Parramatta came in — there was a certain member of the Bijou Chorus, who answered to the name of Ada Lefroy. And I should have said that Miss Miriam Oliver, of England, was so exactly the dead-spit of Miss Ada Lefroy, of the Bijou Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere, that they must be one and the same young lady. As it is, I’ll strike a light and see.” He struck one on the spot. Missy was staring at him with still eyes in a white face. He laughed softly, and used the match to relight his meerschaum pipe, which had gone out.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 56
