“Well, if this doesn’t lick creation!” he murmured, nodding his head very slowly, to look the girl up and down. “To think that I should have missed you from the town and found you in the country! The swell young lady from Home! Good Lord, it’s too rich to be true.”
Missy opened her lips that had been fast, and under that she-oak her language would have surprised the Teesdales.
“Come, this is more like,” said the other clapping his hands in mock approval. “Now you’ll feel better, eh? And now you’ll tell me how you worked it, I’m sure.”
Missy said what she would do instead.
“Then I must just tell myself. Let’s see now: your father — ha! ha! — was old Teesdale’s old friend, and luckily for you he’d warned them his daughter was something out of the common. That was luck! And you were out of the common! Hasn’t ‘Bella told me the things you said and did, till I was sick and tired? Faith, I’d have listened better if I’d dreamt it was you! I remember her saying you brought a letter of introduction, however; and that you must have stole, my beauty!”
Missy cleared her throat. “You’re a liar,” she said. “I found it.”
“You found it! That’s a lot better, isn’t it? A fat lot! Anyhow, out you came, to pose as my young lady from Home till further orders. And my oath, it was one of the cheekiest games I’ve heard of yet!”
“I only came out for a lark,” Missy said sullenly. “It was they that put it into my head to come back and stay. I couldn’t help it. It was better here than in Melbourne. Much better!”
“Morally, eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this is a cleaner life than t’other — what?”
“It is. Thank God!”
Stanborough laughed. (Missy had known him under another name, but she was hardly in a position to gain anything by reminding him of that.) “A mighty fine life,” said he, “with a mighty fine lie at the bottom of it!”
“Yes,” said Missy slowly, “that’s true enough. But I’m a better sort than when I came here, I know that!”
“A better sort, eh? Ha! ha! ha! That’s good, that is. That’s very good indeed.”
But the girl was too much in earnest to heed the sneers. “You may laugh as you like — it’s God’s truth,” cried she. “And Melbourne will never see me no more, nor London neither. Why? ‘Cause when I clear out of this, I clear up-country; and up-country I shall live ever after; yes, and very likely marry and die respectable. So you can go on jeering—”
“Stop! Not so fast,” said Stanborough. “You seem to have got it all cut and dried; but when did you think of clearing out of this? Suppose you’re safe till there’s been time for the mails home and out again. That takes three months; you’ve been here more than one already, and you meant to stop just one month more. Good! very good indeed. Sorry your one month more has gone so quickly — sorry it’s only one more night instead. However, that’s the misfortune of war. Quite understand? Not another month — another night only — that’s to-night — and a little bit of tomorrow.”
Missy remarked at length:
“So you mean to give me away; I might have known that.”
“Of course I do. Six months hard, that’s what you will get.” Missy shuddered. Her tormentor watched her and continued: “So that makes you sit up, does it, my dear? She didn’t know she was breaking the law, didn’t she? She’ll find out soon enough — find out what it costs to pass yourself off as another person, in this Colony — find out what the inside of Carlton Jail’s like, too! Not go back to town. That was good, that was.”
The girl could only pant and glare and wring her hands. More followed in the same strain.
“Nice night, ain’t it? Nice breeze coming up to kiss the leaves and make ‘em cry! Hark at ‘em, tree after tree. There goes this she-oak over our heads! Nice and cool on your face, too, isn’t it? Nice wholesome smell of eucalyptus — and all the rest of it. Oh, a sweet night altogether, and one to remember — for your last night out o’ prison!”
“You brute!” said Missy, and worse.
He listened patiently, nodding his head at each name. And then —
“All that? Not so fast, my dear, not half so fast, if you please. You’re in far too much of a hurry, I do assure you. All that’s supposing I do give you away.” The man’s tone was changed. “But you’re going to.”
“No,” replied Stanborough, “not if you’ll clear right out to-night. Do that and I won’t say a word to a soul; not even at the farm will I give you away, once you’re gone. It’ll just be a case of your going as mysteriously as you came; and they may never find out the truth about you; but even if they do, you’ll be far enough before they do. Only clear out to-night!”
“And leave ‘Bella to you? I’ll see you in blazes—”
“And yourself in quod—”
“I don’t care; you’re not going to ruin Arabella.”
“What if you’re too late to prevent it?”
“If I was, you wouldn’t be here to-night. You see I know you, too.”
There was a pause.
“Do you know what I’ve half a mind to do?” Stanborough said at length in an exceedingly calm voice.
“Yes; to kill me. But you haven’t half the pluck — not you! I know you of old.”
“All right, we shall see. I give you the rest of this night to clear out in. If you don’t, you may lose me my game; but you may bet your soul, Ada Lefroy, I’ll have you locked up before you’re a day older.”
He shook his fist in her face and went away very abruptly; but in a minute he was back, all eagerness and soft persuasion.
“I have nothing against you, Ada,” he began now. “You and I have had fun together. And after all, what have I to gain by getting you locked up? What is it to me if you hoodwink these old people and run your own risk? Why should I want you to clear out to-night? See here, my girl, I don’t want you to do anything of the kind. You sit tight as long as you think you can; only go back now, like a sensible sort, and get ‘Bella to come along with me, like another.”
“I can’t.”
“You could. It was you who persuaded her not to come. I know it was; so don’t tell me you couldn’t persuade her that I am all right, and to keep her word with me after all.”
“Then I won’t say I couldn’t I’ll say I never will.”
“And you mean that?”
“Of course I mean it.”
“Well knowing that I shall come and expose you to-morrow, or the next day, or the day after that? By God, it’d be sport to keep you waiting!”
“Then have your sport. Have it! I will never leave ‘Bella, that’s one thing sure.”
“You’d go to prison for her?”
“I’d do anything for any of them.”
“Then go to hell for them!”
With that he lifted his clenched fist and struck at the girl’s face, but she put up her hands, and only her lip was grazed. When she lowered her hands the man was gone.
And this time he was gone altogether. Missy waited, cowering behind the tree, now on this side, now on that. But there were no more footsteps in the short, dry grass until Missy herself stole out from under that she-oak, and crept down into the gully, with giving knees and her chin on her breast, a very different figure from the bold adventuress who had marched up that same slope a short hour earlier in the night. And the stars were still shining all over the little weather-board homestead, so softly, so peacefully, when Missy got back to it. And in the verandah was the wooden chair in which she would sit to read to Mr. Teesdale, and the wooden chair in which Mr. Teesdale would sit and listen. And Missy glided up and took away their book, which lay forgotten on one of the chairs; and then she glided back, thinking chiefly of the last chapter they had read together. They were hardly likely to read another now. But that was not a nice thought; and the farmhouse lay so still and serene under the stars, it was good to watch it longer; for the little homestead had never before seemed half so swee
t or so desirable in the girl’s eyes. And these were the only waking eyes just then on the premises, for even Arabella had fallen into a fitful, feverish sleep, from which, however, she was presently awakened in the following manner.
Something hot and dry had touched her hand that was lying out over the coverlet. Something else that was also hot, but not dry, had fallen upon that hand, and more of the same sort were still falling. So Arabella awoke frightened; and there was Missy, kneeling at her bedside, fondling her hand, and sobbing as she prayed aloud. Arabella heard without listening. Days afterwards she took out of her ears two phrases: “whatever I have been” and “bad as I am.” These words she put in due season through the mills of her mind; but at the time she simply said:
“Missy! What are you doing? Ah, I remember. Have you seen him? Tell me what he said — what has happened — and what is going to happen now.”
“I’ve seen him and settled him,” Missy whispered firmly as she dried her eyes. “What he said isn’t of any account. But nothing’s going to happen — nothing — nothing at all.”
CHAPTER X.
THE THINNING OF THE ICE.
OLD Teesdale sat with his arm-chair drawn close to the table, and his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He was writing a letter in which he had already remarked that it was the hottest Christmas Eve within even his experience of that colony. In the verandah, indeed, the thermometer had made the shade heat upwards of 100° since nine o’clock in the morning, touching 110° in the early afternoon. It was now about six (Mr. Teesdale being still without his watch was never positive of the time), and because of Mrs. T.’s theory that to open a window was to let in the heat, to say nothing of the flies, the atmosphere of the parlour with its reminiscences of the day’s meals was sufficiently unendurable. A little smoke from Mr. Teesdale’s pipe would surely have improved it if anything; but that was against the rules of the house, and the poor gentleman, who was not master of it, wrote on and on with the perspiration standing on his bald head, and the reek of the recent tea in his nose.
He was on the third leaf of a letter for the English mail. “As to Miriam herself” — thus the paragraph began which was still being penned—” I can only say that she is the life and soul of our quiet home, and what we shall do without her when she goes I really do not like to think. Referring again to the letter in which you advised me of her arrival, and to those ‘habits and ways’ of which you warned me, I cannot deny that I soon saw what you meant; but I must say that I would not have Miriam without her ‘mannerisms’ even if I could. They may be modern, but they are very entertaining indeed to us, who are so far behind the times. Yes, the young girls of our day may have talked less ‘slang’ and paid more attention to ‘appearances,’ but no girl ever had a warmer heart than your Miriam, nor a kinder nature, nor a franker way with her in all her dealings. But her kindness is what has struck me most, from the very first, and especially her kindness to an old man like me. You should see her sit and read to me by the hour, and help me with whatever little thing I may happen to be doing, and listen to my talk as though I were a young man like our John William. Then I think you would understand why I am always saying that she never could have been anybody’s daughter but yours, and why I want to keep her as long as ever you will let her stay. She has spoken of going on to other friends after the New Year; but I wish you would insist upon her coming back to us for a real long visit before she leaves the colony for good; and I know that you would do so if you could but see the change which even a few weeks with us has already wrought in her. You must know, my dear Oliver, that we live here very simply indeed; but I am of opinion that simple living and early hours were what Miriam needed more than anything else, for it is no exaggeration to say that she does not look the same girl who first came to see us with your letter of introduction. She has a better colour, her whole face is brighter and healthier, and the tired look I at first noticed in her eyes has gone out of them once and—”
At this point Mr. Teesdale paused, pen in air.
He was a very careful letter-writer, who wrote a beautiful old-fashioned hand, and made provision for perfectly even spaces by means of a black-lined sheet nicely adjusted under the leaf; and he rounded each sentence in his own mind before neatly committing it to paper. Thus a single erasure was a great rarity in his letters, while two would have made him entirely rewrite. On the other hand, many a minute here and there were spent in peering through the gun-room window, and scouring the Dandinong Ranges for the right word; and now several minutes went thus in one lump, because Mr. Teesdale was by nature an even greater stickler for the literal truth than for flawless penmanship, and he had caught himself in the act of writing what was not strictly true. It was a fact that the tired look had gone out of Missy’s eyes, but to add “once and for all” was to make the whole statement a lie, according to Mr. Teesdale’s standard. For the last thirty-six hours that tired look had been back in those bright eyes, which brightened now but by fits and starts. David did not so define it, but the girl looked hunted. He merely knew that she did not look to-day or yesterday as she had looked for some weeks without a break, therefore he could not and would not say that she did. Accordingly the predicate of the unfinished sentence was radically altered until that sentence stood... “and the tired look I at first noticed in her eyes is to be seen in them but very seldom now.”
But the erasure had occurred on the fifth page, on a new sheet altogether, which it was certainly worth while to commence afresh; and old Teesdale had scarcely regained the point at which he had tripped when the door opened, and the subject of his letter was herself in the room beside him, looking swiftly about her, as if to make certain that he was alone, before allowing her eyes to settle upon his welcoming smile.
“Well, Missy, and what have you been doing with yourself since tea?”
“I?” said the girl absently, as she glanced into the gun-room, and then out of each window, very keenly, before sitting down on the sofa. “I? Oh, I’ve been having a sleep, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Mr. Teesdale was watching her narrowly as he leant back in his chair. She did not look to him as though she had been sleeping; but that was of course his own fancy. On the other hand, the strange expression in Missy’s eyes, which he could not quite define, struck the old man as stranger and more conspicuous than ever.
“I’m afraid, my dear, that you haven’t been getting your proper sleep lately.”
“You’re right. There’s no peace for the wicked these red-hot nights, let alone the extra wicked, like me.”
“Get away with you!” said old Teesdale, laughing at the grave girl who was staring him in the face without the glimmer of a smile.
“Get away I will, one of these days; and glad enough you’ll be when that day comes and you know all about me. I’ve always told you a day like that would come sooner or later. It might come to-morrow — it might come to-night!”
“Missy, my dear, I do wish you’d smile and show me you’re only joking. Not that it’s one of your best jokes, my dear, nor one of your newest either. Ah, that’s it — that’s better!”
She had jumped up to look once more out of the window: a man was passing towards the hen-yard, it was little Geordie, and Missy sat down smiling.
“Then tell me what it is you’re busy with,” she began in a different tone; an attempt at the old saucy manner which the farmer loved as a special, sacred perquisite of his own.
“Now you’re yourself again! I’m writing a long, long letter, Missy. Guess who to?”
“To — to Mr. Oliver?”
“Mr. Oliver! Your father, my dear — your own father! Now guess what it’s about, if you can!”
“About — me?”
David nodded his head with great humour.
“Yes, it’s about you. A nice character I’m giving you, you may depend!”
“Are you saying that I’m a regular bad lot then?”
“Ah, that’s telling!”
“If you were,
you wouldn’t be far from the mark, if you only knew it. But let’s hear what you have said.”
“Nay, come! You don’t expect me to let you hear what I’ve said about you, do you, Missy?”
“Of course I do,” said Missy firmly.
“But that would be queer! Nay, Missy, I couldn’t show you this letter, I really couldn’t. For one thing, it would either make you conceited or else very indignant with poor me!”
“So that’s the kind of character you’ve been giving me, is it?” said Missy, smiling grimly. “Now I must see it.”
“Nay, come, I don’t think you must, Missy — I don’t think you must!”
“But I want to.”
So exclaiming, the girl rose resolutely to her feet; and her resolution settled the matter; for it will have been seen that the weak old man himself was all the time wishing her to see what he had written about her. After all, why should she not know how fond he was of her? If it made her ever such a little bit fonder of him, well, there surely could be no harm in that. Still, Mr. Teesdale chose to walk up and down the room while Missy stood at the window to read his letter, for it was now growing dark.
“I see you mention that twenty pounds.” Missy had looked up suddenly from the letter. “How was it you managed to get the money that night, after all? I have often meant to ask you.”
Mr. Teesdale stopped in his walk. “What does it matter how I got them, honey? I neither begged, borrowed nor stole ‘em, if that’s what you want to know.” The old gentleman laughed.
“I want to know lots more than that, because it matters a very great deal, when I went and put you to all that inconvenience.”
“Well, I went to the man who buys all our milk. I told you I was going to him, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but I’ve heard you say here at table that you haven’t had a farthing from him these six months.”
“Missy, my dear,” remonstrated the old man, with difficulty smiling, “you will force me to ask you — to mind—”
“My own business? Right you are. What’s the time?”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 57
