It was quite late enough. She was going out a-milking no more, either morning or evening, and that was another thing which John William must be told. Mrs. Teesdale, like everybody else, was glad to have more things than one to speak about, when the one was so difficult, and even dangerous. She partially dressed, and left the room as quietly as possible. The first gray light was penetrating into the passage as she stole along it. When she reached John William’s door, there was a noise within; when she opened it, she stood like a rock on the threshold — because she had been a plucky woman all her life — and a man was in the act of getting in by the window.
His middle was across the sill, and the crown of his hat was presented to the door.
“Who are you,” said Mrs. Teesdale sternly, “and what do you want?”
The man raised his head instantly; and it was John William himself.
“Holloa, mother!”
“Where have you been?” said Mrs. Teesdale.
“I didn’t want to wake you before your time, so I thought I’d come in like this. That’s better!”
He landed lightly on the floor; but his feet jingled; he was spurred as well as booted, and dressed, moreover, in his drab tweed suit.
“Where have you been?” said Mrs. Teesdale.
His bed had not been slept in.
“Been? There was something I had to do. No time during the day. So I’ve just got it done before—”
“Where have you been?” said Mrs. Teesdale.
The young man stared. His mother had repeated the question thrice, each time in exactly the same tone, without raising her voice or moving a muscle as she stood on the threshold, with the brass door-handle still between her fingers.
“What business is it of yours, mother?” he said sullenly. “Surely to goodness I’m old enough to do what I like? I’m not what you’d exactly call a boy.”
“You are my boy. Where have you been?”
“In Melbourne — since you so very much want to know.”
He had lost patience, and adopted defiance.
“I was sure of it,” said Mrs. Teesdale, coming into the room now, and quietly shutting the door behind her. “I was sure of it.”
Then, very slowly and deliberately, she raised her left arm, until one lean finger pointed to the wall at his left, and through that wall, as it were, into the room which had been occupied by each of the two visitors. Her eyes flashed into her son’s. The lean finger trembled. But she said no word.
“What does that mean?” he asked at last, with an uneasy laugh.
“You have been — with — that woman!”
“I wish I had,” said John William.
“You have!” cried his mother.
“I have not. With her? Why, I haven’t set eyes on her since the day you took and — the day she left us,” said the angered man, ending quietly. “Then what have you been doing?”
“I have been looking for her.”
“For that woman?”
“Yes.”
“Looking in Melbourne?”
“Yes.”
“In the streets? — in the streets?”
“Yes.”
“And you have never seen her since—”
“Never.”
“But this isn’t the first time! You’ve been looking night after night! So that’s why you ran up them other horses? That’s why you’re half dead unless you get some sleep of afternoons?”
“Mother,” he said, “it is.”
“Oh, my God!” cried Mrs. Teesdale, reeling, and breaking down very suddenly. “Oh, my God!”“
In an instant strong arms were round her; but she would not have them; she freed herself and sat down on the chair that was by the bedside, warding him off with one hand while with the other she covered her face. It cut him to the heart to hear her sobs; to note the tears trickling through the old fingers, gnarled and knotted by a long life of hard work; to see the light strong frame, that had seemed all bone and muscle, like a hawk, so shaken. But because of her other hand, which forbade him to touch her, he could only stand aloof with his beard upon his chest and his thick arms folded. At length she calmed herself; and sat looking up at him with both hands in her lap. Her poor feet were bare; he had snatched a pillow from the bed and pushed it under them while she was still beside herself; and now, when she saw what he had done, she looked at him more kindly; and when she spoke, her voice was softer than ever he had heard it, boy or man.
“John William, you must give this up.”
“Mother, we shall break each other’s hearts, you and I. I cannot — I cannot!”
“But I know you will. You will give up looking for that girl; you will promise me this before I leave the room. Why should you look for her? How can you expect to find her? You don’t know that she is in Melbourne at all. Why should you think of her—”
“Because I’ve got to think of her, as long as I’ve a head on my shoulders and a heart in my body.”
Mrs. Teesdale had her woman’s quick instincts, after all. Hence her very singular omission, on this occasion, to apply a single hard name to the enemy whose deadliest thrust of all was only now coming home to her.
“Very well,” she said; “but you must promise to give up looking for her in Melbourne, by night or by day, at any rate while your mother is alive.”
“It is all that I can do! It is the only chance!” cried the young man, miserably. “Why should I promise to give up my one chance—”
“Only while I live,” interposed the mother.
“But why should I?”
“Because I shall not live very long. Don’t look like that — listen to me. I have been ailing for months; never mind how. Whether it was the worry of lately, or what it was, I don’t know; but it’s only this last week or two that I’ve felt too poorly to bide it any longer. I never said a word to anybody — I wouldn’t have said a word to you — not this morning, but now I must. And you are not to say a word to anybody — least of all to your father — till I give you leave. But the night before last I felt like dying where I sat milking; so I made your father take me into Melbourne, to buy some odds and ends. So I told him, poor man. But a doctor’s opinion was all I wanted; that was my odds — and — ends. — And I got it! No, let me tell you first; I went to Dr. James Murray, in Collins Street East. I had heard of him. So I went to him for the worst; but I never thought it would be the very worst; and it was — it was!”
There was an interruption here.
“My boy! — Nay — you mustn’t — fret; — I’m — sixty-three come August, and it’s not a bad age isn’t that. I may — see — August, he says. — He — says I may live a — good — few months — yet. — Nay, — never mind what it is that’s the matter with me; you’ll know soon enough. He says he’ll come and se£ me for nothing. It’s an interesting case, he says; wanted me to go into a hospital and be under his eye, he did But that I wouldn’t, so he thinks he must come and see me. Nay, never mind — never mind! Only promise not to look for that girl — any more — till I am gone.”
The promise was given. John William had long been kneeling at his mother’s feet, and kissing her hands, her face, her neck, her eyes. That was the interruption which had taken place. Now he was crying like a child.
Mr. Teesdale awoke as his wife reopened their bedroom door.
“My dear,” said he, sweetly, “you’ve been going about with bare feet! You’ll be catching your death of cold!”
He was not to be told just yet.; and because Mrs. Teesdale’s eyes were full of tears, which he must not see, she made answer in her very sharpest manner.
“Mind your own business, and go to sleep again, do!”
David only smiled.
“All right, my dear, you know best. But if you did catch your death o’ cold, it’d be a bad job for the lot of us; it’d be the worst job of all, would that!”
CHAPTER XIX.
TO THE TUNE OF RAIN.
TOWARDS the close of a depressing afternoon in the
following winter Arabella might have been seen (but barely heard) to steal out of the farmhouse by the front door, which she shut very softly behind her. Twilight had set in before its time, thanks to the ponderous clouds that were gathered and still gathering overhead; but as she came forth into the open air, Arabella blinked, like one accustomed to no light at all. Rain had fallen freely during the day, but only, it seemed certain, as a foretaste of what was presently to come. At the moment all was very still, which rendered it the more difficult to make no noise; but this time Arabella was not bound upon any secret or private enterprise. She stepped out naturally enough when a few yards from the house, her simple object being a breath of fresh air; and from her white face and tired eyes, of this she was in urgent need. She picked her way as quickly as possible across the muddy yard, but ere she reached the gate was accosted by Old Willie, who was off duty until milk-cart time in the small hours, and who peered at her with a grave, inquiring look before opening his mouth.
“About the same, miss?”
She shook her head.
“No better, at any rate; if anything, worse.”
“And Mr. Teesdale?”
“He is keeping up. The woman who is helping me to nurse has a baby. She had to bring it with her. Father plays with it all day, and it seems to occupy his mind.”
“Well, that’s something. Now get your snack of air, miss. I mustn’t keep you.”
“No, you mustn’t. I am going to the Cultivation, it is so high and open there. Do you think it will rain before I can get back?”
Old Willie looked aloft. He was an ancient mariner, who had deserted his ship for the diggings in the early days; hence the aptitude for regular night-work.
“I think we shall catch it before pitch-dark,” said he; “so you’d better look sharp, miss; and — good-night!”
“Good-night; and thank you — thank you.”
But Arabella walked away wincing, and she opened the gate with her left hand; for the horny-fisted old sea-dog had shown his sympathy by nearly breaking her right.
It was the gate that led one among the gum-trees, down into that shallow gully, and so upward to the Cultivation. The trees were as leafy as ever in summer-time; the grass at their feet was much greener. There was no other striking difference to mark the exchange of seasons, saving always the heavy gray sky and the damp raw air. Arabella drew her shawl skin-tight about her shoulders, and walked rapidly; but far swifter than her feet went her thoughts — to last summer.
Heaven knows there were others to think of first — and last — just then. Yet in a minute or two Arabella was thinking only of the wicked, the dishonest, the immoral Missy. Nothing was known of her at the farm from the day she left it. That was nearly eight months ago, and eight months was time enough, surely, to forget her in; but here, of all places, Arabella could never forget the woman who had saved her own woman’s honour. Here it had happened. It was at the Cultivation corner that she had made the tryst that would infallibly have been her ruin; it was somewhere hereabouts that Missy had kept that tryst for her and saved her from ruin. She could never come this way without thinking only of Missy, and wondering whether she was alive, and where she was, and what doing. Therefore that which happened this evening was in reality less of a coincidence than it looked.
The girl of whom she was thinking stood suddenly in Arabella’s path.
The recognition, however, was not so immediate. Missy was clad in garments that were the meanest rags compared even with those in which she had first appeared at the farm; also, she was thin to emaciation, and not a strand of her distinguishing red hair could be seen for the unsightly bonnet which was tightly fastened over her head and ears. Consider, further, the light, and you will have more patience than Missy had with the dumbfounded Arabella.
“Don’t you know me, ‘Bella, or won’t you know me?”
Arabella did know her then, and her hands flew out to the other’s and caught them tight. Then she doubted her knowledge — the hands were harder than her own.
“Missy! No, I don’t believe it is you. Where’s your fringe? Why are you — like this? How can it be you? You never used to have hard hands!” Yet she held them tight.
“Don’t talk so loud,” said Missy, nervously; “there might be someone about. You know it’s me. I wonder how you can bear to touch me!”
“I can bear a bit more than that,” said Arabella warmly, and she flung her arms about the other, and reached up and kissed her lovingly upon the mouth, upon both cheeks. The cheeks were cold, and the back and shoulders were wet to the hands and wrists encircling them.
“You’re a good sort, ‘Bella,” murmured Missy, not particularly touched, but in a grateful tone enough. “You always were. There, that’ll do. Fancy you not even being choked off yet — and me like this!”
“Fancy you being back again, Missy! That’s the grand thing. I can hardly credit it even now. But you’re terribly wet, poor dear! It’s dreadful for you, Missy, it is indeed!”
“Oh, that’s nothing; it did rain pretty hard, but there’ll be some more in a minute, so it would come to the same thing in any case.”
“Then you have walked, and were caught in it on the road?”
“Do I look as if I’d ridden? Yes, and it was a pretty long road—”
“From Melbourne? — I should think it was.” Missy laughed.
“From Melbourne, that’s no distance. I’ve travelled more than twice as far since morning, my dear, and I shall have it to travel all over again before to-morrow morning.”
“Then you haven’t come from Melbourne?” cried Arabella, highly amazed.
“Haven’t set foot in it since I saw you last.”
“Where in the world have you been, then, Missy?”
But even as they were speaking, the grass whispered on every hand, the leaves rustled, and down came the rain in torrents. Arabella found herself taken by the arm and led into the shelter of the nearest tree — a spreading she-oak. She was much agitated.
“Oh, what am I to do?” she cried. “I dare not stay many minutes; but I would give anything to stay ever so long, Missy! You don’t understand. Tell me quickly where you have been, if you never went back to Melbourne?”
“Nay, if you’re in a hurry, it’s you that must tell me things. That’s what I’ve come all this way for, ‘Bella — just to hear how you’re all getting on. How’s Mr. Teesdale?”
“He’s as well as he ever is.”
“And you, ‘Bella?”
“Oh, there’s never anything the matter with me.”
“And John William?”
“There’s not much the matter with him, either.”
“Then that’s all right,” Missy fetched a sigh of relief.
It struck Arabella as very odd indeed that the only one of them after whom Missy did not ask should be Mrs. Teesdale. But was it odd? Quite apart from any rights or wrongs, Mrs. Teesdale had been Missy’s natural enemy from the first. Moreover, she had struck Missy as an old woman who would never grow older or die; and Arabella let it pass. She was in a hurry, and it was now her turn to get answers from Missy.
“Where have you been,” she repeated, “if you never went back to Melbourne? Be quick and tell me all about it.”
Missy shook her head, shaking the rain that had gathered upon her shabby bonnet into Arabella’s eyes. It was raining very heavily all this time, and the she-oak’s shelter left much to be desired. But Missy was now the one with her arms about the other, who was, as we know, a much shorter woman; so that Arabella, whose back was to the tree-trunk, was being kept wonderfully dry. Missy shook her head.
“I can’t tell you much if I’m to tell you quickly. You are in a hurry, I can see, and indeed it’s no wonder—”
“Oh, you don’t understand, Missy!” cried the other in a torment. “If only you would come into the house—”
“That I never can.”
“I tell you that you don’t understand. You could — just now.”
“Ne
ver,” said Missy firmly. “I know my sins pretty well by this time. I’ve had time to study ‘em lately; and the worst of the lot was how I played it upon all of you here. Now don’t you begin! You want to know where I’ve been lying low all this while, and what I’ve been doing. I’ll tell you in two twos; then I’ll give you what I’ve got for Mr. Teesdale, and then you shall run away indoors, and back I go to the place I come from. Where’s that? Over twenty miles away, in the Dandenong Ranges. It’s a farm like this — What am I saying? There never was or will be a farm like this! But it isn’t so unlike, either, in this and that; and I’m the girl in the kitchen there, same as Mary Jane is here, and help milk the cows, and cook the dinner, and clean up the place, and all that.”
“Oh, Missy, I can scarcely believe it! Yet I felt hard work on your hands the moment I touched them — they are as rough and hard as Mary Jane’s,” said Arabella, taking fresh hold of them, “and your dress is just like hers. Where did you get such a dress? And how did you come to get taken on at the farm? We all thought you’d gone straight back to Melbourne; as for John William—”
She hesitated. It was one thing to befriend Missy; but Arabella could not help taking a special and a different view of her in relation to her own brother.
“Yes?” said Missy.
“John William was quite sure of it.”
“Then — I suppose — he never thought of looking for me? No, of course he wouldn’t. Why should he?”
“You — you could hardly expect it, dear, I think,” said John William’s sister, very gently.
“Hardly; what a cracked thing it was to say!” cried Missy, laughing down the wistful tone into which she had dropped. “But you none of you could have guessed much about my life there, if you thought I was likely to go straight back to Melbourne from here. No, and you can’t have known what it was to me to have lived here for two months, even as a cheat and a liar. There’s worse things than cheating and lying, ‘Bella; there’s things that cheating and lying’s a healthy change after! But never mind all that. When I left you, and had got through the township, I didn’t take the road to Melbourne at all; I took the other road. Bang ahead of me was them Dandenong Ranges that your dear old father’s always looking at as he sits at the table. I wonder does he look at ‘em as much as ever? So I said, ‘Them ranges is the place for me;’ and I stumped for them ranges straight away. I swopped dresses with a woman I met on the road; this is the rags of what I got for mine; and then I stopped at all the farms asking for work. How I got work, after ever so long, and all about it, I’d tell you if you weren’t in such a hurry to go. You’ll get wet, you know, and here you’re as dry as a bone. But I suppose it’s only natural!”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 65
