Mr. Teesdale was discovered in earnest expostulation with the girl from England, who was smoking his pipe. She had jumped on to the wooden armchair upon which, a moment ago, she had no doubt been seated; now she was dancing upon it, slowly and rhythmically, from one foot to the other, and while holding the long clay well above the old man’s reach, she kept puffing at it with such immense energy that the smoke hung in a cloud about her rakish fringe and wicked smile, under the verandah slates. A smile flickered also across the entreating face of David Teesdale; and it was this his unpardonable show of taking the outrage in good part, that made away with the wife’s modicum of self-control. Doubling a hard-working fist, she was on the point of knocking at the window with all the might that it would bear, when her wrist was held and the blind let down. And it was John William who faced her indignation with the firm front which she herself had given him.
“I am very sorry, mother,” said he quietly, “but you are not going to make a scene.”
Such was the power of Mrs. Teesdale in her own home, she could scarcely credit her hearing. “Not going to?” she cried, for the words had been tuned neither to question nor entreaty, but a command. “Let go my hands this moment, sir!”
“Then don’t knock,” said John William, complying; and there was never a knock; but the woman was blazing.
“How dare you?” she said; and indeed, man and boy, he had never dared so much before.
“You were going to make a scene,” said he, as kindly as ever; “and though we didn’t invite her, she is our guest—”
“You may be ashamed of yourself! I don’t care who she is; she shan’t smoke here.”
“She is also the daughter of your oldest friends; and hasn’t her own father written to say she has ways and habits which the girls hadn’t when you were one? Not that smoking’s a habit of hers: not likely. I’ll bet she’s only done this for a lark. And you’re to say nothing more about it, mother, do you see?”
“Draw up the blind,” said Mrs. Teesdale, speaking to her son as she had spoken to him all his life, but, for the first time, without confidence. “Draw up the blind, and disobey me at your peril.”
“Then promise to say nothing about it to the girl.”
They eyed each other for a minute. In the end the mother said: “To the girl? No, of course I won’t say anything to her — unless it happens again.” It was not even happening when the blind was drawn up, and it never did happen again. But Mrs. Teesdale had given in, for once in her life, and to one of her own children. Moreover, there was an alien in the case, who was also a girl; and this was the beginning between these three.
CHAPTER III.
AU REVOIR.
IT was not a very good beginning, and the first to feel that was John William himself. He felt it at tea. During the meal his mouth never opened, except on business; but his eyes made up for it.
He saw everything. He saw that his mother and Missy would never get on; he knew it the moment they kissed. There was no sounding smack that time. The visitor, for her part, seemed anxious to show that even she could be shy if she tried; and as for Mrs. Teesdale and her warm greeting, it was very badly done. The tone was peevish, and her son, for one, could hear between the words. “You’re our old friends’ child,” he heard her saying in her heart, “but I don’t think I shall like you; for you’ve come without letting me know, you’ve smoked, and you’ve set my own son against me — already.” He was half sorry that he had checked, what is as necessary to some as the breath they draw, a little plain speaking at the outset. But sooner or later, about one thing or another, this was bound to come; and come it did.
“I can’t think, Miriam,” said Mrs. Teesdale, “how you came by that red hair o’ yours! Your father’s was very near black, and your mother’s a light brown wi’ a streak o’ gold in it; but there wasn’t a red hair in either o’ their heads that I can remember.”
At this speech John William bit off an oath under his beard, while David looked miserably at his wife, and Arabella at their visitor, who first turned as red as her hair, and then burst into a fit of her merriest laughter.
“Well, I can’t help it, can I?” cried she, with a good-nature that won two hearts, at any rate. “I didn’t choose my hair; it grew its own colour — all I’ve got to do is to keep it on!”
“Yes, but it’s that red!” exclaimed Mrs. Teesdale stolidly, while John William chuckled and looked less savage.
“Ah, you could light your old pipe at it,” said Missy to the farmer, making the chuckler laugh outright.
Not so Mr. Teesdale. “My dear,” he said to his wife; “my dear!”
“Well, but I could understand it, David, if her parents’ hairs had any red in ‘em. In the only photograph we have of you, Miriam, which is that group there taken when you were all little, you look to have your mother’s fair hair. I can’t make it out.”
“No?” said Missy, sweetly. “Then you didn’t know that red always comes out light in a photograph?”
“Oh, I know nothing at all about that,” said Mrs. Teesdale, with the proper disregard for a lost point. “Then have the others all got red hair too?”
“N — no, I’m the only one.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, Miriam, I’m sure it is!”
“Nay, come, my dear, that’ll do,” whispered David; while John William said loudly, to change the subject, “You’re not to call her Miriam, mother.”
“And why not, I wonder?”
“Because she’s not used to it. She says they call her Missy at home; and we want to make her at home here, surely to goodness!”
Missy had smiled gratefully on John William and nodded confirmation of his statement to Mrs. Teesdale, who, however, shook her head.
“Ay, but I don’t care for nicknames at all,” said she, without the shadow of a smile; “I never did and I never shall, John William. So, Miriam, you’ll have to put up with your proper name from me, for I’m too old to change. And I’m sure it’s not an ugly one,” added the dour woman, less harshly. “Is your cup off, Miriam?” she added to that; she did not mean to be quite as she was.
It was at this point, however, that the visitor asked Mr. Teesdale the time, and that Mr. Teesdale, with a sudden eloquence in his kind old eyes, showed her the watch which Mr. Oliver had given him; speaking most touchingly of her father’s goodness, and kindness, and generosity, and of their lifelong friendship. Thus the long hand marked some minutes while the watch was still out before it appeared why Missy wanted to know the time. She then declared she must get back to Melbourne before dark, a statement which provoked some brisk opposition, notably on the part of Mr. Teesdale. But the girl showed commendable firmness. She would go back as she had come, by the six o’clock ‘bus from the township. None of them, however, would hear of the ‘bus, and John William waited until a compromise had been effected by her giving way on this point; then he went out to put-to.
This proved a business. The old mare had already made one journey into Melbourne and back; and that was some nine miles each way. There was another buggy-horse, but it had to be run up from the paddock. Thus twenty minutes elapsed before John William led horse and trap round to the front of the house. He found the party he had left mildly arguing round the tea-table, now assembled on the grass below the red-brick verandah. They were arguing still, it seemed, and not quite so mildly. Missy was buttoning a yellow glove, the worse for wear, and she was standing like a rock, with her mouth shut tight. Mr. Teesdale had on his tall hat and his dust-coat, and the whip was once more in his hand; at the sight of him his son’s heel went an inch into the ground.
“Only fancy!” cried the old man in explanation. “She says she’s not coming back to us any more. She doesn’t want to come out and stay with us!”
Arabella echoed the “Only fancy!” while Mrs. Teesdale thought of the old folks who had been young when she was, and said decisively, “But she’ll have to.”
John William said nothing at all; but it was to him the vi
sitor now looked appealingly.
“It isn’t that I shouldn’t like it — that isn’t it at all — it’s that you wouldn’t like me! Oh, you don’t know what I am. You don’t, I tell you straight. I’m not fit to come and stay here — I should put you all about so — there’s no saying what I shouldn’t do. You can’t think how glad I am to have seen you all. It’s a jolly old place, and I shall be able to tell ‘em all at home just what it’s like. But you’d far better let me rest where I am — you — you — you really had.”
She had given way, not to tears, indeed, but to the slightly hysterical laughter which had characterised her entry into the parlour when John William was looking through the crack. Now she once more made her laughter loud, and it seemed particularly inconsequent. Yet here was a sign of irresolution which old David, as the wisest of the Teesdales, was the first to recognise. Moreover, her eyes were flying from the weather-board farmhouse to the river timber down the hill, from the soft cool grass to the peaceful sky, and from hay-stack to hen-yard, as though the whole simple scene were a temptation to her; and David saw this also.
“Nonsense,” said he firmly; and to the others, “She’ll come back and stay with us till she’s tired of us — we’ll never be tired of you, Missy. Ay, of course she will. You leave her to me, Mrs. T.”
“Then,” said Missy, snatching her eyes from their last fascination, a wattle-bush in bloom, “will you take all the blame if I turn out a bad egg?”
“A what?” said Mrs. Teesdale.
“Of course we will,” cried her husband, turning a deaf ear to John William, who was trying to speak to him.
“You promise, all of you!”
“Of course we do,” answered the farmer again; but he had not answered John William.
“Then I’ll come, and your blood be on your own heads.”
For a moment she stood smiling at them all in turn; and not a soul of them saw her next going without thinking of this one. The low sun struck full upon the heavy red fringe, and on the pale face and the devil-may-care smile which it over-hung just then. At the back of that smile there was a something which seemed to be coming up swiftly like a squall at sea; but only for one moment; the next, she had kissed the women, shaken hands with the young man, mounted into the buggy beside Mr. Teesdale, and the two of them were driving slowly down the slope.
“I think, John William,” said his mother, “that you might have driven in this time, instead o’ letting your father go twice.”
“Didn’t I want to?” replied John William, in a bellow which made Missy turn her head at thirty yards. “He was bent on going. He’s the most pig-headed old man in the Colony. He wouldn’t even answer me when I spoke to him about it just now.”
He turned on his heel, and mother and daughter were at last alone, and free to criticise.
“For a young lady fresh from England,” began the former, “I must say I thought it was a shabby dress — didn’t you?”
“Shabby isn’t the word,” said Arabella; “if you ask me, I call her whole style flashy — as flashy as it can stick.”
CHAPTER IV.
A MATTER OF TWENTY POUNDS.
“THIS is jolly!” exclaimed Missy, settling herself comfortably at the old man’s side as she handed him back the reins. They had just jogged out of the lowest paddock, and Mr. Teesdale had been down to remove the slip-rails and to replace them after Missy had driven through.
“Very nicely done,” the farmer said, in his playful, kindly fashion. “I see you’ve handled the ribbons before.”
“Never in my life!”
“Indeed? I should have thought that with all them horses and carriages every one of you would have learnt to ride and drive.”
“Yes, you would think so,” Missy said, after a pause; “but in my case you’d think wrong. I can’t bear horses, so I tell you straight. One flew at me when I was a little girl, and I’ve never gone near ‘em since.”
“Flew at you!” exclaimed Mr. Teesdale. “Nay, come!”
“Well, you know what I mean. I’d show you the bite—”
“Oh, it bit you? Now I see, now I see.”
“You saw all along!”
“No, it was such a funny way of putting it.”
“You knew what I meant,” persisted Missy. “If you’re going to make game of me, I’ll get down and walk. Shall we be back in Melbourne by seven?”
Mr. Teesdale drew out his watch with a proud smile and a tender hand. He loved consulting it before anybody, but Missy’s presence gave the act a special charm. He shook his head, however, in answer to her question.
“We’ll not do it,” said he; “it’s ten past six already.”
“Then how long is it going to take us?”
“Well, not much under the hour; you see—”
A groan at his side made Mr. Teesdale look quickly round; and there was trouble under the heavy fringe.
“I must be there soon after seven!” cried the girl petulantly.
“Ay, but where, Missy? I’ll do my best,” said David, snatching up the whip, “if you’ll tell me where it is you want to be.”
“It’s the Bijou Theatre — I’m supposed to be there by seven — to meet the people I’m staying with, you know.”
David had begun to use the whip vigorously, but now he hesitated and looked pained. “I am sorry to hear it’s a theatre you want to get to,” said he gravely.
“Why, do you think them such sinks of iniquity — is that it?” asked the girl, laughing.
“I never was in a theatre in my life, Missy; I don’t approve of them, my dear.”
“No more do I — no more do I! But when you’re staying with people you can’t always be your own boss, now can you?”
“You could with us, Missy.”
“Well, that’s bully; but I can’t with these folks. They’re regular terrors for the theatre, the folks I’m staying with now, and I don’t know what they’ll say if I keep ‘em waiting long. Think you can do it?”
“Not by seven; but I think we might get there between five and ten minutes past.”
“Thank God!”
Mr. Teesdale wrinkled his forehead, but said nothing. Evidently it was of the first importance that Missy should not keep her friends waiting. Of these people, however, she had already spoken so lightly that David was pleased to fancy her as not caring very much about them. He was pleased, not only because they took her to the theatre, but because he wanted no rival Australian friends for his old friend’s child; the farm, if possible, must be her only home so long as she remained in the Colony. When, therefore, the girl herself confirmed his hopes the very next time she opened her mouth, the old man beamed with satisfaction.
“These folks I’m staying with,” said Missy—” I’m not what you call dead nuts on ‘em, as I said before.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” chuckled David, “because we want you all to ourselves, my dear.”
“So you think! Some day you’ll be sorry you spoke.”
“Nonsense, child. What makes you talk such rubbish? You’ve got to come and make your home with us until you’re tired of us, as I’ve told you already. Where is it they live, these friends of yours?”
“Where do they live?” repeated Missy. “Oh, in Kew.”
“Ah — Kew.”
The name was spoken in a queer, noticeable tone, as of philosophic reflection. Then the farmer smiled and went on driving in silence; they were progressing at a good speed now. But Missy had looked up anxiously.
“What do you know about Kew?” said she.
“Not much,” replied David, with a laugh; “only once upon a time I had a chance of buying it — and had the money too!”
“You had the money to buy Kew?”
“Yes, I had it. There was a man who took me on to a hill and showed me a hollow full of scrub and offered to get me the refusal of it for an old song. I had the money and all, as it happened, but I wasn’t going to throw it away. The place looked a howling wilderness; but it is n
ow the suburb of Kew.”
“Think of that. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t buy it?”
“Oh, it makes no difference.”
“But you’d be so rich if you had!”
“I should be a millionaire twice over,” said the farmer, complacently, as he removed his ruin of a top-hat to let in the breeze upon his venerable pate. Missy sat aghast at him.
“It makes me sick to think of it,” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what I couldn’t do to you! If I’d been you I’d have cut my throat years ago. To think of the high old time you could have had!”
“I never had that much desire for a high old time,” said Mr. Teesdale with gentle exaltation.
“Haven’t I, then, that’s all! cried his companion in considerable excitement. “It makes a poor girl feel bad to hear you go on like that.”
“But you’re not a poor girl.”
Missy was silenced.
“Yes, I am,” she said at last, with an air of resolution. It was not, however, until they were the better part of a mile nearer Melbourne.
“You are what?”
“A poor girl.”
“Nonsense, my dear. I wonder what your father would say if he heard you talk like that.”
“He’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Not when he’s worth thousands, Missy?”
“Not when he’s thousands of miles away, Mr. Teesdale.”
Mr. Teesdale raised his wrinkled forehead and drove on. A look of mingled anxiety and pain aged him years in a minute. Soon the country roads were left behind, and the houses began closing up on either side of a very long and broad high road. It was ten minutes to seven by Mr. Teesdale’s watch when he looked at it again. It was time for him to say the difficult thing which had occurred to him two or three miles back, and he said it in the gentlest tones imaginable from an old man of nearly seventy.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 52