And yet — and yet — he would do something to blot this last lurid scene out of his mind. There was nothing he would not do, if only he could do that. Yet this only showed him the narrowness of his own mind. That, after all, was half the trouble. Here at the antipodes, in an overlooked corner that had missed development with the colony, just as Mr. Teesdale himself had missed it: here all minds must be narrow. But theirs at the farm were perhaps narrower than most; otherwise they would never have been so shocked at Missy; at all events they would not have shown their feelings, as they evidently must have shown them, to have driven poor Missy off the premises, as they had apparently done.
Mr. Teesdale became greatly depressed as he made these reflections, and gradually got as much of the blame on to his own shoulders as one man could carry. It was very dark. He was sitting out on the verandah and smoking; but it was too dark to enjoy a pipe properly, even if David could have enjoyed anything just then. He was sitting in one of those wooden chairs in which he had so often sat of late while Missy read to him, and one hand rested mournfully upon the seat of the empty chair at his side. Not that he as yet really dreaded never seeing Missy again. He was keeping a look-out for her all the time. Sooner or later she was bound to come back.
She had come back already, but it was so dark that David never saw her until he was putting a light to his second pipe. Then the face of Missy, with her red hair tousled, came out of the night beyond the verandah with startling vividness, and it was the most defiant face that ever David Teesdale had beheld.
“Missy,” cried he, “is that you?”
He dropped the match and Missy’s face was gone.
“Yes, it’s me,” said her voice, in such a tone as might have been expected from her face.
“Then come in, child, come in,” said David joyfully, pushing back his chair as he rose. “I’m that glad you’ve come back, you can’t think!”
“But I haven’t come back — that’s just it,” answered the defiant voice out of the night.
“Then I’m going to fetch you back, Missy. I’m going—”
“You stop in that verandah. If you come out I’ll take to my heels and you’ll never see me again — never! Now look here, Mr. Teesdale, haven’t I sickened you this time?”
“Done what, Missy?” asked David, uneasily, from the verandah. He could see her outline now.
“Sickened you. I should have thought I’d sickened you just about enough this trip, if you’d asked me. I should have said I’d choked you off for good and all.”
“You know you’ve done no such thing, Missy. What nonsense the child will talk!”
“What! I didn’t sicken you this afternoon?”
“No.”
“Didn’t disgust you, if you like that better?”
“No.”
“Didn’t make you perspire, the whole lot of you?”
“Of course you didn’t, Missy. How you talk! You amused us a good deal, and you surprised us, too, a bit; but that was all.”
“Oh! So that was all, was it? So I only surprised you a bit? I suppose you don’t happen to know whether it was a big bit, eh?”
But David now decided that the time was come for firmness.
“Listen to me, Missy; I’m not going to have any more to say to you unless you come inside at once!”
“But what if I’m not never coming inside — never no more?”
There was that within the words which made David pause to consider. At length he said: “Very well, then, come into the verandah and we’ll have a sensible talk here, and I won’t force you into the house; though where else you’re to go I don’t quite see. However, come here, and I won’t insist on your coming a step further.”
“Honour bright?”
“Of course.”
“Hope to die?”
“I don’t understand you, Missy; but I meant what I said.”
“Then I’m coming. One moment, though! Is anybody about? Is Mrs. Teesdale in the house?”
“No, she’s gone to chapel. So has Arabella, and John William’s milking. They’ll none of ‘em be back just yet. Ah, that’s better, my dear girl, that’s better!”
Missy was back in her old wooden chair. Mr. Teesdale sat down again in its fellow and put his hand affectionately upon the girl’s shoulder.
“So you mean to tell me your hairs didn’t stand on end!” said Missy, in a little whisper that was as unnecessary as it was fascinating just then.
“I haven’t got much to boast of,” answered the old man cheerily; “but what hair I have didn’t do any such thing, Missy.”
“Now just you think what you’re saying,” pursued the girl, with an air as of counsel cautioning a witness. “You tell me I neither sickened you, nor disgusted you, nor choked you off for good and all with that song and dance I gave you this afternoon. Your hairs didn’t stand on end, and I didn’t even make you perspire — so you say! But do you really mean me to believe you?”
“Why, bless the child! To be sure — to be sure!”
“Then, Mr. Teesdale, I must ask you whether you’re in the habit of telling lies.”
David opened his mouth to answer very promptly indeed, but kept it open without answering at all at the moment. He had remembered something that sent his left thumb and forefinger of their own accord into an empty waistcoat pocket. “No,” said he presently with a sigh, “I’m not exactly in the habit of saying what isn’t true.”
“But you do it sometimes?”
“I have done it, God forgive me! But who has not?”
“Not me,” cried Missy candidly. “There’s not a bigger liar in this world than me! I’m going to tell you about that directly. I’m so glad you’ve told a lie or two yourself — it gives me such a leg-up — though I never should have thought it of you, Mr. Teesdale. I’ve told hundreds since I’ve known you. Have you told any since you’ve known me?”
The question was asked with all the inquisitive sympathy of one discovering a comrade in sin. “I mean not counting the ones you’ve just been telling me,” added Missy when she got no answer, “about your not being shocked, and all the rest of it.”
“That was no falsehood, Missy; that was the truth.”
“All right, then, we’ll pass that. Have you told any other lies since I’ve been here? Just whisper, and I promise I won’t let on. I do so want to know.”
“But why, my dear — but why?”
“Because it’ll be ever so much easier for me to make my confession when you’ve made yours.”
“Your confession! What can you have to confess, Missy?” The old man chuckled as he patted her hand.
“More than you’re prepared for. But you must fire first. Have you or have you not told a wicked story since I’ve been staying here?”
Mr. Teesdale cleared his throat and sat upright in his chair.
“Missy,” said he solemnly, “the only untruth I can remember telling in all my life, I have told since you have been with us; and I’ve told it over and over again. Heaven knows why I admit this much to you! I suppose there’s something in you, my dear, that makes me say more than ever I mean to say. But I’m not going to say another word about this — that’s flat.”
“Good Lord!” murmured Missy. “And you’ve told it over and over and over again! Oh, do tell me,” she whispered coaxingly; “you might.”
“My dear, I’ve told you too much already.” And old Teesdale would have risen and paced the verandah, but a pair of strong arms restrained him. They were Missy’s arms thrown round his neck, and the old man was content to sit still.
“Tell me one thing,” she wheedled softly: “had it anything to do with me — that wicked story you’ve told so often?”
Mr. Teesdale was silent.
“Then it had something to do with me. Let me think. Had it anything — to do with — your watch?... Then it had! And anything to do with that twenty pounds you sent me to the post office?... Yes, it had! You pawned that watch to get me that money. You said you had left
it mending. I’ve heard you say so a dozen times. So this is the lie you meant you’d told over and over again. And all for me! O Mr. Teesdale, I am so sorry — I am — so — sorry.”
She had broken down and was sobbing bitterly on his shoulder. The old man stroked her head.
“You needn’t take it so to heart, Missy dear. Nay, come! Shall I tell you why? Because it wasn’t all for you, Missy. I hardly knew you then. Nay, honey, it was all for your dear father — no one else.”
The effect of this distinction, made with a very touching sort of pride, was to withdraw Missy’s arms very suddenly from the old man’s neck, and to leave her sitting and trembling as far away from him as possible, though still in her chair. Her moment was come; but her nerve and her courage, her coolness and steadiness of purpose, where were they now?
She braced herself together with a powerful effort. Hours ago she had resolved, under influences that may be remembered, to undeceive the too trustful old man now at her side. To that resolve she still adhered; but as it had since become evident that nothing she could possibly do would lead him to suspect the truth, there was now no way for her but the hardest way of all — that of a full and clean confession. Her teeth were chattering when she began, but Mr. Teesdale understood her to say:
“Before you told your lie I had told you a dozen — I spoke hardly a word of truth all the way into Melbourne that day. But there was one great, big, tremendous lie at the bottom of all the rest. And can’t you guess what that was? You must guess — I can never tell you — I couldn’t get it out.”
Mr. Teesdale was very silent. “Yes, I think I can guess,” he said at last, and sadly enough.
“Then what was it?” exclaimed Missy in an eager whisper. She was shivering with excitement.
“Well, my dear, I suppose it was to do with them friends you had to meet at the theatre. You might have trusted me a bit more, Missy! I shouldn’t have thought so much of it, after all.”
“Of what?”
“Why, of your going to the theatre alone. Wasn’t that it, Missy?”
The girl moaned. “Oh, no — no! It was something ever so much worse than that.”
“Then you weren’t stopping with friends at all. Was that it? Yes, you were staying all by yourself at one of the hotels.”
“No — no — no. It was ever so much worse than that too. That was one of the lies I told you, but it was nothing like the one I mean.”
“Missy,” old David said gravely, “I don’t want to know what you mean. I don’t indeed! I’d far rather know nothing at all about it.”
“But you must know!” cried Missy in desperation.
“Why must I?”
“Because this has gone on far too long. And I never meant it to go on at all. No, I give you my oath I only meant to have a lark in the beginning — to have a lark and be done with it! Anyhow I can’t keep it up any longer; that’s all about it, and — but surely you can guess now, Mr. Teesdale, can’t you?”
Again the old man was long in answering. “Yes,” he exclaimed at length, and with such conviction in his voice that Missy grasped her chair-arms tight and sat holding her breath. “Yes, I do see now. You borrowed that money not because you really needed it, but because—”
The girl’s groans stopped him. “To think that you can’t guess,” she wailed, “though I’ve as good as told you in so many words!”
“Νο, I can’t guess,” answered David decisively. “What’s more, I don’t want to. So I give it up. Hush, Missy, not another word! I won’t have it! I’ll put my fingers in my ears if you will persist. I don’t care whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, I’m not going to sit here and listen to you pitching into yourself when — when—”
“When what?”
“Why, when I’ve grown that fond of you, my dear!”
“And are you fond of me?” said Missy, in a softened voice that quivered badly. She put her arms once more round the old man’s neck, and let her tousled head rest again upon his shoulder. “Are you really so fond of me as all that?”
“My dear, we all are. You know that as well as I do.”
Missy made one important exception in her own mind, but not aloud. Kind, worn fingers were now busy with her hair, now patting her shoulder tenderly; and in all her poor life Missy had never known a father or a father’s love. Even with the will she could not have spoken for some minutes. When she did speak next it was to echo the old man’s last words; “Yes, I know that as well as you do. And I know how it hurts! But tell me, can you possibly be as fond of me after this afternoon?”
“I can,” said old Teesdale. “I can only speak for myself. Maybe I think more of you than anyone else does; I’ve seen more of you, and had more of your kindness. Nothing could make me forget that, Missy — how you’ve sat with me, and walked with me, and read to me, and taken notice of the old man, no matter who else was by or who wasn’t. No, I could never forget all that, my dear; nothing that you could do could make me forget one half of that!”
“And nothing that I have done?”
“Still less anything that you have done.”
“But if you found out that I’d been deceiving you all along, and obtained every mortal thing on false pretences, and taken the filthiest advantage of your kindness — surely that would wipe out any little good turns which anybody would have done you? Of course it would!”
“It might. But anybody wouldn’t have done ‘em — anybody wouldn’t,” the old man said, leaving a kiss upon the hair between his fingers. “At all events, Missy, there’s one thing that nothing could blot out; for whatever you did, you’d still be your dear father’s daughter!”
Very slowly and deliberately, Missy unwound her arms and lifted her head, and got out of the chair, and stood to her full height in the dark verandah.
“That’s just it,” she said calmly, distinctly. “That’s just what I was coming to.”
But Mr. Teesdale had also risen, and he was not listening to Missy. For footsteps were drawing near through the grass — footsteps and the rustle of stiff Sunday gowns, and the creaking of comfortless Sunday boots — and a harsh voice was crying more harshly than was even its wont:
“Is that you, David? And is that Miriam beside you? And how dare she come back and show her face, I wonder? Ay, that’s what I want to know!”
David ran to meet and expostulate with his harder half. It was seldom that he even tried to quell that outspoken tongue; but now he both tried and succeeded, though Missy in the verandah could not hear by how much artifice or in what words. In another minute, however, Mr. Teesdale was again at her side, while his wife and daughter went past them and into the house without further parley.
These few words were then exchanged in the verandah:
“Missy, she didn’t mean it. You’ll hear no more about it — not a word from anybody.”
“I deserve to, nevertheless.”
“So you’ll come in, won’t you, and have your supper like a dear good girl?”
“Ah, yes, I’ll come in now.”
“I was so afraid — Mrs. T. is that hasty and plain-spoken — that what she said might make you say you’d never come into our house any more.”
“Not it,” said Missy with a laugh. “That’s the sort of thing to have the very opposite effect upon you. Come on in!”
CHAPTER XIV.
A BOLT FROM THE BLUE.
MR. TEESDALE sat at his end of the old green tablecloth, reading a singularly unseasonable communication from that middle-man who bought the milk but was never in a position to pay for it. The time was half-past eleven in the forenoon of Boxing Day, and the daily delivery of letters had just taken place. It was naturally a little later than usual, but Mr. Teesdale wished with all his heart that there had been no delivery at all. At length he raised a tired face from his bad news, and let his eyes rest for the comfort of his spirit upon the red head and fringe of his solitary companion in the parlour. Missy was seated on the sofa, and all of her but the top of her he
ad and the bottom of her dress, with a finger or two of each hand, was hidden behind the Argus newspaper. Missy always liked to see the Argus as soon as it came, though by that time it was never less than a day old, because Mr. Teesdale had it from a friend when the friend was done with it. This morning, as usual, he had handed it to the girl before opening his letters. He now sat staring absently at the girl’s hair, and was therefore somewhat slow to notice that the narrow strip of forehead under the fringe was gone so white that it was difficult to tell where paper ended and forehead began. No sooner had David seen this, however, than he saw also the paper jumping up and down in the girl’s grasp; whereupon the unpleasant letter in his own hands went straightway out of his head.
“Missy,” he cried, “what’s the matter, my dear? What have you seen?”
Missy dashed down the paper and was on her feet in an instant. There was extraordinary spirit in the action, and her eyes were very bright.
“What have I seen?” she repeated, in a tone that suppressed excitement rather than concern. “Nothing; that is, nothing that could interest any of you; only something about a friend of mine.”
Yet she bounced out of the room without another word, and forthwith went in search of Arabella.
She found her in the dairy, which was half under the ground, and wholly out of the way.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 60