Kitabı oku: «The Unbidden Guest», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VI. – THE WAYS OF SOCIETY

The Monday following was the first and the best of some bad days at the farm; for Missy had never written to tell Mr. Teesdale when and where he might call for her, so he could not call at all, and she did not come out by herself. This they now firmly expected her to do, and David wasted much time in meeting every omnibus; but when the last one had come in without Missy, even he was forced to give her up for that day. There would be a letter of explanation in the morning, said David, and shut his ears to his wife’s answer. She had been on tenter-hooks all day, for ever diving into the spare room with a duster, dodging out again to inquire what time it was now, and then scolding David because he had not his watch – a circumstance for which that simpleton was reproaching himself before long.

For there was no letter in the morning, and no Missy next day, or the next, or the next after that. It was then that Mr. Teesdale took to lying awake and thinking much of the friendly ticking that had cheered his wakefulness for thirty years, and even more of a few words in the Thursday’s Argus, which he had not shown to a soul. And strange ideas concerning the English girl were bandied across the family board; but the strangest of all were John William’s, who would not hear a word against her; on the contrary, it was his father, in his opinion, who was to blame for the whole matter, which the son of the house declared to be a mere confusion of one Monday with another.

“You own yourself,” said he, “that the girl wanted a new rig-out before she’d come here to stay. Did she say so, father, or did she not? Very well, then. Do you mean to tell me she could get measured, and tried on, and fixed up all round in four days, and two of ‘em Saturday and Sunday? Then I tell you that’s your mistake, and it wasn’t Monday she said, but Monday week, which is next Monday. You mark my words, we’ll have her out here next Monday as ever is!”

How John William very nearly hit the mark, and how shamefully Arabella missed it with the big stones she had been throwing all the week – how rest returned to the tortured mind of Mr. Teesdale, and how Mrs. T. was not sorry that she had left the clean good sheets on the spare bed in spite of many a good mind to put them away again – all this is a very short story indeed. For Missy reappeared on the Saturday afternoon while they were all at tea.

Arabella was the one who caught first sight of the red sunshade bobbing up the steep green ascent of the farmhouse, for Arabella sat facing the window; but it was left to John William to turn in his chair and recognise the tall, well-dressed figure at a glance as it breasted the hill.

“Here she is – here’s Miriam!” he cried out instantly. “Now what did I tell you all?” He was rolling down his shirt-sleeves as he spoke, flushed with triumph.

Mr. Teesdale had risen and pressed forward to peer through the window, and as he did so the red sunshade waved frantically. Beneath it was a neat straw hat, and an unmistakable red-fringed face nodding violently on top of a frock of vestal whiteness. Arabella flew out to meet the truant, and John William to put on a coat.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Teesdale, holding both her hands when the girl was once more among them. “Well, to be sure; but you’re just in time for tea, that’s one good thing.”

“Nay, I must make some fresh,” cried his wife, without a smile. “Mind, I do think you might have written, Miriam. You have led us a pretty dance, I can tell you that.” She caught up the teapot and whisked out of the room.

“Have I?” the girl asked meekly of the old man.

“No, no, my dear,” and “Not you,” the two Teesdales answered in one breath; though the father added, “but you did promise to write.”

“I know I did. But you see – ”

Missy laughed.

“You should have written, my dear,” David said gently, as she got no further, and he had no wish to cross-question her. “I didn’t know what had got you.”

“None of us could think,” added Arabella.

“Except me, Miriam,” said John William, proudly. “You were getting your new rig-out; wasn’t that it?”

The girl nodded and beamed at him as she said that it was. The sunshade was lying on the sofa now, and Missy sitting at the table in Arabella’s place.

“I thought,” said Mr. Teesdale, “that you had gone off to Sydney, and weren’t coming near us any more. Do you know why? There was a Miss Oliver in the list of the overland passengers in Thurday’s Argus.”

“Indeed,” said the girl.

“Yes, and it was a Miss M. Oliver, and all.”

“Well, I never! That’s what you’d call a coincident, if you like.”

“I’m very glad it was nothing worse,” said Mr. Teesdale heartily. “I made that sure it was you.”

“You never mentioned it, father?” said John William.

“No, because I was also quite sure that she would write if we only gave her time. You ought to have written, Missy, and then I’d have gone in and fetched you – ”

“But that’s just what I didn’t want. All this way! No, the ‘bus was quite good enough for me.”

“But what about your trunk?” Arabella inquired.

Missy made answer in the fewest words that her trunk was following by carrier; and because Mrs. Teesdale entered to them now, with a pot of fresh tea, Missy said little more just then, except in specific apology for her remissness in not writing. This apology was made directly to Mrs. Teesdale, whose manner of receiving it may or may not have discouraged the visitor from further conversation at the moment. But so it seemed to one or two, who heard and saw and felt that such discouragement would exist eternally between that old woman and that young girl.

Milking-time was at hand, however, and Missy was left to finish her tea with only Mr. Teesdale to look after her. John William and his mother were the two best milkers on the farm, and Arabella was a fair second to them when she liked, but that was not this evening. Her heart was with Missy in the parlour. But Missy herself was far better suited in having the old farmer all to herself. With him she was entirely at her ease. The moment they were alone she was thanking David for the twenty pounds duly received at the post-office, and his immediate stipulation that the matter of the loan must be a secret made it also an additional bond of sympathy between these two. They sat chatting about England and Miriam’s parents, but not more than Missy could help. She referred but lightly to a home-letter newly received, as though there was no news in it; she was much more ready to hear how Mr. Teesdale had had the coat torn off his back in rescuing his first home-letters from the tiny post-office of the early days, which had been swept away by the first wave of the gold-rush. Again he spoke of that golden age, and of his own lost chances, without a perceptible shade of regret, and again Missy marvelled; as did Mr. Teesdale yet again, and in his turn, at her tone about money who had been brought up in the midst of it. It only showed the good sense of his old friend in keeping his children simple and careful amid all their rich surroundings; but Mr. Oliver had been ever the most sensible, as well as the kindest of men. The farmer said this as he was walking slowly in the paddock, with a pipe in his mouth and Missy on his arm, and his downcast eyes upon the long, broken shadow of his own bent figure. Missy’s trunk came about this time, but she let it alone. And these two were feeding the chickens together – old David’s own department – when Arabella came seeking Missy, having escaped from the milking-stool a good hour before her time.

“Oh, here you are! Come, and I’ll help you unpack. Mother said I was to,” said she hurriedly. She was only in a hurry for Missy’s society. So Missy went with her, getting a good-humoured nod from the old man, whose side she was sorry to leave.

And David watched her out of sight, smiling his calm, kind smile. “She’s her father’s daughter,” said he to the chickens. “Her ways are a bit new to me – but that’s where I like ‘em. Mannerisms she may have – I wouldn’t have her otherwise. She’s one of the rising generation – but she has her father’s heart, and that’s the best kind that ever beat time.”

In Missy’s bedroom much talking was being done by Arabella. Her curiosity was insatiable, but she herself never gave it a chance. She wanted to know this, but before there was time for an answer she must know that. One thing, when the trunk was unpacked and its contents put away in drawers, she was left entirely unable to understand; and that was, how Missy came to have everything brand-new.

“Why, because everything was spoilt,” said Missy, in apparent wonder at the other’s wonderment.

“By that one wave?”

“Why, of course.”

“But how did it happen?”

“Didn’t I tell you? We’d left the window open, and in comes a green sea and half fills the cabin. The captain, he was ever so wild, and, oh my! didn’t he give it us! Of course, all our things were spoilt – me and the other girls. We finished the voyage in borrowed everything, and in borrowed everything I came here the other day. Did you think them things were mine? Not much, my dear. Not much! But I was forced to have things of my own before I could come out here and stay.”

Arabella, sitting on the bed, studied the tall figure with arms akimbo that struck sharp through the dusk against the square-paned window. She was wondering whether the Olivers were such well-to-do people after all. Her own English was not perfect, but her ear was better than her tongue, and the young ladies in the Family Cherub spoke not at all as Missy spoke. Arabella’s next question seemed irrelevant.

“Did you see much society at home, Missy?”

“You bet I did!” was the answer, and the fuzzy head was nodding against the window.

“Real high society, like you read about in tales, Missy?”

“Rather!”

“Lords?”

“Any jolly quantity of lords!”

“You really mean it, Missy?”

“Mean it? What do you mean? Look here, I won’t tell you no more if you think I’m telling lies.”

“Missy, I never thought of such a thing – never!” Arabella hastened to aver. “I was only surprised, that’s all I was.’.isn’t likely I meant to doubt your word.”

“Didn’t you? That’s all right, then. Why, bless your heart, do you think it so wonderful to know a few lords?”

“I didn’t think they were as common as all that,” said Arabella, meekly.

“Common as mud,” cried Missy grandly. “Why, you can’t swing a cat without knocking a lord’s topper off – not in England!”

Arabella laughed. Then her questions ceased for the time being, and Missy was curious to know how she had impressed a rather tiresome interlocutor, for now in the bedroom it was impossible for them to see each other’s faces. A few minutes later Missy was satisfied on this point. At the supper-table she had no more attentive listener than Arabella, who watched her in the lamplight as one who has merely read watches another who has seen and done, while Missy rattled on more freely than she had done yet before Mrs. Teesdale. Even Mrs. Teesdale was made to smile this time, though she did her best to conceal it. The visitor was in such racy form.

“I may have to go back home again any day,” she told them all. “It’ll depend how my mother is, and how they all get on without me. I’ll bet they manage pretty badly. But while I am here I mean to make the most of my time. A short life and a merry one, them’s my sentiments, ladies and gentlemen! So I want to learn to shoot and milk and do everything but ride. I could ride if I wanted to; I learnt when I was a kid; but a horse once – ”

She broke off, laughing and nodding knowingly at Mr. Teesdale, who explained how Missy had been once bitten and was twice shy. John William said that he could very well understand it; and he offered to take Missy out ‘possum-shooting as soon as ever there was a moon.

“Have you ever fired a gun, Missy?” said Mr. Teesdale; and Missy shook her head.

“P’r’aps you wouldn’t like to try?” said John William.

“Wouldn’t I so!” cried the girl, with flashing eyes. “You show me how, and I’ll try to-morrow.”

“To-morrow’s Sunday,” Mrs. Teesdale said solemnly. “Is your cup off, Miriam?”

It was not, and because the cocoa was too hot for her Missy poured it into the saucer, and drank until her face was all saucer and red fringe. This impressed Arabella.

“We’ll soon teach Missy to shoot,” remarked Mr. Teesdale, smiling into his plate, “if she’ll hold the gun tight and not mind the noise.”

“I’ll do my level,” said Missy gamely.

John William proceeded to assure her that she could not be taught by a better man than his father, whom he declared to be the best shot in that colony for his age. The old man looked pleased, praise from his son being a very rare treat to him. But Arabella had been neglecting her supper to watch and listen to the guest, and now she asked, “Do the fine ladies shoot in England, Missy?”

“Not they!” replied Missy promptly. “I should like to catch them.”

“What ladies do you mean, my dear?” asked the farmer of his daughter.

“Grand ladies – countesses and viscountesses and the rest. Missy knows heaps of them – don’t you, Missy?”

“Well, a good few,” said Missy, with some show of modesty.

“To be sure you would,” murmured Mr. Tees-dale, adding, as his eyes glistened, “and yet you’ll come and stay with the likes of us! You aren’t too proud to take us as you find us – you aren’t above drinking cocoa with your supper.”

“What do the lords and ladies drink with their suppers?” asked Arabella, as Missy smiled and blushed.

But the farmer cried, “Their dinners, she means; I’ll warrant they dine late every night o’ their lives.”

Missy nodded to this.

“But what do they drink with their dinners?” repeated Arabella.

“Oh, champagne.”

“What else?”

“What else? Oh! claret, and port, and sherry wine. And beer and spirits for them that prefers ‘em!”

“All that with their dinners?”

“Rather! I should think they did. The whole lot, one after the other!”

“What! Beer and brandy and sherry wine?” Arabella’s incredulity was disagreeably apparent.

“Yes, everything you can think of; but look here, if you don’t want to believe me, you needn’t, you know!” said Missy, turning as red as her fringe as she stared the other girl full in the eyes across the supper-table. In the awkward pause following John William turned and glared furiously at his sister; but it was their father who cleared the air by saying mildly:

“Arabella, my dear, I’m afraid you don’t know a joke when you hear one.”

Then Arabella coloured in her turn.

“Do you mean to say you were joking, Missy?” she leant forward to ask; as though she could no more believe this than recent statements.

But Missy had given one quick glance at Mr.

Teesdale, and then, with a little gasp, had burst into an immoderate fit of laughter.

“Of course I was,” she cried out as soon as she could speak; “of course I was joking – you old silly!”

CHAPTER VII. – MOONLIGHT SPORT

So the first few days were largely spent in teaching Missy to shoot. A very plucky pupil she made, too, if not a particularly apt one; but head and chief of her sporting qualities was her enthusiasm. That was intense. The girl was never happy without a gun in her hand. So far as safety went, she took palpable pains to follow every injunction in the matter of full-cock and half-cock, and laid to heart all the rules given her for the carrying and handling of a loaded firearm. Thus, no one feared her prowling about the farm on tiptoe with John William’s double-barrels pointing admirably to earth; least of all, the sparrows and parrots which she never hit. Old Teesdale would go with her and stand chuckling at her side when she missed a sparrow sitting; once he snatched the smoking gun from her, and with the other barrel picked off the same small bird on the wing. Then there was much practice at folded newspapers, of which Missy could sometimes make a sieve, at her own range; and altogether these two shots enjoyed themselves. Certainly it was a sight to see them together – the weak-kneed old man, who could shoot so cleverly still, when he had a mind, and the jaunty young woman who was all slang and fun and rollicking good-nature, plus a cockney lust for blood and feathers.

Missy’s first feathers, however, were not such as she might stick in her hat, and her first blood was exceedingly ill-shed. To be sure, she knew no better until the deed was done, and the quaint dead bird with the big head and beak carried home in triumph to Mr. Teesdale. That triumph was short-lived.

“Got one at last!” cried Missy, as she dropped her prey at the old man’s feet. Mr. Teesdale was smoking in the verandah, and he pulled a long face behind his smile.

“So I see,” said he; “but do you know what it is you have got, Missy?”

“No, I don’t, but I mean to have him stuffed, whatever he is.”

“I think I wouldn’t, Missy, if I were you. It’s a laughing jackass.”

“Yes? Well, I guess he won’t laugh much more!”

“And there’s a five-pound penalty for shooting him, Missy. He kills the snakes, therefore you are not allowed by law to kill him. You have broken the law, my dear, and the best thing that we can do is to bury the victim and say nothing about it to anybody.” He was laughing, but the girl stood looking at her handiwork with a very red face.

“I thought I was to shoot everything,” she said. “I thought that everything eat the fruit and things. I never knew I was so beastly cruel!”

She put away the gun, and spent most of that summer’s day in reading to Mr. Teesdale, for whom she had developed a very pretty affection. They read longest in the parlour, with the window shut, and the blind down, and a big fly buzzing between it and the glass. The old man fell sound asleep in the end, whereupon Missy sat very still indeed, just to watch him. And what it was exactly in the worn and white-haired face that fetched the tears to her eyes and the shame to her cheeks, on this particular occasion, there is no saying; but Missy was scarcely Missy during the remainder of the afternoon.

That evening, however, had already been pitched upon for some ‘possum-shooting, given a good moon. From the moment she was reminded of this, at tea-time, the visitor was herself again, and something more. It is saying a good deal, but they had not hitherto seen her in such excessively high spirits as overcame her now. She lent Mr. Tees-dale a hand to load some cartridges in the gunroom while the others were milking; but she was rather a hindrance than a help to that patient old man. She would put in the shot before the powder. Then she got into pure infantile mischief, letting off caps under David’s coat-tails, and doing her best to make him sharp with her. Herein she failed; nevertheless, the elder was glad enough to hand her over to the younger Teesdale when the time came, and with it a moon without a cloud. Neither Arabella nor her father was going, but three of the men were who worked on the place, and with whom John William was obliged to leave Missy alone in the yard while he went for the dogs. It was only for a minute or two; but the men were in fits of laughter when he returned. It appeared that Missy had been giving them some sort of a dance under that limelit moon.

“Down, Major! Down, Laddie!” John William cried at the dogs as they leaped up at Missy.

But Missy answered, “Down yourself, Jack – I like ‘em.” And the three men laughed; in fact, they seemed prepared to laugh at Missy whenever she opened her mouth; but John William laughed too as he led the way into the moonlit paddocks.

Here the hunting-ground began without preliminary, for on this side of the farm there were trees and to spare, the land dipping in a gully full of timber before it rose to the high ploughed levels known as the Cultivation. The gully was well grassed for all its trees, which were divers as well as manifold. There were gum-trees blue and red, and stringy-barks, and she-oaks, each and all of them a haunt of the opossum and the native cat. The party promptly surrounded a blue gum at the base of which the dogs stood barking, and Missy found herself doing what the others did – getting the moon behind the branches and searching for what she was told would look more like the stump of a bough or a tangle of leaves than any known animal.

“I believe it’s a lie,” said John William; “for Laddie barked first, and Laddie always did tell lies.”

“Tell lies?” echoed Missy, with a puzzled grin.

“Yes, barking up trees where there’s nothing at all – that’s what we call telling lies; and old Laddie’s started the evening well by telling one already.”

“Not he,” cried a shrill voice; and the youngest of the three farm-hands – a little bit of a fellow – stood pointing to a branch so low that everyone else had overlooked it.

“I see a little bit of a knot on the bough,” said Missy, “but blow me tight if I see anything else!”

“That’s it,” cried John William. “That little knot is a native cat.”

Missy lowered her gun at once. “Oh, I didn’t come out,” said she, “to shoot cats!”

“But they aren’t cats at all,” Teesdale explained (while his men stood and laughed); “they’re much more like little leopards, I assure you. We only call them cats because – because I’m bothered if I know why! It’s not the name for them, as you’ll say when you’ve shot this beggar. And you don’t know the way they tear our fowls to pieces, Missy, or you wouldn’t make so many bones about it; besides which, you won’t get an easier shot all night.”

“Oh, if that’s the kind of customer, I’m on to try,” said Missy. She raised her gun there and then, pressed it to her shoulder, and took aim at the black notch against the silver disc of the moon. The moonlight licked the barrels from sight to sight, getting into Missy’s eyes, but there were barely a dozen feet between muzzle and mark. The report was quickly followed by a lifeless thud upon the ground; and when the smoke cleared, that notch was gone from the bough. Then one of the men struck a match to show Missy what she had done; and she had done it so effectually as to give herself a sensation which she concealed with difficulty. It was not pity; there was no pitying a spotted little horror with so sharp a snout and such devilish fangs: but whatever it was, that sensation kept Missy modest in her success, so that she refused the next shot point-blank. John William took it, with the only possible result.

“A bushy.” someone said, turning over the dead bush-tailed opossum with his foot It looked very big and soft and gray, lying dead in the moonlight. Missy found it in her heart to pity an opossum.

“Don’t you skin them?” she asked at a respectful range. “Do you make no use of them after all?”

“It’s so hard not to spoil them,” John William said as he slipped another cartridge into the breech. He would have shown her how this particular skin had been ruined by the shot, but Missy said she quite understood.

He was beginning to think her squeamish. He asked her whether she had not had enough. She would not admit it, and took another shot to prove her spirit. This time she failed, and bore her failure with an equanimity which (in Missy) amounted almost to apathy. That she was neither squeamish nor apathetic, however, was demonstrated very suddenly while the night was still young.

A ring-tailed opossum had been brought to earth by a charge from the muzzle-loader of that stunted young colonial whose eyes were as sharp as his voice – he who had “mooned” the native cat. The others called him Geordie. The three of them were kneeling over the dead “ringy,” and Missy was taking no more notice of them than she could help; only Geordie’s was a voice that made itself heard. Missy had taken little stock of what the kneeling men were doing or saying until suddenly she heard:

“Young’uns it is! I told you there was young ‘uns! That little beggar’s as dead as his mother, but this one ain’t. ‘Ere, come off ‘er back, can’t yer? She ain’t no more good to you now, do you ‘ear?”

This was Geordie’s manner of speech to the bunch of breathing fur that stuck tight to the dead doe’s back, whence his fingers were busy disengaging it; but Geordie suddenly found himself on his back in the grass, and when he picked himself up it was Miss Oliver herself who was kneeling where he had knelt, and even going on with his work. It took her some moments, and when done her hands were bloody in the moonshine. Then, first she took that bit of warm fur and nursed it in her neck, stroking it with her chin. And next she turned a calm face up to her companions, and said distinctly to them all, “I call this a damned shame, so I tell you straight!” Indeed she was anything but squeamish.

She lowered her eyes immediately, undid three buttons, and slipped the small opossum into her bosom. There she fixed it, with great care, but not the smallest fuss; and looking up once more, saw the three hirelings walking off together through the trees.

“I tell you,” she called after them – shaking her fist at their backs – “I tell you it’s the damnedest shame that ever was!”

The words rang clear through the clear night, then found an answer at Missy’s side. “You are quite right. It is. And now won’t you get up and come back home, Missy?”

“Jack!” cried the girl faintly, as she stumbled to her feet. “I’d quite forgotten you were there.”

“I have been here all the time,” said John William.

“Then do tell me what I’ve been saying,” said Missy, anxiously, as she took his arm and they started homeward. “I couldn’t see no more and keep my scalp fixed. I hope to God I haven’t been swearing, have I?”

“Not you, Missy. You’ve only said what was right and proper. It was cruel, and I blame myself for the whole thing.”

“No, no, no! I wanted some sport. I thought I could kill things, and never give a – no, never give a thought to ‘em. Now I know I can’t. That’s all. I say, though, if I did use a swear-word, you won’t give me away, will you? I don’t know what I said, and that’s all about it; but when I lose my scalp – ah well, I know I can trust you.”

“Of course you can,” said John William cheerily. And involuntarily he pressed to his side the hand that was still within his arm.

“I wouldn’t say swear-words unless I did lose my scalp – you understand?” said Missy, coming back to it again.

“Of course you wouldn’t; but you didn’t.”

“I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t have your parents hear of it if I did; they’d take it so terribly to heart.”

“They shall hear nothing – not that there’s anything for them to hear.”

“Now my parents are different; they swear themselves.”

“Come, I can’t credit that, you know!”

“But they do – like troopers!” persisted the girl. “It’s the fashion just now in England. You may not know – how should you?”

“Missy,” said John William, as he opened her the gate into the homestead yard, “it’s impossible to tell when you’re joking and when you’re not.”

“Aha, I mean it to be,” cried the girl, bowing low to him, with the moon all over her. Then she stood up to her last inch, smiled full in his face, and turning, left him that smile to keep if he could. He would have followed her, but a burst of laughter in the men’s room took him off his course, as good reasons occurred to him for calling in there first.

The room was a part of one of the farm outhouses. In each corner was a bunk, and on each bunk a man (counting Geordie), the fourth being one Old Willie, a retired salt, who drove the milk into Melbourne in the middle of every night. Old Willie was sitting on the side of his bunk and chuckling so windily that the sparks were flying out of his cutty like fireworks. There was nothing, however, to show which of the other three was the entertainer, for each turned silent and looked guilty when John William entered and planted himself in their midst.

“I just thought I’d tell you,” said he, with forced blandness, “that there is to be no more ‘possum-shooting on this place for good and all. The man who shoots another ‘possum, I’ll hide him with my own hands, and the man who catches me shooting one, he may take and shoot me. For it’s a grand shame, men, it’s a grand shame! You heard Miss Oliver say it was, didn’t you?” he added sharply, turning to the three.

For the moment they looked blank; the next, it was such a fierce person who was repeating the question, with eyes so like pointed pistols, that one after the other of those three men meekly perjured their souls.

“Exactly,” said John William, nodding his head in a deadly calm. “She said it was the grandest shame ever was; and if any man says she said anything else – well, he’d better let me hear him, that’s all!”