For whatever else this wild girl may have been, she was obviously not a coward. That is the one thing to be said for Missy without any hesitation whatever. Alone, and in the night, she was going to pit herself against an unknown man, who was certainly a villain; yet on she went, with her chin in the air and her arms swinging free. The trees were thickest at the bottom of the low gully. The girl came through them with a brisk glance right and left, but never a lagging step. On the further slope the trees spread out again, and here, on comparatively open ground, she did stop, and suddenly. She could smell the man's pipe in the sweet night air; the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
Missy filled her lungs slowly through her teeth, and emptied them with dilated nostrils. Then she went on, longing in her heart for a moon. In the starlight it was not possible to see clearly very many yards ahead. So far as she could see—and her eyes were good—there was no one in that paddock but herself. Yet a faint smell of tobacco still slightly fouled the air. And this was the very worst part of the whole business; it had brought Missy at last to a second stand-still, and to the determination of singing out, when, without warning sound, an arm was flung round her neck, soft words were being whispered in her ear, and Missy who was no coward felt the veins freezing in her body.
She flung herself free with a great effort, then reeled against the she-oak from behind which he had crept who now stood taking off his hat to her in the starlight.
“I beg your pardon,” said a rich, suave voice in its suavest tones; “upon my word, I beg your pardon from the very bottom of my heart! I thought—I give you my word I thought you were another young lady altogether!”
Missy had recovered a measure of her customary self-control. “So I see—so I see,” she managed to say distinctly enough; but her voice was the voice of another person.
“Thank you, indeed! You are very generous,” said the man, raising his hat once more; “few women would have understood. The fact is, as I say, I took you for a certain young lady whom I quite expected to meet before this. Perhaps you have seen her, and could tell me where she is? For we have missed each other among these accursed gum-trees.”
The fellow's impudence was good for Missy.
“Yes, I have seen her,” said she, as calmly as the other.
“And where may she be at this moment?”
“In her father's house.”
The man stood twirling his moustache and showing the white teeth under it. Then he stuck in his mouth a meerschaum he had in his hand, and sucked silently at the pipe for some moments. “I beg your pardon once more; but I fear we are at cross-purposes,” said he presently. He had been considering.
“I don't think it,” said Missy.
“And why not?” This with a smile.
“Because I have a message for you, Mr. Stan-borough.”
“Ha!”
“A message from Arabella Teesdale,” said Missy, who had lowered her tone and drawn the other a pace nearer in his eagerness.
“And?” he asked; but he was made to wait. “Will you have the goodness to give me that message? Tell me what she says, can't you?”
“Oh, certainly!” replied Missy, with a laugh. “I was to say that she had been very foolish, but has come to her senses in time; and that you will never see her any more, as she has thought better of it, and is done with you for good and all!”
There was a pause first, and then a short sardonic laugh.
“So you were to say all that! It isn't the easiest thing in the world to take it in all at once. Do you mind saying some of it over again?”
“Once is enough. You've got your warning; it's no good your coming after 'Bella Teesdale no more. If you do, you look out for her brother, that's all!”
“John William, eh?” The man laughed again.
“Yes.”
“I know all about the family, you see. I know all about you too—in a way. I never knew you were 'Bella's keeper, I must admit. She merely told me you were a young English lady, of the name of Miss Miriam Oliver, who landed the other week in theParramatta.”
“So I am,” said Missy, trembling violently. Her back was still to the good she-oak, but the man had come so close to her now that she could not have escaped him if she would.
“Now that's very interesting,” he hissed, so that the moisture from his mouth struck her in the face. “If I'd been asked who you were, d'ye see, without first being told, d'ye know what I should have said? I should have said that the other week—just about the time theParramattacame in—there was a certain member of the Bijou Chorus, who answered to the name of Ada Lefroy. And I should have said that Miss Miriam Oliver, of England, was so exactly the dead-spit of Miss Ada Lefroy, of the Bijou Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere, that they must be one and the same young lady. As it is, I'll strike a light and see.” He struck one on the spot. Missy was staring at him with still eyes in a white face. He laughed softly, and used the match to relight his meerschaum pipe, which had gone out.
“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. Thatwasluck! And youwereout 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 morenightinstead. 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. Thatwasgood, 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 Idogive 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 sweet 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.”
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 1000 since nine o'clock in the morning, touching 1100 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.'. 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 areal long visitbefore 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 Tees-dale 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 youhavesaid.”
“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 Iwantto.”
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. Tees-dale 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?”
“The time!” The question did indeed seem irrelevant. “I'm sure I don't know, but I'll go and have a look at the kitchen——”
“Then you needn't. I don't really want to know. I was only wondering when John William would be back from Melbourne. But where's your watch?”
“Getting put to rights, my dear,” said old Tees-dale faintly, with his eyes upon the carpet.
“What, still?”
“Yes; they're keeping it a long time, aren't they?”
“They are so,” said Missy dryly. She watched the old man as he crossed the room twice, with his weak-kneed steps, his white hands joined behind him and his thin body bent forward. Then she went on reading his letter.
It affected her curiously. At the third page she uttered a quick exclamation; at the fourth she lowered the letter with a quick gesture, and stood staring at David with an expression at which he could only guess, because the back of her head was against the glass.
“This is too much,” cried Missy in a broken voice. “I can never let you send this.”
“And why not, my dear?” laughed Mr. Teesdale, echoing, as he thought, her merriment; for it was to this he actually attributed the break in her voice.
“Because there isn't a word of truth in it; because I haven't a warm heart nor a kind nature, and because I'mnotfrank in my dealings. Frank, indeed! If you knew what I really was, you wouldn't say that in a hurry!”
Mr. Teesdale could no longer suppose that the girl was in fun. Her bosom was heaving with excitement; he could see that, if he could not see her face. He said wearily:
“There you go again, Missy! I can't understand why you keep saying such silly things.”
“I'm not what you think me. You understand that, don't you?”
“I hear what you say, but I don't believe a word of it.”
“Then you must! You shall! I can't bear to deceive you a moment longer—I simply can't bear it when you speak and think of me like this. First of all, then, this letter's no good at all!”
In another instant that letter fluttered upon the floor in many pieces.
“You must forgive me,” said Missy, “I couldn't help it; it wasn't worth the paper it was written on; and now I'm going to tell you why.”
Old Teesdale, however, had never spoken, and this silenced the girl also, for the moment. But that moment meant a million. One more, and Missy would have confessed everything. She was worked up to it. She was in continual terror of an immediate exposure. Her better nature was touched and cauterised with shame for the sweet affection of which she had cheated this simple old man. She would tell him everything now and here, and the mercy that filled his heart would be extended to her because she had not waited to be unmasked by another. But she paused to measure him with her eye, or, perhaps, to take a last look at him looking kindly upon her. And in that pause the door opened, making Missy jump with fright; and when it was only Arabella who entered with the lighted kerosene lamp, Missy's eyes sped back to the old man's face in time to catch a sorrowful mute reproach that went straight to her palpitating heart. She stooped without a word to help him gather up the fragments of the torn letter.
She had no further opportunity of speaking that night; and supper would have been a silent meal but for what happened as they all sat at table. All, that night, did not include John William, who was evidently spending Christmas Eve in Melbourne. There was some little talk about him. David remarked that a mail would be in with the Christmas letters, and Missy was asked whether she had not told John William to call at the post office. She had not. During her sojourn at the farm she had only once been to the post office herself; had never sent; and had been told repeatedly she was not half anxious enough about her Home letters. They told her so now. Missy generally said it was because she was so happy and at-home with them; but tonight she made no reply; and this was where they were when there came that knock at the window which made Missy spill her cocoa and otherwise display a strange state of mind.
“Who is it?” she cried. “Who do you think it is?”
“Maybe some neighbour,” said Mrs. T., “to wish us the compliments o' t' season.”
“If not old Father Christmas himself!” laughed David to Missy, in the wish that she should forgive herself, as he had forgiven her, for tearing up his letter. But Missy could only stare at the window-blind, behind which the knock had been repeated, and she was trembling very visibly indeed. Then the front-door opened, and it was Missy, not one of the family, that rushed out into the passage to see who it was. The family heard her shouting for joy:
“It's John William. It's only John William after all. Oh, you dear, dear old Jack!”
Very quickly she was back in the room, and down on the horsehair sofa, breathing heavily. John William followed in his town clothes.
“Yes, of course it's me. Good evening, all. Who did you think it was, Missy?”
“I thought it was visitors. What if it had been? Oh, I hate visitors, that's all.”
“Then I'm sorry to hear it,” remarked Mrs. Teesdale sourly, “for we have visitors coming to-morrow.”
“I hate 'em, too,” said John William wilfully.
“Then I'll thank you to keep your hates to yourselves,” cried Mrs. T. “It's very rude of you both. Your mother wouldn't have spoke so, Missy!”
“Wouldn't she!” laughed the girl. “I wonder if you know much about my mother? But after that I think I'll be off to bed. Iamrude, I know I am, but I never pretended to be anything else.”
This was fired back at them from the door, and then Missy was gone without saying good-night.
“She's not like her mother,” said Mrs. T. angrily; “no, that she isn't!”
“But why in the name of fortune go and tell her so?” John William blurted out. “I never knew anything like you, mother; on Christmas Eve, too!”
“I think,” said David gently, “that Missy is not quite herself. She has been very excitable all day, and I think it would have been better to have taken no notice of what she said. You should remember, my dear, that she is utterly unused to our climate, and that even to us these last few days have been very trying.”
Arabella was the only one who had nothing at all to say, either for Missy or against her. But she went to Missy's room a little later, and there she spoke out:
“You thought it was—Stanborough! I saw you did.”
“Then I did—for the moment. But it was very silly of me—I don't know what could have put him into my head, when I've settled him so finely for good and all!”
“God bless you, Missy! But—but do you think there is any fear of him coming back and walking right in like that?”
“Not the least. Still, if he did—if hedid, mark you—I'd tackle him again as soon as look at him. So never you fear, my girl, you leave him to me.”
In the Melbourne shops that Christmas Eve the younger Teesdale had been perpetrating untold acts of extravagance, for two of which a certain very bad character was entirely and solely responsible. Thus with next day's Christmas dinner there was a bottle of champagne, and the healths of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, and of Miriam their daughter, were drunk successively, and with separate honours. Missy thereat seemed to suffer somewhat from her private feelings, as indeed she did suffer, but those feelings were not exactly what they were suspected to be at the time. She was wondering how much longer she could keep up this criminal pretence and act this infamous part. And as she wondered, a delirious recklessness overcame her, and emptying her glass she jumped to her feet to confess to them all then and there; but the astonished eye of Mrs. Teesdale went like cold steel to her heart, and she wished them long life and prosperity instead. She found herself seated once more with a hammering heart and sensations that drove her to stare hard at the old woman's unsympathetic face, as her own one chance of remaining cool till the end of the meal. And yet a worse moment was to follow hard upon the last.
Missy had made straight for the nearest and the thickest shelter, which happened to underlie that dark jagged rim of river-timber at which old Teesdale was so fond of gazing. She had thrown herself face downward on a bank beside the sluggish brown stream; her fingers were interwoven under her face, her thumbs stuck deep into her ears. So she did not hear the footsteps until they were close beside her, when she sat up suddenly with a face of blank terror.
It was only John William. “Who did you think it was?” said he, smiling as he sat down beside her.
Missy was trembling dreadfully. “How was I to know?” she answered nervously. “It might have been a bushranger, mightn't it?”
“Well, hardly,” replied John William, as seriously as though the question had been put in the best of good faith. And it now became obvious that he also had something on his mind and nerves, for he shifted a little further away from Missy, and sat frowning at the dry brown grass, and picking at it with his fingers.
“Anyhow, you startled me,” said Missy, as she arranged the carroty fringe that had been shamefully dishevelled a moment before. “I am very easily startled, you see.”
“I am very sorry. I do apologise, I'm sure! And I'll go away again this minute, Missy, if you like.” He got to his knees with the words, which were spoken in a more serious tone than ever.
“Oh, no, don't go away. I was only moping. I am glad you've come.”
“Thank you, Missy.”
“But now you have come, you've got to talk and cheer me up. See? There's too many things to think about on a Christmas Day—when—when you're so far away from everybody.”
John William agreed and sympathised. “The fact is I had something to show you,” he added; “that's why I came.”
“Then show away,” said Missy, forcing a smile. “Something in a cardboard box, eh?”
“Yes. Will you open it and tell me how you like it?” He handed her the box that he had taken out of his breast-pocket. Missy opened it and produced a very yellow bauble of sufficiently ornate design.
“Well, I'm sure! A bangle!”
“Yes; but what do you think of it?” asked John William anxiously. He had also blushed very brown.
“Oh, of course I think it's beautiful—beautiful!” exclaimed Missy, with unmistakable sincerity. “But who's it for? That's what I want to know,” she added, as she scanned him narrowly.
“Can't you guess?”
“Well, let's see. Yes—you're blushing! It's for your young woman, that's evident.”
John William edged nearer.
“It's for the younglady—the young lady I should like to be mine—only I'm so far below her,” he began in a murmur. Then he looked at her hard. “Missy, for God's sake forgive me,” he cried out, “but it's for you!”
“Nonsense!”
“But I mean it. I got it last night. Do, please, have it.”
“No,” said Missy firmly. “Thank you ever so very awfully much; but you must take it back.” And she held it out to him with a still hand.
“I can't take it back—I won't!” cried young Teesdale excitedly. “Consider it only as a Christmas box—surely your father's godson may give you a little bit of a Christmas box? That's me, Missy, and anything else I've gone and said you must forgive and forget too, for it was all a slip. I didn't mean to say it, Missy, I didn't indeed. I hope I know my position better than that. But this here little trumpery what-you-call-it, you must accept it as a Christmas present from us all. Yes, that's what you must do; for I'm bothered if I take it back.”
“You must,” repeated Missy very calmly. “I think you mean to break my heart between you with your kindness. Here's the box and here's the bangle.”
John William looked once and for all into the resolute light eyes. Then first he took the box and put the lid on it, and stowed it away in his breastpocket; and after that he took that gold bangle, very gingerly, between finger and thumb, and spun it out into the centre of the brown river, where it made bigger, widening bangles, that took the best part of a minute to fail and die away. Then everything was stiller than before; and stillest of all were the man and the woman who stood facing each other on the bank, speckled with the steep sunlight that came down on them like rain through the leaves of the river-timber overhead.
“That was bad,” said Missy at last. “Something else was worse. It's not much good your trying to hedge matters with me; and for my part I'm going to speak straight and plain for once. If I thought that you'd gone and fallen in love withme—as sure as we're standing here, Jack, I'd put myself where you've put that bangle.”
Her hand pointed to the place. There was neither tremor in the one nor ripple upon the other.
“But why?” Teesdale could only gasp.
“BecauseI'mso far belowyou.”
“Missy! Missy!” he was beginning passionately, but she checked him at once.
“Let well alone, Jack. I've spoken God's truth. I'm not going to say any more; only when you know all about me—as you may any day now—perhaps even to-day—don't say that I told nothingbutlies. That's all. Now must I go back to the house, or will you?”
He glanced towards the river with unconscious significance. She shook her head and smiled. He hung his, and went away.
Once more Missy was alone among the river-timber; once more she flung herself down upon the short, dry grass, but this time upon her back, while her eyes and her ears were wide open.
A cherry-picker was frivolling in the branches immediately above her. From the moment it caught her eye, Missy seemed to take great interest in that cherry-picker's proceedings. She had wasted innumerable cartridges on these small birds, but that was in her blood-thirsty days, now of ancient history, and there had never been any ill-feeling between Missy and the cherry-pickers even then. One solitary native cat was all the fair game that she had slaughtered in her time. She now took to wondering why it was that these animals were never to be seen upon a tree in day-time; and as she wondered, her eyes hunted all visible forks and boughs; and as she hunted, a flock of small parrots came whirring like a flight of arrows, and called upon Missy's cherry-picker, and drove him from the branches overhead. But the parrots were a new interest, and well worth watching. They had red beaks and redder heads and tartan wings and emerald breasts. Missy had had shots at these also formerly; even now she shut her left eye and pretended that her right fore-finger was a gun, and felt certain of three fine fellows with one barrel had it really been a gun. Then at last she turned on her elbow towards the river, and opened her mouth to talk to herself. And after a long half-hour with nature this was all she had to say:
“If I did put myself in there, what use would it be? That beast would get a hold of Arabella then. But it'd be nice never to know what they said when they found out everything. What's more, I'd rather be in there, after this, than in any town. After this!”
She gave that mob of chattering parrots a very affectionate glance; also the dark green leaves with the dark blue sky behind them; also the brown, still river, hidden away from the sun. She had come to love them all, and the river would be a very good place for her indeed.
She muttered on: “Then to think of John William! Well, I never! It would be best for him too if I snuffed out, one way or another; and as for 'Bella, if that brute doesn't turn up soon, he may not turn up at all. But he said he'd keep me waiting. He's low enough down to do it, too.”
She looked behind her shuddering, as she had looked behind her many and many a time during the last few days. Instantly her eyes fell upon that at which one has a right to shudder. Within six feet of Missy a brown snake had stiffened itself from the ground with darting tongue and eyes like holes in a head full of fire. And Missy began to smile and hold out her hands to it.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on and do your worst! I wish you would. That'd be a way out without no blame to anybody—and just now they might be sorry. Come on, or I'll come to you. Ah, you wretch, you blooming coward, you!”
She had got to her knees, and was actually making for the snake on all fours; but it darted back into its hole like a streak of live seaweed; and Missy then rose wearily to her feet, and stood looking around her once more, as though for the last time.
“What am I to do?” she asked of river, trees, and sky. “What am I to do? I haven't the pluck to finish myself, nor yet to make a clean breast. I haven't any pluck at all. I might go back and do something that'd make the whole kit of 'em glad to get rid o' me. That's what I call a gaudy idea, but it would mean clearing out in a hurry. And I don't want to clear out—not yet. Not just yet! So I'll slope back and see what's happening and how things are panning out; and I'll go on sitting tight as long as I'm let.”