The Unbidden Guest

“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. I am rude, 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 he did, mark you – I’d tackle him again as soon as look at him. So never you fear, my girl, you leave him to me.”

CHAPTER XI. – A CHRISTMAS OFFERING

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 young lady– 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 with me– 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.

“Because I’m so far below you.”

“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 nothing but lies. 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.”

CHAPTER XII. – “THE SONG OF MIRIAM.”

Accordingly Missy reappeared in the verandah about tea-time, and in the verandah she was once more paralysed with the special terror that was hanging over her from hour to hour in these days. An unfamiliar black coat had its back to the parlour window; it was only when Missy discerned an equally unfamiliar red face at the other side of the table that she remembered that Christmas visitors had been expected in the afternoon, and reflected that these must be they. The invited guests were a brace of ministers connected with the chapel attended by the Teesdales, and the red face, which was also very fat, and roofed over with a thatch of very white hair, rose out of as black a coat as that other of which Missy had seen the back. So these were clearly the ministers. And they were already at tea.

As soon as Missy entered the parlour she recognised the person sitting with his back to the window. He had lantern jaws hung with black whiskers, and a very long but not so very cleanshaven upper lip. His name was Appleton, he was the local minister, and Missy had not only been taken to hear him preach, but she had met him personally, and made an impression, judging by the length of time the ministers hand had rested upon her shoulder on that occasion. He greeted her now in a very complimentary manner, and with many seasonable wishes, which received the echo of an echo from the elder reverend visitor, whom Mrs. Teesdale made known to Missy as their old friend Mr. Crowdy.

“Mr. Crowdy,” added Mrs. T., reproachfully, “came all the way from Williamtown to preach our Christmas morning sermon. It was a beautiful sermon, if ever I heard one.”

“It was that,” put in David, wagging his kind old head. “But you should have told Mr. Crowdy, my dear, how Miriam feels our heat. I wouldn’t let her go this morning, Mr. Crowdy, on that account. So you see it’s me that’s to blame.”

Mr. Crowdy looked very sorry for Miriam, but very well pleased with himself and the world. Missy was shooting glances of gratitude at her indefatigable old champion. Mr. Crowdy began to eye her kindly out of his fat red face.

“So your name’s Miriam? A good old-fashioned Biblical name, is Miriam,” he said, in a wheezy, plethoric voice. “Singular thing, too, my name’s Aaron; but I’d make an oldish brother for you, young lady, hey?”

Miriam laughed without understanding, and showed this. So Mr. Teesdale explained.

“Miriam, my dear, was the sister of Moses and Aaron, you remember.”

Missy did remember.

“Moses and Aaron? Why, of course!” cried she. “‘Says Moses to Aaron! ‘”

The quotation was not meant to go any further; but the white-haired minister asked blandly, “Well, what did he say?” So bland, indeed, was the question that Missy hummed forth after a very trifling hesitation —

“Says Moses to Aaron,While talking of these times’ —Says Aaron to Moses,‘I vote we make some rhymes!The ways of this wicked world,‘Tis not a bed of roses —No better than it ought to be – ’‘Right you are!’ says Moses.”

There was a short but perfect silence, during which Mrs. Teesdale glared at Missy and her husband looked pained. Then the old minister simply remarked that he saw no fun in profanity, and John William (who was visibly out of his element) felt frightfully inclined to punch Mr. Crowdy’s white head for him. But the Reverend Mr. Appleton took a lighter view of the matter.

“With all due deference to our dear old friend,” said this gentleman, with characteristic unction, “I must say that I am of opinion ‘e is labouring under a slight misconception. Miss Miriam, I feel sure, was not alluding to any Biblical characters at all, but to two typical types of the latter-day Levite. Miss Miriam nods! I knew that I was right!”

“Then I was wrong,” said Mr. Crowdy, cheerfully, as he nodded to Missy, who had not seriously aggrieved him; “and all’s well that ends well.”

“Hear, hear!” chimed in David, thankfully. “Mrs. T., Mr. Appleton’s cup’s off. And Mr. Crowdy hasn’t got any jam. Or will you try our Christmas cake now, Mr. Crowdy? My dears, my dears, you’re treating our guests very shabbily!”

“Some of them puts people about so – some that ought to know better,” muttered Mrs. Tees-dale under her breath; but after that the tea closed over Missy’s latest misdemeanour – if indeed it was one for Missy – and a slightly sticky meal went as smoothly as could be expected to its end.

Then Mr. Appleton said grace, and Mr. Crowdy, pushing back his plate and his chair, exclaimed in an oracular wheeze, “The Hundred!”

“The Old ‘Undredth,” explained the other, getting on his feet and producing a tuning-fork. He was the musical minister, Mr. Appleton. Nevertheless, he led them off too high or too low, and started them afresh three times, before they were all standing round that tea-table and singing in unison at the rate of about two lines per minute —

“All – peo – ple – that – on – earth-do – dwell —Sing – to – the – Lord – with – cheer-fill-voice-Him – serve – with – fear – His – praise-forth-tell-Come – ye – be – fore – Him – and – re-joice.”

And so through the five verses, which between them occupied the better part of ten minutes; whereafter Mr. Crowdy knelt them all down with their elbows among the tea-things, and offered up a prayer.

Now it is noteworthy that the black sheep of this mob, that had no business to be in this mob at all, displayed no sort of inclination to smile at these grave proceedings. They took Missy completely by surprise; but they failed to tickle her sense of humour, because there was too much upon the conscience which had recently been born again to Missy’s soul. On the contrary, the hymn touched her heart and the prayer made it bleed; for that heart was become like a foul thing cleaned in the pure atmosphere of this peaceful homestead. The prayer was very long and did not justify its length. It comprised no point, no sentence, which in itself could have stung a sinner to the quick. But through her fingers Missy could see the bald pate, the drooping eyelids, and the reverent, submissive expression of old Mr. Teesdale. And they drew the blood. The girl rose from her knees with one thing tight in her mind. This was the fixed determination to undeceive that trustful nature without further delay than was necessary, and in the first fashion which offered.

A sort of chance came almost immediately; it was not the best sort, but Missy had grown so desperate that now she was all for running up her true piratical colours and then sheering off before a gun could be brought to bear upon her. So she seized the opportunity which occurred in the best parlour, to which the party adjourned after tea. The best parlour was very seldom used. It had the fusty smell of all best parlours, which never are for common use, and was otherwise too much of a museum of albums, antimacassars, ornaments and footstools, to be a very human habitation at its best. Though all that met the eye looked clean, there was a strong pervading sense of the dust of decades; but some of this was about to be raised.

In the passage Mr. Appleton had taken Missy most affectionately by the arm, and had whispered of Mr. Crowdy, who was ahead, “A grand old man, and ripe for ‘eaven!” But as they entered the best parlour he was complimenting Missy upon her voice, which had quite altered the sound of the late hymn from the moment when John William fetched and handed to her an open hymn-book. And here Mr. Crowdy, seating himself in the least uncomfortable of the antimacassared chairs, had his say also.

“I like your voice too,” the florid old minister observed, cocking a fat eye at Miriam. “But it is only natural that any young lady of your name should be musical. Surely you remember? ‘And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances – ’ and so forth. Exodus fifteenth. I suppose you can’t play upon the timbrel, hey, Miss Miriam?”

“No,” said Missy; “but I can dance.”

“Hum! And sing? What I mean is, young lady, do you only sing hymns?”

Missy kept her countenance.

“I have sung songs as well,” she ventured to assert.

“Then give us one now, Missy,” cried old Tees-dale. “That’s what Mr. Crowdy wants, and so do we all.”

“Something lively?” suggested Missy, looking doubtfully at the red-faced minister.

“Lively? To be sure,” replied Mr. Crowdy. “Christmas Day, young lady, is not like a Sunday unless it happens to fall on one, which I’m glad it hasn’t this year. Make it as lively as convenient. I like to be livened up!” And the old man rubbed his podgy hands and leant forward in the least uncomfortable chair.

“And shall I give you a dance too?”

“A dance, by all means, if you dance alone. I understand that such dancing has become quite the rage in the drawing-rooms at home. And a very good thing too, if it puts a stop to that dancing two together, which is an abomination in the sight of the Lord. But a dance by yourself – by all manner of means!” cried Mr. Crowdy, snatching off his spectacles and breathing upon the lenses.

“But I should require an accompaniment.”

“Nothing easier. My friend Appleton can accompany anything that is hummed over to him twice. Can’t you, Appleton?”

“Mr. Crowdy,” replied the younger man, in an injured voice, as he looked askance at a little old piano with its back to the wall, and still more hopelessly at a music-stool from which it would be perfectly impossible to see the performance; “Mr. Crowdy, I do call this unfair! I – I – ”

“You – you – I know you, sir!” cried the aged divine, with unmerciful good-humour. “Haven’t I heard you do as much at your own teas? Get up at once, sir, and don’t shame our cloth by disobliging a young lady who is offering to sing to us in the latest style from England!”

“I’m not offering, mind!” said Missy a little sharply. “Still, I’m on to do my best. Come over here, Mr. Appleton, and I’ll hum it quite quietly in your ear. It goes something like this.”

That conquered Appleton; but the Teesdales, while leaving the whole matter in the hands of Missy and of the venerable Mr. Crowdy, who wanted to hear her sing, had thrown in words here and there in favour of the performance and of Mr. Appleton’s part in it; all except Mrs. T., who was determined to have no voice in a matter of which she hoped to disapprove, and who showed her determination by an even more unsympathetic cast of countenance than was usual with her wherever Missy was concerned. Mrs. T. was seated upon a hard sofa by her husband’s side, Arabella on a low footstool, John William by the window, and the two ministers we know where. The one at the piano seemed to have got his teeth into a banjo accompaniment which would have sounded very wonderfully like a banjo on that little old tin-pot piano if he had thumped not quite so hard; but now Missy was posing in front of the mantelpiece, and all eyes but the unlucky accompanist’s were covering her eagerly.

“Now you’re all right, Mr. Appleton. You keep on like that, and I’ll nip in when I’m ready. If I stop and do a spout between the verses you can stop too, only don’t forget to weigh in with the chorus. But when I dance, you keep on. See? That’ll be all right, then. Ahem!”

Missy had spoken behind her hand in a stage whisper; now she turned to her audience and struck an attitude that made them stare. The smile upon her face opened their eyes still wider – it was so brazen, so insinuating, and yet so terribly artificial. And with that smile she began to dance, very slowly and rhythmically, plucking at her dress and showing her ankles, while Appleton thumped carefully on, little knowing what he was missing. And when it seemed as though no song was coming the song began.