The Unbidden Guest

“Nay, come – not exactly ten,” the old gentleman said, with some gravity, for he was a great stickler for the literal truth; “only seven or eight, I understood from your father?”

The visitor coloured, then pouted, and then burst out laughing as she exclaimed, “You oughtn’t to be so particular about ladies’ ages! Surely two or three years is near enough, isn’t it? I’m ashamed of you, Mr. Teesdale; I really am!” And David received such a glance that he became exceedingly ashamed of himself; but the smile that followed it warmed his old heart through and through, and reminded him, he thought, of Miriam’s mother.

Meantime, the younger Teesdale remained rooted to the spot where he had been very nearly kissed. He was still sufficiently abashed, but perhaps on that very account a plain speech came from him too.

“You’re not like what I expected. No, I’m bothered if you are!”

“Much worse?” asked the girl, with a scared look.

“No, much better. Ten thousand times better!” cried the young man. Then his shyness overtook him, and, though he joined in the general laughter, he ventured no further remarks. As to the laughter, the visitor’s was the most infectious ever heard in the weather-board farmhouse. Arabella shook within the comfortable covering with which nature had upholstered her, and old David had to apply the large red handkerchief to his furrowed cheeks before he could give her the message to Mrs. Teesdale, for which there had not been a moment to spare out of the crowded minute or two which had elapsed since the visitor’s unforeseen arrival.

“Go, my dear,” he said now, “and tell your mother that Miriam is here. That’s it. Mrs. T. will be with us directly, Miriam. Ah, I thought this photograph’d catch your eye sooner or later. You’ll have seen it once or twice before, eh? Just once or twice, I’m thinking.” The group still lay on the table at Mr. Teesdale’s end.

“Who are they?” asked the visitor, very carelessly; indeed, she had but given the photograph a glance, and that from a distance.

“Who? Why, yourselves; your own family. All the lot of you when you were little,” cried David, snatching up the picture and handing it across. “We were just looking at it when you came, Miriam; and I made you out to be this one, look – this poor little thing with the sun in her eyes.”

The old man was pointing with his finger, the girl examining closely. Their heads were together. Suddenly she raised hers, looked him in the eyes, and burst out laughing.

“How clever you are!” she said. “I’m not a bit like that now, now am I?”

She made him look well at her before answering. And in all his after knowledge of it, he never again saw quite so bold and dibonnaire an expression upon that cool face framed in so much hot hair. But from a mistaken sense of politeness, Mr. Teesdale made a disingenuous answer after all, and the subject of conversation veered from the girl who had come out to Australia to those she had left behind her in the old country.

That conversation would recur to Mr. Teesdale in after days. It contained surprises for him at the time. Later, he ceased to wonder at what he had heard. Indeed, there was nothing wonderful in his having nourished quite a number of misconceptions concerning a family of whom he had set eyes on no member for upwards of thirty years. It was those misconceptions which the red-haired member of that family now removed. They were all very natural in the circumstances. And yet, to give an instance, Mr. Teesdale was momentarily startled to ascertain that Mrs. Oliver had never been so well in her life as when her daughter sailed. He had understood from Mr. Oliver that his wife was in a very serious state with diabetes. When he now said so, the innocent remark made Miss Oliver to blush and bite her lips. Then she explained. Her mother had been threatened with the disease in question, but that was all. The real fact was, her father was morbidly anxious about her mother, and to such an extent that it appeared the anxiety amounted to mania.

She put it in her own way.

“Pa’s mad on ma,” she said. “You can’t believe a word he says about her.”

Mr. Teesdale found this difficult to believe of his old friend, who seemed to him to write so sensibly about the matter. It made him look out of the gun-room window. Then he recollected that the girl herself lacked health, for which cause she had come abroad.

“And what was the matter with you, Miriam,” said he, “for your father only says that the doctors recommended the voyage?”

“Oh, that’s all he said, was it?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“And you want to know what was the matter with me, do you?”

“No, I was only wondering. It’s no business of mine.”

“Oh, but I’ll tell you. Bless your life, I’m not ashamed of it. It was late nights – it was late nights that was the matter with me.”

“Nay, come,” cried the farmer; yet, as he peered through his spectacles into the bright eyes sheltered by the fiery fringe, he surmised a deep-lying heaviness in the brain behind them; and he noticed now for the first time how pale a face they were set in, and how gray the marks were underneath them.

“The voyage hasn’t done you much good, either,” he said. “Why, you aren’t even sunburnt.”

“No? Well, you see, I’m such a bad sailor. I spent all my time in the cabin, that’s how it was.”

“Yet the Argus says you had such a good voyage?”

“Yes? I expect they always say that. It was a beast of a voyage, if you ask me, and quite as bad as late nights for you, though not nearly so nice.”

“Ah, well, we’ll soon set you up, my dear. This is the place to make a good job of you, if ever there was one. But where have you been staying since you landed, Miriam? It’s upwards of twenty-four hours now.”

The guest smiled.

“Ah, that’s tellings. With some people who came out with me – some swells that I knew in the West End, if you particularly want to know; not that I’m much nuts on ‘em, either.”

“Don’t you be inquisitive, father,” broke in John William from the sofa. It was his first remark since he had sat down.

“Well, perhaps I mustn’t bother you with any more questions now,” said Mr. Teesdale to the girl; “but I shall have a hundred to ask you later on. To think that you’re Mr. Oliver’s daughter after all! Ay, and I see a look of your mother and all now and then. They did well to send you out to us, and get you right away from them late hours and that nasty society – though here comes one that’ll want you to tell her all about that by-and-by.”

The person in question was Arabella, who had just re-entered.

“Society?” said she. “My word, yes, I shall want you to tell me all about society, Miriam.”

“Do you hear that, Miriam?” said Mr. Teesdale after some moments. She had taken no notice.

“What’s that? Oh yes, I heard; but I shan’t tell anybody anything more unless you all stop calling me Miriam.”

This surprised them; it had the air of a sudden thought as suddenly spoken.

“But Miriam’s your name,” said Arabella, laughing.

“Your father has never spoken of you as anything else,” remarked Mr. Teesdale.

“All the same, I’m not used to being called by it,” replied their visitor, who for the first time was exhibiting signs of confusion. “I like people to call me what I’m accustomed to being called. You may say it’s a pet name, but it’s what I’m used to, and I like it best.”

“What is, missy?” said old Teesdale kindly; for the girl was staring absently at the opposite wall.

“Tell us, and we’ll call you nothing else,” Arabella promised.

The girl suddenly swept her eyes from the wall to Mr. Teesdale’s inquiring face. “You said it just now,” she told him, with a nod and her brightest smile. “You said it without knowing when you called me ‘Missy.’ That’s what they always call me at home – Missy or the Miss. You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

“Then I choose Missy,” said Arabella. “And now, father, I came with a message from my mother; she wants you to take Missy out into the verandah while we get the tea ready. She wasn’t tidy enough to come and see you at once, Missy, but she sends you her love to go on with, and she hopes that you’ll excuse her.”

“Of course she will,” answered Mr. Teesdale for the girl; “but will you excuse me, Missy, if I bring my pipe out with me? I’m just wearying for a smoke.”

“Excuse you?” cried Missy, taking the old man’s arm as she accompanied him to the door. “Why, bless your life, I love a smoke myself.”

John William had jumped up to follow them; had hesitated; and was left behind.

“There!” said Arabella, turning a shocked face upon him the instant they were quite alone.

“She was joking,” said John William.

“I don’t think it.”