The Unbidden Guest

“Then you must be a fool, Arabella. Of course she was only in fun.”

“But she said so many queer things; and oh, John William, she seems to me so queer altogether!”

“Well, what the deuce did you expect?” cried the other in a temper. “Didn’t her own father say that she was something out of the common? What do you know about it, anyway? What do you know about ‘modern mannerisms’. Didn’t her own father let on that she had some? Even if she did smoke, I shouldn’t be surprised or think anything of it; depend upon it they smoke in society, whether they do or they don’t in your rotten Family Cherub. But she was only joking when she said that; and I never saw the like of you, Arabella, not to know a joke when you hear one.” And John William stamped away to his room; to reappear in a white shirt and his drab tweed suit, exactly as though he had been going into Melbourne for the day.

It was Mrs. Teesdale, perhaps, who put this measure into her son’s head; for, as he quitted the parlour, she pushed past him to enter it, in the act of fastening the final buttons of her gray-stuff chapel-going bodice. “Now, then, Arabella,” she cried sharply, “let blind down and get them things off table.” And on to it, as she spoke, Mrs. Teesdale flung a clean white folded table-cloth which she had carried between elbow and ribs while busy buttoning her dress. As for Arabella, she obeyed each order instantly, displaying an amount of bustling activity which only showed itself on occasions when her mother was particularly hot and irritable; the present was one.

Mrs. Teesdale was a tall, strong woman who at sixty struck one first of all with her strength, activity, and hard, solid pluck. Her courage and her hardness too were written in every wrinkle of a bloodless, weather-beaten face that must have been sharp and pointed even in girlhood; and those same dominant qualities shone continually in a pair of eyes like cold steel – the eyes of a woman who had never given in. The woman had not her husband’s heart full of sympathy and affection for all but the very worst who came his way. She had neither his moderately good education, nor his immoderately ready and helping hand even for the worst. Least of all had she his simple but adequate sense of humour; of this quality and all its illuminating satellites Mrs. Teesdale was totally devoid. Yet, but for his wife, old David would probably have found himself facing his latter end in one or other of the Benevolent Asylums of that Colony; whereas with the wife’s character inside the husband’s skin, it is not improbable that the name of David Teesdale would have been known and honoured in the land where his days had been long indeed, but sadly unprofitable.

Arabella, then, who had inherited some of David’s weak points, just as John William possessed his mother’s strong ones, could work with the best of them when she liked and Mrs. Teesdale drove. In ten minutes the tea was ready; and it was a more elaborate tea than usual, for there was quince jam as well as honey, and, by great good luck, cold boiled ham in addition to hot boiled eggs. Last of all, John William, when he was ready, picked a posy of geraniums from the bed outside the gun-room outer door (which was invisible from the verandah, where David and the visitor could be heard chatting), and placed them in the centre of the clean table-cloth. Then Mrs. Teesdale drew up the blind; and a nice sight met their eyes.

Mr. Teesdale was discovered in earnest expostulation with the girl from England, who was smoking his pipe. She had jumped on to the wooden armchair upon which, a moment ago, she had no doubt been seated; now she was dancing upon it, slowly and rhythmically, from one foot to the other, and while holding the long clay well above the old man’s reach, she kept puffing at it with such immense energy that the smoke hung in a cloud about her rakish fringe and wicked smile, under the verandah slates. A smile flickered also across the entreating face of David Teesdale; and it was this his unpardonable show of taking the outrage in good part, that made away with the wife’s modicum of self-control. Doubling a hard-working fist, she was on the point of knocking at the window with all the might that it would bear, when her wrist was held and the blind let down. And it was John William who faced her indignation with the firm front which she herself had given him.

“I am very sorry, mother,” said he quietly, “but you are not going to make a scene.”

Such was the power of Mrs. Teesdale in her own home, she could scarcely credit her hearing. “Not going to?” she cried, for the words had been tuned neither to question nor entreaty, but a command. “Let go my hands this moment, sir!”

“Then don’t knock,” said John William, complying; and there was never a knock; but the woman was blazing.

“How dare you?” she said; and indeed, man and boy, he had never dared so much before.

“You were going to make a scene,” said he, as kindly as ever; “and though we didn’t invite her, she is our guest – ”

“You may be ashamed of yourself! I don’t care who she is; she shan’t smoke here.”

“She is also the daughter of your oldest friends; and hasn’t her own father written to say she has ways and habits which the girls hadn’t when you were one? Not that smoking’s a habit of hers: not likely. I’ll bet she’s only done this for a lark. And you’re to say nothing more about it, mother, do you see?”

“Draw up the blind,” said Mrs. Teesdale, speaking to her son as she had spoken to him all his life, but, for the first time, without confidence. “Draw up the blind, and disobey me at your peril.”

“Then promise to say nothing about it to the girl.”

They eyed each other for a minute. In the end the mother said: “To the girl? No, of course I won’t say anything to her – unless it happens again.” It was not even happening when the blind was drawn up, and it never did happen again. But Mrs. Teesdale had given in, for once in her life, and to one of her own children. Moreover, there was an alien in the case, who was also a girl; and this was the beginning between these three.

CHAPTER III. – AU REVOIR

It was not a very good beginning, and the first to feel that was John William himself. He felt it at tea. During the meal his mouth never opened, except on business; but his eyes made up for it.

He saw everything. He saw that his mother and Missy would never get on; he knew it the moment they kissed. There was no sounding smack that time. The visitor, for her part, seemed anxious to show that even she could be shy if she tried; and as for Mrs. Teesdale and her warm greeting, it was very badly done. The tone was peevish, and her son, for one, could hear between the words. “You’re our old friends’ child,” he heard her saying in her heart, “but I don’t think I shall like you; for you’ve come without letting me know, you’ve smoked, and you’ve set my own son against me – already.” He was half sorry that he had checked, what is as necessary to some as the breath they draw, a little plain speaking at the outset. But sooner or later, about one thing or another, this was bound to come; and come it did.

“I can’t think, Miriam,” said Mrs. Teesdale, “how you came by that red hair o’ yours! Your father’s was very near black, and your mother’s a light brown wi’ a streak o’ gold in it; but there wasn’t a red hair in either o’ their heads that I can remember.”

At this speech John William bit off an oath under his beard, while David looked miserably at his wife, and Arabella at their visitor, who first turned as red as her hair, and then burst into a fit of her merriest laughter.

“Well, I can’t help it, can I?” cried she, with a good-nature that won two hearts, at any rate. “I didn’t choose my hair; it grew its own colour – all I’ve got to do is to keep it on!”

“Yes, but it’s that red!” exclaimed Mrs. Teesdale stolidly, while John William chuckled and looked less savage.

“Ah, you could light your old pipe at it,” said Missy to the farmer, making the chuckler laugh outright.

Not so Mr. Teesdale. “My dear,” he said to his wife; “my dear!”

“Well, but I could understand it, David, if her parents’ hairs had any red in ‘em. In the only photograph we have of you, Miriam, which is that group there taken when you were all little, you look to have your mother’s fair hair. I can’t make it out.”

“No?” said Missy, sweetly. “Then you didn’t know that red always comes out light in a photograph?”

“Oh, I know nothing at all about that,” said Mrs. Teesdale, with the proper disregard for a lost point. “Then have the others all got red hair too?”

“N – no, I’m the only one.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, Miriam, I’m sure it is!”

“Nay, come, my dear, that’ll do,” whispered David; while John William said loudly, to change the subject, “You’re not to call her Miriam, mother.”

“And why not, I wonder?”

“Because she’s not used to it. She says they call her Missy at home; and we want to make her at home here, surely to goodness!”

Missy had smiled gratefully on John William and nodded confirmation of his statement to Mrs. Teesdale, who, however, shook her head.

“Ay, but I don’t care for nicknames at all,” said she, without the shadow of a smile; “I never did and I never shall, John William. So, Miriam, you’ll have to put up with your proper name from me, for I’m too old to change. And I’m sure it’s not an ugly one,” added the dour woman, less harshly. “Is your cup off, Miriam?” she added to that; she did not mean to be quite as she was.

It was at this point, however, that the visitor asked Mr. Teesdale the time, and that Mr. Teesdale, with a sudden eloquence in his kind old eyes, showed her the watch which Mr. Oliver had given him; speaking most touchingly of her father’s goodness, and kindness, and generosity, and of their lifelong friendship. Thus the long hand marked some minutes while the watch was still out before it appeared why Missy wanted to know the time. She then declared she must get back to Melbourne before dark, a statement which provoked some brisk opposition, notably on the part of Mr. Teesdale. But the girl showed commendable firmness. She would go back as she had come, by the six o’clock ‘bus from the township. None of them, however, would hear of the ‘bus, and John William waited until a compromise had been effected by her giving way on this point; then he went out to put-to.

This proved a business. The old mare had already made one journey into Melbourne and back; and that was some nine miles each way. There was another buggy-horse, but it had to be run up from the paddock. Thus twenty minutes elapsed before John William led horse and trap round to the front of the house. He found the party he had left mildly arguing round the tea-table, now assembled on the grass below the red-brick verandah. They were arguing still, it seemed, and not quite so mildly. Missy was buttoning a yellow glove, the worse for wear, and she was standing like a rock, with her mouth shut tight. Mr. Teesdale had on his tall hat and his dust-coat, and the whip was once more in his hand; at the sight of him his son’s heel went an inch into the ground.

“Only fancy!” cried the old man in explanation. “She says she’s not coming back to us any more. She doesn’t want to come out and stay with us!”

Arabella echoed the “Only fancy!” while Mrs. Teesdale thought of the old folks who had been young when she was, and said decisively, “But she’ll have to.”

John William said nothing at all; but it was to him the visitor now looked appealingly.

“It isn’t that I shouldn’t like it – that isn’t it at all – it’s that you wouldn’t like me! Oh, you don’t know what I am. You don’t, I tell you straight. I’m not fit to come and stay here – I should put you all about so – there’s no saying what I shouldn’t do. You can’t think how glad I am to have seen you all. It’s a jolly old place, and I shall be able to tell ‘em all at home just what it’s like. But you’d far better let me rest where I am – you – you – you really had.”

She had given way, not to tears, indeed, but to the slightly hysterical laughter which had characterised her entry into the parlour when John William was looking through the crack. Now she once more made her laughter loud, and it seemed particularly inconsequent. Yet here was a sign of irresolution which old David, as the wisest of the Teesdales, was the first to recognise. Moreover, her eyes were flying from the weather-board farmhouse to the river timber down the hill, from the soft cool grass to the peaceful sky, and from hay-stack to hen-yard, as though the whole simple scene were a temptation to her; and David saw this also.

“Nonsense,” said he firmly; and to the others, “She’ll come back and stay with us till she’s tired of us – we’ll never be tired of you, Missy. Ay, of course she will. You leave her to me, Mrs. T.”

“Then,” said Missy, snatching her eyes from their last fascination, a wattle-bush in bloom, “will you take all the blame if I turn out a bad egg?”

“A what?” said Mrs. Teesdale.

“Of course we will,” cried her husband, turning a deaf ear to John William, who was trying to speak to him.

“You promise, all of you!”

“Of course we do,” answered the farmer again; but he had not answered John William.

“Then I’ll come, and your blood be on your own heads.”