The Unbidden Guest

“It makes me sick to think of it,” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what I couldn’t do to you! If I’d been you I’d have cut my throat years ago. To think of the high old time you could have had!”

“I never had that much desire for a high old time,” said Mr. Teesdale with gentle exaltation.

“Haven’t I, then, that’s all!” cried his companion in considerable excitement. “It makes a poor girl feel bad to hear you go on like that.”

“But you’re not a poor girl.”

Missy was silenced.

“Yes, I am,” she said at last, with an air of resolution. It was not, however, until they were the better part of a mile nearer Melbourne.

“You are what?”

“A poor girl.”

“Nonsense, my dear. I wonder what your father would say if he heard you talk like that.”

“He’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Not when he’s worth thousands, Missy?”

“Not when he’s thousands of miles away, Mr. Teesdale.”

Mr. Teesdale raised his wrinkled forehead and drove on. A look of mingled anxiety and pain aged him years in a minute. Soon the country roads were left behind, and the houses began closing up on either side of a very long and broad high road. It was ten minutes to seven by Mr. Teesdale’s watch when he looked at it again. It was time for him to say the difficult thing which had occurred to him two or three miles back, and he said it in the gentlest tones imaginable from an old man of nearly seventy.

“Missy, my dear, is it possible” (so he put it) “that you have run short of the needful?”

“It’s a fact,” said Missy light-heartedly.

“But how, my dear, have you managed to do that?”

“How? Let’s see. I gave a lot away – to a woman in the steerage – whose husband went and died at sea. He died of dropsy. I nursed him, I did. Rather! I helped lay him out when he was dead. But don’t go telling anybody – please.”

Mr. Teesdale had shuddered uncontrollably; now, however, he shifted the reins to his right hand in order to pat Missy with his left.

“You’re a noble girl. You are that! Yet it’s only what I should have expected of their child. I might ha’ known you’d be a noble girl.”

“But you won’t tell anybody?”

“Not if you’d rather I didn’t. That proves your nobility! About how much would you like, my dear, to go on with?”

“Oh, twenty pounds.”

Mr. Teesdale drew the breeze in through the broken ranks of his teeth.

“Wouldn’t – wouldn’t ten do, my dear?”

“Ten? Let’s think. No, I don’t think I could do with a penny less than twenty. You see, a wave came into the cabin and spoilt all my things. I want everything new.”

“But I understood you had such a good voyage, Missy?”

“Not from me you didn’t! Besides, it was my own fault: I gone and left the window open, and in came a sea. Didn’t the captain kick up a shine! But I told him it was worse for me than for him; and look at the old duds I’ve got to go about in all because! Why, I look quite common – I know I do. No; I must have new before I come out to stay at the farm.”

“I’m sure our Arabella dresses simple,” the farmer was beginning; but Missy cut him short, and there was a spot of anger on each of her pale cheeks as she broke out:

“But this ain’t simple – it’s common! I had to borrow the most of it. All my things were spoilt. I can’t get a new rig-out for less than twenty pounds, and without everything new – ”

“Nay, come!” cried old David, in some trouble. “Of course I’ll let you have anything you want – I have your father’s instructions to do so. But – but there are difficulties. It’s difficult at this moment. You see the banks are closed, and – and – ”

“Oh, don’t you be in any hurry. Send it when you can; then I’ll get the things and come out afterwards. Why, here we are at Lonsdale Street!”

“But I want you to come out soon. How long would it take you to get everything?”

“To-day’s Thursday. If I had it to-morrow I could come out on Monday.”

“Then you shall have it to-morrow,” said David, closing his lips firmly. “Though the banks are closed, there’s the man we send our milk to, and he owes me a lump more than twenty pound. I’ll go to him now and get the twenty from him, or I’ll know the reason why! Yes, and I’ll post it to you before I go back home at all! What address must I send it to, Missy?”

“What address? Oh, to the General Post Office. I don’t want the folks I am staying with to know. They offered to lend me, and I wouldn’t. Will you stop, please?”

“Quite right, my dear, quite right. I was the one to come to. You’ll find it at the – ”

“Do you mind stopping?”

“Why, we’re not there yet. We’re not even in Bourke Street.”

“No, but please stop here.”

“Very well. Here we are, then, and it’s only six past. But why not drive right on to the theatre – that’s what I want to know?”

Missy hesitated, and hesitated, until she saw the old man peering into her face through the darkness that seemed to have fallen during the last five minutes. Then she dropped her eyes. They had pulled up alongside the deep-cut channel between road-metal and curb-stone, whereby you shall remember the streets of Melbourne. Nobody appeared to be taking any notice of them.

“I see,” said David very gently. “And I don’t wonder at it. No, Missy, it’s not at all the sort of turn-out for your friends to see you in. Jump down, my dear, and I’ll just drive alongside to see that nothing happens you. But I won’t seem to know you, Missy – I won’t seem to know you!”

Lower and lower, as the old man spoke, the girl had been hanging her head; until now he could see nothing of her face on account of her fringe; when suddenly she raised it and kissed his cheek. She was out of the buggy next moment.

She walked at a great rate, but David kept up with her by trotting his horse, and they exchanged signals the whole way. Close to the theatre she beckoned to him to pull up again. He did so, and she came to the wheel with one of her queer, inscrutable smiles.

“How do you know,” said she, “that I’m Miriam Oliver at all?”

The rays from a gas-lamp cut between their faces as she looked him full in the eyes.

“Why, of course you are!”

“But how do you know?”

“Nay, come, what a question! What makes you ask it, Missy?”

“Because I’ve given you no proof. I brought an introduction with me and I went and forgot to give it to you. However, here it is, so you may as well put it in your pipe and smoke it.”