The Unbidden Guest

“Very good,” said David, coldly, because both look and word of this roadside acquaintance were equally undesirable in his eyes. “Very good, if I find it. And now, if you’ll allow me, I’ll push on home.”

The other showed himself as ready with a sneer as with an oath. “You are in a desperate hurry!” said he.

“I am,” said David; “nevertheless, I’m much obliged to you for being so clever with the horse just now, and I wish you a very good night.” And with that, showing for once some little decision, because this kind of man repelled him, old Tees-dale cracked his whip and drove on without more ado.

Nor is it likely he would have thought any more about so trifling an incident, but for another which occurred before he finally reached home. It was at his own slip-rails, not many minutes later; he had got down and taken them out, and was in the act of leading through, when his foot kicked something hard and small, so that it rattled against one of the rails, and shone in the light of the buggy lamp at the same instant. The farmer stopped to pick it up, found it a meerschaum pipe, and pulled a grave face over it for several moments. Then he slipped it into his pocket, and after putting up the rails behind him, was in his own yard in three minutes. Here one of the men took charge of horse and buggy, and the master went round to the front of the house, but must needs stand in the verandah to spy on Arabella, who was sitting with her Family Cherub under the lamp and the blind never drawn. She was not reading; her head was lifted, and she was gazing at the window – at himself, David imagined; but he was wrong, for she never saw him. Her face was flushed, and there was in it a wonder and a stealthy joy, born of the romantic reading under her nose, as the father thought; but he was wrong again; for Arabella had finished one chapter before the coming of Missy, and had sat an hour over the next without taking in a word.

“So you’ve got back, father?” she was saying presently, in an absent, mechanical sort of voice.

“Here I am,” said Mr. Teesdale; “and I left Missy at the theatre, where it appears she had to meet – ”

“Missy!” exclaimed Arabella, remembering very suddenly. “Oh yes! Of course. Where do you say you left her, father?”

“At the Bijou Theatre, my dear, I am sorry to say; but it wasn’t her fault; it was the friends she is staying with whom she had to meet there. Well, let’s hope it won’t do her any harm just once in a way. And what have you been doing, my dear, all the evening?”

“I? Oh, after milking I had a bit of a stroll outside.”

“A stroll, eh? Then you didn’t happen to see a man hanging about our slip-rails, did you?”

Mr. Teesdale was emptying his pockets, with his back to Arabella, so he never knew how his question affected her.

“I wasn’t near the slip-rails, I was in the opposite direction,” she said presently. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I found this right under them,” said Mr. Teesdale, showing her the meerschaum pipe before laying it down on the chimney-piece; “and as I was getting near the township, I met a man who told me he’d lost just such a pipe. And I didn’t like him, my dear, so I only hope he’s not coming after our Mary Jane, that’s all.”

Mary Jane was the farm-servant. She had not been out of the kitchen since milking-time, said Arabella; and her father was remarking that he was glad to hear this, when the door flew open, and Mrs. Teesdale whistled into the room like a squall of wind.

“At last!” she cried. “Do you know how long you’ve been, David? Do you know what time it is?”

“I don’t, my dear,” said he.

“Then look at your watch.”

“My dear,” he said, “I’ve left my watch in Melbourne.”

“In Melbourne!” cried Mrs. Teesdale among her top notes. “And what’s the meaning of that?”

“It means,” said Mr. Teesdale, struggling to avoid the lie direct, “that it hasn’t been cleaned for years, and that it needed cleaning very badly indeed.”

“But you told Miriam how well it was going; time we were having our teas!”

“Yes, I know, and – that’s the curious thing, my dear. It went and stopped on our way in.” For there was no avoiding it, after all; yet in all the long years of their married life, it was his first.

CHAPTER VI. – THE WAYS OF SOCIETY

The Monday following was the first and the best of some bad days at the farm; for Missy had never written to tell Mr. Teesdale when and where he might call for her, so he could not call at all, and she did not come out by herself. This they now firmly expected her to do, and David wasted much time in meeting every omnibus; but when the last one had come in without Missy, even he was forced to give her up for that day. There would be a letter of explanation in the morning, said David, and shut his ears to his wife’s answer. She had been on tenter-hooks all day, for ever diving into the spare room with a duster, dodging out again to inquire what time it was now, and then scolding David because he had not his watch – a circumstance for which that simpleton was reproaching himself before long.

For there was no letter in the morning, and no Missy next day, or the next, or the next after that. It was then that Mr. Teesdale took to lying awake and thinking much of the friendly ticking that had cheered his wakefulness for thirty years, and even more of a few words in the Thursday’s Argus, which he had not shown to a soul. And strange ideas concerning the English girl were bandied across the family board; but the strangest of all were John William’s, who would not hear a word against her; on the contrary, it was his father, in his opinion, who was to blame for the whole matter, which the son of the house declared to be a mere confusion of one Monday with another.

“You own yourself,” said he, “that the girl wanted a new rig-out before she’d come here to stay. Did she say so, father, or did she not? Very well, then. Do you mean to tell me she could get measured, and tried on, and fixed up all round in four days, and two of ‘em Saturday and Sunday? Then I tell you that’s your mistake, and it wasn’t Monday she said, but Monday week, which is next Monday. You mark my words, we’ll have her out here next Monday as ever is!”

How John William very nearly hit the mark, and how shamefully Arabella missed it with the big stones she had been throwing all the week – how rest returned to the tortured mind of Mr. Teesdale, and how Mrs. T. was not sorry that she had left the clean good sheets on the spare bed in spite of many a good mind to put them away again – all this is a very short story indeed. For Missy reappeared on the Saturday afternoon while they were all at tea.

Arabella was the one who caught first sight of the red sunshade bobbing up the steep green ascent of the farmhouse, for Arabella sat facing the window; but it was left to John William to turn in his chair and recognise the tall, well-dressed figure at a glance as it breasted the hill.

“Here she is – here’s Miriam!” he cried out instantly. “Now what did I tell you all?” He was rolling down his shirt-sleeves as he spoke, flushed with triumph.

Mr. Teesdale had risen and pressed forward to peer through the window, and as he did so the red sunshade waved frantically. Beneath it was a neat straw hat, and an unmistakable red-fringed face nodding violently on top of a frock of vestal whiteness. Arabella flew out to meet the truant, and John William to put on a coat.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Teesdale, holding both her hands when the girl was once more among them. “Well, to be sure; but you’re just in time for tea, that’s one good thing.”

“Nay, I must make some fresh,” cried his wife, without a smile. “Mind, I do think you might have written, Miriam. You have led us a pretty dance, I can tell you that.” She caught up the teapot and whisked out of the room.

“Have I?” the girl asked meekly of the old man.

“No, no, my dear,” and “Not you,” the two Teesdales answered in one breath; though the father added, “but you did promise to write.”

“I know I did. But you see – ”

Missy laughed.

“You should have written, my dear,” David said gently, as she got no further, and he had no wish to cross-question her. “I didn’t know what had got you.”

“None of us could think,” added Arabella.

“Except me, Miriam,” said John William, proudly. “You were getting your new rig-out; wasn’t that it?”

The girl nodded and beamed at him as she said that it was. The sunshade was lying on the sofa now, and Missy sitting at the table in Arabella’s place.

“I thought,” said Mr. Teesdale, “that you had gone off to Sydney, and weren’t coming near us any more. Do you know why? There was a Miss Oliver in the list of the overland passengers in Thurday’s Argus.”

“Indeed,” said the girl.

“Yes, and it was a Miss M. Oliver, and all.”

“Well, I never! That’s what you’d call a coincident, if you like.”

“I’m very glad it was nothing worse,” said Mr. Teesdale heartily. “I made that sure it was you.”

“You never mentioned it, father?” said John William.

“No, because I was also quite sure that she would write if we only gave her time. You ought to have written, Missy, and then I’d have gone in and fetched you – ”

“But that’s just what I didn’t want. All this way! No, the ‘bus was quite good enough for me.”

“But what about your trunk?” Arabella inquired.

Missy made answer in the fewest words that her trunk was following by carrier; and because Mrs. Teesdale entered to them now, with a pot of fresh tea, Missy said little more just then, except in specific apology for her remissness in not writing. This apology was made directly to Mrs. Teesdale, whose manner of receiving it may or may not have discouraged the visitor from further conversation at the moment. But so it seemed to one or two, who heard and saw and felt that such discouragement would exist eternally between that old woman and that young girl.