Behold him at Redford, with his tea-cup in his hand. He was safe now from talk about the baby; but he was also cut off from the lovely Deborah, now wandering about her extensive grounds with another young man. Old Father Pennycuick had him fast. They sat together under a verandah of the great house.
"There were no pilots then," said the old man, puffing comfortably at his pipe—"there were no pilots then, and we had to feel our way along with the cast 'o the lead. We got ashore at Williamstown, on sailors' backs, and walked to Melbourne. Crossed the Yarra on a punt, not far from where Prince's Bridge now is—"
"Yes," said Guthrie Carey.
He seemed to be listening attentively, his strong, square face set like a mask; but his eyes roamed here and there.
"Bread two-and-six the small loaf," Mr. Pennycuick dribbled into his dreaming ears. "Eggs sixpence apiece. Cheap enough, too, compared with the gold prices. But gold was not thought of for ten years after that. I tell you, sir, those were the times—before the gold brought all the riff-raff in."
The sailor murmured something to the effect that he supposed they were.
"We'd got our club, and a couple of branch banks, and a post-office, and Governor La Trobe, and Bishop Perry, and the nicest lot of fellows that ever came together to make a new country. We were as happy as kings. All young men. I was barely twenty-three when I took up Redford—named after our place at home. You know our place at home, of course?"
"I have seen it from the road," answered the guest, arrested in his mental wanderings by the mention of his own age.
"You must have seen it often, living so close."
"I never lived close myself; I am a Londoner."
"It's all the same—your people do. The Pennycuicks and the Careys have been neighbours for generations."
"I am only distantly related to that family."
"A Carey is a Carey," persisted the old man, who had determined to have it so from the first, and he would listen to no disclaimers.
He had already referred darkly to that Mary Carey of the hooked nose and pointed chin. His eldest daughter, he said, had been named after her. This eldest daughter, with her too-ruddy face, had shyly drawn near, and taken a chair at her father's elbow, where she sat very quietly, busily tatting. Plain though her face was, she had beautiful hands. Her play with thread and shuttle, just under Guthrie's eyes, held them watchful for a time—the time during which no sign of Deborah's white gown was to be perceived upon the landscape.
"My brother and I, we never hit it off, somehow. So when my father died I cleared. You don't remember his funeral, I suppose? No, no—that was before your time. They hung the church all over with black broadcloth of the best. That was the way in those days, and the cloth was the parson's perquisite. The funeral hangings used to keep him in coats and trousers. And they used to deal out long silk hat-scarves to all the mourners—silk that would stand alone, as they say—and the wives made mantles and aprons of them. They went down from mother to daughter, like the best china and family spoons. That's how women took care of their clothes when I was young. They didn't want new frocks and fallals every week, like some folks I could name." And he pinched his daughter's ear.
"Talk to Deb, father," said Mary. "I have not had a new frock for a great many weeks."
"Aye, Deb's the one! That girl's got to marry a millionaire, or I don't know where she'll be."
Almost Mrs. Urquhart's words! And, like hers, they pricked sharply into the feelings of our young man. His eyes went a-roaming once more, to discover the white gown afar off, trailing unheeded along a dusty garden path. The old man saw it too, and his genial countenance clouded over.
"Well," he continued, after a thoughtful pause, "poor old Billy Dalzell and I, we emigrated together. He had a devil of a stepfather, and no home to speak of. We were mates at school, and we made up our minds to start out for ourselves. You remember the Dalzells of the Grange, of course?"
"I can't say that I do, sir."
"Well, they're gone now. Billy's father went the pace, and the mortgagees sold him up; and if his mother hadn't given him a bit when we started, Billy wouldn't have had a penny. She pawned all she could lay her hands on for him, we found out afterwards—Billy was cut up about that—and got ill-used by Heggarty for it when he found it out. She was a fool, that woman. Everybody could see what Heggarty was, except her. Old Dalzell was a gentleman, anyhow, with all his faults."
The white dress drew nearer, and its grey tweed companion. The host was once more wasting his story on deaf ears. "So we started off; and when we got here we went in together. He had enough to buy a mob of cattle and a dray and team, and so had I. We loaded up with all the necessaries, and hired three good men, and travelled till we found country. Took us about five months. At last we came here, and put our pegs in, and I started off to Melbourne for the license—ten pounds, and leave to renew at the end of the year—and here I've stuck ever since. Billy, he took up other land, and got married, and died, poor chap! And that's his boy over there," pointing with his pipe—"and he'll never be the man his father was, if he lives to a hundred."
The person referred to was he in the grey tweed, who sauntered with such assurance at white-robed Deborah's side. He was a tall, graceful and most distinguished-looking young fellow; but Guthrie Carey was prepared to believe heartily the statement that Dalzell junior would never be the man his father was.
"You shall see the identical hut," Mr. Pennycuick kindly promised. "Down by the creek, where those big willows are—I planted them myself. Not good enough for a dog-kennel, my daughters say; but the best thing I can wish for them is that they may be as happy in their good houses as I was in that old shanty—aye, in spite of many a hard time I had there, with blacks and what not. We cut the stuff, Billy and I, and set the whole thing up; and all our furniture was our sleeping-bunks and a few stools and a table. We washed in a tin bowl on a block outside the door. Not so particular about tubbing and clean shirts in those days. Our windows were holes of a handy size for gun barrels, and the shutters we put up o' nights were squares of bark hung on to nails by strips of green hide. Many's the time I've woke to see one of 'em tilted up, and a pair of eyes looking in—sometimes friends, sometimes foes; we were ready for either. When Billy went, and I thought I'd get married too, then I built a better house—brick this time, and workmen from Melbourne to do it; that's it over there, now the kitchens and store-rooms—and imported furniture—er—I am not boring you, I hope?"
"Oh, dear, no! I am deeply interested."
"Well, Billy and I"—the tale seemed interminable—"Billy and I, we gave sixty pounds apiece for our stock horses, and the same for a ton of flour; and went right over Ballarat without knowing it. Camped there, sir, and didn't see the gold we must actually have crunched under our boot heels. And Billy had misfortunes, and died poor as a rat. It was in the family. Mrs. D. was all right, though. She used to send a brother of hers to Melbourne market with her cattle, and cash being scarce, he would sometimes have to take land deeds for them, and she'd be wild with him for it. But what was the consequence? Those bits of paper that she thought so worthless that it's a wonder she took the trouble to save them, gave her city lots that turned out as good as gold mines. She sold too soon, or she'd have made millions—and died of a broken heart, they say, when she found out that mistake. Still, she left a lot more than it's good for a young fellow to start life with. That boy has been to Cambridge, and now he loafs about the club, pretends to be a judge of wine, gets every stitch of clothes from London—pah!" Mr. Pennycuick spat neatly and with precision over the verandah floor into a flower-bed. "But these mother's darlings—you know them. If Mrs. Dalzell could see him now, I daresay she'd be bursting with pride, for there's no denying that he's a smart-looking chap. But his father would be ashamed of him."
"Daddy dear!" Mary gently expostulated.
"So he would. An idle, finicking scamp, that'll never do an honest stroke of work as long as he lives. And I wish Deb wouldn't waste her time listening to his nonsense. Isn't it about time to be getting ready for dinner, Moll?"
Mary looked through a window at a clock indoors, and said it was. Guthrie hailed the news, and rose to his feet.
But not yet did he escape. His host, hoisting himself heavily out of his big cane chair, hollowed like a basin under his vast weight, extended a detaining hand.
"Come with me to my office a minute," he half whispered. "I'd like to show you something."
With apparent alertness, but sighing inwardly, Guthrie followed his host to the room in the old part of the house which he called his office. Mr. Pennycuick carefully shut the door, opened a desk full of drawers and pigeon-holes, and brought forth a bit of cardboard with a shy air. He had never shown it to his family, and doubtless would not have shown it now if he had not been growing old and soft and sentimental. It was a prim and niggling little water-colour drawing of English Redford—a flat facade, with swallows as big as condors flying over the roofs, and dogs that could never have got through any doorway gambolling on the lawn in front. A tiny 'Mary Carey' in one corner was just, and only just, visible to the naked eye.
"This was done for me, when we were both young, by her—your aunt," said Mr. Pennycuick, gloating upon his treasure over Guthrie's shoulder.
"Not my aunt," explained Guthrie. "I don't know what relation, but a long way farther off than that. I am only a very small Carey, you know, sir."
Mr. Pennycuick testily intimated, as before, that to be a Carey at all was enough for him. It was his excuse for these confidences, of which he was half ashamed.
While Guthrie studied the poor picture, trying to look as interested as he was expected to be, his host turned and stared down into the drawer that had held it for so many years. Other things were there—the usual dead flowers, still holding together, still fusty to the nose; the usual yellowing ball glove, the usual dance and invitation cards, and faded letters, with their edges frayed; a book-marker with an embroidered 'Friendship', mixed up with forget-me-nots, in coloured silks upon perforated card, backed by a still gleaming red satin ribbon looped at one end and fringed out at the other; the book that it was tucked into ("The Language of Flowers"), a large valentine in a wrapper with many broken seals, some newspaper cuttings, half a sixpence, with a hole in it, and a daguerreotype in a leather case.
This last he took up, opened and gazed at steadily, until his companion was compelled to interrupt him with an inquiring eye. Then he passed it over, and Guthrie turned it this way and that, until he caught the outlines of a long aquiline face between bunched ringlets, and a long bodice with a deep point, which he understood to have belonged to his distant relative at some period before he was born.
"And this?" he murmured politely.
"Yes," said Mr. Pennycuick; "that's her. And I've never shown it to a soul before—not even to my wife."
"A—a sweet expression. Fair, was she?"
"Fair as a lily, and as pure, and as beautiful. Gentle as a dove. With blue eyes."
Guthrie did not care for this type just now. He liked them dark and flashing and spirited, like Miss Deborah. But he murmured "Hm-m-m" sympathetically.
"The loveliest woman in England," the old man maundered on. "Surely you must have heard of her, in the family?"
Guthrie had not only heard of her, as we know, he had seen her; but he shook a denying head, and dropped another hint of his own position in the family—outside the royal enclosure, as it were.
"Well, now, I'll just tell you what happened," said Mr. Pennycuick, turning to the open drawer again. "Strictly between ourselves, of course—and only because you are a Carey, you understand—somehow you bring it all back—"
He was fumbling with the big valentine, getting it out of its case.
"Yes?" Guthrie encouraged him, while inwardly chafing to be gone.
"You see this?" It was an exquisite structure of foamy paper lace, silver doves, gauzed-winged Cupids, transfixed hearts and wreaths of flowers, miraculously delicate. How it had kept its frail form intact for the many years of its age was a wonder to behold. "You see this?" said the old man. "Well, when I was a young fellow, the 14th of February was a time, I can tell you! You fellows nowadays, you don't know what fun is, nor how to go a-courting, nor anything. … I was at old Redford that year, and she was at Wellwood, and all through the sleet and snow I rode there after dark, tied my horse to a tree, crept up that nut-walk—you know it?—and round by the east terrace to the porch, and laid my valentine on the door-step, and clanged the bell, and hid behind the yew-fence till the man came out to get it. Then I went home. And last thing at night there was a clatter-clatter at the door at Redford, and I dashed out to catch whoever it was—her brother she sent—but wasn't quite smart enough. If only I'd seen him. I should have known—as I ought to have, without that; but I didn't. It never occurred to me that she'd send the answer so soon, and she had disguised her writing in the address, and there was another girl—name of Myrtle Vining—who used to have myrtle on her note-paper, and all over the place—and here these flowers looked to me as if they were meant for myrtle, and these two crossed arrows are like capital V—and how I came to be such an egregious dolt, Lord only knows! Well, I've paid for it—that I have—I've paid for it. Look here—don't touch! I'll show you what I found out when it was too late—after she'd played shy with me till I got angry and left her, and it was all over—my eyes aren't good enough to see it now, but I suppose it's there still—"
With infinite care and the small blade of his pocket-knife, he lifted the tiny tip of a tiny Cupid's wing. With bent head and puckered eyelids, Guthrie peered under, and read: "Yours, M. C.," written on a space of paper hardly larger than a pin's head.
"In my valentine that night," said Mr. Pennycuick, "I'd asked her to have me. I didn't hide it up in this way; I knew, while I wondered that she took no notice, that she must have seen it. This was her answer. And I never got it, sir, till she was married to another man—and then by the merest accident. Then I couldn't even have the satisfaction of telling her that I'd got it, and how it was I hadn't got it before. Of course, I wasn't going to upset her after she was married to another man. I've had to let her think what she liked of me."
Guthrie was certainly interested now, but not as interested as he would have been the day before. The day before, this story would have moved him to pour out the tale of his own untimely and irreparable loss. He and old Mr. Pennycuick would—metaphorically speaking—have mingled their tears together.
"You forget, off and on," said Mr. Pennycuick, as he wrapped up his treasure with shaking hands and excessive care—"perhaps for years at a time, while you are at work and full of affairs; but it comes back—especially when you are old and lonely, and you think how different your life might have been. You don't know anything about these things yet. Perhaps, when you are an old man like me, you will."
Guthrie did know—no one better, he believed. But he did not say. Unknown to himself, he had reached that stage which Mr. Pennycuick came to when he began courting Sally Dimsdale, who had made him such a good and faithful (and uninteresting) wife.
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," says the old proverb. True enough. But one might write it this way, with even more truth: "It is better to love and lose than to love and gain." One means by love, romantic love, of course.
Carey junior joined the Christmas party after breakfast, and was handed round. Mary introduced him. He was spick-and-span, with shining cheeks and a damp and glossy top-knot, and his blue eyes stared at the strange crowd stolidly for several minutes before he suddenly crumpled up his face and uttered a howl of terror.
"What is it?" queried Dalzell, with raised brows, pretending that he had never seen such a thing before.
"It's a baby," Frances explained, dancing round it. "Baby! Baby!"—shaking the new rattle that was one of its Christmas gifts—"look at me, baby! It is Mr. Carey's baby. Oh, come and speak to him, Mr. Carey! He is frightened of so many strangers."
The stalwart father in the background glowered upon the son disgracing him. Red as beetroot, embarrassed and annoyed, he strode forward. The yelling infant cast one glance at him, and yelled louder than before. "I shouldn't have let him come," the sailor growled. He had got up from the wrong side of the bed that morning, and was in the mood to regret everything, even that he had been born. "I don't know what possessed me to let you be bothered with the brat. I'll ring for his nurse."
This was unanimously objected to. The ladies gathered round, with honeyed words and tinkling baubles to pacify the little guest. Deborah snatched him from her sister's arms, and ran with him into the garden, where she tossed him, still writhing and wailing, up and down, and dipped his face into flowers, and played other pranks calculated to enchant the average baby. This baby turned on her for her pains, and having slapped her cheeks, grabbed her beautiful hair and tore it down about her ears. The next instant he felt the weight of the hand from which his own had derived its strength.
"You brute!" cried Deb, shielding the offending little arm from a second blow. "A great big man like you, to strike a tender mite like this!"
"'Tender' is hardly the word," the irate parent sneered. "And mite as he is, he is not to do things of that sort." Guthrie glared at her sacred locks, dishevelled. "I'm awfully sorry. He shan't do it again. I'll take him away tomorrow."
"You will do nothing of the sort," flashed Deb. "You are not fit to have the care of him. He shall stay here, where he will be treated as a baby ought to be—not smacked and knocked about for nothing at all."
"I admire his pluck," quoth Dalzell, sauntering up.
"So do I," said Deb; but she handed her sobbing burden to Mary. "Here, take him, Moll, while I put my hair up. POOR little fellow!"
She need not have been so severe. She might have known that it was because the cheeks and hair were hers that the baby had been punished for his assault on them. She could have seen that she was wringing the culprit's heart. Perhaps she did, and had no room in her own to care. She stood on the sunny garden path and lifted her hands to her head—a lovely pose.
"Here, let me," said Claud Dalzell.
She let him—which was cruellest of all. Guthrie turned his murderous eyes from the group and sauntered away, out of the garden, out of their sight, unrecalled, apparently unnoticed. Mary carried the crying child into the house.
Then for an hour the silly fellow walked alone in the most solitary places that he could find, revelling in the thought that it was Christmas Day, and he singled out by Fate to have no share in its happy circumstances: no home, no friends, no love, like other men—nothing to make life worth living, save only the baby son that he had ill-used. Apart from the sting of Deb's comment on it, he repented him of that blow. A great big man like him, to strike a tender mite like this—a motherless babe, his precious Lily's bequest to him—aye, indeed! It was the act of a brute, whatever the provocation. The mite was a waif too, alone in the world when his father was at sea, pathetically helpless, with no defence against blows and unkindness. The reflection brought dimness to the man's hard blue eyes, and turned his steps houseward.
He arrived to find a large four-horsed brake at the door. The body was filling with other persons—the sailor knew not, cared not whom. He looked up at the radiant figure in front. She looked down on him with heart-melting kindness, as if nothing had happened.
"Why, Mr. Carey, aren't you coming to church?" she called to him. "Not—not today, I think," he answered, without premeditation.
"Christmas Day," she hinted invitingly. "You don't always get the chance, you know."
"I know. But—thanks—I'd rather not," he bluntly persisted, hating himself for the churlish response, and all the time wanting to go—certain to have gone if he had given himself time to think. Soldiers and sailors, with their habit of unquestioning obedience to authority, are almost always "good" churchmen, and, as she had pointed out, this offer of Christian privileges did not come to him every year. He had not anticipated it on this occasion, knowing Redford to be situated at least ten miles from a church.
"Oh, well," said Deborah, scenting spite, "I daresay it IS more comfortable in the cool house."
And then she left him, in the position of a self-indulgent idler, preferring comfort to duty, a foil to his more conscientious rival. When the dust of the departure had cleared away, he sat on, not in the cool house, but on the hot verandah, nursing his griefs in solitude. He seemed the only person left behind, or else he seemed forgotten, as a guest of no account. "What a Christmas Day!" was again his thought, while he dragged before his mind's eye old pictures of his English home, his dead mother, Santa Claus stockings, and all sorts of pathetic things. He resolved to quit Redford on the morrow, and spend the last hours of his leave in establishing his son elsewhere.
Then Mary Pennycuick came out to him, with that son in her arms. Her face was redeemed from its plainness by the tender motherliness and the no less tender friendliness of its expression; that of little Harry was cherubic. The heart of the lonely man warmed to both.
"He has come to tell daddy that he is a good boy now," explained Mary proudly. Guthrie ejaculated "Sonny boy!" and held out his arms. The baby, bearing no malice, tumbled into them, and was at once occupied with his father's watch-chain. The three subsided upon two cane chairs, looking, as Mary keenly comprehended, like a self-contained family.
"You have stayed at home because of him!" the man complained fretfully.
But the girl hastened to perjure herself with the assertion that she had done nothing of the kind. She then persuaded him to the half-belief that his child was not only no nuisance to the house, but its positive delight; and she earnestly talked him out of his cruel resolve to return it to bad air and all sorts of domestic risks. "How can he be any burden on us?" she pleaded. "We need never see him unless we like—only, of course, we shall like. It is entirely an arrangement between you and Mrs. Kelsey. Unless," she bethought herself—"unless you'd like to consider an idea of Alice Urquhart's—"
"Oh, no!" he broke in. "I'd rather Mrs. Kelsey—a proper business agreement—if I could feel absolutely certain—"
"Well, you can," said Mary. "The beginning and end of all the trouble to us is our answering for Mrs. Kelsey. She was once our nurse, and we know her ways; for the rest, she is as independent of us as that lady in Sandridge."
"In that case—of course, I've very little time, and really I don't know where to turn—perhaps until after this voyage—"
"Yes. Then, if you are dissatisfied, you can make a change." She assumed the matter settled, and began to go into details. "Deb saw Mrs. Kelsey while you were away; she's willing enough. She says ten shillings a week would cover everything. The drainage is all right. Kelsey will see that he has one cow's milk. They'll feed him well, but they won't give him rich things; she's the most careful woman. He'll be out in the air, getting strong, all the time. He'll want hardly any clothes in the country. Deb says he'd be better without shoes and socks."
"I hope he'll be kept out of Miss Deborah's way, after that exhibition—"
"Nonsense! She was too rough and ready with him. And she didn't mind a bit—of course not. She says she likes boys to be boys. He is a thorough boy," Mary proudly declared, bending to kiss a chubby knee.
Harry acknowledged the caress with a thumping smack of her bowed head.
"Gently—gently!" warned the father amiably.
"Now, what do you say to our walking over to interview Mrs. Kelsey?" Mary pushed her advantage home. "I daresay she will be busy, but she'd give us a few minutes. It would be a satisfaction to her to speak to you herself, and here is a good opportunity. They won't be home much before two."
Guthrie fetched his straw hat. Mary retied the baby's flapping head-gear, and they set forth.
"Let me have him," she begged, mother-like.
"No. He is too heavy for you."
The father carried the child, who loved the feel of the strong arms, in which he jumped up and down, continuing to make play with his sturdy little fists. Instead of striking back, Guthrie answered the baby assaults with wild-beast roars and gestures that sent the little man into fits of delight. Mary laughed in chorus, keeping touch with the happy creature over the towering shoulder reared between them. It was more than ever like a little self-contained family, taking its Sunday stroll.
Mrs. Kelsey had her Christmas dinner in hand, but came to them in her big white apron and sleeves rolled to her dimpled elbows, smiling, business-like, charming in her plain, reposeful, straightforward attitude towards the visitors and their mission. No sooner had he beheld her orderly and cheerful house, looked into her kind eyes, and heard her sincere speech, than the young father was satisfied that he had found a good place for his little son. The child seemed to know it too, for when the strange woman drew him to her broad lap—calmly, as if used to doing it—he surrendered himself without a protest. When presently she gave him a drink of milk and a biscuit to munch, he regaled himself peaceably, with the air of feeling quite at home. When he had finished his lunch he played with a collie puppy.
"I'll do my best for him, sir, and I'll not let these young ladies spoil him if I can help it," said Mrs. Kelsey, with a smile at Mary Pennycuick.
Terms had been arranged, and everything settled.
"I hope you will be able to keep him from being any bother to them," said Guthrie earnestly.
"Bother!" crowed Mary, whose intention was to visit the child daily. "We'll see to that, Mr. Carey—never fear."
Mrs. Kelsey suggested beginning her duties, with the aid of the little nurse, at once; but Mary would not hear of parting the boy from his father while they could be together. So he was carried back to Redford, to be the plaything of the housekeeper's room for the rest of the day.
"MY baby," Mary began to call him. She had to preside at the great dinner, but was not visible to her family for hours before and after.
It was a better Christmas to Guthrie Carey in the end than in the beginning. Deb came back from church chastened in spirit, to make up to him for her unkindness, on the score of which her warm heart had reproached her. She made him play billiards with her after tea, while Claud was resting after his labours; she chaffed him deliciously on his errors in the game. She forgot to ask after his baby; but she asked whether it would not be possible to get his leave extended. When he said "No"—he had had more than his share already—she commended him for his sense of duty, and in her seriousness was more enchanting than in her fun.
"But I do wish we could have kept you longer," she flattered him, in her sweet way. "However, we shall have a hostage for your return."
Several new people came to dinner, including Mr. Goldsworthy and Ruby—the latter sent at once, by Deb's command, to keep little Carey company. Spacious Redford was taxed to the utmost to accommodate its guests, and never was better Christmas cheer provided in the old hall of English Redford than its son in exile dispensed under his Australian roof. When every leaf was put into the dining-table, it was so long that Mary at one end was beyond speaking distance of her father at the other, and those at the sides could scarce use their elbows as they ate. The banquet was prodigious, with speeches to wind up with (Mr. Goldsworthy, in his oration, disgusted Deb by referring to the host as "princely", and to the ladies of the house as his "bevy of beautiful daughters"); and if the truth must be told, the crowning ceremony of the loving cup was a bit superfluous. It found the host already fuddled beyond a doubt, and several of the guests under suspicion of being so. But in the opinion of all, Redford had celebrated Christmas in an unsurpassably proper manner.
Two mornings later, a waggonette was packed with luggage and four passengers—Mary Pennycuick, Guthrie Carey, the baby and the baby's little nurse. They proceeded in a body to the overseer's house, where the load was halved. Mary, the baby, and one box were left with Mrs. Kelsey (reinforced by the collie puppy and a plate of sugared strawberries); the sailor and the nursemaid, after a few poignant moments, went on to a distant railway station.
"Have an easy mind," said Mary, outside the parlour door. "He will be well off with her, and we shall all be looking after him."
"How can I thank you?" said the parting guest, barely able to articulate. He wrung her hand, and looked at her kind, red face with feelings unspeakable. "God bless you! God reward you for your goodness to the little chap and me."
He was including all the family in his benediction, and it was the father in him that was so touched and overcome. None the less, she accepted the tribute for her own, and to her poverty-stricken womanhood it was wealth indeed.
She stood in the porch to watch the wheels of his departing chariot flash through the sun and dust. She stared long at the vacant point of disappearance, like one entranced. When she came to herself, she ran into the house and fell upon little Harry.
"My baby," she crooned passionately, "MY baby!"
Carey Junior responded with his ready fist, pushing her from him. He was feeding the puppy with a strawberry, and she put her head in the way.
"Fie! You mustn't do that," said Mrs. Kelsey, mindful of her responsibilities. "That's rude."
"Oh, let him," pleaded the girl, infatuated with that look of his father in his face; and she dropped on her knees before him and kissed a dangling foot, with which he kicked her mouth. "Let him do what he likes, so long as he's happy."
"Not at all," her old nurse reproved her. "I promised Mr. Carey that he should not be spoiled."
He was not spoiled. The admirable foster-mother, brooking no interference with her system, improved him into a well-behaved child, as well as the healthiest and most beautiful in all that countryside. It was a standing grievance at Redford that she would not allow him to be always on show there, subject to Mary's indulgence, and Deb's caprices, and the temptations of the housekeeper's store-room. Only Mr. Kelsey, who was his idol, was permitted to withdraw him from Mrs. Kelsey's eye. The man used to take the child, with a toy whip in his little hand, on the saddle before him, and let him think he was guiding the steady horse and doing all the business of the station as well. The overseer confessed, in bad weather, when he had to ride alone, that he was lost without his little mate. "Hardly weaned," he used to brag, "and knows every beast on the place as well as I do myself." This was gross exaggeration, yet was the infant Harry a conspicuously forward child, with the "makings of a man" in him visible to all. His hearty whoas and gee-ups carried as far as the overseer's gruff voice; and the picture of the jolly boy, with his rosy, joyous face, and his fair curls blowing in the wind, was one to kindle the admiration of all who saw it. The phrase continually on the lips of his adopted family and connections was: 'Won't his father be surprised when he sees him!' They enjoyed in anticipation the grateful praises that would be heaped upon them then.
But Guthrie Carey never saw his son again.
The baby went a-visiting with his foster-parents to the local township, and it was supposed caught the infection of typhoid there from some unknown source. Having caught it, the robust little body, unused to any ailment, was wrecked at once, where a frail child might easily have weathered the storm. No little prince of blood royal could have been better nursed and more strenuously fought for; but three days after he had visibly sickened he was dead. And then the wail went up, "Oh! what will his father say?"
When Guthrie came, prepared by letters from fellow-mourners as bereaved as himself, it was but from one day to the next—only to "hear the particulars" and to see the little grave. Deborah was away from home, but in any case Mary would have been the one to perform the sad duties of the occasion; they were hers by right. She took him to the family cemetery on the only evening of his stay, and, herself speechless and weeping, showed him the whole place renovated and made beautiful for the sake of the latest comer. No weeds, no dead rose-bushes, no vampire ivy now; but an orderly garden, new planted and watered, and in the midst a small mound heaped with fresh-cut flowers. She had visited the child daily while he lived at Mrs. Kelsey's; now she almost daily visited his grave.
They dropped on their knees beside it, close as bride and bridegroom on altar steps, as father and mother at the firstborn's cradle. The dusk was melting into moonlight; they could not see each other's faces. When his big frame heaved with heavy sobs, she laid a timid hand—her beautiful hand—on his shoulder; and when he felt that sympathetic woman's touch, he turned suddenly and kissed her. Afterwards he did not remember that he had done it.
She seemed to cling to him when, next morning, the time came for him to go.
"You will come again?" she implored him, in a trembling whisper. "You will come here when you return next time?"
"Oh, surely," he replied, whispering too, and to the full as deeply moved. But when he got away it was to other lands that he turned his eyes, in the search for new interests to occupy his lonely life. With Lily and the baby dead, and Deborah Pennycuick given to another man, Australia had no more hold on him. His first letter to Redford notified that he had changed into another line, and that the name of his new ship was the DOVEDALE. She traded to the West Indies.
He forgot to write again when, not very long afterwards, he went back to his old line, at the invitation of the Company, as captain of the ship on which he had served as mate.
Mrs. Goldsworthy was reconciled to her relations through her illness—the greatest peacemaker in families, save death; and for her sake they made a show of tolerating her husband, after they had given him some bad hours behind her back. But the whole affair was like a blight on Redford, which was never the same place again. Mr. Pennycuick had a slight "stroke" on hearing all the bad news at once. It was light enough to be passed over and hushed up, but his vigour and faculties declined from that hour with a rapidity that could be marked from day to day. "A changed man," observed his neighbours, one to another. At the same time, they hinted that other things were not as they used to be—that the old man had had losses—that Redford was heavily burdened—that the proud Pennycuicks, already humbled, were likely to experience a further fall. Certainly, the governess was dispensed with, and the dashing four-in-hand withdrawn from the local racecourses and agricultural show-grounds, of which it had long been the constant and conspicuous ornament, to be sold at public auction, without reason given. The great, hospitable house got a character for dullness for the first time in its history. No lights or laughter flowed from the windows of the big drawing-room of an evening; the lawns lay dark and still, while downstairs a rubber of whist or a hand at cribbage with Jim Urquhart or Mr. Thornycroft represented what was left of the gaieties of the past. These men—these old fogies, as fretful Frances styled them both—were not of those who shunned Redford because it had grown dull; on the contrary, they now—according to Frances again—virtually lived there. And it was the absent pleasure-seekers, her true kindred, for whom her soul longed.
He who most openly resented the change, having (next to Mary) been most instrumental in causing it, was Deborah's lover, Claud Dalzell.
He had been none too gracious a lover—although graceful enough, when all was well—seeing that he had continued his bachelor life, with all its social obligations, after as before his engagement, and had allowed this to run to nearly two years, without coming to any effective understanding about the wedding-day; but when, in the thick of her troubles, he descended upon Redford merely to denounce the Goldsworthy marriage as a personal affront, and, as it were, to tax her with it, then her loving indulgence did not suffice to excuse him.
As usual, he went to his room first, to wash and change. He hated to pass the door of a sitting-room with the dust of travel on him; he could not shake hands with equanimity until he had restored his person and toilet to their normal perfection, which meant more or less the restoring of his nerves and temper to repose. So he appeared on this occasion, fresh and finished to the last degree, the finest gentleman in the world—the very light of Deb's eyes, and the satisfaction of her own fastidious taste—walking in to her where she awaited him, in the morning-room, herself 'groomed' to match, with as much care as she had taken when she had no more serious matter to think of than how to dress to please him.
He met her, apparently, as usual. She, turning to him as to a rock in a weary land, flung herself into his arms with more than her usual self-abandonment.
"Oh, darling!" she breathed, in that delicious voice of hers, "it is good to see you. I have wanted you so badly."
"I am sorry I did not come before," he replied, kissing her gravely. "Somebody has been wanted to deal with that extraordinary girl."
"Ah, poor girl! Do you know she is very ill with brain fever? Keziah has gone to nurse her. It must have been that coming on. She was out of her mind."
"I should think so—and everybody else too, apparently. What were you all about, Debbie, not to see this Goldsworthy affair going on under your noses?"
"It hasn't been going on. It has been Guthrie Carey—until now."
"I am told"—it was Frances who had told him in the passage just now—"that she refused Carey only the day before."
"She did."
"In order to make a runaway match with this parson fellow. The facts speak for themselves."
"Ah!" sighed Deb, turning to the tea-table, "I expect we don't know all the facts."
She meant that he did not know them. He only knew what Frances knew, and providentially they had been able to keep the episode of the dam out of the published story. That was the secret of Mary herself, her husband, her father, and this one sister; and they kept it close, even from Claud Dalzell. "I will tell him some day when we are married," Deb had promised herself; but as things fell out, she never did tell him. And it was on account of her brother-in-law's part in the suppressed event that she now forbore to call him behind his back what she had not hesitated to call him before his face—that is, failed to show that she fully shared her lover's indignation at the MESALLIANCE, and the scandalous way that it had been brought about.
"But, good heavens!"—Claud took his cup perfunctorily from her hand, and at once set it down—"are more facts necessary? She has made a clandestine marriage with a man whose bishop will turn him out of the church, I hope. They were right, I suppose, in concluding that no one here would consent to it; and what conceivable circumstances could excuse such an act?"
"Illness," said Deb. "Madness."
"Nonsense! There's too much method in it. It is obviously but the climax of a long intrigue—a course of duplicity that I could never have believed possible in a girl like Mary, although I have always thought HIM cad enough for anything."
"Have your tea," said Deb, a trifle off-hand; "it will be cold."
And she sat down with her own cup, and began to sip it with a leisurely air.
"A clandestine marriage," remarked Claud, ignoring her advice, "logically implies a clandestine engagement. Carey was but a red herring across the trail. And you ought to have known it, Deb."
"Well, I didn't," said she shortly.
He took a turn up and down the room, trying to preserve his wonted well-bred calm. But he was intensely irritated by her attitude.
"I cannot understand you," he complained, with a hard edge to his voice. "I should have thought that you—YOU of all people—would have been wild—as wild as I am."
She exasperated him with a little laugh and a truly cutting sarcasm. "It is bad form to SHOW that you are wild, you know, even if you feel so."
"I am just wondering whether you feel so. You are not used to hiding your feelings—at any rate, from me. I expected to find you out of your mind almost."
"What's the use? If I raved till doomsday I couldn't alter anything. The mischief is done. It is no use crying over spilt milk, my dear."
"You look as if you did not want to cry." "Do I?"
"As if it did not much matter to you whether it was spilt or not." "It doesn't matter to me, compared with what it matters to her." "Well, it matters to ME," Claud Dalzell announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. "I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling ass, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling himself my brother—Good God! it's too sickening."
"Not YOUR brother," Deb gently corrected him.
"He is mine if he is yours." "Oh, not necessarily!"
"Deb," said Claud, with an air of desperation, planting himself before her, "what are you going to do?"
She looked up at him with narrowing eyes and stiffening lips.
"What IS there to do?" she returned. "Are you going to put up with this—this outrage—to condone everything—to tolerate that fellow at Redford, taking the position of a son of the house, or are you going to show them both that they have forfeited their right ever to set foot upon the place again?"
"My sister too, you mean?"
"Certainly—if you can still bring yourself to call her your sister. She belongs to him now, not to us. She has voluntarily cut herself off from her world. Let her go. Deb, if you love me—"
He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.
"Ah, is that to be a test of love?" she asked. "I understand. I am to choose between you. Well"—she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger—"I am going to her now. I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you. Good-bye! And pray, don't come again to this contaminated house. We have too horribly gone down in the world. I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account. We Pennycuicks, we don't abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together." She held the jewel out to him.
"What rot!" he blurted vulgarly, flushing with anger that was not unmixed with shame. "Why will you wilfully misunderstand me? Put it on, Deb—put it on, and don't be so childish."
"I will not put it on," said she, "until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them."
"My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn't. Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know—"
"Hush!" She stopped him from further arguing; but she did not stop him from taking her hand and cramming the diamond back into its old place. "I must go. Father cannot—he is ill himself; and Miss Keene is too frightfully modest to nurse him alone, so that I must send Keziah back, and stay—"
"Can't Miss Keene go and send her back, and stay?"
"Oh, she would be no use in such an illness as Mary's. And I must see for myself how things are—whether they are taking proper care of the poor, unfortunate child—"
"Is she so very ill? I did not know that."
There was commiseration in his tone, but in his heart he hoped that the deservedly sick woman would crown her escapades by dying as quickly as possible. Then, perhaps, he could forgive her.
Deb gave him sundry confidences. On his appearing to take them in a proper spirit, she gave him some more tea. And so they lapsed into their normal relations. When she again urged the need for her to be getting off on her errand of mercy, he magnanimously offered to drive her. She accepted with a full heart, and her arms about his neck. While she was getting ready, he repacked his portmanteau, and ordered it to be put into the buggy.
"It's no use my going back," he said to her, when they were on the road, "with you away, and your father too ill to see me. I'll put up at the hotel tonight, and go on to town in the morning. You can send for me there whenever you want me, you know."
"Just as you like, dear," said Deb quietly; and for the rest of their journey they talked commonplaces.
When they reached the parsonage gate, from which the maid-of-all-work and a group of street gossips scattered in panic at their approach, the lovers shook hands perfunctorily.
"Goodbye, then, for a little while," said Claud. "You don't want me to come in, do you?"
"Certainly not," said she coldly.
"You know that it is totally against my judgment—and my wishes—that you go in yourself, Deb?"
"Yes. But one's own judgment must be one's guide."
Thus they parted, each with a grievance against the other—a root of bitterness to be nourished by much thinking about it, and by the circumstance that poor Mary neither died nor was repudiated. Claud drove on to the hotel, to be further disgusted with his accommodation and his dinner; Deb walked into the house which hitherto she had visited in a spirit of kindly condescension, to be revolted by the new aspect which her changed relations with it now gave to its every feature. Ruby, neglected, with a jam-smeared face—the flustered maid, tousled, grubby, her frock gaping—the horrible hall, with its imitation-marble paper and staring linoleum—the prim, trivial, unaired, unused drawing-room, with its pathetic attempts at elegance—Deb inwardly curled up at the sight of these things as things now belonging to the family. When the master of the house came hurrying in to her, rusty, unshaven, abject, she would have changed places with a Christian of old Rome facing a lion of the amphitheatre.
"Oh, this is good of you! This is kind indeed!" Mr. Goldsworthy greeted her, and threatened in his grateful emotion to fall at her feet. "I did not dare to hope—"
But Deb shudderingly swept him aside, with his gratitude and his excuses and his timid justifications. He could stand up before his other critics—he had a clear conscience, he said; but before her he knew himself for what he was. He followed her like a dog to Mary's room, obeyed her directions like a slave, wept when she consented to "say no more", and stooped to beg from him a solemn vow and promise that he would be good to his wife. This was after the doctors had refused to permit his wife's removal to Redford to be nursed, and after Redford had practically been in command of his establishment for seven weeks.