CHAPTER XV.—A DAY OF RECKONING.

Missy retreated a step from the verandah, stood still, and gasped. Then she pressed both hands to her left side. She was as one walking on the down line in order to avoid the up train, only to be cut to pieces by the down express, whose very existence she had forgotten.

Her eyes fastened themselves upon one object. Presently she found that it was Mrs. Teesdale's pebble brooch. Her ears rang with a harsh, shrill voice; it took her mind some moments to capture the words and grasp their meaning.

"You wicked, wicked, ungrateful woman! To dare to come here and pass yourself off as Miriam Oliver, and live with us all these weeks—you lying hussy! If you have anything to say for yourself be sharp and say it, then out you pack!"

The convicted girl now beheld the verandah swimming with people. As her sight cleared, however, she could only count four, including Mrs. Teesdale. There was the veritable Miss Oliver, but Missy took no note of her just then. There was Arabella, white and weeping; and there was Mr. Teesdale, looking years older since the morning, with the saddest expression Missy had ever seen upon human countenance. He was gazing, not at her, but down upon the ground at her feet. John William was not there at all. Missy looked about for him very wistfully, but in vain; and her glance ended, where it had begun, upon the furious face of Mrs. Teesdale. Furious as it was, the wretched girl found it much the easiest face to meet with a firm lip and a brazen front.

"Do you know that you could be sent to prison?" Mrs. Teesdale proceeded, still at a scream. "Ay, and I'll see that you are sent, and all!"

"Nay, come!" muttered Mr. Teesdale, shaking his head at the grass, but without looking at anybody.

Then suddenly he lifted his eyes, stepped down from the verandah, and went up to Missy.

"Missy," said he, in a low, hoarse voice, "Missy, I'll take your word as soon as the word of a person I've never set eyes on before. Is this true, or is it not? Are you, or are you not, Miriam Oliver, the daughter of my old friend?"

"It is true," said Missy. "I'm no more Miriam Oliver than you are."

Neither question nor answer had reached the ears of those in the verandah. But they saw David turn towards them with his head hanging lower than before, and he tottered as he rejoined them. Miss Oliver, however, may have guessed what had passed, for she smiled a supercilious smile which no one happened to observe. This young lady was a contrast to her impersonator in every imaginable way. She was not nearly so tall, and she had exceedingly fair hair. Her nose was tip-tilted to begin with, but she seemed to have a habit of turning it up even beyond the design of nature. This was perhaps justified on the present occasion. She was very fashionably dressed in a costume of extremely light gray; and in the dilapidated framework of the old verandah she was by far the most incongruous figure upon the scene.

"Has she anything to say for herself?" Mrs. Teesdale demanded of her husband. He shook his head despondently.

And then, at last, Missy opened her mouth.

"I have only this to say for myself. It isn't much, but Mr. Teesdale will tell you that it's the truth. It's only that I did do my level best to make a clean breast to him last night."

"She did!" exclaimed the old man, after a moment's rapid consideration. "Now I see what she meant. To think that I never saw then!"

"You were very dense," said Missy; "but not worse than John William. I did my best to tell you last night, and I did my best to tell him only this morning, but neither of you would understand."

As she spoke to the old man her voice was strangely gentle, and a smile was hovering about the corners of her mouth when she ceased. Moreover, her words had brought out a faint ray of light upon Mr. Teesdale's dejected mien.

"It's a fact!" he cried, turning to the others. "She did her best to confess last night. She did confess. I remember all about it now. It was a full confession, if only I'd put two and two together. But—well, I never could have believed it of her. That was it!"

He finished on a sufficiently reproachful note.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Teesdale turned upon him as fiercely as though he had spoken from a brief in Missy's defence.

"What if she had confessed? I'm ashamed of you, David, going on as though that could ha' made any difference! She'd still have deceived us and lied to us all these weeks. Black is black and this—this woman—is that black that God Himself couldn't whiten her!"

And Mrs. Teesdale shook her fist at the guilty girl.

"We have none of us a right to say that," murmured David.

"But I do say it, and I mean it, too. I say that she'd still have stolen Miriam's letter of introduction, and come here deliberately and passed herself off as Miriam, and slept under our roof, and eaten-our bread, under false pretences—false pretences as shall put her in prison if I have anything to do with it! No confession could have undone all that; and no confession shall keep her out of prison neither, not if I know it!"

Some of them were expecting Missy to take to her heels any moment; but she never showed the least sign of doing so.

"No, nothing can undo it," she said herself. "I've known that for some time, and I shan't be sorry to pay the cost."

Then the real Miss Oliver put in her word. It was winged with a sneer.

"It was hardly a compliment," she said, "to take her for me! You might ask her, by the way, when and where she stole my letters. I lost several." She could not permit herself to address the culprit direct.

"I'll tell you that," said Missy, "and everything else too, if you like to listen."

"Do, Missy!" cried Arabella, speaking also for the first time. "And then I'll tell them something."

"Be sharp, then," said Mrs. Teesdale. "We're not going to stand here much longer listening to the likes of you. If you've got much to say, you'd better keep it for the magistrate!"

Missy shook her head at Arabella, stared briefly but boldly at Mrs. Teesdale, and then addressed herself to the fair girl in gray, who raised her eyebrows at the liberty.

"You remember the morning after you landed in the Parramatta? It was a very hot day, about a couple of months ago, but in the forenoon you went for a walk with a lady friend. And you took the Fitzroy Gardens on your way."

Miss Oliver nodded, without thinking whom she was nodding to. This was because she had become very much interested all in a moment; the next, she regretted that nod, and set herself to listen with a fixed expression of disgust.

"You walked through the Fitzroy Gardens, you stopped to look at all the statues, and then you sat down on a seat. I saw you, because I was sitting on the next seat. You sat on that seat, and you took out some letters and read bits of them to your friend. I could hear your voices, but I couldn't hear what you were saying, and I didn't want to, either. I had my own things to think about, and they weren't very nice thinking, I can tell you! That hot morning, I remember, I was just wishing and praying to get out of Melbourne for good and all. And when I passed your seat after you'd left it, there were your letters lying under it on the gravel. I picked them up, and I looked up and down for you and your friend. You were out of sight, but I made for the entrance and waited for you there. Yes, I did—you may sneer as much as you like! But you never came, and when I went back to my lodgings I took your letters with me."

Still the young lady sneered without speaking, and Missy hardened her heart.

"I read them every one," she said defiantly. "I had nothing to do with myself during the day, and very good reading they were! And in the afternoon, just for the lark of it, I took your letter of introduction, which was among the rest, and then I took the 'bus and came out here."

She turned now to David, and continued in that softer voice which she could not help when speaking to him.

"It was only for the fun of it! I had no idea of ever coming out again. But you made so much of me; you were all so kind—and the place—it was heaven to a girl like me!"

Here she surprised them all, but one, by breaking down. Mr. Teesdale was not astonished. When she recovered her self-control it was to him she turned her swimming eyes; it was the look in his that enabled her to go on.

"If you knew what my life was!" she wailed; "if you knew how I hated it! If you knew how I longed to come out into the country, when I saw what the country was like! I had never seen your Australian country before. It was all new to me. I had only been a year out from home, but at home I lived all my life in London. My God, what a life! But I never meant to come back to you—I said I wouldn't—and then I said you must take the consequences if I did. Even when I said good-bye to you, Mr. Teesdale, I never really thought of coming back; so you see I repaid your kindness not only by lies, but by robbing you——"

She pulled herself up. David had glanced uneasily towards his wife. The girl understood.

"By robbing you of your peace of mind, for I said that I would come back, never meaning to at all. And now do you know why I was in such a hurry to get to the theatre? Yes, it was because I had an engagement there. All the rest was lies. And I never should have come out to you again, only at last I saw in the Argus that she—that Miss Oliver—had gone to Sydney. Don't you remember how you'd seen it too? Well, then I felt safe. I was only a ballet-girl, I'd done better once, for at home I'd had a try in the halls. So I chucked it up and came out to you. I thought I should see in the Argus when Miss Oliver came back from Sydney, but somehow I've missed it. And now——"

She flung wide her arms, and raised her eyes, and looked from the sky overhead to the river-timber away down to the right, and from the river-timber to David Teesdale.

"And now you may put me in prison as fast as you like. I've been here two months. They're well worth twelve of hard labour, these last two months on this farm!"

She had finished.

Mrs. Teesdale turned to her husband. "The brazen slut!" she cried. "Not a word of penitence! She doesn't care—not she! To prison she shall go, and we'll see whether that makes her care."

But David shook his head. "No, no, my dear! I will not have her sent to prison. What good could it do us or her? Rather let her go away quietly, and may the Almighty forgive her—and—and make her——"

He looked down, and there was Missy on her knees to him. "Can you forgive me?" she cried passionately. "Say that you forgive me, and then send me to prison or any place you like. Only say that you forgive me if you can."

"I can," said the old man softly, "and I do. But I am not the One. You shall not go to prison, but you must go away from us, and may God have mercy on you and help you to lead a better life hereafter. You—you have been very kind to me in little ways, Missy, and I shall try to think kindly of you too."

He spoke with great emotion, and as he did so his trembling hand rested ever so lightly upon the red head from which the hat was tilted back. And the girl seized that kind, caressing hand, and raised it to her lips, but let it drop without allowing them to touch it. Then she rose and retreated under their eyes. And all the good women had been awed to silence by this leave-taking; but one of them recovered herself in time to put a shot into the retiring enemy.

"Mr. Teesdale is a deal too lenient," cried the farmer's wife. "He's been like that all his life! If I'd had my way, to prison you should have gone—to prison you should have gone, you shameless bad woman, you!"

Old David heard it without a word. He was seeing the last of Missy as she descended the pad-dock by the path that led down to the slip-rails; the very last that he saw of her was the sunlight upon her hair and hat.

Arabella had darted into the house, and she now came out with a small bundle of things in her arms. With these she followed Missy, coming up with her at the slip-rails, against which she was leaning with her face buried in her hands.

Now this was the spot where Arabella had first met the man from whom this abandoned girl had rescued her, body and soul. She had desired to tell them all that story, to show them the good in Missy, and so make them less hard upon her. The person who had prevented her, by forbidding look and vigorous gesture, was Missy herself....

It was half an hour later when Arabella returned to the house. This was what she was in time to see and hear.

The real Miss Oliver was sitting in the buggy beside the man in livery, replying, with chilly smiles and decided shakes of her fair head, to the joint remonstrances, exhortations, and persuasions of Mr. and Mrs. Teesdale, who were standing together on the near side of the buggy.

"But I've just made the tea this minute," Arabella heard her mother complain. "Surely you'll stop and have your tea with us after coming all this way?"

"Thank you so much; it is very kind of you; but I promised to be back at the picnic in time for tea, and it is some miles away."

"But Mrs. Teesdale takes a special pride in her tea," said David, "and she has made it, so that we shouldn't keep you waiting at all."

"So kind of you; but I'm afraid I have stayed too long already. I was just waiting to say goodbye to Mrs. Teesdale. Good-bye again——"

"Come, Miriam," said Mrs. T., a little testily, "or we shall be offended!"

"I should be very sorry to offend you, I am sure, but really my friends lent me their buggy on the express condition——"

From her manner Mr. Teesdale saw that further pressing would be useless.

"We will let you go now," said he, "if you will come back and stay with us as long as you can."

"For a month at least," added Mrs. T.

Miss Oliver looked askance.

"We are such very old friends of your parents," pleaded David.

"We would like to be your parents as long as you remain in Australia," Mrs. Teesdale went so far as to say. And already her tone was genuinely kind and motherly, as it had never become towards poor Missy in all the past two months.

Miss Oliver raised her eyebrows; luckily they were so light that the grimace was less noticeable than it otherwise might have been.

"Suppose we write about it?" said she at length. "Yes, that would be the best. I have several engagements, and I am only staying out a few weeks longer. But I will certainly come out and see you again if I can."

"And stay with us?" said Mrs. T.

"And stay a night with you—if I can."

"By this time," exclaimed David, "we might have had our tea and been done with it. Won't you think better of it and jump down now? Come, for your parents' sakes—I wish you would."

"So do I, dear knows!" said Mrs. Teesdale wistfully. But Miss Oliver, this time without speaking, shook her head more decidedly than ever; gave the old people a bow apiece worthy of Hyde Park; and drove off without troubling to notice the daughter of the house, who, however, was not thinking of her at all, but of Missy.