CHAPTER XVI.—A MAN'S RESOLVE.

How to tell John William when he came home, that was the prime difficulty in the mind of Arabella. Tell him she must, as soon as ever he got in. She felt it of importance that he should hear the news first from herself, and not, for example, from their mother. But it was going to be a very disagreeable duty; more so, indeed, than she ever could have dreamt, until Missy herself warned her, almost with her last words, at the slip-rails. Missy had opened her eyes for her during those few final minutes. Till then she had suspected nothing between her brother and the girl. And now the case seemed so clear and so inevitable that her chief cause for wonderment lay in her own previous want of perception. It made her very nervous, however, with the news still to break to John William. She wished that he would make haste home. He had ridden off early in the afternoon to look up another young farmer several miles distant; not that he wanted to see anyone at all, but because he was ill at ease and anxious to be out of Missy's way, as Arabella now made sure. But poor Missy! And poor John William! Would they ever see each other again? She hoped not. Her heart grieved for them both, but she hoped not. No woman, being also a sister of the man concerned, could know about another woman what Arabella now knew against Missy, and hope otherwise. And the state of her own feelings in the matter was her uppermost trouble, when at last John William trotted his mare into the yard, and Arabella followed him into the stable.

Then and there she hurriedly told all. Her great dread was that their mother might appear on the scene and tell it in her way. But the attitude of the man greatly astonished Arabella. He took the news so coolly—but that was not it. He seemed not at all agitated to hear what Missy was, and who she was not, but very much so on learning how summarily she had been sent about her business. He said very little even then, but Arabella knew that he was trembling all over as he unsaddled the mare.

"My heart bled for the poor thing," she added, speaking the simple truth. "It would have bled even if she hadn't done more for me than ever I can tell anybody. I was thankful I went after her, and saw the last of her at the rails——"

"Which way did she go?"

"To the township to begin with; but she gave me——"

"Which way did she mean to go—straight back to Melbourne?"

"She didn't say. I was going on to tell you that at the slip-rails she gave me some messages for you, John William."

"We will have them afterwards. Let us go in to supper now."

"Very well—but stay! Are you prepared for mother? She is dreadful about it; she makes it even worse than it is."

"I am prepared for anything. I shall not open my mouth."

Nor did he; but the provocation was severe. Mrs. Teesdale was glad of an opportunity of rehearsing the whole story from beginning to end. This enabled her to decide what epithets were too weak for the occasion, and what names were as nearly bad enough for Missy as any that a respectable woman could lay her tongue to; also, by what she now said, this excellent woman strengthened her own rather recent convictions that she had "suspected something of the kind" about Missy from the very first. Certainly she had felt a strong antipathetic instinct from the very first. Quite as certainly she had now just cause for righteous rage and desires the most vindictive. Yet there was not one of those three, her nearest, who did not feel a fresh spasm of pain at each violent word, because every one of them, save the wife and mother, had some secret cause to think softly of the godless girl who was gone, and to look back upon her more in pity than in blame.

For sadness, Mr. Teesdale was the saddest of them all. He crept to his bed a shaken old man, and had to listen to his wife until he thought she must break his heart. Meantime Arabella and John William foregathered in the latter's room, and talked in whispers in order not to wake two old people who had neither of them closed an eye.

"About those messages," said John William. "What were they?"

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and he pared a cake of tobacco as he spoke. His wideawake lay on the quilt beside him, and he had not taken off his boots. Arabella stood uneasily.

"Poor girl! she spoke about you a good deal just at the last."

Arabella hesitated.

"I want to know what she said," observed John William dryly.

"Well, first she was sorry you weren't there."

"If I had been she never should have gone like that!"

"What, not when everything had come out——"

"No, not at all; she shouldn't have been kicked out, anyway. I'd have given her time and then driven her back to Melbourne, with all her things. What right have we with them, I should like to know?"

"She wanted us to keep them, she——"

"Wanted us! I'd have let her want, if I'd been here. However, go on. She was sorry I wasn't there, was she?"

"Well, at first she said so, but in a little while she told me that she was glad. And after that she said I didn't know how glad she was for you never to set eyes on her again!"

"Never's a long time," muttered John William.

"Did she explain herself?" he added, as loud as they ventured to speak.

"Y—yes." Arabella was hesitating.

"Then out with it!"

"She told me—it can't be true, but yet she did tell me—that you—fancied yourself in love with her, John William!"

"It isn't true."

"Thank God for that!"

"Stop a moment. Not so fast, my girl! It isn't true—because there's no fancy at all about it, d'ye see?"

Arabella saw. It was written and painted all over his lined yet glowing face; but where there could be least mistake about it was in his eyes. They were ablaze with love—with love for a woman who had neither name, honour, nor common purity. He could not know this. But Arabella knew all, and it was her business—nay, her solemn undertaking—to repeat all that she knew to John William.

"I was told," she faltered, "what to say to you if you said that."

"Who told you?"

"She did—Missy."

"Then say it right out."

But that was difficult between brother and sister. At first he refused to understand, and then he refused to believe.

"It's a lie!" he cried hoarsely. "I don't believe a word of it!"

"And do you suppose I would make it up? Upon my sacred honour, John William, it is only what she told me with her own——"

"I know that; it's her lie—I never meant it was yours. No, no, it's Missy's lie to choke me off. But it shan't! No, by Heaven, and it shouldn't if it were the living truth!"

There was no more to be said. The man knew that, and he relit the pipe, which he had scarcely tasted, without looking at the sister whom he had silenced. Presently he said in a perfectly passionless voice, coming back from the unspeakable to a point which it was possible to discuss:

"About those things of hers—all her clothes. Did you say that she wanted us to keep them? And if so, why?"

"Because," said Arabella with some reluctance, "they were bought with money which—as she said herself—she had obtained from father on false pretences."

It may have been because he was now quite calm outwardly, but at this the man winced more visibly than at what had come out before.

"From father," he repeated at length; "he couldn't let her have much, anyway!"

"He let her have twenty pounds."

"Never; the bank wouldn't let him have it."

"The bank didn't; he got it on his watch."

"On the watch that's—mending?"

The truth flashed across him before the words were out. Arabella nodded her head, and her brother bowed his in trouble.

"Yes, that's bad," said he, as though nothing else had been. "There's no denying it, that is bad." It was a thing he could realise; that was why he took it thus disproportionately to heart.

"Surely it is all bad together!" said Arabella. John William spent some minutes in a study of the bare boards by his bedside.

"Where do you think she went to?" he said at last, looking up.

"I have no idea."

"Have you told me all that she said? She didn't—she didn't send any other messages?" It was wistfully asked.

"No, none; but she did tell me how she hopes and prays that you will never give her another thought. She declares she has never given a single thought to you. It is true, too, I am sure."

"We shall see—we shall see. So you have no idea where she went? She gave you no hint of any sort or kind?"

"None whatever."

"She has gone back to Melbourne, think you?"

"I don't know where else she could go to."

"No more do I," said John William, rising from the bed at last. He opened the window softly and looked out into the night. "No more do I see where else she could go to," he whispered over again. Then he turned round to Arabella. She was watching him closely. Neither of them spoke. But John William picked his wideawake from off the bed and jammed it over his brows. Then he took a pair of spurs from the drawers-head and dropped them into his coat pocket. Then he faced Arabella afresh.

"Do you know what I am going to do?"

"I can guess. You are going to ride into Melbourne and look for Missy."

"I am—and now, at once. I'm going out by that window. Don't shut it, because I shall be back before milking, and shall come in the same way I get out."

"But you'll never see her, John William; you'll never see her," said Arabella in misery. "It'll be like hunting for a needle in a haystack!"

"You may always find the needle—there is always a chance. For me, if half of what she told you has a word of truth in it I shall have a better chance by night than by day. It can't be much after eleven now, and I guess I shall do it to-night in half an hour."

"But if you don't see her?"

"Then I shall have another try to-morrow night—and another the next—and another the night after that. There are plenty of horses in the paddock; there are some that haven't been ridden this long time, and some that nobody can ride but me. The mare will have to sweat for it to-night, but not after to-night. Only look here. I shall be found out sooner or later, then there will be a row, and you know who'll make it. You'll let it be later, won't you,'Bella, so far as you're concerned?"

"You must know that I will!"

"Then bless you, my dear, and good night."

They had seldom kissed since they were little children. They were both of them over thirty now, in respect of mere years. But with his beard tickling the woman's cheek, the man whispered, "You said that she had done something for you, too, you know!"

And the woman answered, "Something more than I can ever tell any of you. You little know what I might have come to, but for Missy. Yet what are you to do with her, poor Jack, if you do find her?"

And the man said, "Make her good again, so help me God!"