CHAPTER XVII.—THE TWO MIRIAMS.

A Sunday morning early in the following February; in fact, the first Sunday of the month.

It was, perhaps, the freshest and coolest morning of any kind that the hot young year had as yet brought forth. Nevertheless, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Teesdale had gone to chapel, as was their wont. For this Sabbath day was also one requiring a red letter in the calendar of the Teesdales, insomuch as it was the solitary entire day which a greatly honoured visitor over the week-end had consented, after much ill-bred importuning, to give to her father's old friends at the farm.

The visitor was gone to chapel with Arabella. But the farmer and his wife had stayed at home, the one to shoot a hare, and the other to cook it for the very special Sunday dinner which the occasion demanded.

Naturally David's part was soon performed, because the old man was so good a shot still, and there were plenty of hares about the place. It was less natural in one of his serene disposition to light a pipe afterwards and sit down in the verandah expressly and deliberately to think of things which could only trouble him. This, however, was what he proceeded to do. And the things troubled him more and more the longer he allowed his mind to dwell upon them.

One thing was the whole miserable episode of Missy, of whom the old man could not possibly help thinking, in that verandah.

Another was the manner and bearing of the proper Miriam, which was of the kind to make simple homely folks feel small and awkward.

A third thing was the difference between the two Miriams.

"She is not like her mother, and she certainly is not like her father—not as I knew him," muttered David with reference to the real one. "But she's exactly like her portrait in yon group. Put her in the sun, and you see it in a minute. She frowns just like that still. She has much the same expression whenever she isn't speaking to you or you aren't speaking to her. It isn't a kind expression, and I wish I never saw it. I wish it was more like——"

He ceased thinking so smoothly, for as a stone stars a pane of glass, that had shot into his mind's eye which made cross-roads of his thoughts. He took one of the roads and sat pulling at his pipe. Here from the verandah there was no view to be had of the river-timber and the distant ranges so beloved of the old man's gaze. But his eyes wandered down the paddock in front of the farmhouse, and thence to the township roofs, shifting from one to another of such as shone salient in the morning sun, and finally running up the parched and yellow hill upon the farther side. That way lay Melbourne, nine or ten miles to the south. And on this hill-top, between withered grass and dark blue sky, the old eyes rested; and the old lips kept clouding with tobacco-smoke the bit of striking sky-line, for the satisfaction of seeing it break through the cloud next instant; while on the worn face the passing flicker of a smile only showed the shadow of pain that was there all the time, until at length no more smoke came to soften the garish brilliance of the southern sky.

Then David lowered his eyes and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. And presently he sighed a few syllables aloud:

"Ay, Missy! Poor thing! Poor girl!"

For on the top of that hill, between grass and sky, between puff and puff from his own pipe, a mammoth Missy had appeared in a vision to David Teesdale. Nor was it one Missy, but a whole set of her in a perfect sequence of visions. And this sort of thing was happening to the old man every day.

There was some reason for it. With all her badness the girl had certainly shown David personally a number of small attentions such as he had never experienced at any hands but hers. She had filled his pipe, and fetched his slippers, and taken his arm whenever they chanced to be side by side for half a dozen steps. His own daughter never dreamt of such things, unless asked to do them, which was rare. But Missy had done them continually and of her own accord. She had taken it into her own head to read to the old man every day; she had listened to anything and all things he had to say to her, as Arabella had never listened in her life. Not that the daughter was at all uncommon in this respect; the wife was just the same. The real Miriam, too, showed plainly enough to a sensitive eye that poor David's conversation interested her not in the least. So it was only Missy who was uncommon—in caring for anything that he had to say. And this led Mr. Teesdale to remember the little good in her, and doubtless to exaggerate it, without thinking of the enormous evil; even so that when he did remember everything the old man, for one, was still unable to think of the impostor without a certain lingering tenderness.

There kept continually recurring to him things that she had said, her way of saying them, the tones of her voice, the complete look and sound of her in sundry little scenes that had actually taken place during her stay at the farm. Two such had been played all over again between the smoke of his pipe, the rim of yellow grass, and the background of blue sky which had formed the theatre of his thoughts. One of the two was the occasion of Missy's first blood-shedding with John William's gun. David recalled her sudden coming round the corner of the house—this corner. A whirlwind in a white dress, the flush of haste upon her face, the light of triumph in her eyes, the trail of the wind about her disorderly red hair. So had she come to him and thrown her victim at his feet as he sat where he was sitting now. And in a trice he had taken the triumph out of her by telling her what it was that she had shot, and why she ought not to have shot it at all. He could still see the look in her face as she gazed at her dead handiwork in the light of those candid remarks: first it was merely crestfallen, then it was ashamed, as her excitement subsided and she realised that she had done a cruel thing at best. She was not naturally cruel—a thousand trifles had proved her to be the very reverse. Her heart might be black by reason of her life, but by nature it was soft and kind. Kindness was something! It made up for some things, too.

Thus David would console himself, fetching his consolation from as far as you please. But even he could extract scant comfort from the other little incident which had come into his head. This was when Missy drank off Old Willie's whisky without the flicker of an eyelid; there has hitherto been no occasion to mention the matter, which was not more startling than many others which happened about the same time. Suffice it now to explain that Mr. Teesdale was in the habit of mixing every evening, and setting in safety on the kitchen mantelpiece, a pannikin of grog for Old Willie, who started townwards with the milk at two o'clock every morning. One fine evening Missy happened to see David prepare this potion, and asked what it was, getting as answer, "Old Willie's medicine;" whereupon the girl took it up, smelt it, and drank it off before the horrified old gentleman had time to interfere. "It's whisky!" he gasped. "Good whisky, too," replied Missy, smacking her lips. "But it was a stiff dose—I make it stiff so as to keep Old Willie from wanting any at the other end. You'd better be off to bed, Missy, before it makes you feel queer."

"Queer!" cried Missy. "One tot like that! Do you suppose I've never tasted whisky before?" And indeed she behaved a little better than usual during the remainder of the evening.

That alone should have aroused his suspicions—so David felt now. But at the time he had told nobody a word about the trick, and had passed it over in his own mind as one of the many "habits and ways which were not the habits and ways of young girls in our day." Their name had indeed been legion as applied to the perjured pretender; that sentence in Mr. Oliver's letter, like the remark about "modern mannerisms," was fatally appropriate to her. Remained the question, how could those premonitory touches apply to a young lady so cultivated and so superior as the real Miriam Oliver?

It was a question which Mr. Teesdale found very difficult to answer; it was a question which was driven to the back of his brain, for the time being, by the return of the superior young lady herself, with Arabella, from the township chapel.

David jumped up and hurried out to meet them. Miss Oliver wore a look which he could not read, because it was the look of boredom, with which David was not familiar. He thought she was tired, and offered her his arm. She refused it with politeness and a perfunctory smile.

"I'm afraid you've had a very hot walk," said the old man. "Who preached, Arabella?"

"Mr. Appleton. Miss Oliver didn't think——"

"Ah! I thought he would!" cried David with enthusiasm. "We're very proud of Mr. Appleton's sermons. It will be interesting to hear how he strikes a young lady——"

"She didn't think much of him," Arabella went on to state with impersonal candour.

"Nay, come!" And Mr. Teesdale looked for contradiction to the young lady herself; but though the latter raised her eyebrows at Arabella's way of putting it, she did not mince matters in the least. Perhaps this was one of those ways or habits.

"It was better than I expected," she said, with a small and languid smile.

"But didn't you like our minister, Miss Oliver? We all think so highly of him."

"Oh, I am sure he is an excellent man, and what he said seemed extremely well meant; but one has heard all that before, over and over again, and rather better put."

"Ah, at Home, no doubt. Yes; I suppose you would now, in London. However," added David, throwing up his chin in an attempt to look less snubbed than he felt as they came into the verandah, "as long as you don't regret having gone! That's the main thing—not the sermon. The prayers and the worship are of much more account, and I knew you'd enjoy them. Take this chair, Miss Oliver, and get cooled a bit before you go inside."

Miss Oliver stopped short of saying what she thought of the prayers, which, indeed, had been mostly extemporised by the Rev. Mr. Appleton. But Arabella, had she not gone straight into the house, would have had something to say on this point, for Miss Oliver had been excessively frank with her on the way home, and she was nettled. It was odd how none of them save Mrs. Teesdale (who was not sensitive) thought of calling the real Miriam by her Christian name. That young lady had refused the chair, but she stood for a moment taking off her gloves.

"And why didn't you come to chapel, Mr. Teesdale?" she asked, for something to say, simply.

"Aha!" said David slyly. "That's tellings. I make a rule of going, and it's a rule I very seldom break; but I'm afraid I broke it this morning—ay, and the Sabbath itself—I've broken that and all!"

Miss Miriam was a little too visibly unamused, because, with all her culture, she had omitted to cultivate the kind art of appreciation. She had never studied the gentle trick of keeping one's companions on good terms with themselves, and it did not come natural to her. So David was made to feel that he had said something foolish, and this led him into an unnecessary explanation.

"You see, in this country, in the hot weather, meat goes bad before you know where you are." This put up the backs of Miss Oliver's eyebrows to begin with.

"You can't keep a thing a day, so, if I must tell you, I've been shooting a hare for our dinners. Mrs. T. is busy cooking it now. You see, if we'd hung it up even for a couple of hours——"

"Please don't go into particulars," cried Miss Oliver, with a terrible face and much asperity of tone. "There was no need for you to tell me at all. You dine late, then, on Sundays?"

"No, early, just as usual; it will be ready by the time you've got your things off."

"What—the hare that you've only shot since we went out?"

"Why, to be sure."

Miss Oliver went in to take off her things without another word. And David gathered from his guilty conscience that he had said what he had no call to say, what it was bad taste to say, what nobody but a very ill-bred old man would have dreamt of saying; but presently he knew it to his cost.

For nothing would induce the visitor to touch that hare, though Mrs. Teesdale had cooked it with her own hands. She had to say so herself, but Miss Miriam steadily shook her head; nor did there appear to be much use in pressing her. Mrs. Teesdale only made matters worse by so doing. But it is impossible not to sympathise with Mrs. Teesdale. She was by no means so strong a woman as her manifold and varied exertions would have led one to suppose. A hot two hours in the kitchen had left their mark upon her, and being tired at all events, if not in secret bodily pain, she very quickly became angry also. There was, in fact, every prospect of a scene, when David interposed and took the entire blame for having divulged to Miss Oliver the all too modern history of the hare. Then Mrs. Teesdale was angry, but only with her husband. With Miriam she proceeded to sympathise from that instant; indeed, she had set herself to make much of this Miriam from the first; and the matter ended by the young lady at last overcoming her scruples and condescending to one minute slice from the middle of the back. But she had worn throughout these regrettable proceedings a smile, hardly noticeable in itself, but of peculiarly exasperating qualities, if one did happen to remark it. And it had not escaped John William, who sat at the table without speaking a word, feeling, in any case, disinclined to open his mouth before so superior a being as this young lady from England.

In the heat of the afternoon, however, the younger Teesdale found the elder in the parlour, alone too, but walking up and down, as if ill at ease; and John William then had his say.

"Where's everybody?" he asked, putting his head into the room first of all. Then he entered bodily and shut the door behind him. "Where's our precious guest?" he cried, in no promising tone.

"She's gone to lie down, and so has——"

"That's all right! I shan't be sorry myself if she goes on lying down for the rest of the day. I don't know what you think of her, father, but I do know what I think!"

Mr. Teesdale continued to pace the floor with bent body and badly troubled face, but he said nothing.

"She's what I told you she would be," proceeded the son, "in the very beginning. I told you she'd be stuck up—and good Lord, isn't she? I said we didn't want that kind here, and no more we do. No, I'm dashed if we do! Don't you remember? It was the time you read us the old man's letter. I liked the letter and I might like the old man, but I'm dashed if I like his daughter! She doesn't take after her father, I'll be bound."

"Not unless he is very much changed," admitted David sadly. "Still, I think you are rather hard upon her, John William."

"Hard upon her! Haven't I been watching her? Haven't I ears and eyes in my head, like everybody else? It's only one meal I've set down to beside her, so far, but one 'll do for me! With her nasty supercilious smile, and her no-thank-you this and no-thank-you that! I never did know anybody take such a delight in refusing things. Look at her about that hare!"

"Yes; and your mother had spent all morning at it. I'm very much afraid she's knocked herself up over it, for she's lying down, too. Your mother is not so strong as she was, John William. I'm very much afraid that matter of Missy has been preying on her nerves."

"I'd rather have Missy than this here Miriam," said John William, after a pause, and all at once his voice was full of weariness.

The same thought was in Mr. Teesdale's mind, but he did not give expression to it. Presently he said, still pacing the room with his long-legged, weak-kneed stride:

"I wonder what Mr. Oliver meant when he hinted that I should find Miriam so different from the girls of our day? Where are the tricks and habits that he alluded to? Poor Missy had plenty, but I can't see any in Miriam."

"Can't you? Then I can. Ways of another kind altogether. Did the girls in your day turn up their noses at things before people's faces?"

"No."

"Did they sneer when they talked to their elders and betters?"

"No; but we are only Miriam's elders, mind—not her betters."

"Could they smile without looking supercilious, and could they open their mouths without showing their superiority?"

"Of course they could."

"There you are then! One more question—about Mr. Oliver this time. When you left the old country he hadn't the position he has now, had he?"

"No, no; very far from it. He was just beginning business, and in a small way, too. Now he is a very wealthy man."

"Then he hadn't got as good an education as he's been able to give his children, I reckon?"

"No, you're right. We went to school together, he and I," said Mr. Teesdale simply.

"Then don't you see?" cried his son, jumping up from the sofa where he had been sitting, while the old man still walked up and down the room. "Don't you see, father? Mr. Oliver was warning you against what he himself had suffered from. You bet that Miss Miriam picks him up, and snubs him and sneers at him, just as she does with us!"

Which was the cleverest deduction that this unsophisticated young farmer had ever arrived at in his life; but puzzling constantly over another matter had lent a new activity to his brain, and much worry had sharpened his wits.

Old Teesdale accepted his son's theory readily enough, but yet sorrowfully, and the more so because the more he saw of his old friend's child, the less he liked her.

Indeed, she was not at all an agreeable young person. It appeared that she had been merely reading in her own room, so when Arabella owned to having been asleep in hers, she looked duly and consciously superior. There was something comic about that look of conscious superiority which broke out upon this young lady's face upon the least provocation, but it is difficult to give an impression of it in words—it was so slight, and yet so plain. To be sure, she was the social as well as the intellectual superior of the simple folk at the farm, but that in itself was not so very much to be proud of, and at any rate one would not have expected a tolerably well-educated girl to exhale superiority with every breath. But this was the special weakness of Miss Miriam Oliver. Even the fact that some of the Teesdales read the Family Cherub was an opportunity which she could not resist. She took up a number and satirised the Family Cherub most unmercifully. Then she was queer about the poor old piano in the best parlour. She played a few bars upon it—she could play very well—and then jumped up shuddering. Certainly the piano was terribly out of tune; but not more so than this young Englishwoman's manners. In conversation with the Teesdales there was only one subject that really interested her.

It was a subject which had been fully dealt with at supper on the Saturday night, when Mrs. Teesdale had waxed very warm thereon. Old Teesdale and Arabella had listened in silence because to them it was not quite such a genial topic. John William had not been there; the misfortune was that he did sit down to the Sunday supper, when Miss Oliver brought up this subject again.

"Did my under-study like cocoa, then?" she inquired, having herself refused to take any, much to Mrs. T.'s discomfiture.

"You mean that impudent baggage?" said the latter. "Ay, she was the opposite extreme to you, Miriam. She took all she could get, you may be sure! She made the best use of her time!"

"Do tell me some more about her," said Miss Oliver. "It is most interesting."

"Nay, I would rather not speak of her," replied Mrs. Teesdale, who was only too delighted to do so when sure of a sympathetic hearing. "It was the most impudent piece of wickedness that ever I heard tell of in my life."

"The queer thing to me," remarked Miss Oliver, "is that you ever should have believed her. Fancy taking such a creature for me! It was scarcely a compliment, Mrs. Teesdale. A more utterly vulgar person one could hardly wish to see."

"My dear," began Mr. Teesdale nervously, "she behaved very badly, we know; yet she had her good points——"

"Hold your tongue, David!" cried his wife, whom nothing incensed more than a good word for Missy. "She curry-favoured with you, so you try to whitewash her. I wonder what Miriam will think of you? However, Miriam, I can tell you that I never believed in her—never once! A brazen, shameless, lying, thieving hussy, that's what she——"

A heavy fist had banged the table at the lower end, so that every cup danced in its saucer, and all eyes were turned upon John William, who sat in his place—trembling a little—very pale—but with eyes that glared alarmingly, first at his mother, then at the guest.

"What did she steal?" he thundered out. "You may be ashamed of yourself, mother, trying to make the girl out worse than she was. And you, Miss Oliver—I wonder you couldn't find something better to talk about—something in better taste!"

Miss Oliver put up her pale eyebrows.

"This is interesting!" she exclaimed. "To think that one should come here to learn what is, and what is not good taste! Perhaps you preferred my—my predecessor to me, Mr. Teesdale?"

"I did so!" said John William stoutly.

"Ah, I thought as much. She was, of course, rather more in your line."

"By the Lord," answered the young man, forgetting himself entirely, "if you were more in hers it would be the better for them that have to do with you. She could have taught you common civility, at any rate, and common kindness, and two or three other common things that you seem never to have been taught in your life!" There was a moment's complete silence. Then Miss Oliver got steadily to her feet.

"After that," she said to David, "I think my room is the best place for me—and the safest too."

She proceeded to the door without let or hindrance. All save herself were too much startled to speak or to act. Mr. Teesdale was gazing through the gun-room window with a weary face; his wife held her side as if it were a physical trouble with her; while Arabella looked in terror at John William, who was staring unflinchingly at the first woman he had lived to insult. The latter had reached the threshold, where, however, she turned to leave them something to keep.

"It serves me right," she said. "I might have known what to expect if I came here."