CHAPTER XX.—THE LAST ENCOUNTER.

It was in the old parlour, an hour later.

Here the change from summer to winter struck the eye more forcibly than it ever can out-of-doors in a country where no leaves fall. The gauze screen which had fitted in front of the fire-place was put away, and a log fire burnt excellently on the whitened hearth; the room was further lighted by the kerosene lamp that stood as of old upon the table; the gun-room door was shut; and a pair of old green curtains, of a different shade from that of the tablecloth, which looked less green and more faded than ever, were drawn across the window.

Mr. Teesdale sat in his accustomed corner, with his chair pushed back and pointing neither towards the table nor the fire, but between the two. On his knee was a bare-legged child, perhaps fourteen months old. Arabella, when she was in the room, took a chair near the table, if she sat down at all, and the lamplight only blackened the inscription of sleepless nights and anxious days that was cut deep upon her pallid face. John William sat at that end of the sofa which he had invariably affected, watching Missy; they all did this, even to Mr. Tees-dale, who was also occupied with the child upon his knee; but all save the child, who sometimes crowed and was checked, sat more like waxworks in a show than living, suffering beings.

When one spoke, it was in a whisper. But there was very little speaking. If Missy had not come back at all they could scarcely have been more silent.

Yet the way they spoke to her when they spoke at all—the way they looked at her, whether they spoke or not—this was much more remarkable than their silence, for which there was good reason. They spoke to Missy as to an old and valued friend, who had come at a cruel time, but who brought her own welcome even so; they looked at her with hospitable, grieved eyes that entreated her to take the kindly will for the kindlier deed. Across their faces, too, there now and then swept looks of apprehension which she did not see; but never a shade that would have led a stranger to suspect that they knew aught but good of this girl, or that she had rendered aught but kindness to them and theirs.

As for Missy, she did not see half their looks, because her own eyes had been either averted or downcast during the whole of the hour that she had already spent in the room. Now they were averted. She was sitting on a stool by the fireside—by that side of the fire which was furthest from Mr. Teesdale and nearest to the door. Her body was bent forward; her eyes were fixed pensively upon the fire; her left elbow rested upon her knee, and her chin in the hollow of her left hand. Hand and face were brown alike from hard work in all weathers. It was the weather of that day, however, that had quenched the colour from her hair; limp and soaking as it was, it looked much less red than formerly in the glare of midsummer. Also the fringe had disappeared entirely; but this alteration was permanent. Most notable of all changes, however, was the gauntness and angularity of the old good figure, which had struck Arabella even in the darkness; it was painfully conspicuous in the light. Missy had been to her box with Arabella, and was clad in a blouse and skirt that had been made for her ten months earlier. They fitted but loosely now. A hat and jacket, which she had also obtained from her box, had been taken away from her by John William: it lay within reach of his hand upon the sofa, where he appeared content to sit still and stare fixedly at Missy's back. Thus he was not aware that she had taken a small roll of papers out of her blouse, and that her right hand had been for some time fidgeting with it in her lap. And when David, who had a much better view, broke the silence with a low-toned question, the younger Teesdale had to get up in order to understand what his father meant.

"What is it you have got there, Missy?"

"It is something that I—I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Teesdale." She turned her head and looked a little wistfully at John William and Arabella; but neither of these two perceived that she wished to speak to Mr. Teesdale alone; and, after all, there was no reason why she should not speak out in front of them. So she proceeded. "It's something rather important—it's the only thing that could ever have brought me back here. Mr. Teesdale, you never took possession of my box after all!"

"'Twasn't likely," said David.

"But I meant you to. I told Arabella——"

"Yes, yes, but you didn't really and truly expect me to take you at your word, Missy?"

"Of course I did. The box was yours. It and all that was in it had been bought with your money."

"I wouldn't have anybody touch the box," said David, with characteristic pride. "I took and locked it up myself, and I've kept the key in my pocket ever since."

"But it was all yours by rights——"

"I care nothing at all about that!"

"The dresses and things, as well as the box itself, were worth something. Not much, perhaps—still, something. And then there were four pounds and some silver which I'd never touched. Here they are—four pounds."

She got up and laid them in a row on the tablecloth under the lamp. The others had risen also; and John William, for one, had his eyes fixed upon the little roll of paper in her right hand. It was a roll of one-pound notes. She began to lay them one by one upon the table, counting aloud as she did so.

"One, two, three, four, five, six—-"

"Stop a moment," said David, trembling. "How did you come by them, Missy?"

"Seven, eight. Didn't I tell you that I've been working all this time upon a farm? Nine——"

"Ah, yes, you did."

There had been a few explanations—a very few—when John William had first brought her in. Then dry clothes, then supper, then silence. It must be remembered that the shadow of death hung over the farm.

"Ten. I was there thirty-three weeks last Saturday. Eleven. They gave me ten shillings a week, and they found me—twelve—in food and clothes. I had things to put up with—thirteen—but nothing I couldn't bear. I was thankful you'd taught me to milk here. Fourteen, fifteen. I was so! Sixteen, and that's the lot. Sixteen and four's twenty. Twenty pound I got out of you, Mr. Tees-dale, because I couldn't resist it when you said what you may recollect saying as you drove me back into Melbourne that first day. I never meant to pay you back; I wasn't half sure that I'd ever let you see me again. I don't say I should have done it if I'd known you'd go and pawn your watch for me; still I did do you out of the twenty pounds, and I meant to do you out of them for good and all. But here they are."

"Thank you, Missy," said David at last. The others said nothing at all.

"Thank me! I don't want you to thank me at all. What have I done but rob you and pay you back again? No—I only want you—to forgive me—if you can!"

"I do forgive you, my dear; but I forgave you long ago," said David, smoothing back her hair and kissing her upon the forehead.

"You two forgive me, I know," she said, turning to the others.

Arabella embraced her tearfully, but John William only laughed sardonically. What had he to forgive?

"I knew you did. So now there is only one thing more that I want to send me away happy."

"Send you away! Where to? You've only just come," cried Mr. Teesdale, as loud as he dared; but even as he spoke he remembered the special difficulty of the occasion, and his face twitched with the pain. "Why, where did you think of going to?" he added, wiping his lips with his red pocket-handkerchief.

"Back to the Dandenong Ranges. I'm so happy there, you don't know! Thought I'd left? Not me, don't you believe it. No, I must get back to my work as quick as I can. And you'll be able to sit in quietness and look out through the gun-room window"—she pointed to the gun-room door—"and across the river-timber to them blue ranges, and you'll be able to say, 'Missy's working there. She's honest now, whatever she was once; and she's trying to make up for her whole life.' Yes, and you may say, 'She's trying to make up for it all, and it was us that taught her; it was us that took her out of hell and gave her a glimpse of the other thing!' That's what you'll be able to say, Mr. Teesdale. And I'll know you're looking at the ranges, and I'll think you're looking at me, every evening in the summer-time, and every dinner-time all the year round. They ain't so blue as they look, when you get there—I guess the sky isn't either when you get there—but they're blue enough for Missy; they're blue enough for me."

The tears were running down her face. John William had interjected, here and there, "You're never going back at all." But she had taken no notice of him; and when he repeated the same speech now, she shook her head and only sobbed the more.

"What is it that would send you away happy?" asked poor David; for he knew well what the answer was to be; and by now he was himself intensely agitated.

"I want someone else to forgive me, too," said Missy, "if it is not too late." And she looked at the door that led into the passage that led to Mrs. Tees-dale's room. This door, also, was kept carefully closed.

"It is too late for you to see her; it would not be safe," said Mr. Teesdale, sadly shaking his head. "But she lies yonder at peace with all mankind; she has told me so herself. Rest assured that she forgives you, Missy."

"She would forgive you with all her heart," said Arabella. "She has been so brave and good—and gentle—ever since she first fell ill. She would forgive you, Missy, as freely as my father has done."

"She has forgiven you long ago," declared John William. "She spoke to me about you the morning after she had been to see the doctor without telling us she was going. She spoke of you then without any bitterness; so she had forgiven you as long ago as that."

Missy received these optimistic assurances with a look of dissatisfied doubt, as though she could accept no forgiveness that was not actual and absolute. Then her eyes found their way back to the passage door; and she could scarce believe them. She sprang backward with a cry of fear. The other three started also with one accord—so that the room shook. For the door was open, and on the threshold, like a spectre, stood none other than the dying woman herself.

"Forgive you!" she said, in a crazy rattle of a voice. "You!"

She entered without stumbling, shut the door behind her, and took two steps forward. They appeared the steps of a decrepit, rather than a dying woman; but they brought her no nearer to Missy, who backed in terror towards the gun-room. Nor was poor Missy worse than any of the rest, who not one of them could put out a hand to uphold this tottering, terrible figure, so scared and shaken were they. And the old woman stood there in her bedclothes, with a ghastly dew upon her emaciated face, and ordered the young girl out of the house.

"Forgive you!" she said. "Go; how dare you come back? David—all of you—how dare you take her in—a common slut—with me on my deathbed? How long have you had her here, I wonder? Not long, I know, or I should ha' felt it—I should ha' known! Do you think I could have died in my bed with that—with that in the house? God forgive you all; and you, out you go. Do you hear? Go!"

She pointed to the gun-room door with a bony, quivering hand; and because the girl she abhorred was paralysed with horror, she brought that hand down passionately upon the table, so that the four sovereigns rang together, and she saw the gold and notes, and fiercely inquired where they came from.

But now at last David was supporting her in his arms, and he answered soothingly:

"They are twenty pounds that Missy borrowed from me when she was with us—I never told you about it. She has come to-night and paid them back to me. That's the only reason she is here. She has been all this time earning them, just to do something to atone."

"Pah!" cried Mrs. Teesdale, stiffening herself in her husband's arms, and reaching her skinny hands to the notes and gold. "How came you to have twenty pounds to give her? How comes she to have them to give you back? How do you think she earned them? Shall I tell you how?" the poor woman screamed. "They're the wages of sin—the wages of sin—of sin!" She snatched up gold and notes alike and flung the lot at the fire with all her feeble might. The gold went ringing round the whitened hearth. The notes fell short.

"Now go," she said to Missy, her scream dropping to a whisper, "and come back at your peril."

Missy got her hat and jacket from the sofa, brushing the wall all the way, and never taking her eyes from that awful, menacing, death-smitten face. Then suddenly she plucked up courage, took one step forward, and stood in profound humility, mutely asking for that forgiveness which she was never to get. A strong hand, young Teesdale's, had laid hold of her arm from behind and given her strength.

David, too, was putting in a quavering word for her.

"She is going," said he. "She was going in any case. You are wrong about the money. She has earned it honestly, as a farm servant, like our Mary Jane. Can't you see how brown her face and hands are? We have all forgiven her, as we hope to be forgiven. Cannot you also forgive her, my dear, and let her go her ways in peace?"

The sick woman wavered, and for a moment the terrible gaze, transfixing Missy, turned, by comparison, almost soft. Then it shifted and fell upon the bearded face of him who was supporting the unhappy girl, and moment, mood and chance were gone, all three, beyond redemption.

"John William," said his mother, "leave her alone. Do you hear me? Let her go!"

Nothing happened.

"Let her go!" screamed Mrs. Teesdale. "Choose once and for all between us—your dying mother and—that—woman!"

At first nothing; then the man's hand dropped clear of the girl.

"Now go," said the woman to the girl.

The girl fled into the gun-room, and so out into the night, only pausing to shut the doors behind her, one after the other. With the shutting of the outer door—it was not slammed—they heard the last of Missy.

"Now follow her," said the mother to the man.

But the man remained.