I wouldn’t. Will you stop, please?”
“Quite right, my dear, quite right. I was the one to come to. You’ll find it at the – ”
“Do you mind stopping?”
“Why, we’re not there yet. We’re not even in Bourke Street.”
“No, but please stop here.”
“Very well. Here we are, then, and it’s only six past. But why not drive right on to the theatre – that’s what I want to know?”
Missy hesitated, and hesitated, until she saw the old man peering into her face through the darkness that seemed to have fallen during the last five minutes. Then she dropped her eyes. They had pulled up alongside the deep-cut channel between road-metal and curb-stone, whereby you shall remember the streets of Melbourne. Nobody appeared to be taking any notice of them.
“I see,” said David very gently. “And I don’t wonder at it. No, Missy, it’s not at all the sort of turn-out for your friends to see you in. Jump down, my dear, and I’ll just drive alongside to see that nothing happens you. But I won’t seem to know you, Missy – I won’t seem to know you!”
Lower and lower, as the old man spoke, the girl had been hanging her head; until now he could see nothing of her face on account of her fringe; when suddenly she raised it and kissed his cheek. She was out of the buggy next moment.
She walked at a great rate, but David kept up with her by trotting his horse, and they exchanged signals the whole way. Close to the theatre she beckoned to him to pull up again. He did so, and she came to the wheel with one of her queer, inscrutable smiles.
“How do you know,” said she, “that I’m Miriam Oliver at all?”
The rays from a gas-lamp cut between their faces as she looked him full in the eyes.
“Why, of course you are!”
“But how do you know?”
“Nay, come, what a question! What makes you ask it, Missy?”
“Because I’ve given you no proof. I brought an introduction with me and I went and forgot to give it to you. However, here it is, so you may as well put it in your pipe and smoke it.”
She took some letters out of her pocket as she spoke, and shifted the top one to the bottom until she came to an envelope that had never been through the post. This she handed up to David, who recognised his old friend’s writing, which indeed had caught his eye on most of the other envelopes also. And when she had put these back in her pocket she held out her dirty-gloved hand.
“So long,” she said. “You won’t know me when I turn up on Monday.”
“Stop!” cried David. “You must let me know when to send the buggy for you, and where to. It’ll never do to have you coming out in the ‘bus again.”
“Right you are. I’ll let you know. So long again – and see here. I think you’re the sweetest and trustingest old man in the world!”
She was far ahead, this time, before the buggy was under way again.
“Naturally,” chuckled David, following her hair through the crowd. “I should hope so, indeed, when it’s a child of John William Oliver, and one that you can love for her own sake an’ all! But what made her look so sorry when she gave me the kiss? And what’s this? Nay, come, I must have made a mistake!”
He had flattered himself that his eyes never left the portals where they had lost sight of the red hair, and when he got up to it what should it be but the stage door? The words were painted over it as plain as that. The mistake might be Missy’s; but a little waiting by the curb convinced Mr. Teesdale that it was his own; for Missy never came back, as he argued she must have done if she really had gone in at the stage door.
CHAPTER V. – A WATCH AND A PIPE
Mr. Teesdale drove on to the inn at which he was in the habit of putting up when in town with the buggy. His connection with the house was very characteristic. Many years before the landlord had served him in a menial capacity, but for nearly as many that worthy had been infinitely more prosperous than poor David, who, indeed, had never prospered at all. They were good friends, however, for the farmer had a soul too serene for envy, and a heart too simple to be over-sensitive concerning his own treatment at the hands of others. Thus he never resented his old hand’s way with him, which would have cut envy, vanity, or touchiness, to the quick. He came to this inn for the sake of old acquaintance; it never occurred to him to go elsewhere; nor had he ever been short or sharp with his landlord before this evening, when, instead of answering questions and explaining what had brought him into Melbourne twice in one day, Mr. Teesdale flung the reins to the ostler, and himself out of the yard, with the rather forbidding reply that he was there on business. He was, indeed; though the business was the birth of the last half-hour.
It led him first to a little bare office overlooking a yard where many milk-carts stood at ease with their shafts resting upon the ground; and the other party to it was a man for whom Mr. Teesdale was no match.
“I must have twenty pounds,” said David, beginning firmly.
“When?” replied the other coolly.
“Now. I shan’t go home without it.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Teesdale, but I’m afraid that you’ll have to.”
“Why should I,” cried David, smacking his hand down on the table, “when you owe me a hundred and thirty? Twenty is all I ask, for I know how you are situated; but twenty I must and shall have.”
“We simply haven’t it in the bank.”
“Nay, come, I can’t believe that.”
“I’ll show you the pass-book.”
“I won’t look at it. No, I shall put the matter into the hands of a solicitor. Good evening to you. I dare say it isn’t your fault; but I must have some satisfaction, one way or the other. I am not going on like this a single day longer.”
“Good evening, then, Mr. Teesdale. If you do what you say, we shall have to liquidate; and then you will get nothing at all, or very little.” David had heard this story before. “It was an evil day for me when I sent you my first load of milk,” he cried out bitterly; but in the other’s words there had been such a ring of truth as took all the sting out of his own.
“It will be a worse one for us when you send me your last,” replied the man of business. “That would be enough to finish us in itself, without your solicitor, in our present state; whereas, if you give us time – ”
“I have given you too much time already,” said the farmer, heaving the sigh which was ever the end of all his threats; and with a sudden good-humoured resignation (which put his nature in a nutshell), he got up and went away, after an amicable discussion on the exceeding earliness of summer with the man for whom he was no match at all. Throughout his life there had been far too many men who were more than a match for poor David in all such matters.
But the getting of the twenty pounds was a matter apart. He did not want it for himself; the person in need of the money was the child of his dear old friend, who had charged her to apply to him, David, in precisely that kind of difficulty which had already arisen. The fact made the old man’s heart hot on one side and cold on the other; for while it glowed with pride at the trust reposed in him, it froze within his breast at the thought of his own helplessness to fulfil that trust. This, however, was a thought which he obstinately refused to entertain. He had not twenty pounds in the bank; on the contrary, his account was overdrawn to the utmost limit. For himself, he would have starved rather than borrow from his friend the innkeeper; but he could have brought himself to do so for Miriam, had he not been perfectly certain that his old servant would refuse to lend. In all Melbourne there was no other to whom he could go for the twenty pounds; yet have it he must, by hook or crook, that night; and ten minutes after his fruitless interview with the middleman who sold his milk, a way was shown him.
He was hanging about the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, watching the multitude