Behold him at Redford, with his tea-cup in his hand. He was safe now
from talk about the baby; but he was also cut off from the lovely
Deborah, now wandering about her extensive grounds with another young
man. Old Father Pennycuick had him fast. They sat together under a
verandah of the great house.
"There were no pilots then," said the old man, puffing comfortably at
his pipe--"there were no pilots then, and we had to feel our way along
with the cast 'o the lead. We got ashore at Williamstown, on sailors'
backs, and walked to Melbourne. Crossed the Yarra on a punt, not far
from where Prince's Bridge now is--"
"Yes," said Guthrie Carey.
He seemed to be listening attentively, his strong, square face set like
a mask; but his eyes roamed here and there.
"Bread two-and-six the small loaf," Mr Pennycuick dribbled into his
dreaming ears. "Eggs sixpence apiece. Cheap enough, too, compared with
the gold prices. But gold was not thought of for ten years after that.
I tell you, sir, those were the times--before the gold brought all the
riff-raff in."
The sailor murmured something to the effect that he supposed they were.
"We'd got our club, and a couple of branch banks, and a post-office,
and Governor La Trobe, and Bishop Perry, and the nicest lot of fellows
that ever came together to make a new country. We were as happy as
kings. All young men. I was barely twenty-three when I took up
Redford--named after our place at home. You know our place at home, of
course?"
"I have seen it from the road," answered the guest, arrested in his
mental wanderings by the mention of his own age.
"You must have seen it often, living so close."
"I never lived close myself; I am a Londoner."
"It's all the same--your people do. The Pennycuicks and the Careys have
been neighbours for generations."
"I am only distantly related to that family."
"A Carey is a Carey," persisted the old man, who had determined to have
it so from the first, and he would listen to no disclaimers.
He had already referred darkly to that Mary Carey of the hooked nose
and pointed chin. His eldest daughter, he said, had been named after
her. This eldest daughter, with her too-ruddy face, had shyly drawn
near, and taken a chair at her father's elbow, where she sat very
quietly, busily tatting. Plain though her face was, she had beautiful
hands. Her play with thread and shuttle, just under Guthrie's eyes,
held them watchful for a time--the time during which no sign of
Deborah's white gown was to be perceived upon the landscape.
"My brother and I, we never hit it off, somehow. So when my father died
I cleared. You don't remember his funeral, I suppose? No, no--that was
before your time. They hung the church all over with black broadcloth
of the best. That was the way in those days, and the cloth was the
parson's perquisite. The funeral hangings used to keep him in coats and
trousers. And they used to deal out long silk hat-scarves to all the
mourners--silk that would stand alone, as they say--and the wives made
mantles and aprons of them. They went down from mother to daughter,
like the best china and family spoons. That's how women took care of
their clothes when I was young. They didn't want new frocks and fallals
every week, like some folks I could name." And he pinched his
daughter's ear.
"Talk to Deb, father," said Mary. "I have not had a new frock for a
great many weeks."
"Aye, Deb's the one! That girl's got to marry a millionaire, or I don't
know where she'll be."
Almost Mrs Urquhart's words! And, like hers, they pricked sharply into
the feelings of our young man. His eyes went a-roaming once more, to
discover the white gown afar off, trailing unheeded along a dusty
garden path. The old man saw it too, and his genial countenance clouded
over.
"Well," he continued, after a thoughtful pause, "poor old Billy Dalzell
and I, we emigrated together. He had a devil of a stepfather, and no
home to speak of. We were mates at school, and we made up our minds to
start out for ourselves. You remember the Dalzells of the Grange, of
course?"
"I can't say that I do, sir."
"Well, they're gone now. Billy's father went the pace, and the
mortgagees sold him up; and if his mother hadn't given him a bit when
we started, Billy wouldn't have had a penny. She pawned all she could
lay her hands on for him, we found out afterwards--Billy was cut up
about that--and got ill-used by Heggarty for it when he found it out.
She was a fool, that woman. Everybody could see what Heggarty was,
except her. Old Dalzell was a gentleman, anyhow, with all his faults."
The white dress drew nearer, and its grey tweed companion. The host was
once more wasting his story on deaf ears. "So we started off; and when
we got here we went in together. He had enough to buy a mob of cattle
and a dray and team, and so had I. We loaded up with all the
necessaries, and hired three good men, and travelled till we found
country. Took us about five months. At last we came here, and put our
pegs in, and I started off to Melbourne for the license--ten pounds,
and leave to renew at the end of the year--and here I've stuck ever
since. Billy, he took up other land, and got married, and died, poor
chap! And that's his boy over there," pointing with his pipe--"and
he'll never be the man his father was, if he lives to a hundred."
The person referred to was he in the grey tweed, who sauntered with
such assurance at white-robed Deborah's side. He was a tall, graceful
and most distinguished-looking young fellow; but Guthrie Carey was
prepared to believe heartily the statement that Dalzell junior would
never be the man his father was.
"You shall see the identical hut," Mr Pennycuick kindly promised. "Down
by the creek, where those big willows are--I planted them myself. Not
good enough for a dog-kennel, my daughters say; but the best thing I
can wish for them is that they may be as happy in their good houses as
I was in that old shanty--aye, in spite of many a hard time I had
there, with blacks and what not. We cut the stuff, Billy and I, and set
the whole thing up; and all our furniture was our sleeping-bunks and a
few stools and a table. We washed in a tin bowl on a block outside the
door. Not so particular about tubbing and clean shirts in those days.
Our windows were holes of a handy size for gun barrels, and the
shutters we put up o' nights were squares of bark hung on to nails by
strips of green hide. Many's the time I've woke to see one of 'em
tilted up, and a pair of eyes looking in--sometimes friends, sometimes
foes; we were ready for either. When Billy went, and I thought I'd get
married too, then I built a better house--brick this time, and workmen
from Melbourne to do it; that's it over there, now the kitchens and
store-rooms--and imported furniture--er--I am not boring you, I hope?"
"Oh, dear, no! I am deeply interested."
"Well, Billy and I"--the tale seemed interminable--"Billy and I, we
gave sixty pounds apiece for our stock horses, and the same for a ton
of flour; and went right over Ballarat without knowing it. Camped
there, sir, and didn't see the gold we must actually have crunched
under our boot heels. And Billy had misfortunes, and died poor as a
rat. It was in the family. Mrs D. was all right, though. She used to
send a brother of hers to Melbourne market with her cattle, and cash
being scarce, he would sometimes have to take land deeds for them, and
she'd be wild with him for it. But what was the consequence? Those bits
of paper that she thought so worthless that it's a wonder she took the
trouble to save them, gave her city lots that turned out as good as
gold mines. She sold too soon, or she'd have made millions--and died of
a broken heart, they say, when she found out that mistake. Still, she
left a lot more than it's good for a young fellow to start life with.
That boy has been to Cambridge, and now he loafs about the club,
pretends to be a judge of wine, gets every stitch of clothes from
London--pah!" Mr Pennycuick spat neatly and with precision over the
verandah floor into a flower-bed. "But these mother's darlings--you
know them. If Mrs Dalzell could see him now, I daresay she'd be
bursting with pride, for there's no denying that he's a smart-looking
chap. But his father would be ashamed of him."
"Daddy dear!" Mary gently expostulated.
"So he would. An idle, finicking scamp, that'll never do an honest
stroke of work as long as he lives. And I wish Deb wouldn't waste her
time listening to his nonsense. Isn't it about time to be getting ready
for dinner, Moll?"
Mary looked through a window at a clock indoors, and said it was.
Guthrie hailed the news, and rose to his feet.
But not yet did he escape. His host, hoisting himself heavily out of
his big cane chair, hollowed like a basin under his vast weight,
extended a detaining hand.
"Come with me to my office a minute," he half whispered. "I'd like to
show you something."
With apparent alertness, but sighing inwardly, Guthrie followed his
host to the room in the old part of the house which he called his
office. Mr Pennycuick carefully shut the door, opened a desk full of
drawers and pigeon-holes, and brought forth a bit of cardboard with a
shy air. He had never shown it to his family, and doubtless would not
have shown it now if he had not been growing old and soft and
sentimental. It was a prim and niggling little water-colour drawing of
English Redford--a flat facade, with swallows as big as condors flying
over the roofs, and dogs that could never have got through any doorway
gambolling on the lawn in front. A tiny 'Mary Carey' in one corner was
just, and only just, visible to the naked eye.
"This was done for me, when we were both young, by her--your aunt,"
said Mr Pennycuick, gloating upon his treasure over Guthrie's shoulder.
"Not my aunt," explained Guthrie. "I don't know what relation, but a
long way farther off than that. I am only a very small Carey, you know,
sir."
Mr Pennycuick testily intimated, as before, that to be a Carey at all
was enough for him. It was his excuse for these confidences, of which
he was half ashamed.
While Guthrie studied the poor picture, trying to look as interested as
he was expected to be, his host turned and stared down into the drawer
that had held it for so many years. Other things were there--the usual
dead flowers, still holding together, still fusty to the nose; the
usual yellowing ball glove, the usual dance and invitation cards, and
faded letters, with their edges frayed; a book-marker with an
embroidered 'Friendship', mixed up with forget-me-nots, in coloured
silks upon perforated card, backed by a still gleaming red satin ribbon
looped at one end and fringed out at the other; the book that it was
tucked into ("The Language of Flowers"), a large valentine in a wrapper
with many broken seals, some newspaper cuttings, half a sixpence, with
a hole in it, and a daguerreotype in a leather case.
This last he took up, opened and gazed at steadily, until his companion
was compelled to interrupt him with an inquiring eye. Then he passed it
over, and Guthrie turned it this way and that, until he caught the
outlines of a long aquiline face between bunched ringlets, and a long
bodice with a deep point, which he understood to have belonged to his
distant relative at some period before he was born.
"And this?" he murmured politely.
"Yes," said Mr Pennycuick; "that's her. And I've never shown it to a
soul before--not even to my wife."
"A--a sweet expression. Fair, was she?"
"Fair as a lily, and as pure, and as beautiful. Gentle as a dove. With
blue eyes."
Guthrie did not care for this type just now. He liked them dark and
flashing and spirited, like Miss Deborah. But he murmured "Hm-m-m"
sympathetically.
"The loveliest woman in England," the old man maundered on. "Surely you
must have heard of her, in the family?"
Guthrie had not only heard of her, as we know, he had seen her; but he
shook a denying head, and dropped another hint of his own position in
the family--outside the royal enclosure, as it were.
"Well, now, I'll just tell you what happened," said Mr Pennycuick,
turning to the open drawer again. "Strictly between ourselves, of
course--and only because you are a Carey, you understand--somehow you
bring it all back--"
He was fumbling with the big valentine, getting it out of its case.
"Yes?" Guthrie encouraged him, while inwardly chafing to be gone.
"You see this?" It was an exquisite structure of foamy paper lace,
silver doves, gauzed-winged Cupids, transfixed hearts and wreaths of
flowers, miraculously delicate. How it had kept its frail form intact
for the many years of its age was a wonder to behold. "You see this?"
said the old man. "Well, when I was a young fellow, the 14th of
February was a time, I can tell you! You fellows nowadays, you don't
know what fun is, nor how to go a-courting, nor anything.... I was at
old Redford that year, and she was at Wellwood, and all through the
sleet and snow I rode there after dark, tied my horse to a tree, crept
up that nut-walk--you know it?--and round by the east terrace to the
porch, and laid my valentine on the door-step, and clanged the bell,
and hid behind the yew-fence till the man came out to get it. Then I
went home. And last thing at night there was a clatter-clatter at the
door at Redford, and I dashed out to catch whoever it was--her brother
she sent--but wasn't quite smart enough. If only I'd seen him. I should
have known--as I ought to have, without that; but I didn't. It never
occurred to me that she'd send the answer so soon, and she had
disguised her writing in the address, and there was another girl--name
of Myrtle Vining--who used to have myrtle on her note-paper, and all
over the place--and here these flowers looked to me as if they were
meant for myrtle, and these two crossed arrows are like capital V--and
how I came to be such an egregious dolt, Lord only knows! Well, I've
paid for it--that I have--I've paid for it. Look here--don't touch!
I'll show you what I found out when it was too late--after she'd played
shy with me till I got angry and left her, and it was all over--my eyes
aren't good enough to see it now, but I suppose it's there still--"
With infinite care and the small blade of his pocket-knife, he lifted
the tiny tip of a tiny Cupid's wing. With bent head and puckered
eyelids, Guthrie peered under, and read: "Yours, M. C.," written on a
space of paper hardly larger than a pin's head.
"In my valentine that night," said Mr Pennycuick, "I'd asked her to
have me. I didn't hide it up in this way; I knew, while I wondered that
she took no notice, that she must have seen it. This was her answer.
And I never got it, sir, till she was married to another man--and then
by the merest accident. Then I couldn't even have the satisfaction of
telling her that I'd got it, and how it was I hadn't got it before. Of
course, I wasn't going to upset her after she was married to another
man. I've had to let her think what she liked of me."
Guthrie was certainly interested now, but not as interested as he would
have been the day before. The day before, this story would have moved
him to pour out the tale of his own untimely and irreparable loss. He
and old Mr Pennycuick would--metaphorically speaking--have mingled
their tears together.
"You forget, off and on," said Mr Pennycuick, as he wrapped up his
treasure with shaking hands and excessive care--"perhaps for years at a
time, while you are at work and full of affairs; but it comes
back--especially when you are old and lonely, and you think how
different your life might have been. You don't know anything about
these things yet. Perhaps, when you are an old man like me, you will."
Guthrie did know--no one better, he believed. But he did not say.
Unknown to himself, he had reached that stage which Mr Pennycuick came
to when he began courting Sally Dimsdale, who had made him such a good
and faithful (and uninteresting) wife.
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,"
says the old proverb. True enough. But one might write it this way,
with even more truth: "It is better to love and lose than to love and
gain." One means by love, romantic love, of course.