"'Dovedale'--DOVEDALE--hullo!" Mr Pennycuick broke the silence of his
newspaper reading. "Why, isn't that--Well, upon my soul! it does seem
as if some folks were born unlucky. Here's that poor young
fellow--first he loses a charming wife, before he's been married any
time, and then the finest child going, and now here he's gone himself,
before his prime, with no end of a career before him--"
"Who?" cried Deb from the tea-table, where she was helping herself to a
hot cake.
"Young Carey--our Carey; oh, it's him all right, worse luck! His ship's
been wrecked, and only two A.B.s saved to tell the tale. Look here."
He passed the newspaper, pressed under his broad thumb.
Deb stood to read the indicated item, while her father watched her
face. Neither of them noticed Mary's peculiar appearance, nor marked
her departure from the room.
"We must inquire about this," said Deb earnestly. "We must get the
names of those on board. He may have been on leave." She was a prompt
person, and as she spoke looked at the clock--a little after four--and
laid the paper down. "I'll drive you to the station, daddy, and we'll
telegraph to the shipping people and his doctor friend. We'll get
authentic information somehow, if we have to cable home for it."
They were off in a quarter of an hour, having sent a message to Mary by
Miss Keene to explain their errand. They dined in the township while
waiting for replies, and came home late at night, heavy-hearted, with
the melancholy news confirmed. Since it happened to be the transition
moment, when Mr Carey had ceased to be a mate, and was only a
prospective commander, the authorities in Melbourne, consulting latest
advices, had no doubt of his having been on the DOVEDALE to the last.
Those of them who presently found themselves mistaken did not take the
trouble to say so. They left it to time and the newspapers.
But meanwhile Mary Pennycuick sadly complicated the case. When Deb and
her father returned from their expedition, it was to hear from Frances
an excited story of how the elder sister had hidden behind locked
doors, and not only refused dinner but denied speech to all comers.
"We know she's there, because she said 'Go away' to Miss Keene when she
knocked first; but since then she hasn't said a word--not for hours and
hours. I've been listening at her door since Miss Madden let me out of
school. I shouldn't be surprised," said Frances, who had a fine
imagination, "if she's committed suicide. Poor Mr Carey was her lover,
you know."
"Pooh!" said Deb.
SHE knew whose lover poor Mr Carey had been. But she ran to Mary's room
in some concern. She tried the handle of the door, and then rapped
sharply.
"Molly, open this door!" she commanded.
And there was a rustle inside, a shuffling step, and the lock clicked.
She marched in, to see Mary fling herself back on the bed from which
she had risen, with a protesting wail:
"Oh, why can't you all let me alone?"
"Why, what's the matter?" Deb climbed on the bed, and tried to lift the
half-buried head to her breast--a signal for the pent-up grief to burst
forth. "Molly, sweetheart, what's all this about?"
"Oh, my love! my love!" keened Mary wildly. "Oh, Deb! oh, Deb! He was
my all, and he's dead, and I can't bear it--I can't! I can't!"
Deb pursed her lips, and the colour rose in her clear cheek. She saw
the situation, so pathetic and so ignominious! SHE could not understand
a woman falling in love with, and then breaking her heart for, a man
who had never cared for her. But then Deb's face was not heavy and
bricky, with prominent cheek-bones, and a forehead four inches high.
"My precious," she crooned, as tenderly as if she understood it all,
and as if her immense pity was not mixed with contempt--"don't, don't!
It doesn't matter about me, but don't let the others think--It would be
too undignified, darling--a casual acquaintance--though a dear, good
boy as ever lived--"
"There was nobody like him, Deb, and he was my all--"
"No, no, Mary--"
"You don't know, Debbie--oh, nobody knows!" And wrapping her head in
her arms again, Mary abandoned herself to her despair.
Deb got off the bed, lit dressing-table candles, and poured water and
eau de Cologne into a wash-basin. She returned with a fragrant sponge,
with which she stroked what she could reach of her sister's face.
"Come now," said she briskly, "you must have a little pride, dear. You
mustn't give way like this--for a man who did not--and you know he did
not--"
Mary broke in with sudden passion, lifting her distorted countenance to
the cruel light.
"He did!" she affirmed. "You have no business to sneer and say he
didn't--he DID!"
It was not for nothing that the heart-hungry girl had brooded for
months over a few acts and words, magnifying them through the
spectacles that Nature and her needs had provided. Deb put her pitying
arms round her sister's shoulders.
"But, my dear, I know--we all know--"
"How could you know when you were not at home? Nobody knows--nobody but
him and me." Feeling Deb's continued scepticism in the silence of her
caresses, Mary burst out recklessly: "Would he have KISSED me if he had
not?"
Deb's arm was withdrawn. She twisted half round to look in Mary's face.
Mary covered it with her pretty hands, weeping bitterly.
"Is that--did he do that?" asked Deb, in a low tone.
"That night--that last night--oh, I ought not to have spoken of
it!--when we were at our little grave. It was that precious child that
drew us together. You think he had gone away and forgotten, but I know
he had not; he would have come back--he promised to. He gave me his
dear photograph. I have not shown it to anybody, but here it is--"
And still sobbing, and with tears running down her cheeks, she reached
to a drawer by the bedside, and dragged out this further testimony to
her claim--it was wrapped in layers of tissue-paper, like her father's
valentine--and displayed it with a touching pride. Before handing it to
Deb, she gazed at it with grotesquely distorted face, kissed it,
pressed it to her bosom, kissed it again, and moaned over it, rocking
to and fro; then, when she had pushed it from her, flung herself into
her former attitude of complete abandonment to grief.
Very calmly Deb carried the picture to the dressing-table, and held it
behind a candle. There he was, big, strong, healthy, manly, with that
clear brow, that square chin, that steady, good mouth; and he looked
her straight in the eyes. Was it possible that a countenance could so
deceive? No more tears from Deb for his untimely fate. Had it been his
face in the flesh, it could not possibly have gazed in that undaunted
way at hers; her expression would have withered him.
She returned to the morning-room--drawing-room also when no guests were
in the house--to report to her father.
"Mary has gone to bed," she said quietly. "She is very much upset by
this business. It appears there was something between her and Mr Carey.
She expected him to come back for her--"
"What! MARY?" cried Rose, waiting with Frances to say goodnight.
"There!" triumphed Frances, "what did I say?"
"MARY!" their father echoed Rose's surprised tone. "The dickens! You
don't say so. Poor little soul! Poor little girlie! Well, I never
thought of that. Did you, Deb?"
"Never, father. Not for a moment."
"I suppose it was the child. It must have been the child." Mr
Pennycuick was deeply concerned. "I wonder why he never said anything,"
he addressed Deb, when Rose and Frances had been sent to bed. "Eh, Deb?
Seems strange, don't it? We had so much talk together. Quite like a
sort of son, he was. Aye, I could have made a son of that fellow. Poor
lad!--poor lad! Suppose he thought it wasn't the straight thing to bind
a girl of ours till he was in a better position--it'd be just like him.
Well--but Mary, of all people!" (This was the puzzle to all.) "It must
have been the baby. She certainly did dote on that child, and 'love me,
love my dog'--eh? But to think of her keeping it so close all that
time! Afraid I'd make a fuss, I suppose. You could have told her, Deb,
that I don't stand in my children's way for the sake of my own
feelings; and a Carey of Wellwood isn't for us to sniff at either, if
he is poor. A Carey has been good enough for a Pennycuick before today.
God! I wish I'd known. I might have got him something better to do, and
saved them both from this. Poor old girl! Is she very bad, Debbie?
Shall I go and talk to her a bit?"
"I wouldn't tonight, father, if I were you," replied Deb, with a weary
air. "She is quieter now, and I have given her something to send her to
sleep. I will keep my door open, and go and look at her through the
night. I think she will be better tomorrow."
On the morrow Mary was at least more self-controlled. She came amongst
her family with the look of one who had passed through an illness, and
shrinking from the first words and glances. But they all gathered her
to their hearts, and murmured loving sympathy in her ears, and tenderly
fussed over her and waited upon her. Her father took her to his
sanctum, and showed her his old daguerreotype and valentine, and told
her they should be hers at his death. Miss Keene excited as an old maid
is over anybody's love affair, wanted to take over the house-keeping as
well as the doing of the flowers, in order to leave the mourner free to
enjoy the full luxury of her state. The governess, assumed to be above
love affairs, was very strict with Frances, holding her to tasks set on
purpose to prevent her from teasing her eldest sister. But Frances had
informed the servants overnight that Mr Carey was drowned, and that he
had been Miss Pennycuick's affianced husband all the time, unbeknown to
anybody. And the tale was already spreading far and wide--to the
Urquharts at Five Creeks, to Mr Thornycroft at Bundaboo, to Mr
Goldsworthy and his parishioners, to the editor of the local paper--so
that soon the family friends were arriving, to press Mary's hand and
condole with her--to show her how she had risen in the world, as a
woman in the eyes of all.
"No, no," she protested, when the affianced husband was too literally
taken for granted; "it was not a formal engagement. It was
only"--defending herself against the puzzled stare and lifted
eyebrow--"only that we understood each other. He was coming back, if he
had lived."
The wish was father to the thought. Good, honest girl as she was, she
had persuaded herself to this--that he would have come back if he had
lived, and that then the omitted formalities called for by that
graveside kiss would certainly have been observed. It seems incredible,
but rampant sex does stranger things every day of the week. There is,
at any rate, nothing extraordinary in the way she clung to the sweet
dignity that a similar belief on the part of others brought to her--the
poor, plain girl, who had always been "out of it".
The long-hidden photograph was now put into a costly frame, and set up
in her room for anybody to see. Frances would often sneak in with a
visitor, to show the manner of man who would have married Molly; there
were even times when Mary herself was the exhibitor. At other times she
might have been found kneeling before it as at a shrine, and weeping
her eyes out. And she put off her colours and ornaments, and wore
black, and nobody made any objection. The hero of romance was given to
her unquestioningly, and with him a respect and consideration such as
she had never known before. Lovers talked to her of their love affairs,
feeling that she was now one of them. Her father maundered to her for
hours at a stretch of the old Mary Carey, at last secure of sympathy
and a perfect listener. Deb was reserved and silent, but otherwise as
devoted as the rest.
And then came the inevitable discovery that Guthrie Carey was not dead,
after all. It was made at Five Creeks, while Frances was on a holiday
visit to her friend, Belle Urquhart. At Redford, nobody thought of
reading the shipping columns in the newspaper--their interest was
supposed to be gone for ever; but Jim Urquhart glanced at them daily,
looking for the arrival of a friend from overseas. And one day he saw a
ship's name that was familiar to him, and bracketed with it the name of
G. Carey as its commander. The coincidence was startling. He pointed it
out to a man staying in the house--a stranger to the Redford family and
to the district.
"There was a mate named Carey on this ship a while ago. He changed into
that unfortunate DOVEDALE that was wrecked, and was lost with her. Odd
that the captain of his old vessel should have the same name--same
initial too. Our friend was Guthrie--"
"Guthrie Carey? Oh, I know Guthrie Carey. Met him in London last year,
just after the DOVEDALE wreck. He told me of his narrow escape--was
really going with her on her last voyage, and only prevented at the
last moment by the offer of this captaincy from his former owners. It's
the same man. Do you know him?"
They all told how much they knew him; and there was great commotion at
Five Creeks. Jim was for driving hot-foot to Redford to warn Mr
Pennycuick against disseminating the newspaper through the house too
rashly. Alice and her mother each volunteered to go with him, so as to
"break it" with feminine skilfulness to Mary, whose reason might be
destroyed by too sudden a gorge of joy, like the stomach of a starved
man by clumsy feeding. But while they anxiously discussed what ought to
be done, Frances was doing. The enterprising young lady slipped away,
and with Belle's help caught and saddled her pony, and was off to
Redford as if wolves were at her heels. No war correspondent on active
service ever did a smarter trick to get ahead of other papers.
She burst into the family circle violently.
"Mary--Mary! Deb! Rose! father! Mr Carey is alive! He wasn't drowned!
He wasn't on the DOVEDALE--he was just going; but they wanted him back,
and they made him a captain, and he's here now. His ship came in last
night, and there it is in the paper, and his name; and Mr Mills at Five
Creeks saw him himself after the Dovedale was wrecked, and he knows him
well, and he's in Melbourne now, and I expect he'll be here
directly--perhaps he's coming up now, this very minute--"
She was checked by angry exclamations from all persons addressed,
except Mary. She, at the moment bending over a table, cutting out
needle-work, straightened herself, and stood stockstill and staring,
while first her bricky face went dark purple all over, and then seemed
drained in three seconds of every drop of blood. She heard the words:
'Mr Carey is alive,' and instantly believed them; at the same moment
her dream-palace vanished, and she saw the bare ground of her love
affair exactly as it was--as Guthrie himself would see it--and just how
she had deceived herself and others. Her healthy heart and nervous
system could not support her under the impact of such a shock. She
reeled as she stood, spun half round, and fell backwards into Deborah's
arms.
"You little FOOL!" Deb rated the dismayed child, "to blurt it out like
that. Never mind, father, it's all right. She has fainted, but she'll
soon come round. Go and get a smelling-bottle, somebody. Tell Keziah to
bring a little brandy--don't speak to anybody else. Where's today's
ARGUS?"
While Rose was flying for restoratives, and Frances speeding through
the house with her great news, Deb and her father exchanged significant
glances over Mary's prostrate form.
"It is more than a year," said Deb, "and he has not even written to
her."
"I'll write to him," said Mr Pennycuick, grinding his teeth--"I'll
write to him!" It was the tone in which he might have said, "I'll wring
his neck for him!"
But when Mary came round and perceived his mood and intentions, she
implored him not to write--went on her knees, and almost shrieked in
her frantic fear of his doing so.
"Oh, father, don't--DON'T! If he does not remember--if he does not want
to come--you would not drag him by force? And he never bound
himself--he never really asked me; very likely he did not mean
anything, after all."
"Not mean anything!" shouted the indignant father. "He can kiss a
girl--a daughter of mine--and not mean anything! I'll make him tell me
whether he dared not to mean anything--"
"No, father," commanded Deb. "You must not write to him. It is not for
a Pennycuick to fling herself at any man's head. Let him alone; we
don't want him. Treat him--as I hope Molly is going to do--with the
contempt that he deserves."
Mr Pennycuick stormed and muttered, but obeyed; and for two days
Captain Carey was left to the anathemas of Redford and the countryside
as a heartless jilt, to Mary's extreme anguish. She tried to water down
the concoction that she stood answerable for, to take blame off him and
put it on herself; but she dared not go far enough to convince anybody
that she was not sacrificing herself to shield him.
It was a horrible position for a delicate-minded and even high-minded
girl, and the misery of it was aggravated by the constant effort to
efface its signs and evidences. She was left with no outlook in life
but to get through twenty, thirty, forty years somehow, and come to a
little peace at last, when everything would be forgotten; and her one
forlorn hope was that Guthrie would not discover her crime--would keep
up the neglect with which he had treated his old friends, and not come
near them.
He might have done this--for the fact was that he now had a dawning
"affair" in another quarter--had not Frances intervened. To her,
inaction at such a crisis was intolerable, and since nobody else would
do it, she wrote to Guthrie Carey herself. She wrote, she said, to
welcome him back to life and to Australia, and to congratulate him on
being a captain; incidentally she mentioned other matters, and asked
innocent-seeming questions which she was well aware could only be
answered in person.
Frances, since his first acquaintance with her, had shot up into a
slim, tall girl, exquisite in colouring and the daintiness of her
figure and face. Although unlike Deb in every way, people were
beginning to compare them as rival beauties--Frances' private opinion
being that there was no comparison. She had nearly done with
governesses, short frocks and pigtails, and was ardently anticipating
the power and glory coming to her when she should be a full-grown woman.
Two days after the clandestine postage of her letter to Captain Carey,
a new housemaid brought Mary his visiting-card on a silver tray. Mary
knew, before looking at it--having heard nothing of the letter, and no
sound of his arrival in his hired buggy--what name it bore. Her forlorn
hope had been too forlorn to stand for anything but despair. She had
expected the catastrophe from the first.