“SHE WILL DO!”
Madeline, having arrived in London, drove direct to No. 2, and spent
one more night under Mrs. Kane’s roof, where she was received with open
arms, and proudly shown a letter marked, “Private and confidential,”
and signed by the neat and respectable signature of “Letitia Harper.”
“_I_ answered her! Ay, my word, that I did!” cried Mrs. Kane
triumphantly. “She’ll not come poking her nose after you again. I knew
Miss West for a long time, I said, and nothing to her discredit.
She was a most excellent, reliable young lady--who kept herself _to_
herself: and should I mention as Miss Harper had kindly referred to me?
_That_ wor a poser, I can tell you! Back came a letter telling me on no
account to say a word to Miss West, and enclosing a postal order for
ten shillings for my _trouble_! That was a rare joke! the trouble was
a pleasure. And how is Mr. Wynne? and how is the dear baby?” continued
Mrs. Kane, whose speech and affection were alike at high tide.
It was evident to Madeline herself that she must get some new clothes.
She was not even wearing out the remains of her trousseau--never having
had one. What would her father say to her faded cotton, and still
more shabby serge? Even the eleven-and-ninepenny hat was now _passé_.
Knowing, as he did, too, that she had the means to dress differently!
She must spend money on her wardrobe without delay. Accordingly, after
breakfast, she sallied forth, and went to a first-class establishment
where a great sale was in its first frenzy. Here, among a mob of
well-dressed ladies, she struggled for standing room, and waited for
attendance, and saw dress after dress on which she had set her heart
snatched away and sold. After patient endurance of heat, tempers,
rudeness, and unblushing selfishness, she secured the attention of a
harassed girl, who perhaps feeling that she was even such an one as
herself, assisted her to choose a neat covert coating, a tailor-made
coat and skirt--a model costume of _crêpon_, with immense sleeves and a
profusion of jet and black satin trimmings, also a black gauze evening
gown--a once-exquisite garment, but now shockingly tumbled by ruthless
hands, though it _was_ a “Paris pattern.”
These, with a smart silk blouse, a picture hat, a cape, shoes,
handkerchiefs, veils, and gloves, swallowed up twenty-five pounds. Then
she returned with her parcels in a hansom, displayed the contents (by
request) to Mrs. Kane, and spent her evening in altering the bodices
and packing her trunk: it was not very full. It did not need any one
to come and sit on the top and press the lock together. Next morning
she was _en route_ to Riverside, and that same evening in Mrs. Harper’s
arms!
Mrs. Harper and her daughter were delighted to see her. The house
was empty; the girls had gone home for the Easter holidays, and they
would be very cosy and comfortable. They asked many veiled and clever
questions anent her money. What had she done with it? Surely she had
not spent it _all_? How much was the tailor-made? How much was the
black? But she gave them no satisfactory answer. That was _her_ affair,
and not in the bond!
Days passed, and yet no sign of Mr. West, and Mrs. Harper was becoming
a little impatient and irritable. Could he mean to disappear for a
second time? What was she to think?
Meanwhile Madeline wrote to the farm daily, posting the letters
herself. Here is one of them as a specimen:--
“MY DEAR LAURENCE,
“No news yet. So glad to get your letters. I call for them every day.
It looks funny to see nothing but W. on the envelope, but it would
never do to put West, much less Wynne. It makes me very happy to
hear that you and baby are getting on so well and are making the best
of this lovely weather. How I wish I was back with you--ten--fifty
times a day--strolling about the lanes and fields among the lambs and
primroses, instead of being cooped up here, in this hot, dusty suburb.
You must not do too much! How dare you walk to the top of Brownwood
Hill! It is just four times too far. How could the Holts allow you to
be so foolish? But I’m afraid you don’t mind _them_. You ask what _I_
am doing? I am trying hard to make believe that I am Madeline West
once more. Don’t be shocked, my dear Laurence, but at times I succeed
admirably, especially when I sit down to an hour’s practising on the
schoolroom piano. I am getting up my music and singing again, and
working very hard, so that my father won’t be disappointed as far
as my voice is concerned. I have looked over the new books that the
girls had last half in the first class--horrible essays and lectures
and scientific articles--about the glacial periods, and shooting
stars, such as I abhor, and _you_ love; but I know that I ought to
read up, for I am a shameful ignoramus. I, however, enjoy rubbing up
my French, and have devoured several most delicious books by Gyp. Miss
Harper lent them to me. She said, now that I had left school, I might
read them. I asked her--just to see how she would look--if she had
any of Émile Zola’s. I had heard so much of them. She nearly fainted,
and said, ‘My dear, you must never even mention that man’s _name_!’
I have learnt to dress my hair in the new style. I’ve gone shopping
with Miss Harper. Altogether I’ve been very busy, and when I sit in
my old place at meal-times, and stare at the familiar wall-paper,
and familiar cups and saucers, and when I listen to the Harpers’
well-known little sayings and turns of speech, when I look out of the
windows, or sit alone in the schoolroom, as I used formerly to do in
holiday times, I honestly declare that I feel as if all about you was
a dream, and that I cannot bring myself to realize that I have ever
left school at all. You see I am naturally a very adaptable creature;
I drop into a groove at once, and accommodate myself to circumstances.
For instance, Mr. Holt said I was born to be a farmer’s wife! I have
lived here for so many, many years that I fall straight back into
my old place. Then I rouse up and go off to the post-office, when
the second post is due, and receive one of your welcome letters;
and I know that I am not dreaming, but that I am actually married.
Oh, Laurence, I sometimes look at the Harpers and say to myself--If
they knew! I wish that this waiting was over! I wish my father would
come! This delay makes me so nervous and so jumpy. It’s like sitting
in a dentist’s drawing-room! I sincerely hope that anticipation
will prove to be the worst part of the business. Miss Harper is
coming. I hear her heavy step! No--I breathe again. Only fancy, she
asked me yesterday, with one of her old sharp looks, _whom_ I was
always writing to? and I was fortunate to have so many friends--such
wonderful correspondents! With a kind of sneer, then, she said, ‘I’m
going out, and I may as well post your letter,’ but I need not tell
you that I declined her amiable offer, and posted it myself. You say
that baby screams at night, and must be consigned to an outhouse, if
he continues to make night hideous. How inhuman of you, Laurence,
to write such horrid things, even in joke! Do you think he could
possibly be missing _me_, or is this a foolish idea with respect to
an infant of five months old? Ask Mrs. Holt to feel his gums. Perhaps
it is a tooth? And now good-bye, with many kisses to him, and kind
remembrances to the Holts.
“I am, your loving wife,
“M. W.”
Very shortly after this letter was despatched Mrs. Harper received
a telegram from the agents to say that the _Ophir_ was expected at
Plymouth the next afternoon.
What a fuss ensued, what rushing and running and packing, and calling
for twine and luggage labels, and leather straps and sandwiches on the
part of an excited spinster, who was enchanted at the prospect of a
jaunt down to Devonshire--all expenses paid. Once fairly off, and away
from her own familiar beat, she was little better than a child. It was
not Miss Harper who looked after Madeline, but Madeline who took care
of her. At every big station she was seized with a panic, and called
out, “Porter, where are we now? How long do we stop? Do we change? Is
the luggage all right?” Her fussy flight to the refreshment-rooms,
and frantic dashes back to the carriage--usually the wrong one--was
amusing to her fellow-travellers, but not to Madeline; and, besides
this, her shrill and constant chatter about “your father,” “I do hope
the _Ophir_ won’t be late,” “she is a splendid steamer, 10,000-horse
power,” “and I hope they have had a good passage,” made her former
pupil feel a keen desire to say something cross, knowing that Miss
Harper imagined that she was impressing the other inmates of the
carriage, but in reality was making herself supremely ridiculous.
Madeline was thankful when they were safely housed (luggage and all)
in the best hotel in Plymouth. Miss Harper had only forgotten her
umbrella in the train, and lost a considerable share of her temper in
consequence, but a good dinner and a good night’s rest made this all
right, and she wore a smiling face as she and her charge and many other
people went down the next morning to board the newly-arrived Orient
Liner _Ophir_.
To a stranger it was a most bewildering scene, and Miss Harper and
Madeline stared about them helplessly; but of course the new arrivals
were readily singled out by the passengers, and Mr. West had no
hesitation whatever in promptly selecting the prettiest girl who had
come up the side as his own daughter.
It would have been a severe blow to his penetration and self-esteem had
he been wrong, but it so happened that he was right.
And now, before introducing him to Madeline, let us pause and take a
little sketch of Robert West, millionaire, who had made considerable
capital out of the fact, and taken the lead socially during the
recent voyage, from whist and deck-quoits to the usual complimentary
letter to the captain. He is a man of fifty-five, or a little more,
short, spare, dapper, with a thin face, hair between fair and grey,
quick bright hazel eyes, a carefully trimmed short beard, and waxed
moustache. There are a good many deep wrinkles about his eyes, and
when he raises his cap he no longer looks (as he does otherwise, and
at a short distance) a man of five and thirty, but his full age, for
we perceive that his head is as bald as a billiard ball. (N.B.--His
photographs are invariably taken in his hat.) He is dressed in the most
approved manner, and by the best tailor in Melbourne; a fat little
nugget hangs from his watch-chain; a perennial smile adorns his face,
although he has a singularly hard and suspicious eye. His history
and antecedents may be summed up in a few sentences: His father, an
English yeoman of a respectable old stock, committed forgery, and
was transported to Port Philip in 1823; he got a ticket-of-leave,
acquired land, squatted, married in Port Philip, now Victoria. His
success was fitful, owing to drought, scab, and the many other evils
to which an Australian settler is heir. However, he gave his son a
fairly good education in England. He desired him to make a figure as
a gentleman. To this end he pinched and struggled and scraped, and
finally sent Robert down to Melbourne with a certain sum of money, and
a stern determination to grapple with and conquer fortune. Privately
Robert despised his horny-handed old father, the ex-convict. He hated
a squatter’s life--loathed dingoes, dampers, buck-jumpers, and wool,
and he soon fell into a comfortable berth in a land-agent’s office,
and being steady, capable, hard-headed (and hard-hearted), prospered
rapidly; in his young days everything in Melbourne was of Tropical
growth.
He married a veritable hot-house flower--his employer’s only
daughter--a pretty, indolent, excitable, extravagant creature, with
French blood in her veins, who carried him up a dozen rungs of the
social ladder, and brought him a fortune. Her house--in Toorak--her
splendid dresses, entertainments, and equipages were the talk and
envy of her neighbours and sex; she was in with the Government House
set, and she lived in an incessant round of gaiety, a truly brilliant
butterfly.
After six years of married life, she died of consumption; and her
widower was not inconsolable. He kept on the big house, he frequented
his club, he heaped up riches, he gambled with selections as others
do with cards; he was not behind-hand in the great land boom which
led to that saturnalia of wild speculation which demoralized the
entire community. Suburban lands were forced up to enormous prices--a
thousand times their value; people bought properties in the morning and
sold them in the afternoon at an advance of thousands of pounds. New
suburbs, new banks, new tenements sprang up like mushrooms, under the
influence of adventurous building societies, and every one was making
an enormous fortune--on paper.
When the gigantic bubble burst, the consequences were terrible,
involving the ruin of thousands. Robert West had seen that the crash
must come, but believed that _he_ would escape. He tempted fortune too
rashly. Just a few more thousands, and he would sell out; but his
greed was his bane. He had not time to stand from under when the whole
card house toppled over and his fortunes fell.
He was left almost penniless: the banks had collapsed, land and estate
was unsaleable. He was at his wits’ end. He seriously contemplated
suicide, but after all decided to see the thing out--that is, his
own life. He went to Sydney; he kept his head above water; he looked
about keenly for a plank of security, and providence--luck--threw
him one. Land he had taken with grumbling reluctance as part payment
of an ancient debt--land he had never been within five hundred miles
of--proved to be a portion of the celebrated Waikatoo gold mines. He
was figuratively and literally on the spot at once; his old trade stood
to him. He traded, and sold, and realized, keeping a certain number of
shares, and then turned his back on greater Britain for ever, intending
to enjoy life, and to end his days in Britain the less. Money was his
dear and respected friend; he loved it with every fibre of his little
shrivelled heart. Ambition was his ruling passion, and rank his idol.
To rank he would abase himself, and grovel in the gutter; to rank he
intends to be allied before he is much older--if not in his own proper
person, he will at least be the father-in-law of a peer. Money for the
attainment of this honour was no object; and as his sharp, eager eyes
fell on the pretty frightened face that was looking diffidently round
the many groups standing on the deck of the steamer, he told himself,
with a thrill of ecstasy, “That if that girl in the black hat is
Madeline--by Jove! she will do!”