CHAPTER XII.
“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!”