Ernest Hornung - The Unbidden Guest

Arabella was the first at the farm to become aware of Mr. Teesdale’s return from Melbourne. She was reading in the parlour, with her plump elbows planted upon the faded green table-cloth, and an untidy head of light-coloured hair between her hands; looking up from her book by chance, she saw through the closed window her father and the buggy climbing the hill at the old mare’s own pace. Arabella went on reading until the buggy had drawn up within a few feet of the verandah posts and a few more of the parlour window. Then she sat in doubt, with her finger on the place; but before it appeared absolutely necessary to jump up and run out, one of the men had come up to take charge of the mare, and Arabella was enabled to remove her finger and read on.

The parlour was neither very large nor at all lofty, and the shut window and fire-place closely covered by a green gauze screen, to keep the flies out, made it disagreeably stuffy. There were two doors, but both of these were shut also, though the one at the far end of the room, facing the hearth, nearly always stood wide open. It led down a step into a very little room where the guns were kept and old newspapers thrown, and where somebody was whistling rather sweetly as the other door opened and Mr. Teesdale entered, buggy-whip in hand.

He was a frail, tallish old gentleman, with a venerable forehead, a thin white beard, very little hair to his pate, and clear brown eyes that shone kindly upon all the world. He had on the old tall hat he always wore when driving into Melbourne, and the yellow silk dust-coat which had served him for many a red-hot summer, and was still not unpresentable. Arabella was racing to the end of a paragraph when he entered, and her father had stolen forward and kissed her untidy head before she looked up.

“Bad girl,” said he, playfully, “to let your old father get home without ever coming out to meet him!”

“I was trying to finish this chapter,” said Arabella. She went on trying.

“I know, I know! I know you of old, my dear. Yet I can’t talk, because I am as bad as you are; only I should like to see you reading something better than the Family Cherub .” There were better things in the little room adjoining, where behind the shooting lumber was some motley reading, on two long sagging shelves; but that room was known as the gun-room, and half those books were hidden away behind powder-canisters, cartridge-cases, and the like, while all were deep in dust.

“You read it yourself, father,” said Arabella as she turned over a leaf of her Family Cherub .

“I read it myself. More shame for me! But then I’ve read all them books in the little gun-room, and that’s what I should like to see you reading now and then. Now why have you got yon door shut, Arabella, and who’s that whistling in there?”

“It’s our John William,” Miss Teesdale said; and even as she spoke the door in question was thrown open by a stalwart fellow in a Crimean shirt, with the sleeves rolled up from arms as brown and hard-looking as mellow oak. He had a breech-loader in one hand and a greasy rag in the other.

“Holloa, father!” cried he, boisterously.

“Well, John William, what are you doing?”

“Cleaning my gun. What have you been doing, that’s more like it? What took you trapesing into Melbourne the moment I got my back turned this morning?”

“Why, hasn’t your mother told you?”

“Haven’t seen her since I came in.”

“Well, but Arabella – ”

“Arabella! I’m full up of Arabella,” said John William contemptuously; but the girl was still too deep in the Family Cherub to heed him. “There’s no getting a word out of Arabella when she’s on the read; so what’s it all about, father?”

“I’ll tell you; but you’d better shut yon window, John William, or I don’t know what your mother ‘ll say when she comes in and finds the place full o’ flies.”

It was the gun-room window that broke the law of no fresh air, causing Mr. Teesdale uneasiness until John William shut it with a grumble; for in this homestead the mistress was law-maker, and indeed master, with man-servant and maid-servant, husband and daughter, and a particularly headstrong son, after her own heart, all under her thumb together.

“Now then, father, what was it took you into Melbourne all of a sudden like that?”

“A letter by the English mail, from my old friend Mr. Oliver.”

“Never heard tell of him,” said John William, making spectacles of his burnished bores, and looking through them into the sunlight. Already he had lost interest.

Mr. Teesdale was also occupied, having taken from his pocket a very large red cotton handkerchief, with which he was wiping alternately the dust from his tall hat and the perspiration from the forehead whereon the hat had left a fiery rim. Now, however, he nodded his bald head and clicked his lips, as one who gives another up.

“Well, well! Never heard tell of him – you who’ve heard me tell of him time out o’ mind! Nay, come; why, you’re called after him yourself! Ay, we called you after John William Oliver because he was the best friend that ever we had in old Yorkshire or anywhere else; the very best; and you pretend you’ve never heard tell of him.”

“What had he got to say for himself?” said Mr. Oliver’s namesake, with a final examination of the outside of his barrels.

“Plenty; he’s sent one of his daughters out in the Parramatta , that got in with the mail yesterday afternoon; and of course he had given her an introduction to me.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed John William, looking up sharply, as he ran over the words in his ear. “I say, father, we don’t want her here,” he added earnestly.

“Oh, did you find out where she was? Have you seen her? What is she like?” cried Arabella, jumping up from the table and joining the others with a face full of questions. She had that instant finished her chapter.

“I don’t know what she’s like; I didn’t see her; I couldn’t even find out where she was, though I tried at half a dozen hotels and both coffee-palaces,” said the farmer with a crestfallen air.

“All the better!” cried John William, grounding his gun with a bang. “We don’t want none of your stuck-up new chums or chumesses here, father.”

“I don’t know that; for my part, I should love to have a chance of talking to an English young lady,” Arabella said, with a backward glance at her Family Cherub . “They’re very rich, the Olivers,” she added for her brother’s benefit; “that’s their house in the gilt frame in the best parlour, the house with the tower; and the group in the frame to match, that is the Olivers, isn’t it, father?”

“It is, my dear; that’s to say, it was, some sixteen years ago. We must get yon group and see which one it is that has come out, and then I’ll read you Mr. Oliver’s letter, John William. If only he’d written a mail or two before the child started! However, if we’ve everything made snug for her to-night, I’ll lay hands on her to-morrow if she’s in Melbourne; and then she shall come out here for a month or two to start with, just to see how she likes it.”

“How d’ye know she’ll want to come out here at all?” asked John William. “Don’t you believe it, father; she wouldn’t care for it a little bit.”

“Not care for it? Not want to come out and make her home with her parents’ old friends? Then she’s not her father’s daughter,” cried Mr. Teesdale indignantly; “she’s no child of our good old friends. Why, it was Mr. Oliver who gave me the watch I – hush! Was that your mother calling?”