Sisters Part 10

She stood in the porch to watch the wheels of his departing chariot flash through the sun and dust. She stared long at the vacant point of disappearance, like one entranced. When she came to herself, she ran into the house and fell upon little Harry.

"My baby," she crooned pa.s.sionately, "MY baby!"

Carey Junior responded with his ready fist, pushing her from him. He was feeding the puppy with a strawberry, and she put her head in the way.

"Fie! You mustn't do that," said Mrs Kelsey, mindful of her responsibilities. "That's rude."

"Oh, let him," pleaded the girl, infatuated with that look of his father in his face; and she dropped on her knees before him and kissed a dangling foot, with which he kicked her mouth. "Let him do what he likes, so long as he's happy."

"Not at all," her old nurse reproved her. "I promised Mr Carey that he should not be spoiled."

He was not spoiled. The admirable foster-mother, brooking no interference with her system, improved him into a well-behaved child, as well as the healthiest and most beautiful in all that countryside.

It was a standing grievance at Redford that she would not allow him to be always on show there, subject to Mary's indulgence, and Deb's caprices, and the temptations of the housekeeper's store-room. Only Mr Kelsey, who was his idol, was permitted to withdraw him from Mrs Kelsey's eye. The man used to take the child, with a toy whip in his little hand, on the saddle before him, and let him think he was guiding the steady horse and doing all the business of the station as well. The overseer confessed, in bad weather, when he had to ride alone, that he was lost without his little mate. "Hardly weaned," he used to brag, "and knows every beast on the place as well as I do myself." This was gross exaggeration, yet was the infant Harry a conspicuously forward child, with the "makings of a man" in him visible to all. His hearty whoas and gee-ups carried as far as the overseer's gruff voice; and the picture of the jolly boy, with his rosy, joyous face, and his fair curls blowing in the wind, was one to kindle the admiration of all who saw it. The phrase continually on the lips of his adopted family and connections was: 'Won't his father be surprised when he sees him!' They enjoyed in antic.i.p.ation the grateful praises that would be heaped upon them then.

But Guthrie Carey never saw his son again.

The baby went a-visiting with his foster-parents to the local township, and it was supposed caught the infection of typhoid there from some unknown source. Having caught it, the robust little body, unused to any ailment, was wrecked at once, where a frail child might easily have weathered the storm. No little prince of blood royal could have been better nursed and more strenuously fought for; but three days after he had visibly sickened he was dead. And then the wail went up, "Oh! what will his father say?"

When Guthrie came, prepared by letters from fellow-mourners as bereaved as himself, it was but from one day to the next--only to "hear the particulars" and to see the little grave. Deborah was away from home, but in any case Mary would have been the one to perform the sad duties of the occasion; they were hers by right. She took him to the family cemetery on the only evening of his stay, and, herself speechless and weeping, showed him the whole place renovated and made beautiful for the sake of the latest comer. No weeds, no dead rose-bushes, no vampire ivy now; but an orderly garden, new planted and watered, and in the midst a small mound heaped with fresh-cut flowers. She had visited the child daily while he lived at Mrs Kelsey's; now she almost daily visited his grave.

They dropped on their knees beside it, close as bride and bridegroom on altar steps, as father and mother at the firstborn's cradle. The dusk was melting into moonlight; they could not see each other's faces. When his big frame heaved with heavy sobs, she laid a timid hand--her beautiful hand--on his shoulder; and when he felt that sympathetic woman's touch, he turned suddenly and kissed her. Afterwards he did not remember that he had done it.

She seemed to cling to him when, next morning, the time came for him to go.

"You will come again?" she implored him, in a trembling whisper. "You will come here when you return next time?"

"Oh, surely," he replied, whispering too, and to the full as deeply moved. But when he got away it was to other lands that he turned his eyes, in the search for new interests to occupy his lonely life. With Lily and the baby dead, and Deborah Pennycuick given to another man, Australia had no more hold on him. His first letter to Redford notified that he had changed into another line, and that the name of his new ship was the DOVEDALE. She traded to the West Indies.

He forgot to write again when, not very long afterwards, he went back to his old line, at the invitation of the Company, as captain of the ship on which he had served as mate.

CHAPTER IX.

"'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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body like him, Deb, and he was my all--"

"No, no, Mary--"

"You don't know, Debbie--oh, n.o.body 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 pa.s.sion, 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? n.o.body knows--n.o.body 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.