Part 7

"Oh, I can't go home, of course," he said, and pushed his thick hair back in a tired kind of way. "Hush, Poppet; go home with Martha like a good girl, and, on no account, say you've seen me. Promise me----"

He did not wait for an answer, however, but made fresh confusion by fainting dead away on the floor at Martha's feet.

The manager of the restaurant felt himself a very ill-used man that such things should happen at his busiest time; but he was not inhuman, and the boy's deathly face and the little girl's exceeding distress touched him. Besides, Malcolm was his most regular customer; it would be unwise to offend him. So he helped to lift the boy into an inner room, gave Martha brandy and water, and recommended burnt feathers.

"I'll go and send a tellygrum for the Captain," Malcolm said, picking up his hat. He too felt ill-used, for there were some choice morsels still on his plate, and there was no knowing when he would get his pudding.

But Poppet caught his coat sleeve.

"Not father, on _any_ account," she said. "Esther, or Meg, or even Pip--but oh, not father!"

"No, you'd better not fetch the Captain," Martha said. "Oh no, he wouldn't do at all. Better telegraph for Miss Meg--she's got a head on her. The missus is ill with a headache, so it's no good fetching her--yes, send for Miss Meg."

It was between half-past one and two when all this happened; at five Bunty was half-sitting, half-lying on the old, springless sofa in the nursery. Poppet had squeezed herself on the half-inch of space he had left, and was gazing at him, a look of great content and unspeakable love on her little face; and Meg on the low rocking-chair beside them was holding a hand of each.

The others had been turned out. Bunty lay with his face to the wall and his lips shut in a dogged kind of way when they had all crowded round asking questions; and at last Meg, seeing he was totally unfit for any excitement or distress, persuaded them to leave him to Poppet and herself till he was stronger.

And when the room was quiet, and Meg rocking softly to and fro, and Poppet occasionally rubbing her smooth little cheek against his old coat, he told them everything of his own accord.

He had not been to America at all, he had never even heard of a boat called the _Isabella_; it must have been some other boy the police had heard of, and a chance resemblance that made them connect the two.

He had been in or near Sydney all the time, living he hardly knew how. The first month he had done odd jobs, fetched and carried for a grocer in Botany. Then he had managed to get a place on a rough farm in the Lane Cove district, where he was paid four shillings a week and given board and lodging--of a kind. But there had been a long spell of rainy weather and rough westerly winds, and he had been in wet things sometimes from morning to night.

"And it gave me fever--rheumatic--pretty badly," he said; "so they shipped me down to the hospital here in Sydney."

Poppet buried her nose in the sofa cushion, and Meg gave an exclamation of horror.

"And you didn't tell the people who you were, and send for us?" she said, wondering if this could be the same boy who, when he was small, required the sympathies of the house if he scratched his knees.

"How could I?" was Bunty's low reply, "when you didn't know about _that_!"

Meg held his hand closer.

"Didn't the people at the hospital ask who you were?" she said.

"I told them I hadn't any home, and my name was John Thomson," he answered. "Of course they thought I was nothing but a farm boy. Well, I was there a long time--about two months, I think; it seemed like years."

Meg's face was pale, and her eyes full of hot tears.

She pictured the poor lad lying in that hospital bed week after week, strange faces all around him, strange hands ministering to him,--weak, racked with pain, and yet with almost incredible strength of mind persevering in his determination not to let his family know anything.

"How could you _help_ sending for us?" she said, in a low tone.

He moved his head a little restlessly.

"I knew you were all sick of me, and ashamed of me. I know I'm not like the rest of you, and I kept saying I'd get well and work hard and do something to make you respect me before I came back."

Respect him! In Poppet's eyes Nelson was less of a hero, Gordon had infinitely less claim to glory.

"Two or three times I nearly told the nurse," he continued, half-shamefacedly; "the pain was pretty bad, I couldn't go to sleep for it, and I thought I'd like Poppet to come,"--he gave her hand a rough squeeze,--"but then I used to stuff the blanket in my mouth and bite it, and it kept me from telling her. I used to have to shut my eyes so I shouldn't see her coming to my end of the ward; I used to get so frightened I'd say it without meaning to."

"And then," said Meg--the narration was almost too painful--"what did you do then--when you got better?"

The rest of the story he hurried over; it made him shudder a little to think of it all, now he was lying in this dear old room with two faces full of love close to him.

He had not been strong enough for any regular work after he came from the hospital. He had twelve shillings of his wages left, and this kept him for a fortnight, with the help of what he received for an odd job or two. The last week had been the worst of all. On Saturday he had elevenpence only left; he lived on it that day, Sunday, and Monday, sleeping in the Domain at night. On Tuesday he had in the course of his wanderings come to Malcolm's favourite restaurant, and lingered around it, trying to feed his poor hungry body with the appetising smells that issued from the door. At last he could bear it no longer; he went in and asked if they wanted a boy to wash up or wait, offering to do so in return for food and a bed at night. They had been very pushed for help, for one of the waiters had fallen ill, and they told him he could try it for a day or two. All Tuesday he worked hard there, washing up, peeling potatoes, running errands; the meals seemed more than ample repayment to him in his half-starved state.

On Wednesday the absent waiter had sent word to say he would be at his duties the following day. Just as Bunty was lading his tray to carry it round he dropped a couple of tumblers,--he had broken two or three things the previous day,--and the manager in annoyance told him he could stay the rest of the day but need not come back to-morrow. Sick at heart at the thought of the streets again, the poor boy had picked up his tray and gone out into the big room with it.

And the next minute there came that wild, glad shriek, and Poppet had flung herself upon him half mad with joy.

Just as the tale ended Nellie burst into the room. She went straight over to the sofa and fell down on her knees beside it.

"Oh, how can you ever forgive us, Bunty!" she said, tears brimming over in her eyes. "Oh, Bunty, I shall never forgive myself, never!"

Esther had followed, her face' shining with gladness. "Mr. Burnham is here," she said, "and----"

"Bunty never did it, 'twath Bully Hawkinth!" burst out Peter, pushing Nellie aside, and actually trying to kiss his injured brother in his excitement.

Bunty rose to his feet, pale, trembling.

"What is it, Esther?" he said. "Nellie--tell me!"

"Only it _was_ young Hawkins after all who took the money," said Esther, in tones that trembled with gladness for the news, and grief for the poor boy's unmerited sufferings. "He broke his collar bone at football yesterday, and he thought at first he was going to die; he confessed it to his mother, and made her send word to school. Mr. Burnham has come straight here with the news, and says he can never forgive himself for all you have suffered over it."

"Oh, Bunty! how hateful we were not to believe you," said Nellie, wiping her eyes; "we don't deserve for you to speak to us."

But Bunty put his poor rough head down on the cushions again, and great hard sobs broke from him, sobs that he was bitterly ashamed of, but that he had absolutely no strength to restrain.

No one would ever know quite how wretched this thing had made him. However warm the welcome home had been, there would always have been that cloud.

The relief was almost too much for him in his weak state.

At night, when Meg was tucking Poppet up in bed, the little girl sat up suddenly.

"Meg, that is the most wonderfullest tree in the world," she said in a low, almost reverential tone.

Meg asked her to explain, and she told how she and Martha had walked backwards three times, around the "wishing-tree" in the Botanical Gardens.

Meg stooped down and kissed the dear little face; how she envied Poppet to-day! she was the only one who had had faith all the time.

"What did you wish?" she asked, though she knew without telling.

"That Bunty might be found this vewy day, and that they might find out about the money."

"But I think I know a little girl who has said that in her prayers every day for five months," whispered Meg. "Which do you think answered, God or the tree?"

The little girl was quiet for a minute, then she knelt up on her pillow and drooped her sweet, grave face with its closed eyelids over her two small hands.

When she cuddled down among the clothes again, she drew Meg's bright head down to her.

"I was thanking Him," she said.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*PARNASSUS AND PUDDINGS.*

"When for the first time Nature says plain 'No To some 'Yes' in you, and walks over you In gorgeous sweeps of scorn."

Pip had not spoken to Meg for over three weeks. There had been one fiery outbreak consequent upon Miss Jones' dismissal of him. When he learnt Meg had been to her he had accused his sister of treachery, of trying to ruin his happiness; he had been willing, he said, to put off the question of marriage for a year or two, but no power on earth would have made him promise to give Mabelle up.

And she had given him up! Put him aside as if he had been a schoolboy, or a worn-out glove! And with astonishing firmness. He had even seen her already walking out with a man who sold saucepans and kettles and fire-grates in the one business street of the suburb.

No wonder his cup of bitterness seemed running over; no wonder he felt Meg had sinned beyond forgiveness in thus interfering.

His last examination had not, it was found, been hopelessly bad, and he had been granted a "_post mortem_." But even then he did not attempt to work. He used certainly, to stay in his bedroom, where his table stood with its wild confusion of books and papers, but he would sit hour after hour staring moodily in front of him, with never a glance at the Todhunter or Berkeley that so urgently required his attention. Or he would read poetry, lying full length on his bed,--Keats, Shelley, and Byron, tales of blighted passion and hopeless grief, till his eyes would ache with the tears his young manhood forbade to fall, tears of huge self-pity and misery.

Surely since the creation there had been no one quite so wretched, so utterly bereft of all that made life worth living! How grey and monotonous stretched out the future before him! The probable length of his life made him aghast. The sheer uselessness of living, the hollow mockery of the sunshine and laughter and birds' songs, and the intolerable length of hours and days, seemed each day to strike him with fresh force.

After a certain time his mood induced poetic outpourings. He thought himself just as wretched,--even more so, indeed; but the mere fact that his feelings were able to relieve themselves in this way showed the first keenness was passing.

Sheet after sheet of University paper was covered with wild, impassioned addresses in the shape of sonnets and odes, or, when the pen was too full for studied forms, of eloquent blank verse.

For instance, the following poem struck him as exceptionally fine. He composed it at midnight, after eating his heart out in misery all the day. It was written in his blackest writing, as might be expected, and upon a sheet of grey note paper,--the University buff had suddenly offended his sense of fitness.

"Oh, what is life when all its joys are fled! I am in love with Death's long dreamful ease. Over my head I hear th' unwelcome tread Of future years; my aching eye still sees New suns arise and set, and seasons wane. I would take arms against this sea of pain, I would embrace Earth's sea and sink to rest, For ever lulled upon her soothing breast! I would fling off this gift of Life, as you, O bitter Love, flung me aside, your you! O Love, O Love, O bitter, beauteous Love, Heartless and cold, but still my one fair dove! What is this life that some find strangely fair, When but to think brings sorrow and despair? What is this life when love, your love, lies dead, And mine, too much alive, slays me instead? I will give up, go down,--there is a sea, A winding sheet, kept cool and green for me. I will give up, go down! Yet, Love, but smile, But stretch to me that hand so soft and white, That seemed my own, that sad, sweet little while, And all grows day, for ever dead the night."

He was not at all sure when he read it the eighth or ninth time that the mantle of the "Sun-treader" had not fallen upon him, that Helicon's drying fount would not spring up afresh at his bidding.

Other men in love, he knew, had made verses, but they were of the mawkish, sentimental kind his more fastidious taste rejected, the kind that generally began something like--

"Oh, Star of Beauty, all the night Thou shinest in the sky; For thee the dark doth grow quite bright-- Oh, hear my plaintive sigh!"

His, he felt, were strong with the strength born of fathomless misery, and sweet with the bitter-sweet of undying and spurned love.

One day he met Mabelle; she was walking to church with her fat, honest old mother, who preferred a man of saucepans with money far before one of irreproachable shirt cuffs and empty pockets.

She smiled at him from her brown, beautifully lashed eyes, a kind of for-goodness-sake-try-to-make- the-best-of-it-and-don't-look-so-tragic smile, but he interpreted it as a sign of softening. When he got home he sent her the poem,--if anything in the wide world could touch her beautiful, stony heart he thought that would.

He entrusted it to the common post, and waited with an undisciplined heart for the answer.

It came on a Monday morning. Poppet took it from the postman and carried it up to him, but she was too busy with a scheme of Bunty's to notice how white he turned, and how his hand trembled.

It was painfully short and to the point:--

"What's the use of writing poetery to me when all's up and done with? I showed it to Ma and Pa and some one else, and they thort it very fine; but said you oughtent to write it as some one else writes poetery for me now. I think it's very nice of course and I'll keep it this time but don't send any more.

"Your friend only and nothing more, "Miss JONES (not Mabelle).

"P.S.--I suppose I may as well tell you as I'm engaged to be married to Mr. Wilkes."

That was Pip's death-blow, and, if a paradox may be allowed, from that minute he began to live again.

The thought that his cherished poem had been submitted to the critical gaze of a man who sold frying pans and wrote "poetery" himself, stung him to madness. He sat down and attacked his hydrostatics with savage frenzy to prevent himself doing anything desperate.

He even played in a football match the next week, a thing he had not done for a long time; and he took food less under protest.

But Meg he could not forgive; his manner to her, if compelled to speak, was cold and contemptuous; when possible he totally ignored her presence.

The girl found such conduct very hard indeed to bear from her favourite brother, especially as it was only her keen anxiety for his welfare that had made her act as she had done; she bore it in silence, however, and without reproaching him. Some day, she knew, he would thank her from his heart, and for the present she must content herself to lie under the ban of his displeasure.

To solace herself she took to making puddings, learning the technicalities of meat cooking, and concocting queer-smelling bottles of stuff she labelled mushroom ketchup, tomato sauce, and Australian chutnee in her neatest hand.

Esther smiled a little when first these operations began. Meg had hitherto expressed the frankest dislike for culinary engagements.

Nellie laughed openly.

"Her 'prentice hand she tried on us, And then she cooked for Alan, oh!"

she said one day, shaking her head as she eyed a surprisingly queer-looking conglomeration Meg called amber pudding.

"Many thanks, but no, Meg dearest; I think I will finish with honest bread and cheese!"

"Esther?" said Meg, pausing with uplifted tablespoon, and taking no notice of Nell's sarcasm beyond blushing finely. "You'll try a little, won't you? I'm sure it's very nice."

But even Esther looked dubious; the frothed icing on top had an elegant appearance certainly, but underneath was a mass of strange colour and consistency.

"Dear Meg," she said, "I am like the French lady, you know,--I eat only my acquaintances. Nellie, pass me the cheese."

But this sort of thing did not damp Meg's spirits, not at least for more than a day or two.

Perhaps the next three or four puddings would be long-established favourites that no one could take exception to, but after that there would appear one or two of French title and unknown quantities. Now and again indeed they turned out brilliant successes, that every one praised and longed for more of; but most often, it must be confessed, they were failures, very trying to the tempers and digestions of all who ventured on a helping.

"It was well to be Alan," Nellie said, "with nine innocent people submitting themselves daily to the dangers of poisoning or lifelong indigestion, just that in future he might escape and have his palate continually pleased."

"If I can't practise on my own family," demanded Meg, smiling however, "how am I to get experience? All of you have excellent digestions, so it will not do you any real harm."

And she persevered with so much determination that they only groaned inwardly when a "confection a la Marguerite," as Nellie called it, took the place of old favourites, such as plum puddings, apple pies, roly-polys and Queens. Every one accepted their portion in meekness, and really tried to say encouraging things, especially if her face was hot and anxious.

Bunty was just beginning to find his place in the family again. But he was a changed boy. No one could doubt that those five hard months had had the most beneficial effect on his character, although they had made him so white and hollow-cheeked. He was stronger morally, more self-reliant. The rough usage he had received seemed to have quite dissipated his cowardice, and with it the inclination to falsehood. He was almost pitifully careful not to make the slightest untrue statement about anything; and now the barriers of reserve between himself and Meg were broken down, she was able to help him more, and put herself more in his place.

Poppet was as much as ever his faithful little companion; there was absolutely nothing the child would not have done for this dear, recovered brother. She even consulted Meg as to the practicability of learning Latin, just that she might look up his words for him every evening in the dictionary.

But as three-syllabled words in her own language made her pucker up her poor little brows, and as English grammar still had power to draw weary, dispirited tears, Meg advised a short postponement.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*MUSHROOMS.*

"In what will all this ostentation end?"

A new house had been built lately not very far from Misrule, a grand, showy-looking place, or red brick, in the Elizabethan style, which the suburbs of Sydney are just beginning to affect largely.

The grounds were laid out by a landscape gardener, and there were velvet lawns, carpet beds, and terraces reaching down to the river, where at Misrule there was only a wilderness of a garden with broken palings, and a couple of sloping paddocks where long rank grass and poppies flourished. Then the carriage drive,--such a grand, smooth, red sweep, serpentining up to the great porch. The Misrule drive was hardly red at all; the gravel had mostly vanished, the dead leaves were generally of Vallambrosian thickness, and weeds raised cheerful heads at intervals. The name of the people who had built the new house was Browne,--Fitzroy-Browne, with a hyphen and an e.

Mr. Fitzroy-Browne was a railway contractor, and had builded himself an ample fortune out of a Government that not yet had need to cheese-pare.

There were three or four Misses Fitzroy-Browne, that fashionable boarding-schools, dressmakers, and several seasons had done their best for. There was a Mr. Fitzroy-Browne junior, who waxed his moustache, wore clothes of chessboard device, and kept racehorses. And there was Mamma Fitzroy-Browne, who was fat and good-natured, and said "Bless yer 'art" with a cheeriness refreshing in these days of ceremony, and then pulled herself up short and looked unhappy.

Poor Mamma Browne! who sometimes thought wistfully of the long-dead days when Papa had been only an honest navvy, and her little girls and boy too small to snub and suppress her, and order her about.

Mamma Browne, who had liked her little old "best" room, with its big round table, holding the Bible, three gilt-edged books, and some wax grapes under a glass shade, far better than her grand new drawing-room, that was like a furniture show-place, all mirrors and cabinets, and green and gold.

How many Mamma Brownes there are in Australia! It is quite pitiful. Good dear creatures, with their bones too set to adapt themselves to the change the golden days have brought; poor simple-minded things, who, having consistently left "h" out of their language for forty or fifty years, cannot remember it now till an embarrassed cough or a blush and sneer from a Miss Hyphen Browne makes their old hearts ache for shame of themselves.

Dear housewives, who wasted not their husbands' substance in the old days, and now bring down vials of contempt from the daughters for anxious watchfulness over reckless servants! Sociable old bodies, to whom a cup of tea in the kitchen with a gossiping friend had been happiness, but "At Homes," thronged with stylish people whose speech fairly bristled with h's and g's, bewildering misery.

Comfortable women who have weaknesses for violet, crimson, and bright brown, with large bonnets heavily trimmed, and are sternly arrayed in fashionable no colours, and for bonnets forced to wear a bit of jet, a flyaway bow and strings, that they say piteously feels as if they had no head covering at all.

I should like to build a Home for them, these dear, fat, snubbed orphans of society that is altogether too fine for them--I said _fat_, because if you notice it is always the fat ones who get into trouble: the thin ones can shape themselves into place better,--to build a Home full of small cosy rooms, with centre tables, and chairs, not artistically arranged but set straight against the walls, with vases (pronounced vorses) in pairs everywhere, waxen fruit and flowers under glass, and china animals that never were on sea or land. There should always be a tea-pot, warmly cosied, cups big enough to hold more than one mouthful and not sufficiently precious to make one uncomfortable, plates of cake, cut, not in finikin finger strips, but in good hearty wedges.

These to be in readiness for all the dear old vulgar friends who had not got to fortune yet and loved to "drop in."