Neither Drusilla nor Octavia offered to let the two young women talk alone, not because they were consciously spoilsporting, but because they were always starved for company, especially when the company took the form of a brand new face. Such a lovely face too! Not beautiful like Alicia, yet – disloyal though the thought was, they fancied Una was perhaps the more alluring of the two. Her arrival pleased Drusilla particularly, since it answered the vexed question as to how Missy was suddenly managing to borrow novels.
“Thank you for the books,” said Missy, smiling at her friend. “The one I brought home last Monday is nearly worn out.”
“Did you enjoy it?” asked Una.
“Oh, very much!” As indeed she had; its dying heroine with her dicky heart could not have come at a more appropriate moment. Admittedly the heroine actually had managed to die in her beloved’s arms, but she, Missy, had had the good fortune merely almost to die in her beloved’s arms.
Una’s manners were perfect. By the time she had partaken of a cup of tea and some plain home-made biscuits, she had won Drusilla and Octavia over completely. To have no better fare to offer was humiliating, but Una’s appreciation turned the despised biscuits into an inspired guess as to what the visitor really liked and wanted.
“Oh, I get so tired of cream cakes and asparagus rolls!” she exclaimed, smiling with dazzling effect at her hostesses. “How clever of you, and how considerate! These little biscuits are delicious, and so much better for my digestion! Most Byron ladies swamp one in oceans of jam and cream, and as a guest it is of course impossible to refuse refreshments without offending.”
“What a lovely person,” said Drusilla after Una had gone.
“Delightful,” agreed Octavia.
“She may come again,” said Drusilla to Missy.
“Any time,” said Octavia, who had made the biscuits.
On Sunday afternoon Missy announced that she didn’t care to read, she was going for a walk in the bush instead. So calm and decided was her tone that for a moment her mother just stared at her, at a loss.
“A walk?” she asked at last. “In the bush? Most definitely not! You don’t know who you might meet.”
“I won’t meet anyone,” said Missy patiently. “There has never been any kind of prowler or molester of women in Byron.”
Octavia pounced. “How do you know there’s never been a prowler, madam? It’s that ounce of prevention, and never do you forget it! If a prowler is prowling hereabouts, he never finds anyone to molest, because we Hurlingfords keep our girls safe at home, which is where you ought to be.”
“If you are set on the idea, then I suppose I must come with you,” said Drusilla in the tones of a martyr.
Missy laughed. “Oh, Mother! Come with me when you’re so engrossed in your beading? No, I’m going on my own, and that’s final.”
She walked out of the house wearing neither overcoat nor scarf to protect her from the wind.
Drusilla and Octavia looked at each other.
“I hope her brain’s not affected,” said Octavia dolefully.
So secretly did Drusilla, but aloud she said stoutly, “At least you can’t call this bit of defiance underhanded!”
In the meantime Missy had let herself out of the front gate and turned left instead of right, down to where Gordon Road dwindled to two faint wheel-marks meandering into the heart of the bush. A glance behind her revealed that no one was following; Missalonghi’s squat ugliness sat with front door firmly closed.
It was a still clear day and the sun was very warm, even filtering through the trees. Up here on top of the ridge the bush was not thick, for the soil was scanty and whatever did grow mostly had to scrabble for an unloving hold on the sandstone substrate. So the eucalypts and angophoras were short, stunted, and the undergrowth sparse. Spring had arrived; even high up in the Blue Mountains it came early, and two or three warmish days were sufficient to bring the first wattle popping out into a drift of tiny fluffy yellow balls.
The valley went on to her right, glimpsed through the trees; where was John Smith’s house, if house he had? Her mother’s Saturday morning visit to Aunt Aurelia’s yesterday had elicited no further information about John Smith, save a wild rumour that he had engaged a firm of Sydney builders to erect him a huge mansion at the bottom of the cliffs, made out of sandstone quarried on the spot. But Missalonghi could offer no evidence to support this, and Missalonghi sat plump on the only route such builders would have to use. Besides which, Aunt Aurelia apparently had more important worries than John Smith; it seemed the upper echelons of the Byron Bottle Company were becoming extremely alarmed about some mysterious movements in shares.
Missy had no expectation of meeting John Smith on top of the ridge, as it was Sunday, so she decided to find out where his road went over the edge of the valley. When at last she stumbled upon the spot she could see the logic behind the site, for a gargantuan landslide had strewn boulders and rocks in a kind of ramp from top to bottom of the cliff, thus decreasing the sheerness of the drop. Standing at the commencement of the track, she could just glimpse it twisting back and forth across the landslide in a series of zigzags; a perilous descent, yes, but not an impossible one for a cart like John Smith’s.
However, she was far too timid to venture down, not from fear of falling but from fear of walking into John Smith’s lair. Instead, she struck off into the bush on top of the ridge along a narrow path that might have been made by animals going to water. And sure enough, as time went by a sound of running water gradually overpowered the omnipresent sound of the trees talking in that faint, plaintive, fatigued speech gum trees produce on calm days. Louder and louder was the water, until it became a bewildering roar; then when she came upon the stream, it offered her no answer, for though it was quite deep and wide, it was sliding along between its ferny banks without a flurry. Yet the roar of rushing water persisted.
She turned to the right and followed the river, inside her dream of enchantment at last. The sun glanced off the surface of the water in a thousand thousand sparks of light, and the ferns dripped tiny droplets, and dragonflies hovered with rainbow-mica wings, and brilliant parrots wheeled from the trees of one bank to the trees of the other.
Suddenly the river vanished. It just fell away into nothing, a smoothly curving edge. Gasping, Missy drew back quickly, understanding the roar. She had come to the very head of the valley, and the stream which had cut it was entering it in the only way possible, by going down, down, down. Working cautiously along the brink for a good quarter of a mile, she came to a place where a great rock jutted far out over the cliff. And there, right on its end, legs dangling into nothingness, she sat to watch the waterfall in awe. Its bottom she could not discover, only the beautiful untidy tangle of its flight through the windy air, and a rainbow against a mossy place on the cliff behind it, and a chilly moistness that it exhaled as it fell, like a cry for help.
Several hours slipped away as easily as the water. The sun left that part of the ridge. She began to shiver; time to go home to Missalonghi.
And then where her path joined the road leading down into John Smith’s valley, Missy met John Smith himself. He was driving his cart from the direction of Byron, and she saw with surprise that the cart was laden with tools and crates and sacks and iron machinery. Somewhere was a shop open on Sunday!
He pulled up at once and jumped down, smiling broadly. “Hello!” he said. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’m glad to catch you like this, because I was beginning to wonder if you were still in the land of the living. Your mother assured me you were when I called, but she wouldn’t let me see for myself.”
“You came to see how I was?”
“Yes, last Tuesday.”
“Oh, thank you for that!” she said with fervour.
His brows rose, but he didn’t attempt to quiz her. Instead, he left his conveyance where it was, and turned to walk back with her towards Missalonghi.
“I tak
e it there was nothing serious wrong?” he asked after some minutes during which they just paced along together without speaking.
“I don’t know,” said Missy, recognising the emanations of pity and sympathy his obviously healthy being was giving off. “I have to see a doctor in Sydney quite urgently. A heart specialist, I believe.” Now why did she say it like that?
“Oh,” he said, at a loss.
“Whereabouts exactly do you live, Mr. Smith?” she asked, to change the subject.
“Well, further around in the direction you’ve just come from is a waterfall,” he said, not at all reticently, and in a tone of voice which told Missy that, whether because of her sickly condition or because maybe she was so manifestly harmless, he had decided she could be counted a friend. “There’s an old logger’s hut near the bottom of the waterfall, and I’m camping in that for the time being. But I’m starting to build a house a bit closer to the waterfall itself – out of sandstone blocks I’m quarrying on the site. I’ve just been down to Sydney to pick up an engine to drive a big saw. That way I can cut my blocks a lot faster and better, and mill my own timber too.”
She closed her eyes and heaved a big unconscious sigh. “Oh, how I envy you!”
He stared down at her curiously. “That’s an odd thing for a woman to say.”
Missy opened her eyes. “Is it?”
“Women usually don’t like being cut off from shops and houses and other women.” His tone was hard.
“You’re probably right for the most part,” she said thoughtfully, “but in that sense I don’t really count as a woman, so I envy you. The peace, the freedom, the isolation – I dream of them!”
The end of the track came into sight, and so did the faded red corrugated iron roof of Missalonghi.
“Do you do all your shopping in Sydney?” she asked, for something to say, then chastised herself for asking a silly question; hadn’t she met him first in Uncle Maxwell’s?
“I do when I can,” he said, obviously not connecting her with Uncle Maxwell’s, “but it’s a long haul up the Mountains with a full load, and I’ve got only this one team of horses. Still, Sydney’s definitely preferable to shopping in Byron – I’ve never encountered a place so full of Nosey Parkers.”
Missy grinned. “Try not to blame them too much, Mr. Smith. Not only are you a novelty, but you’ve also stolen what they have always regarded as their exclusive property, even if they never thought about it, or wanted it.”
He burst out laughing, evidently tickled that she should bring the matter up. “My valley, you mean? They could have bought it, the sale wasn’t secret – it was advertised in the Sydney papers and in the Katoomba paper. But they’re just not as smart as they think they are, that’s all.”
“You must feel like a king down there.”
“I do, Miss Wright.” And he smiled at her, tipped his battered bushman’s hat, turned and walked away.
Missy floated the rest of the way home, in perfect time to milk the cow. Neither Drusilla nor Octavia made reference to her bush walk, Drusilla because she had been more pleased at the display of independence than worried about the outcome, and Octavia because she had convinced herself Missy’s cerebral processes were being affected by whatever ailed her.
In fact, when by four o’clock there had been no sign of Missy, the two ladies left at Missalonghi had had a small tiff. Octavia thought it was time to inform the police.
“No, no, no!” said Drusilla, quite violently.
“But we must, Drusilla. Her brain’s affected, I know it is. When in her whole life has she ever behaved this way?”
“I have been thinking ever since Missy had her turn, sister, and I’m not ashamed to say that when Mr. Smith carried her in, I was terrified. The thought of losing her to such an unfair, unjust thing – I was never more glad than when Uncle Neville told me he didn’t think it was serious. And then I began to wonder what would happen to Missy had it been me? Octavia, we must encourage Missy to be independent of us! It is not her fault that God did not endow her with Alicia’s looks, or my strength of character. And I began to see that a whole lifetime’s exposure to my strength of character has not been good for Missy. I make the decisions about everything, and it is her nature to acquiesce without a fuss. So for far too long I have gone on making her decisions. I shall do so no longer.”
“Rubbish!” snapped Octavia. “The girl’s got no sense! Shoes instead of boots! Romances! Bush walks! It is my opinion that you must be more severe in future, not less.”
Drusilla sighed. “When we were young women, Octavia, we wore shoes. Father was a very warm man, we lacked for nothing. We rode in carriages, we had plenty of pin-money. And ever since those days, no matter how hard life has been, at least you and I are able to look back and remember the pleasure of pretty shoes, pretty dresses, coming-out parties, gaiety. Where Missy has never worn a pair of pretty shoes, or a pretty dress. I’m not castigating myself for that, for it isn’t my fault, but when I thought she might be going to die – well, I decided I was going to give her whatever she wanted, so long as I could afford it. Shoes I cannot afford, especially if there are going to be heavy doctor’s bills. But if she wants to walk in the bush, or read romances – she may.”
“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! You must go on as you have in the past. Missy needs strong direction.”
And from that viewpoint Drusilla could not budge her.
Unaware of her mother’s soul-searching, Missy decided she had better not read one of the new novels after dinner; she elected to tat instead.
“Aunt Octavia,” she said, fingers flying, “how much lace do you plan to set into your new dress? Is this going to be enough, do you think? I can easily make you a lot more, but I’ll need to know now.”
Octavia held out her knobby hand and Missy deposited the bunched-up lace in it, leaving her aunt to spread out each piece on her lap.
“Oh, Missy, it is beautiful!” breathed Octavia, awed. “Drusilla, do look!”
Drusilla plucked a scrap out of her sister’s lap and held it up to the weak light. “Yes, it is beautiful. You’re improving all the time, Missy, I must say.”
“Ah,” said Missy gravely, “that is because I have finally learned to unknit the sleeve of ravelled care.”
Both older ladies looked utterly blank for a moment, then Octavia cast a significant glance at Drusilla and ever so slightly shook her head. But Drusilla ignored her.
“Quite so,” she said majestically.
Cutting a dash at Alicia’s wedding won out; Octavia put Missy’s brainstorm aside. “Is it enough lace, Drusilla?” she asked anxiously.
“Well, for what I had originally planned it’s enough, but I’ve had a better idea. I’d like to let in some of the same lace all the way around the hem of the overskirt – so fashionable! Missy, would you mind doing so much extra work? Do be frank if you’d rather not.”
Now Missy looked blank; in all her life her mother had never deferred to her before, nor stopped to think whether what she asked was excessive. Of course! It was the heart trouble! How amazing! “I don’t mind in the least,” she said quickly.
Octavia beamed. “Oh, thank you!” Her face puckered. “If only I might help you with the sewing, Drusilla. It’s so much work for you.”
Drusilla looked at the heap of lilac crêpe in her lap and sighed. “Don’t worry, Octavia. Missy does all the fiddly bits like buttonholes and hems and plackets. But I do admit it would be wonderful to have a Singer sewing machine.”
That of course was out of the question; the ladies of Missalonghi made their clothes the old-fashioned hard way, every inch of every seam sewn by hand. Drusilla did the main sewing and the cutting, Missy the fiddly bits; Octavia could not manage to hold an instrument so fine as a sewing needle.
“I am so very sorry your dress has to be brown, Missy,” said Drusilla, and looked at her daughter pleadingly. “But it is lovely material, and it will make up very well, you wait and see. Would you like some beads on it?”
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“And spoil the cut? Mother, you cut superbly, and the cut will carry it without any adornments,” said Missy.
That night in bed Missy lay in the darkness and remembered the details of the loveliest afternoon of her entire life. For not only had he said hello to her, he had climbed down from his cart and actually chosen to walk along with her, chatting to her as if she was a friend rather than a mere member of that tiresome gang called Hurlingford. How nice he had looked. Homespun, but nice. And he smelled not of stale sweat, like so many of the oh-so-respectable Hurlingford men, but of sweet expensive soap; she had recognised it immediately because whenever the ladies of Missalonghi received rare gifts of such soap, it was not consumed upon their bodies (Sunlight was quite good enough for that!), but inserted between the folds of their clothes as they lay in drawers. And his hands might be toil-roughened, but they were clean, even beneath the nails. His hair too was immaculate; no trace of pomade or oil, just the healthy gloss one saw on the fur of a freshly licked cat. A prideful and scrupulous man, John Smith.
Best of all she liked his eyes, such a translucent golden brown, and so laughing. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe any of the tales hinting at dishonesty or baseness. Instead, she would have staked her life upon his intrinsic integrity and fiercely defended ethics. She could see such a man doing murder, perhaps, if goaded beyond endurance, but she could not see him stealing or cheating.
Oh, John Smith, I do love you! And I thank you from the very bottom of my heart for coming back to Missalonghi to see how I did.
With only a month left until her wedding, Alicia Marshall came day by day closer to the most perfect manifestation of her long and glorious blossoming, and she meant to enjoy even that final frantic month to the top of her bent. The date had been set eighteen months previously, and it had never occurred to her to doubt the season or the weather. Sure enough, though occasionally springs on the Blue Mountains might be late, or wet, or unduly windy, this one, obedient to Alicia’s whim, was coming in with the halcyon dreaminess of Eden.