Poor father fumbled at his harness, flurried and silent, cut to the heart, I knew, by this sad change in the familiar custom of years. I don’t know anything that could have hurt him so much as the refusal of his old friends to eat his dinner. Mother, too, looked sad and dispirited; and, altogether, we were by no means a cheerful party. “Oh how different it was last Sunday!” I said to myself over and over again.
When we reached our own house how the sight of the well-spread table smote us. There were the six places set, as they had been set nearly every Sunday for I don’t know how long (for the Smiths, like us, were most punctual church-goers), and the fat turkey, and the monstrous round of beef, the portly ham, the piled-up bowl of salad—all the plentiful dishes of the regular “cold collection,” as Tom called it, which was prepared for Sunday, mocked us with their now absurd abundance. When mother rang the bell, and ordered the potatoes to be brought in, Bridget stood still and looked at her, with mouth and eyes open, wondering what had happened.
We did not sit over our dinners on this occasion; nor did we on the Sunday following, when we again dined alone, with no leaf put into the table. But, after that, the little differences between the two families were swallowed up in the sorrow that came upon them both in their now fast-approaching separation. Our house was by this time getting disorganized and upset. Travelling-boxes and packing-cases, and messes of all sorts, were strewn about the dainty rooms, which were stripped of ornaments and curtains, and sometimes of carpets also—one or two of these latter, which had been made to order for us in England, and some Persian rugs, being too precious and pretty to part with. Mother’s best glass and china were heaped on a table, to be no more used at Narraporwidgee; her linen closet was emptied and its contents spread in neat piles on her bedroom floor, all her hoards of household treasures were like drapers’ goods at stock-taking time; she could not bear to have her “sets” meddled with, and we had not things to use that we wanted. We were just beginning to feel very desolate and uncomfortable, when one morning after breakfast old Mrs. Smith drove up to the door and begged us, with tears in her eyes, to come and make our home at Booloomooroo until the sale was over and it was time to start for Melbourne. Mother, who went to the door herself, put her arms round her old friend, kissed her warmly, and accepted the invitation; and the day after we found ourselves transferred from our mess and muddle to cool, sweet, orderly rooms again; and any breach there might have been between the two families was healed up.
It was very strange and pleasant to find myself under the same roof with my proscribed lover, meeting him familiarly at all hours of the day. Many precious, if brief, moments of happy privacy fell to us in the accidental course of things; but we were honourable, and we did not seek them. We took no walks, we contrived no stolen interviews; we played whist and billiards with our parents during those lovely evenings when we should have chosen to be out of doors, with the utmost propriety—though, I believe, if we had done otherwise in those last days, father and mother would have carefully shut their eyes and have taken no notice. Every day some of us went over to Narraporwidgee with a luncheon basket, and stayed there until dinner-time. Sometimes Tom went too, and helped mother to lift and carry, and to do the rough part of her packing, or helped father with his outdoor arrangements. On these occasions I seldom accompanied them, though mostly left to please myself, but stayed with Mrs. Smith.
Between Mrs. Smith and me there existed at this time a close attachment. I took no care to avoid hurting my dear mother by an ostentatious display of affectionate attentiveness to her; but, at the same time, there was a decided clandestine element in our intercourse. When we were alone we had long talks about Tom, and exchanged confidences that neither of us shared with anybody else. I made Mrs. Smith understand and believe that I should never love another man, if I lived to be a hundred, and that I should consider myself as good as married to him all the two years that we were to be separated; and, in return, Mrs. Smith assured me that his heart had been bound up in me ever since we were boy and girl together, and that she had long looked forward to having me for her daughter some day. She was a chatty old body, very imperious, very highly accomplished, and well versed in the ways of the polite world, in spite of the length of time that she had been absent from it; and she interested me in the profoundest manner with the few glimpses she gave me of the life she had so long done with, which I was just beginning.
We used to sit in her bedroom mostly, which was as peculiar as she was herself. Two or three of the original chambers had been thrown together to make it, and it was in the shape of a letter L. Her sleeping and dressing apparatus was in one limb of the apartment, and the other was filled with couches, tables, cabinets, very old armchairs, and all the appliances of an ancient boudoir. Such queer old chintz the curtains and sofa covers were made of; such spidery legs supported such curious articles of furniture, the like of which I never saw before or since. I often used to think how beautifully they must have been packed to have stood the voyage from England so many years ago, especially considering what ramshackle old ships they had in those times. Over the chimney-piece there were some comical little silhouettes and miniatures in ebony and brass frames; and one day I got up from my chair to study them carefully, while she counted the stitches of a long piece of knitting, with her gold-rimmed spectacles on her thin aquiline nose.
“I suppose these are Tom’s ancestors,” I said presently; “but I can’t find the faintest resemblance in any of them to him.”
“Oh yes, my dear,” she replied quickly; “you have not looked well. That lady with the powdered hair was as like what he is now as a delicate woman could be like a large strong man; and in that old soldier, with all the orders on his breast, you will also see his very image.”
I certainly did not see anything of the sort. Two more absurd frumps never were limned by any painter, and to compare Tom with them was simply preposterous. However, I supposed the originals were better-looking than the portraits, and that her memory was truer than her eyes.
“Are any of these you?” I asked, after a fruitless search for the rudiments of her striking face.