The Ladies of Missalonghi

“According to Maxwell, he said he just wants to live alone in the bush and listen to the silence. Well, if he isn’t actually a jailbird, you must admit he’s certainly a bit of an eccentric!”

“What exactly makes Billy think he’s a jailbird?”

“Maxwell phoned Billy as soon as the fellow had loaded up his cart and gone. And Billy set enquiries going at once. The fellow calls himself John Smith, if you please!” Aurelia snorted derisively. “Now I ask you, Drusilla, would anyone call himself John Smith unless there was real dirty work at the crossroads?”

“It might be his proper name,” said Drusilla fairly.

“Pooh! One is forever reading about John Smiths, but have you ever actually met one? Billy thinks the John Smith is an – an – what do the Americans call it?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Well, not that it matters, this isn’t America. A false name, anyway. Billy’s investigations have revealed that the man has no records with any official body. He paid in gold for the valley, and that’s as much as can be found out.”

“Perhaps he’s a lucky strike miner from Sofala or Bendigo?”

“No. Every gold field in Australia has been in company hands for years, and there have been no big finds by a private individual, Billy says.”

“How extraordinary!” said Drusilla as she absently reached for the second-last fairy cake. “Did Maxwell or Billy have anything else to add?”

“Well, John Smith bought a very large quantity of food, and he paid in gold. Out of a big money-belt under his shirt, and he not wearing an undergarment, either! Luckily by then Missy had gone, for Maxwell swears the fellow would have pulled up his shirt just the same. He cursed in front of Missy, and he said something or other that implied Missy was no lady! With no provocation, I assure you!”

“I believe that,” said Drusilla dryly, taking the last fairy cake from the plate.

At which point Alicia Marshall came into the room. Her mother beamed at her proudly and her aunt gave her a wry little smile. Why oh why couldn’t Missy have been like Alicia?

A truly exquisite creature, Alicia Marshall. Very tall and built on voluptuous yet disciplined lines, she was angelically fair of skin and hair and eyes, with beautiful hands and feet, and a swanlike neck. As always, she was dressed in perfect taste, and wore her ice-blue silk gown (eyelet embroidered, its shorter overskirt fashionably pointed) with incomparable flair and grace. One of her own hats, a tumbled mass of ice-blue tulle and ice-green silk roses, adorned her profusion of palest gold hair. Miraculous, that her brows and lashes were a definite, visible brown! For naturally Alicia did not tell the world that she darkened brows and lashes any more than Una did.

“Your Aunt Drusilla would be happy to provide your household linens, Alicia,” a

Alicia removed her hat and stripped off her long ice-blue kid gloves carefully, unable to answer while she concentrated on these enormously important tasks. Only when she had placed the shed articles on a table well out of harm’s way and seated herself nearby did she activate her disappointingly flat and unmusical voice.

“How very kind of you, Aunt,” she said.

“Kindness does not enter into it, my dear niece, since your mother is determined to pay me,” said Drusilla stiffly. “You had better come to Missalonghi next Saturday morning and pick out whatever you want. I shall host morning tea.”

“Thank you, Aunt.”

“Shall I order some fresh tea for you?” Aurelia asked Alicia anxiously; she was just a little bit afraid of her big, capable, ambitious and driving daughter.

“No, thank you, Mother. I really came in to see what if anything you’ve discovered about the stranger in our midst, as Willie insists upon calling him.” Her lovely lip curled.

So the news was given again and discussed again, after which Drusilla rose to go.

“Next Saturday morning at Missalonghi,” she adjured her relatives, giving herself into the butler’s custody.

All the way home she mentally catalogued the contents of the spare room and various cupboards, terrified that the amount and variety were not going to prove sufficient for the honest sale of one hundred pounds. One hundred pounds! What a lovely windfall! Of course it must not be spent. It must go into the bank and begin to accrue its minuscule interest, there to reside until disaster struck. Just what disaster, Drusilla did not know; but every blind corner on life’s road concealed a disaster – illnesses, property damages and repairs, increased rates and taxes, deaths. Part of it would have to pay for the new roof, certainly, but at least they would not have to sell the Jersey heifer now to pay for that; stretched into the future with numerous as yet unconceived offspring to her credit, the Jersey heifer was worth a lot more than fifty pounds to the ladies of Missalonghi. Percival Hurlingford, a kind man with a kind wife, had always allowed them the services of his very valuable Jersey bull without charge, and had besides been responsible for the gift of their original Jersey cow.

Yes, it was most satisfactory! Perhaps Alicia, a notable trend-setter, would start a fashion among the girls of the Hurlingford co

“So, Octavia,” said Drusilla to her crippled sister that night in the kitchen after they had settled to their handwork while Missy buried her head in a book, “we had better spend next week really going through everything we have, to make sure it’s fit for Aurelia and Alicia to see. Missy, you will have to cope with the house and garden and animals on your own, and since you have the lightest hand with flour, you will have to make the refreshments for morning tea. We’ll have pikelets with jam and cream, a sponge, some little butterfly cakes, and a sour-apple tart cooked with cloves.”

This sorted out to Drusilla’s satisfaction, she then passed to a spicier topic, the advent of John Smith. For once the conversation attracted Missy more than her book did, though she pretended to continue reading, and when she went to bed she carried this additional information with her to integrate and correlate among what Una had told her.

Why shouldn’t his real name be John Smith? Of course the real basis for so much Hurlingford mistrust and suspicion was his acquisition of the valley. Well, John Smith, good for you! thought Missy. It’s high time someone took up the Hurlingfords. She fell asleep smiling.

The fuss of preparation which preceded the visit of the two Marshall ladies was largely futile, a fact of which all three Missalonghi ladies were well aware. However, none of them minded the change of pace, for it had the virtues of novelty and misrule. Only the housebound Missy felt any pangs of regret, and her pangs were due to a combination of booklessness and fear that Una would think she had defected upon payment for the novel taken out last Friday.

The delicacies Missy had taken such pains to prepare were not eaten by the ladies for whom they were intended; Alicia “watched her figure”, as she phrased it, and so too these days did her mother, who wanted to cut a figure of high fashion at her daughter’s wedding. However, the goodies were not wasted upon the pigs, for later on Drusilla and Octavia gobbled them up. Though they both adored sweet things, they rarely ate them because of the additional expense.

The amount of linen displayed for Aurelia and Alicia staggered them, and after a pleasant hour spent discussing the final choices, Aurelia pressed not one but two hundred pounds into Drusilla’s reluctant hand.