Read Online The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough - Free Book Online Page B

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