I told Tom in the evening, when he was sitting in the garden with his pipe, in a good temper. You would have supposed I was announcing some dreadful domestic calamity.
"Whatever for?" he grumbled, with a most injured air. "I thought we were to be a comfortable family party, just ourselves, and no fuss at all."
"There will be no fuss," I said, "unless you make it. He is just coming in a friendly, informal manner, to fill the vacant place. If you will have Dr. Juke, there must be another man to balance the table."
"But why that man? You know Harry can't bear him since he's got so uppish about his money and his swell friends. Why not have somebody of our own class?—though I think it perfectly unnecessary to have anybody under the circumstances."
"Our own class!" I indignantly exclaimed. "I hope you don't insult your children, not to speak of me, by implying that they are not good enough for Gales to associate with?"
"They are," said Tom; "they are—and a lot too good for one Gale to associate with. But he don't think so, Polly."
"If he did not, would he do it?" was my unanswerable retort. But it is useless trying to argue with a prejudiced man who is determined not to see reason. And I felt it wise to leave him before he could draw me into a dispute.
Harry, however, was equally exasperating. He said, "Oh, then I shall make it Monday, if you don't mind. Better a dinner of herbs on washing-day in peace and comfort than a stalled ox on Sunday with Spencer Gale to spoil one's appetite and digestion for it." But Emily rebuked him on my behalf. She had but to look at him to make him do what she wished, and I suppose she thought it good policy to propitiate the future mother-in-law.
Phyllis, whom I had expected to please—for whose sake I had gone to all this trouble—was simply insolent. Alas! it is the tendency of girls in these days. Respect for parents, trust in their judgment and deference to their wishes, all the modest, dutiful ways that were the rule when I was young, seem quite to have gone out of fashion. You would have thought that she was the mother and I the daughter if you had heard how she spoke to me, and seen the superior air with which she stood over me to signify her royal displeasure.
"Oh, well, you have just gone and spoilt the whole thing—that's all."
I could have cried with mortification. But then, what's the use? It is only what wives and mothers must expect when they try to do their best for their families.
I had another struggle with her on Sunday morning. She refused to accompany us to church. She said she was not going to offer herself to Spencer Gale as a companion for a half-hour's walk—that he was quite conceited enough without that; if other girls chose to run after him and spoil him, she didn't. As ifIwould ask her to run after any man! And as if Emily or I could not have walked home with our guest! But I learned a little later what all this prudishness amounted to. When we came back from church—Emily, Lily, Spencer, and I—we found an empty drawing-room, Harry and Tom in armchairs on the verandah, and Phyllis away in the kitchen garden gathering strawberries for dessert with Dr. Juke! And I discovered that that young man had interpreted an invitation to lunch at half-past one as meaning that he should arrive punctually at twelve. Tom pretended that he had called professionally at that hour, and been persuaded to put his buggy up in our stables and remain.
"And I suppose you persuaded him?" I said, trying—because Spencer was standing by me—to keep what I felt out of my voice.
"Well, my dear," replied the fatuous man, "the truth is, he didn't want much pressing."
There are times when I feel that I could shake Tom, he is so wooden-headed and silly—though so dear.
However, Phyllis, when I called her in, greeted Spencer Gale with proper cordiality; and the whole family behaved better than I had expected they would. They seemed to lay themselves out to be pleasant all round, and to make Harry's first day downstairs a happy one. It was a delightful early-summer day—he could not have had a better—and our pretty home was looking its prettiest, for we had had nice rains that year. Phyllis had decorated the table beautifully with roses, and Jane had surpassed herself in cooking the dinner. The pig was done to a turn—I never tasted anything so delicious—and the turkey was a picture. We had our own green peas and asparagus and young potatoes, and our own cream whipped in the meringues and coffee jelly—in short, it was as good a dinner as any millionaire could wish for, and in the end everything seemed to go as I had intended it should.
Harry was no trouble at all. I purposely put him at his father's end of the table, with Emily between him and Juke, to pacify him; and, with his young lady at his side and Spencer as far off as possible, the dear boy was as gay and good-tempered as could be, quite the life of the party. Spencer sat between me and Phyllis, and she really seemed to devote herself to him. I was surprised to see how little fear she evidently had of appearing to throw herself at his head, like the other girls; she chattered and joked to him—the prettiest colour and animation in her face—and hardly glanced at Juke opposite, who, for his part, confined his attentions to his neighbours, Miss Blount and me, and was particularly unobtrusive and quiet.
As for Spencer Gale, he was most interesting in his descriptions of what he had seen and done during his recent European travels; it was quite an education to listen to him. I was particularly pleased that he was so ready to talk on this subject, because I hate to have the children grow up narrow-minded and provincial, ignorant of the world outside their colony. It has been the dream of my life to take them home and give them advantages, and I have never been able to realise it. I could not help thinking, as that young man discoursed of Paris and Venice and all the rest of it, what a delightful honeymoon his bride might have! And so she did, as it turned out, no great while afterwards.
Harry yawned and fidgeted, for sitting long in one position tired him; so Tom and Juke carried him to a cane lounge on the verandah before the rest of us had had dessert. I was annoyed with Phyllis for running out to get pillows, which were already there, and for not returning when she had made her brother comfortable. Emily had the grace to remain at table, and of course Lily stayed also. She is a most intelligent child, voracious for information of all sorts; and she plied our guest with so many questions, and amused him so much by her interest in his adventures, that she made him forget the strawberries on his plate and how time was going—forgetting herself that the poor servants were wanting to clear away so that they might get out for their Sunday walk.
At last he finished, and I led the way to the verandah, where I expected to find the others. But only Harry and his father were there, the boy looking rather fagged and inclined to doze, and Tom—who has no manners—placidly sucking at his pipe.
"Why, where is Phyllis?" I inquired.
"Kitchen," said Harry promptly, opening his eyes.
"And the doctor?"
"Gone off to a patient."
"Then," said I, "come and let me show you my roses, Mr. Gale;" and I took his arm. I thought it a good opportunity to have a little quiet talk with him on my own account. Afterwards I remembered that my husband and son watched us rather anxiously as we sauntered off into the garden, but I did not notice it at the time. It never crossed my mind that they could deliberately conspire to deceive me.
I had had the garden tidied, and, in the first flush of the summer bloom, it looked really beautiful—although I say it. I would not have been ashamed to show it to the Queen herself. And our rustic cottage, that we had continually been adding to and improving ever since it came, a mere shanty, into our hands, was a study for a painter, with the yellow banksia in perfection, quite hiding the framework of the verandah. I halted my companion on the front lawn, at the prettiest point of view.
"A humble little place," I remarked; "but I think I may say for it, without undue vanity, that it looks like the home of gentlefolks."
He followed my gaze, and fixed his eyes upon the particular window which I informed him belonged to Phyllis's room.
"What's she doing?" he inquired bluntly. He could not conceal his impatience for her return.
I told him that, in the case of so variously useful a person, it was impossible to say. I had no doubt she was attending to housekeeping matters, which she never neglected for her own amusement. Then I threw out a feeler or two, to test him—to learn, if possible, something of his tastes and character; it was necessary, for her sake, to do so. And I was delighted to find that he shared my opinion of the colonial girl as a type, and agreed with me that the term "unprotected female" should in these days be altered to "unprotected male," seeing that it was the women who did all the courting, and the men who were exposed to masked batteries, as it were, at every turn.
"A fellow's never safe till he's married," said the poor boy, doubtless speaking from painful experience. "And not then."
"That depends," said I. "There are people—I know plenty—who, having married dolls like those we have been speaking of, find themselves far indeed from being safe; but choose a good, modest, clever, loving girl, who has been well brought up—one devoted to her home and unspoiled by a vulgar society—and it is quite another pair of shoes, as my husband would say. By the way, askhimwhat he thinks of marriage for young men."
"I don't know that I want to ask anybody anything," he returned, a little irritably—for Phyllis was still invisible—"except to leave me alone to do as I like. I don't believe in having wives selected for me, Mrs. Braye; I'm always telling my mother and sisters that, and they won't pay the least attention. I think a fellow might be allowed to please himself, especially a fellow in my position."
"Certainly," I said, with all the emphasis I could command. "Mostcertainly. That is my own view exactly. I have always said that, in respect of my own children, I would never force or thwart them in any way. I chose the one I loved, regardless of wealth or poverty, and they shall do the same. More than that," I added gaily, "I am going to be the most charming mother-in-law that ever was! I shall quite redeem the character. I will never attempt to interfere with my children's households—never bede trop—never—oh! Why, there she is!"
We were turning into a quiet path between tall shrubs—the fatal place where, as I was told, Harry had been entrapped—and I suddenly saw the gleam of a white dress in a little bower at the end of it. At the same moment I saw—so did Spencer Gale—a thing that petrified us both. I was struck speechless, but his emotion forced him to hysteric laughter.
"I'm afraid," said he, recovering himself, "that we arede tropthis time, at any rate."
"Not at all," I retorted, also rallying my self-command. "Not at all. We don't have anything of that sort in this family."
But the facts were too palpable; it was useless pretending to ignore them. Phyllis jumped out of the arbour, like an alarmed bird out of its nest, and came strolling towards us, affecting a nonchalant air, but with a face the colour of beetroot with confusion; and that unspeakable doctor, who had caused her so to forget herself, strutted at her side, twirling the tip of his moustache and endeavouring to appear as if he had not been kissing her, but looking all the time the very image of detected guilt.
It is not necessary to state that Spencer Gale left immediately, and never darkened our doors again. When, a little later, I had it out with Phyllis, she declared, with a toss of the head, that she wouldn't have taken him if there had been no other marriageable man living—that there was only one husband for her, whom she intended to have whether we liked it or not, even if she were forced to wait for him till she was an old woman. I have often regretted that I did not control myself better, but she, who had no excuse for violence, behaved like a perfect lunatic. She went so far as to say she would never forgive me for the insults I had heaped upon one—meaning Edmund Juke—who had no equal in the universe, and who had saved her brother's life. Of course she did not mean it—and I did not mean it—and we forgave each other long ago; but I never hear the name of Spencer Gale without the memory of that interview coming back to me, like a bitter taste in the mouth.
He married about the same time as she did—a significant circumstance! They say that he lost his boom money when the boom burst, and that he drinks rather badly, and makes domestic scandals of various kinds. If he does, it is no more than one might have expected, considering the provocation. It is all very well for my family to repeat these tales to his discredit, and then point to Edmund Juke in Collins Street gradually climbing to the top of his profession; they think this is sufficient to prove that they were always Solomons of wisdom, and I a fool of the first magnitude. It does not occur to them that if some things had been different, all things would have been different. The one man would never have fallen into low habits if he had had Phyllis for his wife, and the other would never have risen so high if he had not had her. That is how I look at it. And as for material prosperity, no one could have foreseen how things were going to turn out, and luck is like the rain that falls on the just and on the unjust—it comes to the people who don't deserve it quite as often as to those who do.
For my part, I pay no heed to malicious gossip. There are always envious persons ready and anxious to pull down those who are placed above them; if they cannot find a legitimate pretext, they invent one. I see for myself that he still lives in his beautiful Kew house, that his wife still leads the fashion at every important social function and drives the finest turn-out in Melbourne; that does not look as if they were so very poor. And if onecouldforgive infidelities in a married man, it would be in the case of one tied to a painted creature who evidently cares for nothing but display and admiration—to have her photograph flaunted in the public streets, and herself surrounded by a crowd of so-called smart people, flattering her vanity for the sake of her husband's position. He may have a handsome establishment, but he cannot have ahome.So who can wonder if he seeks comfort elsewhere, and flies to the bottle to drown his grief? It would have been very, very different if my beautiful Phyllis had been at the head of affairs.
However, if she is satisfied, it is not for me to say a word.
Emily went to her school in Melbourne, and I had to get another governess for Lily. She was a horrid woman. I stood her for one quarter, and then packed her off; and we had to pay her for six months, because she threatened to sue us for breach of contract. The next that I procured was a clever person enough, and not wanting in good manners, but she ordered the servants about as if the house belonged to her, and of course they resented it. So did I. Emily's gentle unobtrusiveness had spoiled us for ways of that sort. Moreover, Miss Scott was terribly severe upon Lily; the child was always in tears over lessons that were too hard for her. I did not believe in overstraining a growing girl, and ventured to remonstrate now and then on her behalf; but Miss Scott was quite above taking advice from her elders and betters—as good as asked me to mind my own business, or, at any rate, to allow her to know hers. So I thought it best to make a change.
And then I was deceived by false representations into engaging a widow lady, who had seen better days. She was recommended to me as an experienced teacher, having held situations in high families before her marriage; and I naturally supposed that one who had been a mother herself would be a safer guide for a young girl than one who had not. But words cannot describe what a wretch that woman was. There is something about widows—I don't know what it is—something that seems almost improper—especially those that are by way of being young and pretty, like Mrs. Underwood, though she was all forty, if she was a day, in spite of her baby airs and graces and her butter-yellow hair. She had the audacity to try and flirt with Tom, under cover of her pathetic stories of her lost husband and children, and those better days that were a pure invention; and he was too idiotically stupid—that is, too innocent and simple-minded—to see what was so glaringly transparent to everybody else. He used to think her an ill-used woman and pity her, and think me hard and unfeeling because I didn't. Oh, never will I have a widow about my house again! She entirely destroyed our domestic peace. Things came to such a pass, indeed, that Tom even threatened—seriously, and not in a joke—to get out his captain's certificate and return to sea, because his home, that had always been so happy, had become unbearable.
She went at last, and then I felt that I had had enough of governesses. Determined that I would never undergo such misery again, and at the same time strongly objecting to boarding-schools for girls, there was nothing for it but to superintend Lily's general studies myself, and take her into town for special lessons. I did not like the job, and found her very tiresome and disheartening; she seemed to mope, all alone, and would not interest herself in anything. A girl in these days is never satisfied with her mother for a companion, and after a time, when the Jukes were settled in their Melbourne house, I was glad to let her go on long visits to her sister. There she found plenty to occupy and amuse her, while I sat solitary at home, working for them both.
For I had no children left when she was away. The difficulty of the governess was not the only trouble that resulted from Emily's desertion of me. Harry also forsook the nest. He said it was inconvenient to live so far from his office, though he had never thought of that while she was with us, and that it would be better for business reasons to have a lodging in town. I did not attempt to thwart him. And so, as soon as he was strong enough to return to regular work—so valued was he by the shipping firm which employed him that they had kept his situation open during his illness—he took himself and a new bicycle to a stuffy Melbourne suburb, where he would be in the way of meeting his beloved frequently at the houses of her friends.
I wanted to settle in Melbourne too, to be near them all. But our little place was our own—a valuable property, yet unsaleable in these bad times—and Tom said we could not afford it. Besides, I knew he would be miserable cooped up in streets, and lost without his pigs and vegetable garden.
Thus we felt ourselves stranded on the shore while our young ones put to sea—deserted in our old age—which, after all, is the common fate. Only we were not in our old age, either of us. I have not a grey hair in my head, even now, and have more than once been taken for Phyllis's elder sister. On the day that she was married, when I wore pale heliotrope relieved with white, I overheard old Captain Saunders—and a man of eighty ought to be a judge—say to Mr. Welshman, "She's a pretty girl, but her mother can beat her." And I should like to see the man of forty who is the equal of what my husband was at fifty-five—or is at his "present-day" age, which comes to little more. Tom is stout certainly, but only in a dignified and commanding fashion; he can out-do Harry in feats of strength, and his fine, bronzed face, with those keen blue eyes in it, has a power of manliness that kings might envy. For the matter of that, kings are not nearly so much of kings as he was accustomed to being on board his ships. I know the lady passengers made themselves ridiculous by the way they scrambled for his notice and a seat beside him at the saloon table.
To people like Mrs. Underwood, though she was really my contemporary, I may seem verypassée—no doubt I do—and a perfect granny to the children, who regard youth and beauty as solely the prerogatives of bread-and-butter misses in their teens; but—as Captain Saunders's remark indicated—I am not too old to charm where I want to charm. No, indeed; nor ever shall be—to one person, at all events. When Tom and I woke up on our silver wedding morning and kissed each other, did we not know what love meant as much and more than we had ever done, without needing Juke and Phyllis, and Harry and his Emily to teach us? I should think so, indeed! It seems to me that itrequiresthe fulness of many years, fatherhood and motherhood in all stages and phases, innumerable steps of painful experience climbed together, to bring us to the perfect comprehension of love—the best love—that love in the lore of which those children, who think themselves so knowing, are mere beginners, with the alphabet to learn.
And this, by the way—it has just this moment occurred to me—is the kernel of the woman question, which seems so vastly complicated. Why, it is as simple as it can possibly be. The whole thing is in a nutshell. Those advocates and defenders of this and that, arguing so passionately and inconclusively at such interminable length—how silly they are! You have one set of people raving for female suffrage and equal rights and liberties with tyrant man; you have another set of people storming at them for thus ignoring the intentions of Nature, the interests of the house and family. The intentions of Nature, indeed! The house and family! When millions of poor women are old maids who haven't chosen to be so!—who, of course,couldnot choose to be so, unless physiologically defective in some way or another. Poor, poor things! They don't want equal rights with man, but equal rights with the lower animals. As they don't know what they miss, they may be forgiven for the way they speak of it in their books and speeches; but if they had it—if all had it who by nature are entitled to it—there would be no more woman question. I am quite convinced of that. Nature's intentions would then really be fulfilled, and the other troubles of the case, all secondary and contingent, would vanish. Of course they would. Man is not a tyrant, bless him! The child is the only tyrant—the legitimate power that keeps woman in her place.
But, oh, how much that child does cost us! We give all freely, and would give a thousand times more if we had it to give, for it is the most precious of human privileges—the thing we really live for, though it is inconvenient to admit it; but we pay with heart's blood, from the beginning to the end. We pay so much and so constantly that it often seems to me that the poor childless ones, undeveloped and inexperienced, who cannot know the great joys of life, are also exempt from all sorrow that is worthy of the name.
Baby-rearing, absorbingly interesting though it be, is really a terrible business; and the fewer the babies the worse it is. You hardly know what it means to have a night's rest for dread of the ever-recurring epidemics that so fatally ravage the nurseries of this country. Day and night you have the shadow of the clinical thermometer, your sword of Damocles, hanging over you, and are afraid to breathe lest you should bring it down. Then, when this hair-whitening strain begins to slacken a little and you think you are going to have an easy time, the children that are now able to take care of themselves utterly refuse to do so. Your girl goes wet-footed with a light heart, and you never see a telegraph messenger coming to the house without expecting to hear that your boy at school has broken his arm at football or his neck bird's-nesting. They follow their mischievous devices, and you can't help it; you can only cluck and fuss like a futile hen running round the pond in which her brood of ducklings is splashing. That's worse than baby-rearing, because you can at least do what you like with a baby.
And then, when you pride yourself on having successfully got through the long struggle, and you tell yourself that now they are going to be a help and a comfort to you at last, off they go to the first stranger who beckons to them, and think no more about you than of an old nurse who has served her purpose—probably turning round to point out the errors you have committed, and to show you how much better you would have done if you had taken their advice. And that is worst of all.
No trouble that I had had with mine, while they were with me, equalled the trouble of being without them, especially on the silver wedding morning, when I had, as it were, the field of my married life before me; when I felt that a golden harvest was my due, and beheld a ravaged garden with all its flowers plucked. It was my own fault that no letters of congratulation came by the first post; I had purposely refrained from reminding the children of the approaching anniversary, just to see if they would remember it, and they had been too full of their own concerns to give it a thought. Afterwards they scolded me for not telling them, and were very repentant. I had no present either—that is, not on the day. Tom had given me a silverentréedish, and I had given him a silver-mounted claret-jug; but we had made our purchases a week too soon, and had been unable to keep the matter secret from each other. It was a wet morning, and I, being the first downstairs, was greeted with the smell of burnt porridge in the kitchen. I thought it too bad of Jane to let such a thing happen on such an occasion, and a hardship that rain should be running like tears down the breakfast-room window panes when I so particularly wanted to be cheered. It was April, the month of broken weather, and leaves were falling thickly on the beds and paths outside. I surveyed the dripping prospect, and noted how impossible it was to keep the weeds down, with the summer-warmed earth so moist; and I turned back into the room to see a late-lit fire fading on the hearth, and the children's empty chairs against the wall.
Well, I sat down behind the two lonely tea-cups and bowed my head on the table, on the point of tears—feeling that I too was a denuded autumn tree, an outworn woman who had had her day. And then, before I could get out my handkerchief, Tom came in.
He kicked two logs together, and the dying fire sprang to life; he opened a window, and the freshest and sweetest morning air poured in, sprinkled with a gentle shower and hinting at coming sunshine.
"What a lovely day we've got, eh, Polly? What a beautiful rain! This'll bring the grass on, and make the land splendid for ploughing, hey? What's the matter, old girl? Missing the children? Oh, well, they're happy; we've nothing to fret about on their account—nor on our own either—and that's more than most people can say on their silver wedding morning. Porridge spoilt? Oh, that's no matter—we have something better than porridge. Here, Jane! Jane! Bring in the you know what, if you've got 'em ready."
Jane came in, smiling, with the newentréedish in her hands. Tom watched it with gleeful eyes, and assisted to place it on the table. It was his little surprise for me—mushrooms, to which I am extravagantly partial—the first of the season. He had gone to Melbourne the day before to buy them, and it was her absorption in the task of cooking them delicately which had caused Jane to neglect the porridge—Tom's first course at every breakfast.
"There" said he, as he lifted the shining lid. He was as pleased as a boy with his plot and itsdénouement.
"Oh, youprecious!" I responded; and the gratitude he expected brought tears to my eyes. "No oneeverhad such a husband as mine!"
He beamed complacently, and sat down beside me, inconveniently close. With his arm round my waist, he helped me to pour out the coffee, and spilled it on the cloth; he fed me with the best of the mushrooms and morsels of beef steak, and wiped gravy from my lips with his own napkin. He seemed to feel that I needed some extra comfort to make up for the children's absence, though he said repeatedly that it was only fitting we should have our wedding-day, whether gold, silver, or pewter, to ourselves.
"As for you," he said, "I declare you don't look a day older than when I married you, Polly. Oh, well, a little fuller in the figure, perhaps; but that's an improvement. Old Saunders is quite right—you can beat the young girls still."
I told him he could beat the young men in the making of pretty speeches, and I pretended not to believe his flatteries; but I knew that he meant every word he said, being the sincerest of men. And my spirits rose by leaps and bounds, until I felt even younger than I looked, and like a real bride once more, just as if those strenuous intermediate years had dropped out of the calendar. The barometer was rising too. Before we had finished our mushrooms the rain had all passed off, and the sun was shining on a clean and fragrant earth. Everything outside glittered and shimmered. It was a thoroughly bridal morning, after all.
"And now, what shall we do?" my husband inquired, having lit his pipe and taken a rapid glance over the newspaper. "We must do something to celebrate the day. What shall it be?"
"It doesn't much matter what, so long as we do it together," was my reply. "But I think I should like to go out somewhere, shouldn't you? It is going to be the perfection of weather."
"Oh, we'll go out, of course. We'll have a day's sight-seeing, and our lunch in town. Let's see"—we studied the "Amusements" column, as we had so often seen the children do—"there's the Cyclorama; we have never seen the Cyclorama yet, and I'm told it's splendid."
"And it is years since we were at the Picture Gallery," I remarked. "There must be dozens of pictures there that we have never seen."
"We might go to the Zoölogical Gardens. If there was one thing more than another that I was fond of as a boy it was a wild beast show. They feed them at four o'clock."
"Yes, and the seals at the Aquarium too. I remember seeing the seals fed at Exhibition time. It was most interesting."
"And they've got Deeming at the Waxworks, Harry says——"
"Oh, Tom—waxworks! However, I don't see why we shouldn't go to waxworks if we feel inclined. We are free agents. There is nobody to criticise us now."
I began to feel that it was really almost a relief to be without the children, just for once in a way. Children are so dreadfully severe and proper in their views of what fathers and mothers ought to do.
"Well, go and get your things on," said my husband, "while I have a look round outside."
He dashed off to see that pigs and fowls were fed, and the boy started on his day's work; and I ran into the kitchen to tell Jane not to cook anything, and upstairs to change my dress and put on my best bonnet. In our haste to make the most of our holiday, we frisked about like young dogs let off the chain. It did not matter how undignified it looked, since there was nobody to laugh at us.
Before ten o'clock we were off, and before eleven we were in Melbourne, sliding up Collins Street on a tram dummy, on our way to the Cyclorama. The Picture Gallery had been set down as a first item of the programme—it opened at ten, and one had the place to one's self during the forenoon—but afterwards we put it at the bottom of the list, and finally struck it out altogether. Our feeling was that we could do pictures at any time—pictures were things young people would thoroughly approve of as an amusement for parents—but that we could not always do exactly as we liked. So we went to the Cyclorama first, and were so intensely interested that we stayed there nearly an hour. We had read of the battle of Waterloo in our school books, but never realised it in the least; now we were like eye-witnesses of the fight, and the whole thing was clear to us. A soldier amongst the spectators pointed out a number of mistakes in the arrangements of troops and guns, but we did not understand them, and did not want to; indeed, we would not listen to him. We moved round and round in our dark watch-tower to the quiet places, and gazed over the far-stretching fields with more delight than our first peep-show at an English fair had given us. The illusion of distance was so complete that it corrected all crudities of detail, and we simply lost ourselves in the romance of the past and our own imaginations.
"Never saw anything so wonderful in my life," said Tom, as at last we tore ourselves away. "I seem to smell that chateau burning, and to hear those poor chaps groaning with their wounds. I'm glad we went, aren't you, Polly?"
I truthfully replied that I was very glad indeed, and we emerged into the street, and he hailed a passing tram. Again we took our places on the dummy, that we might see and feel as much of the bright day as possible. Melbourne was still gay and busy, in spite of gloomy commercial forecasts, and the weather was all that a perfect autumn morning could make it. The sun shone now with an evident intention to continue doing so till bed-time, and we basked in it on the dummy seat like two cats.
"What shall we do next?" asked Tom, consulting his watch. "It is not near lunch-time yet. We must get an appetite for the sort of meal I mean to have to-day."
Before we could make up our minds what to do next, the tram had carried us into Burke Street, and lo! there was the temple of the waxworks staring us in the face. Tom signalled the conductor, and we jumped off, hand in hand, and without a word made our way to the door of the show which we had heard even young children speak of as beneath contempt—only fit for bloodthirsty schoolboys of the lower orders and louts from the country who knew no better.
Well, we were from the country; and, whatever the artistic shortcomings of this exhibition, it had the charm of novelty at any rate. Neither of us had been to waxworks since we were taken as infants to Madame Tussaud's. This was a far cry from Madame Tussaud's, but I must confess that it amused us very well for half an hour. The effigies were full of humour, and the instruments of torture in the chamber of horrors very real and creepy. Also there were some relics of old colonial days that were decidedly interesting. In short, we did not feel that we had wasted time and two shillings when we had gone through the place, though we pretended to have done so, laughing at each other, saying, "How silly we are!"
"Well, let's be silly," said Tom, at last. "There's no law against that, that I know of."
"None whatever," I gaily responded. "There's nobody to——"
"Hush!" he exclaimed, interrupting what I was going to say with a sharp snatch at my arm. We were just leaving the waxworks, and he pulled me back within the door.
"What's the matter?" I cried, bewildered by his sudden action and tone of alarm.
"Come back—come back!" he whispered excitedly. "For Heaven's sake, don't let her see us!"
"Who? who?"
He pointed to the street, and I had a momentary glimpse of our daughter Phyllis going by in her husband's buggy. Edmund, in his tall town hat, which glittered in the sun, was driving her himself; she sat beside him under her parasol, calm, matronly, dignified, a model of all propriety. How would she have looked if she had seen her mother coming out of the waxworks? It was quite a shock to think of it.
"She has been shopping," said Tom casually, "and Ted's been out after patients, and has picked her up, sending the groom home. It isn't every Collins Street doctor who'd let his wife be seen with him in the professional vehicle. Ted's a good fellow and a first-rate husband. We have a lot to be thankful for, Polly."
"We have," I assented, drawing a long breath of relief. For the moment I was most thankful that my dear girl, whom I had so yearned for, was out of sight. The coast was clear, and we sallied forth once more in pursuit of our own devices. Being still not quite as hungry as Tom desired, we strolled around the block and looked in at the shop windows—the florists, the milliners, the photographers.
"Do you remember," said Tom, as we gazed upon a galaxy of Melbourne beauties smiling down upon the street, "how we had our likenesses taken in our wedding clothes?"
"And, oh, such clothes!" I interjected. "A flounced skirt over a crinoline, a spoon bonnet——"
"It was the image of you, my dear, and I wouldn't part with that picture for the world. I say, let's go and be done now. I'd like a memento of this day, to look at when the golden wedding comes. Just as you are, in that nice tailor tweed—in your prime, Polly."
I told him it was nonsense, but he would have it. The people said they would be ready for us at 2.30, and when we had had an immense lunch, and were both looking red and puffy after it, we were photographed together, like any pair of cheap trippers—I sitting in an attitude, with my head screwed round, he standing over me, with a hand on my shoulder. The result may now be seen in a handsome frame on his smoking-room mantelpiece; He thinks it beautiful.
After the operation we had a cup of tea in the nearest restaurant, and by that time it was too late to think of the Zoölogical Gardens, which closed at five, and required a whole day to reveal all their treasures. But we thought we might be in time to see the seals fed, and so took tram again for the Exhibition building. As we entered the Aquarium through the green gloom of the Fernery, we heard the creatures barking, and saw the keeper walking towards the tanks with his basket of fish. We were in good time, and there was no great crowd to-day, so that we could stand close to the iron bars and see all the tricks of the man and the beasts, which were unspeakably funny. I don't know when I have laughed so much as I laughed that afternoon. And Tom was just as much amused as I was.
But when the last fish had been thrown and caught, and we sat down on a bench to rest for a minute, he fell suddenly silent, and I thought he appeared a little tired.
"I know what it is," I said, looking at him. "You are just dying for a pipe."
"No," he answered; "at least, not particularly. But I'll tell you what I do seem to long for, Polly, and that's a sight of blue water. Looking at those creatures diving and splashing somehow reminds me of it. I haven't seen the sea for months."
"Oh, you poor boy!" I exclaimed, jumping up. "Why didn't you say so at first—at the beginning of the day? I never once thought of it. Of course we ought to have been beside the sea on our silver wedding-day—the sea that married us in the beginning—or else on it. Let us get down to Swanston Street at once, and take a St. Kilda tram. There is time to reach the pier before the sun goes down, and we can stay there till dark, and dine at the Esplanade. It will be a nice long ride, and you can have your pipe on the dummy as we go."
"All right," he said, with renewed alacrity. "Mind you, Polly, I couldn't have enjoyed the day more than I have done, so far as it has gone; but a sniff of brine to top up with will just make it perfect."
So we had our sniff of brine. It took three-quarters of an hour to get it, but the drive was delightful in the fresh evening air; the rain had laid the dust of that dustiest of Melbourne roads, and C-spring barouches are not easier to travel in than the cable tramcars on it. Tom had the comfort of his pipe, allowable on the dummy; and the scent of his good tobacco, which the breeze carried from me, was a scent I loved for its associations' sake. When we got to St. Kilda the sun was low; no effect of atmosphere and sea water could have been more lovely. It was only bay water, to be sure, but it was salt, and it sufficed. We called in at the hotel to order our dinner, and walked down and out to the end of the pier, and sat there silently until the ruddy full moon rose. At night, when all was white and shining, we returned there and sat for an hour more, hand in hand.
"What it must be," said Tom, soliloquising, "outside!"
"Ah-h!" I sighed deeply. The same thought had been in both our minds all through the silence which he had broken with his remark. If he had not made it, I should have done so. In imagination we were "outside" together, as in our youth; the scent of sea in the brisk air had acted on us like the familiar touch of a mesmerist on a subject long surrendered to his power; the nostalgia of the seafarer, the sea-lover—which is a thing no other person can understand—had taken hold of us; it was as if some long silent mother-voice called to us across the bay, "Come home, come home!"
Near us, sheltered in the angle of the pier, a bunch of sail boats tugged gently at their ropes; the flopping, squelching sound made by the run of the tide between and under them was sweet in our ears, like an old song. A little way off some yachts of the local club lay each at its own moorings, a hull and a bare pole, ink-black on the shining water. Tom was no yachtsman, of course; he even had a contempt for the modern egg-shell craft, all sail and spar, in which the young men out of the shops and offices raced for cups on summer Saturdays; they were as children's toys in his estimation. But a boat is a boat, and, feeling as I did, and thinking of the remark he had made in the Aquarium, and how I had unaccountably forgotten what we ought to have done on our silver wedding-day, I said—
"Why shouldn't we have a silver honeymoon, and spend it at sea?"
Though he did not answer at once, and though his face was turned from me towards an incoming steamer, a distant streak of shadow sprinkled with lights, that he was trying to identify, I knew that he jumped straight at the suggestion with all his heart.
"Hm-m," he mused; "ha-hm-m. That's not a bad idea of yours, Polly. I daresay it might be done, if you think you'd like it. We have no children to tie us at home—Harry would keep an eye on the pigs and things—it would do us all the good in the world—by Jove, yes!" He sat erect and alert. "Why, the very thought of it makes me feel twenty years younger. I don't see why we shouldn't have a silver honeymoon while we are about it. But what sort of a trip do you fancy? Portland and Warrnambool? Tasmania? New Zealand? I'm afraid Europe is a bit too large an order."
"Nothing of that sort at all," I urged; "but something that we can do all by ourselves, without being interfered with." I pointed to the boats near us. "A yachting cruise to some of the places I have never seen, if you could find a strong, homely sort of yacht, with bulwarks and a cabin in it. Perhaps a hired man or two—yes, that would even give us greater freedom—if there was a place for them to sleep in away from us."
I enlarged upon my idea, while he listened and nodded, proposing amendments here and there; then he jumped up in his resolute way, lifting me with him.
"Let us get home and to bed," said he, "and I'll be up first thing in the morning to see about it. We must save this weather and the moon—the honeymoon, Polly."
We bustled back to town. And whom should we meet in the tram but an old brother salt, who knew exactly what we wanted and where it was to be had—a stout, yawl-rigged craft with something beside lead keel under water, not too smart to look at, but able to travel, and warranted safe "outside" as no ordinary pleasure yacht could be. One day sufficed to stock this vessel with our requirements, and on the morning of the next we set sail, with one quiet man for crew, and a minute dinghy behind us, bound for no port in particular, and to no programme—determined to be free for once, if we never were again. The children thought us quite silly, naturally. I believe Harry felt it something of a hardship to have to give up Emily's society occasionally for the sake of the pigs, and I am sure, though I did not hear them, that Phyllis and Lily made remarks on their poor dear mother's erratic fancies, and the way poor father gave in to them. Phyllis took the opportunity of my absence to "settle up the house," as she called it—meaning my house, and that matters there had fallen into a sad state since she had ceased to superintend them.
But we were emancipated now. We were out of school. I was able to wear—what they had considered inappropriate for years—a hat to keep off the hot sea sunshine, which burns old faces as badly as young ones; and I could fish, and paddle barefoot, and sing, and talk nonsense to Tom to my heart's content, with no sense of appearing ridiculous or undignified to anybody. The crew was an old Bendigo hand, about the age of my father, devoted to us both; and Tom was like a boy again, with the tiller in his hand. What ages it was since he had steered a sailing boat, of any sort or size! Yet even I could tell the difference in a moment, as soon as he took the helm. Not only did he make the yawl do exactly what he wanted, but he seemed to know exactly whatshewanted as well. It was the same sort of sympathy as that between a perfect rider and a horse that thoroughly understands and trusts him. Some people—good seamen in everything else—can never steer like that, although they may have been a lifetime at it. It is an instinct, like good riding, inherited and not acquired. Tom's people had been sailors since the Battle of the Nile.
How hedidlove it, to be sure! Andwhata holiday that was! We had our little discomforts of various kinds, and I was seasick for a night and seedy all the day afterwards; but these trifles were of no account in the sum of our vast enjoyment, and cannot even be remembered now. Looking back on that cruise—that last cruise—perhaps the very last in life—it is one idyllic dream, simply. I find it hard to believe that it could have happened in such a prosaic world.
I daresay that much of the fairyland feeling was due to weather. There is no weather on earth like Australian weather for making holiday in—that is, when it is good. What fell to us on this memorable occasion was as good as good could be—fine and fresh by day, calm and beautiful by night, with various effects of moonlight, each sweeter than the rest. The beginnings of the days were the best of them, perhaps. We went to bed betimes—in that not too spacious chamber of ours between the big and the little masts—and so were ready to see the sunrise, to bathe ourselves in the clean, sharp, early morning air, to set about clearing up the cabin, airing the mattresses on deck, frying the eggs and bacon or newly caught fish, and cooking the coffee over the spirit stove, before the land people were astir, every vein in our bodies thrilling to the salt breeze, tingling with health, and our appetites keen as razors. Later, we would visit the shore for provisions, for newspapers, for a hotel meal, to send inquiring telegrams to our family and await replies, to amuse ourselves with a ramble in the bush or through the bay watering-places whose summer season had ebbed away from them. Later still, I lay prone on deck, snoozing over a novel, while Tom and the crew sailed the boat, and smoked, and talked shop in contented growls, a couple of sentences at a time. Then tea, and washing up, and the fishing lines got out; and the sweet twilight that, when it became darkness, was too cold to sit in; and the lamp lit in the little cabin—yawns—bed—the stirless sleep of nerves at peace and digestion in perfect order.
It was almost the same "outside" as in—not a cat's-paw squall molested us. There was sea enough for good sea-sailing, but not enough to wet me or my little house below—not till we got to Warrnambool, where, being weather-bound for a day or two, we had the joy of seeing great breakers again. They thundered on the rocky shore like cannons going off; they flung foam over the breakwater; they would not let the Flinders come in. We sat on a brown boulder a whole morning and a whole afternoon to look at and listen to them, as one would listen to some archangel of a Paderewski.
Ah me, how happy we were! The second honeymoon, like the second wedding-day, was miles better than the first. We married for love, if two people ever did, not having fifty pounds between us, but my old bridegroom was a truer lover than my young one. He said the same of his old bride. We were like travellers that have climbed to a noble mountain-top and sit down to rest and survey the arduous road by which they came—all rosy in the bloom of sunset—and the poor things still struggling up, not seeing what they head for. I never had such a rest in my life before, and we had never, in all our twenty-five years of dear companionship, been at such perfect peace together. There was only one little cloud, and that passed in a moment. Tom said—it was a mere thoughtless jest, for he did not mean to be unkind—that our divine tranquillity was due to there being no person near for me to be jealous of. I ought to have laughed at such an obviously absurd remark, but I am dreadfully sensitive to anything like injustice, and was foolish enough to feel hurt that he could say such a thing, even in fun.Ijealous! I may have my faults—nobody is perfect in this world—but at least I cannot be justly accused of condescending to petty ones of that sort.
"Good-morning, Grandmamma!"
I was in my kitchen after breakfast, seeing about the dinner—calmly slicing French beans, because it was Monday morning and Jane was helping the washwoman—when I was suddenly accosted in this extraordinary way. With a jump that might have caused me to cut my fingers, I turned my head, and there in the doorway stood my son-in-law, Edmund Juke, panting from his bicycle, and grinning idiotically, as if he had said something very funny. By what he had said, and by the expression of his face, and by seeing him miles away from his consulting-room at that hour of the day, I knew, of course, what had happened. My heart was in my mouth.
"What—what—you don't say—not really?" I gasped, scattering the beans, cut and uncut, together about the floor as I sprang to meet him. "Why, it isn't nearly time yet!"
"Oh yes, it is," said he. "Everything is all right. The finest boy you ever saw, and she doing as well as possible. I would not let any one but myself bring you the good news, Mater dear"—and here he kissed me, more affectionately than usual—"ill as I could spare the time. I knew you'd be easier in your mind, too——"
"But I amnoteasy in my mind," I broke in, excessively concerned about my child, and beginning to see that I had not been fairly treated in the matter. "I am quite sure it is premature, whatever you may say. Phyllis distinctly gave me to understand that it was a month off, at least. Otherwise should I be here?"
"It is an easy thing to make mistakes about, as you know. I can assure you there is nothing wrong in any way. You must allow a medical man—two medical men, for Errington attended her—to be the judge of that," said he, with the airs a young doctor gives himself when he has begun to make a name.
I was indeed thankful to hear him say so, but still I could not quite understand it. I wondered if it were possible—but no, it could not be! The cruel suspicion having entered my mind, however, I felt obliged to speak of it.
"I am not to suppose, am I, that Phylliswishedto deceive her own mother—and on such a point?"
Edmund at once replied, stormily, that I was certainly not to suppose any such preposterous thing; but he protested over much, I thought, and grew red in the face as he did so. I thought it not improbable thathehad suggested my being put off the scent—he, who seemed to have known just when the baby was to be expected; afterwards I was sure of it. My own dear girl would have been incapable of such an idea.
I asked Edmund the hour at which the event had taken place. He said at a little before three that morning. It was now between nine and ten—as I pointed out. He said they had all been glad of a little sleep after their excitement, and that he had come as soon as he could get away. He had also ridden at racing pace, averaging I don't know how many miles an hour. No, the buggy would not have been quicker, even with a pair, and he had wanted his wheel for refreshment and exercise. Of course he could not take me back on it, but there was no hurry about that. He had left Phyllis sleeping as soundly as a top, and the longer she was undisturbed the better.
"Certainly," I said, with rigid face and shaking heart. "And it is right that I should be there to see that she is undisturbed. I ought to have been therehoursago, Edmund, and I can'tthinkwhy you did not send for me—her own mother—the veryfirstperson who should have been informed."
He began to make all sorts of lame excuses.
"You see, Mater dear, the telegraph offices are not open on Sundays."
"Was it Sunday? So long ago as yesterday? And where were the buggy and the bicycle—not to speak of the trains?"
"The buggy and the bicycle were there, but I had to send the groom hunting for Errington, and of course I could not leave her myself. There was not a soul to take a message to you, Mater dear. Besides, there was no earthly use in giving you an upset for nothing. We soon saw that everything was going on beautifully—otherwise, ofcourse, you would have been fetched at once—and so we thought you might as well be spared all the worry—you would have worried frightfully, you know—and that we would give you a pleasant surprise when it was all over. And now you don't seem half grateful to us for being so thoughtful about you."
He laughed at this poor joke. I could not laugh. My heart was too full.
"Poor, poor,poorgirl!" I passionately exclaimed. "To face that trial for the first time—terrified to death, naturally——"
"Oh dear, no," he interposed, in his flippant way. "I am proud to inform you that Phyllis conducted herself like a perfect lady. She was as calm as possible."
"How can you tell how calm she was?" I thundered at him. "You know nothing about it, though you are a doctor.Iknow—I know what she had to go through! And no one near her to help her with a word of comfort, except a hired person—one of your precious hospital nurses that are mere iron-nerved machines—women who might as well be men for all the feelings they've got!"
"But she had—she had," cried Edmund, hastily. "She had my mother near her—one of the kindest old souls that ever breathed."
"What?"
I stared at him, petrified with astonishment and indignation.Hismother assisting at the confinement ofmydaughter! AndIshut out! I could not believe it for the moment—that they would deliberately put such an insult upon me.
Edmund said it was not done deliberately, but was a pure accident. "It just happened," he said, "that she chanced to be in the house yesterday. She came in after morning church, as she often does, and seeing that something was up——"
"What—as early as yesterday morning!" I burst out, thoroughly and justifiably angry now, and not caring to hide it. "You mean to say Phyllis was taken ill in themorning, Edmund, and you did not let me know? Oh, this is too much!"
Of course he hastened to excuse himself—with what I feel sure, though I am sorry to say it, was a barefaced lie. He declared she was not taken ill in the morning—not until quite late in the day—but that she was a little restless and nervous, and his mother had stayed to cheer her.
"Mother is such a bright, calm-minded, capable old body," he said—as if I were a dull, hysterical fool—"and she has had such swarms upon swarms of children, and such oceans of sick-nursing, and Phyllis is so fond of her, and as you were not get-at-able, Mater dear——"
Oh, it was sickening! I hadn't patience to listen to him, with his "Mater dears" and his hypocritical pretences. I saw clearly that it had been what Harry would call a put-up thing; he had preferred old Mrs. Juke—a woman of no education, with a figure like a sack of flour tied round the middle—to me. I suppose his friends had been twitting him about the tyrannical mother-in-law, in the vulgar conventional way; or he had been afraid that I would dispute his authority and orders in the sick-room; or perhaps, to do him justice—he had thought nothing of an affair which was in his daily experience, although it was his own wife concerned. In any case, I was sure that Phyllis had not been to blame. However fond she might be of Mrs. Juke—and probably she feigned affection to some extent, for her husband's sake —it was her own mother she would long for at such a time. And her mother she should have, or I'd know the reason why.
"It is not my fault that I was un-get-at-able yesterday," I said to Edmund, quietly but firmly. "At any rate I am get-at-able now. I see you are in a fidget to be after your patients—go, my dear, and tell her I will be with her in an hour or two. Oh, I daresay thereisno hurry—from your point of view; I am of a different opinion. I am a woman—anda mother; I understand these things. You don't—and never could—not if you were fifty times a doctor."
"All right," he returned cheerfully, or with assumed cheerfulness. "I am sure she will be delighted to see you. Only we shall have to keep her very quiet for the next few days—not let her talk and argue and excite herself, you know——"
I laughed—I could not help it—and waved him off. I told him to get himself some beer, or whatever he fancied, and not to suppose that he could teach me mother's duties at my time of life. And in a few minutes he went flying back to town, and I sought my dear husband, where he was busy digging in the vegetable garden, and flung myself weeping into his grubby arms.
Tom, too, was quite overcome. Not nearly so surprised as I expected him to be, but tremulous in his agitation, and almost speechless at first. For a tough old sailor as he is, he has the softest heart I know.
"My little girl!" he murmured huskily, and cleared his throat again and again. "And it was only the other day that she was a baby herself. Makes us feel very ancient, don't it?"
"No," I returned emphatically. "I don't feel ancient in theveryleast. And you, my dear, are in your prime. It is simply an absurdity that we should be grandparents."
"Well, it does seem rather ridiculous in your case," he rejoined—my sweet old fellow!—"with your brown hair and bright eyes and figure straight as a dart. But I——"
"But you," I insisted, "are just as handsome as ever you were—worth a dozen priggish little whipper-snappers like Edmund Juke."
"Oh! What has Edmund Juke been doing?"
"He let her be ill yesterday—allyesterday—and never sent for me to be with her!" I sobbed, feeling sure of sympathy here, if nowhere else. "Did you ever know of a mother being treated so before?"
But Tom—even Tom—was unsympathetic and disappointing. He did not exclaim and protest on my behalf—did not seem to see how unnatural it was, and what a slight had been put upon me—but just patted my shoulder and stroked my hair, as if I were a mere fretful child.
"If you ask me," he said, when I pressed him to speak his mind, "I must say that I think they showed their sense, Polly. And it's a great relief to me, my dear, on your account. You are so highly strung, pet, that you can't stand things like other people. You'd have been worse than Phyllis. Whereas a placid old Gamp like Mother Juke——"
"Tom!" I broke in sharply. "Whotold you that Mother Juke was there?"
"Nobody," said he, with a disconcerted look. "I only thought it likely that she might be. Was she not?"
"She was. But I want to know why you concluded that she was, when I had not mentioned the fact?"
"I didn't conclude it. I only knew that she was keeping an eye on the child, being so experienced, and living so handy."
"How did you know?"
"Ted told me—in a casual way—a good bit ago—I forget exactly when——"
"Tom——"
But Tom pulled out his watch hastily, plainly anxious to avoid the corner he felt himself being pushed into.
"Look here, Polly, if you want to catch that train, and have to pack your bag before you start, there's not a minute to lose. Now that she knows you know, she'll be looking out for you—wanting to show her baby to her mother, bless her little heart! And a fine boy too. I'm glad the first is a boy—though I'm sure I don't know why I should be, for the girls are far and away the best, to my thinking—girls that grow up to be good and pretty women, treasures to the lucky men who get them—like you."
Silly fellow! But he means it all. There are no empty pretences about Tom. To him there is one perfect being in the world, and that's his wife. It comforted me to feel that I was appreciated in one quarter, whatever I might be in others, and the mention of the baby made me forget everything but my longing to have him in my arms.
"I will go at once," I said, "and you must come too, dearest. You must support me against the Juke faction. You must see that your child's mother has her rights."
"Oh, rights be blowed!" he replied, rather rudely. "There's nobody will dream of disputing them. You don't know what a humble-minded, unselfish, dear old soul that mother of Ted's is; she wouldn't deny the rights of a sucking-pig—let alone an important person like you."
"Your mind is always running on pigs," I laughed. "And I am sure that old creature is just like a great sow fattened up for the Agricultural Show. She grunts as she walks—if you can call it walking—and you almost want bullocks to get her out of an armchair when she has once sunk into it."
"Well, that isn't her fault," Tom commented, grave as a judge.
"Of course it isn't," I acquiesced. "She is getting into years now."
"So are we all."
"Yes. But she is fifteen years older than I am, if she's a day."
"Fifteen years'll fly overusbefore we know it, Polly. And thenyouwon't like to be crowed over, I'll bet."
"Who's crowing? I merely state a fact. She is."
"Then all the more reason why you should be grateful to her."
"Grateful to her for usurping my rights——"
"Nonsense!"
He had one of his short moods on him, when it is better not to argue with him. Besides, there was no time for argument. He led the way to the house, pulling down his shirt-sleeves. He said he would have a wash and put on his coat and take me to Phyllis's house, and see the baby if allowed to do so; but he would not promise to stay more than a few minutes. He did not want, he said, to put them about, when already they had so much to attend to. Talk of humble-mindedness! His humble-mindedness makes me want to shake him sometimes. Off the sea he seemed to forget that he was a commander—a character that Nature intended him to maintain, wherever he was. One had but to look at him to see that.
I had to make so many preparations for his comfort and for the proper safeguarding of Lily in my absence, which I supposed likely to run into a week or two, that it was noon before I could be ready to set forth. So I yielded to Tom's suggestion that we should have our usual one o'clock dinner before starting, and drive ourselves to town in the afternoon. He wanted to take in the buggy for stores. He could see me "comfortably settled," he said, and do his necessary business at the same time.
Alas! How little we anticipated the circumstances of the return journey! No one could have been happier than I, as I sat beside him behind our fast-trotting Parson—we called him Parson because of his peculiar rusty-black colour and a white mark on his chest—talking of the grandchild we were going to see, and all the family affairs involved in his arrival. It never crossed our minds for a moment that he was bringing, not peace, but a sword.
In our excess of considerateness we drove to livery stables, and there put up our trap; then we walked quietly to Phyllis's house, and Tom slunk away somewhere, like a rat into a hole, as soon as we were admitted. His anxiety to be "out of the road" was really undignified. Of course I made straight for my daughter's room.
The large dining-room was full of waiting patients; I counted three women and a child as I passed up the hall. Whatever Edmund's faults, he is one of the cleverest and most sought after doctors in Melbourne. I have heard Mary Welshman and others boasting about Fitzherbert, and Groom, and Sewell, and the rest, but not one of them is to be named in the same day with my son-in-law. Phyllis was obliged to use a little room on the first floor for meals, on account of the lower part of the house being so overrun; and the poor parlourmaid spent her entire time in answering the door.
Creeping upstairs, with my noiseless, sick-room step, I met old Mother Juke, as Tom calls her, lumping down, with the gait of a rheumatic elephant. She seemed to shake the very street. How my poor child could stand such a woman about her, at such a time, I could not imagine; it would have driven me into a fever. Of course she is kind and well-meaning enough—she can't help her age and her physical infirmities—I know that. And it is quite true that she has been a great nurse in her day. But her day is past.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Juke," I said pleasantly, as we met and paused on a little landing at the turn of the stairs, "you are here early."
Scarcely had I opened my mouth when the mountain fell on me, as it were; the old thing put her huge arms about my neck and kissed me. I have always objected to being slobbered over by comparative strangers, and I did not return the kiss; nevertheless I treated her with the courtesy that I felt due to my son-in-law's mother.
"And so," I said, smiling, "you have all been conspiring together to steal a march on me! You have been jumping my claim, as the miners say—defrauding a poor woman of her natural rights."
"Nothing of the sort, my dear," she replied, in her fat voice—and if there is one thing that I dislike more than another is to be "my-deared" in this promiscuous fashion. "You were best out of it, with your feeling heart. It would only have upset you, my dear, and that would have upset her; and then Ted would have been in a way, and Captain Braye would have blamed us. I am sureheis grateful, if nobody else is."
"He is nothing of the sort," I cried, flaming. "My husband is perfectly astounded at the way I have been shut out. He never heard of such a thing as a mother being set aside at such a time."
She was at a loss for an answer to this, so fell back upon praises of the baby and of Phyllis's satisfactory condition. There was nothing, she said, that could give me the faintest cause for uneasiness, nor had been from the first—nor would be, provided she were kept quiet and free from all excitement. And we ought to be humbly thankful that this was so—to feel nothing but joy that she had done so excellently, and that the child was so strong and beautiful.
"That is all very well," I remarked. "But that is not the point. What I want to know is—and I intend to have an answer—whose doing it was that I was not sent for yesterday morning?—that I was kept in utter ignorance of the most important event that has ever occurred in my family—when, for all you people did to prevent it, my daughter might have died without my seeing her again!"
We were now in the little first-floor sitting-room, just off the stairs. It was between three and four, and the luncheon things were not cleared away. Indeed the house seemed completely disorganised, having no one to look after it. Old Mrs. Juke, who did not seem to notice this, stood just within the door, puffing like a porpoise, and trying to look dignified, which was quite impossible.
"I am very sorry you take it in this way," she said, in a hoity-toity tone. "We may have made a mistake, but, if we did, we made it with the best intentions. All we thought of was to save you useless pain. We knew your nervous, anxious temperament, and how keenly you feel anything affecting your children; and so we decided——"
"It was not a matter for you to decide," I broke in, with natural asperity. "I am neither a baby nor an idiot. I have at least as much sense as any one in this house—I should be sorry for myself, indeed, if I had not—and I prefer to attend to my own business, if it's all the same to you. Whether I should be here, or whether I should not, was formeto say—for me and for my daughter. She, I am very certain, had no part in shutting me out; and she ought to have been considered, if I was not."
"It was she," said Mrs. Juke, "who wished it most. Her one desire was to spare you."
"I don't believe it."
"I am sorry if you don't believe it." The old thing shook like blancmange in hot weather. "I can only say that it is perfectly true."
"I will ask her if it is true—that she wished to have strangers with her in place of her own mother."
I started to cross the landing to Phyllis's room, and my teeth were set, and my heart was thumping with an emotion that I could scarcely control—but I need not say I did control it. Mrs. Juke hung on to me to stop me, pleading that Phyllis and the baby were fast asleep together, and must not be disturbed; and I asked her how she, who had been a mother fifteen times, could insult a mother by supposing that she would be less careful of a sick child than anybody else. If I had gone in alone I am sure she would not have heard me—Tom says that I walk about the house as if shod with feathers—but Mrs. Juke would come too, and there was no hushing that solid tread. I saw my darling start up from the pillow, frightened out of her sleep by the noise, and the flush come into her cheeks. And Mrs. Juke cried "There!" reproachfully, as if it had been my fault.
At the same moment another stranger came out of Edmund's dressing-room, and turned upon me like a perfect fury.
"I must ask you, madam, to be so good as to be quiet," she said. "The doctor's orders are——"
But I did not wait to be told by her what the doctor's orders were; I simply took her by the shoulders, ran her back into the dressing-room, and locked the door upon her. If Edmund's mother liked to be rude to me, she could, but I was not going to take impudence from a hospital nurse. I cannot understand the passion young doctors have for those conceited, overbearing women. This creature was not even married. What, I wonder, wouldmymother have thought of a single woman attending a lady in her confinement? I call it scandalous.
When I had got rid of her, I requested Mrs. Juke to retire also, which she did. I apologised to her if I had said anything that seemed discourteous in the heat of the moment, for there was a watery look about her eyes as if she were feeling rather hurt; and I said to her in a gentle way, that, if she would only for one instant imagine herself in my place, she could not help admitting that I was more than justified. I suggested that it would be a kindness to us if she would see what the servants were about, judging from appearances, they were entirely neglecting their duties. I mentioned the state of the lunch-table, and Phyllis broke in to explain that Ted had begun work so late that he had not yet found time to come up for anything to eat.
"Never you mind," I said to her, soothing her. "Youare not to trouble your little head about these matters. I am here, darling, and you can rest from all housekeeping worries now."
And so at last I had my treasure to myself. She was very fluttery, and cried a little—which I did not wonder at—but soon composed herself, and proudly displayed the little one cuddled to her dear breast under the bedclothes. He was a lovely baby (and at this time of writing is the most beautiful boy you ever saw—the image of me, Tom says); and I felt, when I took him into my arms, as if my own happy young mother-days had come over again.