Materfamilias Part 17

"All right," he returned cheerfully, or with a.s.sumed 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 the _very_ least. 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--_all_ yesterday--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. "_Who_ told you that Mother Juke was there?"

"n.o.body," 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 n.o.body 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 over _us_ before we know it, Polly. And then _you_ won'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 s.h.i.+rt-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 antic.i.p.ated the circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 s...o...b..red 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 fas.h.i.+on. "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 sure _he_ is grateful, if n.o.body 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.