Materfamilias Part 19

CHAPTER X.

VINDICATED.

Naturally, I did not see much of the Juke household after the affair of the baby's birth. There is nothing so sad, and so disgraceful to the parties concerned, as discord in families; but this was no vulgar quarrel, although several officious busybodies regarded it as such. I merely took the very broad hint that my son-in-law and his mother had given me, to the effect that Phyllis by her marriage had pa.s.sed into their possession and no more belonged to me. Moreover, one must have _some_ self-respect, as I represented to Tom, who either could not or would not recognise the facts of the case, remaining stupidly impervious to arguments that would have convinced a child; and a proper sense of dignity is an element of good breeding which I have inherited with my blood--fortunately or otherwise, as the case may be.

But I was just as anxious, and even more so, to be a.s.sured that all was well. _My_ feelings towards my own kith and kin can know no change.

Therefore I sent Tom to Melbourne every morning to make inquiries.

Perhaps he would have gone in any case, for his own satisfaction, but he was not the messenger I should have chosen had there been a choice.

Unfortunately, he was the only one available. Without, I am sure, meaning to be disloyal to me, he would stay there half the day, smoke with Edmund, lunch with Mrs. Juke, pay Phyllis visits in her room, and generally allow himself to be cajoled into forgetting the actual state of things--making me cheap as well as himself, and putting me into a most false and ignominious position. And then he would come back laden with "best loves" and "when was I coming to see them again?" and "Baby was wondering what he had done to be deserted by his dear grandmamma,"

and rubbish of that sort, which any one but he must have seen was simply insulting under the circ.u.mstances, and which sometimes drove me wild. His weak amiability, in season and out of season, and his habit of taking everybody to be as goodnatured as himself, made him incapable of perceiving that a gross outrage had been committed, for which formal apologies were due. I argued the matter with him for hours at a time, and had my labour for my pains; he would never positively admit that I was right, simply because he could not understand the point of view. The silence that gives consent was the most I got, and I was not satisfied with that--from him. And so we fell out rather frequently--we, who had never had a disagreement in our lives--and I was very unhappy.

Nevertheless, I was not going to set foot in Edmund Juke's house until proper reparation had been made. It was not for a woman of my years and standing to bow down to a boy and girl and an ignorant old person, who, I believe, began life in a baker's shop, or some such place. An apology I intended to have before I would receive them back to favour.

And they did not apologise. It seems to me a petty sort of thing not to frankly own it when one is in the wrong, but very few people are large-minded enough to apprehend the difference between false pride and true. As a rule, they think it derogatory to dignity--a "come-down" so to speak--to confess to being human and therefore liable to error; whereas you cannot have a better proof of moral superiority. Edmund and Phyllis were no exceptions to this rule. They would do anything short of the one thing they should have done. When the time came for the baby to be baptized, they wrote a joint letter, couched in extravagantly affectionate terms, asking me to be his G.o.dmother. It was the dearest wish of their hearts, they would have me believe; and yet--not a word of regret for what they had made me suffer!

I saw through it at once. They were merely throwing a sop to Cerberus, as it were, expecting that the little compliment would pacify me--treating me as a cross child to be appeased with lollipops. Tom was angry when I expressed my views; he said--what I am sure he was very sorry for afterwards--that I was "the most perverse woman that ever walked;" and it really seemed at one time as if this miserable affair was destined to wreck the happiness of a marriage which for more than a quarter of a century had been the most perfect in the world. I had never imagined it possible that _my_ husband could be morose and rude--and to me, of all people!

I answered the letter the same day. I said I was much obliged to Edmund and Phyllis for their kind invitation, but I considered I was too old to stand sponsor to the baby, who should have some one likely to be of use to him through life. I did not suggest Mrs. Juke as a subst.i.tute; I did not even mention her, nor refer to my grievances; I wrote temperately and courteously, though not gus.h.i.+ngly, and I fully expected that my note would bring forth another, urging me to reconsider the matter, and a.s.suring me that I was not too old for anything--as of course I am not.

Instead of this, they affected to be huffy, made no rejoinder, and took no further notice of me. So my feelings can be imagined when Lily calmly informed me that _she_ was to be the baby's G.o.dmother. I was keeping the child closely at home, engaged with her studies; I had put a stop to the Melbourne visits, because I do not believe in town life for a girl so young, and it was just as easy and very little more expensive to have her masters come out to give her lessons; therefore I could not imagine how she had been, as Harry would have said, "got at."

"Oh, are you?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, dissembling my surprise, "and, pray, who says so?"

"Father," she replied. "Ted spoke to father, and he said I might. And they want father to be G.o.dfather--Mr. Stephen Juke and either father or Harry--and Harry says his conscience is against something or other in the baptismal service--and so is Emily's--and that's why they chose me.

And oh, mother, I must! I MUST!"

She said it as if it were "I will," and with that mulish look which I knew of old, and which meant that she would fight to the death to get her own way, no matter whose feelings might be trampled on. I did not stay to argue with her, but flew down the garden to find Tom. He was pitchforking clean straw into the pigsties, and when he saw me, stood and leaned on the fork handle with an exaggerated air of resignation.

"Well, and what's the matter now?" was expressed in his face and att.i.tude, though he did not speak.

"Tom," I demanded, as I paused before him--I will not deny that I was boiling over "Tom, are you going to be G.o.dfather to the Jukes' baby?"

"I don't know, Polly," he said evasively. "Nothing is settled yet."

"If you do," I declared with pa.s.sion, "I will never speak to you again."

Of _course_ I did not mean that, but he took it as if I had said something horrible. Never did I expect to see my husband look at me as he looked then, or to hear him speak to me in a tone so cold and cruel, or call me names as if he were a common costermonger instead of the gentleman I had always found him.

"Polly," he said, "because you are behaving like a maniac, am I to do so too?--to turn against my daughter for nothing at all--my dear, good child, who never grieved me in her life--and at this time of all times, when her little heart is full----"

I could bear no more. I burst into tears. I believe the boy was digging potatoes not twenty yards away, but I did not care; in the middle of Collins Street I must have done the same. To be misunderstood by the whole world was a trifle indeed, but to be misunderstood by _him_ an insupportable calamity.

It was but for a moment, after all. No sooner did he see my tears than he flung away his fork, hurried me behind a shed, and took me into his arms to comfort me, as he had always done. All piggy as he was, I threw mine around his neck, forgiving him everything for the sake of his constant love.

"There, there," he crooned, "don't cry, pet. What a baby it is, after all! You know as well as I do that you are just cutting off your nose to spite your face--now don't you, sweetheart?"

"Oh, Tom," I wailed, "if you would _only_ understand!"

"Well, I do," he a.s.sured me, ruffling my hair with his grubby paw. "I know all about it, little woman. And I'm ready to do anything in the world to please you. I always am."

"Then you won't stand G.o.dfather to that child--without me?"

"Suppose we both stand together? We've done everything together so far."

"I can't. I have refused."

"Then write and say you have changed your mind."

"It's too late. And they don't want me to change it, Tom--they don't indeed; they only asked me out of politeness; they did not press me the least little bit. I am sure they were delighted when I declined. They had calculated upon it."

"Pooh! That's your imagination."

"It is _not_. What, are you going to accuse me of not speaking the truth?"

"No, no, my dear; but sometimes--well, never mind; we are all liable to make mistakes. And when I think of the letter they wrote, asking you--and I'm sure they meant it----"

"They could not have meant it, because when I only half declined--I left it open to them to ask again--they would not take the hint. Oh, they don't want me for anything now, and I would die sooner than ever force myself on them again!"

Tom inquired, in a grave tone, what I had said in my letter--what reason I had given for declining, or half-declining, in the first instance; and I told him.

"And, dear," I urged, "if I am too old--and they accepted that as a valid excuse--what are you?"

"Hm-m," he mused. "I never thought of that. Harry's the man--not me--if there's anything in being G.o.dfather beyond the name. Only Harry jibs at saying 'I will' and 'all this I steadfastly believe'--as if it were for a young donkey like him to criticise the Prayer Book that's been good enough for generations of us. That boy's head is full of maggots. So's Emily's."

"I beg," said I, "that you will not say a word against Emily, nor Harry either. They are perfectly right. I think their loyalty beautiful."

"To whom?" asked Tom.

"To me," I said. "Was it likely they would stand sponsors to the baby over my head? No, they love me too well to countenance anything that would humiliate me. And Tom, my dear, I think it downright tyranny to keep those two dear children hanging on as they are doing, wasting their best years. You forget that I was barely twenty when you married me."

"Barely twenty-two," he corrected.

"And Emily is twenty-three. You might remember what it was to _us_ to get each other and our little home--how _we_ should have felt if cruel fathers had kept us out of it!"

"Well, I never thought to hear myself called a cruel father," laughed Tom, taking everything literally, as usual. "And as for Hal and Emily--why, you yourself----"

"I did nothing of the sort," I broke in--for I knew what he was going to say--"and I have always advocated early marriages, because our own was so successful. Now, Tom, when we have settled the affair of the christening--but we must do that first----"

"And how's it to be done?" he sighed, heavily. "Good G.o.d! I've been true-blue Church and State all my life, but I'm hanged if I don't wish there were no such things as christenings!"

I am sure I heartily agreed with him.

And after all he had his wish, as far as our baby was concerned. That christening was postponed indefinitely. I heard that Edmund had said, with a man's obtuseness to the logic of the case, that it was better the child should remain a technical sinner than that all its relations should become real ones. I was greatly surprised at the decision, but if they chose to make the poor infant suffer for their faults, it was no concern of mine. Mary Welshman and her husband wanted to make out that it was--this, however, was merely a bit of revenge for some strictures I had pa.s.sed upon that disreputable brother of hers--and they took upon themselves to such an extent that I resigned my sitting in the church and stopped all my subscriptions. Welshman said that if baby died unbaptized and unregenerate, his eternal d.a.m.nation would lie at my door--or something to that effect. I was not going to sit under a clergyman who presumed to behave to me in that way.

And so, thanks to all this meddling and muddling, the miserable affair ended in a complete estrangement between my daughter and me. She never came out to see us, as she had been used to do, and of course I did not go to see her without being asked. I would not let Lily go either, to have her taught to be disrespectful to her mother; and the child--too young to know what was for her good--tried me sorely with her rebellious spirit. She was worse than rebellious--she was disobedient and deceitful; I found that she met her sister secretly when my back was turned, and that she knew when little Eddie cut his first tooth, and when he was short-coated, though I did not. Tom was mopey and grumpy, almost sulky sometimes--so changed that I hardly knew him for my sunny-tempered mate; he seemed all at once to be turning into an old man. And I, though I tried to fight against it, had a perpetual ache in my heart, and was tempted sometimes to wish that I was dead, so that I might be loved once more.

What I should have done without Emily I don't know. Tom gave me permission to make certain arrangements which would enable her and Harry to marry and settle, and the excitement and occupation which this entailed just kept me, I think, from going out of my mind with melancholy. As it was near the midwinter vacation, I insisted on the dear girl giving up her school at the end of term; and we fixed a day in August for the wedding, so as to have the cream of springtime for the honeymoon. Emily's father--a perfect gentleman---was a cripple, earning but a small income by law-writing at home, and their house in Richmond was cramped and close; for health's sake I made her spend part of the holidays with me, and really it was like the happy old times over again to see her sweet, bright face about the house. Her companions.h.i.+p was most beneficial to Lily, too; the child recovered all her amiability, and was as good as gold. Tom quite brightened up, laughing and joking, like his old self; and we had Harry rus.h.i.+ng out upon his bicycle directly his office closed, and staying to sleep night after night, so as to get long evenings with his betrothed. I never saw a pair of lovers behave with better taste. Instead of hiding themselves in an empty room for hours, they would play a rubber of whist with the old folks, and Emily would sing our favourite songs to us, and duets with Lily; and Harry was like a big boy again with his "Mummie" and his "Mater" and his many pranks. It was delicious to wake in the night and think of him back in the family nest--to picture him as he had looked when I went in to tuck him up, turning his handsome head to kiss his mother. It was a good time altogether--except for the one thing; _that_ spoiled all--for me, at any rate, if not for the others.