A Humble Enterprise Part 10

The green light was on her face, and he saw her smile, as if no longer afraid of him.

"You can have whatever you dream," she said. "We shall probably never realise ours. Still, we can dream on. That costs nothing."

"Oh, you will realise it--never fear." He abandoned his peaceful home upon the spot, and determined to take her travelling directly they were married. And there was no prospect of tedium in that plan either, for his experience, full as it was, had never included the charm of such a companion, the delight of educating and enriching the mind of an intelligent woman who was also his own wife.

"Meanwhile," said Jenny, "we get books from the library, and read about the places that we want to see, and the routes to them. We know the Orient Line guide by heart. We hunt for pictures, and photographs, and ill.u.s.trated books. There are some nooks and corners of Europe we know so well that we shall never want a guide when we get there--if we ever do get there."

"You'll get there," said Anthony confidently; "don't doubt it."

It never occurred to him that she might decline to be personally conducted by him, but that was natural in a man of whom women had always made so much. He added, struck by a bright thought, "If you are fond of looking at pictures of places, I will send you a portfolio of photos that I have--mementoes of my many wanderings--if I may. They would amuse Miss Sarah. I should like to give her some amus.e.m.e.nt, if I could, poor little girl." But he never thought of Sarah in his plan for becoming the showman of the world, except that she must be disposed of somehow--she and her mother and that young a.s.s in the office--so that Jenny might be free, and at the same time easy in her mind about them.

Jenny received the offer of the photos in silence; then said, "Thank you" with a perplexed expression, indicating that a "but" was on its way. He hastened to intercept it.

"There's the steamer--do you see? Patience rewarded. They have a Lord on board and a returning Chief Justice, and the loyal citizens down to meet them have had no dinner. They've been waiting on the pier at Williamstown for hours. Come and sit down, won't you? I'm sure your little feet must be tired."

He used the adjective inadvertently, and Jenny s.h.i.+ed at it for a moment, like a dazzled horse. But she had not the strength to resist her intense desire to be with him a little longer, especially with that word, that tone of voice, compelling her.

"I must be going home," she murmured, but was drawn as by a magnet after him when he turned to the bench on which she had before been sitting.

"It can't be more than eight o'clock, and now's the time you ought to be out, when it's cool and fresh," said he. "Don't you find the heat of that room very trying since the warm weather came?"

They talked about the tea-room in an ordinary way. Then they drifted into confidences about each other's private lives and interests; and from that they went on to discuss their respective views as to books, creeds, and the serious matters of life; and all the time Anthony Churchill kept a tight hand upon himself, that he might not frighten her. It had to be a very strenuous hand indeed, for it was a sentimental night, with the sea and the stars and the soft wind, and she had never looked so sweet as now, away from all the a.s.sociations of the tea-room, which he had grown to hate, sitting pensively at rest, with her little hands in her lap. More than that, he had never known how well she was educated, how much thinking she had done, how intellectually interesting she was, until he had had this talk with her.

At last, in an unguarded moment, he said more than he had meant to say.

Laying his hat beside him, that he might feel the cool fan of the wind over his slightly fevered brain, he drew a long breath, and exclaimed in a burst, "Well, you have given me a happy hour! I wonder when you'll give me another like it?"

Immediately she began to recollect how late it was, and to be in a flurry to get home to her mother. All at once the suspicion that he might be divining her feeling for him, and that she might be running wicked risks, a.s.sailed her. She rose from her seat without speaking.

"Not yet!" he pleaded impulsively, as she looked for him to rise too; "not yet! Five minutes more!" And he took her hand, which hung near him, and tried to draw her back to his side, looking up at her in all the beauty of his broad brows, and his bold nose, and his commanding manliness, with eyes that burned through hers to her shaking heart. This was love-making, she knew, though not a word of love was spoken, and, under all the circ.u.mstances surrounding him and her in their social life, it terrified her.

"I have stayed too long already," she said. "I ought not to have been here alone--so late."

The tremble in her voice, as well as the implication of her words, shocked him, and he pulled himself up sharply, regretting his indiscretions as much as she did hers.

"Oh, it's not late. But I'm imposing on good nature, trying to keep you merely to talk to me. Fact is, I seldom come across people that I care to talk to." He held his watch open under a lamp. "Later than I thought, though--late for you to be about alone, as you say, Miss Liddon. You don't mind my seeing you home, do you?"

She thanked him, and they walked to the tram together, without saying anything except that they thought rain was at hand; and the tram set her down almost at the door of her lodgings, where Mrs. Liddon and Sarah awaited her on the doorstep--Sarah in an ecstasy of secret joy at the apparent success of her manoeuvres.

Jenny never went alone to the pier after that night, and her admirer sought for another happy hour in vain. On the two occasions that he went to St. Kilda in the hope of a meeting, she had her family with her, and not all Sarah's artifices could disintegrate the party. Jenny loved him more distractedly than ever, but, having no a.s.surance that he loved her in the right way, or loved her at all, she knew what her duty was. And she had the resolution to act accordingly, though it was a hard task. He had scruples about going to the tea-room by himself, after what Mary had said to him; and he found it no fun to go with her, or other ladies.

Then the rush of the races set in. Mr. Oxenham and other guests arrived from the country; horses had to be inspected; betting business became brisk and absorbing; lunches, garden parties, dinners, b.a.l.l.s, crowded upon one another in a way to carry a society man and bachelor off his feet. In short, for a few weeks Mr. Anthony Churchill almost forgot the tea-room. Almost--not quite. The portfolio of photographs arrived by the carrier (and the formal note of thanks for it was preserved, and is extant to this day); flowers for Sarah came from Paton's, at short intervals, with all the air of having been specially selected; Joey swaggered into the new sitting-room with news of his rise to 200 a year, imagining it to be the reward of transcendent merit. But poor little Jenny, harried with great crushes of tea-drinkers, worn with fatigue and heat and bad air and a restless mind, ready to go into hysterics at a touch, but for the fact that there was no time for such frivolities, sighed for the refreshment of her beloved's voice and face in vain. Day after day, week after week, she watched for his return, and he came not. She concluded that her effort to do her duty had been successful, and--though she would have done the same again, if necessary--she was heart-broken at the thought.

To tell the honest truth, as a faithful chronicler should do, our hero very nearly _did_ abandon her at this juncture. When love, even the very best of love, is in its early stages, it is easily nipped by little accidents, like other young things. It wants time to toughen the tender sprout, and develop its growth and strength until it can defy vicissitudes; nothing but time will do it, let poets and novelists say what they like to the contrary. And so Anthony, not having been in love with Jenny Liddon for more than a few days (and having been many times in love), was seduced by the charms of the stable and the betting-ring and the good company in which he found himself, when deprived by circ.u.mstances of the higher pleasure of her society. More than that, her image was temporarily superseded by that of a beautiful and brilliant London woman who was on a visit to Government House, and whom in this time of festivity he was constantly meeting. She was a lady of t.i.tle and high connections, and she singled him out for special favour because he was big and handsome, travel-polished and proper-mannered, and altogether good style as an attendant cavalier. His family (barring his stepmother), proudly aware of the mutual attraction, and pleased to hear it joked of and commented on amongst their friends, formed the confident expectation that a marriage would result, whereby their Tony would have a wife and a position of a dignity commensurate with his own surpa.s.sing worth.

CHAPTER XI

NATURE SPEAKS

At the end of the gay season, when races were over, and mult.i.tudinous parties had become a weariness to the flesh, a few people of the highest fas.h.i.+on went on a yachting cruise, to recruit their strength after all they had gone through. Of these Tony was one, and Lady Louisa, whom he was expected to bring back as his affianced bride (she was a widow of thirty-five), was another; and Maude Churchill (without her husband, and bent on circ.u.mventing Lady Louisa) was a third. They were got up elaborately in blue serge and white flannel and gold b.u.t.tons, and the smartest of straw hats and knotted neckties, and they set off on a hot morning of late November, when the breeze was fair.

Mary Oxenham saw them start. She had refused to accompany them, partly because she felt she was too quiet for such a party, and partly because she wanted to return to her own household and children, whom she seldom left for so long. As she bade the voyagers good-bye she said to her brother, "What are you going to do at Christmas, Tony?"

"Stay with us--in his own father's house--of course," Mrs. Churchill interposed promptly. "You can come down, Mary."

"I can't, Maude; I must be at home, as well as you. You won't come to me for Christmas, Tony?"

"I don't think so, Polly--many thanks," he answered. "I expect my father will want me here." The fact was, he had too many interests in Melbourne to wish to leave at present.

"Well, come when you can, dear old fellow. I want to have you all to myself, if it's only for a few days."

"I will, Polly, I will. Good-bye, and take care of yourself. Are you really going away before we come back?"

"At the end of the week, Tony. I have been away too long--all your fault, bad boy. Well, good-bye again. _Bon voyage_, everybody!"

The town clock was striking the quarter before noon when she re-entered her carriage at Spencer Street, and it occurred to her to drive to the tea-room, to see how Jenny was getting on. Like Tony, she had been forgetting and deserting her _protegee_ during the bustle of the last few weeks, and felt a twinge of self-reproach in consequence.

Entering the room, which fortunately chanced to have no customer at the moment, she was surprised to see Jenny sitting, or rather lying, in one of the low chairs, with her head laid back and her eyes closed, her chest slowly rising and falling in heavy, dumb sobs--evident symptoms of some sort of hysterical collapse. Sarah and her mother were hanging over her in great alarm and distress, as at a spectacle they were wholly unused to, Mrs. Liddon persuading her to drink some brandy and water which the landlady had hastily produced.

"Oh, what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Oxenham, hurrying forward. "What ails Jenny? Oh, poor child, how ill she looks!"

"She's just worn out," said Mrs. Liddon. "I've seen it coming on for weeks, and nothing that I could say would make her take care of herself. She _will_ come here and work when she's not fit to stand. We wanted her to stay at home this morning, but no--she wouldn't listen to us."

Jenny struggled to sit up and shake herself together. "Oh, mother, don't scold me," she said. "It's just the heat, I think. It's nothing. I shall be right in a moment I--I--oh, I _am_ a fool! Mrs. Oxenham, I am so sorry--so ashamed----"

Her mother held the gla.s.s between her chattering teeth, and she drank a little brandy and water, and choked, and burst out crying.

"Jenny," said Mrs. Oxenham, in a voice of authority, "you come away out of this immediately. I have the carriage here, and I will drive you home." In a flash she remembered that the mother and sister could not be spared from the tea-room, that the girl should not be left alone in lodgings, and that Maude and Tony were safely off to sea. "Home with me, I mean," she continued. "I will send you back to your mother to-night, when you are all right again. You can do quite well without her, can't you"--turning to Mrs. Liddon--"now that you have Mrs. Allonby's help?"

Mrs. Allonby, who was the basket-maker's wife, volubly a.s.sured Mrs.

Oxenham that she could easily manage Miss Liddon's work now that the crush of race time was over, and if she couldn't, there was her niece to fall back upon. Mrs. Liddon and Sarah said the same as well as they could, but were almost speechless with grat.i.tude. Sarah did not know that Mr. Anthony had sailed away, and she began to see visions and to dream dreams of the most beautiful description. She had a shrewd idea as to what Jenny's complaint arose from, though not a word had been breathed on the subject, and this seemed the very medicine for it. She ran to get her sister's hat and gloves, when they had composed her a little, and would not regard any protests whatever.

"It is the very, _very_ thing to set her up," she cried, in exultation.

"And, oh, it _is_ good of you, Mrs. Oxenham!"

"Come, then," said that lady. "I will take care of her for the rest of the day, and you see if I don't send her back to you looking better than she does now. Quite a quiet day, Jenny dear; you need not look at your dress--it is quite nice. There's n.o.body in the house but my father and husband."

Before she had made up her mind whether to go or not, Jenny found herself das.h.i.+ng through the streets in Mrs. Churchill's landau, having been half-pushed, half-carried down the stairs and hoisted into it--she, who had been the controlling spirit hitherto. Joey, on the way to his dinner, saw her thus throned in state, and could scarcely believe his eyes. "There's my sister having a drive with the boss's daughter," he casually remarked to a couple of fellow-clerks, as if it were no new thing; but the spectacle deeply impressed him. That day he patronised the tea-room for the first time, to the delight of his adoring mother, and began to identify himself with his family.

Jenny recovered self-possession in the air. She was agitated by the new turn in her affairs--by the wonderful chance that had s.n.a.t.c.hed her out of the turmoil of her petty cares into the serene atmosphere of the world of the well-to-do, who were untroubled by the necessity of earning their bread, into the enchanted sphere where her beloved's life revolved; but she no longer trembled and cried, like the weakly of her s.e.x, because her nerves were too many for her. Nothing more discouraging than a discovery that the milk-jugs had not been washed by Mrs. Allonby's niece, whose duty it now was to prepare them overnight, had broken down the spirit that had withstood long wear and tear of strenuous battle like finely-tempered steel; and a like trifling encouragement was sufficient to lift it up again. The ease of the carriage was delicious; the relief of having nothing to do unspeakable; the sight of the beautiful gardens and stately rooms of the house that entertained her as a guest and equal, more refres.h.i.+ng than either. The day was such a holiday as the girl had never had before.

Mrs. Oxenham made her lie on a springy sofa for an hour, while they quietly talked together; then they had a _tete-a-tete_ lunch--delicate food and choice wine that comforted soul and body more than Jenny knew; and again she was made to rest on downy pillows--to sleep, if she could--while Mary in an adjoining room played Mendelssohn's _Lieder_, one after another, with a touch like wind-borne feathers. By-and-by the girl was shown about the house, made acquainted with precious pictures and works of art brought together from all quarters of the world, such as she had never seen or dreamed of; and great photographs, scattered about in costly frames, were named to her as she moved in and out amongst them.

"This is my husband, whom you have not seen--but he will be here to dinner, and you needn't be at all afraid of him, for he is one of the gentlest and dearest of men," said Mrs. Oxenham, taking up a ma.s.s of _repousse_ silver that enshrined the image of a burly fellow with a plain but honest face. "And this is my young stepmother, whom I think you _have_ seen; she is in the dress she wore when she was presented at Court. This is my brother--I have a little half-brother, the sweetest baby, that we will have down to amuse us presently, but this is my only _own_ brother; him, I think, you have also seen."

She pa.s.sed on to others, and Jenny pa.s.sed on with her; but presently, while Mrs. Oxenham was writing a note, the girl returned to the table on which stood the counterfeit presentment of her red-bearded hero, in peaked cap and Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and hob-nailed boots--such a magnificent figure in that crowd of distinguished n.o.bodies! Looking up when she had finished her note, Mrs. Oxenham saw her standing, rapt and motionless, with the heavy frame in her hands, and was struck by the expression of her face and att.i.tude.