Kitabı oku: «A Humble Enterprise», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XI
NATURE SPEAKS

At the end of the gay season, when races were over, and multitudinous parties had become a weariness to the flesh, a few people of the highest fashion 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 circumventing Lady Louisa) was a third. They were got up elaborately in blue serge and white flannel and gold buttons, 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 protégée 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 glass 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 assured 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 gratitude. 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 nobody in the house but my father and husband."

Before she had made up her mind whether to go or not, Jenny found herself dashing 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 snatched 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 sex, 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 refreshing 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 tête-à-tête 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 mass of repoussé 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 passed on to others, and Jenny passed 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 nobodies! 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 attitude.

"Good heavens!" she mentally exclaimed. "I do hope and trust that boy has not been thoughtless!"

She remembered how she had found him in the tea-room, and his proneness to amatory dalliance of a fleeting kind, inevitable in the case of a man so handsome, and so much sought after by flirting women; and she had a moment of grave uneasiness. Then she reflected upon Jenny's soberness of nature and Tony's opportune departure with Lady Louisa, and was at ease again.

Tea was served at five, and the children came down to be played with. Then Mr. Churchill and Mr. Oxenham returned from their club to dinner, and the latter was introduced to Jenny, and both did their part to put her at ease and make her feel at home and happy. The old gentleman took her in to dinner on his arm, and was concerned that she did not eat as she should, and told her she wanted a change to the seaside, racking his brains to think how he could manage to cozen her into accepting some assistance that would make such a thing practicable. Soon after dinner was over the hansom Mrs. Oxenham had ordered was announced, and the good old fellow, bustling in from his wine, declared his intention of seeing Miss Liddon home in person. He blamed Mary for sending her away so soon, but Mary said it was better for her to go to bed early; and then Mr. Churchill said he hoped Miss Liddon would soon come again – forgetting that his daughter was on the point of leaving him, and that his young wife would be little likely to endorse such an invitation.

Jenny left in a glow of inward happiness, and of gratitude that she could not express, though she tried to do so. Mrs. Oxenham wrapped her in a Chuddah shawl, and kissed her on the doorstep.

"Good-night, dear child," she said, quite tenderly. "Go straight to bed and to sleep, and don't go to the tea-room to-morrow. I shall come and see you early."

Having watched her charge depart in her father's care, this kind woman returned to her husband, whom she found alone in the dining-room, smoking, and reading the evening paper, with his coffee beside him.

"Harry, dear," she said, "I want to ask you something."

"Ask away," he returned affably.

"Would you have any objection to my having that girl to stay with me for Christmas – that is, if she will come?"

He laid down his paper and thought about it. Though he was a Manchester cotton man, he was no snob, or he would not have been Mary Churchill's husband; but this was, as he would have termed it, a large order.

"Who else is coming?" he inquired.

"Nobody. That is, I have not asked anybody at present. I think I'd rather we were quietly by ourselves. She's a lady, Harry, you can see it for yourself. Her father was an Eton boy."

"Eh? You don't say so!" This was certainly a strong argument.

"And she is thoroughly out of health. I never saw a girl so altered – shattered with hard work, poor little soul. I believe if she doesn't get a long rest and a change that she will have a severe illness, and then what would become of her mother and sister, and the business she has managed so splendidly? Now that Cup time is over, it is possible for them to do without her for awhile, and country air and good feeding and a little looking after would set her up, I know. And I don't see how else she is to get it. I am sure the children would like to have her, Harry; and she is so modest and quiet that she would never be in the way."

"What about Tony?" asked Mr. Oxenham.

"He is not coming. I asked him, but he said he couldn't leave town. He is too much engaged with Lady Louisa, I suppose; and if she didn't keep him, Maude would. Oh, if there was the slightest chance of Tony being at Wandooyamba, of course I shouldn't ask Miss Liddon there."

"Well, my dear, I'm sure I don't care, one way or another. Do just what you think best."

"You are quite sure you don't mind, Harry?"

"Not in the least. What's good enough for you is good enough for me, and, personally, I think she's an awfully nice little thing."

"Then I shall go and settle it with her mother in the morning," said Mrs. Oxenham, "and we will take her back with us."

CHAPTER XII
TWO WISE MEN

It was not far from Christmas when Anthony returned from his cruise, which he did in a listless, yawning, world-weary frame of mind. He had not enjoyed himself as he had expected to do, and wished he had remained in Melbourne at work, and given his old father a holiday instead. Tasmania had looked beautiful, to be sure, but he had seen too many things that were more so, and seen them too recently, to be impressed by its hills and streams; while the sea had no charm after his recent voyage. He had wholly depended on his company for entertainment, and his company had disappointed him. Few, indeed, can stand the test of such conditions as those under which they were expected to shine, as under a microscope, with double lustre and meaning (he had not stood it himself); and it was not surprising that the brilliant Lady Louisa had failed to substantiate her pretensions to be a clever woman, or that Mrs. Churchill had contrived to make a most kindly-disposed stepson hate her. Not, of course, that it was necessary for Lady Louisa to show herself clever in order to captivate our hero, or any man; it was because her stupidity had led her to waste her blandishments on a brainless idiot of a whisky-drinking globe-trotter, whose name was his only title to be called a gentleman, that it had manifested itself so unmistakably to her superseded slave. When the bookless, newspaperless, trifling time was over, he stepped ashore with a sense of being released from an irksome bondage, and determined to keep clear of his late too close companions for many a long day. One only was excepted – an old chum and crony, who had accompanied him on the voyage from England, a Queensland squatter, who lived nine months of the year in Melbourne – Adam Danesbury by name. Mr. Danesbury had afforded much amusement on board the yacht by boasting modestly of his recent engagement to a girl at home; showing her likeness, worn in a locket on his watch-chain, to the ladies, and confiding to them his plan for returning to marry and fetch her out as soon as he had got his northern shearing over. The ladies thought it was so very funny of him; any other man, they said, would have kept such a thing as dark as possible, under the circumstances. But Anthony Churchill, who had always made a friend of Danesbury, had never liked him so well as he liked him now.

"Come up to my place and dine with me to-night," he said to him, as the party were dispersing in the yard of the railway station; "and let's have a quiet pipe and a little peace, after all this racket."

"All right," said Mr. Danesbury, "I'm on."

They spoke in low tones, like a couple of conspirators.

"Mr. Churchill! Mr. Churchill!" called Lady Louisa from a Government House carriage, to which a callow aide had escorted her. "What have I done that I should be neglected in this manner? Are you not even going to say good-bye to me?"

Anthony advanced with his man-of-the-world courtliness, and pressed her outstretched hand. "No," he said, "I never mean to say good-bye to you – until I am obliged."

"Au revoir, then," she laughed. "You will come and see me soon?"

He bowed as to a queen, while the young A.D.C., whose enchantress she was at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that she was almost old enough to be his mother, glared ferociously.

"These conceited colonials!" he muttered to himself; "these trading cads, putting on the airs of gentlemen! What presumption of the fellow to speak in that tone to HER!"

"Tony," cried Maude, from the midst of her bags and bundles, which her maid was counting into the hands of a cabman, "you will see me safe home, Tony?"

"Well, really, Maude, I don't see how you can help getting home safely, with your own husband to take care of you," Tony replied, a little irritably (his father, delighted to get his young wife back again, was calling her carriage up). "You don't want me now."

"Tony, you know I always want you. And you might come just for a cup of tea and to see the children. They'll be expecting you."

"I'll see them on Sunday. I must go home and get washed and decent."

"As if you couldn't get washed in our house, where you've got your own rooms, and dozens of suits of clothes lying in your drawers!"

"Oh, I know; but you must excuse me now, really. There'll be letters and all sorts of things at my chambers, waiting for me, and I telegraphed to Jarvis to have my dinner ready."

He detached himself from her clutches, and, when her carriage drove off, called up his hansom and flung himself into it with a sigh of relief. "Thank God, that's over!" he ejaculated, drawing his cigar-case from his pocket. "What fools women are! The more I see of them, the more sick of them I get."

It was great luxury to find himself in his own bachelor home, where the priceless Jarvis had everything in order and ready for him, and where he was his own man, as he could never be elsewhere. He had an iced drink, and read his letters, and glanced at half a dozen newspapers, lolling bare-armed upon a sofa, with a pipe in his mouth and slippered feet in the air; and then he had a bath and elaborately dressed himself, putting a silk coat over his diamond-studded shirt; and Jarvis set the dainty dinner-table, and Danesbury arrived.

"Come in, old fellow!" shouted the emancipated one, hearing his friend in the hall. "Now we'll enjoy ourselves! Take off that black coat – no ladies to consider now; we may as well be cool and comfortable when we do get the chance. Dinner ready, Jarvis? All's vanity and vexation of spirit, old man, except one's dinner. Thank God, we've still got that to fall back upon!"

"We've got something more than that to fall back upon, let us hope," said Mr. Danesbury, smiling. "At any rate, I have."

"Oh, you! You've got Miss Lennox to fall back on, of course. But we are not all so lucky."

"What's happened to you, that you should class yourself with the unlucky ones? But I know; Lady Louisa hasn't appreciated you. I can quite understand that you feel bad about it, being so little accustomed to such treatment."

"Hang Lady Louisa! A battered old campaigner, with no more heart or brains than a Dutch doll! I should be sorry to feel bad over a woman of that sort."

"What then?"

"Lord knows. A troubled conscience, perhaps, for having wasted so much valuable time. Dinner, as I said before, will restore me. Sit down."

They sat down, and did justice to Jarvis's preparations. Anthony's little dinners were famous amongst dining men, who knew better than to disturb enjoyment and digestion with too much conversation while they were in progress; but when this meal had reached the stage of coffee and cigarettes, the two friends fell into very confidential talk.

"What you want," said Adam Danesbury, "is to get married, Tony."

"Why," said the host, "you've been the loudest of us all in denouncing those bonds – till now. Because you've lost your tail, is that any reason why we should cut off ours?"

"That's all very well while we're young and foolish," said Mr. Danesbury sedately (he was a sedate person always, but "a devil of a fellow," all the same, at times). "And I denounce the thing still, when it's nothing but a buying and selling business, like what we so often see. But get a good girl, Tony – a girl like my girl – one who doesn't make a bargain of you, but loves the ground you walk on, though you may go barefoot —then it's all right. Think of our advanced age, if you please. Byron was in the sere and yellow leaf before he was as old as I am, and you are close up. Twenty years hence we shall be old fogies, and we shall have lost our appetite for cakes, if not for ale, and they will shunt us into corners; then we shall want our girls and boys to ruffle it in our place. If we don't look sharp, those girls and boys won't be there, Tony, and it will feel lonely – I know it will."

"These be the words of wisdom," said Tony reflectively. "I must confess I had forgotten about the girls and boys."

"Oh, but, apart from them, it's a mistake to put it off, after a certain time of life – that is, of course, if you can find the right sort of woman. For God's sake, don't go and throw yourself away on one of these society girls. What a fellow wants is a home, and they don't seem to know the meaning of the word."

"How would you describe the right sort of woman?" asked Anthony, pushing the wine towards his friend.

"I would say, a woman like Rose Lennox."

"Yes, of course – naturally. Only, unfortunately, I don't know Miss Lennox."

"I wish you did, Tony. If you had come down to my father's place, as I wanted you to, you would have met her. However, you will see her before long, I trust."

Anthony spread his arms over the table, and looked curiously at the man in whom Miss Lennox had wrought so great a change.

"Tell me about her, will you, old fellow?" he said. "Tell me, so that I may know what the right woman is like, when I do happen to see her."

Mr. Danesbury was nothing loth. He, too, spread his arms on the table, with an air of preparation, having placed his unconsumed cigarette in the ash-tray beside him.

"Well, in the first place, I must tell you she is poor," he began. "But she's none the worse for that."

"No, the better – the better!" cried Anthony, delighted. "I believe it's just money that spoils them all."

"Though she's poor, she's the most perfect lady that ever stepped."

The host nodded comprehendingly.

"Her father has the parish next to my father's; old Lennox got the living after I left home. It's supposed to be worth two-fifty, but if he gets two it's as much as he does; and there are seven children. My Rose is the eldest – twenty-three next birthday."

"Yes?" Anthony had left off smoking, and was listening as men seldom listened to this love-sick swain.

"The way I knew her first – my sisters gave a garden party – you know those little clerical garden parties? – parsons and their wives and daughters from miles round, coming in their washed frocks and their little basket carriages; and two of the Lennox girls were there – nice, interesting little things, but not Rose. We had three tennis afternoons before I knew of her existence. I used to hear my sisters say, 'Why don't you make Rose come?' but never took any heed; until one day I had to drive some of them home, because a storm was coming, and they hadn't any carriage; and just as I got there the storm burst, and I went in to wait till it was over. And there I saw that girl – my Rose – sitting at a table, mending stockings, with half a dozen little brats saying their lessons to her. This was what she did every day – sewed, and kept house, and taught the children, while her sisters went out to play tennis. She said it was so good for them to have a little recreation – as if she wasn't to be thought of at all. That's the sort of woman she is."

Anthony stretched out his hand. "Show me that locket again, will you?"

Adam Danesbury detached watch and chain, and pushed them over the table. "It don't do her justice," he said tenderly. "She's got hair that you can see yourself in, and a complexion like milk; the colour comes and goes with every word you say to her, and her expression changes in the same way. Photography always fails with people of that sort. Still – there she is."

Photography had evidently not done justice to Miss Lennox. The ladies on the yacht had called her dowdy, and insignificant, and plain, wondering at Mr. Danesbury's taste; but, helped by that gentleman's description of her, Anthony made out a sweet and modest face, which held his gaze for several minutes. Her lover watched him eagerly – this accomplished connoisseur – and swelled with pride to see her so appreciated.

"Well?" he said challengingly.

"Well," said Anthony, as he snapped the locket, "she's a charming creature, and you are an enviable fellow."

"I am that," rejoined the lover, re-opening the case before hanging it to his button-hole. "And I shall be a great deal more enviable this time next year, please God."