A Humble Enterprise

He plumped down on his seat in front of her. "It has everything to do with me," he said; "everything. Sarah – I am going to call you Sarah from this moment – shall I tell you something?"

She looked at him, holding her breath.

"You must keep it a secret for a little while, until I know whether she will have me. I am going to ask Jenny to be my wife."

He met her eyes boldly, for he had made up his mind; and she, seeing him serious and determined, clasped her hands in a speechless ecstasy of gratitude to Heaven for its goodness to her.

Then he went home and wrote a letter.

"Dear Polly, —

"Many thanks for yours, which I got both together last night. We only returned yesterday, or I would have written before. I am glad you found all well at home, and that the kiddies were pleased with their presents. Give them my love. Tell Harry I will see about the buggy and the stores at once; the latter shall go up by goods train to-morrow. I suppose he wants the waggonette big enough to hold you all – something like the old one, only lighter. It might have been rather serious, that smash. He's too risky with his half-broken cattle and his fancy driving, and that Emily always was a fiend incarnate. If she belonged to me I'd shoot her.

"I didn't have such a gaudy time as you seem to think. I'm sure I don't know what I went for, unless it was to get cool, which there was little chance of in a boat so crowded. Lord Nettlebury made a beast of himself as usual, regardless of the ladies, who pretended not to see it just because it was Nettlebury. I told Maude they disgraced themselves more than he did, by their indulgence of him; but women are all alike – or nearly all. It was sickening to see them fawning over the disgusting little brute, who ought to have been pitched overboard.

"Danesbury is the best of fellows – mad on his little English fiancée, and with no eyes for anybody else. They chaffed him unmercifully, but he liked it. She has wonderfully improved him. He says they are going to live in the country when she comes out, and he's looking for a place in this colony not too fatiguingly far from town. He's in the right there. Melbourne isn't wholesome. I'm sick of it myself – that is, I'm sick of streets, which are the same everywhere, and of sea, and of men and women who make a child's game of life. I want a sniff of the bush air before I settle down, and I think I'll run up to you to-morrow night, when I've seen about Harry's commissions. We have hardly had a good talk since I came back, and the kids will be forgetting me. Our stepmother has been rather getting on my nerves lately; it will be a relief to be out of her reach for a day or two. And my liver (perhaps that's why I've been so bored) wants horse exercise after so much loafing. Hal and I will have some rides together, tell him. I suppose the poor little beggars have done school, and are in the full swing of holidays by now. They won't object to a few more toys for Santa Claus's stocking, I daresay. I will bring you up some fish in ice, if I can get them fresh enough.

"Yours affectionately,"A. Churchill."

The writer of this letter posted it at the G.P.O. while spending his afternoon about town, buying buggies and Christmas presents for his sister's family, consequently it went up country by the five o'clock express, and Mrs. Oxenham received it before noon next day. No answer was expected or required, and therefore Tony was surprised and annoyed to get a telegram from her, just as he was thinking it time to change his clothes for his journey, to say, —

"Come to-morrow if equally convenient. Meet you night train."

"What the deuce – oh, here, Jarvis, hold on a bit. Confound the – what on earth does she mean? Can't have got that great house full of guests, so that there isn't a corner for me to sleep in – that would be too absurd. Going out, perhaps – but she wouldn't stop me for that. Can't be Jenny – she'd stop me altogether if she meant that. It's a dashed nuisance anyhow."

The packing was stayed, and he mooned away to the club, because he didn't know what else to do with himself. He was lost for want of occupation, and ridiculously angry at having to kick his heels for twenty-four hours for no earthly purpose that he could see. There was nothing to do or to interest one – there never is under these circumstances; his journey put back at the last moment, he was stranded until it could be put on again. So he drifted to the club.

There he found his father. It was the old gentleman's habit to play tennis after business, to keep his fat down – a habit formed long years before the lawn variety of the game had been invented; and Tony found him hard at it, and watched him listlessly.

As soon as Mr. Churchill was aware of his son's presence, he exclaimed: "Why, I thought you were off to Wandooyamba to-night!"

"Going to-morrow," returned Tony.

And when the game was over, the father said, "Come out and dine with us to-night, boy. You are deserting us altogether these days, and I've got a lot of business I want to talk over with you."

Tony recognised that it was his duty to accede, because he really had been neglecting his father (but that was Maude's fault); and he acceded accordingly, as cheerfully as he could. Jarvis having been informed by telephone, the two gentlemen took tram together, and were presently seen by Maude from her bedroom window sauntering up the garden, affectionately arm in arm. She dashed aside the gown that had been chosen for the evening, and called for Mrs. Earl's latest – a white brocade, full of gold threads, that was very splendid.

Anthony had leisurely dressed himself in the clothes he kept at Toorak for these chance occasions, and was pulling his coat lappets straight over his big chest when he heard her knock on his door.

"That you, mother?" he called. "How are you?"

"Oh, Tony! Are you ready, Tony?" she called back.

"Yes – no, not quite, I sha'n't be long."

"Do – do make haste and come downstairs. I've something I want to say to you – very particularly – before the others come down."

"All right. I won't be a minute."

He thought he would dawdle on until he heard the "others" —i. e., his father – on the stairs; then he thought he might as well hear what the wonderful secret was. It was never safe to put her off. She was liable to burst at wrong times if kept bottled up too long.

CHAPTER XIV

A WEAK FATHER

He found her pacing up and down the long drawing-room with excitement in her face, all the gold drops on the crape front of her dress swinging and twinkling, the stiff train scratching over the carpet. She almost rushed at him when he appeared.

"Tony," she said, laying her heavily diamonded hand upon his arm, "your father says you are going up to Wandooyamba."

He flushed a little, admitting that he was. "And what then?"

"Tony, you – are – not – to – go."

"Oh, indeed! And pray, madam, who are you, to give me orders —me, that was dux of my school when you were in your cradle?"

"I am your mother, sir. It is a mother's business to give orders, and a son's to obey them. And I say you are not to go to Wandooyamba."

"If a mother is to issue commands of that sort, and in that tone of voice, the least she can do is to give her reasons for them."

"The reason is that Mary has company up there – people – a person– a person that I don't choose you to associate with."

"And who may that person be? A he or a she?"

"You know quite well, so don't pretend you don't."

"I know nothing," said Tony mendaciously, "and am most anxious for information. I cannot imagine Mary associating with anybody who isn't fit to associate with me. But perhaps it is I who am not fit? Who's the almighty swell that I'm not good enough for?"

"No swell at all – quite the contrary. It's that tea-room girl – oh, Tony, I believe you knew all the time, only you like to put that mask on, because you know how I hate to see you look at me like a wooden image! It's that Liddon girl, that she made such an absurd fuss about. She wasn't well, and Mary took her to Wandooyamba to recruit, and she's there now."

"I don't see what that has to do with me," said he in a stately way; and he tried to move away from her.

Maude clutched him with both hands round his arm, and moved with him. "If it doesn't matter now, it will matter when you get under the same roof with her. Oh!" – looking up at him – "you did know she was there, and you are going after her! You used to sneak to the tea-room on the sly – heaps of people have told me – and now you are going to Wandooyamba just on purpose to make love to her – I can see it in your face, though you have your mask on! Oh! Tony dear, don't —don't be a naughty, bad boy – for my sake!"

"If I have ever been bad – bad to women," said Tony, removing his mask, "that time is over. Don't distress yourself. If I should by chance make love to Miss Liddon, it will be quite respectably, I assure you."

"But that would be worse!" shrieked Maude, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room, horrified. "Oh, Tony, what are you talking about – you, that have always been so fastidious! A tea-room girl! Oh, you are only trying to aggravate me! I didn't save you from Lady Louisa to have you throw yourself away on a tea-room girl!"

He almost shook her, he was so angry with her. "May I ask you to be so very good as to mind your own business, and allow me to manage mine?" he said, with a sort of cold fury in his voice and eyes. It was not the way a son should speak to his mother – indeed, it was quite brutal – but he could not restrain himself; and she, looking at him, guessed what the sudden rage portended.

"It is my business," she retorted, with equal passion. "It is my family's business – it is all our businesses – to see that we are not disgraced."

"Disgraced!" he drawled, with bitter amusement. "Good Lord!"

The white gauze over her bosom heaved like foam on a flowing tide, the gold drops studding it shook like harebells in a breeze.

"Tony," she burst out fiercely, "I shall tell your father of you."

She swept out of the room, and he heard her long tail scraping over the tiles of the hall, and rustling up the broad stairs.

"Little devil!" he muttered in his teeth; and then he laughed, and his eyes cleared, and he went out upon the colonnaded verandah and walked up and down, with his hands behind him, till the gong clanged for dinner.

Sedately he marched into the dining-room and stood by the table, he and the servants, all silent alike, waiting for host and hostess to come downstairs. Then in flounced Maude, in her glittering whiteness, with her head up, and a wicked flash of triumph in her eyes as she met the wooden stare of her stepson; and her husband followed at her heels, furtive, downcast, troubled – pretending for the present that all was well, and failing to convince even the footman that it was so. Tony was at once aware that Maude had "told his father of him," and all through dinner he was trying to forecast what the result would be. She sparkled balefully for a time, trying to tease him into disputatious talk; but his cold irresponsiveness cowed her into silence too, and the resource of wistful glances that hinted at remorse and tears. It was a dismal meal. When it was happily at an end, and she rose from her plate of strawberries, he marched to the door and held it open for her, standing stiffly, like a soldier sentinel. She looked at him appealingly, and whispered "Forgive me," as she swept slowly out; but he stared stonily over her head and took no notice.

Shutting the door sharply behind her, he returned to his seat at the table. The gliding servants vanished, and his father pushed the wine towards him. There was a long silence, which he would not break. The old man cleared his throat a few times, and smacked his lips over his old port. At last their eyes met, and the spell was lifted.

"What's this, my boy, about – about poor Liddon's daughter?"

Anthony laid a broad palm over his father's hand resting on the table. "Don't let us talk of it here, daddy," he said, with gruff gentleness. "Finish your wine comfortably. Then we'll go into the smoking-room, and I'll tell you all about it."

Mr. Churchill brisked up, tossed off his port, and was ready for the smoking-room at once. It was detached from the house, and its French doors opened upon a retired lawn, on which the moon shone between the shadows of shrubs and trees. They drew armchairs towards the threshold, and lit their pipes, but not the lamps, and talked and talked in the cooling twilight, as men who had confidence in one another.

At first the father would not hear of the projected match. He belonged to a vulgar little world that was eaten up with the love of money, and could not despise the conventions of his caste. He argued, gently but obstinately, that it would "never do, you know," for quite a long time, thinking of what Maude would say to him if he failed to be firm; but a mention of Maude's homely predecessor, and the days when there was no high fashion in the family, touched his susceptible heart. Tony drew comparisons between his dead mother, his stepmother and his proposed wife, and morals therefrom.

"Well, well," the old gentleman admitted, "there's something in that."

"Where would you have been without her, all that time when you were poor and struggling?"

"True. But you are not poor and struggling."

"I may be. No one can tell. Any sort of misfortune may come to a man. And in the day of adversity – well, you can see what she would be."

"Oh, she's a good girl – I never denied it – as good as they make 'em."

"Suppose I should fall ill? Maude's sister was at a ball the night before her husband died."

"She didn't know he was so bad, of course."

"She would have guessed if she'd been a woman of the right sort. Jenny won't go to balls when I am ill in bed, if it's only a cold or a headache."

"No doubt that's the sort to stick to you and comfort you." The old father sighed as he reflected on his increasing gout. "And I daresay – after all – in the long run perhaps – "

"Exactly. I am firmly convinced of it. She will last it out. And meanwhile, think of the cosy home I'll have! Oh, I may have been a careless, fast fellow, but I've had my ideas of what I would like to be, and like my home to be. And then there's the children – if anybody has got the makings of a good mother in her, she has. Don't you see it yourself?"

"Certainly. A good daughter always makes a good mother."

"If you'd seen her with Maude's brats – washing the milk and butter stains from their hands and mouths! And they took to her on the spot, as if they'd known her for years. It is a sure sign."

"Oh, it is – it is! Your mother had that way. Poor old girl! Many's the time I've seen her at the wash-tub, and ironing my shirts, and cooking my dinner, and you children hanging round her all the while. But it's odd to see a swell fellow like you caring for that sort of thing. You've been brought up so differently."

"Perhaps it's my mother's nature cropping out in me. But, in fact, it's because I've seen too much, sir."

"Too much what?"

"Too much woman – of the sort that I know don't make good wives – at any rate, not good enough for me."

"Ah, you're wise! I daresay you do take after your mother; she was better than I am. You are wiser for yourself than I should have been for you."

"I don't know that it's wisdom, consciously. It's pure selfishness, as like as not. I know she'll be good to me, and take care of me, and stick to me through thick and thin."

"You must stick to her, too, Tony."

"No fear. A man couldn't play the beast, with a wife of that sort; at least, I hope not. I mean to be a pattern husband."

After the third pipe he rose up stealthily.

"I'll just go and change my clothes and get home to bed," he said. "Say good-night to Maude for me. I won't disturb her again."

"Good-night, my boy. And you may tell her I've given my consent, if you like. Only, mind you, we shall have to abolish the tea-room for the sake of the family."

"We'll hand it over to the basket-maker's wife, and that fellow in the office must make a home for his remaining relatives. Good-night, dad – good old dad!"

He stole up to his room and changed his clothes, stole down again and out into the moonlit garden. As the road gate clicked behind him he saw the front-door open, and in the effulgent aperture a white figure that glittered vaguely. A wailing note came through the scented dusk.

"Tony!"

"Good-night," he called back, and turned to run towards an approaching tram. He made his voice as cheerful and kindly as he could, for he forgave her now; but he said to himself, "Oh, you little Jezebel!" and then, in a graver spirit, "Thank God, my Jenny is not one of that breed!"

He went home to bed and slept like a new-born baby. Next morning he went early to the tea-room to tell Sarah that his father had given his consent and good wishes, and to inquire if Jenny was still at Wandooyamba – because Mary's telegram had made him nervous. Sarah said her sister was with Mrs. Oxenham still, and not to return till after Christmas; and Sarah wept a little for pure happiness, and kissed her potential brother behind the screen. He would have spoken to Mrs. Liddon, as suitor to guardian, before going away; but she was busy with her scones, and the girl declared they would all be spoiled and the credit of the tea-room ruined if such a surprise were sprung upon her at such a time. So he left the matter in Sarah's hands, and went away and did some more shopping; bought a beautiful little ring with a pea-sized pearl in it, in addition to fish and lollies. No more telegrams arrived, and Jarvis took the portmanteau to the station, and stood the crush of ticket-getting, and put his master's coat and the evening papers into the best corner of the smoking carriage on the express; and at 4.55 the happy man was borne upon his way, feeling certain that he was to see the wife he had promised himself before he went to bed that night.

CHAPTER XV

A STRAW AGAINST THE TIDE

Jenny was having an idyllic time at Wandooyamba. Mrs. Oxenham was not the woman to do things by halves, and, having undertaken to restore the girl to health, she set about the task with her native wisdom and capability. New milk in the morning; broth at eleven o'clock; drives behind Harry's wild teams, which never made her afraid; rides on a quiet pony with him and little Hal; rambles in the wooded hills about the house – the lone bush that she loved, but had never had her fill of; these things, in conjunction with a kindness from all around her that never allowed her to feel like an outsider, promptly brought a glow to the magnolia-petal whiteness of the little face, and a clear light to the eyes that had been so dull and tired.

She was so perfectly well-mannered and well-bred, and she looked so pretty in her neat gowns – particularly when she wore the black silk that had been cut low and frilled with lace for the evening, showing her delicately-curved and fine-skinned throat – that neither host nor hostess felt any incongruity in her position as their social equal and the equal of their friends. If they remembered the tea-room, they remembered also the father who had been an Eton boy; but soon they forgot all about her antecedents and belongings, and esteemed her wholly on her own merits. They wished they could have kept her altogether, as housekeeper, or companion, or governess to the children (two sturdy boys, who loved her with all the sincerity of their discriminating little hearts), because she was so gentle, and so useful, and never in anybody's way.

She was never in anybody's way, and yet she was always at hand if there was anything to be done that nobody else was ready to do. Until she had left the house no one realised the amount of unostentatious service that she represented. She made toys for the boys; she made sailor suits for them (though nobody had wanted her to do that); she arranged the flowers; she sewed and cut the weekly papers; she marked handkerchiefs; she made the tea; she took the children for walks, and kept them good by telling stories to them – a great relief to the house when school-time was over and the governess had gone away.

"She's just my right hand," Mary said to her husband one day; "and I don't know what I shall do without her when the time comes to send her home. It's like having a younger sister to stay with one."

"It is," said Mr. Oxenham, who had just found his favourite driving gloves, of which several fingers and thumbs had opened, mended so neatly that they were as good as ever.

Nevertheless, neither of them had any idea of making an actual younger sister of Jenny Liddon, and when Tony's letter arrived there was consternation over its contents.

"Now, isn't that just too bad?" Mary cried, as she dashed it on the table, and stamped her foot with vexation (Jenny being in the school-room with the boys). "When I wanted him to come, he wouldn't; and now I don't want him he starts off, without giving me any warning, in this way! Oh, it really is too provoking of him! To-morrow – that's this very night, less than twelve hours from now – he will be here, Harry. And that girl in the house!"

"It's awkward," said Harry, picking up the letter and perusing it for himself. "A fetching little thing like her, and a handsome, fast fellow like him, both under the same roof – "

"Oh, it must not be," Mrs. Oxenham declared impetuously. "It must be prevented at all costs. I have a duty to Jenny as well as to my brother. I only hope and trust he doesn't know she is here – I asked them not to mention it, and you see he says nothing about her; but, whether or no, I am not going to let either of them make fools of themselves, if I can help it."

"You can't very well tell him not to come, my dear."

"I know I can't. Besides, that would only make him the more determined."

"Nor yet pack Miss Liddon home, after asking her to stay over Christmas – like a schoolgirl expelled for misconduct."

"I know that too. I must scheme and plot to deceive them, like the bad women in novels; only they do it to harm people, while I shall do it for their good. Go away, Harry, and let me think."

He went away, and was uncomfortable till lunch time, when she met him with a calm face and a telegram in her hand, which she asked him to despatch to the township for her.

"I have put him off till to-morrow," she said. "You can tell him the horses were lame, or something."

Mr. Oxenham, who had scores of buggy horses, all jumping out of their skins with the exhilaration of their spring coats and renewed constitutions, said she must think of something that Tony would be more likely to believe than that. And she said, "Oh, leave it to me!" And he replied that he would do so with the very greatest pleasure.

The luncheon bell rang, and Jenny came into the pleasant dining-room, with the children clinging to her. She put them in high chairs on either side of her place at the table, and tied on their bibs, and cut up their roast mutton and potato, like the little mother that her lover dreamed of.

"Why do you bother about those brats, Miss Liddon, while the nurse spends all her time flirting over the back fence?" their father said, in a gay but compunctious tone. And he helped her to mayonnaise, and to her special wine, and to cool soda-water, and to salt, and to anything he could lay his hands on; for he feared they were going to treat her badly, and he wanted to put in all the good treatment that he could beforehand.

His wife regarded the girl with infinite kindness, but no compunction whatever – for she was a woman, and not a man.

"Jenny, dear," she said, "do you think you would enjoy a little drive this afternoon? I don't think it is too hot."

"I should, greatly," Jenny replied, the ready glow in her face. "But I enjoy everything – whether out of doors or in – whatever you like best."

"Me, too," clamoured little Hal. "Let me go too, mother! Then I can tell Miss Liddon some more about Uncle Tony's ship that he's gone to Tasmania in."

With the explosion of this unexpected bomb the colour flew over Jenny's face, and, because she knew she was blushing, it deepened to the hue of a peony. Anthony had not been named in the family circle since her arrival, except to and by this terrible infant; even Sarah had been afraid to interfere with the march of events by any allusion to him in her letters. So that Jenny believed him to be still upon the sea, and that nobody knew how she thought about him.