How he did love it, to be sure! And what a holiday that was! We had our little discomforts of various kinds, and I was seasick for a night and seedy all the day afterwards; but these trifles were of no account in the sum of our vast enjoyment, and cannot even be remembered now. Looking back on that cruise – that last cruise – perhaps the very last in life – it is one idyllic dream, simply. I find it hard to believe that it could have happened in such a prosaic world.
I daresay that much of the fairyland feeling was due to weather. There is no weather on earth like Australian weather for making holiday in – that is, when it is good. What fell to us on this memorable occasion was as good as good could be – fine and fresh by day, calm and beautiful by night, with various effects of moonlight, each sweeter than the rest. The beginnings of the days were the best of them, perhaps. We went to bed betimes – in that not too spacious chamber of ours between the big and the little masts – and so were ready to see the sunrise, to bathe ourselves in the clean, sharp, early morning air, to set about clearing up the cabin, airing the mattresses on deck, frying the eggs and bacon or newly caught fish, and cooking the coffee over the spirit stove, before the land people were astir, every vein in our bodies thrilling to the salt breeze, tingling with health, and our appetites keen as razors. Later, we would visit the shore for provisions, for newspapers, for a hotel meal, to send inquiring telegrams to our family and await replies, to amuse ourselves with a ramble in the bush or through the bay watering-places whose summer season had ebbed away from them. Later still, I lay prone on deck, snoozing over a novel, while Tom and the crew sailed the boat, and smoked, and talked shop in contented growls, a couple of sentences at a time. Then tea, and washing up, and the fishing lines got out; and the sweet twilight that, when it became darkness, was too cold to sit in; and the lamp lit in the little cabin – yawns – bed – the stirless sleep of nerves at peace and digestion in perfect order.
It was almost the same "outside" as in – not a cat's-paw squall molested us. There was sea enough for good sea-sailing, but not enough to wet me or my little house below – not till we got to Warrnambool, where, being weather-bound for a day or two, we had the joy of seeing great breakers again. They thundered on the rocky shore like cannons going off; they flung foam over the breakwater; they would not let the Flinders come in. We sat on a brown boulder a whole morning and a whole afternoon to look at and listen to them, as one would listen to some archangel of a Paderewski.
Ah me, how happy we were! The second honeymoon, like the second wedding-day, was miles better than the first. We married for love, if two people ever did, not having fifty pounds between us, but my old bridegroom was a truer lover than my young one. He said the same of his old bride. We were like travellers that have climbed to a noble mountain-top and sit down to rest and survey the arduous road by which they came – all rosy in the bloom of sunset – and the poor things still struggling up, not seeing what they head for. I never had such a rest in my life before, and we had never, in all our twenty-five years of dear companionship, been at such perfect peace together. There was only one little cloud, and that passed in a moment. Tom said – it was a mere thoughtless jest, for he did not mean to be unkind – that our divine tranquillity was due to there being no person near for me to be jealous of. I ought to have laughed at such an obviously absurd remark, but I am dreadfully sensitive to anything like injustice, and was foolish enough to feel hurt that he could say such a thing, even in fun. I jealous! I may have my faults – nobody is perfect in this world – but at least I cannot be justly accused of condescending to petty ones of that sort.
CHAPTER IX
GRANDMAMMA
"Good-morning, Grandmamma!"
I was in my kitchen after breakfast, seeing about the dinner – calmly slicing French beans, because it was Monday morning and Jane was helping the washwoman – when I was suddenly accosted in this extraordinary way. With a jump that might have caused me to cut my fingers, I turned my head, and there in the doorway stood my son-in-law, Edmund Juke, panting from his bicycle, and grinning idiotically, as if he had said something very funny. By what he had said, and by the expression of his face, and by seeing him miles away from his consulting-room at that hour of the day, I knew, of course, what had happened. My heart was in my mouth.
"What – what – you don't say – not really?" I gasped, scattering the beans, cut and uncut, together about the floor as I sprang to meet him. "Why, it isn't nearly time yet!"
"Oh yes, it is," said he. "Everything is all right. The finest boy you ever saw, and she doing as well as possible. I would not let any one but myself bring you the good news, Mater dear" – and here he kissed me, more affectionately than usual – "ill as I could spare the time. I knew you'd be easier in your mind, too – "
"But I am not easy in my mind," I broke in, excessively concerned about my child, and beginning to see that I had not been fairly treated in the matter. "I am quite sure it is premature, whatever you may say. Phyllis distinctly gave me to understand that it was a month off, at least. Otherwise should I be here?"
"It is an easy thing to make mistakes about, as you know. I can assure you there is nothing wrong in any way. You must allow a medical man – two medical men, for Errington attended her – to be the judge of that," said he, with the airs a young doctor gives himself when he has begun to make a name.
I was indeed thankful to hear him say so, but still I could not quite understand it. I wondered if it were possible – but no, it could not be! The cruel suspicion having entered my mind, however, I felt obliged to speak of it.
"I am not to suppose, am I, that Phyllis wished to deceive her own mother – and on such a point?"
Edmund at once replied, stormily, that I was certainly not to suppose any such preposterous thing; but he protested over much, I thought, and grew red in the face as he did so. I thought it not improbable that he had suggested my being put off the scent – he, who seemed to have known just when the baby was to be expected; afterwards I was sure of it. My own dear girl would have been incapable of such an idea.
I asked Edmund the hour at which the event had taken place. He said at a little before three that morning. It was now between nine and ten – as I pointed out. He said they had all been glad of a little sleep after their excitement, and that he had come as soon as he could get away. He had also ridden at racing pace, averaging I don't know how many miles an hour. No, the buggy would not have been quicker, even with a pair, and he had wanted his wheel for refreshment and exercise. Of course he could not take me back on it, but there was no hurry about that. He had left Phyllis sleeping as soundly as a top, and the longer she was undisturbed the better.
"Certainly," I said, with rigid face and shaking heart. "And it is right that I should be there to see that she is undisturbed. I ought to have been there hours ago, Edmund, and I can't think why you did not send for me – her own mother – the very first person who should have been informed."
He began to make all sorts of lame excuses.
"You see, Mater dear, the telegraph offices are not open on Sundays."
"Was it Sunday? So long ago as yesterday? And where were the buggy and the bicycle – not to speak of the trains?"
"The buggy and the bicycle were there, but I had to send the groom hunting for Errington, and of course I could not leave her myself. There was not a soul to take a message to you, Mater dear. Besides, there was no earthly use in giving you an upset for nothing. We soon saw that everything was going on beautifully – otherwise, of course, you would have been fetched at once – and so we thought you might as well be spared all the worry – you would have worried frightfully, you know – and that we would give you a pleasant surprise when it was all over. And now you don't seem half grateful to us for being so thoughtful about you."
He laughed at this poor joke. I could not laugh. My heart was too full.
"Poor, poor, poor girl!" I passionately exclaimed. "To face that trial for the first time – terrified to death, naturally – "
"Oh dear, no," he interposed, in his flippant way. "I am proud to inform you that Phyllis conducted herself like a perfect lady. She was as calm as possible."
"How can you tell how calm she was?" I thundered at him. "You know nothing about it, though you are a doctor. I know – I know what she had to go through! And no one near her to help her with a word of comfort, except a hired person – one of your precious hospital nurses that are mere iron-nerved machines – women who might as well be men for all the feelings they've got!"
"But she had – she had," cried Edmund, hastily. "She had my mother near her – one of the kindest old souls that ever breathed."
"What?"
I stared at him, petrified with astonishment and indignation. His mother assisting at the confinement of my daughter! And I shut out! I could not believe it for the moment – that they would deliberately put such an insult upon me.
Edmund said it was not done deliberately, but was a pure accident. "It just happened," he said, "that she chanced to be in the house yesterday. She came in after morning church, as she often does, and seeing that something was up – "
"What – as early as yesterday morning!" I burst out, thoroughly and justifiably angry now, and not caring to hide it. "You mean to say Phyllis was taken ill in the morning, Edmund, and you did not let me know? Oh, this is too much!"
Of course he hastened to excuse himself – with what I feel sure, though I am sorry to say it, was a barefaced lie. He declared she was not taken ill in the morning – not until quite late in the day – but that she was a little restless and nervous, and his mother had stayed to cheer her.
"Mother is such a bright, calm-minded, capable old body," he said – as if I were a dull, hysterical fool – "and she has had such swarms upon swarms of children, and such oceans of sick-nursing, and Phyllis is so fond of her, and as you were not get-at-able, Mater dear – "
Oh, it was sickening! I hadn't patience to listen to him, with his "Mater dears" and his hypocritical pretences. I saw clearly that it had been what Harry would call a put-up thing; he had preferred old Mrs. Juke – a woman of no education, with a figure like a sack of flour tied round the middle – to me. I suppose his friends had been twitting him about the tyrannical mother-in-law, in the vulgar conventional way; or he had been afraid that I would dispute his authority and orders in the sick-room; or perhaps, to do him justice – he had thought nothing of an affair which was in his daily experience, although it was his own wife concerned. In any case, I was sure that Phyllis had not been to blame. However fond she might be of Mrs. Juke – and probably she feigned affection to some extent, for her husband's sake – it was her own mother she would long for at such a time. And her mother she should have, or I'd know the reason why.
"It is not my fault that I was un-get-at-able yesterday," I said to Edmund, quietly but firmly. "At any rate I am get-at-able now. I see you are in a fidget to be after your patients – go, my dear, and tell her I will be with her in an hour or two. Oh, I daresay there is no hurry – from your point of view; I am of a different opinion. I am a woman —and a mother; I understand these things. You don't – and never could – not if you were fifty times a doctor."
"All right," he returned cheerfully, or with assumed 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?"
"Nobody," 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 nobody 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 shirt-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 anticipated the circumstances 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 passed 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 slobbered 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 fashion. "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 nobody 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.
"I am very sorry you take it in this way," she said, in a hoity-toity tone. "We may have made a mistake, but, if we did, we made it with the best intentions. All we thought of was to save you useless pain. We knew your nervous, anxious temperament, and how keenly you feel anything affecting your children; and so we decided – "
"It was not a matter for you to decide," I broke in, with natural asperity. "I am neither a baby nor an idiot. I have at least as much sense as any one in this house – I should be sorry for myself, indeed, if I had not – and I prefer to attend to my own business, if it's all the same to you. Whether I should be here, or whether I should not, was for me to say – for me and for my daughter. She, I am very certain, had no part in shutting me out; and she ought to have been considered, if I was not."
"It was she," said Mrs. Juke, "who wished it most. Her one desire was to spare you."
"I don't believe it."
"I am sorry if you don't believe it." The old thing shook like blancmange in hot weather. "I can only say that it is perfectly true."
"I will ask her if it is true – that she wished to have strangers with her in place of her own mother."
I started to cross the landing to Phyllis's room, and my teeth were set, and my heart was thumping with an emotion that I could scarcely control – but I need not say I did control it. Mrs. Juke hung on to me to stop me, pleading that Phyllis and the baby were fast asleep together, and must not be disturbed; and I asked her how she, who had been a mother fifteen times, could insult a mother by supposing that she would be less careful of a sick child than anybody else. If I had gone in alone I am sure she would not have heard me – Tom says that I walk about the house as if shod with feathers – but Mrs. Juke would come too, and there was no hushing that solid tread. I saw my darling start up from the pillow, frightened out of her sleep by the noise, and the flush come into her cheeks. And Mrs. Juke cried "There!" reproachfully, as if it had been my fault.
At the same moment another stranger came out of Edmund's dressing-room, and turned upon me like a perfect fury.
"I must ask you, madam, to be so good as to be quiet," she said. "The doctor's orders are – "
But I did not wait to be told by her what the doctor's orders were; I simply took her by the shoulders, ran her back into the dressing-room, and locked the door upon her. If Edmund's mother liked to be rude to me, she could, but I was not going to take impudence from a hospital nurse. I cannot understand the passion young doctors have for those conceited, overbearing women. This creature was not even married. What, I wonder, would my mother have thought of a single woman attending a lady in her confinement? I call it scandalous.
When I had got rid of her, I requested Mrs. Juke to retire also, which she did. I apologised to her if I had said anything that seemed discourteous in the heat of the moment, for there was a watery look about her eyes as if she were feeling rather hurt; and I said to her in a gentle way, that, if she would only for one instant imagine herself in my place, she could not help admitting that I was more than justified. I suggested that it would be a kindness to us if she would see what the servants were about, judging from appearances, they were entirely neglecting their duties. I mentioned the state of the lunch-table, and Phyllis broke in to explain that Ted had begun work so late that he had not yet found time to come up for anything to eat.
"Never you mind," I said to her, soothing her. "You are not to trouble your little head about these matters. I am here, darling, and you can rest from all housekeeping worries now."
And so at last I had my treasure to myself. She was very fluttery, and cried a little – which I did not wonder at – but soon composed herself, and proudly displayed the little one cuddled to her dear breast under the bedclothes. He was a lovely baby (and at this time of writing is the most beautiful boy you ever saw – the image of me, Tom says); and I felt, when I took him into my arms, as if my own happy young mother-days had come over again.
"Now, Phyllis dear," I said to her, as I laid him back into his nest, "I don't want to bother or disturb you in the slightest degree, but I do want to know whether it was your wish, as Mrs. Juke declares it was – "
However, before I could get the question out, or she could answer, the door opened; and there stood the nurse, looking at me with her nasty, hard eyes, as if I were some venomous reptile; and Errington was behind her. She had actually been to fetch him – he lived almost next door – in her rage with me for having had the firmness to keep her in her place. He was one of these modern young doctors who swear by the new ways, and of course he believed her tales and took her part against me.
"Mrs. Braye," he began, trying to be very professional and superior, "I must beg of you to leave my patient's room. The nurse has my orders not to allow her to talk or to be agitated in any way. I do not wish her to see people at present."
"I will take care," I answered, with dignity, "that she does not see people."
"Excuse me – she is seeing people now."
"I suppose you are not aware," I said, very quietly, "that I am your patient's mother? It seems to be taken for granted in this house that such a person does not exist."
"I am aware of it," he was good enough to admit; "I recognise the fact, Mrs. Braye, and sympathise with your feelings, believe me. But, if you will allow me to say so, you are so excitable – you have such a quick, nervous temperament – "
"And who has dared to discuss my temperament with you?" I demanded furiously – for this was the last straw – an utter stranger, a boy young enough to have been my son! "Where is Dr. Juke? I will ask him to explain. Mrs. Juke" – she was lurking in the passage outside – "will you be kind enough to send Edmund to me? After all, he is the medical authority here."
Edmund came hurrying up, and I never saw a man look so much like a whipped dog. He had not the courage of a mouse in the presence of his colleague. He spread out his hands with a helpless air – said we were all under Errington's orders, and that he no longer had a say in anything – in short, left me undefended to be a laughing-stock to those people.
I flew downstairs to find Tom, whom I had left in a little office behind the consulting-room, waiting until I summoned him to see the baby. I knew what he would think of the way I was being treated, and how he would vindicate and uphold me. But here I was again frustrated. The aroma of his strong tobacco was in the air; the ashes from his pipe were still hot in the tray; but he had vanished. Rushing back into the hall, I collided with that pert little parlourmaid who answers the door. She had come to tell me, she said, with an ill-disguised smirk, that Captain Braye had gone to do some business in the town and would return in the course of an hour or two. She must have seen that something was the matter, but she was just as callous as the rest of them.
I said "Very well," as cheerfully as I could, and sought the only refuge I knew of – the drawing-room on the first floor. It was dark with drawn blinds and the tree ferns on the balcony, but not so dark that I could not see the thick dust on everything; and there were flowers in the vases that literally stank with decay and the bad water their stalks were rotting in. Feeling sure that I was safe in this deserted and neglected place, I closed the door behind me, sank upon a sofa, took out my pocket-handkerchief, and had a good cry. Any mother, hurt to the heart as I had been, would have done the same.