CHAPTER VIII
THE SILVER WEDDING
Emily went to her school in Melbourne, and I had to get another governess for Lily. She was a horrid woman. I stood her for one quarter, and then packed her off; and we had to pay her for six months, because she threatened to sue us for breach of contract. The next that I procured was a clever person enough, and not wanting in good manners, but she ordered the servants about as if the house belonged to her, and of course they resented it. So did I. Emily's gentle unobtrusiveness had spoiled us for ways of that sort. Moreover, Miss Scott was terribly severe upon Lily; the child was always in tears over lessons that were too hard for her. I did not believe in overstraining a growing girl, and ventured to remonstrate now and then on her behalf; but Miss Scott was quite above taking advice from her elders and betters – as good as asked me to mind my own business, or, at any rate, to allow her to know hers. So I thought it best to make a change.
And then I was deceived by false representations into engaging a widow lady, who had seen better days. She was recommended to me as an experienced teacher, having held situations in high families before her marriage; and I naturally supposed that one who had been a mother herself would be a safer guide for a young girl than one who had not. But words cannot describe what a wretch that woman was. There is something about widows – I don't know what it is – something that seems almost improper – especially those that are by way of being young and pretty, like Mrs. Underwood, though she was all forty, if she was a day, in spite of her baby airs and graces and her butter-yellow hair. She had the audacity to try and flirt with Tom, under cover of her pathetic stories of her lost husband and children, and those better days that were a pure invention; and he was too idiotically stupid – that is, too innocent and simple-minded – to see what was so glaringly transparent to everybody else. He used to think her an ill-used woman and pity her, and think me hard and unfeeling because I didn't. Oh, never will I have a widow about my house again! She entirely destroyed our domestic peace. Things came to such a pass, indeed, that Tom even threatened – seriously, and not in a joke – to get out his captain's certificate and return to sea, because his home, that had always been so happy, had become unbearable.
She went at last, and then I felt that I had had enough of governesses. Determined that I would never undergo such misery again, and at the same time strongly objecting to boarding-schools for girls, there was nothing for it but to superintend Lily's general studies myself, and take her into town for special lessons. I did not like the job, and found her very tiresome and disheartening; she seemed to mope, all alone, and would not interest herself in anything. A girl in these days is never satisfied with her mother for a companion, and after a time, when the Jukes were settled in their Melbourne house, I was glad to let her go on long visits to her sister. There she found plenty to occupy and amuse her, while I sat solitary at home, working for them both.
For I had no children left when she was away. The difficulty of the governess was not the only trouble that resulted from Emily's desertion of me. Harry also forsook the nest. He said it was inconvenient to live so far from his office, though he had never thought of that while she was with us, and that it would be better for business reasons to have a lodging in town. I did not attempt to thwart him. And so, as soon as he was strong enough to return to regular work – so valued was he by the shipping firm which employed him that they had kept his situation open during his illness – he took himself and a new bicycle to a stuffy Melbourne suburb, where he would be in the way of meeting his beloved frequently at the houses of her friends.
I wanted to settle in Melbourne too, to be near them all. But our little place was our own – a valuable property, yet unsaleable in these bad times – and Tom said we could not afford it. Besides, I knew he would be miserable cooped up in streets, and lost without his pigs and vegetable garden.
Thus we felt ourselves stranded on the shore while our young ones put to sea – deserted in our old age – which, after all, is the common fate. Only we were not in our old age, either of us. I have not a grey hair in my head, even now, and have more than once been taken for Phyllis's elder sister. On the day that she was married, when I wore pale heliotrope relieved with white, I overheard old Captain Saunders – and a man of eighty ought to be a judge – say to Mr. Welshman, "She's a pretty girl, but her mother can beat her." And I should like to see the man of forty who is the equal of what my husband was at fifty-five – or is at his "present-day" age, which comes to little more. Tom is stout certainly, but only in a dignified and commanding fashion; he can out-do Harry in feats of strength, and his fine, bronzed face, with those keen blue eyes in it, has a power of manliness that kings might envy. For the matter of that, kings are not nearly so much of kings as he was accustomed to being on board his ships. I know the lady passengers made themselves ridiculous by the way they scrambled for his notice and a seat beside him at the saloon table.
To people like Mrs. Underwood, though she was really my contemporary, I may seem very
passée
– no doubt I do – and a perfect granny to the children, who regard youth and beauty as solely the prerogatives of bread-and-butter misses in their teens; but – as Captain Saunders's remark indicated – I am not too old to charm where I want to charm. No, indeed; nor ever shall be – to one person, at all events. When Tom and I woke up on our silver wedding morning and kissed each other, did we not know what love meant as much and more than we had ever done, without needing Juke and Phyllis, and Harry and his Emily to teach us? I should think so, indeed! It seems to me that it
requires
the fulness of many years, fatherhood and motherhood in all stages and phases, innumerable steps of painful experience climbed together, to bring us to the perfect comprehension of love – the best love – that love in the lore of which those children, who think themselves so knowing, are mere beginners, with the alphabet to learn.
And this, by the way – it has just this moment occurred to me – is the kernel of the woman question, which seems so vastly complicated. Why, it is as simple as it can possibly be. The whole thing is in a nutshell. Those advocates and defenders of this and that, arguing so passionately and inconclusively at such interminable length – how silly they are! You have one set of people raving for female suffrage and equal rights and liberties with tyrant man; you have another set of people storming at them for thus ignoring the intentions of Nature, the interests of the house and family. The intentions of Nature, indeed! The house and family! When millions of poor women are old maids who haven't chosen to be so! – who, of course,
could
not choose to be so, unless physiologically defective in some way or another. Poor, poor things! They don't want equal rights with man, but equal rights with the lower animals. As they don't know what they miss, they may be forgiven for the way they speak of it in their books and speeches; but if they had it – if all had it who by nature are entitled to it – there would be no more woman question. I am quite convinced of that. Nature's intentions would then really be fulfilled, and the other troubles of the case, all secondary and contingent, would vanish. Of course they would. Man is not a tyrant, bless him! The child is the only tyrant – the legitimate power that keeps woman in her place.
But, oh, how much that child does cost us! We give all freely, and would give a thousand times more if we had it to give, for it is the most precious of human privileges – the thing we really live for, though it is inconvenient to admit it; but we pay with heart's blood, from the beginning to the end. We pay so much and so constantly that it often seems to me that the poor childless ones, undeveloped and inexperienced, who cannot know the great joys of life, are also exempt from all sorrow that is worthy of the name.
Baby-rearing, absorbingly interesting though it be, is really a terrible business; and the fewer the babies the worse it is. You hardly know what it means to have a night's rest for dread of the ever-recurring epidemics that so fatally ravage the nurseries of this country. Day and night you have the shadow of the clinical thermometer, your sword of Damocles, hanging over you, and are afraid to breathe lest you should bring it down. Then, when this hair-whitening strain begins to slacken a little and you think you are going to have an easy time, the children that are now able to take care of themselves utterly refuse to do so. Your girl goes wet-footed with a light heart, and you never see a telegraph messenger coming to the house without expecting to hear that your boy at school has broken his arm at football or his neck bird's-nesting. They follow their mischievous devices, and you can't help it; you can only cluck and fuss like a futile hen running round the pond in which her brood of ducklings is splashing. That's worse than baby-rearing, because you can at least do what you like with a baby.
And then, when you pride yourself on having successfully got through the long struggle, and you tell yourself that now they are going to be a help and a comfort to you at last, off they go to the first stranger who beckons to them, and think no more about you than of an old nurse who has served her purpose – probably turning round to point out the errors you have committed, and to show you how much better you would have done if you had taken their advice. And that is worst of all.
No trouble that I had had with mine, while they were with me, equalled the trouble of being without them, especially on the silver wedding morning, when I had, as it were, the field of my married life before me; when I felt that a golden harvest was my due, and beheld a ravaged garden with all its flowers plucked. It was my own fault that no letters of congratulation came by the first post; I had purposely refrained from reminding the children of the approaching anniversary, just to see if they would remember it, and they had been too full of their own concerns to give it a thought. Afterwards they scolded me for not telling them, and were very repentant. I had no present either – that is, not on the day. Tom had given me a silver
entrée
dish, and I had given him a silver-mounted claret-jug; but we had made our purchases a week too soon, and had been unable to keep the matter secret from each other. It was a wet morning, and I, being the first downstairs, was greeted with the smell of burnt porridge in the kitchen. I thought it too bad of Jane to let such a thing happen on such an occasion, and a hardship that rain should be running like tears down the breakfast-room window panes when I so particularly wanted to be cheered. It was April, the month of broken weather, and leaves were falling thickly on the beds and paths outside. I surveyed the dripping prospect, and noted how impossible it was to keep the weeds down, with the summer-warmed earth so moist; and I turned back into the room to see a late-lit fire fading on the hearth, and the children's empty chairs against the wall.
Well, I sat down behind the two lonely tea-cups and bowed my head on the table, on the point of tears – feeling that I too was a denuded autumn tree, an outworn woman who had had her day. And then, before I could get out my handkerchief, Tom came in.
He kicked two logs together, and the dying fire sprang to life; he opened a window, and the freshest and sweetest morning air poured in, sprinkled with a gentle shower and hinting at coming sunshine.
"What a lovely day we've got, eh, Polly? What a beautiful rain! This'll bring the grass on, and make the land splendid for ploughing, hey? What's the matter, old girl? Missing the children? Oh, well, they're happy; we've nothing to fret about on their account – nor on our own either – and that's more than most people can say on their silver wedding morning. Porridge spoilt? Oh, that's no matter – we have something better than porridge. Here, Jane! Jane! Bring in the you know what, if you've got 'em ready."
Jane came in, smiling, with the new
entrée
dish in her hands. Tom watched it with gleeful eyes, and assisted to place it on the table. It was his little surprise for me – mushrooms, to which I am extravagantly partial – the first of the season. He had gone to Melbourne the day before to buy them, and it was her absorption in the task of cooking them delicately which had caused Jane to neglect the porridge – Tom's first course at every breakfast.
"There" said he, as he lifted the shining lid. He was as pleased as a boy with his plot and its
dénouement.
"Oh, you
precious!
" I responded; and the gratitude he expected brought tears to my eyes. "No one
ever
had such a husband as mine!"
He beamed complacently, and sat down beside me, inconveniently close. With his arm round my waist, he helped me to pour out the coffee, and spilled it on the cloth; he fed me with the best of the mushrooms and morsels of beef steak, and wiped gravy from my lips with his own napkin. He seemed to feel that I needed some extra comfort to make up for the children's absence, though he said repeatedly that it was only fitting we should have our wedding-day, whether gold, silver, or pewter, to ourselves.
"As for you," he said, "I declare you don't look a day older than when I married you, Polly. Oh, well, a little fuller in the figure, perhaps; but that's an improvement. Old Saunders is quite right – you can beat the young girls still."
I told him he could beat the young men in the making of pretty speeches, and I pretended not to believe his flatteries; but I knew that he meant every word he said, being the sincerest of men. And my spirits rose by leaps and bounds, until I felt even younger than I looked, and like a real bride once more, just as if those strenuous intermediate years had dropped out of the calendar. The barometer was rising too. Before we had finished our mushrooms the rain had all passed off, and the sun was shining on a clean and fragrant earth. Everything outside glittered and shimmered. It was a thoroughly bridal morning, after all.
"And now, what shall we do?" my husband inquired, having lit his pipe and taken a rapid glance over the newspaper. "We must do something to celebrate the day. What shall it be?"
"It doesn't much matter what, so long as we do it together," was my reply. "But I think I should like to go out somewhere, shouldn't you? It is going to be the perfection of weather."
"Oh, we'll go out, of course. We'll have a day's sight-seeing, and our lunch in town. Let's see" – we studied the "Amusements" column, as we had so often seen the children do – "there's the Cyclorama; we have never seen the Cyclorama yet, and I'm told it's splendid."
"And it is years since we were at the Picture Gallery," I remarked. "There must be dozens of pictures there that we have never seen."
"We might go to the Zoölogical Gardens. If there was one thing more than another that I was fond of as a boy it was a wild beast show. They feed them at four o'clock."
"Yes, and the seals at the Aquarium too. I remember seeing the seals fed at Exhibition time. It was most interesting."
"And they've got Deeming at the Waxworks, Harry says – "
"Oh, Tom – waxworks! However, I don't see why we shouldn't go to waxworks if we feel inclined. We are free agents. There is nobody to criticise us now."
I began to feel that it was really almost a relief to be without the children, just for once in a way. Children are so dreadfully severe and proper in their views of what fathers and mothers ought to do.
"Well, go and get your things on," said my husband, "while I have a look round outside."
He dashed off to see that pigs and fowls were fed, and the boy started on his day's work; and I ran into the kitchen to tell Jane not to cook anything, and upstairs to change my dress and put on my best bonnet. In our haste to make the most of our holiday, we frisked about like young dogs let off the chain. It did not matter how undignified it looked, since there was nobody to laugh at us.
Before ten o'clock we were off, and before eleven we were in Melbourne, sliding up Collins Street on a tram dummy, on our way to the Cyclorama. The Picture Gallery had been set down as a first item of the programme – it opened at ten, and one had the place to one's self during the forenoon – but afterwards we put it at the bottom of the list, and finally struck it out altogether. Our feeling was that we could do pictures at any time – pictures were things young people would thoroughly approve of as an amusement for parents – but that we could not always do exactly as we liked. So we went to the Cyclorama first, and were so intensely interested that we stayed there nearly an hour. We had read of the battle of Waterloo in our school books, but never realised it in the least; now we were like eye-witnesses of the fight, and the whole thing was clear to us. A soldier amongst the spectators pointed out a number of mistakes in the arrangements of troops and guns, but we did not understand them, and did not want to; indeed, we would not listen to him. We moved round and round in our dark watch-tower to the quiet places, and gazed over the far-stretching fields with more delight than our first peep-show at an English fair had given us. The illusion of distance was so complete that it corrected all crudities of detail, and we simply lost ourselves in the romance of the past and our own imaginations.
"Never saw anything so wonderful in my life," said Tom, as at last we tore ourselves away. "I seem to smell that chateau burning, and to hear those poor chaps groaning with their wounds. I'm glad we went, aren't you, Polly?"
I truthfully replied that I was very glad indeed, and we emerged into the street, and he hailed a passing tram. Again we took our places on the dummy, that we might see and feel as much of the bright day as possible. Melbourne was still gay and busy, in spite of gloomy commercial forecasts, and the weather was all that a perfect autumn morning could make it. The sun shone now with an evident intention to continue doing so till bed-time, and we basked in it on the dummy seat like two cats.
"What shall we do next?" asked Tom, consulting his watch. "It is not near lunch-time yet. We must get an appetite for the sort of meal I mean to have to-day."
Before we could make up our minds what to do next, the tram had carried us into Burke Street, and lo! there was the temple of the waxworks staring us in the face. Tom signalled the conductor, and we jumped off, hand in hand, and without a word made our way to the door of the show which we had heard even young children speak of as beneath contempt – only fit for bloodthirsty schoolboys of the lower orders and louts from the country who knew no better.
Well, we were from the country; and, whatever the artistic shortcomings of this exhibition, it had the charm of novelty at any rate. Neither of us had been to waxworks since we were taken as infants to Madame Tussaud's. This was a far cry from Madame Tussaud's, but I must confess that it amused us very well for half an hour. The effigies were full of humour, and the instruments of torture in the chamber of horrors very real and creepy. Also there were some relics of old colonial days that were decidedly interesting. In short, we did not feel that we had wasted time and two shillings when we had gone through the place, though we pretended to have done so, laughing at each other, saying, "How silly we are!"
"Well, let's be silly," said Tom, at last. "There's no law against that, that I know of."
"None whatever," I gaily responded. "There's nobody to – "
"Hush!" he exclaimed, interrupting what I was going to say with a sharp snatch at my arm. We were just leaving the waxworks, and he pulled me back within the door.
"What's the matter?" I cried, bewildered by his sudden action and tone of alarm.
"Come back – come back!" he whispered excitedly. "For Heaven's sake, don't let her see us!"
"Who? who?"
He pointed to the street, and I had a momentary glimpse of our daughter Phyllis going by in her husband's buggy. Edmund, in his tall town hat, which glittered in the sun, was driving her himself; she sat beside him under her parasol, calm, matronly, dignified, a model of all propriety. How would she have looked if she had seen her mother coming out of the waxworks? It was quite a shock to think of it.
"She has been shopping," said Tom casually, "and Ted's been out after patients, and has picked her up, sending the groom home. It isn't every Collins Street doctor who'd let his wife be seen with him in the professional vehicle. Ted's a good fellow and a first-rate husband. We have a lot to be thankful for, Polly."
"We have," I assented, drawing a long breath of relief. For the moment I was most thankful that my dear girl, whom I had so yearned for, was out of sight. The coast was clear, and we sallied forth once more in pursuit of our own devices. Being still not quite as hungry as Tom desired, we strolled around the block and looked in at the shop windows – the florists, the milliners, the photographers.
"Do you remember," said Tom, as we gazed upon a galaxy of Melbourne beauties smiling down upon the street, "how we had our likenesses taken in our wedding clothes?"
"And, oh, such clothes!" I interjected. "A flounced skirt over a crinoline, a spoon bonnet – "
"It was the image of you, my dear, and I wouldn't part with that picture for the world. I say, let's go and be done now. I'd like a memento of this day, to look at when the golden wedding comes. Just as you are, in that nice tailor tweed – in your prime, Polly."
I told him it was nonsense, but he would have it. The people said they would be ready for us at 2.30, and when we had had an immense lunch, and were both looking red and puffy after it, we were photographed together, like any pair of cheap trippers – I sitting in an attitude, with my head screwed round, he standing over me, with a hand on my shoulder. The result may now be seen in a handsome frame on his smoking-room mantelpiece; He thinks it beautiful.
After the operation we had a cup of tea in the nearest restaurant, and by that time it was too late to think of the Zoölogical Gardens, which closed at five, and required a whole day to reveal all their treasures. But we thought we might be in time to see the seals fed, and so took tram again for the Exhibition building. As we entered the Aquarium through the green gloom of the Fernery, we heard the creatures barking, and saw the keeper walking towards the tanks with his basket of fish. We were in good time, and there was no great crowd to-day, so that we could stand close to the iron bars and see all the tricks of the man and the beasts, which were unspeakably funny. I don't know when I have laughed so much as I laughed that afternoon. And Tom was just as much amused as I was.
But when the last fish had been thrown and caught, and we sat down on a bench to rest for a minute, he fell suddenly silent, and I thought he appeared a little tired.
"I know what it is," I said, looking at him. "You are just dying for a pipe."
"No," he answered; "at least, not particularly. But I'll tell you what I do seem to long for, Polly, and that's a sight of blue water. Looking at those creatures diving and splashing somehow reminds me of it. I haven't seen the sea for months."
"Oh, you poor boy!" I exclaimed, jumping up. "Why didn't you say so at first – at the beginning of the day? I never once thought of it. Of course we ought to have been beside the sea on our silver wedding-day – the sea that married us in the beginning – or else on it. Let us get down to Swanston Street at once, and take a St. Kilda tram. There is time to reach the pier before the sun goes down, and we can stay there till dark, and dine at the Esplanade. It will be a nice long ride, and you can have your pipe on the dummy as we go."
"All right," he said, with renewed alacrity. "Mind you, Polly, I couldn't have enjoyed the day more than I have done, so far as it has gone; but a sniff of brine to top up with will just make it perfect."
So we had our sniff of brine. It took three-quarters of an hour to get it, but the drive was delightful in the fresh evening air; the rain had laid the dust of that dustiest of Melbourne roads, and C-spring barouches are not easier to travel in than the cable tramcars on it. Tom had the comfort of his pipe, allowable on the dummy; and the scent of his good tobacco, which the breeze carried from me, was a scent I loved for its associations' sake. When we got to St. Kilda the sun was low; no effect of atmosphere and sea water could have been more lovely. It was only bay water, to be sure, but it was salt, and it sufficed. We called in at the hotel to order our dinner, and walked down and out to the end of the pier, and sat there silently until the ruddy full moon rose. At night, when all was white and shining, we returned there and sat for an hour more, hand in hand.
"What it must be," said Tom, soliloquising, "outside!"
"Ah-h!" I sighed deeply. The same thought had been in both our minds all through the silence which he had broken with his remark. If he had not made it, I should have done so. In imagination we were "outside" together, as in our youth; the scent of sea in the brisk air had acted on us like the familiar touch of a mesmerist on a subject long surrendered to his power; the nostalgia of the seafarer, the sea-lover – which is a thing no other person can understand – had taken hold of us; it was as if some long silent mother-voice called to us across the bay, "Come home, come home!"
Near us, sheltered in the angle of the pier, a bunch of sail boats tugged gently at their ropes; the flopping, squelching sound made by the run of the tide between and under them was sweet in our ears, like an old song. A little way off some yachts of the local club lay each at its own moorings, a hull and a bare pole, ink-black on the shining water. Tom was no yachtsman, of course; he even had a contempt for the modern egg-shell craft, all sail and spar, in which the young men out of the shops and offices raced for cups on summer Saturdays; they were as children's toys in his estimation. But a boat is a boat, and, feeling as I did, and thinking of the remark he had made in the Aquarium, and how I had unaccountably forgotten what we ought to have done on our silver wedding-day, I said —
"Why shouldn't we have a silver honeymoon, and spend it at sea?"
Though he did not answer at once, and though his face was turned from me towards an incoming steamer, a distant streak of shadow sprinkled with lights, that he was trying to identify, I knew that he jumped straight at the suggestion with all his heart.
"Hm-m," he mused; "ha-hm-m. That's not a bad idea of yours, Polly. I daresay it might be done, if you think you'd like it. We have no children to tie us at home – Harry would keep an eye on the pigs and things – it would do us all the good in the world – by Jove, yes!" He sat erect and a