"What engagement? There's nothing on to-night, I'm sure."

He didn't know what to say, so he nodded in the direction of the club.

For all the engagement he had was to go and walk up and down the St.

Kilda pier.

CHAPTER IX

THE POTENTIAL HUSBAND

Sarah found herself obliged to go home when the tea-room closed. It was absolutely necessary, she said, to wash her hair. She would not be longer than she could help, and if Jenny liked to go to the pier by herself--for _she_ should not lose the refreshment of the sea air, so f.a.gged as she looked--her mother and sister could join her there when the hair was dried sufficiently.

Jenny did not feel called upon to forego the recreation of which she was so much in need, and had long been accustomed to go about at all hours by herself, safe and fearless, though Sarah was not allowed to do so. So the proposition was agreed to; in fact, it was jumped at.

"And if you find it late before you are ready, dears," said Jenny, fixing her hat by the tea-room pier-gla.s.s, "don't mind about fetching me. I can bring myself back quite well. It isn't worth while to waste a shilling on mere going and coming."

"All right," said Sarah; and mentally added, "I ought to be ashamed of myself, I know--but I don't care!"

She set out briskly to walk home with her mother, glad of the exercise after sitting for so many hours; and her sister spent an extra penny to ride from Spencer Street to the bridge because of her over-tired legs.

It was their habit to take the tram to St. Kilda in preference to the train, in order to be freely blown by such air as there was on the journey to and fro; and she seated herself on the fore end of the dummy on this occasion, quite unaware of the fact that a man in the following vehicle was in chase of her. She antic.i.p.ated a long evening of lonely meditation, which was the thing above all others that she desired just now--two whole hours in which she might hug the image of Mr. Anthony Churchill in peace.

That gentleman in his proper person watched her flitting down the seaward road. He had not seen her in her hat before, and daylight was failing fast, but he knew the shape and style of the airy little figure a long way off. He suspected Sarah of having contrived that it should be alone to-night; but he knew that Jenny was guiltless of any knowledge that lovers were around. Was he her lover? He put the question to himself, but shirked answering it. He would see what he was a couple of hours hence. One thing he was quite clear about, however, and that was that her defencelessness was to be respected.

Unconscious of his neighbourhood, she made her way to the pier, which was almost deserted, and seated herself on the furthest bench. There she composed herself in a little cloak that she had brought with her, and began to stare into the grey haze of sky and sea, starred with the riding lights of the ships at Williamstown, never once turning her head to look behind her. Anthony sat down at the inner angle of the pier, stealthily lit a pipe, crossed his legs, laid his right arm on the rail, and watched her.

"After all," he thought, "her father was an Eton boy; he really was--I have proved it--and he had a marquis to f.a.g for him. His people were gentlefolks; so was he; showed it in every word he spoke, poor old boy.

Maude, now--her grandfather was a bullock-driver, and couldn't write his name; and her father's a vulgar brute, in spite of his knighthood and his money-bags. And Oxenham is a Manchester cotton fellow--got the crest for his carriage and tablespoons out of a book. I don't see why they should want to make a row. Trade is trade, and we are all tarred with that brush. Goodness knows it would be a better world than it is if we all conducted business as she does--were as scrupulous and high-minded in our dealings with money. We are in no position to look down upon her on that ground. As for money, there's plenty; I don't want any more."

He puffed at his pipe, and the little figure grew dimmer and dimmer; but he could see that she had not stirred.

"Little mite of a thing! No bigger than a child she looks, sitting there--like a baby to nurse upon one's knee. In the firelight ... in the dusk before the lamps are lit ... gathered up in her husband's arms, with that little head tucked under his ear----"

He tapped his pipe on the pier-rail, rose, and walked up and down.

"Why not?" he asked himself plainly. "Could I regret it, when she is so evidently the woman to _last_? Beauty is but skin deep, as the copy-books so justly remark, but her beauty is not that sort; she's sound all through--a woman who won't be beholden to anybody for a penny--who makes her own frocks--takes care of them all like a father--stands against the whole world, with her back to the wall----"

Such were his musings. And, my dear girls--to whom this modest tale is more particularly addressed--I am credibly informed that quite a large number of men are inclined to matrimony or otherwise by considerations of the same kind. _You_ don't think so, when you are at play together in the ball-room and on the tennis-ground, and you fancy it is your "day out," so to speak; but they tell me in confidence that it is the fact.

They adore your pretty face and your pretty frocks; they are immensely exhilarated by your sprightly banter and sentimental overtures; they absolutely revel in the pastime of making love, and will go miles and miles for the chance of it; but when it comes to thinking of a home and family, the vital circ.u.mstances of life for its entire remaining term, why, they really are not the heedless idiots that they appear--at any rate, not all of them.

I was talking the other day to a much greater "swell" than Anthony Churchill ever was--a handsome and charming bachelor of high rank in the Royal Navy, about whom the young ladies buzzed like summer flies round a pot of treacle--and he was very serious upon the subject, and desperately melancholy. He was turning forty, and wearying for a haven of peace. There must have been any number of girls simply dying to help him to it, and yet he considered his prospects hopeless. "I see nothing for it," he said, "but to marry a good, honest cook, or spend a comfortless old age in solitude,"--not meaning by this that his dinner was of paramount importance to him, for his tastes were simple, but that he despaired of finding a lady whom the home of his dreams--and of his means--would hold. His dreams, he seemed to think, were out of date. In fact, he shared the views of the man in _Punch_, who was prevented from getting married by his love of a domestic life. And many others share those views. And thus the army of old maids waxes ever bigger and bigger--and they wonder why.

Not, of course, that I wish to disparage the old maid, especially if she can't help it; and far be it from me to teach the pernicious doctrine that a girl's business in life is to spread lures for a husband. I only say that an unmarried woman is not a woman, but merely a more or less old child; that marriage should come at the proper time, like birth and death; and that if it doesn't--if it falls out of fashion, as everybody can see that it is doing, in spite of nature and the parties concerned--then something must be very rotten somewhere. We will leave it at that.

Anthony Churchill had had a hundred b.u.t.terfly sweethearts, and been a few times in love. Earlier in life he might have bartered his future income for an inadequate sum down, had not happy accident intervened.

Now he was experienced enough to know the risks he ran, old enough to understand what was for a man's good and comfort in his ripe years--that is, partly. No man can be quite wise enough until too late for wisdom to avail him anything. It must be a terrible thing to have the right of practically unrestricted choice in selecting a mate that you may never exchange or get rid of! To find, perchance, that you have blundered in the most awful possible manner, entirely of your own free will!

Though, as to that, free will is an empty term. We are purblind puppets all. To see through a gla.s.s darkly is the most that we can do. There was a long and slender shadow on the sea--a mail boat coming in, bringing travellers home--and as our hero watched it, standing with his back to the unconscious heroine, he thought how he had been as one of them but a few days ago.

"And little thinking that I was coming back to do a thing like this!"

He walked up and down once more, feeling all the weight of destiny upon him. And Jenny sat and thought of him, and thought that never, never would he give a thought to her!

"What _would_ they say," he asked himself, "if I really were to do it? I--I! And she the daughter of one of my clerks, and a restaurant-keeper!" He put the question from the Toorak point of view, and at the first blush was appalled by it.

Then he sat down again, and looked at the shadow of her hat against the sky.

"What do I care? They will see what she is--little creature, with that deer-like head!" He went off into dreams. "She shall not make her own frocks again, sweet as she looks in them--her children's pinafores, if she likes--monograms for my handkerchiefs--pretty things for her house.

What a house she'll have!--all in order from top to bottom, and she looking after everything, as the old-fashioned wives used to do. I think I see her cooking, in a white ap.r.o.n, with her sleeves turned up. When the cooks are a nuisance, like Maude's, that's what she'll do--turn to and cook her husband's dinner herself. Catch Maude cooking a dinner for anybody! By Jove, I shouldn't like to be the one to eat it." The pipe had been set a-going unconsciously, and he puffed in happy mood. "A real home to come back to of a night, when a fellow's tired--when a fellow grows old.... Sitting down with him after dinner, with her sewing in her hands--not wanting to be at a theatre or a dance every night of her life--not bringing up her daughters to want it. How quickly she sews! I watched her at it--able to do anything with those little hands, no bigger than a child's. But she's no child--not she; no doll, for an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt, like those others. A woman--a real woman, understanding life--a mind-companion, that one can tell things to; knows what love is too, if I'm not mistaken--or will do, when I teach her. Oh, to teach it to a woman with a face like that--with living eyes like those!"

He was at the end of the main pier, looking over the bulwark at the narrow shadow on the sea. It was nearly abreast of St. Kilda now, gliding ghostly, so dim that he only knew where it was by seeing where it was not. Standing sideways to Jenny's bench, he saw her get up, and saw the living eyes shine in the light of the green lamp.

He stepped towards her in a casual way.

CHAPTER X

AS THE WIND BLOWS

"Is that you, Miss Liddon? Getting a breath of sea air? That's right.

Where are Mrs. Liddon and Miss Sarah?"

"Good evening, Mr. Churchill. Yes--a whiff; it is so pleasant when the sun is gone. My mother and sister were not able to come to-night, I--I am just going back to them."

"That you are not," said Mr. Churchill mentally; "not if I know it. But I must be careful what I'm about. She's shaking like a leaf--I can hear it in her voice. I mustn't be brutal and frighten her. Little lady that she is! She mustn't get the idea that I'm a Don Juan on the loose." He half turned as he dropped her hand, and said quietly, "I've been watching the mail boat. She's late. Do you see her over there?"

"Where?" asked Jenny; not that she wanted to see it, but that she didn't know what else to say at this upsetting moment.

"Just over there. But it's almost too dark to distinguish her. How glad they'll all be to get home in time for supper and a sh.o.r.e bed! Have you ever had a voyage?"

"Never."

"Then you don't know what a tedious thing it is."

"I only wish I did know," responded Jenny, who had gathered herself together. "I don't fancy _I_ should suffer from tedium, somehow."

"Why? Do you want so much to travel? But of course you do, if you have never done it."

"Above all things," she said earnestly. "It is the dream of our life--my sister and I."

"You are happy in having it to come--in not being satiated, as I am.

_My_ dream just now is to settle down in a peaceful home, and never stir away from it any more."