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 alert. "Why, the very thought of it makes me feel twenty years
younger. I don't see why we shouldn't have a silver honeymoon while we
are about it. But what sort of a trip do you fancy? Portland and
Warrnambool? Tasmania? New Zealand? I'm afraid Europe is a bit too large
an order."
"Nothing of that sort at all," I urged; "but something that we can do
all by ourselves, without being interfered with." I pointed to the boats
near us. "A yachting cruise to some of the places I have never seen, if
you could find a strong, homely sort of yacht, with bulwarks and a cabin
in it. Perhaps a hired man or two--yes, that would even give us greater
freedom--if there was a place for them to sleep in away from us."
I enlarged upon my idea, while he listened and nodded, proposing
amendments here and there; then he jumped up in his resolute way,
lifting me with him.
"Let us get home and to bed," said he, "and I'll be up first thing in
the morning to see about it. We must save this weather and the moon--the
honeymoon, Polly."
We bustled back to town. And whom should we meet in the tram but an old
brother salt, who knew exactly what we wanted and where it was to be
had--a stout, yawl-rigged craft with something beside lead keel under
water, not too smart to look at, but able to travel, and warranted safe
"outside" as no ordinary pleasure yacht could be. One day sufficed to
stock this vessel with our requirements, and on the morning of the next
we set sail, with one quiet man for crew, and a minute dinghy behind us,
bound for no port in particular, and to no programme--determined to be
free for once, if we never were again. The children thought us quite
silly, naturally. I believe Harry felt it something of a hardship to
have to give up Emily's society occasionally for the sake of the pigs,
and I am sure, though I did not hear them, that Phyllis and Lily made
remarks on their poor dear mother's erratic fancies, and the way poor
father gave in to them. Phyllis took the opportunity of my absence to
"settle up the house," as she called it--meaning my house, and that
matters there had fallen into a sad state since she had ceased to
superintend them.
But we were emancipated now. We were out of school. I was able to
wear--what they had considered inappropriate for years--a hat to keep
off the hot sea sunshine, which burns old faces as badly as young ones;
and I could fish, and paddle barefoot, and sing, and talk nonsense to
Tom to my heart's content, with no sense of appearing ridiculous or
undignified to anybody. The crew was an old Bendigo hand, about the age
of my father, devoted to us both; and Tom was like a boy again, with the
tiller in his hand. What ages it was since he had steered a sailing
boat, of any sort or size! Yet even I could tell the difference in a
moment, as soon as he took the helm. Not only did he make the yawl do
exactly what he wanted, but he seemed to know exactly what _she_ wanted
as well. It was the same sort of sympathy as that between a perfect
rider and a horse that thoroughly understands and trusts him. Some
people--good seamen in everything else--can never steer like that,
although they may have been a lifetime at it. It is an instinct, like
good riding, inherited and not acquired. Tom's people had been sailors
since the Battle of the Nile.
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.