VINDICATED.
Naturally, I did not see much of the Juke household after the affair of
the baby's birth. There is nothing so sad, and so disgraceful to the
parties concerned, as discord in families; but this was no vulgar
quarrel, although several officious busybodies regarded it as such. I
merely took the very broad hint that my son-in-law and his mother had
given me, to the effect that Phyllis by her marriage had passed into
their possession and no more belonged to me. Moreover, one must have
_some_ self-respect, as I represented to Tom, who either could not or
would not recognise the facts of the case, remaining stupidly impervious
to arguments that would have convinced a child; and a proper sense of
dignity is an element of good breeding which I have inherited with my
blood--fortunately or otherwise, as the case may be.
But I was just as anxious, and even more so, to be assured that all was
well. _My_ feelings towards my own kith and kin can know no change.
Therefore I sent Tom to Melbourne every morning to make inquiries.
Perhaps he would have gone in any case, for his own satisfaction, but he
was not the messenger I should have chosen had there been a choice.
Unfortunately, he was the only one available. Without, I am sure,
meaning to be disloyal to me, he would stay there half the day, smoke
with Edmund, lunch with Mrs. Juke, pay Phyllis visits in her room, and
generally allow himself to be cajoled into forgetting the actual state
of things--making me cheap as well as himself, and putting me into a
most false and ignominious position. And then he would come back laden
with "best loves" and "when was I coming to see them again?" and "Baby
was wondering what he had done to be deserted by his dear grandmamma,"
and rubbish of that sort, which any one but he must have seen was
simply insulting under the circumstances, and which sometimes drove me
wild. His weak amiability, in season and out of season, and his habit of
taking everybody to be as goodnatured as himself, made him incapable of
perceiving that a gross outrage had been committed, for which formal
apologies were due. I argued the matter with him for hours at a time,
and had my labour for my pains; he would never positively admit that I
was right, simply because he could not understand the point of view. The
silence that gives consent was the most I got, and I was not satisfied
with that--from him. And so we fell out rather frequently--we, who had
never had a disagreement in our lives--and I was very unhappy.
Nevertheless, I was not going to set foot in Edmund Juke's house until
proper reparation had been made. It was not for a woman of my years and
standing to bow down to a boy and girl and an ignorant old person, who,
I believe, began life in a baker's shop, or some such place. An apology
I intended to have before I would receive them back to favour.
And they did not apologise. It seems to me a petty sort of thing not to
frankly own it when one is in the wrong, but very few people are
large-minded enough to apprehend the difference between false pride and
true. As a rule, they think it derogatory to dignity--a "come-down" so
to speak--to confess to being human and therefore liable to error;
whereas you cannot have a better proof of moral superiority. Edmund and
Phyllis were no exceptions to this rule. They would do anything short of
the one thing they should have done. When the time came for the baby to
be baptized, they wrote a joint letter, couched in extravagantly
affectionate terms, asking me to be his godmother. It was the dearest
wish of their hearts, they would have me believe; and yet--not a word of
regret for what they had made me suffer!
I saw through it at once. They were merely throwing a sop to Cerberus,
as it were, expecting that the little compliment would pacify
me--treating me as a cross child to be appeased with lollipops. Tom was
angry when I expressed my views; he said--what I am sure he was very
sorry for afterwards--that I was "the most perverse woman that ever
walked;" and it really seemed at one time as if this miserable affair
was destined to wreck the happiness of a marriage which for more than a
quarter of a century had been the most perfect in the world. I had never
imagined it possible that _my_ husband could be morose and rude--and to
me, of all people!
I answered the letter the same day. I said I was much obliged to Edmund
and Phyllis for their kind invitation, but I considered I was too old to
stand sponsor to the baby, who should have some one likely to be of use
to him through life. I did not suggest Mrs. Juke as a substitute; I did
not even mention her, nor refer to my grievances; I wrote temperately
and courteously, though not gushingly, and I fully expected that my note
would bring forth another, urging me to reconsider the matter, and
assuring me that I was not too old for anything--as of course I am not.
Instead of this, they affected to be huffy, made no rejoinder, and took
no further notice of me. So my feelings can be imagined when Lily calmly
informed me that _she_ was to be the baby's godmother. I was keeping the
child closely at home, engaged with her studies; I had put a stop to the
Melbourne visits, because I do not believe in town life for a girl so
young, and it was just as easy and very little more expensive to have
her masters come out to give her lessons; therefore I could not imagine
how she had been, as Harry would have said, "got at."
"Oh, are you?" I ejaculated, dissembling my surprise, "and, pray, who
says so?"
"Father," she replied. "Ted spoke to father, and he said I might. And
they want father to be godfather--Mr. Stephen Juke and either father or
Harry--and Harry says his conscience is against something or other in
the baptismal service--and so is Emily's--and that's why they chose me.
And oh, mother, I must! I MUST!"
She said it as if it were "I will," and with that mulish look which I
knew of old, and which meant that she would fight to the death to get
her own way, no matter whose feelings might be trampled on. I did not
stay to argue with her, but flew down the garden to find Tom. He was
pitchforking clean straw into the pigsties, and when he saw me, stood
and leaned on the fork handle with an exaggerated air of resignation.
"Well, and what's the matter now?" was expressed in his face and
attitude, though he did not speak.
"Tom," I demanded, as I paused before him--I will not deny that I was
boiling over "Tom, are you going to be godfather to the Jukes' baby?"
"I don't know, Polly," he said evasively. "Nothing is settled yet."
"If you do," I declared with passion, "I will never speak to you again."
Of _course_ I did not mean that, but he took it as if I had said
something horrible. Never did I expect to see my husband look at me as
he looked then, or to hear him speak to me in a tone so cold and cruel,
or call me names as if he were a common costermonger instead of the
gentleman I had always found him.
"Polly," he said, "because you are behaving like a maniac, am I to do so
too?--to turn against my daughter for nothing at all--my dear, good
child, who never grieved me in her life--and at this time of all times,
when her little heart is full----"
I could bear no more. I burst into tears. I believe the boy was digging
potatoes not twenty yards away, but I did not care; in the middle of
Collins Street I must have done the same. To be misunderstood by the
whole world was a trifle indeed, but to be misunderstood by _him_ an
insupportable calamity.
It was but for a moment, after all. No sooner did he see my tears than
he flung away his fork, hurried me behind a shed, and took me into his
arms to comfort me, as he had always done. All piggy as he was, I threw
mine around his neck, forgiving him everything for the sake of his
constant love.
"There, there," he crooned, "don't cry, pet. What a baby it is, after
all! You know as well as I do that you are just cutting off your nose to
spite your face--now don't you, sweetheart?"
"Oh, Tom," I wailed, "if you would _only_ understand!"
"Well, I do," he assured me, ruffling my hair with his grubby paw. "I
know all about it, little woman. And I'm ready to do anything in the
world to please you. I always am."
"Then you won't stand godfather to that child--without me?"
"Suppose we both stand together? We've done everything together so far."
"I can't. I have refused."
"Then write and say you have changed your mind."
"It's too late. And they don't want me to change it, Tom--they don't
indeed; they only asked me out of politeness; they did not press me the
least little bit. I am sure they were delighted when I declined. They
had calculated upon it."
"Pooh! That's your imagination."
"It is _not_. What, are you going to accuse me of not speaking the
truth?"
"No, no, my dear; but sometimes--well, never mind; we are all liable to
make mistakes. And when I think of the letter they wrote, asking
you--and I'm sure they meant it----"
"They could not have meant it, because when I only half declined--I left
it open to them to ask again--they would not take the hint. Oh, they
don't want me for anything now, and I would die sooner than ever force
myself on them again!"
Tom inquired, in a grave tone, what I had said in my letter--what reason
I had given for declining, or half-declining, in the first instance; and
I told him.
"And, dear," I urged, "if I am too old--and they accepted that as a
valid excuse--what are you?"
"Hm-m," he mused. "I never thought of that. Harry's the man--not me--if
there's anything in being godfather beyond the name. Only Harry jibs at
saying 'I will' and 'all this I steadfastly believe'--as if it were for
a young donkey like him to criticise the Prayer Book that's been good
enough for generations of us. That boy's head is full of maggots. So's
Emily's."
"I beg," said I, "that you will not say a word against Emily, nor Harry
either. They are perfectly right. I think their loyalty beautiful."
"To whom?" asked Tom.
"To me," I said. "Was it likely they would stand sponsors to the baby
over my head? No, they love me too well to countenance anything that
would humiliate me. And Tom, my dear, I think it downright tyranny to
keep those two dear children hanging on as they are doing, wasting their
best years. You forget that I was barely twenty when you married me."
"Barely twenty-two," he corrected.
"And Emily is twenty-three. You might remember what it was to _us_ to
get each other and our little home--how _we_ should have felt if cruel
fathers had kept us out of it!"
"Well, I never thought to hear myself called a cruel father," laughed
Tom, taking everything literally, as usual. "And as for Hal and
Emily--why, you yourself----"
"I did nothing of the sort," I broke in--for I knew what he was going to
say--"and I have always advocated early marriages, because our own was
so successful. Now, Tom, when we have settled the affair of the
christening--but we must do that first----"
"And how's it to be done?" he sighed, heavily. "Good God! I've been
true-blue Church and State all my life, but I'm hanged if I don't wish
there were no such things as christenings!"
I am sure I heartily agreed with him.
And after all he had his wish, as far as our baby was concerned. That
christening was postponed indefinitely. I heard that Edmund had said,
with a man's obtuseness to the logic of the case, that it was better the
child should remain a technical sinner than that all its relations
should become real ones. I was greatly surprised at the decision, but if
they chose to make the poor infant suffer for their faults, it was no
concern of mine. Mary Welshman and her husband wanted to make out that
it was--this, however, was merely a bit of revenge for some strictures I
had passed upon that disreputable brother of hers--and they took upon
themselves to such an extent that I resigned my sitting in the church
and stopped all my subscriptions. Welshman said that if baby died
unbaptized and unregenerate, his eternal damnation would lie at my
door--or something to that effect. I was not going to sit under a
clergyman who presumed to behave to me in that way.
And so, thanks to all this meddling and muddling, the miserable affair
ended in a complete estrangement between my daughter and me. She never
came out to see us, as she had been used to do, and of course I did not
go to see her without being asked. I would not let Lily go either, to
have her taught to be disrespectful to her mother; and the child--too
young to know what was for her good--tried me sorely with her rebellious
spirit. She was worse than rebellious--she was disobedient and
deceitful; I found that she met her sister secretly when my back was
turned, and that she knew when little Eddie cut his first tooth, and
when he was short-coated, though I did not. Tom was mopey and grumpy,
almost sulky sometimes--so changed that I hardly knew him for my
sunny-tempered mate; he seemed all at once to be turning into an old
man. And I, though I tried to fight against it, had a perpetual ache in
my heart, and was tempted sometimes to wish that I was dead, so that I
might be loved once more.
What I should have done without Emily I don't know. Tom gave me
permission to make certain arrangements which would enable her and Harry
to marry and settle, and the excitement and occupation which this
entailed just kept me, I think, from going out of my mind with
melancholy. As it was near the midwinter vacation, I insisted on the
dear girl giving up her school at the end of term; and we fixed a day in
August for the wedding, so as to have the cream of springtime for the
honeymoon. Emily's father--a perfect gentleman---was a cripple, earning
but a small income by law-writing at home, and their house in Richmond
was cramped and close; for health's sake I made her spend part of the
holidays with me, and really it was like the happy old times over again
to see her sweet, bright face about the house. Her companionship was
most beneficial to Lily, too; the child recovered all her amiability,
and was as good as gold. Tom quite brightened up, laughing and joking,
like his old self; and we had Harry rushing out upon his bicycle
directly his office closed, and staying to sleep night after night, so
as to get long evenings with his betrothed. I never saw a pair of lovers
behave with better taste. Instead of hiding themselves in an empty room
for hours, they would play a rubber of whist with the old folks, and
Emily would sing our favourite songs to us, and duets with Lily; and
Harry was like a big boy again with his "Mummie" and his "Mater" and his
many pranks. It was delicious to wake in the night and think of him back
in the family nest--to picture him as he had looked when I went in to
tuck him up, turning his handsome head to kiss his mother. It was a good
time altogether--except for the one thing; _that_ spoiled all--for me,
at any rate, if not for the others.
Every day, and nearly all day long, Emily and I busied ourselves
preparing the new house. The dears had wished to live in our
neighbourhood, like the devoted children that they were, and had fallen
in love with a sweet little villa of half a dozen rooms, in a neat,
small garden, which was the ideal home for a bride and bridegroom of
large refinement and small means. It was a Boom property going cheap,
and Tom and I stretched a point to buy it outright and make them a
present of it; so that I could look forward to having my dear
daughter-in-law near me for many years to come. Such proximity might
have been inconvenient in the case of another person, but I had no fear
of the old prejudice against mothers-in-law operating here.
The drawing-room, furnished entirely to my own design, was a picture. We
had the floor stained and rugs spread about; as Emily said, that was one
of the charms of living out of streets, which, however well-watered,
continually covered your things with dust, as if the house had pores to
take it in by. In town, if you want polished surfaces, you must simply
live with a duster in your hand. Then we papered the walls yellow and
painted the woodwork cream; and we made delightful chintz curtains and
covers for inexpensive furniture, and got a handy carpenter to carry out
our ideas for overmantel and bookcases, and used I don't know how many
tins of Aspinall. Without going into further particulars, I may say that
it was the prettiest little home that can be imagined when all was done.
Emily was only too pleased to leave everything to my taste and judgment,
and I cannot remember ever having a job that I enjoyed more thoroughly.
Then she had to go back to her mother to get her clothes ready. And,
because I could not do without her altogether, I often joined her in
town and had an hour's shopping or sewing with her. I accompanied her,
of course, when she went to choose the wedding-gown--a walking costume
of cloth and silk that would be useful to her afterwards--and on the
following day I kept an appointment we had made to interview a
dressmaker.
For the first time, she was not waiting for me. Her mother met me
instead--a nice, superior sort of woman, quite different from Mrs.
Juke--but a little inclined to be offhand, even with me. I also detected
in her manner a trace of that jealous spirit which above all things I
abhor, especially in mothers, whose natural instinct it is to sacrifice
and efface themselves for their children's good.
"Emily is out," she said. "You can't have her. You'll have to do as I
mostly have to do--attend to your business alone."
"But it is her business I am going to attend to--not my own," I said;
"and I cannot possibly do it without her. It is entirely for her
pleasure and convenience that I have come in to-day, Mrs. Blount, and
she faithfully promised to be ready for me at three."
"Well, you see, sickness is not like anything else--it's got to come
first. It's not an hour since she was sent for, and there was no way of
getting a message to you. She told me to give you her love, and say how
sorry she was."
"Will she be long, do you think?"
"I couldn't say; but she took her nightgown with her."
"Oh! Then I may as well go home at once. And when she wants me again,
she can send me word." I was inclined to be annoyed with Emily for
running me about for nothing, but--providentially--it occurred to me to
inquire what her errand was.
"It's the child," said Mrs. Blount, "that's not very well."
"What child?"
"The little Juke baby. He has only a cold, his mother thinks, but, as
the doctor is away just now, she's nervous about him. So she sent for
Emily."
"For _Emily!_" My heart swelled. I cannot describe the feeling that came
over me. Mrs. Blount stared at me in an odd way, and I have no doubt had
cause to do so; I must have stared at her like a daft creature. Neither
of us spoke another word. I just turned and ran out of the house, ran
all the way to the tram road, ran after a tram that had already passed
the end of the street, and in a quarter of an hour was jumping from the
dummy of another opposite my darling daughter's door. No doubt my fellow
travellers smiled to see a matron of my years conducting herself in that
manner, but I cast dignity to the winds. A new maid who did not know me
answered my sharp pull at the house bell, and told me Mrs. Juke was not
at home to visitors.
"How is the baby?" I gasped out, trembling in every limb.
"We have just sent for Dr. Errington," she replied. And then I rushed
past her and upstairs to Phyllis's room.
As soon as I opened the door, and heard the sound in the air, I
recognised croup. It reminded me of times, in years gone by, when I had
wakened in the night and wondered for a moment what the extraordinary
noise was that pulsed through the house like the snoring of a wild
animal, and then leaped from my bed in agony as if a sword had gone
through me. I could see my own child's face, swollen and dark with
threatened suffocation, looking to her mother for help with those
beseeching eyes: just in the same way they looked at me now, only now
the mother-anguish was wringing _her_ poor heart. She was walking up and
down the floor distractedly, with the baby in her arms--he had grown a
huge fellow, and weighed her down; and Emily was wildly turning the
leaves of a great medical book of Edmund's, blind with tears. Dear,
loving, futile creatures! It was more than I could bear to see them, and
to hear my Phyllis cry, "Mother! Mother! Oh, mother, tell us what to
do!"
In one moment my cloak was on the floor and the babe was in my arms. He
struggled to cry, but could not get the sound out--only the brazen crow,
and harsh, strangled breath, which, I was informed, were symptoms of a
crisis which had only just appeared, attacking him in his sleep--and
Phyllis, when she had given him to me, clasped and unclasped her hands,
wrung them, and moaned as if some one were killing her.
"Ipecacuanha wine!" I shouted. "Run Emily! Run over to the chemist's and
get it fresh--it must be fresh--and don't lose an instant! Hot water,
Phyllis, and a sponge! And tell them to get a bath ready!"
They scurried away, and Emily, hatless and panting, was back from the
chemist's on the other side of the street before I had finished
loosening the infant's clothes; and he nearly choked himself with the
first spoonful of the stuff, which nevertheless I was obliged to make
him swallow.
"He can't! He can't!" Phyllis moaned, tears that she forgot to wipe away
running down her poor face like rain down a window-pane. "Oh, he's
choking! He's going into convulsions! He's dying! Oh, Ted, Ted! Oh, my
precious angel! Oh, what shall I do!"
I calmly gave him another spoonful of the ipecacuanha wine, for I knew
what I knew--that in ten minutes all this grief would subside with the
sufferings of the poor child--and almost immediately the expected
results occurred. It was an agitating moment for her, still imagining
convulsions and the throes of dissolution, and an anxious one for me,
because this was a much younger victim to croup than any I had had to
deal with; but when the paroxysm passed it was evident to everybody--and
the servants also were standing round--that his distress was already
soothed and the tension of the attack relieved. I put him gently into
the warm bath, heating it gradually till he might almost have been
scalded without knowing it, fomenting the little throat with a soft
sponge; and when I took him out and rolled him in a warm blanket, he
sank at once to sleep in my arms, and the crisis and the danger were
over.
Then in dashed Dr. Errington, desperately alarmed because he was so
late, and full of suspicious questions. Phyllis took him aside and
explained everything, and, although it was hard to convince him that the
right thing had been done, eventually he was convinced, and owned it.
"I congratulate you, Mrs. Braye, on your presence of mind," he said
handsomely. "It it not at all unlikely, from what Mrs. Juke tells me,
that the prompt measures you took averted a serious attack."
"Thank you, doctor," I replied with a modest smile. "I am glad to prove
to you that I am of some use in a sick-room."
He looked a little embarrassed--as well he might--and Emily flushed up.
It was her habit to blush at anything and nothing, like a half-grown
school girl. But Phyllis spoke out bravely.
"Mother has just saved his life, Dr. Errington--that's all. If she had
not come at the moment she did, he must have choked to death. None of us
knew what to do to relieve him, but she knew at once." Then, as she
kneeled beside me where I sat on the nursing chair by the fire, she
dropped her poor, pretty, tired head upon my shoulder, and said, in the
most natural way in the world: "Father is right--there's no nurse in the
world like her."
I have had many happy moments in my life, first and last, but I do think
that was one of the happiest.
We sat by the fire until dusk--we three and the sleeping child. He had
gone off in my arms, and I would not permit him to be moved or touched.
As long as the light lasted I watched his sweet face, and the blessed
dew of perspiration on his still open lips and where the matted curls
stuck to his nobly-shaped brow; never had I seen such a splendid boy of
his age--except my own. I made Phyllis put up her feet on a lounge
opposite, and every now and then I met her wistful eyes looking at me
as if she were a child herself again. Yet I saw a great change in
her--the great change that motherhood makes in every woman--enhancing
her charm in every way. Emily sat on the stool between us. Once or twice
she attempted to go--and I wished she would--but Phyllis would not let
her. However, though not one of us yet, she would be soon, and in our
murmured talk together I instructed them both in some of the things of
which, in spite of a doctor being the husband of one of them, they were
alike ignorant.
"Remember," I said, "never to be without a four-ounce bottle of
ipecacuanha wine, hermetically sealed when fresh, and kept where you can
readily lay your hand upon it. And when you find your child breathing in
that loud, hoarse way, or beginning that barking cough, give a
teaspoonful at once--at _once_--and another every five minutes until
relieved. Now don't forget that, either of you. You thought it only a
bad cold, Phyllis dear, but I could have told you differently if you
had sent for me. When he gets another attack----"
"Oh, do you think he will have another?" she gasped, springing up on her
sofa with that unnecessary, uncontrollable agitation which I understood
so well.
I told her I expected it, but that there was no need to be alarmed,
since she now knew how to recognise and deal with the complaint, which,
even if constitutional with him, he would grow out of in a few years. I
suggested causes to be guarded against--stomach troubles, the notorious
insalubrity of Melbourne streets, and so on--and reassured her as much
as I could.
"Pray Heaven," she sighed, with tears in her eyes, "that I may never see
him like this again! Oh, I can't bear to think of it!" She shuddered
visibly. "He would have been dead now--now, at this very moment--and Ted
would have come home to find we were childless--if it had not been for
you, mother."
"I think it very likely," I said, looking at the darling as I gently
swayed him to and fro on the low rocking-chair. "But he won't die now."
"And he wasn't christened!" she ejaculated.
"_That_ didn't matter," Emily put in, with her inevitable blush. "You
don't believe in that old fetish of baptismal regeneration, surely,
Phyllis? You don't think the poor little soul would have been plunged
into fire and brimstone because a man did not make incantations over
it?"
I rebuked Emily. As I had before remarked to Tom, she had all sorts of
maggots in her head. It was the B.A., the advanced woman, coming out in
her, and I did not like to see it, my own family having been brought up
so differently. I observed with relief, that Phyllis took no notice of
her flippant questions. She looked at me--knowing that I should
understand--and said she felt as if it would be a comfort to her somehow
to have him baptized. I suggested that it would be nice to have it done
in the cathedral as soon as he was well enough; and just after that he
awoke, we gave him his medicine, and Emily went home.
When I had dressed the child for his cot and made him comfortable I took
up my own cloak and bonnet. But Phyllis looked so aghast at the
proceeding, and implored me with such evident sincerity not to leave
her, and particularly not to leave the baby, that I consented to stay at
any rate until Edmund returned--although, as I represented to her, her
father would be thinking I had been run over in the street.
When she heard her husband's step in the hall she made an excuse to run
down to speak to him about the boy, and they came back together, and
straightway embraced me with all their four arms at once. Edmund, who
has always had the manners of a prince, spoke in the nicest way about my
goodness to them.
"And now you won't leave us any more, Mater dear--now you see how badly
we manage things without you to help us? I have sent a message to the
captain--I've asked him to come by the next train--and your room is
getting ready. You _will_ stay--for our sakes--won't you?"
I wept on Edmund's shoulder, like a complete idiot. And of course I
stayed.
* * * * *
Shall I ever forget that springtime! The garden was a garden of Eden
with flowers and birds--the bulbs in bloom, bushes of carmine japonica,
great clouds of white almond and pink peach blossom overhead, and the
scent of daphne and violets at every turn. As for the house, it was a
little paradise on earth, which a house can never be, to my thinking,
without a baby in it. To see that dear child crawling all over it, with
Phyllis flying after him--to hear him chirping to his grandfather, who
seemed to forget there were such things as pigs and fowls to see to--oh,
it was too blissful for words! I easily persuaded Edmund that Collins
Street was a place for women and children to live in when they must and
get out of when they could, and he knew when he confided his treasures
to me that they could not be in safer hands. He told me so, and I am
happy to say the event justified his faith. Every time that he came
over--which was almost daily, though often he had not half an hour to
stay--he found them rosier and plumper, turning the scale at a trifle
more.
As I kept them for the summer--in the middle of which we all went to
Lorne for a month--they were with me at the time of Harry's marriage in
the spring. Edmund came down that morning to fetch his wife and Lily to
the wedding, bringing a carriage for them and Tom. Of course they wanted
me to go--everybody wanted it--Tom almost flatly declined to stir a step
without me; but I said, no, I would keep house and take care of the
precious grandson. After the way I had been deprived of him in the past,
it was beautiful to think of having him for a whole day to myself. And,
as I said to Tom, it was all an old woman was fit for.
"Oh, I like that!" he laughed, throwing an arm round my waist. "You know
very well you've only got to put your smart gown on and walk away from
the lot of 'em--bride and bridesmaids and all."
Old goose! But I am sure when he was dressed, and the lilies of the
valley stuck in his buttonhole, he could walk away from any young
bridegroom in the matter of looks--aye, even his own handsome son. They
all kissed me fondly before leaving the house--my pretty girls, and
Edmund, who was as dear as they--and I stood at the gate to see them go
with the pleasant knowledge that I should be more conspicuous by my
absence than any one by their presence at the wedding party, except the
bride herself.
In the afternoon, when Eddie was asleep and I was beginning to feel
rather tired of my own company, I had a visit from kind old Mrs. Juke.
She too had married her sons and daughters, so she could sympathise with
me. We had a comfortable tea together, and lots of talk, comparing
notes, as mothers love to do; and then we amused ourselves with our
grandchild, like two infants with a doll. She was of Tom's opinion that
he was the image of me, and she was in raptures at the improvement in
him since I had "saved his life"--as she persisted in calling the mere
giving of a simple emetic. Strange to say, with all the children she had
had, she could not remember a case of croup amongst them, and she did
not know the sovereign virtue of fresh ipecacuanha wine. Later in the
afternoon we walked to the new house, wheeling the perambulator in turn;
and I showed her everything, and she thought all perfect--as it was. She
was wonderfully agile for a rather stout woman, making nothing of the
long tramp; and her intelligent appreciation of artistic things
surprised me. I had long discovered the fact that she was excellently
educated. Her father had had large flour mills and been wealthy in his
day, and his daughters had all had advantages--far more than I had had
myself, in fact. Poor Mrs. Blount, on the contrary, had never mixed with
cultured people, as her accent indicated.
"Well," said Ted's mother, in Ted's own nice way, when our inspection of
the little house was ended, "Emily Blount ought to be a happy girl."
"And she is," I replied. "About as happy as a young bride ever was in
this world--except myself."
"And me," said Mrs. Juke.
"And you."
I was glad and proud to believe that it was so.
But since then I have wondered sometimes whether Emily appreciates her
extraordinary luck as she ought to do. Now and then it comes across me
that she takes it a little too much as a matter of course.
It is very nice--very nice indeed--to have her living so near me, but I
must say she is not quite so docile as she was before her marriage.
Being a University woman, she naturally knows nothing in the world about
housekeeping, and it was only in kindness to her and out of
consideration for Harry's purse that I advised her now and then on
domestic matters. I thought to be sure she would be grateful for hints
from one of such large experience, but it was evidently otherwise,
since as a rule she did not take them. I told her that three pounds of
butter a week for three people was preposterous, and that light crust
made of clarified beef dripping was infinitely nicer as well as more
wholesome than the rich puff paste they put to everything; but she went
on taking the three pounds just the same. Though I gave her a sausage
machine and endless recipes for doing up cold scraps, I used to see good
pieces of meat thrown away continually; and a girl they had, who lit the
morning fire with kerosene, and who told my Jane that she "couldn't
stand the old lady at no price," broke crockery every time she touched
it, and yet they persisted in keeping her. As I said to Harry, if they
got into these extravagant ways when there were but two of them, how
would it be presently when there was a family to support? But your son
is never the same son after he has taken a wife, and Harry did not like
to be appealed to. The other day he said, "Please don't interfere with
her"--quite as if he were speaking to some meddlesome outsider. _I_
interfere! The notion was too absurd. I reminded him how I had held
aloof from the Jukes when they were young beginners, as proving as I was
not the sort of person to force myself where I was not wanted, even upon
my own children. But he and Emily are not like my beloved Edmund and
Phyllis, who think there is no one in the world like "Mater dear."
THE END.