ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW
He turned into Collins Street, and made his way back to his office,
still musing in this dangerous fashion: "What a housekeeper she would
make! What a mother! What a pride she'd take in her home! Those other
girls, once they'd got a house, would let it take care of itself, and
their husbands too, while they ruffled about, like peacocks in the sun,
and entertained themselves with Platonic love affairs. As long as there
was a useful person to pay the bills they wouldn't bother their heads
about the butcher and baker. Oh, I know them! But _she's_ not that sort.
She wouldn't take our money, honest money as it was--she wouldn't be
beholden to anybody--brave little thing! And such a ridiculous mite as
it is, to go and do battle with the world for independence!"
Passing through a small army of busy clerks, his eye lit on Joey, who
was regarding him with the veneration due from a mortal to an Olympian
god.
"Oh, Liddon--you are Liddon, aren't you?--how are you getting on?" he
demanded suddenly.
"Very well, sir, thank you. I believe I am giving every satisfaction,"
said Joey, with his young complacency.
Anthony regarded him for a moment in deep thought, and then asked him
how long he had been in the firm's employ.
"About two years," said Joey.
"And what's your salary?"
"A hundred and thirty, sir."
"Oh, well, I must make inquiries, and see if it isn't getting time to be
thinking of a rise." Nobody had thought of a rise for poor Liddon,
senior, who had been worth a dozen of this boy. "And how is your mother
getting on with the--the little business she has entered into?"
"I hardly know," said Joey, with a blush and a stammer. "I don't see
very much of them now."
"Why not?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Somehow I can't take to the tea-room
scheme. I can't bear to see my mother and sisters doing that sort of
thing, when our family has never been connected with trade in any way."
"Don't despise trade, young man. You are connected with it yourself--and
not at all to your disadvantage, it strikes me--as your father was
before you."
"Yes, sir; but this is a very different sort of thing, and my father, as
you may have heard, sir, was an Eton boy."
"I have heard so. Well, you follow in your father's steps, my lad, and
do your duty as well as he did. And your first duty is to look after
your womenkind, and save them in every way you can. Out of office hours
you could do a great deal for them, couldn't you?"
"I'm sure," complained Joey aggrievedly, "I'm ready to do anything--only
Jenny won't let me. She will manage and control things, as if she were
the head of the family. She would go into this low tea-room business in
spite of all I could say. However"--drawing himself up--"I hope it won't
be very long before she is in a different position."
A stinging thought flashed into Mr. Churchill's mind, and changed his
amused smile into an anxious frown. "Do you mean by marriage?" he asked;
saying to himself that she was just the woman to take up with a loafing
vagabond, who would live upon her at his ease, while she worked to
support him.
"No, sir. But my father's uncle, who is a great age, is rich, and we
expect to come in for some of his property when he dies."
"Oh!" in an accent of relief. "I wouldn't advise you to count on any
contingencies of that sort. Just stick to business, and depend on your
own exertions--as your sister does. Take pattern by her, and you won't
go far wrong."
Joey looked at his young chief with a new expression.
"Do you know my sister?" he inquired.
"I know _of_ her," said Anthony warily. "My father and Mrs. Churchill,
and my sister, Mrs. Oxenham, have taken a great interest in the tea-room
ever since it was first opened; I have heard from them of her noble
efforts to help her family."
This was a new view of the case to Joey, who decided to go and see his
mother and sisters in the evening.
Just before Anthony passed out of the tea-room, after giving his flowers
to Sarah, two stout countrywomen with children came in; people who had
arrived by train, with the dust of travel in their throats, and to whom
a cup of tea never came amiss at any time. Jenny made them comfortable
in soft chairs, and gave them a pot and a pile of scones; then she came
back to Sarah's table, and, kneeling down, encircled the lilies of the
valley with her arms. She inhaled deep breaths of perfume, and gave them
forth in long sighs, with her eyes shut. Sarah watched her.
"They are the very dearest flowers you can buy," she remarked. "And I
know they are bought, because of the wires on the stalks."
Jenny opened her eyes and gloated on them. "You have seven, Sally," she
said wistfully. "You might give me one."
"For the matter of that, they are more yours than mine," said Sarah.
"But take all you like."
Jenny took one green stalk in her fingers, and, walking to the
fireplace, over which their old family pier-glass, its gilt frame
swathed in Liberty muslin, afforded customers the opportunity of seeing
that their bonnets were on straight, pinned the fragrant morsel at her
throat. The white bells lay under her chin, and she was looking down her
nose and sniffing at them all day.
Anthony came for tea at five o'clock, and saw them there, and, one
minute after, saw them not there. On that occasion he had no
conversation with the wearer, but talked for twenty minutes with her
sister, becoming very confidential. On the following day he came also,
bringing violets and English primroses in a little basket from the
Toorak garden; having given Maude to understand that they were for the
adornment of his own rooms. On the day after that he came again; and
Mrs. Oxenham, whom he had imagined to be paying calls with her
stepmother, came at the same hour and caught him. He was comfortably
taking his tea at Sarah's table, when he was suddenly made to feel like
a little schoolboy playing the truant.
Mary beckoned him to her, and took him to task forthwith.
"My dear boy, what are you doing here?"
"Having tea and scones. It's what everybody does who comes here."
"But you have not brought any one?"
"No; I had a fancy for a solitary cup."
"Oh, solitary! You think I didn't see you, lolling with your arms on
that girl's table and talking to her--looking as if you had been sitting
there for hours."
"I really hadn't been sitting there for hours; I have not been in the
room five minutes."
"In that case, you are evidently very much at home here. Now, Tony dear,
it _doesn't do_, you know."
"What doesn't do? What iniquity am I accused of? Maude brings me here,
and gives me the taste for tea; and I find the Liddons keeping the
place, and take that interest in the fact which we all do, and are in
duty bound to do; and I talk a little to that poor crippled child--I
can't talk to the other one, because she's always too busy; and here you
look at me as if I were a shameless profligate----"
"Hush--sh! don't talk so loud. Some tea, dear, please,"--to Jenny, who
approached to serve her patroness. "There's no real harm in your coming
here by yourself, of course--you don't suppose I am not quite aware of
that; but it's the look of the thing, Tony. A man alone does _not_ look
well in a place like this."
"I don't think I ever thought of how I looked."
"You know what I mean. _We_ come here, father and Maude and I, to help
the place, and because we _do_ want tea, Maude and I, at any rate----"
"So do I. I want tea occasionally, as well as other mortals sweltering
in the city dust; and I'm sure I want to help the place."
"Don't be provoking, Tony. You never want tea--it's nonsense. When you
are thirsty you want whisky and soda. And as for helping the place, you
do exactly the other thing--and you must know it."
"What is the other thing?"
He lowered his voice, and Mrs. Oxenham did not answer him for some
minutes, Jenny being present, looking rather unusually dignified,
arranging the tray on the table. A faint perfume of violets exhaled from
that small person as she passed him, whereby he knew that she had his
flowers about her somewhere--in her breast, he fancied. He rose and
stood, as he always did, when she was moving about him.
"The other thing," continued Mary, when he again took his seat, "is that
you expose that poor girl to injurious suspicions."
"Good Heavens!" he ejaculated.
"It is of her that I think, and of whom you ought to think--not of your
own idle man-about-town whims. You see she is a lady, Tony, not the sort
of person one usually finds in these places--really a lady, I mean."
"Certainly. And I never thought of her as anything else, I assure you."
"She is quite helpless, poor child. She can't prevent men from coming in
by themselves and loafing here, if they choose to do it. I don't think
she ever sufficiently considered what she might be exposing herself to
in that way, when she entered upon this business; but I know she
intended the place to be a ladies' place."
Mrs. Oxenham sipped her tea with a vexed air, while Tony looked at her
gravely, drawing his moustache between his lips, and meditatively biting
it.
"You see, Tony, a number of people come here who know you, at any rate
by sight--I can count at least half a dozen at this moment--and what do
you suppose they say when they see you as I saw you just now?"
"I don't think I care much what they say."
"No; it doesn't affect _you_. It never does affect a man; but it affects
my little Jenny, whom I have been so anxious to protect from anything of
the sort. In the absence of all other reasonable attractions--to a man
like you--they will say that you come here to amuse yourself with her."
"Anybody must see that it is impossible for a fellow to say a word to
her. No will-o'-the-wisp could be more difficult to catch hold of."
"There are plenty of slack times--there are opportunities enough, of
course, if one chooses to make them. Nobody will be so silly as not to
know that. And it's not fair to her, Tony dear. _You_ would not be
blamed--oh, not in the least, of course; but she would be held cheap, on
your account. They would forget that she was a lady--a great number
don't remember it, don't know it, as it is; and the tea-room might lose
some of its repute as a select little place. If she could help
herself--if she could choose whether you are to be let in or not--it
would be different. Don't you see?"
"I see," said Tony thoughtfully.
He sat back in his chair, absently gnawing his moustache, while Mrs.
Oxenham, satisfied that she had explained herself and was understood,
concluded her repast; and he even allowed her to go to Sarah's desk to
pay for it. Then, at a signal from her, he perfunctorily escorted her
downstairs, put her in the carriage, and saw her smilingly depart to
pick up their stepmother, who was paying a visit to Mrs. Earl.
Walking meditatively into Elizabeth Street by himself, it suddenly
occurred to him that he had not paid for his own tea and scone, in the
peaceful enjoyment of which he had been so rudely interrupted. He
hurried back to Sarah, with his sixpence in his hand, and apologies for
his absent-mindedness.
Something in the intelligent face, as she looked keenly at him, prompted
him to say--what he had not dreamed of saying--"My sister has been
scolding me. She says I am not to come here any more, because Miss
Liddon does not want men--men on their own account, I mean."
"I don't think she does--as a rule," said Sarah.
"I am sorry."
"Yes, so am I."
"I--I wonder whether I might call on you some day--where you live?"
"Unfortunately, we don't live anywhere--except here--we only sleep."
"Not on Sundays?"
"We have not made ourselves comfortable, even for Sundays, yet. She was
so afraid of incurring expense till she saw how the business was going
to answer. Now she is talking of a proper sitting-room, but of course it
will take a little time. We used up our furniture for this." Sarah
looked at him again, and, after an inward struggle, added in a lower
tone, "We spend nearly all our fine evenings on the St. Kilda pier.
Being kept in all day, we want air when we can get it, and sea air, if
possible. She loves the sea, and it is easy to get down there when the
tea-room is shut. Mrs. Oxenham recommended it."
He held out his hand--though the room was full, and three women who
wanted his attentions for themselves were watching him--and his eyes
said "Thank you" as plainly as eyes could speak. Carefully looking away
from the spot where Jenny was busy, but hungrily observing him, and from
the faces of his lady acquaintances, he plunged down the stairs, and
swung away to his club, with a light step.
At the top of Collins Street he encountered the carriage, with Maude and
Mary in it, and they stopped to speak to him.
"Come home to dinner with us, Tony," his stepmother entreated, with all
her smiles and wiles.
"Can't," he briefly answered her.
"Oh, why not? We are just going out."
"Another engagement, unfortunately."
"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.