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 shore 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."
The green light was on her face, and he saw her smile, as if no longer
afraid of him.
"You can have whatever you dream," she said. "We shall probably never
realise ours. Still, we can dream on. That costs nothing."
"Oh, you will realise it--never fear." He abandoned his peaceful home
upon the spot, and determined to take her travelling directly they were
married. And there was no prospect of tedium in that plan either, for
his experience, full as it was, had never included the charm of such a
companion, the delight of educating and enriching the mind of an
intelligent woman who was also his own wife.
"Meanwhile," said Jenny, "we get books from the library, and read about
the places that we want to see, and the routes to them. We know the
Orient Line guide by heart. We hunt for pictures, and photographs, and
illustrated books. There are some nooks and corners of Europe we know so
well that we shall never want a guide when we get there--if we ever do
get there."
"You'll get there," said Anthony confidently; "don't doubt it."
It never occurred to him that she might decline to be personally
conducted by him, but that was natural in a man of whom women had always
made so much. He added, struck by a bright thought, "If you are fond of
looking at pictures of places, I will send you a portfolio of photos
that I have--mementoes of my many wanderings--if I may. They would
amuse Miss Sarah. I should like to give her some amusement, if I could,
poor little girl." But he never thought of Sarah in his plan for
becoming the showman of the world, except that she must be disposed of
somehow--she and her mother and that young ass in the office--so that
Jenny might be free, and at the same time easy in her mind about them.
Jenny received the offer of the photos in silence; then said, "Thank
you" with a perplexed expression, indicating that a "but" was on its
way. He hastened to intercept it.
"There's the steamer--do you see? Patience rewarded. They have a Lord on
board and a returning Chief Justice, and the loyal citizens down to meet
them have had no dinner. They've been waiting on the pier at
Williamstown for hours. Come and sit down, won't you? I'm sure your
little feet must be tired."
He used the adjective inadvertently, and Jenny shied at it for a moment,
like a dazzled horse. But she had not the strength to resist her intense
desire to be with him a little longer, especially with that word, that
tone of voice, compelling her.
"I must be going home," she murmured, but was drawn as by a magnet after
him when he turned to the bench on which she had before been sitting.
"It can't be more than eight o'clock, and now's the time you ought to be
out, when it's cool and fresh," said he. "Don't you find the heat of
that room very trying since the warm weather came?"
They talked about the tea-room in an ordinary way. Then they drifted
into confidences about each other's private lives and interests; and
from that they went on to discuss their respective views as to books,
creeds, and the serious matters of life; and all the time Anthony
Churchill kept a tight hand upon himself, that he might not frighten
her. It had to be a very strenuous hand indeed, for it was a sentimental
night, with the sea and the stars and the soft wind, and she had never
looked so sweet as now, away from all the associations of the tea-room,
which he had grown to hate, sitting pensively at rest, with her little
hands in her lap. More than that, he had never known how well she was
educated, how much thinking she had done, how intellectually
interesting she was, until he had had this talk with her.
At last, in an unguarded moment, he said more than he had meant to say.
Laying his hat beside him, that he might feel the cool fan of the wind
over his slightly fevered brain, he drew a long breath, and exclaimed in
a burst, "Well, you have given me a happy hour! I wonder when you'll
give me another like it?"
Immediately she began to recollect how late it was, and to be in a
flurry to get home to her mother. All at once the suspicion that he
might be divining her feeling for him, and that she might be running
wicked risks, assailed her. She rose from her seat without speaking.
"Not yet!" he pleaded impulsively, as she looked for him to rise too;
"not yet! Five minutes more!" And he took her hand, which hung near him,
and tried to draw her back to his side, looking up at her in all the
beauty of his broad brows, and his bold nose, and his commanding
manliness, with eyes that burned through hers to her shaking heart. This
was love-making, she knew, though not a word of love was spoken, and,
under all the circumstances surrounding him and her in their social
life, it terrified her.
"I have stayed too long already," she said. "I ought not to have been
here alone--so late."
The tremble in her voice, as well as the implication of her words,
shocked him, and he pulled himself up sharply, regretting his
indiscretions as much as she did hers.
"Oh, it's not late. But I'm imposing on good nature, trying to keep you
merely to talk to me. Fact is, I seldom come across people that I care
to talk to." He held his watch open under a lamp. "Later than I thought,
though--late for you to be about alone, as you say, Miss Liddon. You
don't mind my seeing you home, do you?"
She thanked him, and they walked to the tram together, without saying
anything except that they thought rain was at hand; and the tram set her
down almost at the door of her lodgings, where Mrs. Liddon and Sarah
awaited her on the doorstep--Sarah in an ecstasy of secret joy at the
apparent success of her manoeuvres.
Jenny never went alone to the pier after that night, and her admirer
sought for another happy hour in vain. On the two occasions that he went
to St. Kilda in the hope of a meeting, she had her family with her, and
not all Sarah's artifices could disintegrate the party. Jenny loved him
more distractedly than ever, but, having no assurance that he loved her
in the right way, or loved her at all, she knew what her duty was. And
she had the resolution to act accordingly, though it was a hard task. He
had scruples about going to the tea-room by himself, after what Mary had
said to him; and he found it no fun to go with her, or other ladies.
Then the rush of the races set in. Mr. Oxenham and other guests arrived
from the country; horses had to be inspected; betting business became
brisk and absorbing; lunches, garden parties, dinners, balls, crowded
upon one another in a way to carry a society man and bachelor off his
feet. In short, for a few weeks Mr. Anthony Churchill almost forgot the
tea-room. Almost--not quite. The portfolio of photographs arrived by the
carrier (and the formal note of thanks for it was preserved, and is
extant to this day); flowers for Sarah came from Paton's, at short
intervals, with all the air of having been specially selected; Joey
swaggered into the new sitting-room with news of his rise to L200 a
year, imagining it to be the reward of transcendent merit. But poor
little Jenny, harried with great crushes of tea-drinkers, worn with
fatigue and heat and bad air and a restless mind, ready to go into
hysterics at a touch, but for the fact that there was no time for such
frivolities, sighed for the refreshment of her beloved's voice and face
in vain. Day after day, week after week, she watched for his return, and
he came not. She concluded that her effort to do her duty had been
successful, and--though she would have done the same again, if
necessary--she was heart-broken at the thought.
To tell the honest truth, as a faithful chronicler should do, our hero
very nearly _did_ abandon her at this juncture. When love, even the very
best of love, is in its early stages, it is easily nipped by little
accidents, like other young things. It wants time to toughen the tender
sprout, and develop its growth and strength until it can defy
vicissitudes; nothing but time will do it, let poets and novelists say
what they like to the contrary. And so Anthony, not having been in love
with Jenny Liddon for more than a few days (and having been many times
in love), was seduced by the charms of the stable and the betting-ring
and the good company in which he found himself, when deprived by
circumstances of the higher pleasure of her society. More than that, her
image was temporarily superseded by that of a beautiful and brilliant
London woman who was on a visit to Government House, and whom in this
time of festivity he was constantly meeting. She was a lady of title and
high connections, and she singled him out for special favour because he
was big and handsome, travel-polished and proper-mannered, and
altogether good style as an attendant cavalier. His family (barring his
stepmother), proudly aware of the mutual attraction, and pleased to hear
it joked of and commented on amongst their friends, formed the confident
expectation that a marriage would result, whereby their Tony would have
a wife and a position of a dignity commensurate with his own surpassing
worth.