TWO WISE MEN
It was not far from Christmas when Anthony returned from his cruise,
which he did in a listless, yawning, world-weary frame of mind. He had
not enjoyed himself as he had expected to do, and wished he had remained
in Melbourne at work, and given his old father a holiday instead.
Tasmania had looked beautiful, to be sure, but he had seen too many
things that were more so, and seen them too recently, to be impressed by
its hills and streams; while the sea had no charm after his recent
voyage. He had wholly depended on his company for entertainment, and his
company had disappointed him. Few, indeed, can stand the test of such
conditions as those under which they were expected to shine, as under a
microscope, with double lustre and meaning (he had not stood it
himself); and it was not surprising that the brilliant Lady Louisa had
failed to substantiate her pretensions to be a clever woman, or that
Mrs. Churchill had contrived to make a most kindly-disposed stepson hate
her. Not, of course, that it was necessary for Lady Louisa to show
herself clever in order to captivate our hero, or any man; it was
because her stupidity had led her to waste her blandishments on a
brainless idiot of a whisky-drinking globe-trotter, whose name was his
only title to be called a gentleman, that it had manifested itself so
unmistakably to her superseded slave. When the bookless, newspaperless,
trifling time was over, he stepped ashore with a sense of being released
from an irksome bondage, and determined to keep clear of his late too
close companions for many a long day. One only was excepted--an old chum
and crony, who had accompanied him on the voyage from England, a
Queensland squatter, who lived nine months of the year in
Melbourne--Adam Danesbury by name. Mr. Danesbury had afforded much
amusement on board the yacht by boasting modestly of his recent
engagement to a girl at home; showing her likeness, worn in a locket on
his watch-chain, to the ladies, and confiding to them his plan for
returning to marry and fetch her out as soon as he had got his northern
shearing over. The ladies thought it was so very funny of him; any other
man, they said, would have kept such a thing as dark as possible, under
the circumstances. But Anthony Churchill, who had always made a friend
of Danesbury, had never liked him so well as he liked him now.
"Come up to my place and dine with me to-night," he said to him, as the
party were dispersing in the yard of the railway station; "and let's
have a quiet pipe and a little peace, after all this racket."
"All right," said Mr. Danesbury, "I'm on."
They spoke in low tones, like a couple of conspirators.
"Mr. Churchill! Mr. Churchill!" called Lady Louisa from a Government
House carriage, to which a callow aide had escorted her. "What have I
done that I should be neglected in this manner? Are you not even going
to say good-bye to me?"
Anthony advanced with his man-of-the-world courtliness, and pressed her
outstretched hand. "No," he said, "I never mean to say good-bye to
you--until I am obliged."
"_Au revoir_, then," she laughed. "You will come and see me soon?"
He bowed as to a queen, while the young A.D.C., whose enchantress she
was at the moment, notwithstanding the fact that she was almost old
enough to be his mother, glared ferociously.
"These conceited colonials!" he muttered to himself; "these trading
cads, putting on the airs of gentlemen! What presumption of the fellow
to speak in that tone to HER!"
"Tony," cried Maude, from the midst of her bags and bundles, which her
maid was counting into the hands of a cabman, "you will see me safe
home, Tony?"
"Well, really, Maude, I don't see how you can help getting home safely,
with your own husband to take care of you," Tony replied, a little
irritably (his father, delighted to get his young wife back again, was
calling her carriage up). "You don't want me now."
"Tony, you know I _always_ want you. And you _might_ come just for a cup
of tea and to see the children. They'll be expecting you."
"I'll see them on Sunday. I must go home and get washed and decent."
"As if you couldn't get washed in our house, where you've got your own
rooms, and dozens of suits of clothes lying in your drawers!"
"Oh, I know; but you must excuse me now, really. There'll be letters and
all sorts of things at my chambers, waiting for me, and I telegraphed to
Jarvis to have my dinner ready."
He detached himself from her clutches, and, when her carriage drove off,
called up his hansom and flung himself into it with a sigh of relief.
"Thank God, that's over!" he ejaculated, drawing his cigar-case from his
pocket. "What fools women are! The more I see of them, the more sick of
them I get."
It was great luxury to find himself in his own bachelor home, where the
priceless Jarvis had everything in order and ready for him, and where he
was his own man, as he could never be elsewhere. He had an iced drink,
and read his letters, and glanced at half a dozen newspapers, lolling
bare-armed upon a sofa, with a pipe in his mouth and slippered feet in
the air; and then he had a bath and elaborately dressed himself, putting
a silk coat over his diamond-studded shirt; and Jarvis set the dainty
dinner-table, and Danesbury arrived.
"Come in, old fellow!" shouted the emancipated one, hearing his friend
in the hall. "Now we'll enjoy ourselves! Take off that black coat--no
ladies to consider now; we may as well be cool and comfortable when we
do get the chance. Dinner ready, Jarvis? All's vanity and vexation of
spirit, old man, except one's dinner. Thank God, we've still got that to
fall back upon!"
"We've got something more than that to fall back upon, let us hope,"
said Mr. Danesbury, smiling. "At any rate, I have."
"Oh, _you_! You've got Miss Lennox to fall back on, of course. But we
are not all so lucky."
"What's happened to you, that you should class yourself with the unlucky
ones? But I know; Lady Louisa hasn't appreciated you. I can quite
understand that you feel bad about it, being so little accustomed to
such treatment."
"Hang Lady Louisa! A battered old campaigner, with no more heart or
brains than a Dutch doll! I should be sorry to feel bad over a woman of
that sort."
"What then?"
"Lord knows. A troubled conscience, perhaps, for having wasted so much
valuable time. Dinner, as I said before, will restore me. Sit down."
They sat down, and did justice to Jarvis's preparations. Anthony's
little dinners were famous amongst dining men, who knew better than to
disturb enjoyment and digestion with too much conversation while they
were in progress; but when this meal had reached the stage of coffee and
cigarettes, the two friends fell into very confidential talk.
"What you want," said Adam Danesbury, "is to get married, Tony."
"Why," said the host, "you've been the loudest of us all in denouncing
those bonds--till now. Because you've lost your tail, is that any reason
why we should cut off ours?"
"That's all very well while we're young and foolish," said Mr. Danesbury
sedately (he was a sedate person always, but "a devil of a fellow," all
the same, at times). "And I denounce the thing still, when it's nothing
but a buying and selling business, like what we so often see. But get a
good girl, Tony--a girl like _my_ girl--one who doesn't make a bargain
of you, but loves the ground you walk on, though you may go
barefoot--_then_ it's all right. Think of our advanced age, if you
please. Byron was in the sere and yellow leaf before he was as old as I
am, and you are close up. Twenty years hence we shall be old fogies, and
we shall have lost our appetite for cakes, if not for ale, and they will
shunt us into corners; then we shall want our girls and boys to ruffle
it in our place. If we don't look sharp, those girls and boys won't be
there, Tony, and it will feel lonely--I know it will."
"These be the words of wisdom," said Tony reflectively. "I must confess
I had forgotten about the girls and boys."
"Oh, but, apart from them, it's a mistake to put it off, after a certain
time of life--that is, of course, if you can find the right sort of
woman. For God's sake, don't go and throw yourself away on one of these
society girls. What a fellow wants is a home, and they don't seem to
know the meaning of the word."
"How would you describe the right sort of woman?" asked Anthony, pushing
the wine towards his friend.
"I would say, a woman like Rose Lennox."
"Yes, of course--naturally. Only, unfortunately, I don't know Miss
Lennox."
"I wish you did, Tony. If you had come down to my father's place, as I
wanted you to, you would have met her. However, you will see her before
long, I trust."
Anthony spread his arms over the table, and looked curiously at the man
in whom Miss Lennox had wrought so great a change.
"Tell me about her, will you, old fellow?" he said. "Tell me, so that I
may know what the right woman is like, when I do happen to see her."
Mr. Danesbury was nothing loth. He, too, spread his arms on the table,
with an air of preparation, having placed his unconsumed cigarette in
the ash-tray beside him.
"Well, in the first place, I must tell you she is poor," he began. "But
she's none the worse for that."
"No, the better--the better!" cried Anthony, delighted. "I believe it's
just money that spoils them all."
"Though she's poor, she's the most perfect lady that ever stepped."
The host nodded comprehendingly.
"Her father has the parish next to my father's; old Lennox got the
living after I left home. It's supposed to be worth two-fifty, but if he
gets two it's as much as he does; and there are seven children. My Rose
is the eldest--twenty-three next birthday."
"Yes?" Anthony had left off smoking, and was listening as men seldom
listened to this love-sick swain.
"The way I knew her first--my sisters gave a garden party--you know
those little clerical garden parties?--parsons and their wives and
daughters from miles round, coming in their washed frocks and their
little basket carriages; and two of the Lennox girls were there--nice,
interesting little things, but not Rose. We had three tennis afternoons
before I knew of her existence. I used to hear my sisters say, 'Why
don't you make Rose come?' but never took any heed; until one day I had
to drive some of them home, because a storm was coming, and they hadn't
any carriage; and just as I got there the storm burst, and I went in to
wait till it was over. And there I saw that girl--my Rose--sitting at a
table, mending stockings, with half a dozen little brats saying their
lessons to her. This was what she did every day--sewed, and kept house,
and taught the children, while her sisters went out to play tennis. She
said it was so good for them to have a little recreation--as if _she_
wasn't to be thought of at all. That's the sort of woman she is."
Anthony stretched out his hand. "Show me that locket again, will you?"
Adam Danesbury detached watch and chain, and pushed them over the table.
"It don't do her justice," he said tenderly. "She's got hair that you
can see yourself in, and a complexion like milk; the colour comes and
goes with every word you say to her, and her expression changes in the
same way. Photography always fails with people of that sort.
Still--there she is."
Photography had evidently not done justice to Miss Lennox. The ladies on
the yacht had called her dowdy, and insignificant, and plain, wondering
at Mr. Danesbury's taste; but, helped by that gentleman's description of
her, Anthony made out a sweet and modest face, which held his gaze for
several minutes. Her lover watched him eagerly--this accomplished
connoisseur--and swelled with pride to see her so appreciated.
"Well?" he said challengingly.
"Well," said Anthony, as he snapped the locket, "she's a charming
creature, and you are an enviable fellow."
"I am that," rejoined the lover, re-opening the case before hanging it
to his button-hole. "And I shall be a great deal more enviable this time
next year, please God."