A Humble Enterprise Part 16

"And now, when are you coming to us, Jenny?" Cousin Alice inquired.

"Couldn't you come and spend the day to-morrow? And couldn't _you_ come, Mrs. Oxenham? Our tennis club is having a tournament, and we are giving a tea on the ground--under nice shady trees, you know. It would be such an honour if you would come and look on at us."

"I'm afraid _I_ couldn't," said Mary, with a pretence of thinking it over. "But Jenny, if she likes, I could send her in."

"Oh, yes! And couldn't she spend a few days with us when she was here?

We have seen nothing of her. We could drive her back to Wandooyamba."

This was what Mrs. Oxenham had fished for, had roasted herself in the sun for, and she roused herself to deal with the timely opportunity. She looked at Jenny, and Jenny looked back at her with eyes that said "No"

so unmistakably as to suggest the thought that perhaps she knew of Anthony's coming to the mind of the suspicious woman. This made her resolute.

"What do you say, dear?" she inquired genially; and in a moment Jenny understood that her friend wished her to accept the invitation, and was wondering in a startled way whether she had outstayed her welcome at Wandooyamba. "Don't consider us--we must not be selfish--and you will come back to us, of course. d.i.c.kson could drive you over when he goes for the letters, and that would give you the afternoon to see the tournament."

There was nothing to say but "thank you" all round, and Jenny said it with good taste, determined to bring her holiday to an end as soon as possible--not to return to Wandooyamba after leaving it, but to spend Christmas with her own too-long deserted family. Mary had an inkling of what was going on in the girl's mind, but said to herself that it couldn't be helped. Anthony must be saved at all hazards.

CHAPTER XVI

A STAR IN TWILIGHT

Mrs. Oxenham was immensely kind to Jenny when the pair were again upon the road.

"They seemed to want you so much, darling, and I thought your mother would wish you to show them some attention," she said. "But goodness knows what Harry and I will do without you! We shall be quite lost, and the children too, till you come back again."

"You are too good to me," murmured Jenny, half inclined to cry. "I think I am getting quite spoiled."

"Oh, no! You are not one of the spoilable sort," said Mary tenderly.

Jenny had but one portmanteau with her, and into this she packed all her belongings before starting off next day. Mr. Oxenham put it and her into the buggy with his own hands, and, because he was not directly responsible for her departure, bewailed it loudly.

"I call it too bad of you--downright mean, I call it--to run away from us like this, Miss Liddon," he said to her again and again, to the unconcealed irritation of his wife.

"You go on, Harry, as if she were leaving us for ever. We haven't seen the last of her yet--not by a long way, have we, dear?"

The parting guest was sped with warmest kisses and handclasps, and bidden vaguely to come back again soon. But as she stood up to wave her handkerchief to the children from the middle of the home paddock, looking back upon the great, rambling house, where she had had such a good time, she said to herself that she should go back no more. If matters had turned out differently she would have called her conviction of that moment a presentiment.

Aunt Emma and Cousins Clementine and Alice received her cordially, and at once began to pelt her with questions concerning the Oxenham household, and as to what she knew of the Churchills in town. Uncle John, the bank manager, lunching with his family, asked about Joey, and the state of the restaurant business, and other practical matters. In the afternoon she helped to carry cakes and cream jugs to the tennis-ground, and was there introduced to the rank and fashion of the town, not as "My cousin, who keeps the tea-room in Little Collins Street," but as "My cousin, who is staying with Mrs. Oxenham at Wandooyamba," and she sat under a tree and watched the players, and talked when she was obliged to talk, and, when she wasn't, thought her own thoughts, which were chiefly concerned in devising some way of getting home immediately.

The tennis-tea was followed by tea at the bank, composed of the remains of the former, with cold meat and eggs; and by-and-by the moon got up, and it was proposed that the young people should have a walk to enjoy the pleasant night. A bank-clerk and a bachelor lawyer, who had "dropped in," attached themselves to Clem and Alice, and Mrs. Rogerson and her niece soberly chaperoned the party, and talked family affairs together.

The night train from Melbourne came in at ten o'clock, and the little township loved to catch it in the act. All townships which have a train do. It is a never-failing joy to them. And, finding themselves in the neighbourhood of the station at about 9.35, the Rogerson girls exclaimed with one voice, "Let's stay and see the train come in."

The motion was carried unanimously, and for half an hour they loitered up and down the platform, looking into the vagueness of the moonlit night, and talking and laughing rather loudly; all but Jenny, who, though she was so much less genteel than these relations, did not think it good manners to make a noise. And so it came to pa.s.s that she presently saw a buggy dash into the station-yard, and recognised it as the one that had brought her in in the morning.

"That's to meet somebody," said Clem to Alice, with intense curiosity.

"Jenny, who's expected at Wandooyamba to-night?"

"n.o.body, that I know of," said Jenny. "They are always sending for parcels and things."

The train signalled from a distance, hummed through the still night, and clattered up to the platform, watched intently by all the eyes available. It was not the great express, but a local off-shoot from it, and the pa.s.sengers it disgorged at this point were not very numerous.

The first to tumble out was a big man with a red beard.

"Oh! _Oh!_ OH! It's Mrs. Oxenham's brother! It's Mr. Anthony Churchill!

He hasn't been here for ages--they said he was in England. Oh, isn't he handsome? Oh, I wonder if he will come to the town at all? Oh, Jenny, just see what you have missed!"

Jenny drew back into the dim crowd, on which he cast no glance as he strode to the buggy, calling to a porter to bring his things. She said nothing, but she thought--it was a thought that stung like fire--"Now I know why I have been sent away from Wandooyamba."

Anthony's journey had been a pleasant one--especially the latter part of it, when the coolness of a dewy night had replaced the glare of day; smoking quietly, and meditating upon his prospects, he would not have changed places with a king. Since he had definitely made up his mind to marry Jenny, and since his father had admitted the wisdom of that proceeding, and consented to it, all seemed plain and clear before him; for he had no fear of Mary, who was the first to know her worth, and already treated her as a sister, and no fear at all that the girl herself would for a moment dream of refusing him. He was too deeply experienced in the signs and tokens of the supreme sentiment not to recognise it when he saw it, and he had seen it very plainly once or twice through the modest disguises that she flattered herself had screened it from him.

All the way up he had been thinking of her, imagining their meeting at Wandooyamba, and all that he would do on the morrow, which was Sunday, and a most beautiful day for love-making. He planned the time and circ.u.mstances of his marriage, and how the other Liddons should be disposed of while he was showing the world to his bride, and where he and she would live, and what sort of home they would have when they settled down after their travels. Being Sat.u.r.day night, which pa.s.sengers by the express who want to go all the way to Sydney don't choose for starting on that journey, if they can help it, he had room to put up his legs and make a rug pillow for his head; in which condition of bodily ease, his mind, so to speak, went out to play, and amused itself delightfully. Jenny would not have known herself had she seen how she was pictured in the fancies of his dreaming brain.

Needless to say, he never dreamed of seeing her on the platform when he arrived, and did not do so. At each of the country stations there was a lounging crowd to see the train come in, people to whom it was the chief entertainment in life, and who were a great nuisance occasionally to the hungry and thirsty traveller with but a few minutes in which to get his meal; but these had nothing to do with Jenny or with him, and were ignored as far as possible. He distinctly heard the "Oh's" of Clementine and Alice, and the sound of his name, and nothing was less likely to suggest the presence of his little sweetheart, with her shy refinement.

He knew that a man would have been sent to meet the train, and looked for him and him only. In two minutes his rug and luggage were in the buggy, and the light vehicle spinning out of the town.

The groom was a youth who was not supposed to know anything about the inside of his master's house, and Anthony heard no news that interested him--except that Mr. Oxenham did not intend to drive Emily again with ladies and children behind her; which was a great relief to him. He lit his pipe afresh, and leaned back in his corner with arms folded, and thought of what was coming, in a mood of mind that he had imagined himself to have outgrown years and years ago. The night was very sweet and still, with its delicate mixture of moonlight and shadow; a night to make the most world-hardened man feel sentimental. And the spell of the lonely bush is very strong upon those who are native to it, when they have been away for a long time.

"There will be a moon again to-morrow night," he thought. "And all these leagues of solitude to lose ourselves in! It shall be settled to-morrow night, and then we will both stay for Christmas, while I teach her to get used to it. Oh, this is better than the Richmond lodgings, or the St. Kilda pier!"

Through the trees he saw a dark bank, crowned with a cl.u.s.ter of low roofs, uplifted from the valley pastures to the palely shining sky. He looked at it with kindling eyes, and thought of the little figure moving about the many rooms, in the atmosphere of cultured people--its native air--and how considerate and sagacious his sister Mary was. A light like a star stole out upon the hill, and another, and another. He hoped devoutly that Mary had not sent her charge to bed.

"What time do you make it, Pat?"

"About eleven, sir; not more."

Oh, that wasn't bed-time! And she was not ill now. Perhaps, however, she would make an excuse to retire, lest she should be in the way at the family meeting; it would be just like her. Perhaps she would go to bed to avoid him, out of pure shyness. The doubt worried him, for he had set his heart on seeing her that night--just to satisfy himself that she was really alive and well, and had not been forgetting to care for him during his long absence from her.

CHAPTER XVII

"YOU NEED NOT EXPECT ME BACK"

Harry Oxenham, pipe in mouth, stood at the open garden gate. Mary stood on the step of the front door. Conscious of guilt, they greeted him with more than usual cordiality.

"And so you have really come, after all, my dear old boy," his sister cried, with her arms about his neck. "This _is_ good of you! A piece of luck that I _never_ expected!"

"Yes, I've come. Awfully glad to get into clean air, out of those stinking streets. How are the kids? Why didn't you let me come last night?"

"Oh, the kids are as right as possible. You won't know them, they have grown so. Of course they are in bed and asleep, or they would be pulling you down between them."

She was hoping the tiresome brats wouldn't begin to talk of Jenny the first thing in the morning, and he was anxiously peering over her shoulder.

"Why did you stop me yesterday, Polly?"