A Humble Enterprise Part 22

Jenny smiled at the prospect.

"How absurd it is!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"I don't see it," said Tony.

"I suppose not," she rejoined.

Lest unseasoned persons should have their appet.i.tes interfered with, the yacht did not venture outside the Heads, but cruised about in quiet waters, touching now and then at little piers, for the variation of a sh.o.r.e ramble or a picnic in the scrub; and it was a beautiful time. Adam Danesbury and Sarah became great friends. She talked to him by the hour of the virtues of her beloved sister, and he to her of the equal excellencies of Miss Lennox; topics of interest that never palled upon them. Mrs. Liddon was happy, knitting a shawl for Jenny's trousseau, and losing herself in sensational novels, and getting "wrinkles," as she called them, from the very swell cook who daily concocted dishes that she had never so much as heard of. If there was a fly in the sweet ointment of her satisfaction, it lay in the fact that Joey was not taken much notice of. But Mr. Churchill was not interested in Joey, and had invited the friend on purpose to relieve himself of the obligation to take much notice. The young men had each other's company, together with tobacco, books, cards, chess, and Jarvis to bring them cool drinks when they were thirsty; what could junior clerks require more? Joey was a very good boy on this occasion, very subdued and inoffensive, keeping all his swagger until he should return to the office to tell of his doings and the high company he had kept; and he was undeniably a handsome youth, with the proper bearing of a gentleman. But his s.e.x was against him. Crippled Sarah, wizened and sallow, was infinitely more interesting to the distinguished host Between him and her a very strong bond existed.

And, as he had foreseen, the yachting arrangement was perfect for lovers on whose behalf every other member of the party was minded to be un.o.btrusive and discreet. What days were those that he and Jenny had together in the first bloom of their courtship! What fresh sea-mornings, in which to feel young blood coursing to the tune of the salt wind and the bubble of the seething wake! What dream-times under the awning in the tempered heat, with soft cushions and poetry books! What rambles on the lonely sh.o.r.es, and rests in ti-tree arbours, and talks and companionship that grew daily fuller and deeper, and more and more intimate and satisfying! In the quiet evenings four people sat down to whist round the lamp in the little cabin, and the fifth dozed over her knitting, so that the remaining two had the deck to themselves, and the romantic hours to revel in undisturbed. Then Tony smoked a little because Jenny wished it, and she leaned on his arm as they paced to and fro; and they opened those sacred chambers of thought which are kept locked in the daytime, and acquainted each other with dim feelings and aspirations that expressed themselves in sympathetic silences better than in speech.

Thus did they grow together so closely that Jenny's wedding-day came to her with no shock of change or fear. After the Christmas cruise he called to see her at all hours--to disturb her at her flying needlework, which she would slave at, in spite of him--making her own "things" to save expense, as if expense mattered; nightly taking her down to St Kilda for that blow on the pier which still refreshed her more than anything. And very soon they saw the mail boat come in--the very mail boat in which he had taken berths for their wedding journey. As they watched her pa.s.sing in the falling dusk, they recalled their first meeting in that place--how very few mails had arrived since then, and what stupendous things had happened in the interval!

"What a funk you _were_ in!" said Tony, laying his big hand over the small one on his arm. "Poor little mite! You took me for a gay devil walking about seeking whom I might devour, didn't you? What would you have thought if you had known I had followed you all the way--stalked you like a cat after a mouse--eh?"

"You _didn't_, Tony!"

"I did, sweetheart. It was Sarah put me up to it."

"Sarah! I won't believe such a thing of my sister."

"Ask her, then. Sarah understood me a long time before you did. And I made a vow that I'd repay her for that good turn, and I haven't done it yet. What do you think she would like best?"

"I know what she would _like_," said Jenny wistfully. "To go abroad with us. It has been the dream of her life."

"Not this time, pet. Next time she shall. This time I must have only you, and you must have only me. Besides, she wouldn't go, not if you went on your knees to her. She knows better. She's a deal cleverer than you are--in some things."

"I know she is. Poor Sally! And she might have been like me, with everything heart can wish for! Mother says she was a finer baby than I--beautifully formed and healthy; but she had an accident that hurt her back--a fall. And so all the sweetness of life has been taken from her, while I--I am overwhelmed with it."

"Not all," said Tony. "We shall make her happy between us."

"If she can't have _this_," said Jenny, pressing his arm, "she can't know what happiness means."

He drew the warm hand up, and kissed the tips of her fingers, on which gloves were never allowed on these occasions.

"I foresee," he said gravely, "that I shall have to beat you and refuse to give you money for new bonnets, to make you realise that your little feet are standing on the earth, Jenny, and not on the clouds of heaven."

They were married in February, that they might have a quiet month before sailing in March. Mrs. Rogerson wanted to undertake the wedding, but was politely informed that there was to be no wedding; and there was none in her sense. Jenny went out for a walk with her mother and sister, and Anthony went out for a walk with Adam Danesbury; old Mr. Churchill and his daughter Mary, who happened to be staying with him, took a hansom from the office, Joey having been released from his desk therein; and these people met together for a few minutes, transacted their business briefly, and adjourned to the Cafe Anglais for lunch; after which the bride and bridegroom, being already dressed for travel, with their baggage at the station, fared forth into the wide world.

Thus ended the tea-room enterprise.

And I don't know whether the moral of Jenny's story is bad or good. It depends on the point of view. Virtue, of course, ought to be its own reward--at any rate, it should seek no other; and there are people who think a husband no reward at all, under any circ.u.mstances, but quite the contrary. For myself, I regard a rich marriage as rather a vulgar sort of thing, and by no means the proper goal of a good girl's ambitions.

Also, however well a marriage may begin, n.o.body can foretell how it will eventually turn out. It is a matter of a thousand compromises, take it at its best, and all we can say of it is that there is nothing above it in the scale of human satisfactions.

_That_ I will maintain as beyond a doubt, because it is the dictum of nature, who is the mother of all wisdom. She says that even an unlucky marriage, which is a living martyrdom, is better than none, but that a marriage like that which arose out of Jenny's tea-room is a door to the sanctuary of the temple of life, never opened to the undeserving--the nearest approach to happiness that has been discovered at present.

Yes--although, without beating her or keeping her short of pocket-money, the husband necessarily makes his wife feel that the earth is her habitation and the clouds of heaven many miles away.

THE END.