Materfamilias Part 12

I took the kiss I had so richly earned, and hurried to the schoolroom.

There sat Miss Blount, still faded and tearful, but beaming with the joy that filled the house, like the sun through rain. She and Lily had been crying and rejoicing together, congratulating one another. I waved the child aside, and, taking her governess by the hand, with a "Come, dear,"

which I could see explained everything in a moment, led her into Harry's room.

After all, she was a lady, and a B.A. He might have done worse. But when I saw the look he turned to her when she ran like a deer to his arms--poor sticks of arms!--and how he held her, and crooned over her--oh, it was like a dagger in my breast!

Tom took me away, and tried to comfort me. He reminded me that we did the same ourselves when we were young, and that we still had each other.

"You've still got me, Polly. _I_ sha'n't desert you."

Yes, yes; of course I still had him. But----

Well, a _man_ can't understand.

CHAPTER VII.

A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT.

A boy who is not yet twenty-four, and who has nothing beyond his salary as a clerk in a shipping office, and whose young lady is a pauper, can get engaged if he likes; but he cannot get married. I pointed this out to Harry as soon as he was well enough to be reasoned with. I said to him, "You know, my dearest, that there's nothing in the world I would not do to make you happy, but it would not be making you happy to let you think for a moment of such madness." It appeared, from Tom's account, that the child had been thinking of it--doubtless at Emily's instigation. "I might as well encourage you to cut your throat. Far better, indeed."

"Better?" he echoed, lifting his eyebrows, and smiling in that queer way of his.

"Better!" I insisted firmly. "You little know what it means--that rushing into irrevocable matrimony without counting the cost--without knowing what it entails--without experience or means----"

"Mother," he interrupted, still smiling--a little impudently, though I don't think he meant to be rude--"you were not any more experienced than we are, and not any older or richer, were you?"

I replied with dignity that my case was nowise in point. He wanted to know why it was not. I said, because I--unlike him--had been practically homeless at the time. And he cried, "_Were_ you? I never heard of that!"

and stared at me in such a way that I blushed hotly, though old enough to know better. He was an obstinate fellow, and he corresponded with his grandfather and young uncles and aunts in England, and had a heap of their autographed photos in his room. I thought I had better turn him over to his father.

Tom was walking in the garden with Emily, who had managed to get around him in that innocent-seeming way of hers--well, I must not be uncharitable; I daresay it _was_ innocent, and I could almost have fancied that they did not care about being interrupted. Only, of course, that's nonsense.

"My dear," I said, in a sprightly voice, "your young man seems to find his mother a bore these days, and it's only natural. I have been trying to cheer him, and he responds by yawning in my face. Pray do go and exercise your spells, which are so much more potent, and leave me my old man, who is still my own."

Was there any harm in a little light chaff of this kind? One would surely think not. But Tom, standing and looking after her as she slipped away, blushing in her ready, _ingenue_ fashion--so unlike a B.A.--said, quite gravely----

"That's a dear little soul, Polly! And I wouldn't speak to her in just that sort of a way, if I were you. It hurts her."

"It hurts _me_," I returned, "when _you_ speak in that sort of a way.

It is most unjust. Can't you take a joke? You know perfectly well that I treat her with the utmost kindness and consideration--that I have accepted her unreservedly, for my boy's sake."

"Well, well," said he, "I know you don't mean it. Your bark's worse than your bite, old girl. Come and look at the new pigs."

He drew my hand under his arm and patted it. We had had so many little tiffs lately--things we never dreamt of till Miss Blount came!--that I was determined not to quarrel now. It should never be said that _I_ was to blame for making a happy home unhappy. I swallowed my vexation and went to see the pigs--thirteen little black Berkshires, all as lively as they could be, on which he gloated whole-heartedly for the moment, as if they were more than wife or children. In his expansive ardour he offered me one of them to make a festive dish of for Sunday.

"Let us have a little feast, Polly, for the young folks. Harry is able to sit up to table now, and we have done nothing to celebrate the engagement yet. Sucking-pig and one of the fat turkeys, and ask Juke to join us. Eh?"

"My dear," I replied, "I am perfectly willing to celebrate the engagement in any way you like--yes, we'll have a nice dinner, and ask Dr. Juke--I am sure we owe him every attention that we can possibly pay him; but what I want to warn you against is letting them suppose that there is to be any celebration of the marriage--with our consent."

Tom stared as if he did not understand.

"You mean, not immediately?" he questioned. "Of course not."

"I mean, not for _years_," I solemnly urged. "Tom, you must back me up in this. The boy is but a boy, with his way to make in the world. Before we allow him to saddle himself with a wife who will probably be quite useless--those University women always are--and the responsibilities of a family, he _must_ be in a position to afford it."

"Yes," said Tom, in a tepid way. "But you and I, Polly----"

"Oh, never mind about you and me," I broke in; "that is altogether different"--for of course it was. "You were a man of twice his age."

"Which would make him about fourteen," said my husband, trying to be funny.

As for me, I saw nothing to laugh at. I cannot imagine a more serious position as between parent and child. "At his time of life," I said, "four years are equal to ten at any other stage. Let him have those four years--let him begin where his father did--and I shall be quite satisfied."

"Well, you see, my dear, it hardly rests with us, does it?"

Tom stirred up the mother sow with his walking-stick, and sn.i.g.g.e.red in a most feeble-minded fashion.

"How? Why not?" I demanded. "Do you mean to say you have not the power to influence him? Do you think that Harry, if properly advised, would persist in taking his own way in spite of us? I refuse to believe that any son of _mine_ could do such a thing."

Again Tom laughed, looking at me as if he saw some great joke somewhere.

I asked him what it was, and he said, "Oh, never mind--nothing." But I knew. He was thinking of my own elopement, to which I was driven by my father's second marriage--an incident that had no bearing whatever upon the present case. It exasperated me to see him so flippant about a matter of really grave importance, but I determined not to let him draw me into a dispute.

"Four years," I said mildly, "would give them time to know each other and their own minds. It would be a test, to prove them. If at the end of four years they were still faithful, I should feel a.s.sured that all was well. But of course they would get tired of each other long before that, and so he would be spared a terrible fate, and all the trouble would be at an end."

We had left the pigsty and were pacing the paths of the kitchen garden, surveying the depredations of the irrepressible slug.

"The rain seems to wash the soot away as fast as I put it on," sighed Tom. "I'll get a bag of lime, and try what that'll do. Well, Polly, for my part, I should be very sorry to think them likely to get tired of each other. And I don't believe it, either. I don't think she's that sort of a girl somehow."

"How like a man!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Just because she's got a pretty face!"

"No, not because she's got a pretty face--though it is a pretty face--but because she's good as well as pretty. She's a right down good girl, my dear, believe me--just the sort of daughter-in-law I'd have chosen for myself, if I had had the choosing. I told Harry so. You should have seen how pleased he was!"

"No doubt. But I don't see how you can know whether she's good or not.

_You_ are not always with her, as we are."

"Oh, I see her at times. We have little talks occasionally. A man can soon tell." He put his arm round my waist as we paced along. "I haven't been married to you for all these years without knowing a good woman from a bad one, Polly."

It was intended for a compliment, but somehow I could not smile at it.

In fact, I shed a tear instead. And when he saw it, and stooped to kiss it away, my feelings overcame me. I threw my arms round his neck and begged him not to let fascinating daughters-in-law draw away his heart from his old wife. I daresay it was silly, but I could not help it. Of course he chuckled as if I had said something very funny. And his only reply was "_Baby!_"--in italics. So like a man, who never can see a meaning that is not right on the top of a word.

However, I promised to be nice to Emily--nicer, rather, for, as I told him, I had always been nice to her--and he said he would take an early opportunity to have a serious talk with Harry.

"But let the poor chap alone till he gets his strength again," he pleaded--as if I were a perfect tyrant, bent on making the boy miserable; "let the poor children enjoy their love-making for the little while that Emily remains here. She has been telling me that she's got a fine appointment in a school--joint princ.i.p.al--and that she's going to work in a fortnight--to work and save for their little home, till Harry is ready for her."

"_What?_" I exclaimed. "She never told me that."