Materfamilias

"There" said he, as he lifted the shining lid. He was as pleased as a boy with his plot and its _denouement._

"Oh, you _precious!_" I responded; and the grat.i.tude he expected brought tears to my eyes. "No one _ever_ had such a husband as mine!"

He beamed complacently, and sat down beside me, inconveniently close.

With his arm round my waist, he helped me to pour out the coffee, and spilled it on the cloth; he fed me with the best of the mushrooms and morsels of beef steak, and wiped gravy from my lips with his own napkin.

He seemed to feel that I needed some extra comfort to make up for the children"s absence, though he said repeatedly that it was only fitting we should have our wedding-day, whether gold, silver, or pewter, to ourselves.

"As for you," he said, "I declare you don"t look a day older than when I married you, Polly. Oh, well, a little fuller in the figure, perhaps; but that"s an improvement. Old Saunders is quite right--you can beat the young girls still."

I told him he could beat the young men in the making of pretty speeches, and I pretended not to believe his flatteries; but I knew that he meant every word he said, being the sincerest of men. And my spirits rose by leaps and bounds, until I felt even younger than I looked, and like a real bride once more, just as if those strenuous intermediate years had dropped out of the calendar. The barometer was rising too. Before we had finished our mushrooms the rain had all pa.s.sed off, and the sun was shining on a clean and fragrant earth. Everything outside glittered and shimmered. It was a thoroughly bridal morning, after all.

"And now, what shall we do?" my husband inquired, having lit his pipe and taken a rapid glance over the newspaper. "We must do something to celebrate the day. What shall it be?"

"It doesn"t much matter what, so long as we do it together," was my reply. "But I think I should like to go out somewhere, shouldn"t you?

It is going to be the perfection of weather."

"Oh, we"ll go out, of course. We"ll have a day"s sight-seeing, and our lunch in town. Let"s see"--we studied the "Amus.e.m.e.nts" column, as we had so often seen the children do--"there"s the Cyclorama; we have never seen the Cyclorama yet, and I"m told it"s splendid."

"And it is years since we were at the Picture Gallery," I remarked.

"There must be dozens of pictures there that we have never seen."

"We might go to the Zoological Gardens. If there was one thing more than another that I was fond of as a boy it was a wild beast show. They feed them at four o"clock."

"Yes, and the seals at the Aquarium too. I remember seeing the seals fed at Exhibition time. It was most interesting."

"And they"ve got Deeming at the Waxworks, Harry says----"

"Oh, Tom--waxworks! However, I don"t see why we shouldn"t go to waxworks if we feel inclined. We are free agents. There is n.o.body to criticise us now."

I began to feel that it was really almost a relief to be without the children, just for once in a way. Children are so dreadfully severe and proper in their views of what fathers and mothers ought to do.

"Well, go and get your things on," said my husband, "while I have a look round outside."

He dashed off to see that pigs and fowls were fed, and the boy started on his day"s work; and I ran into the kitchen to tell Jane not to cook anything, and upstairs to change my dress and put on my best bonnet. In our haste to make the most of our holiday, we frisked about like young dogs let off the chain. It did not matter how undignified it looked, since there was n.o.body to laugh at us.

Before ten o"clock we were off, and before eleven we were in Melbourne, sliding up Collins Street on a tram dummy, on our way to the Cyclorama.

The Picture Gallery had been set down as a first item of the programme--it opened at ten, and one had the place to one"s self during the forenoon--but afterwards we put it at the bottom of the list, and finally struck it out altogether. Our feeling was that we could do pictures at any time--pictures were things young people would thoroughly approve of as an amus.e.m.e.nt for parents--but that we could not always do exactly as we liked. So we went to the Cyclorama first, and were so intensely interested that we stayed there nearly an hour. We had read of the battle of Waterloo in our school books, but never realised it in the least; now we were like eye-witnesses of the fight, and the whole thing was clear to us. A soldier amongst the spectators pointed out a number of mistakes in the arrangements of troops and guns, but we did not understand them, and did not want to; indeed, we would not listen to him. We moved round and round in our dark watch-tower to the quiet places, and gazed over the far-stretching fields with more delight than our first peep-show at an English fair had given us. The illusion of distance was so complete that it corrected all crudities of detail, and we simply lost ourselves in the romance of the past and our own imaginations.

"Never saw anything so wonderful in my life," said Tom, as at last we tore ourselves away. "I seem to smell that chateau burning, and to hear those poor chaps groaning with their wounds. I"m glad we went, aren"t you, Polly?"

I truthfully replied that I was very glad indeed, and we emerged into the street, and he hailed a pa.s.sing tram. Again we took our places on the dummy, that we might see and feel as much of the bright day as possible. Melbourne was still gay and busy, in spite of gloomy commercial forecasts, and the weather was all that a perfect autumn morning could make it. The sun shone now with an evident intention to continue doing so till bed-time, and we basked in it on the dummy seat like two cats.

"What shall we do next?" asked Tom, consulting his watch. "It is not near lunch-time yet. We must get an appet.i.te for the sort of meal I mean to have to-day."

Before we could make up our minds what to do next, the tram had carried us into Burke Street, and lo! there was the temple of the waxworks staring us in the face. Tom signalled the conductor, and we jumped off, hand in hand, and without a word made our way to the door of the show which we had heard even young children speak of as beneath contempt--only fit for bloodthirsty schoolboys of the lower orders and louts from the country who knew no better.

Well, we were from the country; and, whatever the artistic shortcomings of this exhibition, it had the charm of novelty at any rate. Neither of us had been to waxworks since we were taken as infants to Madame Tussaud"s. This was a far cry from Madame Tussaud"s, but I must confess that it amused us very well for half an hour. The effigies were full of humour, and the instruments of torture in the chamber of horrors very real and creepy. Also there were some relics of old colonial days that were decidedly interesting. In short, we did not feel that we had wasted time and two shillings when we had gone through the place, though we pretended to have done so, laughing at each other, saying, "How silly we are!"

"Well, let"s be silly," said Tom, at last. "There"s no law against that, that I know of."

"None whatever," I gaily responded. "There"s n.o.body to----"

"Hush!" he exclaimed, interrupting what I was going to say with a sharp s.n.a.t.c.h at my arm. We were just leaving the waxworks, and he pulled me back within the door.

"What"s the matter?" I cried, bewildered by his sudden action and tone of alarm.

"Come back--come back!" he whispered excitedly. "For Heaven"s sake, don"t let her see us!"

"Who? who?"

He pointed to the street, and I had a momentary glimpse of our daughter Phyllis going by in her husband"s buggy. Edmund, in his tall town hat, which glittered in the sun, was driving her himself; she sat beside him under her parasol, calm, matronly, dignified, a model of all propriety.

How would she have looked if she had seen her mother coming out of the waxworks? It was quite a shock to think of it.

"She has been shopping," said Tom casually, "and Ted"s been out after patients, and has picked her up, sending the groom home. It isn"t every Collins Street doctor who"d let his wife be seen with him in the professional vehicle. Ted"s a good fellow and a first-rate husband. We have a lot to be thankful for, Polly."

"We have," I a.s.sented, drawing a long breath of relief. For the moment I was most thankful that my dear girl, whom I had so yearned for, was out of sight. The coast was clear, and we sallied forth once more in pursuit of our own devices. Being still not quite as hungry as Tom desired, we strolled around the block and looked in at the shop windows--the florists, the milliners, the photographers.

"Do you remember," said Tom, as we gazed upon a galaxy of Melbourne beauties smiling down upon the street, "how we had our likenesses taken in our wedding clothes?"

"And, oh, such clothes!" I interjected. "A flounced skirt over a crinoline, a spoon bonnet----"

"It was the image of you, my dear, and I wouldn"t part with that picture for the world. I say, let"s go and be done now. I"d like a memento of this day, to look at when the golden wedding comes. Just as you are, in that nice tailor tweed--in your prime, Polly."

I told him it was nonsense, but he would have it. The people said they would be ready for us at 2.30, and when we had had an immense lunch, and were both looking red and puffy after it, we were photographed together, like any pair of cheap trippers--I sitting in an att.i.tude, with my head screwed round, he standing over me, with a hand on my shoulder. The result may now be seen in a handsome frame on his smoking-room mantelpiece; He thinks it beautiful.

After the operation we had a cup of tea in the nearest restaurant, and by that time it was too late to think of the Zoological Gardens, which closed at five, and required a whole day to reveal all their treasures.

But we thought we might be in time to see the seals fed, and so took tram again for the Exhibition building. As we entered the Aquarium through the green gloom of the Fernery, we heard the creatures barking, and saw the keeper walking towards the tanks with his basket of fish. We were in good time, and there was no great crowd to-day, so that we could stand close to the iron bars and see all the tricks of the man and the beasts, which were unspeakably funny. I don"t know when I have laughed so much as I laughed that afternoon. And Tom was just as much amused as I was.

But when the last fish had been thrown and caught, and we sat down on a bench to rest for a minute, he fell suddenly silent, and I thought he appeared a little tired.

"I know what it is," I said, looking at him. "You are just dying for a pipe."

"No," he answered; "at least, not particularly. But I"ll tell you what I do seem to long for, Polly, and that"s a sight of blue water. Looking at those creatures diving and splashing somehow reminds me of it. I haven"t seen the sea for months."

"Oh, you poor boy!" I exclaimed, jumping up. "Why didn"t you say so at first--at the beginning of the day? I never once thought of it. Of course we ought to have been beside the sea on our silver wedding-day--the sea that married us in the beginning--or else on it.

Let us get down to Swanston Street at once, and take a St. Kilda tram.

There is time to reach the pier before the sun goes down, and we can stay there till dark, and dine at the Esplanade. It will be a nice long ride, and you can have your pipe on the dummy as we go."

"All right," he said, with renewed alacrity. "Mind you, Polly, I couldn"t have enjoyed the day more than I have done, so far as it has gone; but a sniff of brine to top up with will just make it perfect."

So we had our sniff of brine. It took three-quarters of an hour to get it, but the drive was delightful in the fresh evening air; the rain had laid the dust of that dustiest of Melbourne roads, and C-spring barouches are not easier to travel in than the cable tramcars on it. Tom had the comfort of his pipe, allowable on the dummy; and the scent of his good tobacco, which the breeze carried from me, was a scent I loved for its a.s.sociations" sake. When we got to St. Kilda the sun was low; no effect of atmosphere and sea water could have been more lovely. It was only bay water, to be sure, but it was salt, and it sufficed. We called in at the hotel to order our dinner, and walked down and out to the end of the pier, and sat there silently until the ruddy full moon rose. At night, when all was white and shining, we returned there and sat for an hour more, hand in hand.

"What it must be," said Tom, soliloquising, "outside!"

"Ah-h!" I sighed deeply. The same thought had been in both our minds all through the silence which he had broken with his remark. If he had not made it, I should have done so. In imagination we were "outside"

together, as in our youth; the scent of sea in the brisk air had acted on us like the familiar touch of a mesmerist on a subject long surrendered to his power; the nostalgia of the seafarer, the sea-lover--which is a thing no other person can understand--had taken hold of us; it was as if some long silent mother-voice called to us across the bay, "Come home, come home!"

Near us, sheltered in the angle of the pier, a bunch of sail boats tugged gently at their ropes; the flopping, squelching sound made by the run of the tide between and under them was sweet in our ears, like an old song. A little way off some yachts of the local club lay each at its own moorings, a hull and a bare pole, ink-black on the shining water.

Tom was no yachtsman, of course; he even had a contempt for the modern egg-sh.e.l.l craft, all sail and spar, in which the young men out of the shops and offices raced for cups on summer Sat.u.r.days; they were as children"s toys in his estimation. But a boat is a boat, and, feeling as I did, and thinking of the remark he had made in the Aquarium, and how I had unaccountably forgotten what we ought to have done on our silver wedding-day, I said--