Anthony Churchill had had a hundred butterfly sweethearts, and been a few times in love. Earlier in life he might have bartered his future income for an inadequate sum down, had not happy accident intervened. Now he was experienced enough to know the risks he ran, old enough to understand what was for a man's good and comfort in his ripe years—that is, partly. No man can be quite wise enough until too late for wisdom to avail him anything. It must be a terrible thing to have the right of practically unrestricted choice in selecting a mate that you may never exchange or get rid of! To find, perchance, that you have blundered in the most awful possible manner, entirely of your own free will!
Though, as to that, free will is an empty term. We are purblind puppets all. To see through a glass darkly is the most that we can do. There was a long and slender shadow on the sea—a mail boat coming in, bringing travellers home—and as our hero watched it, standing with his back to the unconscious heroine, he thought how he had been as one of them but a few days ago.
"And little thinking that I was coming back to do a thing like this!"
He walked up and down once more, feeling all the weight of destiny upon him. And Jenny sat and thought of him, and thought that never, never would he give a thought to her!
"What would they say," he asked himself, "if I really were to do it? I—I! And she the daughter of one of my clerks, and a restaurant-keeper!" He put the question from the Toorak point of view, and at the first blush was appalled by it.
Then he sat down again, and looked at the shadow of her hat against the sky.
"What do I care? They will see what she is—little creature, with that deer-like head!" He went off into dreams. "She shall not make her own frocks again, sweet as she looks in them—her children's pinafores, if she likes—monograms for my handkerchiefs—pretty things for her house. What a house she'll have!—all in order from top to bottom, and she looking after everything, as the old-fashioned wives used to do. I think I see her cooking, in a white apron, with her sleeves turned up. When the cooks are a nuisance, like Maude's, that's what she'll do—turn to and cook her husband's dinner herself. Catch Maude cooking a dinner for anybody! By Jove, I shouldn't like to be the one to eat it." The pipe had been set a-going unconsciously, and he puffed in happy mood. "A real home to come back to of a night, when a fellow's tired—when a fellow grows old.... Sitting down with him after dinner, with her sewing in her hands—not wanting to be at a theatre or a dance every night of her life—not bringing up her daughters to want it. How quickly she sews! I watched her at it—able to do anything with those little hands, no bigger than a child's. But she's no child—not she; no doll, for an hour's amusement, like those others. A woman—a real woman, understanding life—a mind-companion, that one can tell things to; knows what love is too, if I'm not mistaken—or will do, when I teach her. Oh, to teach it to a woman with a face like that—with living eyes like those!"
He was at the end of the main pier, looking over the bulwark at the narrow shadow on the sea. It was nearly abreast of St. Kilda now, gliding ghostly, so dim that he only knew where it was by seeing where it was not. Standing sideways to Jenny's bench, he saw her get up, and saw the living eyes shine in the light of the green lamp.
He stepped towards her in a casual way.