Mary, in particular, profited by the change; for in one of those “general posts” so frequently played by the colonial cabinet, John Turnham had come out Minister of Railways; and she could have a “free pass” for the asking. John paid numerous visits to his constituency; but he was now such an important personage that his relatives hardly saw him. As likely as not he was the guest of the Henry Ococks in their new mansion, or of the mayor of the borough. In the past two years Mahony had only twice exchanged a word with his brother-in-law.
And then they met again.
In Melbourne, at six o’clock one January morning, the Honourable John, about to enter a saloon-compartment of the Ballarat train, paused, with one foot on the step, and disregarding the polite remarks of the station-master at his heels, screwed up his prominent black eyes against the sun. At the farther end of the train, a tall, thin, fair-whiskered man was peering disconsolately along a row of crowded carriages. “God bless me! isn’t that. . . .Why, so it is!” And leaving the official standing, John walked smartly down the platform.
“My dear Mahony!—this is indeed a surprise. I had no idea you were in town.
“Why not have let me know you proposed coming?” he inquired as they made their way, the train meanwhile held up on their account, towards John’s spacious, reserved saloon.
(“What he means is, why I didn’t beg a pass of him.”) And Mahony, who detested asking favours, laid exaggerated emphasis on his want of knowledge. He had not contemplated the journey till an hour beforehand. Then, the proposed delegate having been suddenly taken ill, he had been urgently requested to represent the Masonic Lodge to which he belonged, at the Installation of a new Grand Master.
“Ah, so you found it possible to get out of harness for once?” said John affably, as they took their seats.
“Yes, by a lucky chance I had no case on hand that could not do without me for twenty-four hours. And my engagement-book I can leave with perfect confidence to my wife.”
“Mary is no doubt a very capable woman; I noticed that afresh, when last she was with us,” returned John; and went on to tick off Mary’s qualities like a connoisseur appraising the points of a horse. “A misfortune that she is not blessed with any family,” he added.
Mahony stiffened; and responded dryly: “I’m not sure that I agree with you. With all her energy and spirit Mary is none too strong.”
“Well, well! these things are in the hands of Providence; we must take what is sent us.” And caressing his bare chin John gave a hearty yawn.
The words flicked Mahony’s memory: John had had an addition to his family that winter, in the shape—to the disappointment of all concerned—of a second daughter. He offered belated congratulations. “A regular Turnham this time, according to Mary. But I am sorry to hear Jane has not recovered her strength.”
“Oh, Jane is doing very well. But it has been a real disadvantage that she could not nurse. The infant is. . . .well, ah. . . .perfectly formed, of course, but small—small.”
“You must send them both to Mary, to be looked after.”
The talk then passed to John’s son, now a schoolboy in Geelong; and John admitted that the reports he received of the lad continued as unsatisfactory as ever. “The young rascal has ability, they tell me, but no application.” John propounded various theories to account for the boy having turned out poorly, chief among which was that he had been left too long in the hands of women. They had overindulged him. “Mary no more than the rest, my dear fellow,” he hastened to smooth Mahony’s rising plumes. “It began with his mother in the first place. Yes, poor Emma was weak with the boy—lamentably weak!”
Here, with a disconcerting abruptness, he drew to him a blue linen bag that lay on the seat, and loosening its string took out a sheaf of official papers, in which he was soon engrossed. He had had enough of Mahony’s conversation in the meantime, or so it seemed; had thought of something better to do, and did it.
His brother-in-law eyed him as he read. “He’s a bad colour. Been living too high, no doubt.”
A couple of new books were on the seat by Mahony; but he did not open them. He had a tiring day behind him, and the briefest of nights. Besides attending the masonic ceremony, which had lasted into the small hours, he had undertaken to make various purchases, not the least difficult of which was the buying of a present for Mary—all the little fal-lals that went to finish a lady’s ball-dress. Railway-travelling was, too, something of a novelty to him nowadays; and he sat idly watching the landscape unroll, and thinking of nothing in particular. The train was running through mile after mile of flat, treeless country, liberally sprinkled with trapstones and clumps of tussock grass, which at a distance could be mistaken for couched sheep. Here and there stood a solitary she-oak, most doleful of trees, its scraggy, pine-needle foliage bleached to grey. From the several little stations along the line: mere three-sided sheds, which bore a printed invitation to intending passengers to wave a flag or light a lamp, did they wish to board the train: from these shelters long, bare, red roads, straight as ruled lines, ran back into the heart of the burnt-up, faded country. Now and then a moving ruddy cloud on one of them told of some vehicle crawling its laborious way.
When John, his memoranda digested, looked up ready to resume their talk, he found that Mahony was fast asleep; and, since his first words, loudly uttered, did not rouse him, he took out his case, chose a cigar, beheaded it and puffed it alight.
While he smoked, he studied his insensible relative. Mahony was sitting uncomfortably hunched up; his head had fallen forward and to the side, his mouth was open, his gloved hands lay limp on his knee.
“H’m!” said John to himself as he gazed. And: “H’m,” he repeated after an interval.—Then pulling down his waistcoat and generally giving himself a shake to rights, he reflected that, for his own two-and-forty years, he was a very well preserved man indeed.
CHAPTER SIX
“Oh, Richard!. . . .and my dress is blue,” said Mary distractedly, and sitting back on her heels let her arms fall to her sides. She was on her knees, and before her lay a cardboard box from which she had withdrawn a pink fan, pink satin boots with stockings to match, and a pink head-dress.
“Well, why the dickens didn’t you say so?” burst out the giver.
“I did, dear. As plainly as I could speak.”
“Never heard a word!”
“Because you weren’t listening. I told you so at the time. Now what am I to do?” and, in her worry over the contretemps, Mary quite forgot to thank her husband for the trouble he had been to on her behalf.
“Get another gown to go with them.”
“Oh, Richard. . . .how like a man! After all the time and money this one has cost me. No, I couldn’t do that. Besides, Agnes Ocock is wearing pink and wouldn’t like it.” And with a forehead full of wrinkles she slowly began to replace the articles in their sheaths. “Of course they’re very nice,” she added, as her fingers touched the delicate textures.
“They would need to be, considering what I paid for them. I wish now I’d kept my money in my pocket.”
“Well, your mistake is hardly my fault, is it, dear?” But Richard had gone off in a mood midway between self-annoyance and the huff.
Mary’s first thought was to send the articles to Jinny with a request to exchange them for their counterparts in the proper colour. Then she dismissed the idea. Blind slave to her nursery that Jinny was, she would hardly be likely to give the matter her personal supervision: the box would just be returned to the shop, and the transfer left to the shop-people’s discretion. They might even want to charge more. No, another plan now occurred to Mary. Agnes Ocock might not yet have secured the various small extras to go with her ball-dress; and, if not, how nice it would be to make her a present of these. They were finer, in better taste, than anything to be had on Ballarat; and she had long owed Agnes some return for he
r many kindnesses. Herself she would just make do with the simpler things she could buy in town. And so, without saying anything to Richard, who would probably have objected that Henry Ocock was well able to afford to pay for his own wife’s finery, Mary tied up the box and drove to Plevna House, on the outer edge of Yuille’s Swamp.
“Oh, no, I could never have got myself such beautiful things as these, Mary,” and Mrs. Henry let her hands play lovingly with the silk stockings, her pretty face a-glow with pleasure. “Henry has no understanding, dear, for the etceteras of a costume. He thinks, if he pays for a dress or a mantle, that that is enough; and when the little bills come in, he grumbles at what he calls my extravagance. I sometimes wish, Mary, I had kept back just a teeny-weeny bit of my own money. Henry would never have missed it, and I should have been able to settle a small bill for myself now and then. But you know how it is at first, love. Our one idea is to hand over all we possess to our lord and master.”
She tried on the satin boots; they were a little long, but she would stuff the toes with wadding. “If I am really not robbing you, Mary?”
Mary reassured her, and thereupon a visit was paid to the nursery, where Mr. Henry’s son and heir lay sprawling in his cradle. Afterwards they sat and chatted on the verandah, while a basket was being filled with peaches for Mary to take home.
Not even the kindly drapery of a morning-wrapper could conceal the fact that Agnes was growing very stout—quite losing her fine figure. That came of her having given up riding-exercise. And all to please Mr. Henry. He did not ride himself, and felt nervous or perhaps a little jealous when his wife was on horseback.
She was still very pretty of course—though by daylight the fine bloom of her cheeks began to break up into a network of tiny veins—and her fair, smooth brow bore no trace of the tragedy she had gone through. The double tragedy; for, soon after the master of Dandaloo’s death in a Melbourne lunatic asylum, the little son of the house had died, not yet fourteen years of age, in an Inebriates’ Home. Far was it from Mary to wish her friend to brood or repine; but to have ceased to remember as utterly as Agnes had done had something callous about it; and, in her own heart, Mary devoted a fresh regret to the memory of the poor little stepchild of fate.
The ball for which all these silken niceties were destined had been organised to raise funds for a public monument to the two explorers, Burke and Wills, and was to be one of the grandest ever given in Ballarat. His Excellency the Governor would, it was hoped, be present in person; the ladies had taken extraordinary pains with their toilettes, and there had been the usual grumblings at expense on the part of the husbands—though not a man but wished and privately expected his wife “to take the shine out of all the rest.”
Mary had besought Richard to keep that evening free—it was her lot always to go out to entertainments under some one else’s wing—and he had promised to do his utmost. But, a burnt child in this respect, Mary said she would believe it when she saw it; and the trend of events justified her scepticism. The night arrived; she was on the point of adjusting her wreath of forget-me-nots before her candle-lit mirror, when the dreaded summons came. Mahony had to change and hurry off, without a moment’s delay.
“Send for Purdy. He’ll see you across,” he said as he banged the front door.
But Mary despatched the gardener at a run with a note to Tilly Ocock, who, she knew, would make room for her in her double-seated buggy.
Grindle got out, and Mary, her bunchy skirts held to her, took his place at the back beside Mrs. Amelia. Tilly sat next the driver, and talked to them over her shoulder—a great big jolly rattle of a woman, who ruled her surroundings autocratically.
“Lor, no—we left ’im counting eggs,” she answered an inquiry on Mary’s part. “Pa’s got a brood of Cochin Chinas that’s the pride and glory of ’is heart. And ’e’s built ’imself the neatest little place for ’em you could meet on a summer’s day: you must come over and admire it, my dear—that’ll please ’im, no end. It was a condition I made for ’is going on keeping fowls. They were a perfect nuisance, all over the garden and round the kitchen and the back, till it wasn’t safe to put your foot down anywhere—fowls are such messy things! At last I up and said I wouldn’t have it any longer. So then ’e and Tom set to work and built themselves a fowl-house and a run. And there they spend their days thinking out improvements.”
Here Tilly gave the driver a cautionary dig with her elbow; as she did this, an under-pocket chinked ominously. “Look out now, Davy, what you’re doing with us!—Yes, that’s splosh, Mary. I always bring a bag of change with me, my dear, so that those who lose shan’t have an excuse for not paying up.” Tilly was going to pass her evening, as usual, at the card-table. “Well, I hope you two’ll enjoy yourselves. Remember now, Mrs. Grindle, if you please, that you’re a married woman and must behave yourself, and not go in for any high jinks,” she teased her prim little stepdaughter, as they dismounted from the conveyance and stood straightening their petticoats at the entrance to the hall.
“You know, Matilda, I do not intend to dance to-night,” said Mrs. Amelia in her sedate fashion: it was as if she sampled each word before parting with it.
“Oh, I know, bless you! and know why, too. If only it’s not another false alarm! Poor old pa’d so like to have a grandchild ’e was allowed to carry round. ’E mustn’t go near Henry’s, of course, for fear the kid ’ud swallow one of ’is dropped aitches and choke over it.” And Tilly threw back her head and laughed. “But you must hurry up, Mely, you know, if you want to oblige ’im.”
“Really, Tilly!” expostulated Mary. (“She sometimes does go too far,” she thought to herself. “The poor little woman!”) “Let us two keep together,” she said as she took Amelia’s arm. “I don’t intend to dance much either, as my husband isn’t here.”
But once inside the gaily decorated hall, she found it impossible to keep her word. Even on her way to a seat beside Agnes Ocock she was repeatedly stopped, and, when she sat down, up came first one, then another, to “request the pleasure.” She could not go on refusing everybody: if she did, it would look as if she deliberately set out to be peculiar—a horrible thought to Mary. Besides, many of those who made their bow were important, influential gentlemen; for Richard’s sake she must treat them politely.
For his sake, again, she felt pleased; rightly or wrongly she put the many attentions shown her down to the fact of her being his wife. So she turned and offered apologies to Agnes and Amelia, feeling at the same time thankful that Richard had not Mr. Henry’s jealous disposition. There sat Agnes, looking as pretty as a picture, and was afraid to dance with any one but her own husband. And he preferred to play at cards!
“I think, dear, you might have ventured to accept the Archdeacon for a quadrille,” she whispered behind her fan, as Agnes regretfully declined Mr. Long.
But Agnes shook her head. “It’s better not, Mary. It saves trouble afterwards. Henry doesn’t care to see it.” Perhaps Agnes herself, once a passionate dancer, was growing a little too comfortable, thought Mary, as her own programme wandered from hand to hand.
Among the last to arrive was Purdy, red with haste, and making a great thump with his lame leg as he crossed the floor.
“I’m beastly late, Polly. What have you got left for me?”
“Why, really nothing, Purdy. I thought you weren’t coming. But you may put your name down here if you like,” and Mary handed him her programme with her thumb on an empty space: she generally made a point of sitting out a dance with Purdy that he might not feel neglected; and of late she had been especially careful not to let him notice any difference in her treatment of him. But when he gave back the card she found that he had scribbled his initials in all three blank lines. “Oh, you mustn’t do that. I’m saving those for Richard.”
“Our dance, I believe, Mrs. Mahony?” said a deep voice as the band struck up “The Rats Quadrilles.” And, s
waying this way and that in her flounced blue tarletan, Mary rose, put her hand within the proffered crook, and went off with the Police Magistrate, an elderly greybeard; went to walk or be teetotumed through the figures of the dance, with the supremely sane unconcern that she displayed towards all the arts.
“What odd behaviour!” murmured Mrs. Henry, following Purdy’s retreating form with her eyes. “He took no notice of us whatever. And did you see, Amelia, how he stood and stared after Mary? Quite rudely, I thought.”
Here Mrs. Grindle was forced to express an opinion of her own—always a trial for the nervous little woman. “I think it’s because dear Mary looks so charming to-night, Agnes,” she ventured in her mouse-like way. Then moved up to make room for Archdeacon Long, who laid himself out to entertain the ladies.
It was after midnight when Mahony reached home. He would rather have gone to bed, but having promised Mary to put in an appearance, he changed and walked down to the town.
The ball was at its height. He skirted the rotating couples, seeking Mary. Friends hailed him.
“Ah, well done, doctor!”
“Still in time for a spin, sir.”
“Have you seen my wife?”
“Indeed and I have. Mrs. Mahony’s the belle o’ the ball.”
“Pleased to hear it. Where is she now?”
“Look here, Mahony, we’ve had a reg’lar dispute,” cried Willie Urquhart pressing up; he was flushed and decidedly garrulous. “Almost came to blows we did, over whose was the finest pair o’ shoulders—your wife’s or Henry O.’s. I plumped for Mrs. M., and I b’lieve she topped the poll. By Jove! that blue gown makes ’em look just like. . . .what shall I say?. . . .like marble.”
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Page 39
