The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  Thus the summer dragged by; a summer to try the toughest. Mahony thought he had never gone through its like for heat and discomfort. The drought would not break, and on the great squatting-stations round Ballarat and to the north, the sheep dropped like flies at an early frost. The forest reservoirs dried up, displaying the red mud of their bottoms, and a bath became a luxury—or a penance—the scanty water running thick and red. Then the bush caught fire and burnt for three days, painting the sky a rusty brown, and making the air hard to breathe. Of a morning his first act on going into his surgery was to pick up the thermometer that stood on the table. Sure as fate, though the clock had not long struck nine, the mercury marked something between a hundred and a hundred and five degrees. He let it fall with a nerveless gesture. Since his sunstroke he not only hated, he feared the sun. But out into it he must, to drive through dust-clouds so opaque that one could only draw rein till they subsided, meanwhile holloaing off collisions. Under the close leather hood he sat and stifled; or, removing his green goggles for the fiftieth time, climbed down to enter yet another baked wooden house, where he handled prostrate bodies rank with sweat, or prescribed for pallid or fever-speckled children. Then home, to toy with the food set before him, his mind already running on the discomforts of the afternoon.—Two bits of ill-luck came his way this summer. Old Ocock fell, in dismounting from a vehicle, and sustained a compound fracture of the femur. Owing to his advanced age there was for a time fear of malunion of the parts, and this kept Mahony on the rack. Secondly, a near neighbour, a common little fellow who kept a jeweller’s shop in Bridge Street, actually took the plunge: sold off one fine day and sailed for home. And this seemed the unkindest cut of all.

  But the accident that gave the death-blow to his scruples was another. On the advice of a wealthy publican he was treating, whose judgment he trusted, Mahony had invested—heavily for him, selling off other stock to do it—in a company known as the Hodderburn Estate. This was a government affair and ought to have been beyond reproach. One day, however, it was found that the official reports of the work done by the diamond drill-bore were cooked documents; and instantly every one connected with the mine—directors, managers, engineers—lay under the suspicion of fraudulent dealings. Shares had risen as high as ten pounds odd; but when the drive reached the bore and, in place of the deep gutter-ground the public had been led to expect, hard rock was found overhead, there was a panic; shares dropped to twenty-five shillings and did not rally. Mahony was a loser by six hundred pounds, and got, besides, a moral shaking from which he could not recover. He sat and bit his little-finger nail to the quick. Was he, he savagely asked himself, going to linger on until the little he had managed to save was snatched from him?

  He dashed off a letter to John, asking his brother-in-law to recommend a reliable broker. And this done, he got up to look for Mary, determined to come to grips with her at last.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  How to begin, how reduce to a few plain words his subtle tangle of thought and feeling, was the problem.

  He did not find his wife on her usual seat in the arbour. In searching for her, upstairs and down, he came to a rapid decision. He would lay chief stress on his poor state of health.

  “I feel I’m killing myself. I can’t go on.”

  “But Richard dear!” ejaculated Mary, and paused in her sewing, her needle uplifted, a bead balanced on its tip. Richard had run her to earth in the spare bedroom, to which at this time she often repaired. For he objected to the piece of work she had on hand—that of covering yards of black cashmere with minute jet beads—vowing that she would ruin her eyesight over it. So, having set her heart on a fashionable polonaise, she was careful to keep out of his way.

  “I’m not a young man any longer, wife. When one’s past forty. . . .”

  “Poor mother used to say forty-five was a man’s prime of life.”

  “Not for me. And not here—in this God-forsaken hole!”

  “Oh dear me! I do wonder why you have such a down on Ballarat. I’m sure there must be many worse places in the world to live in”; and lowering her needle, Mary brought the bead to its appointed spot. “Of course you have a lot to do, I know, and being such a poor sleeper doesn’t improve matters.” But she was considering her pattern sideways as she spoke, thinking more of it than of what she said. Every one had to work hard out here; compared with some she could name, Richard’s job of driving round in a springy buggy seemed ease itself. “Besides I told you at the time you were wrong not to take a holiday in winter, when you had the chance. You need a thorough change every year to set you up. You came back from the last as fresh as a daisy.”

  “The only change that will benefit me is one for good and all,” said Mahony with extreme gloom. He had thrown up the bed-curtain and stretched himself on the bed, where he lay with his hands clasped under his neck.

  Tutored by experience, Mary did not contradict him.

  “And it’s the kind I’ve finally made up my mind to take.”

  “Richard! How you do run on!” and Mary, still gently incredulous but a thought wider awake, let her work sink to her lap. “What is the use of talking like that?”

  “Believe it or not, my dear, as you choose. You’ll see—that’s all.”

  At her further exclamations of doubt and amazement, Mahony’s patience slipped its leash. “Surely to goodness my health comes first. . . .before any confounded practice?”

  “Ssh! Baby’s asleep.—And don’t get cross, Richard. You can hardly expect me not to be surprised when you spring a thing of this sort on me. You’ve never even dropped a hint of it before.”

  “Because I knew very well what it would be. You dead against it, of course!”

  “Now I call that unjust. You’ve barely let me get a word in edgeways.”

  “Oh, I know by heart everything you’re going to say. It’s nonsense. . . .folly. . . .madness. . . .and so on: all the phrases you women fish up from your vocabulary when you want to stave off a change—hinder any alteration of the status quo. But I’ll tell you this, wife. You’ll bury me here, if I don’t get away soon. I’m not much more than skin and bone as it is. And I confess, if I’ve got to be buried I’d rather lie elsewhere—have good English earth atop of me.”

  Had Mary been a man, she might have retorted that this was a very woman’s way of shifting ground. She bit her lip and did not answer immediately. Then: “You know I can’t bear to hear you talk like that, even in fun. Besides, you always say much more than you mean, dear.”

  “Very well then, if you prefer it, wait and see! You’ll be sorry some day.”

  “Do you mean to tell me, Richard, you’re in earnest, when you talk of selling off your practice and going to England?”

  “I can buy another there, can’t I?”

  With these words he leapt to his feet, afire with animation. And while Mary, now thoroughly uneasy, was folding up her work, he dilated upon the benefits that would accrue to them from the change. Good-bye to dust, and sun, and drought, to blistering hot winds and papier maché walls! They would make their new home in some substantial old stone house that had weathered half a century or more, tangled over with creepers, folded away in its own privacy as only an English house could be. In the flower-garden roses would trail over arch and pergola; there would be a lawn with shaped yews on it; while in the orchard old apple-trees would flaunt their red abundance above grey, lichened walls.

  (“As if there weren’t apples enough here!” thought Mary.)

  He got a frog in his throat as he went on to paint in greater detail for her, who had left it so young, the intimate charm of the home country—the rich, green, dimpled countryside. And not till now did he grasp how sorely he had missed it. “Oh, believe me, to talk of ‘going home’ is no mere figure of speech, Mary!” In fancy he trod winding lanes that ran between giant hedges: hedges in tender bud, with dew on the
m; or snowed over with white mayflowers; or behung with the fairy webs and gossamer of early autumn, thick as twine beneath their load of moisture. He followed white roads that were banked with primroses and ran headlong down to the sea; he climbed the shoulder of a down on a spring morning, when the air was alive with larks carolling. But chiefly it was the greenness that called to him—the greenness of the greenest country in the world. Viewed from this distance, the homeland looked to him like one vast meadow. Oh, to tread its grass again!—not what one knew as grass here, a poor annual, that lasted for a few brief weeks; but lush meadow-grass, a foot high; or shaven emerald lawns on which ancient trees spread their shade; or the rank growth in old orchards, starry with wild flowers, on which fruit-blossoms fluttered down. He longed, too, for the exquisite finishedness of the mother country, the soft tints of cloud-veiled northern skies. His eyes ached, his brows had grown wrinkled from gazing on iron roofs set against the hard blue overhead; on dirty weatherboards innocent of paint; on higgledy-piggledy backyards and ramshackle fences; on the straggling landscape with its untidy trees—all the unrelieved ugliness, in short, of the colonial scene.

  He stopped only for want of breath. Mary was silent. He waited. Still she did not speak.

  He fell to earth with a bump, and was angry. “Come. . . .out with it! I suppose all this seems to you just the raving of a lunatic?”

  “Oh, Richard, no. But a little. . . .well, a little unpractical. I never heard before of any one throwing up a good income because he didn’t like the scenery. It’s a step that needs the greatest consideration.”

  “Good God! Do you think I haven’t considered it?—and from every angle? There isn’t an argument for or against, that I haven’t gone over a thousand and one times.”

  “And with never a word to me, Richard?” Mary was hurt; and showed it. “It really is hardly fair. For this is my home as well as yours.—But now listen. You’re tired out, run down with the heat and that last attack of dysentery. Take a good holiday—stay away for three months if you like. Sail over to Hobart Town, or up to Sydney, you who’re so fond of the water. And when you come back strong and well we’ll talk about all this again. I’m sure by then you’ll see things with other eyes.”

  “And who’s to look after the practice, pray?”

  “Why, a locum tenens, of course. Or engage an assistant.”

  “Aha! you’d agree to that now, would you? I remember how opposed you were once to the idea.”

  “Well, if I have to choose between it and you giving up altogether. . . .Now, for your own sake, Richard, don’t go and do anything rash. If once you sell off and leave Ballarat, you can never come back. And then, if you regret it, where will you be? That’s why I say don’t hurry to decide. Sleep over it. Or let us consult somebody—John perhaps——”

  “No you don’t, madam, no you don’t!” cried Richard with a grim dash of humour. “You had me once. . . .crippled me. . . .handcuffed me—you and your John between you! It shan’t happen again.”

  “I crippled you? I, Richard! Why, never in my life have I done anything but what I thought was for your good. I’ve always put you first.” And Mary’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Yes, where it’s a question of one’s material welfare you haven’t your equal—I admit that. But the other side of me needs coddling too—yes, and sympathy. But it can whistle for such a thing as far as you’re concerned.”

  Mary sighed. “I think you don’t realise, dear, how difficult it sometimes is to understand you. . . .or to make out what you really do want,” she said slowly.

  Her tone struck at his heart. “Indeed and I do!” he cried contritely. “I’m a born old grumbler, mavourneen, I know—contrariness in person! But in this case. . . .come, love, do try to grasp what I’m after; it means so much to me.” And he held out his hand to her, to beseech her.

  Unhesitatingly she laid hers in it. “I am trying, Richard, though you mayn’t believe it. I always do. And even if I sometimes can’t manage it—well, you know, dear, you generally get your own way in the end. Think of the house. I’m still not clear why you altered it. I liked it much better as it was. But I didn’t make any fuss, did I?—though I should have, if I’d thought we were only to occupy it for a single year after.—Still, that was a trifle compared with what you want to do now. Though I lived to a hundred I should never be able to approve of this. And you don’t know how hard it is to consent to a thing one disapproves of. You couldn’t do it yourself. Oh, what was the use, Richard, of toiling as you have, if now, just when you can afford to charge higher fees and the practice is beginning to bring in money——”

  Mahony let her hand drop, even giving it a slight push from him, and turned to pace the floor anew. “Oh, money, money, money! I’m sick of the very sound of the word. But you talk as if nothing else mattered. Can’t you for once, wife, see through the letter of the thing to the spirit behind? I admit the practice has brought in a tidy income of late; but as for the rest of the splendours, they exist, my dear, only in your imagination. If you ask me, I say I lead a dog’s life—why, even a navvy works only for a fixed number of hours per diem! My days have neither beginning nor end. Look at yesterday! Out in the blazing sun from morning till night—I didn’t get back from the second round till nine. At ten a confinement that keeps me up till three. From three till dawn I toss and turn, far too weary to sleep. By the time six o’clock struck—you of course were slumbering sweetly—I was in hell with tic. At seven I could stand it no longer and got up for the chloroform bottle: an hour’s rest at any price—else how face the crowd in the waiting-room? And you call that splendour?—luxurious ease? If so, my dear, words have not the same meaning any more for you and me.”

  Mary did not point out that she had said nothing of the kind, or that he had set up an extreme case as typical. She tightened her lips; her big eyes were very solemn.

  “And it’s not the work alone,” Richard was declaring, “it’s the place, wife—the people. I’m done with ’em, Mary—utterly done! Upon my word, if I thought I had to go on living among them even for another twelvemonth. . . .”

  “But people are the same all the world over!” The protest broke from her in spite of herself.

  “No, by God, they’re not!” And here Richard launched out into a diatribe against his fellow-colonists: “This sordid riff-raff! These hard, mean, grasping money-grubbers!” that made Mary stand aghast. What could be the matter with him? What was he thinking of, he who was ordinarily so generous? Had he forgotten the many kindnesses shown him, the warm gratitude of his patients, people’s sympathy, at the time of his illness? But he went on: “My demands are most modest. All I ask is to live among human beings with whom I have half an idea in common—men who sometimes raise their noses from the ground, instead of eternally scheming how to line their pockets, reckoning human progress solely in terms of £ s. d. No, I’ve sacrificed enough of my life to this country. I mean to have the rest for myself. And there’s another thing, my dear—another bad habit this precious place breeds in us. It begins by making us indifferent to those who belong to us but are out of our sight, and ends by cutting our closest ties. I don’t mean by distance alone. I have an old mother still living, Mary, whose chief prayer is that she may see me once again before she dies. I was her last-born—the child her arms kept the shape of. What am I to her now?. . . .what does she know of me, of the hard, tired, middle-aged man I have become? And you are in much the same box, my dear; unless you’ve forgotten by now that you ever had a mother.”

  Mary was scandalised. “Forget one’s mother?. . . .Richard! I think you’re trying what dreadful things you can find to say. . . .when I write home every three months!” And provoked by this fresh piece of unreason she opened fire in earnest, in defence of what she believed to be their true welfare. Richard listened to her without interrupting; even seemed to grant the truth of what she said. But none the less, even as she plead
ed with him, a numbing sense of futility crept over her. She stuttered, halted, and finally fell silent. Her words were like so many lassoes thrown after his vagrant soul; and this was out of reach. It had sniffed freedom—it was free; ran wild already on the boundless plains of liberty.

  After he had gone from the room she sat with idle hands. She was all in a daze. Richard was about to commit an out-and-out folly, and she was powerless to hinder it. If only she had had some one she could have talked things over with, taken advice of! But no—it went against the grain in her to discuss her husband’s actions with a third person. Purdy had been the sole exception, and Purdy had become impossible.

  Looking back, she marvelled at her own dullness in not foreseeing that something like this might happen. What more natural than that the multitude of little whims and fads Richard had indulged should culminate in a big whim of this kind? But the acknowledgment caused her fresh anxiety. She had watched him tire, like a fickle child, of first one thing, then another; was it likely that he would now suddenly prove more stable? She did not think so. For she attributed his present mood of pettish aversion wholly to the fact of his being run down in health. It was quite true: he had not been himself of late. But, here again, he was so fanciful that you never knew how literally to take his ailments: half the time she believed he just imagined their existence; and the long holiday she had urged on him would have been enough to sweep the cobwebs from his brain. Oh, if only he could have held on in patience! Four or five years hence, at most, he might have considered retiring from general practice. She almost wept as she remembered how they had once planned to live for that day. Now it was all to end in smoke.