Over these imaginings the hours flew by—hours not divided off each from the next, but fusing to form one single golden day: of a kind that does not come twice in a lifetime. Meanwhile the vessel was well advanced up the great Bay, and familiar landmarks began to rise into view. He had sometimes wondered, on the voyage out, what his feelings would be, when he saw these familiar places again and knew that the pincer of the “Heads” had snapped behind him. Now, he contemplated them with a vacant eye; did not take up the thread of a personal relationship. Or once only: at sight of a bare old clump of hills behind Geelong. Then he impulsively went below to fetch Mary—Mary was packing the cabin furniture, sewing up mattresses in the floor-carpeting, the mirror in the blankets—and she, good-naturedly rising from her knees, for to-day she had not the heart to refuse him anything, tied on her bonnet and accompanied him on deck. There, standing arm-in-arm, they thought and spoke of a certain unforgettable evening, now years deep in the past.
“What greenhorns we were then, love, to be sure! So mercifully ignorant of all the ups and downs in store for us.”—But his tone was light, even merry; for to-day the ups had it.
“Yet you seemed to me very old and wise, Richard. I suppose it came of you wearing that horrid beard.”
“And what a little sprite you were!—so shy and elusive. There was no catching you. . . .or getting a word in edgeways—thanks to that poor old chattering Mother B. and her two bumpkins.”
“Whom you couldn’t tell apart. . . .how that did make me laugh!” said Mary. To add with a sigh: “Poor Jinny! Little did we think she would have to go so much sooner than the rest.”
“My dear, a good half of that party is dust by now.”
But no melancholy tinged the reflection. In his present mood, Mahony accepted life, and the doom life implied, with cheerfullest composure.
Hardly a letter received by Mary that morning but had besought them to regard the writer’s house as their own: they had only to make their choice. “Yes, and give umbrage to all the rest. Nonsense, Mary! We’ll just slip off quietly to a hotel. We don’t need to consider the expense now, and shall be much freer and more comfortable than if we tied ourselves down to stay with people.”
But Mahony’s plan miscarried.
What a home-coming that was! No sooner had the ship cast anchor than rowing-boats began to push off from the pier; while one that had been lying on its oars made for them with all speed. Mary, standing hatted and shawled for landing, looked, looked again, rubbed her eyes and exclaimed: “Why, I do declare if it isn’t Tilly! Oh, Richard, what a difference the weeds make!” And sure enough a few minutes later Tilly’s head came bobbing up over the side, and the two women lay in each other’s arms half laughing, half crying, drawing back, first one, then the other, the better to fix her friend. Certainly Tilly had never shown to more advantage. In old days her hats had been flagrant, her silks over-sumptuous, her jewellery too loud. Now, the neat widow’s bonnet with its white frill and black hangings formed a becoming frame for her yellow-brown hair, tanned skin and strong white teeth; the chains, lockets and brooches of twenty-two-carat Ballarat gold had given way to decorous jet; the soft black stuff of the dress moulded and threw up every good point in the rich, full-bosomed figure. Silently Mary noted and rejoiced. But Tilly, one glance snatched, blurted out: “Well, I must say England ’asn’t done much for you, my dear! In all my days, Mary, never did I see you look so peaked and pasty. Seasickness? Not it! It’s that horrible climate you’ve ’ad to put up with. I declare your very letters—with their rain, rain, and fog, fog—used to gimme the blue devils. Well! you’ve come back ’ere to the finest climate in the world. We’ll ’ave you up to the mark again in a brace o’ shakes.”
Further she did not get, for here now was John arriving—a somewhat greyer and leaner John than they had left, but advancing upon one, thought Mahony, with the same old air of: I am here; all is well. Having cordially embraced his sister, John wrung his brother-in-law’s hand: “It would be false to pretend surprise, my dear Mahony, at your decision to return to us.” On his heels came none other than Jerry and his wife: a fair, fragile slip of a girl this—Australian-born and showing it, in a skin pale as a white flower. Mary put her arms round the child—she was scarcely more—and kissed her warmly; while in one breath the little wife, who was all a-flutter and atremble, confided to her how very, very, much afraid she had felt of this meeting, knowing Mary to be dear “Harry’s” favourite sister; and how she hoped dear Mary, please, wouldn’t mind her calling him Harry, but she had once had a dog named Jerry, a white dog with a black patch over one eye; and it seemed so droll, didn’t it? to call your husband by the same name as a dog, especially such a funny-looking dog; although if dear Mary wished it very, very much. . . .all this gabbled off like a lesson got by heart. Mary promptly reassured her: it was her good right to call her husband by whatever name she chose, so long as he did not mind; and that—with a loving glance at Jerry—she would guarantee he didn’t. Then she turned to her brother. The same steady old sober-sides; but now grown quite the man: broad of shoulder, richly whiskered, and, as could be seen at a glance, the most devoted of husbands. Did his young wife speak to some one, he tried to overhear what she was saying; watched the effect of her words on the other; smiled in advance at her little jokes, to incite the listener to smile, too—for all the world after the fashion of a fond mother playing off her child. And when, sprite-like, the girl ran to the other side of the ship, he took the opportunity before following her to squeeze his sister’s hand and murmur: “What do you say to my little Fanny, Mary? Isn’t she perfect?”
“Dear, dear Jerry! If she’s only half as good as she’s pretty. . . .and I can see she is,” said Mary returning the squeeze.
Meanwhile quite a crowd had collected on the wharf, to which the party was rowed in a boat so laden that, at moments, the ladies instinctively held their breaths to lighten the load, and the little bride shrank into the crook of her husband’s arm. Here stood Zara fluttering a morsel of cambric: she had feared an attack of mal de mer, she whispered, did she embark on so choppy a sea. (“We could hardly, I think, love, expect Zara to consider us worth the half-guinea the boatmen were charging!” was Mahony’s postprandial comment.) Here were Agnes Ocock and Amelia Grindle with sundry of their children, and the old Devines, and Trotty, advanced to a hair-net, and John’s three youngest in charge of their schoolmistress; besides many a lesser friend and acquaintance who had made light of the journey to the port. Hand after hand was thrust forth with: “I trust I see you in prime health, ma’am?” “Dear, dearest Mary! How we have missed you!” or: “Thought you’d never hold it out over there, sir.” “Delighted, doctor, I’m sure, to welcome you back to our little potato-patch!” And those who could not get near enough for more, along with a sprinkling of curious strangers, enjoyed just forming the fringe of the crowd. It was a pleasant break in the monotony of colonial life to catch a glimpse of arrivals from overseas; to note the latest fashion in hair and dress; to hear news and pick up gossip.
Mary had just stooped to the youngest of the children, marvelling at its growth, when her ear caught an oddly familiar sound, an uneven, thumping footfall, and turning quickly, whom in all the world should she see but Purdy, out of breath and red in the face, but otherwise looking just the same as of old, or at least “not very different”—a phrase with which Mary had already covered a marked change in more than one present: John’s singular spareness of rib, Zara’s greying front, Agnes’s florid cheeks, the wizened-apple aspect of Amelia Grindle. In Purdy’s case it cloaked a shining-through of the cranium, did he bare his head; more than a hint of coming stoutness; a cheap and flashy style of dress. First, though, she shot a lightning glance at Richard: how would he take this sudden apparition? The look reassured her: he was to-day uplifted above all ordinary prejudice. There was just an instant’s hesitation, and then he himself stepped forward, both hands outheld, one to grasp P
urdy’s right, the other to clap on his shoulder; while his: “Dickybird, my boy! How are you?. . . .how are you?” came simultaneously with Purdy’s: “Dick, old man, I heard your tub was in. I thought I’d just trot along and give you a pawshake.”—And thus the old bond was cemented anew.
Thought Mary: was there any end to the good things with which this day was full?
Drawn to the group, Purdy came in for his share of the welcome. For he had not been back to Ballarat since his abrupt departure some years previously; and his former friends and acquaintances hailed him with the lively interest and curiosity peculiar to people who see but few fresh faces, and never forget an old one.
He shook hands all round. When it came to Tilly: “I need hardly introduce you two, I think!” said Mary slyly.
Tilly burst into a roar. “I should say not, indeed! Why, my dear, I can remember ’im when ’e was only so ’igh,”—and she measured a foot from the ground.
Purdy capped her fiction. “Is that all? Why, you lisped your first prayer at my knee.”
But the children grew peevish; it was time to make a move. At the first breathing of the word hotel, however, such a chorus of dissent broke out that Mahony’s plan had there and then to be let drop. Not a guest-chamber, it seemed, but had been swept and dressed for them—John’s excepted, John still leading a bachelor life at the Melbourne Club. Even Jerry and his bride had made ready their tiny weatherboard; and here Jerry put his lips to Mary’s ear to say how inconsolable little Fanny would be if they went elsewhere: she had sat stitching till past midnight at wonderful bows for bed and window-hangings—a performance which, in the young husband’s eyes, far outweighed the fact of their living miles out, at Heidelberg, to which place a coach ran but at ten of a morning; so that the present night would have to be spent in Melbourne, under the bride’s father’s roof. Had Mary been free to please herself, she would have waived all other considerations rather than disappoint the youthful pair. But Richard! She could hear his amused and sarcastic ha-ha, at the idea of “camping out” with utter strangers for the pleasure of next morning being “carted off” to Heidelberg. Meanwhile, on her other side Fanny was whispering: just fancy, Harry hadn’t been able to tell her what dear Mary’s complexion was, whether blonde or brunette. She had chosen pink for her bows, because pink suited most people, and she had clapped her hands on finding she was right; but she thought she would have sunk through the floor, had she hit on blue. And when Mary laughingly declared that blue was one of her favourite colours, and that even in yellow or green the trimmings would have been equally appreciated, little Fanny bit her lip and looked as if she were going to cry.—All this in a rapid aside.
The Devines won the day—after a heated discussion in which everybody spoke at once. These good people had actually a carriage-and-pair in waiting, that the travellers might be spared the brief railway journey from port to town; as well as a spring-cart for the baggage. There was no standing out against Mrs. Devine’s persuasions, seconded as they were by the M.L.C. himself, who from a modest place in the background threw in, whenever he got the chance: “My ’ouse is entirely at your disposal, sir. We beg you and your good lady will do us the honour.”
“Indeed and I’ll not take no!” declared his wife; and, under a pair of nodding, hearse-like plumes, her fat, rosy face beamed on those about her, after the manner of a big red sun. “’Tis a great hempty barn, that’s what it is, and I’ve looked to this day to fill it. Why, dearie, so’s not to ’ear quite so much of me own footsteps, I’ve been and taken in one o’ Jake’s sister’s ’usband’s sister’s children.”
Thus the Mahonys found themselves rolling townwards in the Devines’ well-hung landau, on their knees a picnic-basket containing port wine and sandwiches with which to refresh and sustain the inner man.
Mahony fell silent as the wheels revolved; a smile played round his lips. He was laughing at himself for having imagined that it would be necessary to explain away his reappearance in these people’s midst. One and all had followed John’s lead in finding his return to Australia—Australia facile princeps!—the most natural thing in the world.
At South Yarra they became the occupants of the largest guest-chamber in a brand-new mansion, which counted every comfort and luxury the upholsterers had known how to cram into it, and now only needed really to be lived in. Its stiff formality reminded Mary, the homemaker, of the specimen rooms set out in a great furniture warehouse; rooms in which no living creature has yet left a trace. Her fingers itched to break up the prim rows of chairs ranged against the walls; lightly to disarrange albums; to leave on antimacassars the impress of a head.
Mrs. Devine having finally satisfied herself that they had everything they required—down to a plump and well-studded pincushion on which the pins wrote “Welcome!”—for: “I’ve no faith in them giddy girls, dearie,”—husband and wife were at last alone together.
“Whew!” breathed Mahony, and sinking into an armchair he fanned himself with his handkerchief. “Well! I sincerely hope you’re satisfied, Mary. Royalty itself could not ask for a warmer welcome than you have had, my dear.” But he smiled again as he spoke; and the usual edge to his words was wanting.
“You, too,” said Mary, who was fighting the lock of a carpet-bag. Then she laughed. “As if royalty ever got hugged, and kissed, and slapped on the back! But indeed, Richard, I shall never, never forget the kindness that’s been shown us. And what a lovely house this is!. . . .I mean, could be made.”
“My dear, you shall have as good—and better. Rather much oilcloth here for my taste. The grounds, too, struck me as stiffish, what I saw of them.” Rising to take another look through a raised slat of the venetian, he turned and beckoned his wife. “What do you say to this, Mary?” Peeping over his shoulder she saw their host, in comfortable corduroys, without his coat, his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows, trundling a loaded wheelbarrow. Said Mahony: “Seems to have turned into a very decent sort of fellow indeed, does our good Cincinnatus.”
“Who?. . . .Mr. Devine? Yes, hasn’t he? I thought it most tactful of him to be quiet in the carriage, when he saw you didn’t want to talk.”
Below, on a dinner-table built to accommodate a score, a veritable banquet had been spread. They sat down to it at six o’clock, a large family party. For on the wharf Mrs. Devine, as winner, had scattered her invitations broadcast, even insisting on Tilly exchanging her hotel for the second-best spare room. Zara was there, together with Jerry and his wife, and John, and Trotty, who hung on one of Aunt Mary’s arms as did pretty Fanny on the other; and the health of the home-comers and the happy change in Mahony’s fortunes were drunk to in bumpers of champagne. By every one but the master of the house; before whose plate stood a jug of barley-water. In the intervals of signalling to the servants where to put the dishes, and whose glass or plate stood empty, Mrs. Devine, purply moist with gratification and excitement, drew Mahony’s attention to this jug with a nudge and a wink.
“Your doin’, doctor. . . .all thanks to you. Jake took the pledge that time you know of, and never ’as ’e broke it since, no matter where ’e is or in ’oos company.” She actually laid her pudgy hand on Mahony’s and gave it a warm squeeze.
“Very creditable. . . .very creditable indeed,” murmured Mahony, stiff with embarrassment lest his host should overhear what was being said.
But Mrs. Devine had already telegraphed to her husband down the length of the table; and the good man smiled and nodded, and sipped his barley-water in Mahony’s direction.
The ladies withdrawing and Jerry sidling out soon after, the three men pulled their chairs closer; and now colonial affairs took the place of family gossip and perfunctory inquiries about “home.” As fellow-members of the Legislative Council, John and Devine had become fast friends. It was also in the wind, it seemed, that Devine might be called on to form a ministry. Puzzled by the many changes, the new men and new names that
had come up during his absence, Mahony acted chiefly the listener; but the interested listener, for it was gratifying to find himself once more at the fountain-head. His companions’ talk, ranging over a great variety of topics, harked back yet and again to the great natural catastrophe in the face of which legislation was powerless—the unprecedented drought which, already in its fourth year, was ruining the squatters, compelling them to part with thousands on thousands of dying sheep, for the price of the skins alone.
In listening Mahony eyed the two men up and down. His bearded host looked sound as a bell. But it was otherwise with John—“He’s a shocking bad colour,”—and knowing his brother-in-law to be of temperate habits, he resolved to have a word with him in private.
It grew late: for over an hour John’s horses had pawed the gravel of the drive. Finally Mahony excused himself on grounds of fatigue and ran upstairs. But he might have saved his haste. For Mary had taken her hairbrush and gone to Tilly’s room. There, a fresh log having been thrown on the whitewashed hearth, the two women sat and talked far into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
Mahony’s first lightning plan of putting up his plate at the top of Collins Street, among the bigwigs of the profession, was not carried out. For when, the day after landing, he went to interview Simmonds, his man of business, he found his affairs in even more brilliant condition than Simmonds’ letter—written a fortnight back to await the ship’s arrival—had led him to believe. That had put the sum lying to his credit at between ten and eleven thousand pounds. By now, however—a second company in which he was interested choosing the self-same moment to look up—combined dividends were flowing in at the rate of twelve to fifteen hundred pounds a month. And this, despite the enormous outlay incurred by the Australia Felix Company in sinking a fourth shaft, lighting the mine throughout with gas, erecting the heaviest plant yet seen on the goldfields.
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Page 59
