The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  In John’s bedroom she chanced to open a leaf of the great triple-fronted mahogany wardrobe, to look if any clothes had been left hanging to share in the general dilapidation; and there, the first thing she lighted on was a shawl of “poor Jinny’s”—or what had once been a shawl, for it was now riddled like a colander, and all but fell to pieces as she touched it. For a moment Mary stood lost to her surroundings. What memories that shawl called up! Of softest white cashmere, with a handsome floral border, it had been John’s present to Jinny on the birth of their first child: “And if the next’s a boy, Jane, I promise you one of richest India silk, my love!” But, even so, this gift had filled Jinny’s cup to the brim. Mary could only remember it tied up with ribbons in tissue paper, and smelling of camphor to knock you down—Jinny had hardly dared to wear it for fear the dust should discolour it, or the sun fade the bordering. There had been quite a quarrel one day, when John and she were staying with them in Ballarat, because Jinny had visited the Ococks in her second-best. “Far from me be it, Mary, to inculcate an extravagant spirit in Jane, or encourage her to run up bills at the milliner’s. But she is now my wife, and it is her duty to dress accordingly,” had been John’s way of putting it. Well, poor Jinny, she might just as well have worn her finery and worn it out. . . .as only have had it on her back some dozen times in all. She was gone where no shawls were needed.

  “It’s really a lesson not to hoard one’s clothes, but to use and enjoy them while you can. Not to get anything too grand, either, which makes it seem a pity to wear.”

  “John ought to have given all such things away,” she said to herself a few minutes later. For a nudge of memory had drawn her to a lumber-room, where four zinc-and-wood saratogas were lined up in a row. These held all that remained to mortal eyes of “poor Emma.” For Jinny had once soon after marriage confessed to a wild fit of jealousy, in which she had packed away every scrap of her predecessor’s belongings.—Fifteen years dead! The things were now, no doubt, mere rags and tatters, for the box-lid was not made that could keep out the moth. Some day she, Mary, must make it her business to run through them, to see if no little enduring thing was left that could be handed on to Trotty, as a memento of her long-dead mother.

  “Regular Bluebeard’s chambers,” was Richard’s comment, when she told him of her discoveries.

  But Mary had on her thinking-cap, and sat wondering how she could best reduce John’s affairs to order. The house must be opened up without loss of time, scrubbers and cleaners turned in, painters and paperhangers and then. . . .

  A few days later she came home radiant.

  “I’ve got the very person for John!” and undoing her bonnet-strings, she threw them back with an air of triumph. It was a hot November afternoon.

  “What!. . . .yet again?” and having kissed her, Mahony laid his book face downwards and prepared to listen. “Tell me all about it.”

  “Quite one of the most sensible women I’ve ever met.”

  “Then, my dear, you do not mean pretty Fanny!”

  For Mary had been out spending a couple of days with the young pair at Heidelberg, to pay her overdue respects to the cottage of which she had heard so much.

  “It really is a dear little place. And kept in apple-pie order.”

  She had soon discovered, though, that the prevailing neatness and nicety were not the result of any brilliant housewifely qualities in the little bride. The good genius proved to be an aunt—“Auntie Julia”—who had had charge of the motherless girl since birth.

  “One of those neat, brisk little women, Richard, who do everything well they put their hands to. Her hair’s grey, but she is not really old. What struck me first was when she said: ‘Now please don’t imagine I’m a fixture here, Mrs. Mahony. I just came to help my little Fan over her first troubles in setting up house. I don’t hold with old aunts—or mothers either—quartering themselves upon the newly wed. Young people should be left to their own devices. No, poor old Auntie Julia’s job is done; she’s permanently out of work.’”

  It was here Mary thought she saw a light in John’s darkness. Taking the bull by the horns, she there and then told Miss Julia the story of her brother’s two marriages, and of his vain attempts to live in peace and harmony with Zara.

  “Poor fellow, poor fellow! Dear Mrs. Mahony, I agree with you: relatives are not the easiest people in the world to get on with. They are either so much alike that each knows all the time just what the other is thinking—and that is fatal; for, if you won’t mind my saying so, the private thoughts we indulge in, even of our nearest, are not of a fit kind to be made public.” (“But with such a merry twinkle in her eye, Richard, that it took away anything that might have sounded sharp or biting.”) “Or else brothers and sisters are so different that they might have been born on different planets.”

  Mary next enumerated the long line of housekeepers who had wandered in their day through John’s establishment. “In at one door, and out at the next!”

  “Aha! You needn’t tell me where the shoe pinched there. I see, I see. Each of ’em in turn thought she was the one chosen by fate to fill your poor sister-in-law’s place. May I speak frankly? If I take the post, you may make your mind perfectly easy on that score. I’m not of the marrying sort. Some men are born to be bachelors; some women, bless ’em, what’s known as old maids. I can assure you, my dear Mrs. Mahony, I am happiest in the single life. Nor have I missed a family of my own, for my little Fan here has been as much mine as though I had borne her.” Here, however, seeing Mary’s rather dubious air, she laid a hand on her arm and added reassuringly: “But don’t be afraid, my dear. I do not noise these views abroad. They’re just between you, me and the tea-caddy.”

  “It was really said very nicely, Richard—not at all indelicately.”

  “All the same, I should give her a hint that such radical ideas would be fatal to her prospects with his lordship,” said Mahony, who had recently smarted anew under his brother-in-law’s heavy-handed patronage.

  “She won’t talk like that to a man. And I feel sure I’m right; she’s the very person.”

  And so she was. No sooner had John, on Mary’s recommendation, made definite arrangements with Miss Julia than tangles seemed to straighten of themselves. Hers was a master mind. In less than no time the house was cleaned, renovated, repaired; efficient servants were engaged; John was transferred from his uncomfortable Club quarters to a comfortable domesticity. And Miss Julia proved herself of an exquisite tact in running the establishment, in meeting John’s wishes, in agreeing with him without yielding a jot of her own convictions. And thereafter John—“He couldn’t, of course, let the credit for the changed state of affairs go out of the family!”—John went about singing Mary’s praises, and congratulating himself on being the possessor of so capable a sister.

  Next, Jinny’s three mites were brought home from boarding-school; and together Mary and Miss Julia stripped them of their “uniforms,” undid their meagre little rats’-tails, and freed their little bodies from the stiff corsets in which even the infant Josephine was encased. Three pleasant-faced, merry-eyed little girls emerged, who soon learned to laugh and play again, and filled the dead house with the life it needed. They adored Auntie Julia: and were adored by their father as of old.

  There remained only Trotty—or Emmy, as she was now called. Mary had confabbed with Miss Julia, and they had shaken their heads in unison over John’s extraordinary attitude towards his first family. But, on meeting the girl, Miss Julia struck her palms together and cried: “What! stand out against that?. . . .my dear, have no fear! Just let your brother grow used to seeing such a daughter opposite him at breakfast, and he’ll soon miss her if she chances to be absent. Exactly what he needs to preside over his dinner-table. It shall be my task to train her for the post.”

  In the meantime, however, Mary kept Emmy at her own side, in order to renew acquaintance with o
ne she had known so well as a child.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emmy also served to fill a gap.

  As always when forced to live at haphazard, without a fixed routine, Mahony was restless and ill at ease. He had not even a comfortable room to retire to: his present den was the dull little back parlour of a town house. Books, too, he came very short in; it did not seem worth while unpacking those he had brought out with him; and the newly ordered volumes could not be expected to arrive for months to come. Nor did he see much of Mary: what time she had to spare from her relatives was spent in endless discussions with decorators and upholsterers.

  The company of his young niece was thus a real boon to him. Emmy had no obligations, was free to go with him when and where he chose. What was more, with neither the cares of a family nor of house-furnishing on her mind, her thoughts never strayed. And a sound friendship sprang up between the oddly matched pair. No longer afraid of her uncle, Emmy displayed a gentle, saucy, laughing humour. Mahony hired a little horse for her and they rode out together, she pinned up in Mary’s old habit; rode out early of a morning while other people were still fast asleep. Their destination was invariably the new house, to see what progress had been made since the day before: holding her habit high, Emmy would run from room to room, exclaiming. Thence they followed quiet, sandy tracks that led through stretches of heath and gorse to the sea. Or they strolled on foot, Emmy hanging on her uncle’s arm and chattering merrily: a simple-hearted, unaffected girl, as natural as she was pretty, which was saying a good deal, for she promised to be a regular beauty. “Strawberries and cream” was Mahony’s name for her. She had inherited her mother’s ripe-corn fairness and limpid, lash-swept eyes; but the wild-rose complexion of the English-born woman had here been damped to palest cream, in which, as a striking contrast, stood out two lovely lips of a vivid carnation-red—a daring touch on the part of nature that already drew men’s eyes as she passed. In person, she was soft and round and womanly. But the broad little hands with their slyly bitten nails were still half a child’s. She was childishly unconscious, too, of her attractions, innocent in the use to which she put them; and blushed helplessly did any one remark on her appearance—as the outspoken people who surrounded her were only too apt to do. Without being in the least clever, she had a bright open mind, and drank in with interest all Mahony could give her: tales of his travels or of the early days; descriptions of books and plays; little homilies on the wonders of nature. If he had a fault to find with her, it was that she seemed just as sweetly grateful for, say, “Auntie Julia’s” enjoinders how to hold her crotchet-needle, or hints on dress and deportment, as to him for his deeper lore. Yes, the child had an artless and inborn desire to please, and dissipated her favours in a manner that belonged very surely to her age. . . .and her sex. For he might say “child,” but let him remember that his own little Polly-Mary had been but a couple of months older, when he ran her off from among her playmates and friends.

  Altogether there was much about John’s daughter—no! not thus would he put it—about Mary’s niece, that reminded him of Mary herself, as a little mouse of a bride long years ago. And not the least striking point of resemblance was this whole-hearted surrender of attention. It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect the faculty to persist: life in its course brought, to even the fondest of wives, distractions, cares and interests of her own. But there was no denying it, this lack of preoccupation it was, this freedom—even emptiness if you would—of mind, into which oneself poured the contents, that rendered a very young woman so delightful a companion.

  And when, at length, the move to the new house was made, and Mahony set about unpacking, arranging and cataloguing the books he had, and planning where those to come should be shelved, Emmy was still his right hand. Mary, busy with strange servants, with the stocking of kitchen and larder, could do no more than occasionally look in to see how the two of them were getting on, and keep them supplied with refreshment. Good-naturedly she yielded Emmy entirely to Richard, who now passed to overhauling his minerals, plants and butterflies, all of which had made the journey to England with him and back. And glass cases, stacks of blotting-paper and sheets of cork were set up afresh in this big, pleasant room, the windows of which looked down a vista cut through spreading oleanders to where, in the orchard, peach and almond-blossom vied in pinkness against a pale blue sky.

  But it was not very long before Emmy was spirited away to grace her father’s table. Then, his own affairs in order, domestic appointments running smoothly, Mahony drove out with Mary in the neat brougham he had given her, to return some of the visits that had been paid them. Later on, too, he accompanied her to dinners, balls and soirées; or played the host at his own table, which Mary soon filled with guests.

  The society in which they here found themselves had a variety and a breadth about it that put it on a very different footing from either the narrow Ballarat circle of earlier years, or the medieval provincialism into which they had stumbled overseas. And moments came when, squarely facing the facts, Mahony admitted to himself he might go farther and fare worse: in other words, that he could now never hope to know anything better. The most diverse tastes were catered for. There was the ultra-fashionable set that revolved round Government House and the vice-regal entertainments; that covered the lawns at Flemington and Caulfield; drove out in splendid four and six-in-hands to champagne picnics at Yan Yean; overflowed the dress circle at the Theatre Royal, where Bandmann was appearing in his famous rôles; the ladies decked for all occasions—lawn, theatre, picnics, dusty streets alike—in the flimsiest and costliest of robes. At the head of this aristocracy of wealth stood those primitive settlers the great squatter-kings, owners of sheep-runs that counted up to a hundred thousand acres: men whose incomes were so vast that they hardly knew how to dispense them, there existing here no art treasures to empty the purse, nor any taste to buy them had they existed. Neither did travel tempt these old colonists, often of humble origin, whose prime had been spent buried in the bush; while it had not yet become the fashion to educate sons and daughters “at home.” Since, however, fortunes were still notoriously precarious—flood or fire could ruin a man overnight—and since, too, the sense of uncertainty that characterised the early days had bitten too deep ever to be got out of the blood, “spend while you may” remained the motto men lived by. And this led to a reckless extravagance that had not its equal. Women lavished money on dress, which grew to be a passion in this fair climate; on jewellery with which to behang their persons; on fantastic entertainments; men drank, betted, gambled; while horse-racing had already become, with both sexes, the obsession it was to remain. This stylish set—it also included fabulously lucky speculators, as well as the great wool-buyers—Mahony did not do much more than brush in passing. His sympathies inclined rather to that which revolved round the trusty prelate who, having guided the destinies of the Church through the ups and downs of its infancy, now formed a pivot for the intellectual interests of the day—albeit of a somewhat non-progressive, anti-modern kind. Still, the atmosphere that prevailed in the pleasant rooms at Bishopscourt was the nearest thing to be found to the urbane, unworldly air of English university or cathedral life. Next in order came the legal luminaries, Irishmen for the most part, with keen, ugly faces and scathingly witty tongues; men whose enormous experience made them the best of good company. And to this clique belonged also the distinguished surgeons and physicians of the eastern hill; the bankers, astutest of financiers; with, for spice, the swiftly changing politicians of the moment, here one day, gone the next, with nothing but their ideas or their energy to recommend them, and dragging with them wives married in their working days. . . .well, the less said of the wives the better.

  Such was the society in which Mahony was now called on to take his place. And the result was by so much the most vivid expression of his personality he had yet succeeded in giving, that it became the one that imprinted itself on men’s minds, to the confus
ion of what had gone before and was to come after: became the reality from which his mortal shadow was thrown.—“Mahony?” would be the query in later years. “Mahony? Ah yes, of course, you mean Townshend-Mahony of ‘Ultima Thule,’” this being the name he had bestowed on his new house.—Mary regarded him fondly and with pride. Certain it was, no matter in what circle she moved, whose dinner-table he sat at, whose hearthrug he stood on, he was by far the most distinguished-looking man in the room. And not only this: a kind of mellowness now descended on him, a new tolerance with his fellow-men. The lines of work and worry disappeared; he filled out both in face and figure, and loved to tease Mary by declaring he was on the high road to growing fat. He brushed up his musical accomplishments, too; and his pleasant tenor, his skill as a flute-player, brought him into fresh demand. Miss Timms-Kelly, Judge Kelly’s daughter, who had quite the finest amateur voice in Melbourne, was heard to say she preferred Richard’s second in a duet to any other; and many an elaborate aria, full of shakes and trills, did she warble to his obbligato on the flute.