The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  However, she kept these thoughts to herself, patiently doing all that was required of her in the way of linking hands in dark rooms, hymn-singing and the rest, with only an occasional silent chuckle at the antics of the believers. But then came an evening when circumstances forced her hand. Well, yes. . . .that was partly true. They were at a sitting with a medium of whom she had long had her doubts; and, on this night, the evidence for fraud seemed to her so glaring that she determined to put it to the test. For once, Richard was not beside her. Instead, on her right, she had a lady who fell into raptures at each fresh proof of the “dear spirits’” presence. Stealthily bringing her two hands together (as Tilly had long ago instructed her), Mary freed one from this person’s hold; and, when “spirit-touches” were again proclaimed by her neighbour (they never visited her!) she made a grab, and just as she expected, found the medium—easily recognisable by her bulk—crouched on her knees inside the circle, with a long feather whisk in her hand. In the dark, and in utter silence, a struggle went on between them, she holding fast, the medium wriggling this way and that, and ultimately, by lying almost flat on the floor, contriving to wrench herself free. Not a word did Mary say. But at the end, when the lights were turned up, it was announced that the “spirits” complained of an unsympathetic presence in the circle; and after some hocus-pocus with slate-writing, etc., she, Mary, was designated and asked to withdraw.

  Richard, pale and extremely haughty, made the best of the situation in face of all these strangers, none of whom but eyed Mary as if she were a moral pariah. Inwardly he was raging; and he freely vented his anger in the carriage going home.

  “There you have it! Your mulish obstinacy. . . .your intolerable lack of imagination. . . .your narrow, preconceived notions of what can and cannot happen!” Till Mary, too, lost her temper, and blurted out the plain facts of the case. “I knew her by her figure. What’s more, I distinctly felt the big wart she has on the side of her chin.”

  But with this, it seemed, she merely displayed her ignorance. For the spirit body, in manifestation, was but the ethereal shadow cast by the physical, and its perfect duplicate. Richard also went on to crush her with St. Paul’s “terrestrial and celestial”; harangued her on the astounding knowledge of the occult possessed by the early Christians. It was no good talking. Everything she said could be turned against her.

  As she brushed her hair for the night, however, she could not resist remarking, in a final tone: “Well! all I know is, if these really are spirits who come back, it doesn’t make me think much of heaven. That the dead can still take an interest in such silly, footling things!”

  “Quite so, my dear. You keep your traditional fancy picture of semi-birds and harps and crowns. It best suits a mind like yours to make its heaven as remote and unreal as possible. For the truth is, you no more believe in it than you do in the tale of Cinderella.”

  “Really, Richard!. . . .what next, I wonder?—Though I must say, I don’t think there’s much to choose between harps and things, and playing concertinas and tilting tables. One’s as stupid as the other.”

  “Well, how else. . . .can you perhaps suggest a better way for a discarnate being to make its presence known? Every beginning is crude—and always has been. Though, for that matter, what is the Morse alphabet they use on the electric telegraph, but a series of transmitted raps?”

  “Oh, I’m not clever enough to argue about these things. But I know this: if I go to heaven, I hope at least to find there’ll be something—something really useful—to do.”

  But when the light was out and they lay composing themselves for sleep, she heard Richard mutter to himself: “There may be. . . .there probably is. . . .fraud. And why not?. . . .do not rogues ofttimes preach the gospel? But that there’s truth in it—a truth greater than any yet dreamed of—on that I would stake my soul. Ours the spadework. . . .God alone knows what the end will be.”

  The result of this affair was that Mary no longer frequented séances. On such nights Richard went out alone, and she sat comfortably by the fire, her feet on the fender, her needlework or the children at hand.

  But not for long. As suddenly as Richard had thrown himself into the whirl, so suddenly he tired of it, and at the first hint of spring—it was early February; birds had begun to twitter in the parks, the spikes of the golden crocus to push up through the grass, and Richard petulantly to discard his greatcoat—on one of these palely sunny days he came home restless to the finger-tips, and before the evening ended was proposing to start, then and there, for the Continent. Why should they not shut up the house, send the children to the seaside, and jaunt off by themselves, hampered only by the lightest of luggage, and moving from place to place as their fancy led them?

  Why not? There was, nowadays, no practical reason why he should scruple to satisfy any and every whim. And so his roughly sketched plan was carried out. With the sole difference that they took Cuffy with them. For, as soon as Nannan heard what was in the wind, she marched downstairs and said bluntly, she did not choose to shoulder the entire charge of Master Cuffy. The child was anyhow but poorly, what with the colds and things he had had since getting here; a walking mass of the fidgets besides; and if now his papa and mamma were going away as well, she guaranteed he’d worry himself, and everybody else, into a nervous fever. Mahony cut short the argument that followed by saying curtly: “We’ll take the youngster with us,” and pooh-poohed Mary’s notion that travelling would be bad for the child. Much less harmful, said he, than staying behind and fretting his heart out. Besides, Ann would be there. Ann could look after him.

  And so it came about that Cuffy journeyed in foreign parts, bearing with him, snail-like, all that stood to him for home.

  Of these early travels, the most vivid memory he retained was, oddly enough, the trifling one of being wrapped in an opossum-rug and carried in some one’s arms from a train to a ship, and back to a train. But in those buried depths of his mind to which he had normally no access, a whole galaxy of pictures lay stored; and, throughout his life, was the hidden spring that released them touched, one and another would abruptly flash into consciousness. As a small boy they put him in many an awkward fix; for he could never prove what he said, or even make it sound probable; and, at school, among companions whose horizon was bounded north, south, east and west by the bush, they harvested him a lively crop of ridicule and opprobrium. (“A tarnation liar. . . .that young Cuffs Mahony!”) But there were houses built in water—somehow he knew it—and bridges with shops on them. Boats with hoods, too, and men who stood up in them to row with a single oar. There was a statue so big that you could climb into its nose and sit there, and look out of its eyes: rivers, not red and muddy but apple green; a tower that leaned right over to one side; long-legged birds that built their nests on chimney-tops.—But then again, on the heel of such bold assertions, a sudden doubt would invade the speaker; a doubt whether he had not, after all, only dreamt these things. With no one to whom he could turn for confirmation, with every object that related to them lost or destroyed, Cuffy, throughout his later boyhood, swung like a pendulum between fact and dream, and was sadly torn in consequence.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Travelling from Dover to Calais and thence to Paris, the party set off on what, in thought, Mary ever after dubbed: “that mad race across Europe.”

  For, the Channel behind them, Richard’s restlessness broke out in a new form: it seemed impossible for him to be content in any place they visited for more than a day or two on end. In vain did Mary protest: “But, Richard, we’re not seeing anything!” Within a few hours of his arrival in a town, he had had enough of it, sucked it dry; and was fidgeting to be off to the next on their line of route. Nor was this itch for movement all. The strange food did not suit him: he either liked it too well and ate too heartily of it, or turned from it altogether. Then the noisiness of foreign cities—the cobbled streets, the rattling of the loosely hung v
ehicles, the loud foreign voices, the singing, the tambourining—got on his nerves, and, together with the unshaded windows of hotel bedrooms, kept him awake half the night: him spoilt, for how many a year, by the perfectly darkened sashes, the ordered silence of his sleeping-room at “Ultima Thule.” And all the beauties in the world could not make up to Richard for lack of sleep. Or, to turn it round: rob him of his sleep, and you robbed him of all power to enjoy fine scenery or handsome monuments. And so they sometimes arrived at a place and left it again, without having really seen very much more of it than the four walls of a room.

  Before they had got any distance, it became clear to Mary that Richard’s travelling-days were. . . .well, one could hardly say “over,” when they had only just begun. The truth was, they had come too late. He was no longer able to enjoy them.

  It was not the physical discomforts alone that defeated him. The fancies he went in for, as soon as he set foot on foreign soil, made his life a misery to him. In Paris, for instance, he was seized by a nervous fear of the street traffic; actually felt afraid he was going to be run over. If he had to cross one of the vast squares, over which vehicles dashed from all directions, he would stand and hesitate on the kerb, looking from side to side, unable to resolve to take the plunge; and wasn’t he angry with her, if she tried to make a dash for it! His own fears rendered him fussy about Cuffy and the maid’s safety, too. He wouldn’t hear of them going out alone; and insisted every morning on shepherding them to their walk in the Public Gardens. If he was prevented, they must drive there in a fiacre. Which all helped to make the stay in Paris both troublesome and costly. Then there was that time in Strasbourg, when they set out to climb the tower of the cathedral. It was certainly a bad day to choose, for it had rained in the night and afterwards frozen over, and even the streets were slippery. But Richard was bent on seeing the Rhine, and the Vosges, and the Black Forest from the top of the steeple; so up they went. As far as the platform, it was plain sailing. But on the tower proper, when they were mounting the innumerable stone steps—all glassy with ice, and very tricky to keep a footing on—which led to the spire, he turned pale, and confessed to giddiness. . . .it was true you looked through the wide-open stonework right down to the street below, where people crawled like ants. And after another bend in the stair, he clinging fast to the iron hand-rail, he had ignominiously to give in and descend again: backwards, too! “I felt I should either fall through one of the openings or throw myself out. Great heights are evidently not for me.”

  And this was not wholly due to imagination. For, after going up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and taking a peep over the side, he felt so sick on reaching the ground that he had to go back to the hotel and lie down.

  Again a beautiful city like Munich was ruined for him, by the all-pervading smell of malt from its many breweries. The whole time they were there he went about with his nose in the air, sniffing; and he never ceased to grumble. Next, as the Tyrolese mountains were so close, they took train and went in among them; but this didn’t suit him either. The nearness of these drear, dark masses wakened in him, he said, an overpowering sense of oppression; made him feel as if he must climb them; get to their summits in order to be able to breathe. One moment abjuring heights, another hankering after them!. . . .who could keep pace with such inconsistencies?

  Of course there were times when he smiled at himself; saw the humour of the situation; especially when he had just escaped from one of his bugbears. But then came the next (he was never prepared for them) and hit him equally hard. The thing he couldn’t laugh at was his—their—“infernal ignorance of foreign lingos.” Not to be able to express himself properly, make himself fully understood, riled and fretted him; though less, perhaps, than did her loud and unabashed efforts to say what she wanted. And because he couldn’t argue, or expostulate, with porters, waiters, cabbies and the like, he constantly suspected these people of trying to do him. The queer thing was, he preferred being diddled, putting up with it in gloomy silence, to trying, in broken French, German or Italian, to call the cheats to account. Many an extra franc and taler and lira did this hypersensitiveness cost him. But his dread of being laughed at was stronger than himself.

  Yes! there was always something. He never let himself have any real peace or enjoyment. Or so thought Mary at the time. It was not till afterwards, when he fell to re-living his travels in memory, that she learned how great was the pleasure he had got out of them. Inconveniences and annoyances were by then sunk below the horizon. Above, remained visions of white cities, and slender towers, and vine-clad hills; of olive groves bedded in violets; fine music heard in opera and oratorio; coffeedrinking in shady gardens on the banks of a lake; orchards of pink almond-blossom massed against the misty blue of far mountain valleys.

  Of all the towns they touched, even including Naples and Rome, Venice suited him best; and this, she firmly believed, because he went there with the idea that, having neither streets nor wheeled traffic, it must of necessity be a quiet and restful place. Herself she noticed nothing of this. Dozens of people walked the narrow alleys—you could really go everywhere on foot—and the cries of the gondoliers, the singing and mandoline-playing lasted far into the night. But Richard throve on it; though it was June now, and very hot, and alive with mosquitoes. He bathed daily on the Lido, and for the rest of the day kept cool in picture-galleries and churches, of which he never seemed to tire. Whereas she, after half an hour of screwing up her eyes and craning her neck at ceilings, had had more than enough.

  They had been there for a whole fortnight, and there was still no talk of their moving on, when something happened which cut their stay through as with a knife. The smallest details of that July afternoon—it started with one of Cuffy’s outbreaks—were burnt into Mary’s brain.

  Richard had gone after lunch to the British Consul’s, to fetch their Australian mail: Mary was anxiously waiting for news of the birth of Tilly’s child. She wrote at her own home budget while expecting his return, sitting in the cool hotel bedroom with Cuffy playing on the floor beside her. Deep in her letter, she did not notice that the child had strayed to the balcony. How long he had been there, still as a mouse, she did not know; but she was suddenly startled by hearing him give a shrill cry.

  “Oh, no. . . .no!”

  Laying down her pen, she stepped through the window. “What’s the matter with you?”

  On the opposite side of the canal some men were engaged in drowning a puppy. They had tied a weight to the little animal’s neck before throwing it into the water, but this was not heavy enough to keep it down; and again and again, in a desperate struggle for breath, it fought its way to the surface, only to be hit at with sticks did it come within arm’s reach. Finally, amid the laughter of the crowd, the flat side of an oar caught it full on its little panting snout and terrified eyes. With a shriek that was almost human, it sank, not to rise again.

  “Run inside, Cuffy. Don’t stay here watching those nasty cruel men,” said Mary, and took him by the arm. But Cuffy tore it away and remained standing with dilated eyes and open lips, breathing rapidly. The last blow struck, he burst into a passion of tears and, running to a corner of the room, threw himself face downwards on the floor.

  There followed one of those dreadful exhibitions of rage or temper which Mary found it so hard to reconcile with her little son’s usual docility. Cuffy kicked and screamed and wouldn’t be touched, like the naughtiest of children; and at the same time was shaken from head to foot by sobs about which there was nothing childish.

  She was still bending over him, still remonstrating, when the door opened and Richard came in. One glance at his face was enough to make her forget Cuffy and spring to her feet.

  “Richard! Why, my dear. . . .why, whatever is the matter?” For he had gone out, not an hour earlier, in the best of spirits; and here he came back, white as a ghost, with dazed-looking eyes and shuffling feet. “Are you ill? Has the sun. . . .?” />
  Midway in a sob Cuffy stopped to listen. . . .held his breath.

  Pouring himself out a glass of water and spilling it as he poured, Richard drank, in a series of gulps. Then, from a bundle of newspapers and letters he was carrying, he drew forth a folded sheet and handed it to Mary.

  “Read this.”

  In deep apprehension she took the paper. As she read she, too, went pale. It was a telegram from Jerry, forwarded by their London banker, and ran: Return immediately. Most urgent. Wilding absconded America.

  Mary could not all at once take in the full sense of the words.

  “But how. . . .what does it mean, Richard? I don’t understand.”

  “Mean? Ruin, I suppose. In all probability I am a ruined man.” And dropping heavily on a chair, Mahony buried his face in his hands.

  Cuffy sat up, and peeped furtively at his father and mother, with round eyes.

  “Ruin? But how?. . . .why? Oh dear, can’t you speak? No, no, Richard! What are you thinking of? Remember the child.” From under his hands tears were dripping on the table.—“Go to Ann, Cuffy. She shall take you out or give you your tea. Run away, dear. . . .quickly!—Now, Richard; pull yourself together. It’s no good breaking down. What has happened? What do you intend to do?”