The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  Then Mamma went into the surgery to tell Papa. She shut the door, but you could hear their voices through it; and merely the sound of them, though he didn’t know what they were saying, threw Cuffy into a flutter. Retreating to the furthest corner of the verandah, he sat with his elbows on his knees, the palms of his hands pressed against his ears.

  And while Emmy, face downwards on her pillow, wept: “I don’t care. . . .let them fall down mines if they want to. . . .he’s very nice. . . .Aunt Mary isn’t fair!” Mary was saying: “I did think she could be trusted with the children—considering the care she took of Jacky.”

  “Other people’s children, my dear—other people’s children! He might have been her own.”

  Mary was horrified. “Whatever you do, don’t say a thing like that before Cuffy! It would mean the most awkward questions. And surely we are not ‘other people?’ If Emmy can’t look after her own little cousins. . . .The child might have been killed, while she sat there flirting and amusing herself.”

  “It’s not likely to happen again.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. When I tackled her with it, she got on the high horse at once, and said it wasn’t a very great crime to have a little chat with somebody: life was so dull here, and so on.”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s true enough.”

  “What a weak spot you have for the girl! But that’s not all. It didn’t take me long to discover she’d been trying to make the children deceive me. They were to have held their tongues about this Angus meeting them on their walks. . . .Cuffy went as near as he could to telling a fib over it. Now you must see I can’t have that sort of thing going on. . . .the children taught fibbing and deceiving!”

  “No, that certainly wouldn’t do.”

  “Then, imagine a girl of Emmy’s birth and upbringing plotting to meet, on the sly, a man we don’t invite to the house! She’ll be the talk of the place. And what if she got herself into some entanglement or other while she’s under our care? John’s eldest daughter and an insignificant little dissenter, poor as a church mouse, and years older than she is! Think what Lizzie would say!”

  “My dear, Lizzie’s sentiments would be the same, and were it Crœsus and Adonis rolled into one.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose they would.—But Emmy is far too extravagant for a poor man’s wife. She changes her underclothing every day of the week. You should hear Maria grumble at the washing! Besides, she’s everlastingly titivating, dressing her hair or something. She does none of the jobs one expects from a nursery-governess. And if I venture to find fault. . . .I don’t know, but she seems greatly changed. I think first her father’s death, and then Jacky’s have thoroughly spoiled her.”

  “Well! to have the two mortals you’ve set your heart on snatched from you, one after the other, isn’t it enough to dash the stoutest?. . . .let alone an innocent young girl. Emmy has been through a great spiritual experience, and one result of it might very well be to mature her. . . .turn her into a woman who feels her power. It will probably be the same wherever she goes, with a face like hers. In her father’s house, she would of course have met more eligible men than we, in our poor circumstances, can offer her. Still, my advice would be, such as they are, ask ’em to the house. Let everything be open and above-board.”

  “What! invite that little Angus? Nonsense! It would only be encouraging him. Besides, it’s all very well for you to theorise; I have to look at it from the practical side. And it surely isn’t what one has a governess for?. . . .to smooth the way for her flirtations. I may as well tell you everything. When she first came, I used to send her running up to the station—if I needed stamps, or small change, or things like that—Mr. Pendrell is always so obliging. But I had to stop it. She took to staying away an unconscionable time, and his wife must have got wind of it, she began to look so queerly at Emmy and to drop hints. Most uncomfortable. And then you’ve surely noticed how often old Thistlethwaite comes to see us now, compared with what he used to, and how he sits and stares at Emmy. He looks at her far too much, too, when he’s preaching, and I’ve heard him pay her the most outrageous compliments. A clergyman and a widower, and old enough to be her grandfather! But Emmy just drinks it in. Now, mind you, if there were any question of a decent match for her, I’d do what I could to help. . . .for I don’t believe Lizzie will ever let her say how-do-you-do to an eligible. But I cannot have her getting into mischief here—why, even the baker tries to snatch a word with her when he delivers the bread!—and being branded as forward, and a common flirt. No, the truth is, she’s just too pretty to be of the least practical use.”

  Mahony made no reply.

  “Are you listening, Richard?. . . .to what I say?”

  “Yes, I hear.”

  “I thought you were asleep. Well, perhaps you’ll rouse yourself and tell me what I ought to do.”

  “I suppose there’s nothing for it: Emmy must go.”

  “And then?”

  “Then?”

  “I mean about the children. Who’s to give them their lessons and their music-lessons?. . . .and take them out walking?”

  “My dear, can you not teach them yourself for a bit?”

  “No, Richard, I cannot! At the age they’re at now, they need one person’s undivided attention. They’ve simply got to have a governess.”

  “Oh well! I suppose if you must you must. . . .and that’s all about it.”

  The implication in these words exasperated Mary.

  “If I must? I’m not asking anything for myself! You’ve never heard me utter a word of complaint. But I can’t do more than I am doing. Any one but you would see it. But you’re as blind as a bat!”

  “Not so blind as you think, my dear. One thing I see is that you never hesitate to load me up with a fresh expense.”

  “No, that’s out-and-away unfair,” cried Mary, thoroughly roused. “I, who slave and toil. . . .and when I’m not even convinced that it’s necessary, either. For you’re always saying you’re satisfied with the practice, that the fees come in well and so on; and yet to get anything out of you nowadays is like drawing blood from a stone. I don’t care a rap about myself; I’ll put up with whatever you like; but I can’t and won’t sit by and see my children degenerate. I think that would break my heart. I shall fight for them to my last breath.”

  “Yes, for them. But for me, never a trace of understanding!” —And now the quarrel began in earnest.

  Cuffy, sitting hunched up on the verandah, squeezed his ears until they sang.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The day began at six. . . .with the pestilential screech of the mill-whistle. This also started the children off. Birdlike sounds began to issue from their room across the passage: there was no muting these shrill, sweet trebles. And soon Miss Prestwick’s thin voice made itself heard, capped by Mary’s magisterial tones, and the dashing and splashing of bath-water, and small feet scampering, and Maria thudding up and down, clattering her brooms.

  There was no more chance of sleep. He, too, rose.

  The water of the shower-bath was tepid and unrefreshing. It had also to be sparingly used. Then came breakfast—with mushy butter, the pat collapsing on its way from the cellar; with sticky flies crawling over everything, a soiled cloth, the children’s jabber, Miss Prestwick’s mincing airs, and Mary checking, apportioning, deciding. Mahony ate hastily, and, there being here no morning paper or early post to engage him, retired to the surgery. His cases written up, his visits for the day arranged, he sat and waited, and listened. This was the time when a walking-patient or two might call for treatment; and the footsteps of any one nearing the house could be heard a long way off, crunching the gravel of the path by the Lagoon, coming up the right-of-way. And as he sat, idly twirling his thumbs, it became a matter of interest to speculate whether approaching steps would halt at his door or move on towards the railway station. In
waiting, he could hear Cuffy’s voice proclaiming loudly and unnaturally: Jer suise urn petty garsong, de bun figoor.

  After a couple of false alarms there was a knock at the door; and Maria introduced a working-man with a foreign body in his eye. A grain of mortar extracted and the eye bathed, Mahony washed, stitched and bandaged a child’s gashed knee, and drew a tooth for a miner’s wife. Mary’s aid was needed here, to hold the woman’s hands. It was Mary, too, who applied restoratives and helped to clean up the patient. After which she brushed yesterday’s dust from his wide-awake, held a silk coat for him to slip his arms into and checked the contents of his bag.

  He set off on his morning round, following the path that ran alongside the Lagoon. Here and there the shadow of a fir-tree fell across it, and, though the season was but late spring, the shade was welcome. Emerging from the Lagoon enclosure, he entered the single street that formed the township of Barambogie. This was empty but for a couple of buggies which stood outside a public-house, their hoods white with the dust of innumerable bush journeys.

  But the sound of his foot on the pavement, his shadow on the glass of the shop-windows, made people dart to their doors to see who passed. Huh! it was only “the new doctor”; and out of him nothing was to be got. . . .in the shape of a yarn, or a companionable drink.

  One or two threw him a “Mornin’!” The rest contented themselves with a nod. But all alike regarded his raised hat and courteous “Good day to you!” “Good morning, sir!” with the colonial’s inborn contempt for form and ceremony. By the Lord Harry! slapdash was good enough for them.

  On this particular day Mahony had three calls to make.

  Arrived at the Anglican parsonage—a shabby brick cottage standing on a piece of ground that had never been fenced in—he took up the knocker, which, crudely repaired with a headless nail and a bit of twine, straightway came off in his hand. He rapped with his knuckles, and the Reverend Thistlethwaite, in nightshirt and trousers and with bare feet, appeared from his back premises, where he had been feeding fowls. Re-affixing the knocker with a skill born of long practice, he opened the door of the parlour, into which there was just room to squeeze. On the table, writing-materials elbowed the remains of a mutton-chop breakfast. Blowflies crawled over the fatted plates.

  An unsightly carbuncle lanced and dressed, the reverend gentleman—he was a fleshy, red-faced man, of whom unkind rumour had it that there were times when his tongue tripped over his own name—laid himself out to detain his visitor. He was spoiling for a chat.

  “Yes, yes, doctor, hard at work. . . .hard at work!”—with an airy wave of the hand at pens, ink and paper. “Must always have something fresh, you know, of a Sunday morning, to tickle ’em up with. Even the minor prophets are racked, I can assure you, in the search for a rousing heading.”

  Mahony replaced lancet and lint in silence. It was common knowledge that old Thistlethwaite had not written a fresh sermon for years; but had used his stale ones again and again, some even said reading them backwards, for the sake of variety. The implements littering the table were set permanently out on view.

  Insensitive to Mahony’s attitude, he ran on: “Talking of rummy texts now. . . .did y’ever hear the story of the three curates, out to impress the Bishop with their skill at squeezing juice from a dry orange, who, each in turn, in the different places he visited on three successive Sundays, held forth on the theme: ‘Now Peter’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever’? You have?. . . .capital, isn’t it? But I’ll warrant you don’t know the yarn of old Minchin and the cow. It was at Bootajup in the Western District, and his first up-country cure; and Minch, who was a townbird born and bred, was officiating for the first time at Harvest Festival. The farmers had given liberally, the church was full, Minch in the reading-desk with his back to a side door that had been left open for coolness. All went well till in the middle of the Psalms, when he saw the eyes of his congregation getting rounder and rounder. Old Minch, who was propriety in person, thought his collar had come undone, or that he’d shed a private button. . . .ha, ha! Whereas, if you please, it was a cow which had strayed to the door, and was being agreeably attracted by the farm produce. Minch looked round just as the animal walked in, lost his head, dropped his book and bolted; taking the altar rails at a leap, with cassock and surplice bunched up round him. Ha, ha! Capital. . . .capital! It was Minchin, too, who was once preaching from the text: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,’ when he found himself forced to sneeze some dozen times running. Ha, ha, ha! His own eyes poured tears—ran with water. Out it came: a-tischoo, a-tischoo! The congregation rocked with laughter.—What?. . . .you must be toddling? Well, well! we know you doctors are busy men. Hot?—call this hot? I wonder what you’ll say to our summers! Well, good day, doctor, good day!”

  “ ‘Except ye become as little children’. . . .‘for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ My God!. . . .then give me earth.”

  Striking off on a bush track Mahony trudged along, leaving a low trail of dust in his wake. His goal was a poor outlying wooden shanty, to treat a washerwoman’s severely scalded leg and foot. The wound, some days old, was open, dirty, offensive; the woman, who sat propped up before her tubs, struggling to finish her week’s work, loud-mouthed with pain.

  “She don’t half holler’n screech if oner the kids knocks up against it,” volunteered a foxy-looking girl who stood by, sucking her thumb, and watching, with an unholy interest, the sponging off of the foul rags, the laying bare of the raw flesh.

  Mahony’s impatient “Why on earth didn’t you send for me sooner?” brought no coherent response; but his prescription of complete rest in a horizontal position effectually loosed the sufferer’s tongue. “Didn’t I know you’d be after orderin’ me some such foolery? Who’s to kape us? I’ve no man. I’m a poor lone widder. . . .”

  “Apply to your priest for aid.”

  “The praste? A fat lot o’ good that ’ud be—the great lazy louse! We cud all starve afore he’d lift a finger.”

  “Well, I’ve warned you, I can do no more.” And cutting further discussion short, Mahony put on his hat and walked out of the house.

  As, however, the foxy child, thumb in mouth, lolloped after him, he took a sovereign from his pocket. “Here, my girl, here’s something to tide you over. Now see that your mother lies up. You’re old enough to lend a hand.”

  But before he had gone a hundred yards he turned on his heel, recalling the low, cunning look that had leapt into the girl’s eyes at sight of the gold piece. “Fool that I am!. . . .the mother will never see it.”

  Caught in the act of secreting the coin in her stocking, the girl went livid with fury. “What d’you mean? D’you think I was goin’ to pinch it? Ma!. . . .d’you hear, Ma?. . . .what he says? Ma! he’s callin’ me a thief.”

  “A thief, indeed! My child a thief?—And you, you pesky young devil, you hand that chip over or I’ll wring your neck!”

  Thence to the shop of Ah Sing, the Chinese butcher, where a rachitic infant lay cramped with the colic. Mahony looked with pity on the little half-breed, slit of eye and yellow of skin, and was very short with the mother, a monstrously fat woman who stood, her arms akimbo, answering his questions with an air of sulky defiance. No, she didn’t know, not she, what had caused the colic: she’d done nothing. But here espying an empty tin dish that had been thrust under the bed, Mahony picked it up and sniffed it. “Ha! here we have it. What filthy messes has your husband been feeding the child on now? Haven’t I told you her stomach will not stand them?”

  “Mrs. Ah Sing” bit back the abusive rejoinders that were given to escaping her at any reference to her child’s mixed origin: “Doctor’s” were Sing’s best customers. But the visit over, she flounced into the shop and, seizing a knife, let loose her spleen in hacking down some chops, while she vociferated for all to hear: “Filthy mess, indeed. . . .I’ll mess him! Let him look to his own kids, sa
y I! That boy brat of his is as white as a sheet and thin as a lizard.—Here, you Sing, weigh this and look sharp about it, you crawling slug, you!”

  “Malia! me give lil baby powder—you no sendee more for doctor-man, Malia!” said the soft-voiced, gentle Chinaman who owned her.

  “Oh, hell take the kid!—and you along with it,” gave back Maria.

  On the way home Mahony overtook his children and the governess, returning from their morning walk. The twins’ short fag legs were weary. Entrusting his bag to Cuffy, who forthwith became “the doctor,” bowing graciously to imaginary patients, and only waggling the bag just the least little bit to hear the things inside it rattle, their father took his little girls by the hand. Poor mites! They were losing their roses already. Somehow or other he must make it possible to send them away when the real hot weather came. This was no place for children in summer; he heard it on every side. And his, reared to sea-breezes, would find it doubly hard to acclimatise themselves. Stung by these reflections he unthinkingly quickened his pace, and strode ahead, a gaunt figure, dragging a small child at a trot on either hand. Miss Prestwick gave up the chase.

  Dinner over, out he had to turn again. Back to the main street and the hotel, where a buggy should have been in waiting. It was not. He had to stand about in the sun while the vehicle was dragged out, the horse fetched, harnessed, and backed between the shafts. A strap broke in the buckling; the ostler, whistling between his teeth, leisurely repaired the damage with a bit of string.