The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  It was done out of sheer tenderheartedness, but. . . .For one thing, the Bishop had entered into the fun and applauded with the rest; so it was a sort of snub for him, too. As for Miss Mundy, though she shut her music-book and retired into the wings, she glared at Richard as if she could have eaten him; while the audience, defrauded of its amusement, turned nasty, and started to boo and groan. There was an awkward pause before the next item on the programme could be got going. And when Richard’s own turn came—he was reading selections from Out of the Hurly-Burly—people weren’t very well disposed towards him. Which he needed. For he was shockingly nervous; you could see the book shaking in his hands. Then, too, the light was poor, and though he rubbed and polished at his spectacles and held the pages up this way and that, he couldn’t see properly, and kept reading the wrong words and having to correct himself, or go h’m. . . .h’m. . . .while he tried to decipher what came next. And through his stumbling so, the jokes didn’t carry. Nobody laughed; even though he had picked out those excruciatingly funny bits about the patent combination step-ladder and table, that performed high jinks of itself in the attic at night; and the young man who stuck to the verandah steps when he went a-courting: things that usually made people hold their sides.

  If only he would just say he couldn’t see, and apologise and leave off. . . .or at least cut it short. But he was too proud for that; besides, he wouldn’t think it fair, to fail in his share of the entertainment. And so he laboured on, stuttering and stumbling, and succeeding only in making a donkey of himself. Suppressed giggles were audible behind Mary: yes, people were laughing now, but not at the funny stories. Of course at the finish, the audience didn’t dare not to clap; for the Bishop led the way; but the next minute everybody broke out into a hullabaloo of laughing and talking; in face of which the Bishop’s “Most humorous! Quite a treat!” sounded very thin.

  The exertion had worn Richard out: you could see the perspiration trickling down his face. The result was, having immediately to get on his feet again to introduce the Bishop, he clean forgot what he had been going to say. Nothing came. There was another most embarrassing pause, in which her own throat went hot and dry, while he stood clearing his and looking helplessly round. But, once found, his words came with a rush—too much of a rush: they tumbled over one another and got all mixed up: he contradicted himself, couldn’t find an end to his sentences, said to-morrow when he meant to-day, and vice versa; which made sad nonsense. The Bishop sat and picked his nose, or rather pinched the outside edge of one nostril between thumb and middle finger, looking, as far as a man of his nature could, decidedly uncomfortable. Behind her, a rude voice muttered something about somebody having had “one too many.”

  And things went from bad to worse; for Richard continued to ramble on, long after the Bishop should have been speaking. There was no one at hand to nudge him, or frown a hint. His subject had of course something to do with it. For the Bishop had elected to speak on “Our glorious country: Australia,” and that was too much for Richard. How could he sing a Te Deum to a land he so hated? The very effort to be fair made him unnecessarily wordy, for his real feelings kept cropping up and showing through. And then, unluckily, just when one thought he had finished, the words “glorious country” seized on his imagination; and now the fat was in the fire with a vengeance. For he went on to say that any country here, wonderful though it might be, was but the land of our temporary adoption; the true “glorious country” was the one for which we were bound hereafter: “That land of which our honoured guest is one of the keepers of the keys.” Until recently this Paradise had been regarded as immeasurably distant. . . .beyond earthly contact. Now the barriers were breaking down.—“If you will bear with me a little, friends, I will tell you something of my own experiences, and of the proofs—the irrefragable proofs—which I myself have received, that those dear ones who have passed from mortal sight still live, and love us, and take an interest in our doings.”—And here if he didn’t give them. . . .didn’t come out in front of all these scoffing people, with that foolish, ludicrous story of the doll. . . .Lallie’s doll! Mary wished the floor would open and swallow her up.

  The giggling and tittering grew in volume. (“Sit down, Richard, oh, sit down!” she willed him. “Can’t you see they’re laughing at you?”) People could really hardly be blamed for thinking he had had a glass too much; he standing there staring, with visionary eyes, at the back of the hall. But by now he had worked himself into such a state of exaltation that he saw nothing. . . .not even the Bishop’s face, which was a study, his Lordship belonging to those who held spiritualism to be of the devil.

  “Where’s dolly?” “Want me mammy!” “Show us a nose!” began to be heard on all sides. The audience was getting out of hand. The Bishop could bear it no longer: rising from his seat he tapped Richard sharply on the arm. Richard gave a kind of gasp, put his hand to his forehead, and breaking off in the middle of a sentence sat heavily down.

  Straightway the Bishop plunged into his prepared discourse; and in less than no time had his audience breathlessly engrossed, in the splendid tale of Australia’s progress.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Wept Mary, his Lordship’s visit having ended in strain and coolness: “How could you!. . . .how could you? Knowing what he thinks—and him a guest in the house! And then to hold our poor little darling up to derision—for them to laugh and mock at—oh! it was cruel of you. . . .cruel. I shall never forget it.”

  “Pray would you have me refuse, when the opportunity offers, to bear witness to the faith that is in me? Who am I to shrink from gibes and sneers? Where would Christianity itself be to-day, had its early followers not braved scorn and contumely?”

  “But we’re not early Christians! We’re just ordinary people. And I think it’s perfectly dreadful to hear you make such comparisons. Talk about blasphemy. . . .”

  “It’s always the same. Try to tell a man that he has a chance of immortality. . . .that he is not to be snuffed out at death like a candle. . . .and all that is brutal and ribald in him comes to the surface.”

  “Leave it to the churches!. . . .it’s the churches’ business. You only succeed in making an utter fool of yourself.”

  Immortality. . . .and a doll’s nose! Oh, to see a man of Richard’s intelligence sunk so low! For fear of what she might say next, Mary flung out of the room, leaving him still haranguing, and put the length of the passage between them. At the verandah door she stood staring with smouldering eyes into the garden. Telling herself that, one day, it would not be the room only she quitted, but the house as well. She saw a picture of herself, marching with defiant head down the path and out of the gate, a child on either hand. (Oh! the children went, too: she’d take good care of that.) Richard should be left to the tender mercies of Zara: Zara who, at first sound of a raised voice, vanished behind a locked door. That might bring him to his senses. For things could not go on as they were. Never a plan did she lay for his benefit but he somehow crossed and frustrated it. And as a result of her last effort, they were actually in a worse position than before. Not only was the practice as dead as a doornail again, but a new load of contempt rested on Richard’s shoulders.

  The first hint that something more than his spiritistic rantings might be at work, in frightening people off, came from Maria. It was a couple of weeks later. Mary was in the kitchen making pastry, dabbing blobs of lard over a rolled-out sheet of paste, and tossing and twisting with a practised hand, when Maria, who stood slicing apples, having cast more than one furtive glance at her mistress, volunteered the remark: “Mrs. Mahony, you know that feller with the broke leg? Well, they do say his Pa’s bin and fetched another doctor, orl the way from Oakworth.”

  “What boy? Young Nankivell? Nonsense! He’s out of splints by now.”

  “Mike Murphy told the grocer so.”

  “Now, Maria, you know I won’t listen to gossip. Make haste with the fruit for this pie.�
�

  But it was not so easy to get the girl’s words out of her head. Could there possibly be any truth in them? And if so, did Richard know? He wouldn’t say a word to her, of course, unless his hand was forced.

  At dinner she eyed him closely; but could detect no sign of a fresh discomfiture.

  That afternoon, though, as she sat stitching at warm clothing—with the end of March the rains had set in, bringing cooler weather—as she sat, there came a knock at the front door, and Maria admitted what really seemed to be a patient again at last, a man asking imperiously for the doctor. He was shown into the surgery, and even above the whirring of her sewing-machine Mary could hear his voice—and Richard’s, too—raised as if in dispute, and growing more and more heated. She went into the passage and listened, holding her breath. Then—oh! what was that?. . . .who?. . . .what?. . . .a horse-whipping? Without hesitation she turned the knob of the surgery door and walked in.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” With fearful eyes she looked from one to the other. In very fact the stranger, a great red-faced, burly fellow, held a riding-whip stretched between his hands.

  And Richard was cowering in his chair, his grey head sunk between his shoulders. Richard. . . .cowering? In an instant she was beside him, her arm about his neck. “Don’t mind him!. . . .don’t take any notice of what he says.”

  Roughly Mahony shook himself free. “Go away. . . .go out of the room, Mary. This is none of your business.”

  “And have him speak to you like that? I’ll do nothing of the sort. Why don’t you turn him out?” And as Richard did not answer, and her blood was up, she rounded on the man with: “How dare you come here and insult the doctor in his own house? You great bully, you!”

  “Mary!—for God’s sake!. . . .don’t make more trouble for me than I’ve got already.”

  “Now, now, madam, I’ll trouble you to have a care what you’re saying!”—and the network of veins on the speaker’s cheeks ran together in a purplish patch. “None of your lip for me, if you please! As for insults, me good lady, you’ll have something more to hear about the rights o’ that. You’ve got a boy of your own, haven’t you? What would you say, I’d like to know, if a bloody fraud calling himself a doctor had been and made a cripple of him for life?”

  (That hit. Cuffy?. . . .a cripple? Oh, Richard, Richard, what have you done?)

  “As fine a young chap as ever you see, tall and upstanding. And now ’tis said he’ll never walk straight again, but’ll have to hobble on crutches, with one leg four inches shorter than the other, for the rest of his days.—But I’ll settle you! I’ll cork your chances for you! I’ll put a stop to your going round maiming other people’s children. I’ll have the lor on you, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll take it into court, by Jesus I will!”

  “You’ll ruin me.”

  “I’ll never stop till I have. . . .so help me, God!. . . .as you’ve ruined me boy. You won’t get the chance to butcher no one else—you damned, drunken old swine, you!”

  Richard sat motionless, head in hand, and the two fingers that supported his temple, and the skin on which they lay, looked as though drained of every drop of blood. But he said not a word—let even the last infamous accusation pass unchallenged. Not so Mary. With eyes so fierce that the man involuntarily recoiled before them, she advanced upon him. “How dare you?. . . .how dare you say a thing like that to my husband? You!. . . .with a face which shows everybody what your habits are. . . .to slander some one who’s never in his life been the worse for drink? Go away. . . .we’ve had enough of you. . . .go away, I say!”—and throwing open the door she drove him before her.—But on the garden path he turned and shook his fist at the house.

  Richard had not stirred; nor did he look up at her entry. And to her flood of passionate and bewildered questions, he responded only by a toneless: “It’s no use, Mary; what he says may be true. A case of malunion. Such things do happen. And surgery has never been one of my strong points.” Try as she would, there was nothing more to be got out of him.

  In despair she left him, and went to the bedroom. Her brain was spinning like a Catherine wheel. Yet something must be done. They could not—oh, they could not!—sit meekly there, waiting for this new and awful blow to fall. She must go out, track the man, follow him up; and snatching her bonnet from the drawer she tied it on—it had a red rose on a stalk, which nodded at her from the mirror. She would go on her knees to him not to take proceedings. He had a wife. She might understand. . . .being a woman, be merciful. But. . . .Cuffy. . . .a cripple. . . .would she have had mercy? What would her feelings have been, had she had to see her own child go halt and lame? No, Richard was right, it was no good: there was nothing to be done. And tearing off her wraps she threw herself face downwards on the bed, and wept bitterly.

  She did not hear the door open, or see the small face that peered in. And a single glimpse of the dark mass that was his mother, lying shaking and sobbing, was enough for Cuffy: he turned and fled. Frightened by the angry voices, the children had sought their usual refuge up by the henhouse. But it got night, and nobody came to call them or look for them, and nobody lit the lamps; and when they did come home the table wasn’t spread for supper. Cuffy set to hunting for Mamma. But after his discovery his one desire was not to see anything else. In the dark drawing-room, he hid behind an armchair. Oh, what was the matter now? What had they done to her? It could only be Papa that hurt her so. Why did he have to do it? Why couldn’t he be nice to her? Oh, if only Papa—yes, if. . . .if only Papa would go away, as he said, and leave them and Mamma together! Oh, pray God, let Papa go away!. . . .and never, never come back.

  But that night—after a sheerly destructive evening, in which Mary had never ceased to plead with, to throw herself on the mercy of, an invisible opponent: I give you my word for it, he wasn’t himself that day. . . .what with the awful heat. . . .and the length of the drive. . . .and the horse wouldn’t go. . . .he was so upset over it. And then the loss of our little girl. . . .that was a blow he has never properly got over. For he’s not a young man any more. He’s not what he was. . . .any one will tell you that! But they’ll tell you, too, that he has never, never neglected a patient because of it. He’s the most conscientious of men. . . .has always worked to the last ounce of his strength, put himself and the state of his own health last of all. . . .I have known him tramp off of a morning when anybody with half an eye could see that he ought to be in bed. And so kindhearted! If a patient is poor, or has fallen on evil days, he will always treat him free of charge. Oh, surely people would need to have hearts of stone, to stand out against pleas such as these?—Or she lived through, to the last detail, the horrors of a lawsuit: other doctors giving evidence against Richard, hundreds of pounds having to be paid as damages, the final crash to ruin of his career. And when it came to the heritage of shame and disgrace that he would thus hand on to his children, her heart turned cold as ice against him. But that night every warring feeling merged and melted in a burning compassion for the old, unhappy man who lay at her side; lay alarmingly still, staring with glassy eyes at the moonlit window. Feeling for his hand she pressed it to her cheek. “Don’t break your heart over it, my darling. Trust me, I’ll win him round. . . .somehow! And then we’ll go away—far away from here—and start all over again. No one need ever know.”

  But she could not get at him, could not rouse him from the torpor in which this last, unmerited misfortune had sunk him. And there they lay, side by side, hand in hand, but far as the poles apart.

  ***

  The court, airless and fetid, was crowded to the last place. With difficulty he squeezed into a seat on a hard, backless bench. . . .though he was too old and stiff nowadays to sit for long without a support. The judge—why, what was this? He knew that face. . . .had surely met him somewhere?. . . .had dined with him perhaps, or tilted a table in his company—the judge held a large gold toothpick in his hand, and in th
e course of the proceedings must have picked in turn every tooth he had in his head. Foul teeth. . . .a foul breath. . . .out of such a mouth should judgment come? He felt in his pocket to see if, in a species of prevision, he had brought his forceps with him; and sharply withdrew his hand from a mess of melting jujubes. (The children of course. . . .oh, devil take those children! They were always in his way.) Believing himself unseen, he stealthily deposited the sticky conglomerate on the floor. But his neighbour, a brawny digger, with sleeves rolled high above the elbow and arms behaired like an ape’s, espied him, and made as if to call the attention of the usher to his misdeed. To escape detection he rose and moved hurriedly to the other side of the court; where, oddly enough, there seemed after all to be plenty of room.

  Here he was seated to much better advantage; and pulling himself together, prepared to follow the case. But. . . .again he was baffled. Plaintiff’s counsel was on his feet; and once more the striking likeness of the fellow to somebody he had known distracted him. Hang it all! It began to look as if every one present was more or less familiar to him. Secretly he ran his eye over the assembly, and found that it was so. . . .though he could not have put a name to a single manjack of them. However, since nobody seemed to recognise him, he cowered down and trusted to pass unobserved. But, from now on, he was aware of a sense of mystery and foreboding; the court and its occupants took on a sinister aspect. And even as he felt this, he heard two rascally-looking men behind him muttering together. “Are you all right?” said one. To which the other made half-audible reply: “We are, if that bloody fool, our client——” Ha! there was shady work in hand; trouble brewing for somebody. But what was he doing here? What had brought him to such a place?