The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  This new elation held up to the very end (when the thought of being recognised or addressed by any of those he was fleeing from threw him into a veritable fever). In such a mood he was unassailable: insensitive alike to pain or pleasure. Hence, the report that finally reached them from the Oakworth hospital didn’t touch him as it ought to have done. . . .considering that the affair had all but killed him. He really took it very queerly. The surgeon wrote that the operation had been successful; there was now every hope that, the overlapping corrected, perfect union would be obtained; which, as the lad’s father also professed himself satisfied, would no doubt lift a weight from Dr. Mahony’s mind. But Richard only waxed bitterly sarcastic. “Coming to their senses at last, are they?. . . .now it’s too late. Beginning to see how a gentleman ought to be treated?” Which somehow wasn’t like him. . . .to harp on the “gentleman.”

  He even came back on it, in a letter describing an acquaintance he had made (Richard and chance acquaintances!) in sailing down the Bay to Shortlands Bluff. This was a fellow medico: Like myself a gentleman who has had misfortunes, and is now obliged to resume practice. Still more disconcerting was it to read: I told him about Barambogie and mentioned the house being to let and the sale of the furniture, and said there was a practice ready to hand. Rather quiet just now, but certain to improve. If he took it, all I should ask would be a cheque for fifty pounds at the end of the year. I put our leaving down entirely to the climate. Should he write to you, be sure and do not put him off. At which Mary winced.—And yet. . . .Another man might get on quite well here; some one who understood better how to deal with the people. So she answered guardedly; being loath to vex him and spoil his holiday, which really seemed to be doing him good. He boasted of sound nights and improved appetite: As usual the sea makes me ravenous. And so it went on, until the time came when it was no longer possible to shirk the question: what next? Then, at once, they were at loggerheads again.

  In passing through Melbourne, Mahony had seen an advertisement calling for tenders for a practice at a place named Narrong; and with her approval had written for particulars. To Mary this opening seemed just the thing. More than three times the size of Barambogie, Narrong stood in a rich, squatting district, not very far north of Ballarat. The practice included several clubs; the climate was temperate: if Richard could but get a footing there—the clubs alone represented a tidy income—the future might really begin to look more hopeful.

  And at first he was all in favour of it. Then, overnight as it were, he changed his mind, and, without deigning to give her a single reason, wrote that he had abandoned the idea of applying. It was the sea that had done it; she could have sworn it was: this sea she so feared and hated! Besides, the usual thing was happening: no sooner did Richard get away from her than he allowed himself to be influenced by every fresh person he met. And taking advantage of his credulity, people were now, for some obscure purpose of their own, making him believe he could earn three or four hundred a year at Shortlands Bluff. . . .though it was common knowledge that such seaside places lay dead and deserted for nine months out of the twelve. Besides, there was a doctor at Shortlands already; though now close on seventy, and unwilling to turn out at night.

  The one valuable piece of information he gave her was that the billet of Acting Health Officer, with a yearly retaining-fee and an additional couple of guineas for each boarding, was vacant. All else, she felt sure, was mere windy talk. Thus, people were advising him, if he settled there, not only to keep a horse and ride round the outlying districts, but also to cross twice or thrice weekly to the opposite side of the Bay, and open consulting-rooms at some of the smaller places. With my love of sailing this would be no toil to me. . . .sheerly a pleasure. It was true, old Barker intended to hang on to the two clubs in the meanwhile; but by Christmas he might hope to have these in his own hands. He had found the very house for them—a great piece of good luck this, for private houses were few. She would do well, though, to part with some of the heavier furniture; for the rooms were smaller than those they were leaving. Also to try to find a purchaser for the “Collard and Collard”—since coming here he had learned that an “Aucher Frères” was better suited to withstand the sea air. The climate, of course, was superb—though very cold in winter—the bathing excellent: In summer I shall go into the sea every day. Best of all they were within easy reach of Melbourne. . . .and that meant civilisation once more. I feel very happy and hopeful, my dearest. Quite sure my luck is about to turn.

  Angry and embittered, Mary made short work of his fallacies. And now high words passed between them: she believing their very existence to be at stake; he fighting, but with considerable shuffling and hedging (or so it seemed to her), to defend his present scheme. And neither would give way.

  Till one morning she held the following letter in her hand.

  I see it’s no use my beating about the bush any longer—you force me, by writing as you do, to tell you what I did not mean to worry you with. The truth is, I have not been at all well again. My old enemy, for one thing—requiring the most careful dieting—the old headaches and fits of vertigo. I have also fallen back on very poor nights; no sleep till four or five. . . .for which however I must say your letters are partly responsible. Feeling very low the other day, I went to Geelong and saw Bowes-Smith who visits there; and it was his opinion that I should be totally unfit to cope with the work at Narrong. Which but confirms my own. Of course, as you are so set on it, I might try it for three months—alone. But I cannot do impossibilities, and I feel more and more that I am an old and broken man. (Another thing, I should again have no one to consult with—and. . . .as you ought to know by now. . . .I am not well up in surgery.) My poor head has never recovered the shock it got last summer. . . .when you were away. No doubt I had a kind of fit. And though I have said nothing about it, I have been sensible of some unpleasant symptoms of a return of this, on more than one occasion since. My affection, which was aphasia, may come on again at any time. It may also end in. . . .well, in my becoming a helpless burden. . . .to you and every one. Nothing can be done; there is no treatment for it but a total absence of worry and excitement. So if you regret Narrong, you must forgive me; it was done for your sake.

  One other thing. Every one here takes boarders during the season: there is no disgrace attached to it. You could probably fill the house. . . .and in that way I should not feel that I was leaving you entirely unprovided for. There is no dust or dirt here either: whereas at Narrong I should need to keep two horses and a man and buggy.

  Send me some warmer underclothing, the continual blow of the equinoctial gales.

  There is sure to be plenty of sickness when the visitors come. Shortlands will lead to strength, Narrong to the Benevolent Asylum.

  Your loving husband,

  R.T.M.

  P.S. I am so worried I hardly know what I am writing for God’s sake cheer up.

  At which Mary threw the letter on the table and laughed aloud. Hear how ill I am, but be sure not to take it to heart! Oh! it wasn’t fair of him. . . .it wasn’t fair. He had her down and beaten, and he knew it: to such a letter there could be but one reply. Picking it up she re-read it, and for a moment alarm riddled her. Then with a jerk she pulled herself together. How often Richard had. . . .yes! over and over again. Besides, you could just as easily deceive yourself with bad dreams as with rosy ones. How much of what he wrote was true? His health had certainly suffered; but that was all due to this place. He’d said so himself. Let him once get away from here. . . .Places. And if she now insisted on his going to Narrong, even on his definitely applying for the practice, there would be more swords held over her head, more insidious hints and threats. He complained of not being able to find his words: well, would any one think that surprising, did they know the life he had led here?. . . .how he never went out, never spoke to a soul, but sat, for days on end, gloomily sunk in himself.

  His airy suggestion th
at she should open the house to boarders stung and aggrieved her. . . .coming from him. The idea was her own: she had mooted it long ago. Then, it had outraged his feelings. “Not as long as I live!” Which attitude, bereft of common sense though it was, had yet something very soothing in it. Now, without a word of excuse, he climbed down from his perch and thrust the scheme upon her. . . .as his own! Blown into thin air was his pride, his thoughts for her standing, his care for the children’s future. Her heart felt dark and heavy. Of course if the worst should come to the worst. . . .but then she would be doing it for them, not for him. . . .or rather, not just in order that he might somehow get his own way. Oh, he had cried wolf too often. And a desperate bitterness; the sensation of being “had”; of him baulking at no means to achieve his end, was upon her again, clouding her judgment. She simply did not know what to think.

  And this attitude of doubt accompanied her through all the dreary weeks of uprootal; down to the day when the bellman went up and down the main street crying the sale; when the auction-flag flew from the roof; and rough, curious, unfriendly people swarmed the house, to walk off with her cherished belongings. And as she worked, watched, brooded, a phrase from Tilly’s letter kept ringing and buzzing through her head. Sometimes the thought has come to me, just to take Baby and my bit of splosh and go off somewhere where . . .

  For nothing in the world would she have her children defrauded of their piano. Every toy they possessed, too, went with them; she saw to that (He never thought of parting with his books!) While the Paris ornaments were her share of the spoils. (But anyhow it would have been casting pearls before swine, to offer them for sale here).—As, one by one, she took apart the gilt-legged tables, the gilt candelabra, to lay the pieces between soft layers of clothing, memories of the time when they were bought came crowding in on her. She saw the Paris shops again, the salesman bowing and smirking, the monkey-like little courier who had acted as interpreter. But most vividly of all she saw Richard himself. The very clothes he had worn were plain to her: there he stood, erect and handsome, a fine and dignified figure. And then, in pitiful contrast, a vision of him as, a few weeks back, he had slunk up to the railway station: a shamed and humiliated old man. Dear God!. . . .these passionate angers he roused in her, the unspeakable irritations she was capable of feeling with him, were things of the surface only. Dig deeper, and nothing mattered. . . .but him. Aye, dig only deep enough, and her heart was raw with pity for him. Let what might, happen to her; let the children go short, run wild; let him drag them at his heels the whole world over: she would submit to everything, endure everything, if she could only see him—Richard, her own dear husband—hold up his head once more, carry himself with the old confidence, fear to meet no one’s eye, knowing that he had never yet wilfully done any man hurt or wrong.

  PART III

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Papa, papa—the flag! The flag’s just this minnit gone up.”

  “The flag! Papa’s this minnit gone up.”

  The children came rushing in with the news, Lucie in her zeal to echo Cuffy bringing out her words the wrong way round. But how funny! Papa was fast asleep in his chair, and at first when he waked up couldn’t tell where he was. He called out quite loud: “Where am I? Where the dickens am I?” and looked as if he didn’t know them. But as soon as he did, he ran to the window. “Quite right! Splendid! So it is.—Now who saw it first?”

  “Lucie,” said Cuffy stoutly; for he had seen first all the times; Luce never would, not if she was old as old. And so Lucie received the hotly coveted penny, her little face, with the fatly hanging cheeks that made almost a square of it, pink with pleasure. But also with embarrassment. Would God be very angry with Cuffy for tellin’ what wasn’t true? (She thought God must look just like Papa when he was cross.)

  Papa scuttled about. Shouting.

  “Mary! Where are you? The flag’s gone up. Quick! My greatcoat. My scarf.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming.—But. . . .why. . . .you haven’t even got your boots on! Whatever have you been doing since breakfast?”

  “Surely to goodness, I can call a little time my own?. . . .for reading and study?”

  “Oh, all right. But fancy you having to go out again to-day, With such a sea running! And when you got so wet yesterday.”

  “It’s those second-hand oilskins. I told you I ought to have new ones.—Now where are my papers?—Oh, these confounded laces! They would choose just this moment to break. It’s no good; I can’t stoop; it sends the blood to my head.”

  “Here. . . .put up your foot!” And going on her knees, Mary laced his boots. Till she got him off! The fuss—the commotion!

  Standing in the doorway Cuffy drank it all in. This was an exciting place to live. To have to rush like mad as soon as ever a flag went up. If only someday Papa would take him with him. To go down to the beach with Papa, and row off from the jetty—Papa’s own jetty!—and sit in the boat beside him, and be rowed out by Papa’s own sailors, to the big ship that was waiting for him. Waiting just for Papa. When he was a big man he’d be a doctor, too, and have a jetty and a boat of his own, and be rowed out to steamers and ships, and climb on board, and say if they were allowed to go to Melbourne.—But how funny Papa was, since being here. When his voice got loud it sounded like as if he was going to scream. And then. . . .he’d said he was busy. . . .when he was really asleep. He believed Papa was afraid. . . .of Mamma. Knew she’d be cross with him for going to sleep again directly after breakfast. It made him want to say: Oh, don’t be afraid, Papa, big men never do be. . . .only little children like Lucie. (Specially not one’s Papa.)

  Slamming the driving-gate behind him—with such force that it missed the latch, and swinging out went to and fro like a pendulum—Mahony stepped on to the wide, sandy road, over which the golden-flowered capeweed had spread till only a narrow track in the centre remained free. It was half a mile to the beach, and he covered the ground at a jog-trot; for his fear of being late was on a par with his fear that he might fail to see the signal: either through a temporary absence of mind, or from having dozed off (the sea air was having an unholy effect upon him) at the wrong moment. Hence his bribe to the children to be on the look-out.—Now on, past neat, one-storeyed weatherboards, past Bank and church and hotels he hurried, breathing heavily, and with a watchful eye to his feet. For his left leg was decidedly stiffish; and, to spare it, his pace had to be a long, springing step with the right, followed by a shorter one with the left: a gait that had already earned him the nickname in Shortlands of “Old Dot-and-go-one.”

  Taking the Bluff, with its paths, seats and vivid grass-carpet, in his stride, he scrambled down the loose sand of the cliff, through the young scrub and the ragged, storm-bent ti-trees, which were just bursting into pearly blossom. And the result of this hurry-scurry was that he got to the beach too soon: his men had only just begun to open up the boat-shed. Fool that he was! But it was always the same. . . .and would be to-morrow, and the day after that: when his fears seized him, he was powerless against them. Having irritably snapped his fingers and urged on the crew with an impatient: “Come, come, my good men, a little more haste, if you please!” he retired to the jetty, where he paced to and fro.

  But at last the boat was launched, the sailors had grasped their oars: he, too, might descend the steps and take his seat.—And now he knew that all the press and fluster of the past half-hour had been directed towards this one, exquisite moment: in which they drew out to ride the waves. Of the few pleasures left him, it was by far the keenest: he re-lived it in fancy many a night when his head lay safe on the pillow. To-day was a day, too, after his own heart. A high sea ran, and the light boat dived, and soared, and fell again, dancing like a cockleshell. The surface of the water was whipt by a wind that blew the foam from the wave-crests in cloudlets of steam or smoke. The salt spray was everywhere: in your eyes, your mouth, your hair. Overhead, between great bales of snowy cloud, th
e sky was gentian-blue; blue were the hills behind the nestling white huts of the quarantine-station on the other side of the Bay; indigo-blue the waters below. Intoxicated by all this light and colour, at being one again with his beloved element, he could have thrown back his head and shouted for joy; have sent out cries to match the lovely commotion of wind and sea. But there was no question of thus letting himself go: he had perforce to remain as dumb as the men who rowed him. Above all, to remember to keep his eyes lowered. For the one drawback to his pleasure was that he was not alone. He had a crew of six before him, six pairs of strange eyes to meet; and every time he half-closed his own and expanded his nostrils, the better to drink in the savour of the briny, or, at an unusually deep dip, let fly a gleeful exclamation, they fixed him stonily, one and all. There was no escaping them, pinned to his seat as he was: nor any room for his own eyes. . . .nowhere to rest them. . . .except on the bottom of the boat. Only so could he maintain his privacy.—Eyes. . . .human eyes. Eyes. . . .spies, ferreting out one’s thoughts. . . .watchdogs on the qui vive for one’s smallest movement. . . .spiders, sitting over their fly-victims, ready to pounce. Eyes. Slits into the soul; through which you peered, as in a twopenny peepshow, at clandestine and unedifying happenings. A mortal’s outside the ne plus ultra of dignity and suavity. . . .and then the eyes, disproving all. Oh! it ought not to be possible, so to see into another’s depths; it was indecent, obscene: had he not more than once, in a woman’s comely countenance, met eyes that were hot, angry, malignant?. . . .unconscious betrayers of an unregenerate soul. None should outrage him in like fashion: he knew the trick and guarded against it, by keeping his own bent rigidly on the boards at his feet. . . .on the boot-soles of the men in front of him. But smiles and chuckles were not so easily subdued: they would out. . . .and out they came.