The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  Tired of reading, he would talk to himself by the hour together; his clear voice, with its light Irish slur, ringing through the house. And hampered no longer by those shackles of pride and reserve which had made him the most modest of men, his theme was now always, and blatantly, himself. This self—to whom, as to every one else, he referred only in the third person—was the pivot round which his thoughts revolved, he passionately asserting and reasserting its identity, in a singsong that was not unlike a chant. “Richard Townshend Mahony, F.R.C.S., M.D., Edinburgh, R. T. Mahony, M.D. and Accoucheur; Specialist for the Diseases of Women; Consulting Physician to the Ballarat Hospital!” and so on: only, the list having been sung through, untiringly to begin afresh.

  In appearance, now that he was once more clean and well cared-for, he remained a striking-looking man, with his straight, delicate features, his cloven chin, the silver hair smoothed back from his high forehead; and often, on coming into the room and catching him seated and in profile—his gait, of course, was lamentable; he had never recovered the proper use of his legs—Mary had a passing, ghostlike glimpse of the man who had been. It was his eyes that gave him away. There had been a time when these blue-grey eyes had looked out on life with the expression of a wantonly hurt animal. Still later, a day when they had seldom lifted, but had brooded before them, turned inward on torments visible to them alone. Now they met yours again; but as it were shrilly and blindly, all the soul gone out of them; nor ever a trace remaining of their former puzzlement over life the destroyer. He was now the least troubled of men. Content and happiness had come to him at last, in full measure. No more doubts, or questionings, or wrestlings with the dark powers in himself: no anxiety over ways and means (Mary was there, Mary would provide); never a twinge of the old passionate ache for change and renewal. . . .for flight from all familiar things. He desired to be nowhere but here: had, at long last, found rest and peace, within the four walls of a room measuring but a few feet square; that peace for which he had sought, desperately and vainly, throughout the whole of his conscious life; to which he would otherwise have attained only through death’s gates.

  To see him thus was Mary’s reward: Mary, grown so thin that she could count her ribs; with black rings round her eyes, “salt-cellars” above and below her collar-bones; with enlarged, knobby knuckles, and feet that grew daily flatter. But she had no time to think of herself—to think at all, in fact—nor did she linger regretfully over what had been, or grieve in advance for what was bound to come. And Richard’s condition ceased to sadden her: valiantly she accepted the inevitable.

  It was another matter with the children, who had in them a goodly share of Mahony’s own thin-skinnedness. Cuffy and Lucie never grew used or resigned to the state of things: their father’s imbecile presence lay a dead weight on their young lives. And violently conflicting feelings swung them to and fro. If, at dinner, Papa was scolded for spilling his food, or for gobbling—and he was most dreadf’ly greedy—Luce’s eyes would shut so tight that almost you couldn’t see she had any: while he, Cuffy, red as a turkey-cock, would start to eat just like Papa, from being made so sorry and uncomfortable to hear a big man scolded like a baby. They kept out of his way as much as possible, being also subtly hurt by his lack of recognition of them, when he knew Mamma so well: they were just as much belonging to him as Mamma! And, home from their morning lessons at the parsonage, they withdrew to the bottom of the yard, where Mamma couldn’t so easily find them. For she was always trying to make Papa notice them. . . .when you knew quite well he didn’t care. It would be: “Show Papa your copybook. . . .how nicely you can write now,” or: “Let him see your new boots.” At which something naughty would get up in Cuffy, and make him say nastily: “What for?. . . .what’s the good? He doesn’t really look!” But then Mamma would look so sorry that it hurt, and say: “Oh, you must be kind to him, Cuffy! And try not to let him feel it.”

  A doctor drove over once a week from Burrabool to write medicines for Papa, and he said Papa ought to take exercise, and it would be a good thing for him to go a short walk. . . .every single day. And of course he and Luce had to do this, to help Mamma. For half an hour. The thought of it spoiled the whole morning—like a whipping.

  “Does it matter which way we go?”

  Cuffy never failed to ask this, as a sop to his conscience. But really they always went the same road, the one that led straight out of the township. For, if you got past the lock-up, where the constable’s little girl might be swinging on the gate, you were quite certain not to meet anybody. To make sure she wasn’t, you first sent Luce out to look, then fetched Papa and hurried him by. After that, though, you had to walk as slow as slow, because he couldn’t hardly walk at all: his knees bent and stuck out at every step. You each held his hand, and went on, counting the minutes till it was time to turn back. And to find when this was, you had to get his watch out of his pocket yourself and look at it—which he didn’t like, for he thought you were going to take it away from him. But it was no use asking him the time, because he said such funny things. Like: “The time is out of joint,” or: “A time to be born and a time to die!”

  But when you said it was far enough and they could go home, and turned him round, he was glad, too; and the whole way back he talked about nothing but his tea, and what there was going to be for it. And when Mamma came to the door she didn’t say what she would have said to them, that it was greedy and piggy to think about your meals so long beforehand. She just said: “Tea’s all ready, dear; and Bowey has made you some delicious scones.” He and Luce only had bread and butter, and didn’t want it. They liked best to go and play like mad, because the walk was done, and they didn’t have to do it again till next day.

  But then came that awful afternoon when. . . .ugh! he didn’t like even to think about it. . . .ever afterwards.

  They had gone out as usual and walked along the road, and nobody saw them. And he was just going to fetch Papa’s watch to look at the time. . . .or had he tried to and it wouldn’t come, and he had pulled at it? He could never feel quite, quite sure: it remained a horrible doubt. And then, all of a sudden, quite suddenly Papa fell down. “His legs just seemed to shut up, Mamma, really, truly they did!” (when she accused them of having hurried him). They couldn’t stop him. . . .Luce nearly tumbled down, too. . . .and Papa fell flat on his face and lay there; and it had rained, and the road was dirty, and he lay in it, so that his clothes and his face were full of mud. And he called out and so did Luce: “Get up, Papa, you’ll be all wet and dirty!” and again: “Mamma will be so cross if you don’t!” and despairingly: “Oh, dear Papa, do get up and don’t just lie there!” And then he did try, but couldn’t seem to make his legs work properly, and went on lying with his face and hair in the dirt—quite flat. And they tugged and tugged at him, at his arms and his coat, but couldn’t move him, he was so big and heavy; and Luce began to cry; and he felt such a bone come in his own throat that he thought he’d have to cry, too. He began to be afraid the mud would choke Papa, and what would Mamma say then? And Papa kept on asking: “What is it? What’s the doctor doing?” And then he shouted out, like as if he was deaf: “You’ve fallen down, Papa—oh, do get up! What shall we do if you don’t!” And he said to Luce to run home and fetch Mamma, but she was frightened to; and she was frightened to stay there while he went; and so he felt his heart would burst, for they couldn’t leave Papa alone. But just then a man came driving in a spring-cart, and when he saw them he stopped and said: “Hullo, you kids, what’s up?” And “Whoa!” to his horse, and got out. And first he laughed a little, and winked at them, for he thought Papa was tipsy; but when they told him, and said it was their Papa who couldn’t walk any more because his legs were wrong, he stopped laughing and was kind. He took hold of Papa, till he made him stand up, and then he let down the flap of the cart and helped him in, and lifted them up, too, and they drove home that way, their legs hanging out at the back. And when they got to the post offic
e Mamma came running to the door, and had a most awful fright when she saw Papa so wet and dirty, with mud on his face and hair, and scratched with stones where they had pulled him; and she sort of screamed out: “Oh, what’s the matter? What have you done to him?” (and they hadn’t done anything at all). But she was so sorry for Papa, and so busy washing him clean and telling him not to cry, that she didn’t have any time to think about them, or how upset they were. They went away and were together by themselves, at the bottom of the yard.

  After this, though, they didn’t have to take Papa walking any more. He never went out.—But the memory of the accident persisted, and was entangled in their dreams for many a night to come. Especially Cuffy’s. Cuffy would start up, his nightclothes damp with sweat, from a dream that Papa had fallen dead in the road and that he had killed him. And, all his life long, the sight of a heavy body lying prostrate and unable to rise—a horse down in its traces, even a drunkard stretched oblivious by the roadside—had the power to throw him into the old childish panic, and make him want blindly to turn and run. . . .and run. . . .till he could run no more.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Thus the shadows deepened. For still some time Mahony contrived to cover, unaided, the few yards that separated bedroom from sitting-room. Then he took to shouldering his way along the walls, supporting himself by the furniture. And soon, even this mode of progression proving beyond him, he needed the firm prop of an arm on either side, was he to reach his seat by the window. Finally his chair was brought to the bedside, and, with him in it, was pushed and pulled by the two women to the adjoining room.

  He never set foot to the ground again; was very prisoner to this chair. Nor could he stoop, or bend his body sideways; and did he now drop his spectacles, or let his paper flutter to the floor, the house resounded with cries of “Mrs. Mahony, Mrs. Mahony!” or “the Cook, the Cook!” Dead from the waist down, he sat wooden and rigid; and the light of the poor clouded brain that topped this moribund trunk grew daily feebler. His newspaper ceased to interest him; he no longer hymned his own praises: he just sat and stared before him, in mournful vacancy.

  Oh, what a work it was to die!—to shake off a body that had no more worth left in it than a snake’s cast skin, Mary could imagine him saying of himself.—Not so she. She clung jealously to each day on which she still had him with her; plodding to and fro on hot, swollen feet; gladly performing the last, sordid duties of the sickroom.

  Then, gangrene setting in, he became bedridden; and she and Bowey united their strength to turn him from side to side, or to raise him the few necessary inches on his pillow. He was grown quite silent now, and indifferent to every one; the sight of food alone called up a flicker of interest in his dull eyes. But the day came when even to swallow soft jellies and custards was beyond him, and a few teaspoonfuls of liquid formed his sole nourishment. And at length his throat refusing even this office, there was nothing to be done but to sit and watch him die.

  For three days he lay in coma. On the third, the doctor gave it as his opinion that he would not outlive the night.

  Beside the low, trestle-bed in which, for greater convenience, they had laid him, and on which his motionless body formed a long, straight hummock under the blankets, Mary sat and looked her last on the familiar face, now so soon to be hidden from her. . . .it might be for ever. For who knew, who could really know, if they would meet again? In health, in the bustle of living, it was easy to believe in heaven and a life to come. But when the blow fell, and those you loved passed into the great Silence, where you could not get at them, or they at you, then doubts, aching doubts took possession of one. She had sunk under them when her child died; she knew them now, still more fiercely. Death might quite well be the end of everything; just so many bones rotting in a grave.—And even if it was not, if there was more to come, how could it ever be quite the same again?—the same Richard to look at, and with all his weaknesses, who had belonged to her for nearly thirty years. She didn’t believe it. If heaven existed, and was what people said it was, then it would certainly turn him into something different: a stranger. . . .an angel!—and what had she to do with angels? She wanted the man himself, the dear warm incompetent human creature at whose side she had been through so much. Who had so tried, so harassed her, made her suffer so.—Oh, as if that mattered now! What was life, but care and suffering?—for every one alike. His had never been much else. Even though his troubles were mostly of his own making. For he had always asked more of life than it could give: and if, for once, he got what he wanted, he had not known how to sit fast and hold it: so the end was the poor old wreck on the bed before her. Now, death was best. Death alone could wipe out the shame and disgrace that had befallen him—the shame of failure, the degradation of his illness. Best for the children, too; his passing would lift a shadow from their lives. . . .they were so young still, they would soon forget. Yes, best for every one. . . .only not for her. With Richard, the most vital part of herself—a part compounded of shared experience, and mutual endeavour, and the common memories of a lifetime—would go down into the grave.—Burying her face in her hands, Mary wept.

  By day, for the children’s, for her work’s sake, she was forced to bear up. Now there was nobody to see or hear her. The office was closed, the children slept: old Bowey dozed over the lamp in the kitchen. She could weep, without fear of surprise, alone with him who had passed beyond the sound of human grief; in this little back room where, by the light of a single candle, monstrous shadows splashed walls and ceiling: shadows that stirred, and seemed to have a life of their own; for it was winter now, and the wild Australian wind shrilled round the house, and found its way in through the loosely fitting sashes.

  How long she sat thus she did not know: she had lost count of time. But, of a sudden, something. . . .a something felt not heard, and felt only by a quickening of her pulses. . . .made her catch her breath, pause in her crying, strain her ears, look up. And as she did so her heart gave a great bound, then seemed to leave of beating. He had come back. His lids were raised, his eyes half open. And in the breathless silence that followed, when each tick of the little clock on the chest of drawers was separately audible, she saw his lips, too, move. He was trying to speak. She bent over him, hardly daring to breathe, and caught, or thought she caught the words: “Not grieve. . . .for me. I’m going. . . .into Eternity.”

  Whether they were actually meant for her, or whether a mere instinctive response to the sound of her weeping, she could not tell. But dropping on her knees by the bedside, she took his half-cold hand in her warm, live one, and kissed and fondled it. And his lids, which had fallen to again, made one last supreme effort to rise, and this time there was no mistaking the whisper that came over his lips.

  “Dear wife!”

  He was gone again, even as he said it, but it was enough. . . .more than enough! Laying her head down beside his, she pressed her face against the linen of the pillow, paying back to this inanimate object the burning thankfulness with which she no longer dared to trouble him. Eternity was something vast, cold, impersonal. But this little phrase, from the long past days of love and comradeship, these homely, familiar words, fell like balsam on her heart. All his love for her, his gratitude to her, was in them: they were her reward, and a full and ample one, for a lifetime of unwearied sacrifice.

  Dear wife!. . . .dear wife.

  He died at dawn, his faint breaths fluttering to rest.

  Close on two days had to elapse before relative or friend could get to her side: by the time Jerry and Tilly reached Gymgurra, she herself had made all arrangements for the last rites, and Richard was washed and dressed and in his coffin, which stood on a pair of trestles just outside the kitchen door, the doorways of the rooms having proved too narrow to admit it. There he lay, with a large bunch of white violets in his folded hands, looking very calm and peaceful, but also inexpressibly remote—from them all, from everything. Never again would the clatter of cro
ckery or the odours of cooking flay his nerves.

  The children, feeling oddly shy, sought their usual refuge; and when strange men came with the coffin, and there was a great walking about and tramping, they were told to keep out of the way. But afterwards Mamma called them in, and took their hands and took them to see Papa, who was all put in his coffin now, with a bunch of flowers in front of him and his head on a most beautiful satin pillow trimmed with lace. And Mamma kissed him and stroked his hair, and said how young and handsome he looked, with the wrinkles gone away from his face; but Cuffy only thought he looked most frightfully asleep.

  Luce had to have her hand held every time she went by; but he didn’t; he didn’t care. And all the time Papa had lain in bed and was so ill, he hadn’t either. Even when he heard he was dead, and saw him with a sheet pulled over his face, it didn’t seem to make any difference. Or wouldn’t have, if other people hadn’t been so sorry for him. To see them sorry gradually made him sorry, too. For himself. And that night, when a great fat moon was on the sky, he went away and stood and looked up at it, and then something that was just like a line of poetry came into his head, and he said it over and over, and it went: “Now the moon looked down on a fatherless child!”

  Next day though, when Papa was put in and you couldn’t help seeing him every time you went along the passage, it was different. And when Mamma got a large pocket-handkerchief and spread it over his face and hands (when you were dead you couldn’t shooh the flies away, and they liked to walk on you), then he suddenly felt he wanted to see Papa again, most awfully much. So when nobody was about, he went and pulled the handkerchief off, and had a good long look at him: much longer than when he was alive; for then Papa wouldn’t have liked it; besides him being too shy. Now he could stare and stare; and he did; till he saw a secret: Papa had a little black mole at the side of his nose, which he had never seen before. This, and what Bowey said: that they would soon come now and screw the lid down (just as he was, with the little mole, and his eyelashes, and everything), gave him a very queer feeling inside, and made his knees seem as if they weren’t going to hold him up much longer. He had to look away. . . .quickly. . . .look at the violets, which had been sent as a present: Papa was holding them just as if he was still alive. And when he saw them, he suddenly felt he would like to give him something, too. But only potatoes grew in the yard. Potatoes had quite pretty little flowers when they did have, white and purple, only they weren’t come yet. But that afternoon, when he was at the parsonage with a note and was coming away again, he stole a flower (a lovely little “polyanthers”), his heart beating nearly to choke him from having to step on the flower bed, which was all raked in lines, and in case he should be seen from the window. It got rather crushed being in his pocket, but it was very pretty, red and yellow, with bevelledy edges, and soft like velvet. And when Mamma was in the office and Bowey washing sheets, he went on tiptoe to Papa to put his flower in. He meant to hide it under the violets, where nobody but him would know; but doing this his hand touched Papa’s—and that was the end of everything. The mere feel of it, colder—much, much colder—than a glass, or a plate, or a frog’s back, filled him with horror. . . .he nearly screamed out loud. . . .and just dropped the flower anywhere and the handkerchief all rumpled up, and ran for his life. And tore and tore, out of the house and down the yard. . . .to the only quite private place he knew. . . .where no one but him ever went: the space between the closet and the fence, so narrow that you had to squeeze in sideways. And he was only just in time. Before he quite got there he’d begun to cry—as he’d never cried before. It came jumping out of him, in great big sobs.—He was glad Papa was dead—yes, ever so glad!—he told himself so, over and over. He’d never, never, never need to take him for walks again. And nobody would ever laugh, or point their fingers at them, or make fun of them, any more. For if you were once dead you stopped dead—he knew that now. Not like when Lallie died, and he had gone on waiting for her to come back. Papa would never come back. . . .or walk about. . . .or speak to them again. He was going down into the ground, just like he was, with the shiny pillow, and the violets, and. . . .and everything.—Oh, no, no! he couldn’t bear it. . . .he couldn’t—even to think of it nearly killed him. And he stamped his feet and stamped them, in a frenzy of rebellious rage. Oh, he would be good, and not care about anything, if only—if only. . . .he’d take him for walks—anywhere!—yes, he would!—if only. . . .Oh, Papa!. . . .dear, darling Papa!. . . .come back, come back!