The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  A tinge of colour mounted to Mahony’s cheeks. He answered with equal stiffness: “That is so. I come from Mr. William Beamish’s ‘Family Hotel,’ and am commissioned to bring you your sister’s warm love and regards.”

  John Turnham bowed; and waited.

  “I have also to acquaint you with the fact,” continued Mahony, gathering hauteur as he went, “that the day before yesterday I proposed marriage to your sister, and that she did me the honour of accepting me.”

  “Ah, indeed!” said John Turnham, with a kind of ironic snort. “And may I ask on what ground you——”

  “On the ground, sir, that I have a sincere affection for Miss Turnham, and believe it lies in my power to make her happy.”

  “Of that, kindly allow me to judge. My sister is a mere child—too young to know her own mind. Be seated.”

  To a constraining, restraining vision of little Polly, Mahony obeyed, stifling the near retort that she was not too young to earn her living among strangers. The two men faced each other on opposite sides of the table. John Turnham had the same dark eyes and hair, the same short, straight nose as his brother and sister, but not their exotic pallor. His skin was bronzed; and his large, scarlet mouth supplied a vivid dash of colour. He wore bushy side-whiskers.

  “And now, Mr. Mahony, I will ask you a blunt question. I receive letters regularly from my sister, but I cannot recall her ever having mentioned your name. Who and what are you?”

  “Who am I?” flared up Mahony. “A gentleman like yourself, sir!—though a poor one. As for Miss Turnham not mentioning me in her letters, that is easily explained. I only had the pleasure of making her acquaintance five or six weeks ago.”

  “You are candid,” said Polly’s brother, and smiled without unclosing his lips. “But your reply to my question tells me nothing. May I ask what. . . .er. . . .under what. . . .er. . . .circumstances you came out to the colony, in the first instance?”

  “No, sir, you may not!” cried Mahony, and flung up from his seat; he scented a deadly insult in the question.

  “Come, come, Mr. Mahony,” said Turnham in a more conciliatory tone. “Nothing is gained by being tetchy. And my inquiry is not unreasonable. You are an entire stranger to me; my sister has known you but for a few weeks, and is a young and inexperienced girl into the bargain. You tell me you are a gentleman. Sir! I had as lief you said you were a blacksmith. In this grand country of ours, where progress is the watchword, effete standards and clogging traditions must go by the board. Grit is of more use to us than gentility. Each single bricklayer who unships serves the colony better than a score of gentlemen.”

  “In that I am absolutely not at one with you, Mr. Turnham,” said Mahony coldly. He had sat down again, feeling rather ashamed of his violence. “Without a leaven of refinement, the very raw material of which the existing population is composed——”

  But Turnham interrupted him. “Give ’em time, sir, give ’em time. God bless my soul! Rome wasn’t built in a day. But to resume. I have repeatedly had occasion to remark in what small stead the training that fits a man for a career in the old country stands him here. And that is why I am dissatisfied with your reply. Show me your muscles, sir, give me a clean bill of health, tell me if you have learnt a trade and can pay your way. See, I will be frank with you. The position I occupy to-day I owe entirely to my own efforts. I landed in the colony ten years ago, when this marvellous city of ours was little more than a village settlement. I had but five pounds in my pocket. To-day I am a partner in my firm, and intend, if all goes well, to enter parliament. Hence I think I may, without presumption, judge what makes for success here, and of the type of man to attain it. Work, hard work, is the key to all doors. So convinced am I of this, that I have insisted on the younger members of my family learning betimes to put their shoulders to the wheel. Now, Mr. Mahony, I have been open with you. Be equally frank with me. You are an Irishman?”

  Candour invariably disarmed Mahony—even lay a little heavy on him, with the weight of an obligation. He retaliated with a light touch of self-depreciation. “An Irishman, sir, in a country where the Irish have fallen, and not without reason, into general disrepute.”

  Over a biscuit and a glass of sherry he gave a rough outline of the circumstances that had led to his leaving England, two years previously, and of his dismayed arrival in what he called “the cesspool of 1852.”

  “Thanks to the rose-water romance of the English press, many a young man of my day was enticed away from a modest competency, to seek his fortune here, where it was pretended that nuggets could be gathered like cabbages—I myself threw up a tidy little country practice. . . .I might mention that medicine was my profession. It would have given me intense satisfaction, Mr. Turnham, to see one of those glib journalists in my shoes, or the shoes of some of my mess-mates on the Ocean Queen. There were men aboard that ship, sir, who were reduced to beggary before they could even set foot on the road to the north. Granted it is the duty of the press to encourage emigration——”

  “Let the press be, Mr. Mahony,” said Turnham: he had sat back, crossed his legs, and put his thumbs in his armholes. “Let it be. What we need here is colonists—small matter how we get ’em.”

  Having had his say, Mahony scamped the recital of his own sufferings: the discomforts of the month he had been forced to spend in Melbourne getting his slender outfit together; the miseries of the tramp to Ballarat on delicate unused feet, among the riff-raff of nations, under a wan December sky, against which the trunks of the gum-trees rose whiter still, and out of which blazed a copper sun with a misty rim. He scamped, too, his six-months’ attempt at digging—he had been no more fit for the work than a child. Worn to skin and bone, his small remaining strength sucked out by dysentery, he had in the end bartered his last pinch of gold-dust for a barrow-load of useful odds and ends; and this had formed the nucleus of his store. Here, fortune had smiled on him; his flag hardly set a-flying custom had poured in, business gone up by leaps and bounds—“Although I have never sold so much as a pint of spirits, sir!” His profits for the past six months equalled a clear three hundred, and he had most of this to the good. With a wife to keep, expenses would naturally be heavier; but he should continue to lay by every spare penny, with a view to getting back to England.

  “You have not the intention, then, of remaining permanently in the colony?”

  “Not the least in the world.”

  “H’m,” said John: he was standing on the hearthrug now, his legs apart. “That, of course, puts a different complexion on the matter. Still, I may say I am entirely reassured by what you have told me—entirely so. Indeed, you must allow me to congratulate you on the good sense you displayed in striking while the iron was hot. Many a one of your medical brethren, sir, would have thought it beneath his dignity to turn shopkeeper. And now, Mr. Mahony, I will wish you good day; we shall doubtless meet again before very long. Nay, one moment! There are cases, you will admit, in which a female opinion is not without value. Besides, I should be pleased for you to see my wife.”

  He crossed the hall, tapped at a door and cried: “Emma, my love, will you give us the pleasure of your company?”

  In response to this a lady entered, whom Mahony thought one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She carried a yearling infant in her arms, and with one hand pressed its pale flaxen poll against the rich, ripe corn of her own hair, as if to dare comparison. Her cheeks were of a delicate rose pink.

  “My love,” said Turnham—and one felt that the word was no mere flower of speech. “My love, here is someone who wishes to marry our Polly.”

  “To marry our Polly?” echoed the lady, and smiled a faint, amused smile—it was as though she said: to marry this infant that I bear on my arm. “But Polly is only a little girl!”

  “My very words, dearest. And too young to know her own mind.”

  “But you will decide f
or her, John.”

  John hung over his beautiful wife, wheeled up an easy chair, arranged her in it, placed a footstool. “Pray, pray, do not overfatigue yourself, Emma! That child is too heavy for you,” he objected, as the babe made strenuous efforts to kick itself to its feet. “You know I do not approve of you carrying it yourself.”

  “Nurse is drinking tea.”

  “But why do I keep a houseful of domestics if one of the others cannot occasionally take her place?”

  He made an impetuous step towards the bell. Before he could reach it there came a thumping at the door, and a fluty voice cried: “Lemme in, puppa, lemme in!”

  Turnham threw the door open, and admitted a sturdy two-year-old, whom he led forward by the hand. “My son,” he said, not without pride.

  Mahony would have coaxed the child to him; but it ran to its mother, hid its face in her lap.

  Forgetting the bell John struck an attitude. “What a picture!” he exclaimed. “What a picture! My love, I positively must carry out my intention of having you painted in oils, with the children round you.—Mr. Mahony, sir, have you ever seen anything to equal it?”

  Though his mental attitude might have been expressed by a note of exclamation, set ironically, Mahony felt constrained to second Turnham’s enthusiasm. And it was indeed a lovely picture: the gracious, golden-haired woman, whose figure had the amplitude, her gestures the almost sensual languor of the young nursing mother; the two children fawning at her knee, both ash-blond, with vivid scarlet lips.—“It helps one,” thought Mahony, “to understand the mother-worship of primitive peoples.”

  The nursemaid summoned and the children borne off, Mrs. Emma exchanged a few amiable words with the visitor, then obeyed with an equally good grace her husband’s command to rest for an hour, before dressing for the ball.

  Having escorted her to another room, Turnham came back rubbing his hands. “I am pleased to be able to tell you, Mr. Mahony, that your suit has my wife’s approval. You are highly favoured! Emma is not free with her liking.” Then, in a sudden burst of effusion: “I could have wished you the pleasure, sir, of seeing my wife in evening attire. She will make a furore again; no other woman can hold a candle to her in a ballroom. To-night is the first time since the birth of our second child that she will grace a public entertainment with her presence; and unfortunately her appearance will be a brief one, for the infant is not yet wholly weaned.” He shut the door and lowered his voice. “You have had some experience of doctoring, you say; I should like a word with you in your medical capacity. The thing is this. My wife has persisted, contrary to my wishes, in suckling both children herself.”

  “Quite right, too,” said Mahony. “In a climate like this their natural food is invaluable to babes.”

  “Exactly, quite so,” said Turnham, with a hint of impatience. “And in the case of the first child, I made due allowance: a young mother. . . .the novelty of the thing. . . .you understand. But with regard to the second, I must confess I——How long, sir, in your opinion, can a mother continue to nurse her babe without injury to herself? It is surely harmful if unduly protracted? I have observed dark lines about my wife’s eyes, and she is losing her fine complexion.—Then you confirm my fears. I shall assert my authority without delay, and insist on separation from the child.—Ah! women are strange beings, Mr. Mahony, strange beings, as you are on the high road to discovering for yourself.”

  Mahony returned to town on foot, the omnibus having ceased to run. As he walked—at a quick pace, and keeping a sharp look-out; for the road was notoriously unsafe after dark—he revolved his impressions of the interview. He was glad it was over, and, for Polly’s sake, that it had passed off satisfactorily. It had made a poor enough start: at one moment he had been within an ace of picking up his hat and stalking out. But he found it difficult at the present happy crisis to bear a grudge—even if it had not been a proved idiosyncrasy of his, always to let a successful finish erase a bad beginning. None the less, he would not have belonged to the nation he did, had he not indulged in a caustic chuckle and a pair of good-humoured pishes and pshaws, at Turnham’s expense. “Like a showman in front of his booth!”

  Then he thought again of the domestic scene he had been privileged to witness, and grew grave. The beautiful young woman and her children might have served as model for a Holy Family—some old painter’s dream of a sweet benign Madonna; the trampling babe as the infant Christ; the upturned face of the little John adoring. No place this for the scoffer. Apart from the mere pleasure of the eye, there was ample justification for Turnham’s transports. Were they not in the presence of one of life’s sublimest mysteries—that of motherhood? Not alone the lovely Emma: no; every woman who endured the rigours of childbirth, to bring forth an immortal soul, was a holy figure.

  And now for him, too, as he had been reminded, this wonder was to be worked. Little Polly as the mother of his children—what visions the words conjured up! But he was glad Polly was just Polly, and not the peerless creature he had seen. John Turnham’s fears would never be his—this jealous care of a transient bodily beauty. Polly was neither too rare nor too fair for her woman’s lot; and, please God, the day would come when he would see her with a whole cluster of little ones round her—little dark-eyed replicas of herself. She, bless her, should dandle and cosset them to her heart’s content. Her joy in them would also be his.

  CHAPTER NINE

  He sawed, planed, hammered; curly shavings dropped and there was a pleasant smell of sawdust. Much had to be done to make the place fit to receive Polly. A second outhouse was necessary, to hold the surplus goods and do duty as a sleeping-room for Long Jim and Hempel: the lean-to the pair had occupied till now was being converted into a kitchen. At great cost and trouble, Mahony had some trees felled and brought in from Warrenheip. With them he put up a rude fence round his backyard, interlacing the lopped boughs from post to post, so that they formed a thick and leafy screen. He also filled in the disused shaft that had served as a rubbish-hole, and chose another, farther off, which would be less malodorous in the summer heat. Finally, a substantial load of firewood carted in, and two snakes that had made the journey in hollow logs dispatched, Long Jim was set down to chop and split the wood into a neat pile. Polly would need but to walk to and from the woodstack for her firing.

  Indoors he made equal revolution. That her ears should not be polluted by the language of the customers, he ran up a partition between living-room and store, thus cutting off the slab-walled portion of the house, with its roof of stringy-bark, from the log-and-canvas front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs. At Ocock’s Auction Rooms he bought a horsehair sofa to match his armchair, a strip of carpet, a bed, a washhand-stand and a looking-glass, and tacked up a calico curtain before the window. His books, fetched out of the wooden case, were arranged on a brand-new set of shelves; and, when all was done and he stood back to admire his work, it was borne in on him afresh with how few creature-comforts he had hitherto existed. Plain to see now, why he had preferred to sit out-of-doors rather than within! Now, no one on the Flat had a trimmer little place than he.

  In his labours he had the help of a friendly digger—a carpenter by trade—who one evening, pipe in mouth, had stood to watch his amateurish efforts with the jack-plane. Otherwise, the Lord alone knew how the house would ever have been made shipshape. Long Jim was equal to none but the simplest jobs; and Hempel, the assistant, had his hands full with the store. Well, it was a blessing at this juncture that business could be left to him. Hempel was as straight as a die; was a real treasure—or would have been, were it not for his eternal little bark of a cough. This was proof against all remedies, and the heck-heck of it at night was quite enough to spoil a light sleeper’s rest. In building the new shed, Mahony had been careful to choose a corner far from the house.

  Marriages were still uncommon enough on Ballarat to make him an object of considerable curiosit
y. People took to dropping in of an evening—old Ocock; the postmaster; a fellow storekeeper, ex-steward to the Duke of Newcastle—to comment on his alterations and improvements. And over a pipe and a glass of sherry, he had to put up with a good deal of banter about his approaching “change of state.”

  Still, it was kindly meant. “We’ll ’ave to git up a bit o’ company o’ nights for yer lady when she comes,” said old Ocock, and spat under the table.

  Purdy wrote from Tarrangower, where he had drifted:

  Hooray, old Dick, golly for you! Old man didn’t I kick up a bobbery when I heard the news. Never was so well pleased in my life. That’s all you needed, Dick—now you’ll turn into a first-rate colonial. How about that fiver now I’d like to know. You can tell Polly from me I shall pay it back with interest on the fatal day. Of course I’ll come and see you spliced, togs or no togs—to tell the truth my kicksies are on their very last legs—and there’s nothing doing here—all the loose stuff’s been turned over. There’s oceans of quartz, of course, and they’re trying to pound it up in dollies, but you could put me to bed with a pick-axe and a shovel before I’d go in for such tomfoolery as that.—Damn it all, Dick, to think of you being cotched at last. I can’t get over it, and it’s a bit of a risk, too, by dad it is, for a girl of that age is a dark horse if ever there was one.

  Mahony’s answer to this was a couple of pound-notes: So that my best man shall not disgrace me! His heart went out to the writer. Dear old Dickybird! pleased as Punch at the turn of events, yet quaking for fear of imaginary risks. With all Purdy’s respect for his friend’s opinions, he had yet an odd distrust of that friend’s ability to look after himself. And now he was presuming to doubt Polly, too. Like his imperence! What the dickens did he know of Polly? Keenly relishing the sense of his own intimate knowledge, Mahony touched the breast-pocket in which Polly’s letters lay—he often carried them out with him to a little hill, on which a single old blue-gum had been left standing; its scraggy top-knot of leaves drooped and swayed in the wind, like the few long straggling hairs on an old man’s head.