The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  “I haven’t succeeded in interesting you, have I, Pollikins?”

  She made haste to contradict him. Oh, it was very nice, and she loved to hear him read.

  “Come, honestly now, little woman!”

  She faced him squarely at that, though with pink cheeks. “Well, not much, Richard.”

  He took her on his knee. “And what were you smiling at?”

  “Me? Oh, I was just thinking of something that happened yesterday”—and Polly sat up, agog to tell.

  It appeared that the day before, while he was out, the digger’s wife who did Polly’s rough work for her had rushed in, crying that her youngest was choking. Bonnetless, Polly had flown across to the woman’s hut. There she discovered the child, a fat youngster of a year or so, purple in the face, with a button wedged in its throat. Taking it by the heels she shook the child vigorously, upside-down; and, lo and behold! this had the opposite effect to what she intended. When they straightened the child out again the button was found to have passed the danger-point and gone down. Quickly resolved, Polly cut slice on slice of thin bread-and-butter, and with this she and Mrs. Hemmerde stuffed the willing babe till, full to bursting, it warded them off with its tiny hands.

  Mahony laughed heartily at the tale, and applauded his wife’s prompt measures. “Short of the forceps nothing could have been better!”

  Yes, Polly had a dash of native shrewdness, which he prized. And a pair of clever hands that were never idle. He had given her leave to make any changes she chose in the house, and she was for ever stitching away at white muslin, or tacking it over pink calico. These affairs made their little home very spick and span, and kept Polly from feeling dull—if one could imagine Polly dull! With the cooking alone had there been a hitch in the beginning. Like a true expert Mrs. Beamish had not tolerated understudies: none but the lowliest jobs, such as raisin-stoning or potato-peeling, had fallen to the three girls’ share: and in face of her first fowl Polly stood helpless and dismayed. But not for long. Sarah was applied to for the best cookery-book on sale in Melbourne, and when this arrived, Polly gave herself up to the study of it. She had many failures, both private and avowed. With the worst, she either retired behind the woodstack, or Tom disposed of them for her, or the dog ate them up. But she persevered: and soon Mahony could with truth declare that no one raised a better loaf or had a lighter hand at pastry than his wife.

  Three knocks on the wooden partition was the signal which, if he were not serving a customer, summoned him to the kitchen.

  “Oh, Richard, it’s risen beautifully!” And, red with heat and pride, Polly drew a great golden-crusted, blown-up sponge-cake along the oven shelf.

  Richard, who had a sweet tooth, pretended to be unable to curb his impatience.

  “Wait! First I must see. . . .” and she plunged a knife into the cake’s heart: it came out untarnished. “Yes, it’s done to a turn.”

  There and then it was cut; for, said Mahony, that was the only way in which he could make sure of a piece. Afterwards chunks were dealt out to every one Polly knew—to Long Jim, Hempel, Tommy Ocock, the little Hemmerdes. Side by side on the kitchen-table, their feet dangling in the air, husband and wife sat boy-and-girl fashion and munched hot cake, till their appetites for dinner were wrecked.

  But the rains that heralded winter—and they set in early that year—had not begun to fall when more serious matters claimed Mahony’s attention.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was an odd and inexplicable thing that business showed no sign of improving. Affairs on Ballarat had, for months past, run their usual prosperous course. The western township grew from day to day, and was straggling right out to the banks of the great swamp. On the Flat, the deep-sinking that was at present the rule—some parties actually touched a depth of three hundred feet before bottoming—had brought a fresh host of fortune-hunters to the spot, and the results obtained bid fair to rival those of the first golden year. The diggers’ grievances and their conflict with the government were now a turned page. At a state trial all prisoners had been acquitted, and a general amnesty declared for those rebels who were still at large. Unpopular ministers had resigned or died; a new constitution for the colony awaited the Royal assent; and pending this, two of the rebel-leaders, now prominent townsmen, were chosen to sit in the Legislative Council. The future could not have looked rosier. For others; that was. For him, Mahony, it held more than one element of uncertainty.

  At no time had he come near making a fortune out of storekeeping. For one thing, he had been too squeamish. From the outset he had declined to soil his hands with surreptitious grog-selling; nor would he be a party to that evasion of the law which consisted in overcharging on other goods, and throwing in drinks free. Again, he would rather have been hamstrung than stoop to the tricks in vogue with regard to the weighing of gold-dust: the greased scales, the wet sponge, false beams, and so on. Accordingly, he had a clearer conscience than the majority and a lighter till. But even at the legitimate ABC of business he had proved a duffer. He had never, for instance, learned to be a really skilled hand at stocking a shop. Was an out-of-the-way article called for, ten to one he had run short of it; and the born shopman’s knack of palming off or persuading to a makeshift was not his. Such goods as he had, he did not press on people; his attitude was always that of “take it or leave it”; and he sometimes surprised a ridiculous feeling of satisfaction when he chased a drunken and insolent customer off the premises, or secured an hour’s leisure unbroken by the jangle of the store-bell.

  Still, in spite of everything he had, till recently, done well enough. Money was loose, and the diggers, if given long credit when down on their luck, were in the main to be relied on to pay up when they struck the lead or tapped a pocket. He had had slack seasons before now, and things had always come right again. This made it hard for him to explain the present prolonged spell of dullness.

  That there was something more than ordinarily wrong first dawned on him during the stock-taking in summer. Hempel and he were constantly coming upon goods that had been too long on hand, and were now fit only to be thrown away. Half-a-dozen boxes of currants showed a respectable growth of mould; a like fate had come upon some flitches of bacon; and not a bag of flour but had developed a species of minute maggot. Rats had got at his coils of rope, one of which, sold in all good faith, had gone near causing the death of the digger who used it. The remains of some smoked fish were brought back and flung at his head with a shower of curses, by a woman who had fallen ill through eating of it. And yet, in spite of the replenishing this involved, the order he sent to town that season was the smallest he had ever given. For the first time he could not fill a dray, but had to share one with a greenhorn, who, if you please, was setting up at his very door.

  He and Hempel cracked their brains to account for the falling-off—or at least he did: afterwards he believed Hempel had suspected the truth and been too mealy-mouthed to speak out. It was Polly who innocently—for of course he did not draw her into confidence—Polly supplied the clue from a piece of gossip brought to the house by the woman Hemmerde. It appeared that, at the time of the rebellion, Mahony’s open antagonism to the Reform League had given offence all round—to the extremists as well as to the more wary on whose behalf the League was drafted. They now got even with him by taking their custom elsewhere. He snorted with indignation on hearing of it; then laughed ironically. He was expected, was he, not only to bring his personal tastes and habits into line with those of the majority, but to deny his politics as well? And if he refused, they would make it hard for him to earn a decent living in their midst. Nothing seemed easier to these unprincipled democrats than for a man to cut his coat to suit his job. Why, he might just as well turn Whig and be done with it!

  He sat over his account-books. The pages were black with bad debts for “tucker.” Here however was no mystery. The owners of these names—Purdy was among the
m—had without doubt been implicated in the Eureka riot, and had made off and never returned. He struck a balance, and found to his consternation that, unless business took a turn for the better, he would not be able to hold out beyond the end of the year. Afterwards, he was blessed if he knew what was going to happen. The ingenious Hempel was full of ideas for tempting back fortune— opening a branch store on a new lead was one of them, or removing bodily to Main Street—but ready money was the sine qua non of such schemes, and ready money he had not got. Since his marriage he had put by as good as nothing; and the enlarging and improving of his house, at that time, had made a big hole in his bachelor savings. He did not feel justified at the present pass in drawing on them anew. For one thing, before summer was out there would be, if all went well, another mouth to feed. And that meant a variety of seen and unforeseen expenses.

  Such were the material anxieties he had to encounter in the course of that winter. Below the surface a subtler embarrassment worked to destroy his peace. In face of the shortage of money, he was obliged to thank his stars that he had not lost the miserable lawsuit of a few months back. Had that happened, he wouldn’t at present have known where to turn. But this amounted to confessing his satisfaction at having pulled off his case, pulled it off anyhow, by no matter what crooked means. And as if this were not enough, the last words he had heard Purdy say came back to sting him anew. The boy had accused him of judging a fight for freedom from a tradesman’s standpoint. Now it might be said of him that he was viewing justice from the same angle. He had scorned the idea of distorting his political opinions to fit the trade by which he gained his bread. But it was a far more serious thing if his principles, his character, his sense of equity were all to be undermined as well. If he stayed here, he would end by becoming as blunt to what was right and fair as the rest of them. As it was, he was no longer able to regard the two great landmarks of man’s moral development—liberty and justice—from the point of view of an honest man and a gentleman.

  His self-annoyance was so great that it galvanised him to action. There and then he made up his mind: as soon as the child that was coming to them was old enough to travel, he would sell out for what he could get, and go back to the old country. Once upon a time he had hoped, when he went, to take a good round sum with him towards a first-rate English practice. Now he saw that this scheme had been a kind of Jack-o’-lantern—a marsh-light after which he might have danced for years to come. As matters stood, he must needs be content if, the passage-moneys paid, he could scrape together enough to keep him afloat till he found a modest corner to slip into.

  His first impulse was to say nothing of this to his wife in the meantime. Why unsettle her? But he had reckoned without the sudden upward leap his spirits made, once his decision was taken: the winter sky was blue as violets again above him; he turned out light-heartedly of a morning. It was impossible to hide the change in his mood from Polly—even if he had felt it fair to do so. Another thing: when he came to study Polly by the light of his new plan, he saw that his scruples about unsettling her were fanciful—wraiths of his own imagining. As a matter of fact, the sooner he broke the news to her the better. Little Polly was so thoroughly happy here that she would need time to accustom herself to the prospect of life elsewhere.

  He went about it very cautiously though; and with no hint of the sour and sorry incidents that had driven him to the step. As was only natural, Polly was rather easily upset at present: the very evening before, he had had occasion to blame himself for his tactless behaviour.

  In her first sick young fear Polly had impulsively written off to Mother Beamish, to claim the fulfilment of that good woman’s promise to stand by her when her time came. One letter gave another; Mrs. Beamish not only announced that she would hold herself ready to support her “little duck” at a moment’s notice, but filled sheets with sage advice and old wives’ maxims; and the correspondence, which had languished, flared up anew. Now came an ill-scrawled, misspelt epistle from Tilly—doleful, too, for Purdy had once more quitted her without speaking the binding word—in which she told that Purdy’s leg, though healed, was permanently shortened; the doctor in Geelong said he would never walk straight again.

  Husband and wife sat and discussed the news, wondered how lameness would affect Purdy’s future and what he was doing now, Tilly not having mentioned his whereabouts. “She has probably no more idea than we have,” said Mahony.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Polly with a sigh. “Well, I hope he won’t come back here, that’s all”; and she considered the seam she was sewing, with an absent air.

  “Why, love? Don’t you like old Dickybird?” asked Mahony in no small surprise.

  “Oh yes, quite well. But. . . .”

  “Is it because he still can’t make up his mind to take your Tilly—eh?”

  “That, too. But chiefly because of something he said.”

  “And what was that, my dear?”

  “Oh, very silly,” and Polly smiled.

  “Out with it, madam! Or I shall suspect the young dog of having made advances to my wife.”

  “Richard, dear!” Little Polly thought he was in earnest, and grew exceedingly confused. “Oh, no, nothing like that,” she assured him, and with red cheeks rushed into an explanation. “He only said, in spite of you being such old friends he felt you didn’t really care to have him here on Ballarat. After a time you always invented some excuse to get him away.” But now that it was out, Polly felt the need of toning down the statement, and added: “I shouldn’t wonder if he was silly enough to think you were envious of him, for having so many friends and being liked by all sorts of people.”

  “Envious of him? I? Who on earth has been putting such ideas into your head?” cried Mahony.

  “It was ‘mother’ thought so—it was while I was still there,” stammered Polly, still more fluttered by the fact of him fastening on just these words.

  Mahony tried to quell his irritation by fidgeting round the room. “Surely, Polly, you might give up calling that woman ‘mother,’ now you belong to me—I thank you for the relationship!” he said testily. And having with much unnecessary ado knocked the ashes out of his pipe, he went on: “It’s bad enough to say things of that kind; but to repeat them, love, is in even poorer taste.”

  “Yes, Richard,” said Polly meekly.

  But her amazed inner query was: “Not even to one’s own husband?”

  She hung her head, till the white thread of parting between the dark loops of her hair was almost perpendicular. She had spoken without thinking in the first place—had just blurted out a passing thought. But even when forced to explain, she had never dreamt of Richard taking offence. Rather she had imagined the two of them—two banded lovingly against one—making merry together over Purdy’s nonsense. She had heard her husband laugh away much unkinder remarks than this. And perhaps if she had stopped there, and said no more, it might have been all right. By her stupid attempt to gloss things over, she had really managed to hurt him, and had made him think her gossipy into the bargain.

  She went on with her sewing. But when Mahony came back from the brisk walk by means of which he got rid of his annoyance, he fancied, though Polly was as cheery as ever and had supper laid for him, that her eyelids were red.

  This was why, the following evening, he promised himself to be discreet.

  Winter had come in earnest; the night was wild and cold. Before the crackling stove the cat lay stretched at full length, while Pompey dozed fitfully, his nose between his paws. The red-cotton curtains that hung at the little window gave back the lamplight in a ruddy glow; the clock beat off the seconds evenly, except when drowned by the wind, which came in bouts, hurling itself against the corners of the house. And presently, laying down his book—Polly was too busy now to be read to—Mahony looked across at his wife. She was wrinkling her pretty brows over the manufacture of tiny clothes; a rather pale little
woman still, none of the initial discomforts of her condition having been spared her. Feeling his eyes on her, she looked up and smiled: did ever anyone see such a ridiculous armhole? Three of one’s fingers were enough to fill it—and she held the little shirt aloft for his inspection. Here was his chance: the child’s coming offered the best of pretexts. Taking not only the midget garment but also the hand that held it, he told her of his resolve to go back to England and re-enter his profession.

  “You know, love, I’ve always wished to get home again. And now there’s an additional reason. I don’t want my. . . .our children to grow up in a place like this. Without companions—or refining influences. Who knows how they would turn out?”

  He said it, but in his heart he knew that his children would be safe enough. And Polly, listening to him, made the same reservation: yes, but our children. . . .

  “And so I propose, as soon as the youngster’s old enough to travel, to haul down the flag for good and all, and book passages for the three of us in some smart clipper. We’ll live in the country, love. Think of it, Polly! A little gabled, red-roofed house at the foot of some Sussex down, with fruit trees and a high hedge round it, and only the oast-houses peeping over. Doesn’t it make your mouth water, my dear?”

  He had risen in his eagerness, and stood with his back to the stove, his legs apart. And Polly nodded and smiled up at him—though, truth to tell, the picture he drew did not mean much to her: she had never been in Sussex, nor did she know what an oast-house was. A night such as this, with flying clouds and a shrill, piping wind, made her think of angry seas and a dark ship’s cabin, in which she lay deathly sick. But it was not Polly’s way to dwell on disagreeables: her mind glanced off to a pleasanter theme.