The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  There was still an instant of suspense; then heavy footsteps crossed the floor and the door swung back. Mahony’s eyes met a haggard white face set in a dusky background.

  “You!” said John in a slow, dazed way, and blinked at the light. But in the next breath he burst out: “Where’s that damned fool of a woman? Is she skulking behind you? I won’t see her—won’t have her near me!”

  “If you mean your sister Sarah, she is not in the house at present,” said Mahony; and stepping over the threshold he shut the door. The two men faced each other in the twilight.

  “What do you want?” demanded John in a hoarse voice. “Have you, too, come to preach and sermonise? If so, you can go back where you came from! I’ll have none of that cant here.”

  “No, no, I leave that to those whose business it is. I’m here as your doctor”; and Mahony drew up a blind and opened a window. Instantly the level sun-rays flooded the room; and the air that came in with them smacked of the sea. Just outside the window a quince-tree in full blossom reared extravagant masses of pink snow against the blue overhead; beyond it a covered walk of vines shone golden-green. There was not a cloud in the sky. To turn back to the musty room from all this lush and lovely life was like stepping down into a vault.

  John had sunk into a seat before a secretaire, and shielded his eyes from the sun. A burnt-out candle stood at his elbow; and in a line before him were ranged such images as remained to him of his dead—a dozen or more daguerrotypes, of various sizes: Emma and he before marriage and after marriage; Emma with her first babe, at different stages of its growth; Emma with the two children; Emma in ball-attire; with a hat on; holding a book.

  The sight gave the quietus to Mahony’s scruples. Stooping, he laid his hand on John’s shoulder. “My poor fellow,” he said gently. “Your sister was not in a fit state to travel, so I have come in her place to tell you how deeply, how truly, we feel for you in your loss. I want to try, too, to help you to bear it. For it has to be borne, John.”

  At this the torrent burst. Leaping to his feet John began to fling wildly to and fro; and then, for a time, the noise of his lamentations filled the room. Mahony had assisted at scenes of this kind before, but never had he heard the like of the blasphemies that poured over John’s lips. (Afterwards, when he had recovered his distance, he would refer to it as the occasion on which John took the Almighty to task, for having dared to interfere in his private life.)

  At the moment he sat silent. “Better for him to get it out,” he thought to himself, even while he winced at John’s scurrility.

  When, through sheer exhaustion, John came to a stop, Mahony cast about for words of consolation. All reference to the mystery of God’s way was precluded; and he shrank from entering that sound plea for the working of Time, which drives a spike into the heart of the new-made mourner. He bethought himself of the children. “Remember, she did not leave you comfortless. You have your little ones. Think of them.”

  But this was a false move. Like a belated thunderclap after the storm is over, John broke out again, his haggard eyes aflame. “Curse the children!” he cried thickly. “Curse them, I say! If I had once caught sight of them since she. . . .she went, I should have wrung their necks. I never wanted children. They came between us. They took her from me. It was a child that killed her. Now, she is gone and they are left. Keep them out of my way, Mahony! Don’t let them near me.—Oh, Emma. . . .wife!” and here his shoulders heaved, under dry, harsh sobs.

  Mahony felt his own eyes grow moist. “Listen to me, John. I promise you, you shall not see your children again until you wish to—till you’re glad to recall them, as a living gift from her you have lost. I’ll look after them for you.”

  “You will?. . . .God bless you, Mahony!”

  Judging the moment ripe, Mahony rose and went out to fetch the tray on which Sarah had set the eatables. The meat was but a chop, charred on one side, raw on the other; but John did not notice its shortcomings. He fell on it like the starving man he was, and gulped down two or three glasses of port. The colour returned to his face, he was able to give an account of his wife’s last hours. “And to talk is what he needs, even if he goes on till morning.” Mahony was quick to see that there were things that rankled in John’s memory, like festers in flesh. One was that, knowing the greys were tricky, he had not forbidden them to Emma long ago. But he had felt proud of her skill in handling the reins, of the attention she attracted. Far from thwarting her, he had actually urged her on. Her fall had been a light one, and at the outset no bad results were anticipated: a slight haemorrhage was soon got under control. A week later, however, it began anew, more violently, and then all remedies were in vain. As it became clear that the child was dead, the doctors had recourse to serious measures. But the bleeding went on. She complained of a roaring in her ears, her extremities grew cold, her pulse fluttered to nothing. She passed from syncope to coma, and from coma to death. John swore that two of the doctors had been the worse for drink; the third was one of those ignorant impostors with whom the place swarmed. And again he made himself reproaches.

  “I ought to have gone to look for someone else. But she was dying. . . .I could not tear myself away.—Mahony, I can still see her. They had stretched her across the bed, so that her head hung over the side. Her hair swept the floor—one scoundrel trod on it. . . .trod on her hair! And I had to stand by and watch, while they butchered her—butchered my girl.—Oh, there are things, Mahony, one cannot dwell on and live!”

  “You must not look at it like that. Yet, when I recall some of the cases I’ve seen contraction induced in. . . .”

  “Ah yes, if you had been here. . . .my God, if only you had been here!”

  But Mahony did not encourage this idea; it was his duty to unhitch John’s thoughts from the past. He now suggested that, the children and Sarah safe in his keeping, John should shut up the house and go away. To his surprise John jumped at the proposal, was ready there and then to put it into effect. Yes, said he, he would start the very next morning, and with no more than a blanket on his back, would wander a hundred odd miles into the bush, sleeping out under the stars at night, and day by day increasing the distance between himself and the scene of his loss. And now up he sprang, in a sudden fury to be gone. Warning Sarah into the background, Mahony helped him get together a few necessaries, and then walked him to a hotel. Here he left him sleeping under the influence of a drug, and next day saw him off on his tramp northwards, over the Great Divide.

  John’s farewell words were: “Take the keys of the house with you, and don’t give them up to me under a month, at least.”

  That day’s coach was full; they had to wait for seats till the following afternoon. The delay was not unwelcome to Mahony; it gave Polly time to get the letter he had written her the night before. After leaving John, he set about raising money for the extra fares and other unforeseen expenses: at the eleventh hour, Sarah informed him that their young brother Jerry had landed in Melbourne during Emma’s illness, and had been hastily boarded out. Knowing no one else in the city, Mahony was forced, much as it went against the grain, to turn to Henry Ocock for assistance. And he was effusively received—Ocock tried to press double the sum needed on him. Fortune was no doubt smiling on the lawyer. His offices had swelled to four rooms, with appropriate clerks in each. He still, however, nursed the scheme of transferring his business to Ballarat.

  “As soon, that is, as I can hear of suitable premises. I understand there’s only one locality to be considered, and that’s the western township.” On which Mahony, whose address was in the outer darkness, repeated his thanks and withdrew.

  He found Jerry’s lodging, paid the bill, and took the boy back to St. Kilda—a shy slip of a lad in his early teens, with the colouring and complexion that ran in the family. John’s coachman, who had shown himself not indisposed—for a substantial sum, paid in advance—to keep watch over house and grounds,
was installed in an outbuilding, and next day at noon, after personally aiding Sarah, who was all a-tremble at the prospect of the bush journey, to pack her own and the children’s clothes, Mahony turned the key in the door of the darkened house. But a couple of weeks ago it had been a proud and happy home. Now it had no more virtue left in it than a crab’s empty shell.

  He had fumed on first learning of Jerry’s superfluous presence; but before they had gone far he saw that he would have fared ill indeed, had Jerry not been there. Sarah, too agitated that morning to touch a bite of food, was seized, not an hour out, with sickness and fainting. There she sat, her eyes closed, her salts to her nose or feebly sipping brandy, unable to lift a finger to help with the children. The younger of the two slept most of the way hotly and heavily on Mahony’s knee; but the boy, a regular pest, was never for a moment still. In vain did his youthful uncle pinch his leg each time he wriggled to the floor. It was not till a fierce-looking digger opposite took out a jack-knife and threatened to saw off both his feet if he stirred again, to cut out his tongue if he put another question that, scarlet with fear, little Johnny was tamed. Altogether it was a nightmare of a journey, and Mahony groaned with relief when, lamps having for some time twinkled past, the coach drew up, and Hempel and Long Jim stepped forward with their lanterns. Sarah could hardly stand. The children, wrathful at being wakened from their sleep, kicked and screamed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  For the first time in her young married life, Polly felt vexed with her husband.

  “Oh, he shouldn’t have done that. . . .no, really he shouldn’t!” she murmured; and the hand with the letter in it drooped to her lap.

  She had been doing a little surreptitious baking in Richard’s absence, and without a doubt was hot and tired. The tears rose to her eyes. Deserting her pastry-board she retreated behind the woodstack and sat down on the chopping-block; and then, for some minutes, the sky was blotted out. She felt quite unequal, in her present condition, to facing Sarah, who was so sensitive, so easily shocked; and she was deeply averse from her fine-lady sister discovering the straitness of Richard’s means and home.

  But it was hard for Polly to secure a moment’s privacy.

  “An’ so this is w’ere you’re ’idin’, is it?” said Long Jim snappishly—he had been opening a keg of treacle and held a sticky plug in his hand. “An’ me runnin’ my pore ol’ legs off arter you!” And Hempel met her on her entry with: “No further bad news, I ’ope and trust, ma’am?”—Hempel always retained his smooth servility of manner. “The shopman par excellence, my dear!” Richard was used to say of him.

  Polly reassured her attendants, blew her nose, re-read her letter; and other feelings came uppermost. She noticed how scribbly the writing was—Richard had evidently been hard pushed for time. There was an apologetic tone about it, too, which was unlike him. He was probably wondering what she would say; he might even be making himself reproaches. It was unkind of her to add to them. Let her think rather of the sad state poor John had been found in, and of his two motherless babes. As for Sarah, it would never have done to leave her out.

  Wiping her eyes Polly untied her cooking-apron and set to reviewing her resources. Sarah would have to share her bed, Richard to sleep on the sofa. The children. . . .and here she knitted her brows. Then going into the yard, she called to Tom Ocock, who sat whittling a stick in front of his father’s house; and Tom went down to Main Street for her, and bought a mattress which he carried home on his shoulder. This she spread on the bedroom floor, Mrs. Hemmerde having already given both rooms a sound scouring, just in case a flea or a spider should be lying perdu. After which Polly fell to baking again in good earnest; for the travellers would be famished by the time they arrived.

  Towards ten o’clock Tom, who was on the look-out, shouted that the coach was in, and Polly, her table spread, a good fire going, stepped to the door; outwardly very brave, inwardly all a-flutter. Directly, however, she got sight of the forlorn party that toiled up the slope: Sarah clinging to Hempel’s arm, Mahony bearing one heavy child, and—could she believe her eyes?—Jerry staggering under the other: her bashfulness was gone. She ran forward to prop poor Sarah on her free side, to guide her feet to the door; and it is doubtful whether little Polly had ever spent a more satisfying hour than that which followed.

  Her husband, watching her in silent amaze, believed she thoroughly enjoyed the fuss and commotion.

  There was Sarah, too sick to see anything but the bed, to undress, to make fomentations for, to coax to mouthfuls of tea and toast. There was Jerry to feed and send off, with the warmest of hugs, to share Tom Ocock’s palliasse. There were the children. . . .well, Polly’s first plan had been to put them straight to bed. But when she came to peel off their little trousers she changed her mind.

  “I think, Mrs. Hemmerde, if you’ll get me a tub of hot water, we’ll just pop them into it; they’ll sleep so much better,” she said. . . .not quite truthfully. Her private reflection was: “I don’t think Sarah can once have washed them properly, all that time.”

  The little girl let herself be bathed in her sleep; but young John stood and bawled, digging fat fists into slits of eyes, while Polly scrubbed at his massy knees, the dimpled ups and downs of which looked as if they had been worked in by hand. She had never seen her brother’s children before and was as heartily lost in admiration of their plump, well-formed bodies, as her helper of the costliness of their outfit.

  “Real Injun muslin, as I’m alive!” ejaculated the woman, on fishing out their night-clothes. “An’ wid the sassiest lace for trimmin’!—Och, the poor little motherless angels!—Stan’ quiet, you young divil you, an’ lemme button you up!”

  Clean as lily-bells, the pair were laid on the mattress-bed.

  “At least they can’t fall out,” said Polly, surveying her work with a sigh of content.

  Everyone else having retired, she sat with Richard before the fire, waiting for his bath-water to reach the boil. He was anxious to know just how she had fared in his absence, she to hear the full story of his mission. He confessed to her that his offer to load himself up with the whole party had been made in a momentary burst of feeling. Afterwards he had repented his impulsiveness.

  “On your account, love. Though when I see how well you’ve managed—you dear, clever little woman!”

  And Polly consoled him, being now come honestly to the stage of: “But, Richard, what else could you do?”

  “What, indeed! I knew Emma had no relatives in Melbourne, and who John’s intimates might be I had no more idea than the man in the moon.”

  “John hasn’t any friends. He never had.”

  “As for leaving the children in Sarah’s charge, if you’ll allow me to say so, my dear, I consider your sister Sarah the biggest goose of a female it has ever been my lot to run across.”

  “Ah, but you don’t really know Sarah yet,” said Polly, and smiled a little, through the tears that had risen to her eyes at the tale of John’s despair.

  What Mahony did not mention to her was the necessity he had been under of borrowing money; though Polly was aware he had left home with but a modest sum in his purse. He wished to spare her feelings. Polly had a curious delicacy—he might almost call it a manly delicacy—with regard to money; and the fact that John had not offered to put hand to pocket, let alone liberally flung a blank cheque at his head, would, Mahony knew, touch his wife on a tender spot. Nor did Polly herself ask questions. Richard made no allusion to John having volunteered to bear expenses, so the latter had evidently not done so. What a pity! Richard was so particular himself, in matters of this kind, that he might write her brother down close and stingy. Of course John’s distressed state of mind partly served to excuse him. But she could not imagine the calamity that would cause Richard to forget his obligations.

  She slid her hand into her husband’s and they sat for a while in silence. Then, half to hers
elf, and out of a very different train of thought she said: “Just fancy them never crying once for their mother.”

  “Talking of friends,” said Sarah, and fastidiously cleared her throat. “Talking of friends, I wonder now what has become of one of those young gentlemen I met at your wedding. He was. . . .let me see. . . .why, I declare if I haven’t forgotten his name!”

  “Oh, I know who you mean—besides there was only one, Sarah,” Mahony heard his wife reply, and therewith fall into her sister’s trap. “You mean Purdy—Purdy Smith—who was Richard’s best man.”

  “Smith?” echoed Sarah. “La, Polly! Why don’t he make it Smythe?”

  It was a warm evening some three weeks later. The store was closed to customers; but Mahony had ensconced himself in a corner of it with a book: since the invasion, this was the one place in which he could make sure of finding quiet. The sisters sat on the log-bench before the house; and, without seeing them, Mahony knew to a nicety how they were employed. Polly darned stockings, for John’s children; Sarah was tatting, with her little finger stuck out at right angles to the rest. Mahony could hardly think of this finger without irritation: it seemed to sum up Sarah’s whole outlook on life.

  Meanwhile Polly’s fresh voice went on, relating Purdy’s fortunes. “He took part, you know, in the dreadful affair on the Eureka last Christmas, when so many poor men were killed. We can speak of it, now they’ve all been pardoned; but then we had to be very careful. Well, he was shot in the ankle, and will always be lame from it.”

  “What!—go hobbling on one leg for the remainder of his days? Oh, my dear!” said Sarah, and laughed.

  “Yes, because the wound wasn’t properly attended to— he had to hide about in the bush, for ever so long. Later on he went to the Beamishes, to be nursed. But by that time his poor leg was in a very bad state. You know he is engaged—or very nearly so—to Tilly Beamish.”