The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  When the merriment was at its height, the front door opened and in walked Mahony. An instant’s blank amazement, and he had grasped the whole situation—Richard was always so fearfully quick at understanding, thought Polly ruefully. Then, though Purdy jumped to his feet and the laughter died out as if by command, he drew his brows together, and without saying a word, stalked into the surgery and shut the door.

  Like a schoolboy who has been caned, Purdy dug his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed his hindquarters—to the fresh delight of Trotty and the girl.

  “Well, so long, Polly! I’d better be making tracks. The old man’s on the warpath.” And in an undertone: “Same old grouser! Never could take a joke.”

  “He’s tired. I’ll make it all right,” gave Polly back.

  —“It was only his fun, Richard,” she pleaded, as she held out a linen jacket for her husband to slip his arms into.

  “Fun of a kind I won’t permit in my house. What an example to set the child! What’s more, I shall let Hempel know that he is being made a butt of. And speak my mind to your sister about her heartless behaviour.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, Richard. I promise it shan’t happen again. It was very stupid of us, I know. But Purdy didn’t really mean it unkindly; and he is so comical when he starts to imitate people.” And Polly was all but off again, at the remembrance.

  But Mahony, stooping to decipher the names Ellen had written on the slate, did not unbend. It was not merely the vulgar joke that had offended him. No, what really rankled was the sudden chill his unlooked-for entrance had cast over the group; they had scattered and gone scurrying about their business, like a pack of naughty children who had been up to mischief behind their master’s back. He was the schoolmaster—the spoilsport. They were all afraid of him. Even Polly.

  But here came Polly herself to say: “Dinner, dear,” in her kindest tone. She also put her arm round his neck and hugged him. “Not cross any more, Richard? I know we behaved disgracefully.” Her touch put the crown on her words. Mahony drew her to him and kissed her.

  But the true origin of the unpleasantness, Zara, who in her ghoulish delight at seeing Hempel grovel before her—thus Mahony worded it—behaved more kittenishly than ever at table: Zara Mahony could not so easily forgive; and for the remainder of her stay his manner to her was so forbidding that she, too, froze; and to Polly’s regret the old bad relation between them came up anew.

  But Zara was enjoying herself too well to cut her visit short on Mahony’s account. “Besides, poor thing,” thought Polly, “she has really nowhere to go.” What she did do was to carry her head very high in her brother-in-law’s presence; to speak at him rather than to him; and in private to insist to Polly on her powers of discernment. “You may say what you like, my dear—I can see you have a very great deal to put up with!”

  At last, however, the day of her departure broke, and she went off amid a babble of farewells, of requests for remembrance, a fluttering of pocket-handkerchiefs, the like of which Polly had never known; and to himself Mahony breathed the hope that they had seen the last of Zara, her fripperies and affectations. “Your sister will certainly fit better into the conditions of English life.”

  Polly cried at the parting, which might be final; then blew her nose and dried her eyes; for she had a busy day before her. Tilly Beamish had been waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Zara to vacate the spare room, and was to arrive that night.

  Mahony was not at home to welcome the new-comer, nor could he be present at high tea. When he returned, towards nine o’clock, he found Polly with a very red face, and so full of fussy cares for her guest’s comfort—her natural kindliness distorted to caricature—that she had not a word for him. One look at Miss Tilly explained everything, and his respects duly paid he retired to the surgery, to indulge a smile at Polly’s expense. Here Polly soon joined him, Tilly, fatigued by her journey and by her bounteous meal, having betaken herself early to bed.

  “Ha, ha!” laughed Mahony, not without a certain mischievous satisfaction at his young wife’s discomfiture. “And with the prospect of a second edition to follow!”

  But Polly would not capitulate right off. “I don’t think it’s very kind of you to talk like that, Richard,” she said warmly. “People can’t help their looks.” She moved about the room putting things straight, and avoiding his eye. “As long as they mean well and are good. . . .But I think you would rather no one ever came to stay with us, at all.”

  Fixing her with meaning insistence and still smiling, Mahony opened his arms. The next moment Polly was on his knee, her face hidden in his shoulder. There she shed a few tears. “Oh, isn’t she dreadful? I don’t know what I shall do with her. She’s been serving behind the bar, Richard, for more than a year. And she’s come expecting to be taken everywhere and to have any amount of gaiety.”

  At coach-time she had dragged a reluctant Purdy to the office. But as soon as he caught sight of Tilly: “On the box, Richard, beside the driver, with her hair all towsy-wowsy in the wind—he just said: ‘Oh, lor, Polly!’ and disappeared, and that was the last I saw of him. I don’t know how I should have got on if it hadn’t been for old Mr. Ocock, who was down meeting a parcel. He was most kind; he helped us home with her carpet-bag, and saw after her trunk. And, oh dear, what do you think? When he was going away he said to me in the passage—so loud I’m sure Tilly must have heard him—he said: ‘Well! that’s something like a figure of a female this time, Mrs. Doc. As fine a young woman as ever I see!’”

  And Polly hid her face again; and husband and wife laughed in concert.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That night a great storm rose. Mahony, sitting reading after everyone else had retired, saw it coming, and lamp in hand went round the house to secure hasps and catches; then stood at the window to watch the storm’s approach. In one half of the sky the stars were still peacefully alight; the other was hidden by a dense cloud, which came racing along like a giant bat with outspread wings, devouring the stars in its flight. The storm broke; there was a sudden shrill screeching, a grinding, piping, whistling, and the wind hurled itself against the house as if to level it with the ground; failing in this, it banged and battered, making windows and doors shake like loose teeth in their sockets. Then it swept by to wreak its fury elsewhere, and there was a grateful lull out of which burst a peal of thunder. And now peal followed peal, and the face of the sky, with its masses of swirling, frothy cloud, resembled an angry sea. The lightning ripped it in fierce zigzags, darting out hundreds of spectral fangs. It was a magnificent sight.

  Polly came running to see where he was, the child cried, Miss Tilly opened her door by a hand’s-breadth, and thrust a red, puffy face, framed in curl-twists, through the crack. Nobody thought of sleep while the commotion lasted, for fear of fire: once alight, these exposed little wooden houses blazed up like heaps of shavings. The clockhands pointed to one before the storm showed signs of abating. Now, the rain was pouring down, making an ear-splitting din on the iron roof and leaping from every gutter and spout. It had turned very cold. Mahony shivered as he got into bed.

  He seemed hardly to have closed an eye when he was wakened by a loud knocking; at the same time the wire of the night-bell was almost wrenched in two. He sat up and looked at his watch. It wanted a few minutes to three; the rain was still falling in torrents; the wind sighed and moaned. Wild horses should not drag him out on such a night! Thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his dressing-gown, he threw up the parlour window. “Who’s there?” The hiss of the rain cut his words through.

  A figure on the doorstep turned at the sound. “Is this a doctor’s? I wuz sent here. Doctor! for God’s sake. . . .”

  “What is it? Stop a minute! I’ll open the door.”

  He did so, letting in a blast of wind and a rush of rain that flooded the oilcloth. The intruder, off whom the water streamed, had to shout to make himself audible.


  “It’s me—Mat Doyle’s me name! It’s me wife, doctor; she’s dying. I’ve bin all night on the road. Ah, for the love of——”

  “Where is it?” Mahony put his hand to the side of his mouth, to keep his words from flying adrift in the wind.

  “Paddy’s Rest. You’re the third I’ve bin to. Not one of the dirty dogs’ull stir a leg! Me girl may die like a rabbit for all they care.”—The man’s voice broke, as he halloed particulars.

  “Paddy’s Rest? On a night like this? Why, the creek will be out.”

  “Doctor! you’re from th’ ould country, I can hear it in your lip. Haven’t you a wife, too, doctor? Then show a bit o’ mercy to mine!”

  “Tut, tut, man, none of that!” said Mahony curtly. “You should have bespoken me at the proper time to attend your wife.—Besides, there’ll be no getting along the road to-night.”

  The other caught the note of yielding. “Sure an’ you’d go out, doctor dear, without thinkin’, to save your dog if he was drownin’. I’ve got me buggy down there; I’ll take you safe. And you shan’t regret it; I’ll make it worth your while, by the Lord Harry I will!”

  “Pshaw!”—Mahony opened the door of the surgery and struck a match. It was a rough grizzled fellow—a “cocky,” on his own showing—who presented himself in the lamplight. His wife had fallen ill that afternoon. At first everything seemed to be going well; then she was seized with fits, had one fit after another, and all but bit her tongue in two. There was nobody with her but a young girl he had fetched from a mile away. He had meant, when her time came, to bring her to the District Hospital. But they had been taken unawares. While he waited he sat with his elbows on his knees, his face between his clenched fists.

  In dressing, Mahony reassured Polly, and instructed her what to say to people who came inquiring after him; it was unlikely he would be back before afternoon. Most of the patients could wait till then. The one exception, a case of typhoid in its second week, a young Scotch surgeon, Brace, whom he had obliged in a similar emergency, would no doubt see for him—she should send Ellen down with a note. And having poured Doyle out a nobbler and put a flask in his own pocket, Mahony reopened the front door to the howl of the wind.

  The lantern his guide carried shed only a tiny circlet of light on the blackness; and the two men picked their steps gingerly along the flooded road. The rain ran in jets off the brim of Mahony’s hat, and down the back of his neck.

  Having climbed into the buggy they advanced at a funeral pace, leaving it to the sagacity of the horse to keep the track. At the creek, sure enough, the water was out, the bridge gone. To reach the next bridge, five miles off, a crazy cross-country drive would have been necessary; and Mahony was for giving up the job. But Doyle would not acknowledge defeat. He unharnessed the horse, set Mahony on its back, and himself holding to its tail, forced the beast, by dint of kicking and lashing, into the water; and not only got them safely across, but up the steep sticky clay of the opposite bank. It was six o’clock and a cloudless morning when, numb with cold, his clothing clinging to him like wet seaweed, Mahony entered the wooden hut where the real work he had come out to do began.

  Later in the day, clad in an odd collection of baggy garments, he sat and warmed himself in the sun, which was fast drawing up in the form of a blankety mist the moisture from the ground. He had successfully performed, under the worst possible conditions, a ticklish operation; and was now so tired that, with his chin on his chest, he fell fast alseep.

  Doyle wakened him by announcing the arrival of the buggy. The good man, who had had more than one nobbler during the morning, could not hold his tongue, but made still another wordy attempt to express his gratitude. “Whither me girl lives or dies, it’ll not be Mat Doyle who forgits what you did for him this night, doctor! An’ if iver you want a bit o’ work done, or some one to do your lyin’ awake at night for you, just you gimme the tip. I don’t mind tellin’ you now, I’d me shootin’-iron here”—he touched his right lip—“an’ if you’d refused—you was the third, mind you,—I’d have drilled you where you stood, God damn me if I wouldn’t!”

  Mahony eyed the speaker with derision. “Much good that would have done your wife, you fathead! Well, well, we’ll say nothing to mine, if you please, about anything of that sort.”

  “No, may all the saints bless ’er and give ’er health! An’ as I say, doctor. . . .” In speaking he had drawn a roll of banknotes from his pocket, and now he tried to stuff them between Mahony’s fingers.

  “What’s this? My good man, keep your money till it’s asked for!” and Mahony unclasped his hands, so that the notes fluttered to the ground.

  “Then there let ’em lay!”

  But when, in clothes dried stiff as cardboard, Mahony was rolling townwards—his coachman, a lad of some ten or twelve who handled the reins to the manner born—as they went he chanced to feel in his coat pocket, and there found five ten-pound notes rolled up in a neat bundle.

  The main part of the road was dry and hard again; but all dips and holes were wells of liquid mud, which bespattered the two of them from top to toe as the buggy bumped carelessly in and out. Mahony diverted himself by thinking of what he could give Polly with this sum. It would serve to buy that pair of gilt cornices or the heavy gilt-framed pierglass on which she had set her heart. He could see her, pink with pleasure, expostulating: “Richard! What wicked extravagance!” and hear himself reply: “And pray may my wife not have as pretty a parlour as her neighbours?” He even cast a thought, in passing, on the pianoforte with which Polly longed to crown the furnishings of her room—though, of course, at least treble this amount would be needed to cover its cost.—But a fig for such nonsense! He knew but one legitimate use to make of the unexpected little windfall, and that was, to put it by for a rainy day. “At my age, in my position, I ought to have fifty pounds in the bank!”—times without number he had said this to himself, with a growing impatience. But he had not yet managed to save a halfpenny. Thrive as the practice might, the expenses of living held even pace with it. And now, having got its cue, his brain started off again on the old treadmill, reckoning, totting up, finding totals, or more often failing to find them, till his head was as hot as his feet were cold. To-day he could not think clearly at all.

  Nor the next day either. By the time he reached home he was conscious of feeling very ill: he had lancinating pains in his limbs, a chill down his spine, an outrageous temperature. To set out again on a round of visits was impossible. He had just to tumble into bed.

  He got between the sheets with that sense of utter well-being, of almost sensual satisfaction, which only one who is shivering with fever knows. And at first very small things were enough to fill him with content: the smoothness of the pillow’s sleek linen; the shadowy light of the room after long days spent in the dusty glare outside; the possibility of resting, the knowledge that it was his duty to rest; Polly’s soft, firm hands, which were always of the right temperature—warm in the cold stage, cool when the fever scorched him, and neither hot nor cold when the dripping sweats came on. But as the fever declined, these slight pleasures lost their hold. Then he was ridden to death by black thoughts. Not only was day being added to day, he meanwhile not turning over a penny; but ideas which he knew to be preposterous insinuated themselves in his brain. Thus, for hours on end he writhed under the belief that his present illness was due solely to the proximity of the Great Swamp, and lay and cursed his folly in having chosen just this neighbourhood to build in. Again, there was the case of typhoid he had been anxious about, prior to his own breakdown: under his locum, peritonitis had set in and carried off the patient. At the time he had accepted the news from Polly’s lips with indifference—too ill to care. But a little later the knowledge of what it meant broke over him, and he suffered the tortures of the damned. Not Brace; he alone would be held responsible for the death; and perhaps not altogether unjustly. Lying there, a pre
y to morbid apprehensions, he rebuilt the case in memory, struggling to recall each slight variation in temperature, each swift change for better, or worse; but as fast as he captured one such detail, his drowsy brain let the last but one go, and he had to beat it up anew. During the night he grew confident that the relatives of the dead woman intended to take action against him, for negligence or improper attendance.

  An attempt to speak of these devilish imaginings to wife and friend was a failure. He undertook it in a fit of desperation, when it seemed as if only a strong and well grounded opposition would save his reason. But this was just what he could not get. Purdy, whom he tried first, held the crude notion that a sick person should never be gainsaid; and soothingly sympathised and agreed, till Mahony could have cried aloud at such blundering stupidity. Polly did better; she contradicted him. But not in the right way. She certainly pooh-poohed his idea of the nearness of Yuille’s Swamp making the house unhealthy; but she did not argue the matter, step by step, and convince him that he was wrong. She just laughed at him as at a foolish child, and kissed him, and tucked him in anew. And when it came to the typhoid’s fatal issue, she had not the knowledge needed to combat him with any chance of success. She heard him anxiously out, and allowed herself to be made quite nervous over a possible fault on his part, so jealous was she for his growing reputation.

  So that in the end it was he who had to comfort her.

  “Don’t take any notice of what I say to-day, wife. It’s this blessed fever. . . .I’m light-headed, I think.”