“Ooo. . . .tum on! Us’ll dance, too,” cried the twins. And taking hands they hopped and capered about the drawing-room, their little starched white petticoats flaring as they swung. For Papa was dancing with Mamma. He had seized her by the waist and polked her up the passage, and now was whirling her round, she trying to get loose and crying: “Stop, Richard, stop! You’ll make me sick.” But Papa just laughed and twirled on, the Dumplings faithfully imitating him, till, crash, bang! a vase of Parian marble on the big centre table lost its balance, toppled over and was smashed to atoms.
“There!. . . .that’s just what I expected. There’s no room here for such goings-on,” said Mary as she stooped to pick up the fragments.
It came of her having called Richard in to view the drawing-room, where for over a week she had stitched and hammered, or sat perched on the top rung of a step-ladder. Herself she was not displeased with her work; though she mourned the absence of the inlaid secretaire, the card-table, the ottoman. These things were still in the outhouse, in their travelling-cases; and there they would have to remain. The Collard and Collard took up nearly the whole of one wall; the round rosewood table devoured the floor-space; everything was much too large. And the best bits, the Parisian gilt-legged tables and gilt-framed mirrors, made absolutely no show, huddled together as they were.
But Richard went into ecstasies. “They’ll never have seen a room like it!—the people here. We’ll show them what’s what, wife, eh?. . . .make ’em open their eyes. Mary! I prophesy you’ll have the whole township come trooping over the Lagoon to call. We shall need to charge ’em admission.”—and therewith he had seized and swung her round. So undignified. . . .before Eliza. Besides egging the children on to do likewise.
But there was no damping Richard just now. Though a fortnight had passed, he was still in the simmer of excitement into which their coming had thrown him. While she stitched, even while she turned the handle of the sewing-machine, he would stand at her side and talk, and talk, in a voice that was either pitched just a shade too high, or was husky and tremulous. The separation had plainly been too much for him. His joy at getting them again was not to be kept within bounds.
“You’re absolutely all I’ve got, you know. . . .you and the children.”
Which was quite literally true: so true that, at times, Mary would find herself haunted by the unpleasant vision of a funeral at which it was not possible to fill a single coach with mourners. Richard—to be followed to his grave by the doctor who had attended him, the parson who was to bury him. . . .and not a soul besides. Her heart contracted at the disgrace of the thing: the shame of letting the world know how little he had cared for any one, or been cared for in return.
Impatiently she shook her head and turned to listen to voices in the passage. They were those of Richard and a patient; but chiefly Richard’s. For he had carried his talkative fit over to strangers as well. . . .and Mary sometimes wondered what they thought of him: these small shopkeepers and farmers and vinegrowers and licensed publicans. Well, at any rate, they wouldn’t be able to bring the usual accusation against him, of stiff-necked reserve. The truth was, they just came in for their share of his all-pervading good humour. The children, too. Had he always made so much of the children, they would have felt more at home with him, and he have had less cause for jealous grumbles. He even unearthed his old flute, screwed the parts together, and to Cuffy’s enchantment played them his one-time show-piece, The Minstrel Boy. And it was the same with everything. He vowed the Barambogie bread to be the best, the butter the sweetest he had ever tasted: going so far as to compliment the astonished tradespeople on their achievements. And Mary, watching in silence, thought how pleasant all this was. . . .and how unnatural. . . .and waited for the moment to come when he would drop headlong from the skies.
In waiting, her head with its high Spanish comb bent low over her work, she gave the rein to various private worries of her own. For instance she saw quite clearly that Eliza’s stay with them would not be a long one. Forgetful of past favours, of the expense they had been at in bringing her there, Eliza was already darkly hinting her opinion of the place; of the detached kitchen; the dust, the solitude. Again, the want of a proper waiting-room for patients was proving a great trial. The dining-room seemed never their own. More serious was the risk the children thereby ran of catching some infectious illness. Then, she sometimes felt very uneasy about Richard. In spite of his exuberance, he looked anything but well. The bout of dysentery he had suffered from, on first arriving, had evidently been graver than he cared to admit. His colour was bad, his appetite poor; while as for sleep, if he managed four consecutive hours of a night he counted himself lucky. And even then it wasn’t a restful sleep; for he had got the absurd idea in his head that he might not hear the nightbell—in this tiny house!—and at the least sound was awake and sitting up. Again, almost every day brought a long trudge into the bush, from which he came home too tired to eat. And Mary’s old fear revived. Would he ever be able at his age to stand the wear and tear of the work?—especially as the practice grew, and he became more widely known.
But, even as she asked herself the question, another doubt flew at her. Was there any real prospect of the practice growing, and him retrieving his shattered fortunes? Or had he, in burying himself in this wild bush, committed the crowning folly of his life? And, of the two, this fear ate the deeper. For she thought he might have so husbanded his strength as to carry on for a few years; but the more she saw of place and people, the slenderer grew her belief that there was money to be made there. How anybody in his five senses could have professed to see in Barambogie what Richard did—oh! no one but Richard could have so deceived himself. Of all the dead-and-alive holes she had ever been in, this was the deadest. Only two trains a day called there, with eight hours between. The railway station was mostly closed and deserted, the stationmaster to be found playing euchre at the “Sun.” Quite a quarter of the shops in the main street were boarded up; the shafts round the township had all been worked out or abandoned. As for the tale of the big mine. . . .well, she considered that had been just a bait with which to hook a simple fish. How she did wish she had somebody to talk to! Richard was no use at all. . . .in his present mood. To the few feelers she threw out, he declared himself exaggeratedly well content. Though the number of patients was still not great, his calls into the bush were royally paid. It was five guineas here, ten there; as compared with the petty fees he had commanded at Hawthorn. “Surely, my dear, if money flows in at this rate, we can put up with a few slight drawbacks?”
Such as the flour mill, thought Mary grimly. This dreadful mill! Would any but a man so complacently have planked them down next door to it? It entirely spoilt the garden, with its noise and dust. Then, the mill-hands who passed to and fro, or sat outside the fence, were a very rough lot; and five times a day you had to stop in what you were saying and wait for the shriek of the steam-whistle to subside. Except for the railway station, their house and the mill stood alone on this side of the Lagoon, and were quite five minutes’ walk from the township. Richard hugged himself with his privacy, and it certainly was nicer to be away from shops and public-houses. But, for the practice, their seclusion was a real disadvantage. Rummel had lived in the main street; and his surgery had been as handy for people to drop into for, say, a cut finger or a black eye, as was now the chemist’s shop. Then, the Lagoon itself. . . .this view of which Richard had made so much! After the rains, when there was some water in it, it might be all right; but just now it was more than three parts dry, and most unsightly. You saw the bare cracked earth of its bottom, not to speak of the rubbish, the old tins and boots and broken china, that had been thrown into it when full. And the mosquitoes! She had been obliged to put netting round all their beds; and what it would be like in summer passed imagining.
From such reflections, in the weeks and months that followed, she had nothing but work to distract her. The society airily pr
omised her by Richard failed to materialise. She received just three callers. And only one of these—the Bank Manager’s wife, a young thing, newly wed—was worth considering. The stationmaster’s. . . .the stationmaster himself was an educated man, with whom even Richard enjoyed a chat; but he had married beneath him. . . .a dressmaker, if report spoke true. Mrs. Cameron, wife of the Clerk of the Court, had lived so long in Barambogie that she had gone queer from it. Nor was it feasible to ask the old couple over of an evening, for cards or music; for by then old Cameron was so fuddled that he couldn’t tell a knave from a king. The parson was also an odd fish, and a widower without family; the Presbyterian minister unmarried. The poor children had no playfellows, no companions. Oh, not for herself, but for those who were more to her than herself, Mary’s heart was often very hot and sore.
Nevertheless she put her shoulder to the wheel with all her old spirit; rising betimes to bath and dress the children, cutting out and making their clothes, superintending the washing and ironing, cooking the meals; and, when Eliza passed and a young untrained servant took her place, doing the lion’s share towards keeping the house in the spotless state Richard loved and her own sense of nicety demanded. But the work told on her. And not alone because it was harder. In Hawthorn, she had laboured to some end; Richard had had to be re-established, connections formed, their own nice house tended. All of which had given her mind an upward lift. Here, where no future beckoned, it seemed just a matter of toiling for toil’s sake. The consequence was, she tired much more readily; her legs ached, her feet throbbed, and the crow’s-feet began to gather round her eyes. She was paying of course, she told herself, for those long years of luxury and idleness, in which Richard had been against her lifting a finger. And it was no easy thing to buckle to again, now that she was “getting on,” “going downhill”: Mary being come to within a twelve-month of her fortieth year.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Cousin Emmy, tell about little Jacky.”
“Little Jacky what died.”
“No, don’t! Tell what the gumtrees talk.”
Cuffy hated the tale of Baby Jacky’s illness and death; for Cousin Emmy always cried when she told it. And to see a grown-up person cry wasn’t proper.
The four of them were out for their morning walk, and sat resting on a fallen tree.
“Well, dears, poor little Jacky was so often ill that God thought he would be happier in heaven. His back teeth wouldn’t come through; and he was so feverish and restless that I had to carry him about most of the night. The last time I walked him up and down he put his little arms round my neck and said: ‘Ting, Memmy!’—he couldn’t say ‘sing’ or ‘Emmy’ properly, you know”—a detail which entranced the Dumplings, who had endless difficulties with their own speech. “And those were the very last words he said. In the middle of the night he took convulsions–—”
“What are c’nvulshuns, Cousin Emmy?” The question came simultaneously, none of the three being minded, often as they had heard the story, to let the narrator skip this, the raciest bit of it.
‘‘Why, poor darling, he shivered and shook, and squinted and rolled his eyes, and went blue in the face, and his body got stiff, and he turned up his eyes till you could only see the whites. And then he died, and we dressed him in his best nightgown, and he lay there looking like a big wax doll—with white flowers in his hands. And his little coffin was lined with white satin, and trimmed with the most beautiful lace. . . .” And here sure enough, at mention of her nursling’s last costly bed, Emmy began to cry. The three children, reddening, smiled funny little embarrassed smiles and averted their eyes; only occasionally taking a surreptitious peep to see what Cousin Emmy looked like when she did it.
With the heel of his boot Cuffy hammered the ground. He knew something else. . . .about Cousin Emmy. . . .something naughty. He’d heard Mamma and Papa talking; and it was about running away and Aunt Lizzie being most awfully furious. And then Cousin Emmy had come to stay with them. He was glad she had; he liked her. Her hair was yellow, like wattle; her mouth ever so red. And she told them stories. Mamma could only read stories. And never had time.
To-day, however, there would be no more. For round a bend of the bush track, by which they sat, came a figure which the children were growing used to see appearing on their walks. It was the Reverend Mr. Angus. He wore a long black coat that reached below his knees and a white tie. He had a red curly beard and pink cheeks. (Just like a lady, thought Cuffy.) At sight of the lovely girl in deep mourning, bathed in tears, these grew still pinker. Advancing at a jogtrot, their owner seated himself on the tree and took Emmy’s hand in his.
The children were now supposed to “run away and play.” The twins fell to building a little house, with pieces of bark and stones; but Cuffy determined to pick a beeyutiful nosegay, that Cousin Emmy would like ever so much, and say “How pretty!” to, and “How kind of you, Cuffy!’’ Mr. Angus had a face like a cow; and when he spoke he made hissing noises through his teeth. The first time he heard them, Cuffy hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away, and had stood stockstill in front of the minister till Cousin Emmy got quite cross. And Mr. Angus said, in his opinion, little people should not only be seen and not heard, but not even seen.
All right then! Whistling his loudest Cuffy sauntered off. He would be good, and not go near any of the old, open shafts; quite specially not the one where the old dead donkey had tumbled in and floated. You weren’t allowed to look down this hole, not even if somebody held your hand. . . .like Mr. Angus did Cousin Emmy’s. (Why was he? She couldn’t fall off a log.) It had a nasty smell, too. Cousin Emmy said only to think of it made her sick. And Mamma said they were to hold their noses as they passed. Why was the donkey so nasty because it was dead? What did a dead donkey do?
But first he would pick the flowers. It wouldn’t take long, there were such lots of them. Papa said we must thank the rains for the flowers; and it had rained every day for nearly a month. The Lagoon was quite full, and the tank, too; which made Mamma glad.—And now Cuffy darted about, tearing up bits of running postman, and pulling snatches of the purple sarsaparilla that climbed the bushes and young trees, till he had a tight, close bunch in his hot little hand. As he picked, he sniffed the air, which smelt lovely. . . .like honey. . . .Cousin Emmy said it was the wattle coming out. To feel it better he shut his eyes, screwed them up to nothing, and kept them tight. And when he opened them again, everything looked new. . . .as if he’d never seen it before. . . .all the white trees, tall like poles, that went up and up to where, right at the top, among whiskery branches, were bits of blue that were the sky.
With the elastic of his big upturned sailor-hat between his teeth—partly to keep it on; partly because he loved chewing things: elastic, or string, or the fingers of kid gloves—Cuffy ran at top speed to the donkey-hole. But a couple of yards from the shaft his courage all but failed him. What was he going to see? And ooh!. . . .it did smell. Laying his flowers on the ground, he went down on his hands and knees and crawled forward till he could just peep over. And then, why, what a sell! It wasn’t a donkey at all—just water—and in it a great lump that stuck out like a ’normous boiled pudding. . . .oh, and a million, no, two million and a half blowflies walking on it, and a smell like—ooh, yes! just exactly like. . . .
But before he could put a name to the odour, there was a great shouting and cooee-ing, and it was him they were calling. . . .and calling. In his guilty fright Cuffy gave a jerk, and off went his hat with its pulped elastic—went down, down, down, while the blowflies came up. He just managed to wriggle a little way back, but was still on all fours (squashing the flowers) when they found him, Mr. Angus panting and puffing with tears on his forehead, Cousin Emmy pressing her hand to her chest and saying, oh dear oh dear! Then Mr. Angus took him by the shoulder and shook him. Little boys who ran away in the bush always got lost, and never saw their Mammas and Papas again. They had nothing to eat and star
ved to death, and not till years afterwards were their skeletons found. Cuffy, who knew quite well where he was, and hadn’t meant to run away, thought him very silly. . . .and rude.
It was the loss of the hat that was the tragedy. This made ever so many things go wrong, and ended with Cousin Emmy having to go back to live with Aunt Lizzie again, and them getting a real paid governess to teach them.
Hatless, squeezed close up to Cousin Emmy to be under her parasol, Cuffy was hurried through the township. “Or people will think your Mamma is too poor to buy you a hat.”
The children’s hearts were heavy. It infected them with fear to see Cousin Emmy so afraid, and to hear her keep saying: “What will Aunt Mary say?”
Not only, it seemed, had the hat cost a lot of money— to get another like it Mamma would have to send all the way to Melbourne. But it also leaked out that not a word was to have been said about Mr. Angus meeting them, and sitting on the log and talking.
“Why not? Is it naughty?”
“Of course not, Cuffy! How can you be so silly! But——”
But. . . .well, Aunt Mary would certainly be dreadfully cross with her for not looking after him better. How could he be so dishonourable, the first moment she wasn’t watching, to go where he had been strictly forbidden to. . . .such a dirty place!. . . .and where he might have fallen head-foremost down the shaft and never been seen again.
Yes, it was a very crestfallen, guilt-laden little party that entered the house.
Mamma came out of the dining-room, a needle in one hand, a long thread of cotton in the other. And she saw at once what had happened, and said: “Where’s your hat?—Lost it? Your nice, new hat? How? Come in here to me.” The twins began to sniff, and then everything was up.
Yes, Mamma was very cross. . . .and sorry, too; for poor Papa was working his hardest to keep them nice, and then a careless little boy just went and threw money into the street. But ever so much crosser when she heard where the hat had gone: she scolded and scolded. And then she put the question Cuffy dreaded most: “Pray, what were you doing there. . . .by yourself?” In vain he shuffled and prevaricated, and told about the nosegay. Mamma just fixed her eyes on him, and it was no good; Mr. Angus had to come out. And now it was Cousin Emmy’s turn. She went scarlet, but she answered Mamma back quite a lot, and was angry, too; and only when Mamma said she wouldn’t have believed it of her, it was the behaviour of a common nursegirl, and she would have to speak to her uncle about her—at that Cousin Emmy burst out crying, and ran away and shut herself in her room.
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Page 87