The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

by Henry Handel Richardson

  She hung her head, holding tight as if for support to the clasp of her sealskin bag, while the warder told the tale of Richard’s misdeeds. 97B was, he declared, not only disobedient and disorderly; he was extremely abusive, dirty in his habits (here the catch of the handbag snapped, and broke), would neither sleep himself at night nor let other people sleep; also he refused to wash himself, or to eat his food. “It’s always the same ol’ story. No sooner I bring him his grub than he up and pitches the dishes at me head.”

  She thought she had the fellow there. “Do you mean to tell me he. . . .that you give him fresh crockery to break every day?”

  “Crockery? Ho, no fear! The plates and cups is all of tin.”

  At this Mary laughed, but very bitterly. “Ah! now I see. That explains it. For I know my husband. Never would you get him. . . .nothing would induce him. . . .to eat off tin.”

  “Needs Sèvres no doubt!”

  “No! All he needs is to be treated like a gentleman. . . .by gentlemen.”

  But she had to keep a grip on her mind to hinder it from following the picture up: Richard, forced by this burly brute to grope on the floor for his spilt food, to scrape it together, and either eat it or have it thrust down his throat. So she shut her ears, made herself deaf to their further talk, stood as it were looking through the speakers and out beyond—at her ripening purpose.

  But when at the end of the interview she made a last, passionate appeal to be allowed to see her husband, she was not too absorbed to catch the glance, alive with significance, that passed between the men. Sorry, said the keeper, but the patient was in bed resting after a very bad night: he couldn’t on any account have him woke up again. At which excuse, things (old things), that she had heard from Richard about the means used to quell and break the spirits of refractory lunatics, jumped into her mind. There was not only feeding by force, the strait-jacket, the padded cell. There were drugs and injections, given to keep a patient quiet and ensure his warders their freedom: doses of castor oil so powerful that the unhappy wretch into whom they were poured was rendered bedridden, griped, thoroughly ill.

  But she saw plainly, here was nothing to be done. Her fight to get him back would have to be carried on outside the walls of the asylum. Buttoning her gloves with shaky, fumbling fingers, she confronted her opponents in a last bout of defiance. “I find it hard to believe a word of what you’ve said. But I know this: my husband shall not stay here. I’ll take him home and look after him myself. He shall never leave my side again.”

  They all but laughed in her face. The idea was a very woman’s! No alienist would ever be got to revoke this particular patient’s certificate. . . .or advise his release. In his fits of mania 97B was dangerous, and not merely to those about him; he needed protection against himself, which could only be given him by men trained to the job. Impossible!. . . .utterly impossible.

  She left them at it, turned her back and marched out of the room and down the corridor, through innumerable doors, not one of which she could afterwards remember having opened or shut (they were as insubstantial as the people she met on her passage), made her way to the ferry and up the other side, where she was helped into the carriage. And even while she bowled forward again, she continued to sit rigid and insensible, her sole movement being to pull off her gloves—they incommoded her—that she might lock her fingers. . . .in an iron grip. The skin of her face felt stretched: like a mask that was too tight for it. But she shed not a tear, either here or when, having reached home, she paced the floor of the room and told her story. Something stronger than herself had control of her: she was all one purpose, one flame. Her old friend it was who wept. “Oh, just to think of ’im being come to this!. . . .’im, the ’andsomest man I ever saw, and the best as well.”

  But she, too, said: “Impossible! Oh no, my dear, it couldn’t be done,” when she heard of Mary’s determination. “Your children—you ’ave your children to consider.”

  “Oh, I can take care of them. But should I ever again know a moment’s peace, if I left him in that awful place? Richard?. . . .my poor old husband? As it is he’ll believe I’ve deserted him. . . .forgotten him. . . .left off caring. No: I mean to get him out, or die in the attempt.”

  And when the old lady saw the blazing eyes, the dilated nostrils, the set jaw with which this was said, she bowed before the iron will made manifest, and went over heart and soul to Mary’s side. “Well, then, my love and my dearie, if nothing else will do—and, oh my dear, I feel in the bottom of my ’eart you’re right—then what I say is, we—Jake and me—’ull do everything that lies in our power to ’elp you. I’ll manage Jake; you go on to the rest. Get ’old of ’em somehow, and give ’em no quarter. . . .and though they talk till all’s blue about their laws and certificates. What’s laws for, I’d like to know, if not to be got round?”

  But this was the sole word of encouragement Mary heard. The rest of the world combined to iterate and reiterate the doctor’s verdict of impossible, utterly impossible.

  She battered at every likely door. All sense of pride having left her, any influential or well-known person who in former years had broken bread at her table, or whom she had casually met at another’s, she now waylaid or ran to earth. For along with her pride went also the retiring modesty, the shrinking from prominence, that had hallmarked her years of wifehood. She was no longer the “lady,” watchful of her steps. She was a tiger fighting for her young—did not Richard, in his present state, stand for the youngest and most helpless of her children?—and she now found to her astonishment that she was quite capable of standing up to men, of arguing with them, of talking them down, and, if necessary, of telling them what she thought of them.

  The medical profession, of course, furnished her with her most implacable opponents. The doctors to whom she turned acted as if she were the crazed one; or else they smiled good-humouredly at her, as at a child. . . .or a woman. But if she stood firm, refusing to be browbeaten or cajoled, they gave her short shrift. To remove an insane person with notedly violent periods—a perfectly proper subject for detention—from medical safe-keeping, in order to place him in inexperienced lay-hands: such an act would be a criminal proceeding on the part of any medical man found to sanction it. Her ignorance of matters medical alone acquitted her. Nor could she get them to credit the ill-treatment to which Richard was being subjected. Again it was sheer ignorance on her part that made her take this view. The asylum authorities were doubtless fully justified in what they did: you could not reason with the deranged. And so on. . . .and on. How she came to hate and dread the words Certification, Lunacy Laws, Lunacy Authorities! Their very sound seemed to shut away for ever, from the rest of humanity, from every human feeling, those unfortunates who had fallen beneath the ban.

  Giving the doctors up as a bad job, she turned her attention to other influential people she had known: members of parliament, bankers, the clergy. And here she was received with the utmost consideration, no one of these old friends and acquaintances reminding her, by so much as a look, that she was now but a poor up-country postmistress. All alike deplored Richard’s fate, and offered her their heartfelt sympathy; but from none of them could she wring a promise of help or interference. Their concern was entirely for her, her personal safety, and that of her children. While the Bishop and his brethren spoke in muted voices of God’s Will, this mysterious Will to which it was one’s duty to submit—till she could have flung her bag at their heads. A stone for bread, indeed, when her only cry was: “Give me back my husband!”

  Sir Jake, who had been won over—though rather half-heartedly, and solely as a result of endless, nagging curtain-lectures—did what he could; but he no longer held office and his influence was slight. And the person on whom Mary had built most, the one member of the present ministry she knew intimately, Henry Ocock, was not to be got at. Though she called every day, and sometimes twice a day, at his chambers, it was always to learn t
hat business still detained him in Ballarat.

  She applied for a second week’s leave of absence—and got it. And when but forty-eight hours of this remained and she had still achieved as good as nothing, she sent Mr. Henry a page-long telegram, imploring him, in the name of their old friendship, to grant her an interview.

  He travelled to Melbourne by the next train. She met him one cold, dusty autumn afternoon, in a private sitting-room at Scott’s Hotel.

  He came towards her with outstretched hands, but was so shocked at her appearance that he would not let her say a word before she was thoroughly rested and refreshed. Then, the waiter having withdrawn, he drew up his chair and begged her to tell him what he could do for her.

  To this old friend, whose mottled hair she had known when it was sleekest, jettiest raven, she now opened her heart; beginning from the time when, almost against her will and certainly against her better judgment, she had yielded to the specious assurances of Bowes-Smith and his kind, and had consented to Richard becoming the inmate of a public lunatic asylum.—“Never should I have let him get into their clutches!”—But so much had been made of the treatment, the individual nursing he would receive there, and the beneficial effect this would have on him, that she had sunk her scruples. Afterwards had come the stoppage of his letters, the dead silence of his imprisonment, and her growing doubts; followed by her journey to town, her tragic discovery of his true state, the insolence she had had to put up with from the young assistant—“Hardly more than a medical student!”—the beggar’s calvary she had since been through. Not a living soul, it seemed, was willing to break a lance for Richard: once certified, a man might just as well be under the soil. On all sides she had been bidden to go home and live in peace. Knowing what she knew? Would other women have done it? If so, they were made of different stuff from her. She would think herself a traitor, if she did not fight for Richard’s release as long as she had a breath left in her body.

  Ocock let her talk: heard her out in a lawyer’s cogitative silence, the while thoughtfully pulling at and stroking his chin. Even after she had ceased speaking he sat meditative—and so used was Mary, by now, to being instantly downed and dismissed, that this very silence fed her hopes. Hence when at last he broke it, his words had the force of a blow. For all he did was to bring to her notice a point which he very much feared she had overlooked. And this was that she was no longer a private individual, but a public servant in Government employ. Difficulties would certainly be raised from this side, too, did she apply—as she was bound to do—for permission to receive a certified lunatic in her home. The Department would hold that the efficient discharge of her duties and the care, at the same time, of a sick man, would be irreconcilable. . . .impossible.

  At this repetition of the word that had dogged her every step, something tipped over in Mary. Passionately flinging up her head, she looked full and squarely at Ocock: pinned with her own what Richard had been used to call “those shifty little black boot-buttons of eyes!” And then, almost before she knew it, words began to pour from her lips, things she could not have believed herself capable of saying—to any one, let alone Henry Ocock, now so far above her. (In after years of a sleepless night she would suddenly feel her face begin to burn in the darkness, at the mere remembrance of them. Spiritual blackmail would have been Richard’s name for it.)

  It was of herself and Richard that she had meant to speak; of the tie between them which no living creature had the right to break. But Ocock’s presence seemed to bring the whole past alive before her, and the past brought Agnes, and memories of Agnes—“The dearest, truest little soul that ever lived!”—and of the murk and misery in which the poor thing’s days had ended. And under the influence of this emotion everything came out. Not only, lost to shame, did she throw in her listener’s teeth all she had done for Agnes: the expense she had been put to when she could ill afford it; the pains she had been at to save Agnes from herself: she also stripped the veneer off his own conduct, laying bare his heartlessness, his egoism, his cruelty, yes, even brutality: how, in order to keep up his dignity, save his own face, he had wantonly sacrificed his wife, abandoning her when she most needed love, pity, companionship; shutting her up to drink herself to death—even barbarously shipping her off to die alone, among strangers, in a strange land. Not a shred of self-respect did she leave on him: he should see himself for once as others saw him: and she went on, pouring out scorn on his hypocrisy and pretence, till she had him standing there as morally naked as he had come physically naked into the world, and would one day go out of it. Before she finished the tears were streaming down her cheeks. . . .for Agnes; her own troubles completely forgotten for the moment, over the other’s tragedy.

  Her voice failing her, she came to a stop: just sat and stared before her, feeling, now the fit was over, cold and queer and shaky. But nothing would have made her take back a word of what she had said; not even though—as was only too likely—she had ruined her chances for good and all.

  As, however, the silence that followed seemed to be going to last for ever, she plucked up courage to glance at Mr. Henry. And she had the surprise of her life. For he was sitting gazing at her with a look such as she had never seen on his face; a kindly, indulgent, almost fond look; and—oh, was it possible?—with his eyes full of tears. More, these eyes were now as steady as her own, had quite ceased furtively to dart and run. And the crowning touch was put to this strange reception of her tirade, by his nodding his head, slowly, several times in succession and saying: “A staunch and loyal advocate indeed!—My friend, a great fighter has been lost in you.”

  Then he got up and went to the window, where he stood looking down into the street. Mary sat motionless, but odd thoughts and scraps of thoughts were whizzing round her brain. This then was how. . . .stand up to him, bully him. . . .if Agnes had only. . . .but would never have had the spirit. And then his eyes. . . .the shiftiness more than half fear. . . .fear of discovery. . . .and, once found out—But, oh! not praise for her eloquence. If she hadn’t touched him. . . .or had touched him solely in this way.

  Coming back to her he took her hands. “What you are asking of me, Mrs. Mahony, means difficulties of which you, as a woman, do not realise the quarter. . . .the half. I will make you no fixed promises; which I might be unable to keep. All I will say is, that for your sake—your sake alone!—I will see what can be done.”

  And with this single straw to cling to, Mary travelled home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He had enjoined her to patience and patient she was—though week ran into week and month to month, in all of which time she knew nothing of what was happening behind the scenes, or what strings Ocock was pulling to upset the cumbrous machinery of medical law. She just dragged on from day to day, in ignorance and suspense. But her nerves often got the better of her, and then the children felt her heavy, hasty hand. While, in her official capacity, so set did she become on her “rights,” so unblushing in making her voice heard, that her name grew to be a by-word in the service. “That tartar at G.G.,” (which was the morse call for Gymgurra) was how she was familiarly spoken of.

  In this dreary time, when her narrow walls oppressed her to breathlessness, but from which there was no possible escape for her; one piece of good fortune came her way. The house at Shortlands found a tenant; and so the money which she had laboriously scraped together for the following quarter’s rent would not be needed. Hence when at last the tide began to turn, with the substitution of “highly dangerous,” and “a most risky experiment,” for the maddening “impossible,” she actually had a small sum in hand with which to make her preparations. And she set about these forthwith; building on her recently acquired knowledge of men and their ways. She could look for no complete volte face on their part. Only in this grudging, half-hearted fashion would their consent be given.

  Help in the house she must have, was she to be free to devote what time she could spare from h
er office-work to Richard. Her first thought was naturally of her poor old ageing sister, and she wrote to Zara, offering her house-room in exchange for her services. But though in her last situation little more than a nursemaid, Zara declined the proposal as stiffly and uncompromisingly as if she were rolling in money: dubbing Mary mad as a March hare to think of removing “our poor dear Richard” from safe control; madder still to imagine that she, Zara, with her delicate nerves, would be able to live for a single day under the same roof as a lunatic. Emmy, unasked, wrote begging to be allowed to help care for “poor darling Uncle.” But quite apart from the mixed motives that underlay the offer, this was out of the question. You could not so take the bloom off a young girl’s life. There would be things to do for Richard—unfit things. . . .And it was here that Mary bethought herself of the woman she had befriended on her journey to town, whose son had died soon after. So, in the same terms as to Zara, she wrote to “Mrs. Bowman at Sayer’s Thack”—though it did seem rather like posting a letter into the void. Almost by return, however, came an ill-spelt scrawl, joyfully accepting the job; and a little later Mrs. Bowman herself got out of the coach, with all her worldly goods tied up in one small cardboard-box, but carrying with her, as a gift, a stringy old hen (fit only for the soup-pot) and half a pound of dairy butter. And in this poor, lone soul, Mary found yet another of those devoted, leech-like friends, who had starred her path through life.

  The final surrender came in the form of a lengthy screed from Mr. Henry, in which he informed her that, after surmounting difficulties and obstacles greater even than he had anticipated, he had at last succeeded in bringing the various authorities involved—medical, legal, postal—to agree to the plan of Dr. Mahony’s removal from control being given a provisional trial. That was to say, the patient would be accompanied to Gymgurra by two warders, who would remain while the experiment was made. In the event of it failing, they would immediately escort the patient back to the asylum. Followed, this, by four pages in which Mr. Henry begged her once more seriously to consider what she was doing. It was still not too late to draw back. Should she, however, decide to go forward, he trusted she would further show her friendship for him by regarding him as her banker, if the expenses of the undertaking proved too heavy for her purse. He would be only too happy to assist her.—Well, thank goodness, owing to her little windfall, she need be beholden to nobody; although, at this pass, she would not have hesitated to borrow freely. But, Bowey’s expenses settled, she had still enough in hand to cover the three fares up from town, and those of the warders back; as well as their board and lodging while in Gymgurra.