Ultima Thule (23 page)

And when, later on, he returned from a visit to church and parsonage, and still professed himself well content, she began to see him with other eyes. It was not so much tact and civility on his part, as a set determination not to scratch below the surface. He didn't want to spoil his own comfort by being forced to see things as they really were.

Of course this turn of mind made him the pleasantest of guests. (Fancy, though, having to live perpetually in such a simmer of satisfaction!) And even here his wilful blindness had its drawbacks. Had he been different, the kind of man to say: "Your husband is not looking very well," or: "Does Dr. Mahony find the climate here try him?" or otherwise have given her an opening, she might have plucked up courage to confide in him, to unburden herself of some of her worries -- oh! the relief it would have been to speak freely to a person of their own class. As it was, he no doubt firmly refused to let himself become aware of the slightest change for the worse in Richard.

Well, at least her main object was achieved: if wanted, the Bishop had to be sought and found at "Doctor's." She also so contrived it that Richard and he were daily seen hobnobbing in public. Each morning she started them off together for the township: the short, thickset, animated figure, the tall, lean, bent one.

And now the crown was to be set on her labours by a public entertainment. First, a concert of local talent; after which his Lordship had promised to give them a short address.

But at the very last minute, if Richard didn't threaten to undo all her work! For, if he did not take the chair at this meeting, she would have laboured in vain. Just to think of seeing that fool Thistlethwaite in his place! Or old Cameron, who as likely as not would be half-seas over.

But Richard was as obstinate as a mule. "I can't, Mary," . . . very peevishly . . . "and what's more, I won't! To be stuck up there for all those yokels to gape at. For God's sake, let me alone!"

She could cheerfully have boxed his ears. But she kept her temper. "All you've got to do, dear, is to sit there . . . at most to say half-a-dozen words to introduce his Lordship. You, who're such a dab hand at that sort of thing!" -- Until, by alternate wheedling and bullying, she had him worn down.

But when the evening came she almost doubted her own wisdom. By then he had worked himself up into a sheerly ridiculous state of agitation: you might have thought he had to appear before the Queen. His coat was too shabby, his collar was frayed; he couldn't tie his cravat or get his studs in -- she had everything to do for him. She heard him, too, when he thought no one was listening, feverishly rehearsing the reading which the Bishop, at a hint from her, had duly persuaded him into giving. No, she very much feared Richard's day for this kind of thing was over.

The hall at the "Sun" was packed. From a long way round, from Brown's Plains and the Springs, farmers and vinegrowers had driven in with their families: the street in front of the hotel was blocked with buggies, with wagonettes, spring-cars, shandrydans and drays. And the first part of the evening went off capitally. There was quite a fund of musical talent in the place: the native-born sons and daughters of tradesmen and publicans had many of them clear, sweet voices, and sang with ease. It was not till the turn came of the draperess, Miss Mundy, that the trouble began -- they hadn't ventured to leave her out, for she was one of the main props of the church and head teacher in the Sunday School. But she had no more voice than a peahen; and what there was of it was not in tune. Then, though elderly and very scraggy, she had dressed herself up to the nines. She sang Comin' Thro' the Rye with what she meant to be a Scotch accent . . . said jin for gin, boody for buddy . . . and smirked and sidled like a nancified young girl. To the huge delight of the audience, who had her out again and again, shouting "Brave-o!" and "Enkor!"

And the poor silly old thing drank it all in, bowed with her hand on her heart, kissed the tips of her gloves -- especially in the direction of the Bishop -- then fluttered the pages with her lavender kids and prepared to repeat the song. This was too much for Richard, who was as sensitive to seeing another person made a butt of, as to being himself held up to ridicule. From his seat in the front row he hissed, so loudly that everybody sitting round could hear: "Go back, you fool, go back! Can't you see they're laughing at you?"

It was done out of sheer tenderheartedness, but . . . For one thing, the Bishop had entered into the fun and applauded with the rest; so it was a sort of snub for him, too. As for Miss Mundy, though she shut her music-book and retired into the wings, she glared at Richard as if she could have eaten him; while the audience, defrauded of its amusement, turned nasty, and started to boo and groan. There was an awkward pause before the next item on the programme could be got going. And when Richard's own turn came -- he was reading selections from Out of the Hurly-Burly -- people weren't very well disposed towards him. Which he needed. For he was shockingly nervous; you could see the book shaking in his hands. Then, too, the light was poor, and though he rubbed and polished at his spectacles and held the pages up this way and that, he couldn't see properly, and kept reading the wrong words and having to correct himself, or go h'm . . . h'm . . . while he tried to decipher what came next. And through his stumbling so, the jokes didn't carry. Nobody laughed; even though he had picked out those excruciatingly funny bits about the patent combination step-ladder and table, that performed high jinks of itself in the attic at night; and the young man who stuck to the verandah steps when he went a-courting: things that usually made people hold their sides.

If only he would just say he couldn't see, and apologise and leave off . . . or at least cut it short. But he was too proud for that; besides, he wouldn't think it fair, to fail in his share of the entertainment. And so he laboured on, stuttering and stumbling, and succeeding only in making a donkey of himself. Suppressed giggles were audible behind Mary: yes, people were laughing now, but not at the funny stories. Of course at the finish, the audience didn't dare not to clap; for the Bishop led the way; but the next minute everybody broke out into a hullabaloo of laughing and talking; in face of which the Bishop's "Most humorous! Quite a treat!" sounded very thin.

The exertion had worn Richard out: you could see the perspiration trickling down his face. The result was, having immediately to get on his feet again to introduce the Bishop, he clean forgot what he had been going to say. Nothing came. There was another most embarrassing pause, in which her own throat went hot and dry, while he stood clearing his and looking helplessly round. But, once found, his words came with a rush -- too much of a rush: they tumbled over one another and got all mixed up: he contradicted himself, couldn't find an end to his sentences, said to-morrow when he meant to-day, and visa versa; which made sad nonsense. The Bishop sat and picked his nose, or rather pinched the outside edge of one nostril between thumb and middle finger, looking, as far as a man of his nature could, decidedly uncomfortable. Behind her, a rude voice muttered something about somebody having had "one too many."

And things went from bad to worse; for Richard continued to ramble on, long after the Bishop should have been speaking. There was no one at hand to nudge him, or frown a hint. His subject had of course something to do with it. For the Bishop had elected to speak on "Our glorious country: Australia," and that was too much for Richard. How could he sing a Te Deum to a land he so hated? The very effort to be fair made him unnecessarily wordy, for his real feelings kept cropping up and showing through. And then, unluckily, just when one thought he had finished, the words "glorious country" seized on his imagination; and now the fat was in the fire with a vengeance. For he went on to say that any country here, wonderful though it might be, was but the land of our temporary adoption; the true "glorious country" was the one for which we were bound hereafter: "That land of which our honoured guest is one of the keepers of the keys." Until recently this Paradise had been regarded as immeasurably distant . . . beyond earthly contact. Now the barriers were breaking down. -- "If you will bear with me a little, friends, I will tell you something of my own experiences, and of the proofs -- the irrefragable proofs -- which I myself have received, that those dear ones who have passed from mortal sight still live, and love us, and take an interest in our doings." -- And here if he didn't give them . . . didn't come out in front of all these scoffing people, with that foolish, ludicrous story of the doll . . . Lallie's doll! Mary wished the floor would open and swallow her up.

The giggling and tittering grew in volume. ("Sit down, Richard, oh, sit down!" she willed him. "Can't you see they're laughing at you?") People could really hardly be blamed for thinking he had had a glass too much; he standing there staring, with visionary eyes, at the back of the hall. But by now he had worked himself into such a state of exaltation that he saw nothing . . . not even the Bishop's face, which was a study, his Lordship belonging to those who held spiritualism to be of the devil.

"Where's dolly?" "Want me mammy!" "Show us a nose!" began to be heard on all sides. The audience was getting out of hand. The Bishop could bear it no longer: rising from his seat he tapped Richard sharply on the arm. Richard gave a kind of gasp, put his hand to his forehead, and breaking off in the middle of a sentence sat heavily down.

Straightway the Bishop plunged into his prepared discourse; and in less than no time had his audience breathlessly engrossed, in the splendid tale of Australia's progress.

WEPT Mary, his Lordship's visit having ended in strain and coolness: "How could you! . . . how could you? Knowing what he thinks -- and him a guest in the house! And then to hold our poor little darling up to derision -- for them to laugh and mock at -- oh! it was cruel of you . . . cruel. I shall never forget it."

"Pray would you have me refuse, when the opportunity offers, to bear witness to the faith that is in me? Who am I to shrink from gibes and sneers? Where would Christianity itself be to-day, had its early followers not braved scorn and contumely?"

"But we're not early Christians! We're just ordinary people. And I think it's perfectly dreadful to hear you make such comparisons. Talk about blasphemy . . ."

"It's always the same. Try to tell a man that he has a chance of immortality . . . that he is not to be snuffed out at death like a candle . . . and all that is brutal and ribald in him comes to the surface."

"Leave it to the churches! . . . it's the churches' business. You only succeed in making an utter fool of yourself."

Immortality . . . and a doll's nose! Oh, to see a man of Richard's intelligence sunk so low! For fear of what she might say next, Mary flung out of the room, leaving him still haranguing, and put the length of the passage between them. At the verandah door she stood staring with smouldering eyes into the garden. Telling herself that, one day, it would not be the room only she quitted, but the house as well. She saw a picture of herself, marching with defiant head down the path and out of the gate, a child on either hand. (Oh! the children went, too: she'd take good care of that.) Richard should be left to the tender mercies of Zara: Zara who, at first sound of a raised voice, vanished behind a locked door. That might bring him to his senses. For things could not go on as they were. Never a plan did she lay for his benefit but he somehow crossed and frustrated it. And as a result of her last effort, they were actually in a worse position than before. Not only was the practice as dead as a doornail again, but a new load of contempt rested on Richard's shoulders.

The first hint that something more than his spiritistic rantings might be at work, in frightening people off, came from Maria. It was a couple of weeks later. Mary was in the kitchen making pastry, dabbing blobs of lard over a rolled-out sheet of paste, and tossing and twisting with a practised hand, when Maria, who stood slicing apples, having cast more than one furtive glance at her mistress, volunteered the remark: "Mrs. Mahony, you know that feller with the broke leg? Well, they do say his Pa's bin and fetched another doctor, orl the way from Oakworth."

"What boy? Young Nankivell? Nonsense! He's out of splints by now."

"Mike Murphy told the grocer so."

"Now, Maria, you know I won't listen to gossip. Make haste with the fruit for this pie."

But it was not so easy to get the girl's words out of her head. Could there possibly be any truth in them? And if so, did Richard know? He wouldn't say a word to her, of course, unless his hand was forced.

At dinner she eyed him closely; but could detect no sign of a fresh discomfiture.

That afternoon, though, as she sat stitching at warm clothing -- with the end of March the rains had set in, bringing cooler weather -- as she sat, there came a knock at the front door, and Maria admitted what really seemed to be a patient again at last, a man asking imperiously for the doctor. He was shown into the surgery, and even above the whirring of her sewing-machine Mary could hear his voice -- and Richard's, too -- raised as if in dispute, and growing more and more heated. She went into the passage and listened, holding her breath. Then -- oh! what was that? . . . who? . . . what? . . . a horse-whipping? Without hesitation she turned the knob of the surgery door and walked in.

"What is it? What's the matter?" With fearful eyes she looked from one to the other. In very fact the stranger, a great red-faced, burly fellow, held a riding-whip stretched between his hands.

And Richard was cowering in his chair, his grey head sunk between his shoulders. Richard . . . cowering? In an instant she was beside him, her arm about his neck. "Don't mind him! . . . don't take any notice of what he says."

Roughly Mahony shook himself free. "Go away . . . go out of the room, Mary. This is none of your business."

"And have him speak to you like that? I'll do nothing of the sort. Why don't you turn him out?" And as Richard did not answer, and her blood was up, she rounded on the man with: "How dare you come here and insult the doctor in his own house? You great bully, you!"