Ultima Thule (32 page)

At breakfast he sat silent, seemed lost in thought. And Mary, to whom the dark hours had brought no clearness -- every way she turned seemed barred to her -- watched him, the passion of pity that had been wakened by the sight of his poor old scraggy form at the door in the moonlight, trying to escape from her -- from her! -- still hot in her.

But the meal over, he roused to a kind of life. Taking his little favourite on his knee, he caressed her. And then, of a sudden, he grew solicitous about the children: their morning walk, their daily dip in the sea. "Or" -- to Lucie this, as he rocked her to and fro -- "we shall not have them growing up tall and sturdy!" (If only he could hold on to the fact that it had to do with money.)

"Trust me to look after them," said Mary shortly, at a third repetition. Her own thoughts ran: If I can't talk to some one I shall go crazy. Something will have to be done. I know. There's old Mrs. Spence. She is so wise.

Would he never be rid of them? It seemed this morning as if Mary deliberately invented jobs to detain them. He fell to pacing the dining-room, his arms a-swing . . . and each time he came to the window he lifted his eyes in alarm, lest the flag should have run up the flagstaff. A ship at this moment would ruin everything.

But . . . softly! Mary was growing suspicious. "Are you stopping at home then?"

"Yes, yes, I'm staying in. I'll look after the house." (Ha, ha!)

And at last gowns and towels, spades and buckets were collected, the children's hats and her bonnet tied on, and off they went. It was a radiant summer morning, with a light breeze playing, but Mary saw nothing of it: her brain continued its feverish work, in the hope of finding some way out. Suppose I induced him to leave home for a time? -- to go away for a holiday ? . . . and so get the house to myself. Or even persuaded him to put up at an hotel. But before she had gone any distance, she became aware of such a strange inner excitement that it was only with difficulty she mastered an impulse to turn and go back to the house. Why had he been so anxious to get rid of them? Why this sudden odd concern for the children? -- and here there leapt in her mind a story she had once read, or heard, of somebody who had sent his wife and his children out for a walk, and then deliberately hanged himself on a nail behind the scullery-door. But, this half-born apprehension spoken out, she fell righteously foul of herself: her reason, her common sense, that part of her which had waged a life-long war with the fantastic, the incorporeal, rose in arms. Such nonsense Really . . . if one once began to let oneself go. . . . (Besides, wasn't Bridget constantly in and out of the scullery?) Imaginings like these came solely from want of sleep. How angry Richard would be, too, if she reappeared!

So she went on, as usual making Cuffy the scapegoat for her nervous perplexity. "Don't eat your bathing-dress, you naughty boy! How often am I to tell you . . ."

"I'm not eating it! Only smelling." -- He did though, some times. (And his sponge, too.)

"Well, that's not nice either."

"It is! It's scrumptious," cried Cuffy warmly. How did Mamma know? . . . she never bathed. The salty smell -- and the taste -- of damp blue serge when it was hot with the sun -- ooh! too lovely for words. If he put it to his nose he could hardly keep his legs from running: it made him shiver all over, simply not able to wait, to be in the water. And directly they came to the Bluff he bolted: shot along the narrow wooden bridge that ran out from the beach, past the counter where gowns and towels were for hire, and into the Baths, where nothing but gowns and towels were hanging on the rails to dry, all one big salty smell. And you poked your nose into every empty cabin, to find a dry one; and then, hi! off with your clothes before Luce and Mamma got there, and into your gown, hot with the sun, and all prickly and tickly; and then you galloped round the platforms and out on the spring-board, which bounced you ever so high in the air, into water they said was fifteen feet deep, but you didn't know, only if you jumped straight, and made yourself quite stiff, you went down and down, and took ever such a time to come up. Then you swam back to the steps -- they were all slimy, and with seaweed washing round them, for they weren't ever out of the water -- and up and off the board again, again and again, till it was time to fetch Luce, who was afraid to jump springboard.

"If I'm not back in an hour make them come out," Mary instructed the fat bathing-woman, who knew what young water-rats the chicks were, and could be trusted to use force if necessary. -- And with this she turned to go.

But she had done no more than set foot on the wooden causeway, when she saw some one dash on to it from the other end, push rudely past a group of people, a servant it was . . . and it was Bridget, with her hair half down, in her dirty morning apron . . . and she came rushing up to her and seized her hand, and pulled her by it, and sobbed and cried, for every one to hear: "Oh, Mrs. Mahony, come home! . . . come home quick! The doctor's bin and lighted a fire on the surgery table. He's burning the house down!"

"Bridget!"

Her heart, which had begun to hammer at first sight of the girl, gave a gigantic bound, then seemed to stop beating: she had to lean against the wooden railing and press both hands to it, to get it to restart. But, even so, she heard her own voice saying: "Be quiet! Don't make such a noise. There are people . . . I'm coming, I'm coming."

Home! Uphill, through loose, clogging sand; a short cut over the grass of the gardens; along one reddish street and into another, and round into a third; hampered at every step by her long, heavy woman's clothing; not daring to run, for fear of exciting comment, struggling even yet, for Richard's sake, to keep up appearances; the perspiration glistening below her bonnet, her breath coming stormily; but with only one thought: that of being in time to save him. At her side Bridget, gasping out her story. If it hadn't bin that he hadn't had no matches, she'd never have known. But he'd had to come to the kitchen for some, and she'd seen at once there was something in the wind. He'd looked at her, oh, ever so queer! And first he'd tried to take 'em without her seeing him . . . and when she had, he'd laughed, and had went up the passage laughing away to himself. She'd gone after him on tiptoe to see what he was up to, and she'd peeped through the crack of the door, and he'd got that black tin box of his open, and was taking papers and tied-up things out of it, piling 'em on the table, and striking matches and setting fire to 'em. Holy Mother o' God, how she'd run!

There was smoke in the passage. The surgery was full of it; full of bits of flying ash and burnt papers. Through this she saw Richard. He stood at the table, the deal top of which was scorched and blackened, his dispatch-box open and empty before him, his hands in a heap of ashes which he was strewing about the room. He laughed and shouted. She heard her own name.

"Richard! My God! What have you done?"

Mary? . . . Mary's voice? Recoiling, he threw up his arms as if to ward off a blow, looking round at her with a face that was wry and contorted. At the sight of her standing in the doorway, he tried to shake his fist at her; but his arm crumpled up, refused to obey; tried to hurl a scurrilous word . . . to spit at her: in vain. What did happen was the thing against which, waking and sleeping, he had battled with every atom of his failing self-control: there escaped him, at long last, the scream, the insane scream, which signified the crossing of the rubicon. And, as it broke loose, ringing in his ears like the bestial cry of a wounded, maddened animal, everything turned black before his eyes. He lost his balance, staggered, caught at a chair and went down, with the chair on top of him, like an ox felled by a single blow of the pole-axe. And there he lay, in a confused and crumpled heap on the floor.

And Mary, whom no audible sound had reached, who had read into the outward fling of his arm towards her only an appeal for help, for support, was on her knees beside him, her bonnet awry, her dress in disarray, crushing the poor old head to her breast and crying: "Richard! My darling! What is it, oh, what is it?"

But to these words, with which she had so often sought enlightenment, sought understanding, there was now no reply.

HIS stertorous breathing could be heard through the house. Except for this, he might have been dead . . . behind the snow-white dimity and muslin hangings which she had put up in honour of those strangers who would now never cross the threshold. For Bowes-Smith, the well-known Melbourne physician whom she had called in on the advice of Dr. Barker -- yes! with Richard lying senseless at her feet she had forgotten everything but his need, and had sent Bridget flying for the old man whom she had borne so bitter a grudge; and he had come at once, and been kindness itself. So active, too: it was hard to believe that he was between twenty and thirty years Richard's senior -- oh, how did some people manage to live so long and be so healthy! But in spite of his consoling words, she could see that he took a very grave view of Richard's case. And Bowes-Smith and he had had a sheerly endless consultation -- from which, of course, they shut her out -- after which the former had broken it to her that, even if he recovered from the present fit, Richard would remain more or less of a sick man for the rest of his life.

The utmost care was essential; an entire absence of excitement. "For I cannot conceal from you that such apoplectiform attacks, which -- as in this case -- differ little or not at all from true apoplexy, will be liable to recur."

He stood on the dining-room hearthrug, tall, lugubrious, sandy-whiskered, holding his gold-rimmed pince-nez in his hand, and tapping the air with it while he cast about for words, which came laboriously. They had known him well in the old days, and she remembered this habit; it had always made him seem something of a bore. Now it maddened her. For she was keyed up to hear the truth, learn the worst; and to be obliged to sit there, listening to him stumbling and fumbling! He was so bland, too, so non-committal; how differently he would have talked to Richard had she lain ill. But she was only a woman; and, doctors being what they were . . . oh, she knew something about them from the inside. Usen't Richard to say that it was etiquette in the profession to treat a patient's relatives, and particularly his womenfolk, as so many cretins?

Ignoring her blunt question: "But if it isn't true apoplexy, then what is it?" Bowes-Smith proceeded deliberately to catechise her.

"I don't know, Mrs. Mahony, whether you are . . . h'm. . . whether it is . . . er . . . news to you that I saw your husband some two or three months back? He . . . er . . . consulted me, at the time, with regard to . . . h'm . . . to an attack . . . nay, to recurring attacks of vertigo. I found him then under no . . . h'm . . . no delusion as to his own state. He said nothing to you? Did not take you into his confidence?"

"No, nothing," said Mary dully: and inconsequently remembered the letter she had had from Richard when she was trying to induce him to settle in Narrong. She hadn't known then what to believe; more than half suspected him of writing as he did to further his own ends.

"And you have not noticed anything . . . h'm . . . out of the way? There has been no marked change in his habits? No . . . er . . . oddness, or eccentricity?" The questions lumbered along, she sitting the while fiercely knotting her fingers.

"Nothing," she said again. Adding, though, in spite of herself: "But then he has always been so peculiar. If he did seem a little odder of late, I merely put it down to his growing old."

"Quite so . . . er . . . most natural." (She was keeping things back, of course; wives always did. He remembered her well: a handsome creature she had been when last he saw her. The eyes were still very striking.) "And now . . . er . . . with regard to the present attack. Are you aware of anything having happened to . . . er . . . cause him undue excitement . . . or agitation?"

"No," said Mary staunchly. How could it matter now, what had brought the fit on? Wild horses would not have dragged from her any allusion to their bitter quarrel of the night before. That would have meant turning out, to this stranger, the dark side of their married life. However, she again glossed over the bluntness of her denial with: "But he was always one to work himself up over trifles."

"Well, well! My colleague here . . . and if, at any time, you would care to see me again, I am entirely at your disposal." (No need to trouble the poor creature with more, at present. Yes, truly, a magnificent pair of optics!) "Do not be . . . h'm . . . alarmed at any slight . . . er . . . stiffness or rigidity of the limbs that may ensue. That will pass."

And I a doctor's wife! thought Mary hotly. Aloud she said: "Oh, I'm not afraid -- of paralysis or anything -- as long as he is spared." And while the two men confabbed anew, she went to the bedroom and stood looking down at Richard. Her own husband . . . and she could not even be told frankly what was the matter with him. For twenty-five years and more she had had him at her side, to give the truth if she asked for it. She had never known till now how much this meant to her.

Meanwhile she spilt no jot of her strength in brooding or repining: every act, every thought was concentrated on him alone. And not till the first signs of betterment appeared: when the dreadful snoring ceased and his temperature fell to normal; when his eyes began to follow her about the room; when he was able to move one hand to point to what he wanted: not till then did she sit down, cold and grim, to face the future.

"My God! what's to become of us?"

A pitiful forty-odd pounds standing to his credit in a Melbourne Bank, and her own poor remnant of Tilly's loan, was literally all they had in the world. In that last mad holocaust everything else had gone: deeds and mortgages, letters and securities, down to the last atom of scrip. He had piled and burnt till the dispatch-box was empty. (Who would now be able to prove what shares he had held? Or how much had been paid off on the mortgage?) The house at Barambogie was still on their hands; and almost the whole of their lease at Shortlands had still to run. How were these rents to be met? . . . and what would happen if they weren't? She would need expert advice, probably have to employ a lawyer -- a thought that made her shiver. For she had the natural woman's fear of the law and its followers: thought of these only in terms of bills of costs . . . and sharp, dishonest practices.