Part 48 (1/2)
He got a frog in his throat as he went on to paint in greater detail for her, who had left it so young, the intimate charm of the home country--the rich, green, dimpled countryside. And not till now did he grasp how sorely he had missed it. ”Oh, believe me, to talk of 'going home' is no mere figure of speech, Mary!” In fancy he trod winding lanes that ran between giant hedges: hedges in tender bud, with dew on them; or snowed over with white mayflowers; or behung with the fairy webs and gossamer of early autumn, thick as twine beneath their load of moisture. He followed white roads that were banked with primroses and ran headlong down to the sea; he climbed the shoulder of a down on a spring morning, when the air was alive with larks carolling. But chiefly it was the greenness that called to him--the greenness of the greenest country in the world. Viewed from this distance, the homeland looked to him like one vast meadow. Oh, to tread its gra.s.s again!--not what one knew as gra.s.s here, a poor annual, that lasted for a few brief weeks; but lush meadow-gra.s.s, a foot high; or shaven emerald lawns on which ancient trees spread their shade; or the rank growth in old orchards, starry with wild flowers, on which fruit-blossoms fluttered down. He longed, too, for the exquisite finishedness of the mother country, the soft tints of cloud-veiled northern skies. His eyes ached, his brows had grown wrinkled from gazing on iron roofs set against the hard blue overhead; on dirty weatherboards innocent of paint; on higgledy-piggledy backyards and ramshackle fences; on the straggling landscape with its untidy trees--all the unrelieved ugliness, in short, of the colonial scene.
He stopped only for want of breath. Mary was silent. He waited. Still she did not speak.
He fell to earth with a b.u.mp, and was angry. ”Come ... out with it! I suppose all this seems to you just the raving of a lunatic?”
”Oh, Richard, no. But a little ... well, a little unpractical. I never heard before of any one throwing up a good income because he didn't like the scenery. It's a step that needs the greatest consideration.”
”Good G.o.d! Do you think I haven't considered it?--and from every angle?
There isn't an argument for or against, that I haven't gone over a thousand and one times.”
”And with never a word to me, Richard?” Mary was hurt; and showed it.
”It really is hardly fair. For this is my home as well as yours.--But now listen. You're tired out, run down with the heat and that last attack of dysentery. Take a good holiday--stay away for three months if you like. Sail over to Hobart Town, or up to Sydney, you who'er so fond of the water. And when you come back strong and well we'll talk about all this again. I'm sure by then you'll see things with other eyes.”
”And who's to look after the practice, pray?”
”Why, a LOc.u.m TENENS, of course. Or engage an a.s.sistant.”
”Aha! you'd agree to that now, would you? I remember how opposed you were once to the idea.”
”Well, if I have to choose between it and you giving up altogether...
Now, for your own sake, Richard, don't go and do anything rash. If once you sell off and leave Ballarat, you can never come back. And then, if you regret it, where will you be? That's why I say don't hurry to decide. Sleep over it. Or let us consult somebody--John perhaps--”
”No you don't, madam, no you don't!” cried Richard with a grim dash of humour. ”You had me once ... crippled me ... handcuffed me--you and your John between you! It shan't happen again.”
”I crippled you? I, Richard! Why, never in my life have I done anything but what I thought was for your good. I've always put you first.” And Mary's eyes filled with tears.
”Yes, where it's a question of one's material welfare you haven't your equal--I admit that. But the other side of me needs coddling too--yes, and sympathy. But it can whistle for such a thing as far as you're concerned.”
Mary sighed. ”I think you don't realise, dear, how difficult it sometimes is to understand you ... or to make out what you really do want,” she said slowly.
Her tone struck at his heart. ”Indeed and I do!” he cried contritely.
”I'm a born old grumbler, mavourneen, I know--contrariness in person!
But in this case ... come, love, do try to grasp what I'm after; it means so much to me.” And he held out his hand to her, to beseech her.
Unhesitatingly she laid hers in it. ”I am trying, Richard, though you mayn't believe it. I always do. And even if I sometimes can't manage it--well, you know, dear, you generally get your own way in the end.
Think of the house. I'm still not clear why you altered it. I liked it much better as it was. But I didn't make any fuss, did I?--though I should have, if I'd thought we were only to occupy it for a single year after. --Still, that was a trifle compared with what you want to do now. Though I lived to a hundred I should never be able to approve of this. And you don't know how hard it is to consent to a thing one disapproves of. You couldn't do it yourself. Oh, what WAS the use, Richard, of toiling as you have, if now, just when you can afford to charge higher fees and the practice is beginning to bring in money--”
Mahony let her hand drop, even giving it a slight push from him, and turned to pace the floor anew. ”Oh, money, money, money! I'm sick of the very sound of the word. But you talk as if nothing else mattered.
Can't you for once, wife, see through the letter of the thing to the spirit behind? I admit the practice HAS brought in a tidy income of late; but as for the rest of the splendours, they exist, my dear, only in your imagination. If you ask me, I say I lead a dog's life--why, even a navvy works only for a fixed number of hours per diem! My days have neither beginning nor end. Look at yesterday! Out in the blazing sun from morning till night--I didn't get back from the second round till nine. At ten a confinement that keeps me up till three. From three till dawn I toss and turn, far too weary to sleep. By the time six o'clock struck--you of course were slumbering sweetly--I was in h.e.l.l with tic. At seven I could stand it no longer and got up for the chloroform bottle: an hour's rest at any price--else how face the crowd in the waiting-room? And you call that splendour?--luxurious ease? If so, my dear, words have not the same meaning any more for you and me.”
Mary did not point out that she had said nothing of the kind, or that he had set up an extreme case as typical. She tightened her lips; her big eyes were very solemn.
”And it's not the work alone,” Richard was declaring, ”it's the place, wife--the people. I'm done with 'em, Mary--utterly done! Upon my word, if I thought I had to go on living among them even for another twelvemonth ...”
”But PEOPLE are the same all the world over!” The protest broke from her in spite of herself.
”No, by G.o.d, they're not!” And here Richard launched out into a diatribe against his fellow-colonists: ”This sordid riff-raff! These hard, mean, grasping money-grubbers!” that made Mary stand aghast. What could be the matter with him? What was he thinking of, he who was ordinarily so generous? Had he forgotten the many kindnesses shown him, the warm grat.i.tude of his patients, people's sympathy, at the time of his illness? But he went on: ”My demands are most modest. All I ask is to live among human beings with whom I have half an idea in common--men who sometimes raise their noses from the ground, instead of eternally scheming how to line their pockets, reckoning human progress solely in terms of l.s.d. No, I've sacrificed enough of my life to this country.
I mean to have the rest for myself. And there's another thing, my dear--another bad habit this precious place breeds in us. It begins by making us indifferent to those who belong to us but are out of our sight, and ends by cutting our closest ties. I don't mean by distance alone. I have an old mother still living, Mary, whose chief prayer is that she may see me once again before she dies. I was her last-born--the child her arms kept the shape of. What am I to her now?
... what does she know of me, of the hard, tired, middle-aged man I have become? And you are in much the same box, my dear; unless you've forgotten by now that you ever had a mother.”