The Way Home (28 page)

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The sitting at an end, the table was put back in its place against the wall.

"You will smoke, doctor? Nay, please do . . . . I like it. Here are matches. -- Down, Rover! Not yet, Fitz!" For at her movement a red setter had sprung up from a corner, and now stood, his front paws on her knee, ingratiatingly wagging his tail; while observing his comrade's advance an immense black cat, which had been dozing in an arm-chair, rose and dropped a kind of bob-curtsey with its hind quarters. "Behold my two tyrants! They think it time for a run. -- Oh, yes, Mr. Fitz comes too."

"You are very fond of animals?"

"I should be lost without them. They are such dear companions, in their dumb way." As she spoke Mrs. Marriner fondled a silky ear, letting it slip through a pretty, dimpled hand.

"Well do I know it. In my bachelor days, living in a bark-hut the whole of which would have gone into this room, I kept no less than three." And casting the net of his memory Mahony told of his long-forgotten pets, and of their several untimely ends. -- "After that I took no more."

"You had not the heart?" Now could any but a genuine animal-lover have put this question?

"Not exactly. But as a hard-worked medico, with a growing practice . . . the burden of them, you see, would have fallen on my wife. And she does not much care for animals."

"Dear Mary. And now, of course, she has her babies."

"Yes, and all a mother's fears for them, with regard to the four-footed race."

"That is but natural. While they are so tiny." In the kindly indulgence of her tone, the speaker seemed to take all mothers and their weaknesses under her wing. "And yet, doctor, if I had been blessed with little ones, I think I should have brought up babies, puppies and kittens en masse . . . as one family party. Correct me though, if I speak foolishly. Perhaps, when children come, they are all in all."

"It is amazing how the little beggars twine themselves round one's heart. Before my boy was born, my chief feeling was a sense of the coming responsibility. I can laugh at myself now. For my wife has shouldered everything of that sort . . . I leave the children entirely to her."

"I think dear Mary quite the most capable person I know."

What a handsome creature she was, to be sure, full-bosomed yet slender, her neat waist held by a silver girdle, her face alight with sympathy and understanding! Mahony answered heartily: "There have, indeed, been few situations in life Mary has not proved equal to."

The words set a string of memories vibrating; and a silence fell. Unlike many of her sex, who would have babbled on, the lady just smiled and waited; and even her waiting was perfect in tact.

Mahony felt drawn to unbosom himself. "Talking of my children . . . it is sometimes a sorry thought to me that my acquaintance with them can only be a brief one. I mean, the probability is I shall see them but to the threshold of their adult life -- no further. And would like so well to know what they make of it."

His meaning was grasped . . . and with ease. "I understand that . . . especially in the case of such a gifted child as your sweet little Cuffy."

"Yes, I do think the boy is quick beyond the common run."

"Without doubt he is. Look at his musical ability."

"Ah, there you mention the one bit of his education I take a hand in. For Mary has no ear for music. Nor even any particular liking for it."

"And it is so important, is it not, that the ear should be well trained from the first? The spadework done before the child is even aware of it." (Here spoke your true musician.) "But, doctor, if our findings are correct, you may still have the joy of watching over your little brood from the other side . . . n'est-ce-pas?"

"Ah! . . . if that might be. If one could be sure of that." And on the instant Mahony mounted his hobby-horse and was carried away. "With this, my dear lady, you put your finger on what seems to me one of the vital points of the whole question. Have you ever reflected what a difference it would make, did we mortals seriously believe in a life to come? . . . I don't mean the Jewish-Byzantine state of petrified adoration that the churches offer us.... I mean a life such as we know it: a continuation of the best of this earthly existence -- mental striving, spiritual aspiration, love for our neighbour. If we did so believe, our every perspective would alter. And the result be a marked increase in spirituality. For the orthodox Christian's point of view is too often grossly materialistic -- and superstitious. The tenacity with which he clings to a resurrection of the flesh -- this poor cankered flesh! . . . after countless years deep in its grave -- that grave on which he dwells with so morbid a pleasure. Or his childish fear of death -- despite the glories that are promised him on the other side . . . do these not remind you of the sugar-candy with which an infant is bribed to take its pill? Against all this, set the belief that in dying we pass but from one room to another of the house of life -- Christ's 'many mansions.' The belief that an invisible world exists around us -- the spirit counterpart of this we know. That those we have lost still live and love and await us . . . on the other side of a veil which already a few, of rarer perceptions than the rest, have pierced. -- But forgive me! When once I get going on this subject I know no measure. And I confess . . . so few opportunities to talk of it arise. My wife has scant sympathy with the movement; sees, I fear, only its shady side."

"Dearest Mary. She is so practically minded."

"Yes. She is often genuinely uneasy at the hours I spend over my books; would rather have me up and doing -- and though but riding for pleasure along the seashore. Books to her are only a means of killing time."

Mrs. Marriner turned the full weight of a grave, sweet smile upon him. "While we book-lovers. . . well! as far as I am concerned, doctor, my life would be a blank indeed, without the company of the printed page."

"And what of me? . . . whose dearest dream it was, while I slaved for a living, to be able to end my days in a library. I declare to you, it is still a disturbing thought that I shall die leaving so many books unread."

"Let me comfort you. My dear father, who lived to a ripe old age, was given to complaining towards the end that he had 'read all the books' -- or at least all that were worth reading."

"Of course; as one grows older; and harder to please.... Myself though, I seem still far from that. The lists I send my bookseller grow longer, not shorter. And it's not the unread books only. While we're on these ghost-thoughts -- we all have them, I suppose -- let me confess to another, and that is that I shall probably need to go, having seen all too few of the grandeurs and beauties of this world. Pass on to the next without knowing what the Alps or the Andes are like, or the torrents of the Rhine."

"But doctor . . . what hinders you? I don't mean the Andes," -- and Mahony was the recipient of a roguish smile. "But travel is so easy nowadays. One packs one's trunks, books one's berth -- et voilà! What hinders you?"

Ah! what . . . what, indeed? Mahony hesitated for a moment before replying. "The truth is, the years we spent in England were thoroughly uncongenial. . . to us both. We were glad, on getting back to the colony, to settle down. And having once settled . . ."

Yes, that was it: of his own free will he had saddled himself with a big, expensive house, and all that belonged to its upkeep: men-servants and maid-servants, horses and carriages. Mary had taken root immediately; and now the children... their tender age.... But darker than all else loomed Mary's attitude . . . or what might he expect this to be, if -- "The truth is, my wife does not . . . I mean she has gone through so many upheavals already, on my account, that I should hardly feel justified . . . again . . . so soon . . . Still there's no denying it: I do sometimes feel like an old hulk which lies stranded. But there! All my days I've been gnawed by the worm of change -- change of any sort. As a struggling medico I longed for leisure and books. Pinned to the colony, I would be satisfied with nothing but the old country. Now that I have ample time, and more books than I can read, I could wish to be up and out seeing the world. And my dear wife naturally finds it difficult to keep pace with such a weathercock."

"I think it is with you as the German poet sings: 'There, where thou art not, there alone is bliss!'"

"Indeed and that hits my nail squarely on the head. For I can assure you it's no mere spirit of discontent -- as some suppose. It's more a kind of . . . well, it's like reaching out after -- say, a dream one has had and half forgotten, and struggles to recapture. That's baldly put. But perhaps you will understand."

A lengthy silence followed. The clock ticked; the dog sighed gustily. Then, feeling the moment come, the lady rose and swept her skirts to the piano. "Let me play to you," said she.

Mahony gratefully accepted.

Once the music had begun, however, he fell back on his own reflections; they were quickened rather than hampered by the delicate tinkling of the piano. He felt strangely elated: not a doubt of it, a good talk was one of the best of medicines, particularly for such a dry, bottled-up old fogy as he was on the verge of becoming. Of course, did you open your heart you must have, for listener, one who was in perfect tune with you; who could pick up your ideas as you dropped them; take your meaning at a word. And mortals of this type were all too rare; in respect of them, his life had been a sandy waste. Which had told heavily against him. Looking down the years he saw that, all through, his most crying need had been for spiritual companionship; for the balm of tastes akin to his own. It was a crippling reflection that never yet had he found the person to whom he could have blurted out his thoughts without fear of being misunderstood . . . or disapproved . . . or smiled at for an oddity. Here, having unexpectedly tapped a woman's quick perception, a woman's lively sympathy, he had a swift vision of what might have been -- that misty picture that inhabits the background of most minds. To know his idiosyncrasies fondly accepted -- his mental gropings accompanied, his roving spirit gauged and condoned . . . not as any fault of his own, but as an innate factor in his blood! Ah! but for that to come to pass, one would need to leave choosing one's fellow-traveller on the long life-journey until one's own mind and character had formed and ripened. How could one tell, in the twenties, what one would be on nearing the fifties? -- in which direction one would have branched out, and set, and stiffened? At twenty all was glamour and romance; and it seemed then to matter little whether or no a heart was open to the sufferings of the brute creation; whether the written word outweighed the spoken; in how far the spiritual mysteries made appeal -- questions which gradually, with time, came to seem more vital than all else. In youth one's nature cried aloud for companionship . . . one's blood ran hot . . . the mysteries played no part. And then the years passed and passed, and one drifted . . . drifted . . . slowly, but very surely . . . until . . . well, in many a case, he supposed the fact that you had drifted never came to your consciousness at all. But should anything happen to pull you up with a jerk, force you to cast the plummet; should you get an inkling of something rarer and finer: then, the early flames being sunk to a level glow, you stood confounded by your aloofness . . . by the distance you had travelled . . . the isolation of your state. But had he, in sooth, ever felt other than lonely, and alone? Mary was -- had always been -- dearest and best of wives . . . yet . . . yet . . . had they, between them, a single idea in common?... Did they share an interest, a liking, a point of view? -- with the one exception of an innate sobriety and honesty of purpose. No, for more years than he cared to count, Mary had done little, as far as he was concerned, but sit in judgment: she silently censured, mentally condemned all those things in life which he held most worth while: his needs, his studies, his inclinations -- down to his very dreams and hopes of a hereafter.

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Lizzie said: "My dear, our lady friend is in hoops now, if you please! Nothing extreme, of course, considering from whom she takes her present cue. Just the desired soupcon! -- Mary, she went about as a Slim Jane only because the cavalier of the moment approved the simplicity of the human form divine. To-day she is a rapping and tapping medium -- as we very well know. To-morrow, love, the wind will shift to another quarter, and we shall hear of the fair lady running to matins and communicating on an empty stomach. Or visiting in a prison cell got up as a nursing sister, à la Elizabeth Fry."

Hoops . . . nothing extreme . . . considering from whom she takes her present cue. At these words, and even while she was standing up for Gracey's sincerity, there leapt to Mary's mind, with a stab of real pain, Richard's nervous hatred of the exaggerated -- the bizarre. And whether it was hoops, or hooplessness.

III.iii.

THESE rather waspish comments -- Lizzie never seemed able to resist having a thrust at Gracey -- were made in the drawing-room at "Ultima Thule," where the two wives sat waiting for their husbands to rejoin them. John and Lizzie were dining there at John's express request: the groom had ridden over after lunch with a line from John, asking if he and Lizzie might take pot-luck with them that evening. Richard said: "Wonders will never cease," and a refusal was not to be thought of; but Cook had been very put out by the shortness of the notice; so much so that Mary had driven to town to fetch delicacies; thinking as she went, how in the old days she would have run up a dinner for four, and one well worth eating, too, in less than an hour. Her hands did sometimes itch to show such a fair-weather worker as Cook what could be done.

By now the evening was more than half gone, and still the gentlemen lingered; though Lizzie had sung all Richard's favourite songs and pieces, some of them more than once. To pass the time, she had also sung to Cuffy; for -- as had happened ere this when she was dining there -- Nannan had knocked to say Master Cuffy could not be got to sleep, for thinking his Auntie might sing to him. Cuffy as audience was better than none, so Lizzie begged for the child to be brought in; and thereupon Cuffy appeared on Nannan's arm in his little red flannel nightgown, his feet swathed in a crib- blanket, his eyes alight with expectation. Seated on his mother's knee he drank in: "There was a Friar of Orders Grey," and the sad ditty of "Barbara Allan," himself rendering "Sun of my Soul" before, soundly kissed and cosseted by his aunt, who had a great liking for the little man, he was carried back to bed.