The day began at six . . . with the pestilential screech of the mill-whistle. This also started the children off. Birdlike sounds began to issue from their room across the passage: there was no muting these shrill, sweet trebles. And soon Miss Prestwick’s thin voice made itself heard, capped by Mary’s magisterial tones, and the dashing and splashing of bath-water, and small feet scampering, and Maria thudding up and down, clattering her brooms.
There was no more chance of sleep. He, too, rose.
The water of the shower-bath was tepid and unrefreshing. It had also to be sparingly used. Then came breakfast — with mushy butter, the pat collapsing on its way from the cellar; with sticky flies crawling over everything, a soiled cloth, the children’s jabber, Miss Prestwick’s mincing airs, and Mary checking, apportioning, deciding. Mahony ate hastily, and, there being here no morning paper or early post to engage him, retired to the surgery. His cases written up, his visits for the day arranged, he sat and waited, and listened. This was the time when a walking-patient or two might call for treatment; and the footsteps of any one nearing the house could be heard a long way off, crunching the gravel of the path by the Lagoon, coming up the right-of-way. And as he sat, idly twirling his thumbs, it became a matter of interest to speculate whether approaching steps would halt at his door or move on towards the railway station. In waiting, he could hear Cuffy’s voice proclaiming loudly and unnaturally: JER SUISE URN PETTY GARSONG, DE BUN FIGOOR.
After a couple of false alarms there was a knock at the door; and Maria introduced a working-man with a foreign body in his eye. A grain of mortar extracted and the eye bathed, Mahony washed, stitched and bandaged a child’s gashed knee, and drew a tooth for a miner’s wife. Mary’s aid was needed here, to hold the woman’s hands. It was Mary, too, who applied restoratives and helped to clean up the patient. After which she brushed yesterday’s dust from his wide-awake, held a silk coat for him to slip his arms into and checked the contents of his bag.
He set off on his morning round, following the path that ran alongside the Lagoon. Here and there the shadow of a fir-tree fell across it, and, though the season was but late spring, the shade was welcome. Emerging from the Lagoon enclosure, he entered the single street that formed the township of Barambogie. This was empty but for a couple of buggies which stood outside a public-house, their hoods white with the dust of innumerable bush journeys.
But the sound of his foot on the pavement, his shadow on the glass of the shop-windows, made people dart to their doors to see who passed. Huh! it was only “the new doctor”; and out of HIM nothing was to be got . . . in the shape of a yarn, or a companionable drink.
One or two threw him a “Mornin’!” The rest contented themselves with a nod. But all alike regarded his raised hat and courteous “Good day to you!” “Good morning, sir!” with the colonial’s inborn contempt for form and ceremony. By the Lord Harry! slapdash was good enough for them.
On this particular day Mahony had three calls to make.
Arrived at the Anglican parsonage — a shabby brick cottage standing on a piece of ground that had never been fenced in — he took up the knocker, which, crudely repaired with a headless nail and a bit of twine, straightway came off in his hand. He rapped with his knuckles, and the Reverend Thistlethwaite, in nightshirt and trousers and with bare feet, appeared from his back premises, where he had been feeding fowls. Re-affixing the knocker with a skill born of long practice, he opened the door of the parlour, into which there was just room to squeeze. On the table, writing-materials elbowed the remains of a mutton-chop breakfast. Blowflies crawled over the fatted plates.
An unsightly carbuncle lanced and dressed, the reverend gentleman — he was a fleshy, red-faced man, of whom unkind rumour had it that there were times when his tongue tripped over his own name — laid himself out to detain his visitor. He was spoiling for a chat.
“Yes, yes, doctor, hard at work . . . hard at work!”— with an airy wave of the hand at pens, ink and paper. “Must always have something fresh, you know, of a Sunday morning, to tickle ’em up with. Even the minor prophets are racked, I can assure you, in the search for a rousing heading.”
Mahony replaced lancet and lint in silence. It was common knowledge that old Thistlethwaite had not written a fresh sermon for years; but had used his stale ones again and again, some even said reading them backwards, for the sake of variety. The implements littering the table were set permanently out on view.
Insensitive to Mahony’s attitude, he ran on. “Talking of rummy texts now . . . did y’ever hear the story of the three curates, out to impress the Bishop with their skill at squeezing juice from a dry orange, who, each in turn, in the different places he visited on three successive Sundays, held forth on the theme: ‘Now Peter’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever’? You have? . . . capital, isn’t it? But I’ll warrant you don’t know the yarn of old Minchin and the cow. It was at Bootajup in the Western District, and his first up-country cure; and Minch, who was a townbird born and bred, was officiating for the first time at Harvest Festival. The farmers had given liberally, the church was full, Minch in the reading-desk with his back to a side door that had been left open for coolness. All went well till in the middle of the Psalms, when he saw the eyes of his congregation getting rounder and rounder. Old Minch, who was propriety in person, thought his collar had come undone, or that he’d shed a private button . . . ha, ha! Whereas, if you please, it was a cow which had strayed to the door, and was being agreeably attracted by the farm produce. Minch looked round just as the animal walked in, lost his head, dropped his book and bolted; taking the altar rails at a leap, with cassock and surplice bunched up round him. Ha, ha! Capital . . . capital! It was Minchin, too, who was once preaching from the text: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,’ when he found himself forced to sneeze some dozen times running. Ha, ha, ha! His own eyes poured tears — ran with water. Out it came: a-tischoo, a-tischoo! The congregation rocked with laughter. — What? . . . you must be toddling? Well, well! we know you doctors are busy men. Hot? — call this hot? I wonder what you’ll say to our summers! Well, good day, doctor, good day!”
“‘Except ye become as little children’ . . . ‘for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ MY God! . . . then give me earth.”
Striking off on a bush track Mahony trudged along, leaving a low trail of dust in his wake. His goal was a poor outlying wooden shanty, to treat a washerwoman’s severely scalded leg and foot. The wound, some days old, was open, dirty, offensive; the woman, who sat propped up before her tubs, struggling to finish her week’s work, loud-mouthed with pain.
“She don’t half holler’n screech if oner the kids knocks up against it,” volunteered a foxy-looking girl who stood by, sucking her thumb, and watching, with an unholy interest, the sponging off of the foul rags, the laying bare of the raw flesh.
Mahony’s impatient “Why on earth didn’t you send for me sooner?” brought no coherent response; but his prescription of complete rest in a horizontal position effectually loosed the sufferer’s tongue. “Didn’t I know you’d be after orderin’ me some such foolery? Who’s to kape us? I’ve no man. I’m a poor lone widder . . .”
“Apply to your priest for aid.”
“The praste? A fat lot o’ good that ‘ud be — the great lazy louse! We cud all starve afore HE’D lift a finger.”
“Well, I’ve warned you, I can do no more.” And cutting further discussion short, Mahony put on his hat and walked out of the house.
As, however, the foxy child, thumb in mouth, lolloped after him, he took a sovereign from his pocket. “Here, my girl, here’s something to tide you over. Now see that your mother lies up. You’re old enough to lend a hand.”
But before he had gone a hundred yards he turned on his heel, recalling the low, cunning look that had leapt into the girl’s eyes at sight of the gold piece. “Fool that I am! . . . the m............