His way led him through the main street. The morning was drawing towards noon, and the overheated air, grown visible, quivered and flimmered in wavy lines. He wore nankeen trousers, which looked a world too wide for him, and flapped to and fro on his bony shanks. His coat, of tussore, was creased and unfresh, there being no Mary at hand daily to iron it out. On his head he had a sun-hat hung with puggaree and fly-veil: he also carried a sun-umbrella, green-lined; while a pair of dark goggles dimmed for him the intolerable whiteness of sky, road, iron roofs. Thus he went: an odd figure, a very figure of fun, in the eyes of the little township. And yet for all his oddity wearing an air . . . an air of hauteur, of touch-me-not aloofness . . . which set him still further apart. The small shopkeepers and publicans who made up the bulk of the population had never known his like; and were given vigorously to slapping their legs and exclaiming: “By the Lord Harry! . . . goes about with his head as high as if he owned the place.”
On this day though he passed unnoticed. In the broad, sun-stricken street, none moved but himself. The heat, however, was not the sole reason for its emptiness. He who ran might read that the place was thinning out. With the abandonment of the project to reorganise the great mine — the fairy-tale of which had helped to settle HIM there — all hope of a fresh spurt of life for Barambogie was at an end. The new Bank that was to have been opened to receive the gold, the crew of miners and engineers who should have worked the reefs, had already faded into the LIMBUS FATUORUM where, for aught he knew, they had always belonged. What trade there was, languished: he counted no less than four little shops in a row which had recently been boarded up.
Pluff went his feet in the smothery dust of the bush road — his black boots might have been made of white leather — the flies buzzed in chorus round his head. Of the two visits he had to pay, one was a couple of miles off. Two miles there and two back . . . on a morning when even the little walk along the Lagoon had fagged him. Oh! he OUGHT to have a buggy. A country practice without a horse and trap behind it was like trying to exist without bread . . . or water. — And now again, as if on this particular day there was to be no rest or peace for him, a single thought, flashing into his brain, took entire possession of it and whizzed madly round. He plodded along, bent of back, loose of knee, murmuring distractedly: “A buggy . . . yes, God knows, I ought to have a buggy.” But the prospect of ever again owning one seemed remote; at present it was as much as he could do to afford the occasional hire of a conveyance. What must the townspeople think, to see him eternally on the tramp? For nobody walked here. A buggy stood at every door . . . but his. They would soon be beginning to suspect that something was wrong with him; and from that to believing him unable to pay his way was but a step. In fancy he saw himself refused credit, required to hand over cash for what he purchased . . . he, Richard Mahony! . . . till, in foretasting the shame of it, he groaned aloud.
And the case he had come all this way to attend would not profit him. His patient was a poor woman, lying very sick and quite alone in a bark hut, her menfolk having betaken themselves to work. He did what he could for her; left her more comfortable than he found her: he also promised medicines by the first cart that went by her door. But he knew the class: there was no money in it; his bill would have to be sent in time after time. And the older he grew, the more it went against the grain to badger patients for his fees. If they were too mean, or too dishonest, to pay for his services, he was too proud to dun them. And thus bad debts accumulated.
On the road home, the great heat and his own depression overcame him. Choosing a shady spot he lowered himself to the burnt grass for a rest; or what might have been a rest, had not the sound of wheels almost immediately made him scramble to his feet again: it would never do for him to be caught sitting by the roadside. In his haste, he somehow pressed the catch of his bag, which forthwith opened and spilled its contents on the ground. He was on his knees, fumbling to replace these, when the trap hove in sight.
It was a single buggy, in which three people, a young man and two young women, sat squeezed together on a seat built for two. None the less, the man jerked his horse to a stand, and with true colonial neighbourliness called across: “Like a lift?”— to receive, too late to stop him, a violent dig in the ribs from his wife’s elbow.
“Thank you, thank you, my good man! But you are full already.” Provoked at being caught in his undignified position, Mahony answered in a tone short to ungraciousness.
“Devil a bit! Bess ’ere can sit by the splashboard.”
“NO, sir! I should not dream of inconveniencing the lady on my account.”
“O.K.!” said the man. “Ta-ta, then!” and drove on.
“The LADY! Did you hear ’im? Oh, Jimminy Gig! . . . ain’t he a cure?” cried Bess, and bellowed out a laugh that echoed back to where Mahony stood.
“Bill, you great GOFF, didn’t you feel me poke you? Don’t you know ‘OO that was? We don’t want him up here along of us . . . not for Joe!”
Bill spat. “Garn! It’s a goodish step for th’ ol’ cove, and a regular roaster into the bargain.”
“Garn yerself, y’ol’ mopoke! — I say! what was ‘e doin’ there’s what I’d like to know. Did you see him, kneelin’ with all them things spread out around him? Up to some shady trick or other I’ll be bound.”
Bess nodded darkly. “Nobody ‘ull go near the house any more after dark. Maria Beetling sor a black figger in the passage one night, with horns and all, and heard ’im talkin’ to it. She tore home screamin’ like mad for her ma.”
“Ah, git along with yer bunkum! You wimmin’s mouths is allers full o’ some trash or other. I never HEARD such talk,”— and Bill ejected a fresh stream of juice over the side.
His wife made a noise of contempt. “It’s gospel truth. I heard ol’ Warnock the other day talkin’ to Mrs. Ah Sing. An’ they both said it was a crying shame to have a doctor here who went in for magic and such-like. Nor’s that all. A fat lot o’ good his doctoring kin be. To go and let his own kid die. If he couldn’t cure IT, what kin WE hope for, ‘oo he hates like poison?”
“They do say he BOILED her,” said Bess mysteriously. “Made her sit in water that was too hot for her, till her skin all peeled off and she was red and raw. She screeched like blue murder: Maria heard her. They had to rush out and send for another doctor from Oakworth. But it was too late. He couldn’t save her. — An’ then just look at his pore wife. So pale an’ woebegone! Shaking in her shoes, I guess, what he’ll be doing to her next.”
“He ought to be had up for it. Instead of being let streel round with his highty-tighty airs.”
“No, gorblimey, you two! . . . of all the silly, clatterin’ hens!” and leaning forward Bill sliced his horse a sharp cut on the belly. In the cloud of dust that rose as the buggy lurched forward, they vanished from sight.
“Ha! didn’t I know it? their butt — their laughing-stock,” chafed Mahony in answer to the girl’s guffaw; and his hands trembled so that he could hardly pick up his scattered belongings. In his agitation he forgot the rest he had intended to allow himself, and plodded on anew, the sweat trickling in runnels down his back, mouth and nostrils caked dry. Meanwhile venting his choler by exclaiming aloud, in the brooding silence of the bush: “What next? . . . what next, I wonder! Why, the likelihood is, they’ll boggle at my diagnoses . . . doubt my ability to dose ’em for the d.t.‘s or the colic.” And this idea, being a new one, started a new train of thought, his hungry brain pouncing avidly upon it. Thereafter he tortured himself by tracking it down to its last and direst issues; and thus engrossed was callous even to his passage along the main street, for which, after what had just happened, he felt a shrinking distaste, picturing eyes in every window, sneers behind every door.
Safe again within the four walls of his room, he tossed hat and bag from him and sank into the armchair, where he lay supine, his taut muscles relaxed, his tired eyes closed to remembrance. And in a very few minutes he was fast asleep: a deep, sound sleep, such as night and darkness rarely brought him. Dinner-time came and went; but he slept on; for Mrs. Beetling, still nursing her injuries, did not as usual put her head in at the door to say that dinner was ready; she just planked the dishes down on the dining-room table and left them there. And soon the pair of chops, which dish she served up to him day after day, lay hard and sodden in their own fat.
Hunched in his chair, his head on his chest, his mouth open, Mahony drew breaths that were more than half snores. His carefully brushed hair had fallen into disarray, the lines on his forehead deepened to grooves; on his slender hands, one of which hung between his knees, the other over an arm of the chair, the veins stood out blue and bold.
No sound broke the stillness but that of the clock striking the hours and half-hours. Only very gradually did the sleeper come up from those unfathomed depths, of which the waking brain keeps no memory, to where, on the fringe of his consciousness, a disturbing dream awaited him. It had to do with a buggy, a giant buggy, full of people; and, inverting the real event of the day on which it was modelled, he now longed with all his heart to be among them. For it seemed to him that, if he could succeed in getting into this buggy, he would hear somthing — some message or tidings — which it was important for him to know. But though he tried and tried again, he could not manage to swing himself up; either his foot missed the step, or the people, who sat laughing and grimacing at him, pushed him off. Finally he fell and lay in the dust, which, filling eyes, nose, mouth, blinded and asphyxiated him. He was still on his back, struggling for air, when he heard a voice buzzing in his ear: “You’re wanted! It’s a patient come. Wake up, wake up!”— and there was Mrs. Beetling leaning over him and shaking him by the arm, while a man stood in the doorway and gaped.
He was out of his chair and on his feet in a twinkling; but he could not as easily collect his wits, which were still dreambound. His hands, too, felt numb, and as if they did ............