Wept Mary, his Lordship’s visit having ended in strain and coolness: “How could you! . . . how COULD you? Knowing what he thinks — and him a guest in the house! And then to hold our poor little darling up to derision — for them to laugh and mock at — oh! it was cruel of you . . . cruel. I shall never forget it.”
“Pray would you have me refuse, when the opportunity offers, to bear witness to the faith that is in me? Who am I to shrink from gibes and sneers? Where would Christianity itself be to-day, had its early followers not braved scorn and contumely?”
“But WE’RE not early Christians! We’re just ordinary people. And I think it’s perfectly dreadful to hear you make such comparisons. Talk about blasphemy . . .”
“It’s always the same. Try to tell a man that he has a chance of immortality . . . that he is not to be snuffed out at death like a candle . . . and all that is brutal and ribald in him comes to the surface.”
“Leave it to the churches! . . . it’s the churches’ business. You only succeed in making an utter fool of yourself.”
Immortality . . . and a doll’s nose! Oh, to see a man of Richard’s intelligence sunk so low! For fear of what she might say next, Mary flung out of the room, leaving him still haranguing, and put the length of the passage between them. At the verandah door she stood staring with smouldering eyes into the garden. Telling herself that, one day, it would not be the room only she quitted, but the house as well. She saw a picture of herself, marching with defiant head down the path and out of the gate, a child on either hand. (Oh! the children went, too: she’d take good care of that.) Richard should be left to the tender mercies of Zara: Zara who, at first sound of a raised voice, vanished behind a locked door. That might bring him to his senses. For things could not go on as they were. Never a plan did she lay for his benefit but he somehow crossed and frustrated it. And as a result of her last effort, they were actually in a worse position than before. Not only was the practice as dead as a doornail again, but a new load of contempt rested on Richard’s shoulders.
The first hint that something more than his spiritistic rantings might be at work, in frightening people off, came from Maria. It was a couple of weeks later. Mary was in the kitchen making pastry, dabbing blobs of lard over a rolled-out sheet of paste, and tossing and twisting with a practised hand, when Maria, who stood slicing apples, having cast more than one furtive glance at her mistress, volunteered the remark: “Mrs. Mahony, you know that feller with the broke leg? Well, they do say his Pa’s bin and fetched another doctor, orl the way from Oakworth.”
“What boy? Young Nankivell? Nonsense! He’s out of splints by now.”
“Mike Murphy told the grocer so.”
“Now, Maria, you know I won’t listen to gossip. Make haste with the fruit for this pie.”
But it was not so easy to get the girl’s words out of her head. Could there possibly be any truth in them? And if so, did Richard know? He wouldn’t say a word to her, of course, unless his hand was forced.
At dinner she eyed him closely; but could detect no sign of a fresh discomfiture.
That afternoon, though, as she sat stitching at warm clothing — with the end of March the rains had set in, bringing cooler weather — as she sat, there came a knock at the front door, and Maria admitted what really seemed to be a patient again at last, a man asking imperiously for the doctor. He was shown into the surgery, and even above the whirring of her sewing-machine Mary could hear his voice — and Richard’s, too — raised as if in dispute, and growing more and more heated. She went into the passage and listened, holding her breath. Then — oh! what was that? . . . who? . . . WHAT? . . . A HORSE-WHIPPING? Without hesitation she turned the knob of the surgery door and walked in.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” With fearful eyes she looked from one to the other. In very fact the stranger, a great red-faced, burly fellow, held a riding-whip stretched between his hands.
And Richard was cowering in his chair, his grey head sunk between his shoulders. Richard . . . COWERING? In an instant she was beside him, her arm about his neck. “Don’t mind him! . . . don’t take any notice of what he says.”
Roughly Mahony shook himself free. “Go away . . . go out of the room, Mary. This is none of your business.”
“And have him speak to you like that? I’ll do nothing of the sort. Why don’t you turn him out?” And as Richard did not answer, and her blood was up, she rounded on the man with: “How dare you come here and insult the doctor in his own house? You great bully, you!”
“MARY! — for God’s sake! . . . don’t make more trouble for me than I’ve got already.”
“Now, now, madam, I’ll trouble you to have a care what you’re saying!” — and the network of veins on the speaker’s cheeks ran together in a purplish patch. “None of your lip for me, if you please! As for insults, me good lady, you’ll have something more to hear about the rights o’ that. You’ve got a boy of your own, haven’t you? What would you say, I’d like to know, if a bloody fraud calling himself a doctor had been and made a cripple of him for life?”
(THAT hit. Cuffy? . . . a cripple? Oh, Richard, Richard, what HAVE you done?)
“As fine a young chap as ever you see, tall and upstanding. And now ’tis said he’ll never walk straight again, but’ll have to hobble on crutches, with one leg four inches shorter than the other, for the rest of his days. — But I’ll settle you! I’ll cork your chances for you! I’ll put a stop to your going round maiming other people’s children. I’ll have the lor on you, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll take it into court, by Jesus I will!”
“You’ll ruin me.”
“I’ll never stop till I have . . . so help me, God! . . . as you’ve ruined me boy. You won’t get the chance to butcher no one else — you damned, drunken old swine, you!”
Richard sat motionless, head in hand, and the two fingers that supported his temple, and the skin on which they lay, looked as though drained of every drop of blood. But he said not a word — let even the last infamous accusation pass unchallenged. Not so Mary. With eyes so fierce that the man involuntarily recoiled before them, she advanced upon him. “How dare you? . . . how DARE you say a thing like that to my husband? You! . . . with a face which shows everybody what your habits are . . . to slander some one who’s never in his life been the worse for drink? Go away . . . we’ve had enough of you . . . go away, I say!”— and throwing open the door she drove him before her. — But on the garden path he turned and shook his fist at the house.
Richard had not stirred; nor did he look up at her entry. And to her flood of passionate and bewildered questions, he responded only by a toneless: “It’s no use, Mary; what he says may be true. A case of malunion. Such things do happen. And surgery has never been one of my strong points.” Try as she would, there was nothing more to be got out of him.
In despair she left him, and went to the bedroom. Her brain was spinning like a Catherine wheel. Yet something must be done. They could not — oh, they COULD not! — sit meekly there, waiting for this new and awful blow to fall. She must go out, track the man, follow him up; and snatching her bonnet from the drawer she tied it on — it had a red rose on a stalk, which nodded at her from the mirror. She would go on her knees to him not to take proceedings. He had a wife. SHE might understand . . . being a woman, be merciful. But . . . Cuffy . . . a cripple . . . would SHE have had mercy? What would HER feelings have been, had she had to see her own child go halt and lame? No, Richard was right, it was no good: there was nothing to be done. And tearing off her wraps she threw herself face downwards on the bed, and wept bitterly.
She did not hear the door open, or see the small face that peered in. And a single glimpse of the dark mass that was his mother, lying shaking and sobbing, was enough for Cuffy: he turned and fled. Frightened by the angry voices, the children had sought their usual refuge up by the henhouse. But it got night, and nobody came to call them or look for them, and nobody lit the lamps; and when they did come home the table wasn’t spread for supper. Cuffy set to hunting for Mamma. But after his discovery his one desire was not to see anything else. In the dark drawing-room, he hid behind an armchair. Oh, WHAT was the matter now? What HAD they done to her? It could only be Papa that hurt her so. WHY did he have to do it? Why couldn’t he be nice to her? Oh, If only Papa — yes, if . . . if only Papa WOULD go away, as he said, and leave them and Mamma together! Oh, pray God, let Papa go away! . . . and never, never come back.
But that night — after a sheerly destructive evening, in which Mary had never ceased to plead with, to throw herself on the mercy of, an invisible opponent: I give you my word for it, he wasn’t himself that day . . . what with the awful heat . . . and the length of the drive . . . and the horse wouldn’t go . . . he was so upset over it. And then the loss of our little girl . . . that was a blow he has never properly got over. For he’s not a young man any more. He’s not what he was . . . ANYONE will tell you that! But they’ll tell you, too, that he has never, never neglected a patient because of it. He’s the most conscientious of men . . . has always worked to the last ounce of his strength, put himself and the state of his own health last of all . . . I have known him tramp off of a morning when anybody with half an eye could see that he ought to be in bed. And so kindhearted! If a patient is poor, or has fallen on evil days, he will always treat him free of charge. Oh, surely people would need to have hearts of stone, to stand out against pleas such as these? — Or she lived through, to the last detail, the horrors of a lawsuit: other doctors giving............