On one of the numerous packing-cases that strewed the rooms — now just so much soiled whitewash and bare boards — Mary sat and waited for the dray that was to transport boxes and baggage to the railway station. Her heart was heavy: no matter how unhappy you had been in it, the dismantling of a home was a sorry business, and one to which she never grew accustomed. Besides, this time when they left, one of them had to stay behind. As long as they lived here, her child had not seemed wholly gone; so full was the house of memories of her. To the next, to any other house they occupied, little Lallie would be a stranger.

Except for this, she was as thankful as Richard to turn her back on Barambogie — and he had fled like a hunted man, before he was really fit to travel. For the first time in their lives, the decision to leave a place had come from her; she had made up her mind to it while he was still too ill to care what happened. By the next morning the tale of his doings was all over the town: he would never have been able to hold up his head there again. For it wasn’t as if he had made a GENUINE attempt . . . at . . . well, yes, at suicide. To the people here, his going out to take his life and coming back without even having TRIED to, would have something comic about it . . . something contemptible. They would laugh in their sleeves; put it down to want of pluck. When what it really proved — fiercely she reassured herself — was his fondness for her, for his children. When the moment came he couldn’t find it in his heart to deal them such a blow.

But for several days she did no more than vehemently assert to herself: we go! . . . and if I have to beg the money to make it possible. Richard paid dearly for those hours of exposure: he lay in a high fever, moaning with pain and muttering light-headedly. As soon, however, as his temperature fell and his cough grew easier, she made arrangements for a sale by auction, and had a board with “To let!” on it erected in the front garden.

Then, his keys lying temptingly at her disposal, she seized this unique opportunity and, shutting herself up in the surgery, went for and by herself into his money-affairs; about which it was becoming more and more a point of honour with him to keep her in the dark. There, toilfully, she grappled with the jargon of the law: premiums, transfers, conveyances, mortgagor and mortgagee (oh, WHICH was which?), the foreclosing of a mortgage, rights of redemption. Grappled, too, with the secrets of his pass-book. And it was these twin columns which gave her the knock-out blow. As far as ready money went, they were living quite literally from hand to mouth — from the receipt of one pound to the next. In comparison, the deciphering of his case and visiting-books was child’s play. And here, taking the bull by the horns, she again acted on her own initiative. Risking his anger, she sent out yet once more the several unpaid bills she came across, accompanying them by a more drastic demand for settlement than he would ever have stooped to.

For the first time, she faced the possibility that they might have to let the mortgage lapse. Already she had suspected Richard of leaning towards this, the easier solution. But so far she had pitted her will against his. And, even yet, something stubborn rose in her and rebelled at the idea. As long as the few shares he held continued to throw off dividends, at least the interest on the loan could be met. While the rent coming in from the house at Hawthorn (instead of being a source of income!) would have to cover the rent of the house they could no longer live in, but had still to pay for. Oh! it sounded like a bad dream — or a jingle of the House-that-jack-built order.

None the less, she did not waver in her resolution: somehow to cut Richard free from a place that had so nearly been his undoing. And, hedge and shrink as she might, fiercely as her native independence, her womanish principles — simple, but still the principles of a lifetime —— kicked against it, she had gradually to become reconciled to the prospect of loading them up with a fresh burden of debt. The matter boiled down to this: was any sacrifice too great to make for Richard? Wasn’t she really, at heart, one of those women she sometimes read of in the newspapers, who, rather than see their children starve, STOLE the bread with which to feed them?

Yet still she hesitated. Until one night, turning his poor old face to her Richard said: “It’s the sea I need, Mary. If I could just get to the sea, I should grow strong and well again. — But there! . . . what’s the use of talking? As the tree falls, so it must lie!” On this night casting her scruples to the winds, Mary sat down to pen the hated appeal.

FOR RICHARD’S SAKE, TILLY, AND ONLY BECAUSE I’M DESPERATE ABOUT HIM, I ‘M REDUCED TO ASKING YOU IF YOU COULD POSSIBLY SEE YOUR WAY TO LEND ME A HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS. I SAY “LEND” AND I MEAN IT, THOUGH GOODNESS KNOWS WHEN I SHALL BE ABLE TO REPAY YOU. BUT RICHARD HAS BEEN SO ILL, THE PRACTICE HAS ENTIRELY FAILED, AND IF I CAN’T GET HIM AWAY FROM HERE I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

Tilly’s answer, received by return, ran: OH, MARY LOVE, I FEEL THAT SORRY FOR YOU I CAN’T SAY. BUT THANKS BE I CAN “DO” MY DEAR, AND I NEEDN’T TELL YOU THE MONEY IS YOURS FOR THE ASKING. AS FOR “LENDING”— WHY, IF IT MAKES YOUR POOR MIND EASIER PUT IT THAT WAY BUT IT WON’T WORRY ME IF I NEVER SEE THE COLOUR OF THE OOF AGAIN, REMEMBER THAT. ALL I HOPE IS, YOU’LL MAKE TRACKS LIKE ONE O’CLOCK FROM THAT AWFUL PLACE, AND THAT THE DOCTOR’LL SOON BE ON HIS LEGS AGAIN. — BUT MARY! AREN’T I GLAD I KEPT THAT NEST-EGG AS YOU KNOW OF! YOU WERE A BIT DOUBTFUL AT THE TIME, LOVE, IF YOU REMEMBER. BUT IF I HADN’T, WHERE SHOULD I BE TO-DAY? SOMETHING MUST HAVE WARNED ME, I THINK: SIT UP, YOU LOVESICK OLD FOOL YOU, AND TAKE THOUGHT FOR THE TIME WHEN IT’LL BE ALL CALLS AND NO DIVIDENDS. WHICH, MARY, IS NOW. THE PLAIN TRUTH BEING, HIS LORDSHIP KEEPS ME THAT TIGHT THAT IF I DIDN’T HAVE WHAT I DO, I MIGHT BE SITTING IN PENTRIDGE. AND HE, THE GREAT LOON, IMAGINES I COME OUT ON WHAT HE GIVES ME! — OH, MEN ARE FOOLS, MY DEAR, I’LL SAY IT AND SING IT TO MY DYING DAY— AND IF IT’S NOT A FOOL, THEN YOU CAN TAKE IT FROM ME IT’S A KNAVE. THERE OUGHT TO BE A BOARD UP WARNING US SILLY WOMEN OFF. — EXCEPT THAT I’VE GOT MY BLESSED BABE. WHICH MAKES UP FOR A LOT. BUT OH! IF ONE COULD JUST GET CHILDREN FOR THE WISHING, OR PICK ‘EM LIKE FRUIT FROM THE TREES, WITHOUT A THIRD PERSON HAVING TO BE MIXED UP IN IT. (I DO THINK THE LORD MIGHT HAVE MANAGED THINGS BETTER.) AND I WON’T DENY, MARY, THE THOUGHT HAS COME TO ME NOW AND THEN JUST TO TAKE BABY AND MY BIT OF SPLOSH, AND VAMOOSE TO SOMEWHERE WHERE A PAIR OF TROUSERS’LL NEVER DARKEN MY SIGHT AGAIN.

And now, for several mornings running, the postman handed in a couple of newspapers, the inner sheets of which contained the separate halves of a twenty-pound note: this being Tilly’s idea of the safest and quickest means of forwarding money.

“Just something I’d managed to lay past for a rainy day,” Mary lied boldly, on handing Richard his fare to town and ten pounds over for expenses. And pride, scruples, humiliation, all faded into thin air before the relief, the burning gratitude, her gift let loose in him. “Wife! you don’t . . . you CAN’T know what this means to me!” And then he broke down and cried, clinging like a child to her hand.

Restored to composure, he burst into a diatribe against the place, the people. What it had done to him, what they had made of him . . . him, whose only crime was that of being a gentleman. “Because I wouldn’t drink with them, descend to their level. Oh, these wretched publicans! . . . these mill-hands, and Chinese half-castes . . . these filthy Irish labourers! Mary, I would have done better to go to my grave, than ever to have come among them. And then the climate . . . and this water-hole they call a Lagoon . . . and the mill-whistle — that accursed whistle! It alone would have ended by driving me mad. But let me once shake the dust of the place off my feet, and Richard will be himself again. A kingdom for a horse? Mine — no kingdom, but a cesspool — for the sea! The sea! . . . elixir of life . . . to me and my kind. Positively, I begin to believe I’m one of those who should never live out of earshot of its waves.”

This new elation held up to the very end (when the thought of being recognised or addressed by any of those he was fleeing from threw him into a veritable fever). In such a mood he was unassailable: insensitive alike to pain or pleasure. Hence, the report that finally reached them from the Oakworth hospital didn’t touch him as it ought to have done . . . considering that the affair had all but killed him. He really took it very queerly. The surgeon wrote that the operation had been successful; there was now every hope that, the overlapping corrected, perfect union would be obtained; which, as the lad’s father also professed himself satisfied, would no doubt lift a weight from Dr. Mahony’s mind. But Richard only waxed bitterly sarcastic. “Coming to their senses at last, are they? . . . now it’s too late. Beginning to see how a gentleman ought to be treated?” Which somehow wasn’t like him . . . to harp on the “gentleman.”

He even came back on it, in a letter describing an acquaintance he had made (Richard and chance acquaintances!) in sailing down the Bay to Shortlands Bluff. This was a fellow medico: LIKE MYSELF A GENTLEMAN WHO HAS HAD MISFORTUNES, AND IS NOW OBLIGED TO RESUME PRACTICE. STILL MORE DISCONCERTING WAS IT TO READ: I TOLD HIM ABOUT BARAMBOGIE AND MENTIONED THE HOUSE BEING TO LET AND THE SALE OF THE FURNITURE, AND SAID THERE WAS A PRACTICE READY TO HAND. RATHER QUIET JUST NOW, BUT CERTAIN TO IMPROVE. IF HE TOOK IT, ALL I SHOULD ASK WOULD BE A CHEQUE FOR FIFTY POUNDS AT THE END OF THE YEAR. I PUT OUR LEAVING DOWN ENTIRELY............