And then one morning — it was spring now, and piping hot at noon — Long Jim brought home from the post-office a letter for Polly, addressed in her sister Sarah’s sloping hand. Knowing the pleasure it would give her, Mahony carried it at once to his wife; and Polly laid aside broom and duster and sat down to read.
But he was hardly out of the room when a startled cry drew him back to her side. Polly had hidden her face, and was shaken by sobs As he could not get her to speak, Mahony picked up the letter from the floor and read it for himself.
Sarah wrote like one distracted.
OH, MY DEAR SISTER, HOW CAN I FIND WORDS TO TELL YOU OF THE TRULY “AWFUL” CALAMITY THAT HAS BEFALLEN OUR UNHAPPY BROTHER. Mahony skipped the phrases, and learnt that owing to a carriage accident Emma Turnham had been prematurely confined, and, the best medical aid notwithstanding — JOHN SPARED ABSOLUTELY “NO” EXPENSE— had died two days later. JOHN IS LIKE A MADMAN. DIRECTLY I HEARD THE “SHOCKING” NEWS, I AT ONCE THREW UP MY ENGAGEMENT— AT “SERIOUS” LOSS TO MYSELF, BUT THAT IS A MATTER OF SMALL CONSEQUENCE— AND CAME TO TAKE MY PLACE BESIDE OUR POOR DEAR BROTHER IN HIS GREAT TRIAL. BUT ALL MY EFFORTS TO BRING HIM TO A PROPER AND “CHRISTIAN” FRAME OF MIND HAVE BEEN FRUITLESS. I AM INDEED ALARMED TO BE ALONE WITH HIM, AND I TREMBLE FOR THE CHILDREN, FOR HE IS POSSESSED OF AN “INSANE” HATRED FOR THE SWEET LITTLE LOVES. HE HAS LOCKED HIMSELF IN HIS ROOM, WILL SEE “NO ONE” NOR TOUCH A “PARTICLE” OF NOURISHMENT. DO, MY DEAREST POLLY, COME AT ONCE ON RECEIPT OF THIS, AND HELP ME IN THE “TRULY AWFUL” TASK THAT HAS BEEN LAID UPON ME. AND PRAY FORGIVE ME FOR USING THIS PLAIN PAPER. I HAVE HAD LITERALLY NO TIME TO ORDER MOURNING “OF ANY KIND.”
So that was Sarah! With a click of the tongue Mahony tossed the letter on the table, and made it clear to Polly that under no consideration would he allow her to attempt the journey to town. Her relatives seemed utterly to have forgotten her condition; if, indeed., they had ever grasped the fact that she was expecting a child.
But Polly did not heed him. “Oh, poor, poor Emma! Oh, poor dear John!” Her husband could only soothe her by promising to go to Sarah’s assistance himself, the following day.
They had been entirely in the dark about things. For John Turnham thought proper to erect a jealous wall about his family life. What went on behind it was nobody’s business but his own. You felt yourself — were meant to feel yourself — the alien, the outsider. And Mahony marvelled once more at the wealth of love and sympathy his little Polly had kept fresh for these two, who had wasted so few of their thoughts on her.
Polly dried her eyes; he packed his carpet-bag. He did this with a good deal of pother, pulling open the wrong drawers, tumbling up their contents and generally making havoc of his wife’s arrangements. But the sight of his clumsiness acted as a kind of tonic on Polly: she liked to feel that he was dependent on her for his material comfort and well-being.
They spoke of John’s brief married life.
“He loved her like a pagan, my dear,” said Mahony. “And if what your sister Sarah writes is not exaggerated, he is bearing his punishment in a truly pagan way.”
“But you won’t say that to him, dear Richard . . . will you? You’ll be very gentle with him?” pleaded Polly anxiously.
“Indeed I shall, little woman. But one can’t help thinking these things, all the same. You know it is written: ‘Thou shalt have none other gods but Me.’”
“Yes, I know. But then this was JUST Emma . . . and she was so pretty and so good”— and Polly cried anew.
Mahony rose before dawn to catch the coach. Together with a packet of sandwiches, Polly brought him a small black mantle.
“For Sarah, with my dear love. You see, Richard, I know she always wears coloured dresses. And she will feel so much happier if she has SOMETHING black to put on.” Little Polly’s voice was deep with persuasion. Richard was none too well pleased, she could see, at having to unlock his bag again; she feared too, that, after the letter of the day before, his opinion of Sarah had gone down to zero.
Mahony secured a corner seat; and so, though his knees interlocked with those of his VIS-A-VIS, only one of the eight inside passengers was jammed against him. The coach started; and the long, dull hours of the journey began to wear away. Nothing broke the monotony but speculations whether the driver — a noted tippler — would be drunk before Melbourne was reached and capsize them; and the drawling voice of a Yankee prospector, who told lying tales about his exploits in California in ‘48 until, having talked his hearers to sleep, he dropped off himself. Then, Mahony fell to reflecting on what lay before him. He didn’t like the job. He was not one of your born good Samaritans: he relished intruding as little as being intruded on. Besides, morally to sustain, to forbear with, a fellow-creature in misfortune, seemed to him as difficult and thankless a task as any required of one. Infinite tact was essential, and a skin thick enough to stand snubs and rebuffs. But here he smiled. “Or my little wife’s inability to recognise them!”
House and garden had lost their air of well-groomed smartness: the gate stood ajar, the gravel was unraked, the verandah-flooring black with footmarks. With all the blinds still down, the windows looked like so many dead eyes. Mahony’s first knock brought no response; at his second, the door was opened by Sarah Turnham herself. But a very different Sarah this, from the elegant and sprightly young person who had graced his wedding. Her chignon was loose, her dress dishevelled. On recognising Mahony, she uttered a cry and fell on his neck — he had to disengage her arms by force and speak severely to her, declaring that he would go away again, if she carried out her intention of swooning.
At last he got her round so far that she could tell her tale, which she did with a hysterical overstatement. She had, it seemed, arrived there just before her sister-in-law died. John was quarrelling furiously with all three doctors, and, before the end, insulted the only one who was left in such a fashion that he, too, marched out of the house. They had to get the dead woman measured, coffined and taken away by stealth. Whereupon John had locked himself up in his room, and had not been seen since. He had a loaded revolver with him; through the closed door he had threatened to shoot both her and the children. The servants had deserted, panic-stricken at their master’s behaviour, at the sudden collapse of the well-regulated household: the last, a nurse-girl sent out on an errand some hours previously, had not returned. Sarah was at her wits’ end to know what to do with the children — he might hear them screaming at this moment.
Mahony, in no hesitancy now how to deal with the situation, laid his hat aside and drew off his gloves. “Prepare some food,” he said briefly. “A glass of port and a sandwich or two, if you can manage nothing else — but meat of some kind.”
But there was not a morsel of meat in the house.
“Then go to the butcher’s and buy some.”
Sarah gasped, and bridled. She had never in her life been inside a butcher’s shop!
“Good God, woman, then the sooner you make the beginning the better!” cried Mahony. And as he strode down the passage to the door she indicated, he added: “Now control yourself, madam! And if you have not got what I want in a quarter of an hour’s time, I’ll walk out of the house and leave you to your own devices!” At which Sarah, cowed and shaken, began tremblingly to tie her bonnet-strings.
Mahony knocked three times at the door of John Turnham’s room, each time more loudly. Then he took to battering with his fist on the panels, and cried: “It is I, John, your brother-in-law! Have the goodness to unlock this door at once!”
There was still an instant of suspense; then heavy footsteps crossed the floor and the door swung back. Mahony’s eyes met a haggard white face set in a dusky background.
“You!” said John in a slow, dazed way, and blinked at the light. But in the next breath he burst out: “Where’s that damned fool of a woman? Is she skulking behind you? I won’t see her — won’t have her near me!”
“If you mean your sister Sarah, she is not in the house at present,” said Mahony; and stepping over the threshold he shut the door. The two men faced each other in the twilight.
“What do you want?” demanded John in a hoarse voice. “Have you, too, come to preach and sermonise? If so, you can go back where you came from! I’ll have none of that cant here.”
“No, no, I leave that to those whose business it is. I’m here as your doctor”; and Mahony drew up a blind and opened a window. Instantly the ............