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Australia Felix

H >> Henry Handel Richardson (1870 1946) >> Australia Felix




In the harmony of the evening there was just one jarring note for Mary;
and at moments she grew very thoughtful. For the first time Mrs. Kelly,
the motherly widow on whom her choice had fallen, sat opposite John at
the head of the table; and already Mary was the prey of a nagging doubt.
For this person had doffed the neat mourning-garb she had worn when
being engaged, and come forth in a cap trimmed with cherry coloured
ribbons. Not only this, she smiled in sugary fashion and far too
readily; while the extreme humility with which she deferred to John's
opinion, and hung on his lips, made another bad impression on Mary. Nor
was she alone in her observations. After a particularly glaring example
of the widow's complaisance, Tilly looked across and shut one eye, in an
unmistakable wink.

Meanwhile the men's talk had gradually petered out: there came long
pauses in which they twiddled and twirled their wine-glasses, unable to
think of anything to say. At heart, both John and Mahony hailed with a
certain relief the coming break. "After all I dare say such a queer
faddy fellow IS out of his element here. He'll go down better over
there," was John's mental verdict. Mahony's, a characteristic: "Thank
God, I shall not have to put up much longer with his confounded
self-importance, or suffer under his matrimonial muddles!"

When at a question from Mary John began animatedly to discuss the
tuition of the younger children, Mahony seized the chance to slip away.
He would not be missed. He never was--here or anywhere.

On the verandah a dark form stirred and made a hasty movement. It was
the boy Johnny--now grown tall as Mahony himself--and, to judge from
the smell, what he tried to smuggle into his pocket was a briar.

"Oh well, yes, I'm smoking," he said sullenly, after a feeble attempt at
evasion. "Go in and blab on me, if you feel you must, Uncle Richard."

"Nonsense. But telling fibs about a thing does no good."

"Oh yes, it does; it saves a hiding," retorted the boy. And added with a
youthful vehemence: "I'm hanged if I let the governor take a stick to me
nowadays! I'm turned sixteen; and if he dares to touch me--"

"Come, come. You know, you've been something of a disappointment to your
father, Johnny--that's the root of the trouble."

"Glad if I have! He hates me anyway. He never cared for my mother's
children," answered Johnny with a quaint dignity. "I think he couldn't
have cared for her either."

"There you're wrong. He was devoted to her. Her death nearly broke his
heart.--She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, my
boy."

"Was she?" said Johnny civilly, but with meagre interest. This long dead
mother had bequeathed him not even a memory of herself--was as unreal
to him as a dream at second hand. From the chilly contemplation of her
he turned back impatiently to his own affairs, which were burning,
insistent. And scenting a vague sympathy in this stranger uncle who,
like himself, had drifted out from the intimacy of the candle-lit room,
he made a clean breast of his troubles.

"I can't stand the life here, Uncle Richard, and I'm not going to--not
if father cuts me off with a shilling! I mean to see the world. THIS
isn't the world--this dead-and-alive old country! . . . though it's got
to seem like it to the governor, he's been here so long. And HE cleared
out from his before he was even as old as I am. Of course there isn't
another blessed old Australia for me to decamp to; he might be a bit
sweeter about it, if there was. But America's good enough for me, and
I'm off there--yes, even if I have to work my passage out!"

Early next morning, fully equipped for their journey, the Mahonys stood
on the William's Town pier, the centre of the usual crowd of relatives
and friends. This had been further swelled by the advent of Mrs. Devine,
who came panting up followed by her husband, and by Agnes Ocock and
Amelia Grindle, who had contrived to reach Melbourne the previous
evening. Even John's children were tacked on, clad in their Sunday best.
Everybody talked at once and laughed or wept; while the children played
hide-and-seek round the ladies' crinolines. Strange eyes were bent on
their party, strange ears cocked in their direction; and yet once again
Mahony's dislike to a commotion in public choked off his gratitude
towards these good and kindly people. But his star was rising: tears and
farewells and vows of constancy had to be cut short, a jaunt planned by
the whole company to the ship itself abandoned; for a favourable wind
had sprung up and the captain was impatient to weigh anchor. And so the
very last kisses and handclasps exchanged, the travellers climbed down
into a boat already deep in the water with other cuddy-passengers and
their luggage, and were rowed out to where lay that good clipper-ship,
the RED JACKET. Sitting side by side husband and wife watched, with
feelings that had little in common, the receding quay, Mary fluttering
her damp handkerchief till the separate figures had merged in one dark
mass, and even Tilly, planted in front, her handkerchief tied flagwise
to the top of Jerry's cane, could no longer be distinguished from the
rest.

Mahony's foot met the ribbed teak of the deck with the liveliest
satisfaction; his nostrils drank in the smell of tarred ropes and oiled
brass. Having escorted Mary below, seen to the stowing away of their
belongings and changed his town clothes for a set of comfortable baggy
garments, he returned to the deck, where he passed the greater part of
the day tirelessly pacing. They made good headway, and soon the ports
and towns at the water's edge were become mere whitey smudges. The hills
in the background lasted longer. But first the Macedon group faded from
sight; then the Dandenong Ranges, grown bluer and bluer, were also lost
in the sky. The vessel crept round the outside of the great Bay, to
clear shoals and sandbanks, and, by afternoon, with the sails close
rigged in the freshening wind, they were running parallel with the Cliff
--"THE Cliff!" thought Mahony with a curl of the lip. And indeed there
was no other; nothing but low scrub-grown sandhills which flattened out
till they were almost level with the sea.

The passage through the Heads was at hand. Impulsively he went down to
fetch Mary. Threading his way through the saloon, in the middle of which
grew up one of the masts, he opened a door leading off it.

"Come on deck, my dear, and take your last look at the old place. It's
not likely you'll ever see it again."

But Mary was already encoffined in her narrow berth.

"Don't ask me even to lift my head from the pillow, Richard. Besides,
I've seen it so often before."

He lingered to make some arrangements for her comfort, fidgeted to know
where she had put his books; then mounted a locker and craned his neck
at the porthole. "Now for the Rip, wife! By God, Mary, I little thought
this time last year, that I should be crossing it to-day."

But the cabin was too dark and small to hold him. Climbing the steep
companion-way he went on deck again, and resumed his flittings to and
fro. He was no more able to be still than was the good ship under him;
he felt himself one with her, and gloried in her growing unrest. She was
now come to the narrow channel between two converging headlands, where
the waters of Hobson's Bay met those of the open sea. They boiled and
churned, in an eternal commotion, over treacherous reefs which thrust
far out below the surface and were betrayed by straight, white lines of
foam. Once safely out, the vessel hove to to drop the pilot. Leaning
over the gunwale Mahony watched a boat come alongside, the man of
oilskins climb down the rope-ladder and row away.

Here, in the open, a heavy swell was running, but he kept his foot on
the swaying boards long after the last of his fellow-passengers had
vanished--a tall, thin figure, with an eager, pointed face, and hair
just greying at the temples. Contrary to habit, he had a word for every
one who passed, from mate to cabin-boy, and he drank a glass of wine
with the Captain in his cabin. Their start had been auspicious, said the
latter; seldom had he had such a fair wind to come out with.

Then the sun fell into the sea and it was night--a fine, starry night,
clear with the hard, cold radiance of the south. Mahony looked up at the
familiar constellations and thought of those others, long missed, that
he was soon to see again.--Over! This page of his history was turned
and done with; and he had every reason to feel thankful. For many and
many a man, though escaping with his life, had left youth and health and
hope on these difficult shores. He had got off scot-free. Still in his
prime, his faculties green, his zest for living unimpaired, he was
heading for the dear old mother country--for home. Alone and unaided he
could never have accomplished it. Strength to will the enterprise,
steadfastness in the face of obstacles had been lent him from above. And
as he stood gazing down into the black and fathomless deep, which sent
crafty, licking tongues up the vessel's side, he freely acknowledged his
debt, gave honour where honour was due.--FROM THEE COMETH VICTORY, FROM
THEE COMETH WISDOM, AND THINE IS THE GLORY AND I AM THY SERVANT.

The last spark of a coast-light went out. Buffeted by the rising wind,
the good ship began to pitch and roll. Her canvas rattled, her joints
creaked and groaned as, lunging forward, she cut her way through the
troubled seas that break on the reef-bound coasts of this old, new
world.

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