Ultima Thule (14 page)

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! "If only I had never brought you to this accursed place!"

There was an instant's pause, a momentary cessation of her laboured breathing, as the bed shook under the shudders that stand to a man for sobs, before she flung round and drew him to her.

"Mary, Mary! . . . I meant it for the best."

"I know you did, I know. I won't have you blame yourself. It might have happened anywhere." (Oh, my baby, my baby!)

Now they clung to each other, all the petty differences they laboured under obliterated by their common grief. Till suddenly a sound fell on their ears, driving them apart to listen: it was little Lucie, waking from sleep in an empty bed and crying with fear. Rising, her father carried her over and laid her down in his own warm place; and Mary, recalled from her profitless weeping by a need greater than her own, held out her arms and gathered the child in. "It's all right, my darling. Mamma's here."

This, the ultimate remedy. Half an hour later when he crept back to look, mother and child slept, tear-stained cheek to cheek.

His hand in his father's, Cuffy was led into the little room where Lallie lay. -- "I want them to have no morbid fear of death."

On waking that morning -- after a rather jolly day spent at the Bank . . . or what would have been jolly, if Lucie hadn't been such a cry-baby . . . where he had been allowed to try to lift a bar of gold and to step inside the great safe: on waking, Cuffy heard the amazing news that Lallie had gone away: God had taken her to live with Him. His eyes all but dropped out of his head, a dozen questions jumped to his tongue; but he did not ask one of them; for Mamma never stopped crying, and Papa looked as he did when you didn't talk to him, but got away and tried not to remember. So Cuffy sat on the edge of the verandah and felt most awfully surprised. What had happened was too strange, too far removed from the range of his experience, too "interesting," to let any other feeling come up in him. He wondered and wondered . . . why God had done it . . . and why He had just wanted Lallie. Now he himself . . . well, Luce had got so whiny!

But the darkened room and a sheet over the whole bed did something funny to him . . . inside. And, as his father turned the slats of the venetian so that a pale daylight filtered in, Cuffy asked -- in a voice he meant to make whispery and small, but which came out hoarse like a crow: "What's she covered up like that for?"

For answer Mahony drew back the double layer of mosquito netting, and displayed the little sister's face. "Don't be afraid, Cuffy. She's only asleep." And indeed it might well have been so. Here were no rigidly trussed limbs, no stiffly folded arms: the heave of the breath alone was missing. Lallie lay with one little hand under her cheek, her curls tumbling naturally over her shoulder. The other hand held a nosegay, a bit of gaudy red geranium tied up with one of its own leaves -- the single poor flower Mahony had found still a-bloom in the garden.

"Kiss her Cuffy."

Cuffy obeyed -- and got a shock. "Why's she so cold?"

"Because her spirit is flown. This dear little body, that we have known and loved, was only the house of the spirit; and now is empty and must fade. But though we shall not see her, our Lallie will go on living and growing. . . in a grace and beauty such as earth cannot show." And more to himself than to the boy beside him Mahony murmured:

Not as a child shall we again behold her, For when, with raptures wild, In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child, But a fair maiden in her Father's mansions . . .

"Will she . . . do you mean . . . be grown up?" And Cuffy fixed wide, affrighted eyes on his father. For in listening to these words, he had a sudden vision of a Lallie who looked just like Miss Prestwick or Cousin Emmy, with a little small waist, and bulgings, and tight, high, buttoned boots. And against this picture especially the boots -- something in him rose and screamed with repugnance. He wanted Lallie's fat little legs in socks and strapped shoes, as he had always known them. He would not have her different!

"Oh, no, no . . . no!" And with this, his habitual defence against the things he was unwilling to face, Cuffy tore his hand away and escaped to his sanctuary at the bottom of the garden.

Here for the first time a sense of loss came over him. (It was the boots had done it.) What, never see Lallie any more? . . . as his little fat sister? It couldn't be true . . . it couldn't! "I don't believe it . . . I don't believe it!" (Hadn't they told him that very morning that God had taken her away, when all the time she was in there lying on the bed?) And this attitude of doubt persisted; even though, when he got back the next afternoon from a long walk with Maria, God had kept His word and she was gone. But many and many a day passed before Cuffy gave up expecting her to re-appear. Did he go into an empty room, or turn a corner of the verandah, it seemed to him that he must find Lallie there: suddenly she would have come back, and everything be as it was before. For since, by their father's care, all the sinister ceremonials and paraphernalia of death were kept from them, he was free to go on regarding it solely in the light of an abrupt disappearance . . . and if you could be spirited away in this fashion, who was to say if you mightn't just as easily pop up again? Also by Mahony's wish, neither he nor Lucie ever set foot in the outlying bush cemetery, where in due time a little cross informed the curious that the small mound before them hid the mortal remains of Alicia Mary Townshend-Mahony, aged five and a half years. Providing people, at the same time, with a puzzle to scratch their heads over. For, in place of the usual reference to lambs and tender shepherds, they found themselves confronted by the words: Dans l'espoir. And what the meaning of this heathenish term might be, none in Barambogie knew, but all were suspicious of.

* * * * *

"We've simply got to afford it," was Mary's grim reply. -- There she stood, her gaunt eyes fixed on Richard, the embodiment of a mother-creature at bay to protect her young.

Christmas had come and gone, and the fierce northern summer was upon them in earnest. Creeks and water-holes were dry now, rivers shrunk to a trickling thread; while that was brown straw which had once been grass. And Mary, worn down by heat and mental suffering, was fretting her heart out over her remaining baby, little Lucie, now but the ghost of her former self. Coming on top of Lucie's own illness, her twin-sister's death had struck her a blow from which she did not seem able to recover. And to see the child droop and fade before her very eyes rendered Mary desperate. This was why, to Richard's procrastinating and undecided: "I must see if I can afford it," she had flung out her challenge: "We've got to!"

"I suppose you're right."

"I know I am!"

Many and heartfelt had been the expressions of sympathy from those friends and acquaintances who had read the brief notice on the front page of the Argus. Outsiders, too, people Mary had almost forgotten, showed that they still remembered her, by condoling with her in her loss. But it was left to dear old Tilly to translate sentiment into practical aid.

How I feel for you, my darling, words wouldn't tell. It's the cruellest thing ever happened. But oh, the blessing, Mary, that you've still got your other two. You must just remember how much they need you, love, while they're so small, and how much you are to them. -- And now hark to me, my dear. I'd been planning before this to take a shanty at Lorne for the hot weather; and what I want is for you to come and share it with me -- share expenses, if you like, me knowing what you are. But get the chicks away from that wicked heat you must. -- Besides, helping to look after Baby'll be the best of medicines for that poor forlorn little mite, who it makes my heart ache even to think of.

Too great were the odds -- in this case the welfare, perhaps the very life, of his remaining children -- against him. Mahony bowed his head. And when Mary had gone he unlocked a private drawer of his table, and drew out a box in which lay several rolls of notes, carefully checked and numbered. Once more he counted them through. For weeks, nay, for months he had been laboriously adding pound to pound. In all there were close on forty of them. He had fully intended to make it fifty by New Year. Now there was no help: it would have to go. First, the doctor's fare from Oakworth; then the costs of the funeral . . . with a five-pound note to the parson. What was left after these things were paid must be sacrificed to Mary and the children. They would need every penny of it . . . and more besides.

PART II.

TO come back to the empty house, having watched the train carry them off ("Kiss papa good bye! . . . good bye . . . good bye, my darlings! Come back with rosy cheeks. -- Try to forget, Mary . . . my poor old wife!"): to come back to the empty house was like facing death anew. All the doors, three on each side of the central passage, stood open, showing unnatural-looking rooms. Mary had done her best to leave things tidy, but she had not been able to avoid the last disorder inevitable on a journey. Odd sheets of newspaper lay about, and lengths of twine; the floors were unswept, the beds unmade; one of the children had dropped a glove. . . Mahony stooped to it. . . Cuffy's, for a wager, seeing that the middle finger was chewed to pulp. And as he stood holding it, it seemed as if from out these yawning doors, these dismal rooms, one or other of his little ones must surely dart and run to him, with a cry of "Papa . .. Papa!" But not a sound broke the silence, no shadow smudged the whitewash of the walls.

The first shock over, however, the litter cleared up, the rooms dressed, he almost relished the hush and peace to which the going of wife and children had left him. For one thing, he could rest on the knowledge that he had done for them all that was humanly possible. In return, he would, for several weeks to come, be spared the mute reproach of two wan little faces, and a mother's haggard eyes. Nor need he crack his brains for a time over the problem of an education for the children in this wilderness, or be chafed by Mary's silent but pregnant glosses on the practice. In a word he was free . . . free to exist unobserving and unobserved.

But his satisfaction was short-lived: by the end of the second day the deathlike stillness had begun to wear him down. Maria was shut off in the detached kitchen; and on getting home of a late afternoon he knew that, but for the final mill-screech, and the distant rumble of the ten-o'clock train, no mortal sound would reach his ears the long night through. The silence gathered, descended and settled upon him, like a fog or a cloud. There was something ominous about it, and instead of reading he found himself listening. . . listening. Only very gradually did the thought break through that he had something to listen for. Dark having fallen, might not a tiny ghost, a little spirit that had not yet found rest afar from those it loved, flit from room to room in search of them? What more likely indeed? He strained his ears. But only his pulses buzzed there. On the other hand, about eleven o'clock one night, on coming out of the surgery to cross to the bedroom, he could have sworn to catching a glimpse of a little shape . . . vague, misty of outline, gone even as he saw it, and yet unmistakable . . . vanishing in the doorway of the children's room. His heart gave a great leap of joy and recognition. Swiftly following, he called a name; but on the empty air: the room had no occupant. For two nights after he kept watch, to waylay the apparition should it come; but, shy of human eyes, it did not show itself again. Not to be baulked, he tried a fresh means: taking a sheet of paper he let his hand lie lightly along the pencil. And, lo and behold! at the second trial the pencil began to move, seemed to strive to form words; while by the fourth evening words were coming through. Her Mamma . . . her Luce . . . Wants her Mamma.

The kitchen clock had stopped: Maria, half undressed, stealing tiptoe into the house to see the time, a tin lamp with a reflector in her hand, was pulled up short, half-way down the passage, by the sound of voices. Hello! who was Doctor talking to? A patient at this hour? But nobody had knocked at the door. And what . . . oh, crikey! whatever was he saying? The girl's eyes and mouth opened, and her cheeks went pale, as the sense of what she heard broke on her. Pressing herself against the wall, she threw a terrified glance over her shoulder into the inky shadows cast by the lamp. --

"Ma! I was fair skeered out of me senses. To hear 'im sitting there a-talkin' to that pore little kid, what's been dead and buried this month and more! An' him calling her by her name, and saying her Ma would soon be back, and then she wouldn't need to feel lonely any more -- why, I tell yer, even this mornin' in broad daylight I found meself lookin' behind me the whole time. -- Go back? Stop another night there? Not me! I couldn't, Ma. I'm skeered."

"You great ninny, you! What could 'urt yer, I'd like to know? . . . as long as you say yer prayers reg'lar and tells the troof. Ghosts, indeed! I'll ghost you!" -- But Maria, more imaginatively fibred, was not to be won over.

Mahony listened to the excuses put forward by her mother on his reaching home that evening: listened with the kindly courtesy he kept for those beneath him who met him civilly and with respect. Maria's plea of loneliness was duly weighed. "Though I must say I think she has hardly given the new conditions a fair trial. However, she has always been a good girl, and the plan you propose, Mrs. Beetling, will no doubt answer very well during my wife's absence."

It not only answered: it was an improvement. Breakfast was perhaps served a little later than usual, and the cooking proved rather coarser than Maria's, who was Mary-trained. But it was all to the good that, supper over, Mrs. Beetling put on her bonnet and went home, leaving the place clear. His beloved little ghost was then free to flit as it would, without fear of surprise or disturbance. He continually felt its presence -- though it did not again materialise -- and message after message continued to come through. Written always by a third person, in an unfamiliar hand . . . as was only to be expected, considering that the twins still struggled with pothooks and hangers . . . they yet gave abundant proof of their authorship.