Travelling from Dover to Calais and thence to Paris, the party set off on what, in thought, Mary ever after dubbed: “that mad race across Europe.”
For, the Channel behind them, Richard’s restlessness broke out in a new form: it seemed impossible for him to be content in any place they visited for more than a day or two on end. In vain did Mary protest: “But, Richard, we’re not seeing anything!” Within a few hours of his arrival in a town, he had had enough of it, sucked it dry; and was fidgeting to be off to the next on their line of route. Nor was this itch for movement all. The strange food did not suit him: he either liked it too well and ate too heartily of it, or turned from it altogether. Then the noisiness of foreign cities — the cobbled streets, the rattling of the loosely hung vehicles, the loud foreign voices, the singing, the tambourining — got on his nerves, and, together with the unshaded windows of hotel bedrooms, kept him awake half the night: him spoilt, for how many a year, by the perfectly darkened sashes, the ordered silence of his sleeping-room at “Ultima Thule.” And all the beauties in the world could not make up to Richard for lack of sleep. Or, to turn it round: rob him of his sleep, and you robbed him of all power to enjoy fine scenery or handsome monuments. And so they sometimes arrived at a place and left it again, without having really seen very much more of it than the four walls of a room.
Before they had got any distance, it became clear to Mary that Richard’s travelling-days were . . . well, one could hardly say over, when they had only just begun. The truth was, they had come too late. He was no longer able to enjoy them.
It was not the physical discomforts alone that defeated him. The fancies he went in for, as soon as he set foot on foreign soil, made his life a misery to him. In Paris, for instance, he was seized by a nervous fear of the street traffic; actually felt afraid he was going to be run over. If he had to cross one of the vast squares, over which vehicles dashed from all directions, he would stand and hesitate on the kerb, looking from side to side, unable to resolve to take the plunge; and wasn’t he angry with her, if she tried to make a dash for it! His own fears rendered him fussy about Cuffy and the maid’s safety, too. He wouldn’t hear of them going out alone; and insisted every morning on shepherding them to their walk in the Public Gardens. If he was prevented, they must drive there in a FIACRE. Which all helped to make the stay in Paris both troublesome and costly. Then there was that time in Strasbourg, when they set out to climb the tower of the cathedral. It was certainly a bad day to choose, for it had rained in the night and afterwards frozen over, and even the streets were slippery. But Richard was bent on seeing the Rhine, and the Vosges, and the Black Forest from the top of the steeple; so up they went. As far as the platform, it was plain sailing. But on the tower proper, when they were mounting the innumerable stone steps — all glassy with ice, and very tricky to keep a footing on — which led to the spire, he turned pale, and confessed to giddiness . . . it was true you looked through the wide-open stonework right down to the street below, where people crawled like ants. And after another bend in the stair, he clinging fast to the iron hand-rail, he had ignominiously to give in and descend again: backwards, too! “I felt I should either fall through one of the openings or throw myself out. Great heights are evidently not for me.”
And this was not wholly due to imagination. For, after going up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and taking a peep over the side, he felt so sick on reaching the ground that he had to go back to the hotel and lie down.
Again a beautiful city like Munich was ruined for him, by the all-pervading smell of malt from its many breweries. The whole time they were there he went about with his nose in the air, sniffing; and he never ceased to grumble. Next, as the Tyrolese mountains were so close, they took train and went in among them; but this didn’t suit him either. The nearness of these drear, dark masses wakened in him, he said, an overpowering sense of oppression; made him feel as if he MUST climb them; get to their summits in order to be able to breathe. One moment abjuring heights, another hankering after them! . . . who could keep pace with such inconsistencies?
Of course there were times when he smiled at himself; saw the humour of the situation; especially when he had just escaped from one of his bugbears. But then came the next (he was never prepared for them) and hit him equally hard. The thing he COULDN’T laugh at was his — their — “infernal ignorance of foreign lingos.” Not to be able to express himself properly, make himself fully understood, riled and fretted him; though less, perhaps, than did her loud and unabashed efforts to say what she wanted. And because he couldn’t argue, or expostulate, with porters, waiters, cabbies and the like, he constantly suspected these people of trying to do him. The queer thing was, he preferred being diddled, putting up with it in gloomy silence, to trying, in broken French, German or Italian, to call the cheats to account. Many an extra franc and taler and lira did this hypersensitiveness cost him. But his dread of being laughed at was stronger than himself.
Yes! there was always something. He never let himself have any real peace or enjoyment. Or so thought Mary at the time. It was not till afterwards, when he fell to re-living his travels in memory, that she learned how great was the pleasure he had got out of them. Inconveniences and annoyances were by then sunk below the horizon. Above, remained visions of white cities, and slender towers, and vine-clad hills; of olive groves bedded in violets; fine music heard in opera and oratorio; coffee-drinking in shady gardens on the banks of a lake; orchards of pink almond-blossom massed against the misty blue of far mountain valley.
Of all the towns they touched, even including Naples and Rome, Venice suited him best; and this, she firmly believed, because he went there with the idea that, having neither streets nor wheeled traffic, it must of necessity be a quiet and restful place. Herself she noticed nothing of this. Dozens of people walked the narrow alleys — you could really go everywhere on foot — and the cries of the gondoliers, the singing and mandoline-playing lasted far into the night. But Richard throve on it; though it was June now, and very hot, and alive with mosquitoes. He bathed daily on the Lido, and for the rest of the day kept cool in picture-galleries and churches, of which he never seemed to tire. Whereas she, after half an hour of screwing up her eyes and craning her neck at ceilings, had had more than enough.
They had been there for a whole fortnight, and there was still no talk of their moving on, when something happened which cut their stay through as with a knife. The smallest details of that July afternoon — it started with one of Cuffy’s outbreaks — were burnt into Mary’s brain.
Richard had gone after lunch to the British Consul’s, to fetch their Australian mail: Mary was anxiously waiting for news of the birth of Tilly’s child. She wrote at her own home budget while expecting his return, sitting in the cool hotel bedroom with Cuffy playing on the floor beside her. Deep in her letter, she did not notice that the child had strayed to the balcony. How long he had been there, still as a mouse, she did not know; but she was suddenly startled by hearing him give a shrill cry.
“Oh, no . . . NO!”
Laying down her pen, she stepped through the window. “What’s the matter with YOU?”
On the opposite side of the canal some men were engaged in drowning a puppy. They had tied a weight to the little animal’s neck before throwing it into the water, but this was not heavy enough to keep it down; and again and again, in a desperate struggle for breath, it fought its way to the surface, only to be hit at with sticks did it come within arm’s reach. Finally, amid the laughter of the crowd, the flat side of an oar caught it full on its little panting snout and terrified eyes. With a shriek that was almost human, it sank, not to rise again.
“Run inside, Cuffy. Don’t stay here watching those nasty cruel men,” said Mary, and took him by the arm. But Cuffy tore it away and remained standing with dilated eyes and open lips, breathing rapidly. The last blow struck, he burst into a passion of tears and, running to a corner of the room, threw himself face downwards on the floor.
There followed one of those dreadful exhibitions of rage or temper which Mary found it so hard to reconcile with her little son’s usual docility. Cuffy kicked and screamed and wouldn’t be touched, like the naughtiest of children; and at the same time was shaken from head to foot by sobs about which there was nothing childish.
She was still bending over him, still remonstrating, when the door opened and Richard came in. One glance at his face was enough to make her forget Cuffy and spring to her feet.
“Richard! Why, my dear . . . why, whatEVER is the matter?” For he had gone out, not an hour earlier, in the best of spirits; and here he came back white as a ghost, with dazed-looking eyes and shuffling feet. “Are you ill? Has the sun . . .?”
Midway in a sob Cuffy stopped to listen . . . held his breath.
Pouring himself out a glass of water and spilling it as he poured, Richard drank, in a series of gulps. Then, from a bundle of newspapers and letters he was carrying, he drew forth a folded sheet and handed it to Mary.
“Read this.”
In deep apprehension she took the paper. As she read she, too, went pale. It was a telegram from Jerry, forwarded by their London banker, and ran: RETURN IMMEDIATELY. MOST URGENT. WILDING ABSCONDED AMERICA.
Mary could not all at once take in the full sense of the words.
“But how . . . what does it mean, Richard? I don’t understand.”
“Mean? Ruin, I suppose. In all probability I am a ruined man.” And dropping heavily on a chair, Mahony buried his face in his hands.
Cuffy sat up, and peeped furtively at his father and mother, with round eyes.
“Ruin? But how? . . . why? Oh dear, CAN&rsqu............