worse than ever. You used to say you felt cut off in Ballarat. But since we've . . ."
"And you? . . . what about you, pray?"
"Oh, for me it's been different" -- dear Mary! -- "living next door to my mother and all that."
"Well, I can tell you this, wife. I've grown more attached to your mother, her kind heart and sound sense, than I was to any one in all Australia. And certainly more than I am to my own."
"Surely it's time you proved that? What must they be thinking of you?" ("They? Oh? they'll understand. You forget they're Irish, too, love.") "Well, Richard, my advice is . . . if you're quite determined to move from here . . . go and pay some visits and travel about a bit, as you ought to have done at first."
Than this, no suggestion could have jumped better with Mahony's mood: his cramped soul longed to stretch its wings. Spring was at the door, too: that English spring the marvels of which he had seen so often in imagination -- and in imagination continued to catch his only glimpse of them, shut up between brick walls as he was. At Mary's words he had a sudden vision of all the loveliness -- green downs rolling to the sea, orchards in blossom, dewy old bird-haunted gardens -- that he had missed, in flinging himself hugger-mugger on the business of money-making in this sordid town. And so, overthrowing in his haste his original plan of waiting till he was in more prosperous circumstances to present himself, he packed his carpet-bag and went off to visit his relatives and renew his acquaintance with his alma mater, putting the practice up for sale, and leaving a locum to hold together what remained of it. According to the innate perversity of things, he had no sooner done this than it showed signs of betterment. His substitute was called in to one of the hosier kings, bespoken by the wife of a wealthy tanner. Mere chance, of course, but it did look as though fate had a special down on him.
* * * * *
The nominal goal of his journey was Dublin; and after that Edinburgh. But when he looked back on the weeks that followed, he saw them solely in the light of a journey into the past. And now, too, he grasped why he had so long postponed embarking on it. He was, he discovered, one of those who have a nervous aversion from returning on their traces.
Alighting from his car at a corner of the square, he stood, bag in hand, and gazed at his old home. It was very early on a gusty, grey, spring morning; and he himself was cold and unslept. Already, too, the spiritual depression that is Ireland's first gift to her homing sons was invading him: looking about him he saw only stagnation and decay. Here now he stood, a worn and elderly wayfarer, over whose head thirty odd years had passed since, as a boy, he light-heartedly trod this pavement. Thirty years! Yet it might have been yesterday. For nothing was changed -- or nothing but himself. And, as he moved towards the house, he had -- in self-defence as it were -- a moment of vision, in which the long trail of his life swept past the eye of his mind: his rich, motley life, with all its blanks and prizes, its joys, pains and compensations, let alone the multitude of other lives with which it had made contact. And to think there had been moments when he counted it a failure!
In the bulging glass flower-case outside the ground-floor window, a familiar collection of ferns and green things pursued their morbid growth. Down in the area stood the empty saucer, placed there full, of a night, for any thirsty beast that passed. Here was the well-known dent in the brass knocker; the ugly crack in the stone coping. As of old, the balcony showed green and mildewed with the water that leaked from a pair of flower-tubs; just as he remembered it, the white carriage step was split asunder -- a trap for delicate feet. With this difference, that the mould was thicker, the split wider, the cracks more pronounced.
It was the same with his relatives; they, too, had made giant strides along the road of
"And you? . . . what about you, pray?"
"Oh, for me it's been different" -- dear Mary! -- "living next door to my mother and all that."
"Well, I can tell you this, wife. I've grown more attached to your mother, her kind heart and sound sense, than I was to any one in all Australia. And certainly more than I am to my own."
"Surely it's time you proved that? What must they be thinking of you?" ("They? Oh? they'll understand. You forget they're Irish, too, love.") "Well, Richard, my advice is . . . if you're quite determined to move from here . . . go and pay some visits and travel about a bit, as you ought to have done at first."
Than this, no suggestion could have jumped better with Mahony's mood: his cramped soul longed to stretch its wings. Spring was at the door, too: that English spring the marvels of which he had seen so often in imagination -- and in imagination continued to catch his only glimpse of them, shut up between brick walls as he was. At Mary's words he had a sudden vision of all the loveliness -- green downs rolling to the sea, orchards in blossom, dewy old bird-haunted gardens -- that he had missed, in flinging himself hugger-mugger on the business of money-making in this sordid town. And so, overthrowing in his haste his original plan of waiting till he was in more prosperous circumstances to present himself, he packed his carpet-bag and went off to visit his relatives and renew his acquaintance with his alma mater, putting the practice up for sale, and leaving a locum to hold together what remained of it. According to the innate perversity of things, he had no sooner done this than it showed signs of betterment. His substitute was called in to one of the hosier kings, bespoken by the wife of a wealthy tanner. Mere chance, of course, but it did look as though fate had a special down on him.
* * * * *
The nominal goal of his journey was Dublin; and after that Edinburgh. But when he looked back on the weeks that followed, he saw them solely in the light of a journey into the past. And now, too, he grasped why he had so long postponed embarking on it. He was, he discovered, one of those who have a nervous aversion from returning on their traces.
Alighting from his car at a corner of the square, he stood, bag in hand, and gazed at his old home. It was very early on a gusty, grey, spring morning; and he himself was cold and unslept. Already, too, the spiritual depression that is Ireland's first gift to her homing sons was invading him: looking about him he saw only stagnation and decay. Here now he stood, a worn and elderly wayfarer, over whose head thirty odd years had passed since, as a boy, he light-heartedly trod this pavement. Thirty years! Yet it might have been yesterday. For nothing was changed -- or nothing but himself. And, as he moved towards the house, he had -- in self-defence as it were -- a moment of vision, in which the long trail of his life swept past the eye of his mind: his rich, motley life, with all its blanks and prizes, its joys, pains and compensations, let alone the multitude of other lives with which it had made contact. And to think there had been moments when he counted it a failure!
In the bulging glass flower-case outside the ground-floor window, a familiar collection of ferns and green things pursued their morbid growth. Down in the area stood the empty saucer, placed there full, of a night, for any thirsty beast that passed. Here was the well-known dent in the brass knocker; the ugly crack in the stone coping. As of old, the balcony showed green and mildewed with the water that leaked from a pair of flower-tubs; just as he remembered it, the white carriage step was split asunder -- a trap for delicate feet. With this difference, that the mould was thicker, the split wider, the cracks more pronounced.
It was the same with his relatives; they, too, had made giant strides along the road of
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