The Way Home by Henry Handel Richardson Read Free Book Online Page B

grudge was aimed at another quarter. Soon after Christmas Lisby had made good her escape, and was now established as resident mistress at a Young Ladies' Seminary, near Leeds. Which wormed, in spite of himself.
    No complaint crossed Mary's lips; she sacrificed herself as cheerfully as usual. None the less, he owed one of his chief worries during these weeks to Mary. For he could feel that she did not expect him to hold fast, and lived in suspense lest he should throw up the sponge. The consciousness of this galled him -- got on his nerves. Yet never had he felt so averse from breaking silence. It was not only self-annoyance at the foolishness he had been guilty of; or anticipation of a resigned, I-told-you-so attitude on Mary's part -- she had told him so, of course; but it wouldn't be Mary if, when the crisis came, she twitted him with it. No, what tied his tongue was his own disinclination to face the future.
    The result was that Mary, too, grew fidgety: it was so unlike Richard to bottle himself up in this fashion. She began to be afraid he was afraid of her and of what she might say. So, one evening, as they sat together over book and needle, she herself broke the ice by asking him point-blank whether he regretted having settled in Leicester. "For I can see the practice is not doing much in the meantime. Still . . . if you otherwise like the place . . ."
    At her first word the torrent burst.
    "Like it? I wish to God I'd never set foot in its hideous red-brick streets! As for the practice not doing much -- my dear, it has melted into thin air, and that's all there is to say about it. The great majority of that old horse-doctor's patients have given me the go-by -- what on earth has become of the wealthy shoemakers, etc., whose names stood on his books, Heaven alone knows! It can't be that they disapprove of my treatment, for they've never even tried it. Upon my word, Mary, I sometimes think the whole thing was a fake and a swindle. But I can tell you this: if I stop here, I'm on the high road to becoming a sixpenny doctor for the masses. And I will confess to feeling myself a little too good for that."
    "I should think so! It's really most unfortunate, Richard. But what's to be done?"
    "The only course I can see, is to get out of it. I've made a big mistake, my dear, and the shortest and cheapest way in the end will be to admit it and tot up the balance. I could curse myself now, for not having taken your advice. Over hasty as always! The only excuse for me is, I honestly believed there was money to be made here. And was in a panic at the rate our funds were running away."
    "Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. But since you own you did rush rather blindly into this, be warned and don't, for goodness sake, do the same thing in getting out of it. Give it a year's trial."
    But the bare idea turned him cold. Now, too, that he had had his say, he felt doubly resolute. Aloud, he declared that another three months spent in these dark quarters, among this stickiest provinciality, in the mud, wind and rain of this dirty, wet, dismal town, would drive him crazy. "The very smell of the place does for me. Leather and corn and horses -- horses and leather and corn! A population of ostlers and grooms and commercial gentlemen, and cattle-dealers and bull-necked farmers. No, thank you, my dear, no more of it for me! Naturally I shall sell at a loss; but the sooner the better, Mary, before the practice falls to pieces altogether." And from this decision he was not to be moved.
    The question of what next brought them to another deadlock. Mary had got it into her head that, if he went from here, it should only be to London -- and was dumbfounded by the moody silence into which he fell at London's very name. -- "It's society you've missed, Richard. Even had you got on well, you couldn't have put up with the lack of that. But if you persist in sticking to your original plan and going to live in some miserable little village, it will be