Mahony months ahead, thus binding
him fast. And though he would sometimes give Mary a fright by vowing
that he was going to "throw up mid. and be done with it," yet her
ambition--and what an ambitious wife she was, no one but himself knew--
that he should some day become one of the leading specialists on
Ballarat, seemed not unlikely of fulfilment. If his health kept good.
And . . . and if he could possibly hold out!
For there still came times when he believed that to turn his back for
ever, on place and people, would make him the happiest of mortals. For a
time this idea had left him in peace. Now it haunted him again. Perhaps,
because he had at last grasped the unpalatable truth that it would never
be his luck to save: if saving were the only key to freedom, he would
still be there, still chained fast, and though he lived to be a hundred.
Certain it was, he did not become a better colonist as the years went
on. He had learnt to hate the famous climate--the dust and drought and
brazen skies; the drenching rains and bottomless mud--to rebel against
the interminable hours he was doomed to spend in his buggy. By nature he
was a recluse--not an outdoor-man at all. He was tired, too, of the
general rampage, the promiscuous connexions and slap-dash familiarity of
colonial life; sick to death of the all-absorbing struggle to grow
richer than his neighbours. He didn't give a straw for money in itself--
only for what it brought him.
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