THE source of irritation had been removed from Mr Bonner with departure of the expedition. Now he could enjoy its purpose, now that it was becoming history, hence impersonal. To such as Mr Bonner, the life we live is not a part of history; life is too personal, and history is not. So the merchant returned to those personal pleasures, of house and family, business and equipage, and quite considerable bank account. If customers or friends ever alluded to that other matter of exploration for which Mr Bonner had, in fact, been personally responsible, he would smile what was an ethereal smile, for one so hearty, and materialist, and self-willed, and proceed to hold forth, between the chinking of the money in his pocket, on the historical consequences of such an expedition. But thanks be, it no longer directly concerned him. The Crusades were not more remote. No doubt he would have subscribed to a Crusade, just as he would continue, if called upon, to support the expedition, but in hard cash, and not in sufferings of spirit. While approving of any attempt to save the souls of other men, he did appreciate the comfort of his own.
The comforts, both material and spiritual, so conveniently confused in comfortable minds, inspired the merchant’s residence. Of solid stone, this had stood unshaken hitherto. As a house it was not so much magnificent as eminently suitable, and sometimes, by pure chance, even appeared imaginative, in spite of the plethora of formal, shiny shrubs, the laurels, for instance, and the camellias that Uncle had planted in the beginning. The science of horticulture had failed to exorcise the spirit of the place. The wands and fronds of native things intruded still, paperbarks and various gums, of mysterious hot scents, and attentive silences: shadowy trees that, paradoxically, enticed the eyes away from an excess of substance. Moreover, the accents of poetry were constantly creeping in through the throats of doves, and sometimes young ladies might be seen, sampling strawberries from the netted beds, or engaged in needlework in a little latticed summer-house, or playing croquet with the military, but later, in the afternoon, when the hoops made long shadows on the crisp grass.
The Bonners’ garden was a natural setting for young ladies, observers were aware, particularly for the niece, who was of a more solitary nature, and given to dabbling in flowers — in a ladylike manner, of course — when the climate permitted. In the mornings and the evenings she would be seen to cut the spring roses, and lay them in the long, open-ended basket, which the maid would be carrying for that purpose. The maid was almost always at her heels. People said that Miss Trevelyan demanded many little, often unreasonable, services, which was only to be expected of such an imperious young person, and a snob.
She was quite unlike Miss Belle. On those suffocating days when the change would not come, and the feet crushed a scent out of the fallen camphor leaves, Miss Belle would be crying out loud, and fanning herself, and pushing back her hair to be rid of its weight, but would not escape, it was seen by people passing the other side of the wall; Miss Belle remained dripping gold. Or in the grey gales of afternoon, when at last they came, the great round gusts that smote the camphor trees, Miss Belle would catch up her skirt, and run at the wind, and drink it, and feel it inside her dress, and shout, even, until her mother or cousin would hush her. Yes, Miss Belle was the lively one.
So the life of the garden merged with the thoughts of the passers-by. The flickery muslins and the brooding leaves obsessed the more speculative. Indistinct voices would follow them to distant quarters of the town, almost always the voices of ladies, devoted to those pursuits to which ladies do devote themselves, because they must pass the time.
‘Oh dear, I would write a letter,’ Belle might say, ‘if I had not written to everyone.’
She had, too, but she did receive in return many informative letters from other girls.
‘I would not know to whom I might write,’ Laura replied on such an occasion.
They were sitting in the latticed summer-house, from which the wistaria from China hung its buzzing, drunken heads.
‘But there is everyone,’ Belle replied. ‘There is Chattie Wilson, and Lucy Cox, and Nelly McMorran. And everyone.’
‘Or that I would find a subject of sufficient interest.’
‘That is not necessary,’ said Belle. ‘One simply writes.’
Time was heavy, although, in the afternoon, Tom would come.
‘Papa is surprised he has had no word from the expedition,’ Belle rattled, to save herself. ‘He would not expect, of course, civility from Mr Voss, but he did fancy Mr Sanderson might keep him informed, on that stage of the journey at least.’
‘It is early yet,’ suggested Laura, who was sketching the garden from an angle that had only recently occurred to her.
‘Or Mr Palfreyman,’ said Belle. ‘Mr Palfreyman could, and ought to, write.’
She did not look at her cousin.
Laura frowned at the garden.
‘It is not his duty. He is not the leader of the expedition.’
‘Dear Lolly,’ sighed Belle, taking her cousin’s hand as if it had been a cat to cuddle.
‘You are absurd, Belle,’ laughed Laura, to whom perspective was a problem.
‘But you found Mr Palfreyman agreeable. You admitted it yourself. The day the ship sailed.’ For Belle Bonner, her cousin was a fascinating mystery, whether sketching from the summer-house or taking her leave of suspected admirers. ‘Such an amiable man, Mamma considers.’
‘Most amiable,’ Laura agreed.
‘Even Tom feels — because I have asked him — that Mr Palfreyman is so good. Of delicate constitution, perhaps. Still, delicacy of health can make a man considerate of others.’
Laura was entertained.
‘Is that also Tom’s opinion?’
‘No. Mamma’s.’ Belle blushed.
‘Then, poor Mr Palfreyman has been discussed.’
‘Dear Laura, I could be so happy.’ Belle caressed her cousin’s hand.
It was exasperating. She would have forced those she loved to eat of sweets she had not yet tasted.
But Laura laughed. She withdrew her hand, and took the pencil to her sketch, and ploughed it with one long, dark line, almost through the paper.
‘You have spoilt your sketch!’ cried Belle.
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘It was an insipid thing.’
She crumpled it up, and dared her dear Belle.
At that season, Laura’s glistening, green laughter was threaded through the days. These were warm, though not yet oppressive, full of the clovey scent of pinks, with harsh whiffs of torn gum-leaves, dissipated by the wind, and married with perfume of roses, in passionate gusts. Heady days. Green was garlanding the windows, the posts of balconies, the knobs of gateways, in celebration.
In celebration of what, others did not know, except that there was something. They were looking at Laura for some sign, as she moved in the garden, in a crush of cool flowers, or appeared suddenly in doorways, in the sound of her skirts, or under trellises, trailing a dappled shadow, or at windows, that she threw open suddenly, her arms flying upward after the sash, to stay suspended there a second, the greenish flesh of those stalks glimmering against vines. All these acts were joyful, without revealing. Her mouth did not so much smile, as wonder.
For Laura herself had not yet grasped the full sense of that season, only that it was fuller than ever before, and that the flesh of roses was becoming personal, as she cut the long, pointed buds, or heavy blooms that would fall by evening. She had to take all, even the big, blowing ones.
‘Those will make a mess, miss,’ Rose Portion did protest once.
She was holding the basket.
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘I am aware of that.’
‘Tt-tt-tt!’ sighed the brown woman. ‘All over the tables and carpets. A mess of rose petals.’
But the girl was dazed by roses. She continued to cut the big heads, in which bees were rummaging. She bent to reach others, till roselight was flooding her face, and she was forced to lower the lids of her eyes against the glare of roses. Then she became caught. It was one of the older, the more involved, the staggier bushes, of sinewy black wood. She was held. Neither one way nor the other was it possible to move, however she shook the tough bush. She began to laugh, mirthlessly, out of exasperation for her powerlessness, and call:
‘Help me, Rose! Where are you? Do something!’
The woman set down the basket then, and freed her mistress easily.
The girl was laughing, though blushing, because she was really rather annoyed.
‘Can you see whether I am torn?’ she asked.
‘Not that I can notice,’ Rose replied, ‘but I expect.’
Controlling her wind, the woman picked up the basket. This business of flowers was not her work, but it pleased her to do it, and since she had grown heavy, the people of the house humoured her.
Although Mrs Bonner, who had just come out upon the balcony, stood frowning down. At the back of her mind, there was always Rose.
Once Mrs Bonner had gone to her niece at an awkward and unexpected moment, as the latter was practising a new piece, and sat beside her, and said, there and then:
‘We must really think, Laura, what is to be done about Rose. I understand there is a Mrs Lauderdale, who has founded some institution to provide for women in that condition, during, or perhaps it is for afterwards, the unfortunate children, I do not know, but must consult Mrs Pringle, and think.’
Then Aunt Emmy looked right up into her niece’s face, as if she had been a tree with something hiding in it, and not a young woman engaged upon an arpeggio.
‘Yes, Aunt. Of course,’ said Laura, who suffered all the difficulties of music.
Laura is selfish, Mrs Bonner sighed.
‘Nobody will help me,’ she murmured.
So she went away.
Now Laura could see her aunt upon the balcony, threading the ribbon through a clean cap, but looking, instead, at Rose.
Rose looked, and saw, and understood — there was very little she did not — and said:
‘There is Mrs Bonner. She could be wanting something of me.’
‘I do not think so,’ said Laura firmly.
Laura Trevelyan had given much consideration to the question of Rose Portion, but the answer to it was withheld. She did not fret like her aunt, although it concerned her personally, she sensed, even more personally. For personal reasons, therefore, she would continue to give the matter thought, although her faith in reason was already less. She would prepare her mind, shall we say, to receive revelations. This preoccupation, which was also quasi-physical, persisted at all times, though most in the overflowing garden, of big, intemperate roses, with the pregnant woman at her side. At such times, the two shadows were joined upon the ground. Heavy with the weight of golden sun, the girl could feel the woman’s pulse ticking in her own body, and was, in consequence, calmer than she had ever been, quietly joyful, and resigned. As she strolled towards the house, holding her parasol against the glare, though devoured by the tigerish sun, she trusted in their common flesh. The body, she was finally convinced, must sense the only true solution.
Mrs Bonner, on the balcony, sensing her own limitations, tweaked the ribbon through the starched cap, and went inside.
‘They have not yet heard from that German,’ said Rose Portion, whose habit it was to state facts, rather than commit a possible indiscretion by asking.
‘Not yet,’ Laura Trevelyan replied.
She had bared her teeth, it seemed, somewhat convulsively — it could have been the violent glare — and the tips of her teeth were quite transparent.
‘Not yet,’ she said, and mumbled: ‘But perhaps we shall hear, perhaps this evening.’
Although it was spoken more slowly than she had intended, in her mind it sprang like a shiver. Her mouth was dry.
‘Ah, I cannot understand that man,’ said Rose.
‘How?’ asked Laura. ‘Not understand?’
‘It is his speech, I suppose. Though half the time I think he does not understand himself, even in his own language.’
Laura did not answer, but was listening to breath, footsteps, pauses, and pauses were the loudest.
‘No more can I understand his eyes,’ breathed Rose. ‘You should understand a man by his eyes, if by no other avenue.’
Then she cleared her throat, because she had said too much.
They were entering the house by way of the conservatory, in which little ferns rang with bells of moisture, and the teeth of the palm were sawing at the spider’s silk. Here the heat was so intense that the women’s breath was taken from them. Their faces were barely swimming forward between the walls of watery glass. Their features clove painfully the green gloom on which hairy branches swayed.
‘I can understand him,’ said Laura, ‘if not with my reason.’
She was drugged.
‘Even when I cannot agree with him, I can understand him.’
The other woman drew her breath with difficulty.
As they passed into the house, the girl put her hands to her temples in an ecstasy of coolness. When she could not understand, she would pray for him, though of recent nights happiness had made her dumb, and prayer grows, rather, out of wretchedness.
The same evening, when Mr Bonner returned early, as was his habit now, into the house of roses, it happened that his niece was first to meet him, as she passed through the hall on some errand to the pantry. After kissing her at the required moment, for in matters of affection the merchant was something of a ritualist, he did remark:
‘News has come at last from the expedition, today, by the Newcastle packet. They are arrived at Sanderson’s. Or were at his place. They will have left by now for the Downs.
‘So that is that,’ he added, disparagingly, or so it sounded.
The truth was: anything that intruded on the daily round, even events anticipated, or news long hoped for, embittered Mr Bonner.
‘And all is well?’ Laura asked.
‘All are in good heart,’ corrected her uncle. ‘Though it is early days yet, to be sure. Living off the fat of the land.’
How glad he was to be in his own home, and there was no prospect of his having to suffer.
The feet of the young woman were passing on the stone floor of the hall. They made a cool, impersonal sound.
‘Oh, and Laura, there is a letter that has come with mine. It is in the same hand, of Mr Voss. You had better have it.’
‘A letter,’ she repeated, but without surprise, and took it before going on her way.
When she had done what she had intended, Laura Trevelyan went straight up to her room, which, although open to her aunt and her cousin, already contained so much of her secret life, she was not afraid of adding to it. So, after she had sat down and broken the lumpy seal, she unfolded the paper, and began to read rapidly.
That evening, over dessert, when they were discussing the news that had been received, Mrs Bonner asked:
‘Would you say, from his letter, that Mr Voss appears satisfied at last with the way his affairs are progressing?’
Mrs Bonner would almost dare a person to be dissatisfied, provided it was not herself.
‘Yes,’ said her husband, as though he were intending no. ‘I gather he is displeased at the inclusion of Judd, more than ever now that he has met him and can find no reason for objecting.’
‘What sort of a man is Judd?’ asked Mrs Bonner.
‘A very quiet, a very reasonable man, I gather from Sanderson. And lion-hearted. Of great courage and physical strength.’
‘Then, it is the lion in him that Mr Voss is objecting to,’ said Belle, who was bored at this, and would become a silly little girl for her own entertainment.
Her hands, that she held above the finger-bowl, dripped inelegantly with the juice of early peaches.
‘For perhaps the lion will gobble him up,’ she giggled. ‘But, poor lion, I could wish him better than bones and black hair.’
‘Belle!’ Her mother frowned.
And a girl, almost married, who could not learn to eat a peach!
Mr Bonner moved his mouth as if he had a peachstone in it.
‘That could be,’ he said, approving, and would himself have spread a net to assist the lion. ‘But what impression,’ he continued, ‘did Laura’s letter give?’
‘Laura’s letter?’ asked Mrs Bonner and Belle.
‘Yes,’ said the merchant. ‘Mr Voss was kind enough to write to Laura by the same packet. Did you not share the news, Laura?’
The young woman moved her plate slightly, on which were the downy skins of peaches, almost bloody in that light.
‘Yes, I did receive a letter,’ she answered. ‘It was just a short note. Written in friendship. It contains civilities rather than positive news. It did not occur to me to share anything of so little general interest.’
To Mrs Bonner it was peculiar.
To Belle it was something into which animal instinct would burrow at leisure.
But Mr Bonner thought that he detected in his niece signs of unusual dismay, and wondered whether he ought to hurt her, both for her own, and the common safety. Besides acting as a corrective, domestic cruelty could be a mild and pleasing form of sport.
Immediately after this, they pushed back their chairs and went into another room.
And the days swelled with that sensuous beauty which was already inherent in them. I did, of course, know, Laura Trevelyan decided, but remained nevertheless bewildered. By the heavy heads of roses that stunned the intruder beneath trellises. By the scent of ripe peaches, throbbing in long leaves, and falling; they were too heavy, too ripe. Feet treading through the wiry grass were trampling flesh, it seemed, but exquisitely complaisant, perfumed with peach.
Or she closed her eyes, and they rode northward together between the small hills, some green and soft, with the feathers of young corn ruffled on their sides, others hard and blue as sapphires. As the two visionaries rode, their teeth were shining and flashing, for their faces, anonymous with love, were turned, naturally, towards each other, and they did, from time to time, catch such irrelevantly personal glimpses. What they were saying had not yet been translated out of the air, the rustling of corn, and the resilient cries of birds. As they rode on, all metal was twining together, of stirrup-irons, for instance, and the bits in the mouths of their horses. Leather was not the least potent of the scents of their journey, and at evening the head would sink down into the pillow of the warm, wet saddle. The hands of the blind had polished the pommels to the silkiness of ivory.
This was a period of great happiness for Laura Trevelyan, her only known happiness, it seemed. Of course, the other side of her eyelids, there were many possibilities waiting to harm her. If she would open. But she did not.
Except to write. She realized that she had not written the letter.
She sat down one afternoon at her desk. The shutters were closed. Even here was the season’s prevailing scent, of live roses, and the rustling ones, and cloves. She began to write. It was easier than she had expected, as if she had acquired virtuosity in an art. So the chips of marble mounted, as the words were carved out, deep, and final.
When she had dried the paper in its own breeze, and folded, and sealed it, she cried a little, and felt the better for it. She lay on her bed for some time, behind the shutters, in the green afternoon, until the woman came, and asked:
‘Are you not coming down, miss? There are some calls. It has been the wife of Justice Smart, and now it is Mrs Pringle, with Miss Una, in a pale pink bonnet.’
Then the girl, who in the past had barely suffered her maid to touch her, on account of a physical aversion such contact invariably caused, suddenly reached out and put her arms round the waist of the swelling woman, and buried her face in the apron, in the sleeping child, to express what emotion it was difficult to tell.
‘Ah, miss!’ hissed Rose Portion, more in horror over the unorthodoxy of it, than for the stab she experienced in her belly.
Later they would both be glad, but now the girl, realizing she had just done something awkward and strange, jumped up from the bed and began to change into a better dress.
It was Una Pringle, who, seated in the drawing-room on a little, tight-buttoned, slippery chair, first caught sight of Laura through the doorway as she was descending the hall stairs. Down, down, down. Through that, and every subsequent afternoon, of which, it was obvious, she would be the mistress. Una Pringle stopped breathing. She had always hated Laura Trevelyan, and would now hate her more than ever.