Voss

9

MRS BONNER had come out in a rash, due to the particularly humid summer, or to the shortage of green vegetables at Sydney (neither would she be robbed), or sometimes she would attribute her physical distress — privately, in case any of her family should laugh — attribute it to the impossible situation in which she had been placed by the pregnancy of her servant, Rose Portion. For Rose was still with them, very heavy, very shameful. Mrs Bonner would refer to her maid’s condition as Rose’s illness. It was intolerable, as was her own helplessness.

‘I understood,’ said Mrs Bonner to her friend, Mrs Pringle, ‘that there was this institution of Mrs Lauderdale’s for fallen women, but I find, on making inquiries, it is not for those who exhibit, shall we say, material proof of having fallen.’

Mrs Bonner dabbed her lip.

‘I really do not know what to suggest,’ sighed Mrs Pringle, who was herself legitimately pregnant, and who could take no serious interest in a convict woman’s fall.

‘In a normal family,’ complained Mrs Bonner, ‘responsibility for such matters would not be left entirely on one’s hands.’

‘Oh, but Mrs Bonner, no family is normal,’ Mrs Pringle cried.

‘Is it not?’

This did not comfort as it should have.

‘Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory.’

Mrs Bonner looked shocked.

‘I will not deny that children are dear little things,’ conceded Mrs Pringle, who had a lot of them.

‘Nobody would expect a tender child to offer mature advice,’ Mrs Bonner pursued, ‘but a husband should and does think.’

‘A husband does think,’ Mrs Pringle agreed, ‘but that, again, is a different kind of thinking. I believe, between ourselves, Mrs Bonner, that these machines of which all the talk is at Home would never have been invented, if men were not in sympathy, so to speak, to a great extent. I believe that many men, even respectable ones, are themselves machines.’

‘Really, Mrs Pringle?’ Mrs Bonner exclaimed. ‘I would not suspect Mr Bonner of this, though he does not think my way; nor will he offer suggestions.’

Mrs Bonner was again unhappy.

‘It is I who must bear the burden of Rose.’

Ah, Rose, Rose, always Rose, sighed Mrs Pringle. Mrs Bonner had become quite tedious.

‘We must think of something for the wretched soul,’ said the kind friend, and hoped with that to close the subject.

Mrs Bonner, who was a tidy woman, would have turned her maid into the street and learnt to think no more about it, if her family might not have reminded her. In the circumstances, she did not dare, and the question of Rose’s future continued nagging at her martyred mind.

One afternoon of deepest summer, when a brickfielder was blowing, and the hideous native trees were fiendish, and the air had turned brown, Mrs Bonner developed a migraine, and became positively hysterical. She flung herself too hard upon that upright sofa in the drawing-room, on which it was her habit to arrange people to listen to music, and was sobbing between gusts of eau de Cologne.

‘But what is it, Aunt Emmy?’ asked her niece, who had swirled in.

They were alone on that afternoon, except for the heavy Rose, since Belle had been driven to the Lending Library, and Mr Bonner was not yet returned from the establishment in George Street, and Cassie and Edith had started, unwisely, on a picnic with acquaintances while the gale was still threatening.

‘What is it?’ Laura asked, and was smacking the backs of her aunt’s hands.

‘I do not know,’ Mrs Bonner replied.

For, it was everything.

‘It is nothing,’ she choked. ‘It is the dust. It is those dreadful trees, which I can only wish all cut down.’

Waves of resentment surged through Mrs Bonner.

‘It is that Rose,’ she cried, as wind struck its greatest blow hitherto, and sashes rattled. ‘For whom we must all suffer. And cannot receive, in our own home, except our most intimate acquaintance. Because of Rose. And Belle, I am ashamed, must see this everlasting Rose. To say nothing of the young girl in the kitchen, to whom it is an example that could well influence her whole life.’

‘There, Aunt,’ said Laura Trevelyan, and produced her own green smelling-bottle.

‘Then it is Rose,’ she added.

‘I will not deny I am distracted,’ Mrs Bonner sobbed, but drier.

The younger woman had sat down, and, after she had reconciled her watered silk to the rather awkward little chair, announced with a composure that might have been rehearsed.

‘I think, Aunt, that I have a plan.’

Mrs Bonner sniffed so sharp that her nostrils were cut by hartshorn.

‘Ah, dear Laura,’ she gasped. ‘I knew you would.’ And coughed. ‘I believe you have had one all the time, and for some reason that I do not understand, chose to be naughty.’

The young woman was very grave, yet calm, on her wave of grey silk that she was smoothing and coaxing.

I do not understand Laura, Mrs Bonner remembered, not without apprehension.

‘What is your plan?’ she asked.

The young woman was taking her time. She was quite pregnant with some idea waiting to be born. She would not be hurt by any precipitate behaviour of others. She was shielding herself.

And so, she lowered the lids of her mild, yet watchful eyes. At the same time, her engrossed expression did allow her to smile, a smile of great sweetness. Aunt Emmy had to admit: Laura’s face has melted.

Laura said:

‘It is a plan, and it is not a plan. At least, it is the beginning of one, which will grow if circumstances permit.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Bonner, who had hoped for a strong box in which to lock her annoyances. ‘It is not a secret plan, I hope?’

‘It is so simple that I am afraid you may not call it a plan at all.’

‘Tell me,’ Mrs Bonner begged.

‘I cannot tell you, except the beginning of it, because the end has still to come. But, for a start, I have brought Rose down from the attic into the spare room.’

‘Into the best room!’ Mrs Bonner hissed.

‘She will stay there quietly. I will take her all her meals on a tray. It will be a matter of a few days, by Rose’s calculations. I have engaged a midwife, of good reputation, from inquiries I have made, who lives in a cottage in Woolloomooloo, and whose name, you must appreciate it, is Mrs Child.’

‘In the best room!’ Mrs Bonner cried.

‘What is all this?’ asked the merchant, who had come in.

‘That dreadful woman,’ cried his wife, ‘is to have her … Rose Portion in the best room! Laura has done it, and behind my back.’

For Mr Bonner, who hated disturbance, awful prospects were opening in his own house. He listened to the sound of dresses. Complexions were accusing him. He was surounded by women.

‘Laura,’ he began, seizing any weapon, however blunted, ‘I cannot believe that you have been so thoughtless.’

Like most people, Mr Bonner cherished the opinion that he alone considered others.

‘On the contrary, I have given the matter considerable thought,’ replied the wretched Laura, ‘and am haunted by a similar situation in which I am having my baby in an attic, or worse, in the street.’

‘Your baby?’ asked her uncle, in a white voice.

‘Laura is suffering from an unhealthy imagination. That is all, Mr Bonner,’ explained the aunt. ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear.’

The young woman had grown very hard inside her murmurous silk of dove grey.

‘Lord, give me patience,’ she said. ‘If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.’

‘From one who has been treated as a daughter!’ cried Aunt Emmy.

‘It is obvious that she prefers to forget,’ added the uncle, who was not as impressive as he should have been; frequently he would find himself bringing up the rear.

‘When one is unhappy, one does forget,’ Laura admitted. ‘Threats and injustices overshadow all the comfortable advantages.’

Beyond the window-pane, trees were fluctuating, the brown world was heaving. Even in the nice room, despite the protest of horsehair and pampas grass, the dust was settling on reflections and in the grain of taffeta, or ran with the perspiration, or the tears, on ladies’ faces.

For, it had grown stuffy, and Aunt Emmy was crying again.

‘I do not understand,’ she protested, ‘the necessity to be miserable when one need not be.’

‘But we need not, Aunt Emmy,’ cried Laura.

At times she was very quick, glancing, her eyes glittering.

‘Do you not understand the importance of this life which we are going to bring into our house? Regardless of its origin. It is a life. It is my life, your life, anybody’s life. It is life. I am so happy for it. And frightened. That something may destroy this proof of life. Some thoughtlessness. Poor Rose, she does not care a bit about her baby, yet. She will, of course. In the meantime, I must protect it from everyone. Until it can speak for itself. Aunt, dear, if you will only wait to hear.’

Mrs Bonner sighed.

‘I cannot let myself be won over against my reason, Laura. Babies are, of course, very pretty. But.’

Mrs Bonner had, as yet, refused to visualize this baby, and smell the smell of warm flannel.

‘Then I appeal to you, Uncle,’ said Laura, cruelly.

In argument her hand had become an ivory fist, but she herself was again softening. She had a certain waxiness, observed her uncle, who would walk in his garden in the evening amongst those camellia bushes he had planted as a young man.

‘To you, Uncle,’ Laura was saying.

‘I?’ exclaimed Mr Bonner, exposed. ‘I, of course, agree with your aunt. Though there is something to be said, one must confess, for your argument, Laura, at least, shall we say, in its general principle. One must applaud the humanity of your viewpoint. It is the allegory that I do not go much on. You know I am a plain man.’

‘Then, for goodness’ sake, let us prune my argument of allegory,’ Laura hastened to reply. ‘Let it be quite naked. Let us receive this poor child into the world with love. That is argument enough. Or I will love it, if necessary. As if it had been mine. Let me. Let me.’

‘You are overwrought, Laura,’ said Mr Bonner.

His wife smiled bitterly.

‘I am excited,’ Laura agreed, ‘by my great hopes.’

‘I do not see,’ began Mr Bonner, who would tire of things temporarily, and was now, in fact, thinking of his glass of rum and water, ‘I do not see how we can help but allow this misguided wretch to give birth to her child under our roof, unless we break the precepts that our religious faith teaches us. As it is too late to effect an arrangement combining the practical with the humane, let us hope that in time the Supreme Being will lead us out of our predicament. I do not doubt we shall find some honest woman who will see the advantage of accepting the child, especially if accompanied by a small consideration. The unhappy mother will be more difficult to dispose of, although, in this also, I am confident we shall be guided to act in a right way.’

Laura Trevelyan lowered her eyes.

‘I do not know what to say,’ admitted Mrs Bonner, uncertain whether to feel offended at her own husband’s defection, or chastened by his magnanimity.

The poor woman was racked by hartshorn and dampened by emotion. Those little curls, which she still affected from a former fashion, and which rain or sea air always compelled her to revive, had by now lost their necessary frizz, and were hanging upon her forehead like the tails of dead mice.

‘I am at a loss,’ she said.

‘Dear Aunt Emmy,’ the younger woman consoled, ‘you will recover. And discover.’

As her collapsed aunt continued to sit with the smelling-bottle in her lap, the niece added:

‘I must ask you to replace the stopper in the little bottle, otherwise its virtue will be exhausted.’

So Laura Trevelyan left the presence of these relations, who were again her good parents. She did truly love them.

In her condition, she could have loved all men, as, indeed, she would love the baby. She walked through the house protecting her achievement, in her sensuous, full dress of grey watered silk. Of singing silk. Her heart was full. Sitting in the same room with her dull and heavy maid, the mistress did not lose her buoyancy. She was cutting out flannel, making garments for the baby they would have. Her steely scissors flew, and she would gather up snippets of ribbon and braid, and fasten together little, bright bundles of trivial conversation. The maid would listen, but dully. The latter became leaden as her time approached, and she would perhaps have sunk, if it had not been for the trust she put in her mistress.

‘Now that the wind has died, let us take our walk in the garden, Rose,’ decided the mistress.

And the maid followed, trustingly.

They would walk in the garden, in the dusk, by mysterious, involved paths that the mistress chose. In the wilder, scrubbier parts of the garden, the skirts of the two women would catch upon the fallen bark and twigs. Sometimes Laura Trevelyan would tear the bark in scrolls from the native trees, and attempt to unroll them before they broke, or she would tear the leaves, and crush them, and smell them, in her hands smelling of ants.

Then, in the mysterious garden, obsessed by its harsh scents, she would be closest to the unborn child, and to the love of her husband. Darkness and leaves screened the most intimate forms, the most secret thoughts. Soon he will write, she told herself. As if words were necessary. Long before pen had been put to paper, and paper settled on the grass in its final metamorphosis, she had entered the state of implicit trust. In the evening garden, their trusting bodies glimmered together, always altering their shape, as the light inspired, then devoured. Or they would sit, and again it could have been the forms of two women, looking at each other, as the one tried to remember the eyes of her husband. If she could have looked deeper, deeper, deep enough.

Once she had felt the child kick inside her, and she bit her lip for the certainty, the shape her love had taken.

‘Oh, it is cold,’ Rose Portion was moaning. ‘It is cold.’

Fear compelled her to drag her mistress back.

‘On the contrary,’ murmured Laura, ‘it is warm tonight. Far too warm, in fact.’

But she was returned to her actual body.

Then the young woman took the stiff, cold hand of her maid, and led her indoors.

One evening, as Rose Portion was seated by the lamp, picking over some work that she had taken into her lap to pacify her mistress, she looked up quite suddenly. A savage hand had carved the lines deeper in her grey face, which, under light, was more than ever that of a dumb animal.

‘Oh, miss, I cannot bear it,’ breathed Rose.

‘You shall,’ said Laura, getting up.

The woman clenched her teeth, until the grey sweat ran in the channels of her face. It was as if the breath were being torn out of her.

‘It is time,’ said Laura.

‘I do not know,’ Rose replied. ‘At least, it is the pains. I would die if I could.’

Then Laura sent Jim Prentice with the brougham to fetch the midwife, who arrived shortly, with an infallible knowledge of the world and a leather bag.

Mrs Child was a small woman with eyes so sharp and black they could have strayed down from amongst the other jet ornaments accumulated on her bonnet. For reasons of policy, she began by ignoring the patient, while enumerating to Miss Trevelyan those articles she would need in the course of operations. And all the time, the midwife was glancing here and there, as if she had been in the furniture trade, instead of belonging to her own particular branch of the conjuring profession. For Mrs Child knew: however discreet the eyes, and modest the behaviour, solid mahogany and figured brocade must be taken into account. So she reckoned up, accordingly.

Now, when she had removed her bonnet and disposed of her pelisse, the midwife deigned to notice the patient. She ran at Rose, with all her curls a-jingle, and gave her what could have been a pinch.

‘You, Mrs Portion,’ shouted this jolly soul, ‘your trouble is a little one, that you will be calling a blessing by tomorrow night.’

The pregnant woman, who was holding her arms rigid across her belly, gave a long, terrible moan.

So that Mrs Bonner shuddered, in the little, far parlour, which they seldom used, and where she had hoped not to hear.

The midwife sucked her teeth.

‘There, dear. You must not fight against receiving such a wonderful gift. Woman truly vindicated, as a reverend gentleman once put it. But I do not reckon your time is come, unless I do not know my business, and nobody can accuse me of that. I would say, at a guess, in another two, or three, even, or it could be four hours. Now, miss, would it be possible for me to take some light refreshment? I always dine early, to be ready to give service, seeing as the night air seems to work upon the poor things.’

While Mrs Child was demolishing a nice mutton chop, together with a liberal portion of baked custard, and describing for the benefit of Cassie the details of the more spectacular cases to which she had been called, Laura Trevelyan made the necessary preparations. She was exalted now.

‘On the good carpet!’ wailed Mrs Bonner in her distant parlour.

‘I have put newspaper,’ replied her niece. ‘At least four layers of the Herald.’

But the aunt was not consoled. In her isolation, for her husband had remembered a message he had failed to deliver to a friend, and kind Mrs Pringle had carried off their daughter Belle for as long as circumstances required, Mrs Bonner had been reading a sermon, and just now was offering a prayer, for the poor sufferer, which signified: herself. So she passed the evening, in the green-backed mirror, in her stuffy room.

Then a great cry was shattering all the glass in the house. The walls were falling. Flesh subsided only gradually upon the ridge of the spine, to be shocked further at sound of the midwife bouncing up the stairs like an indiarubber ball. She was a very tough small woman, it seemed, who proceeded to wrestle with life itself for the remainder of the night.

In the spare room the kindly lamplight had grown inordinately hard. Nothing was any longer hid, nor would the Brussels carpet muffle. The midwife had the woman sitting on an upright chair, from which her solid gown hung in long, petrified folds. Now that the agony had begun, the girl who had willed it was herself stunned into stone. The knot of her hands was carved upon her waist, as she stood in her corner and listened to doom writing upon a slate.

Only the midwife continued to move, round and about, with the resilience of rubber.

‘Hands on the arms of the chair, dear,’ she advised. ‘You would bless me for it, if you only knew.’

But the woman in labour shrieked.

A flow of endless time began to fill the room. Laura Trevelyan would have prayed, but found that her mind was stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Even the lowing beast was, in the end, stilled.

‘It is the head that is giving the trouble,’ Mrs Child remarked, as, her face averted in considerable delicacy of curls, she fumbled and bungled under Rose Portion’s gown. ‘If you are not an obstropulous little wretch!’

The mother was beyond caring as she drowned in that sea.

In spite of her stone limbs, Laura Trevelyan could have screamed with pain. Her throat was bursting with it. They would all be strangled by the darkness, she suspected, when a curious transformation of their faces began at last to take place. Their livid, living stone was turning, by divine mercy, into flesh. The shutters were slashed with grey. Its thin stuff lay upon the newspapers with which the carpet was spread.

It is moving, we are moving, we are saved, Laura Trevelyan would have cried, if all sound had not continued frozen inside her throat. The supreme agony of joy was twisted, twisting, twisting.

Then the dawn was shrieking with jubilation. For it had begun to live. The cocks were shrilling. Doves began to soothe. Sleepers wrapped their dreams closer about them, and participated in great events. The red light was flowing out along the veins of the morning.

Laura Trevelyan bit the inside of her cheek, as the child came away from her body.

‘There,’ said the midwife. ‘Safe and sound.’

‘A little girl,’ she added with a yawn, as if the sex of the children she created was immaterial.

The actual mother fell back with little blubbering noises for her own poor flesh. She had just drunk the dregs of pain, and her mouth was still too full to answer the cries of her new-born child.

But Laura Trevelyan came forward, and took the red baby, and when she had immersed it in her waiting love, and cleaned it, and swaddled it in fresh flannel, the midwife had to laugh, and comment:

‘Well, you are that drawn, dear, about the face, anyone would think it was you had just been delivered of the bonny thing.’

Laura did not hear. All superficial sounds were swallowed up in her own songs.

Later, she carried the baby through the drowsy morning to that remote room in which her aunt had chosen to do penance. But Mrs Bonner’s cap had slipped. Day had caught her dozing in a chair. She woke up. She said:

‘I knew I would not be able to sleep for the terrible noise. So I sat in the chair, and waited.’

‘And here is the baby,’ said Laura, stooping.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Aunt Emmy. ‘What is it?’

‘It is a girl.’

‘Another girl!’

Mrs Bonner lamented the boys she did not have, and whom, she liked to think, she would have managed and understood.

‘We must do the best by her, then,’ she sighed. ‘Until her future has been settled.’

As for the baby, she had but exchanged one room for another, or so it seemed. She was still curled, with her instincts, in the transparent, pink cocoon of protective love, upon which a vague future could have no possible effect.

Mrs Bonner searched greedily for some evidence of discomfort or sickliness in the sleeping child, of ugly dangers threatening it, but found no more than a bruise or two. Nature had favoured the baby that lay so unperturbed in Laura’s arms. Then Mrs Bonner looked in the latter’s face and was a bit afraid, as if she had been present at a miracle. She did not know what to make of it.

Nor did Laura attempt to explain her own state, even to herself. Those ensuing days she was exhausted, but content. They were the baby’s days. There was a golden fuzz of morning in the garden. She could not bring herself to tread upon the tender flesh of rose petals that were showered at her feet. To avoid this, she would walk round by another way, though it meant running the gauntlet of the sun. Then her duty was most delicious. She was the living shield, that rejoiced to deflect the most savage blows. Other pains, of desert suns, of letters unwritten, of the touch of his man’s hands, with their queer pronounced finger-joints, would fluctuate, as she carried her baby along the golden tunnels of light.

There was no doubt that the child was hers; nor did the blood mother protest, lying on her hot pillows in the shuttered, best room. Rose Portion took all for granted. She would receive the child and feed it at her breast whenever she was told. She would look from her distance at its crinkled face. It was obvious that she had paid the penalty for some monstrous sin, but not the most seductive religion, not even her own baby, could have convinced her the sinner is pardoned. So the flies stood transfixed on wiry legs in the corners of the baby’s eyes. So the wool lace on the backs of the chairs stared back with a Gothic splendour. All was marvellous, but sculpture, to the frozen woman. Her stiff mouth would not move. Her hands had reached the position of infinite acceptance.

Then the mistress would begin to frown for the maid’s omissions.

‘Look, Rose, at the flies on Baby’s face. Disgusting things! They could do her some harm,’ she would scold in true concern. ‘We must ask Mr Bonner to bring us a gossamer from town.’

She herself would take up the baby in its parcel of expensive clothes, and rock it in her arms, or hold it to her shoulder, to listen to its bubbles. The mistress was very soon appeased. She forgot her irritating maid on recovering her child. The young woman would glow and throb with the warmth of the baby, whereas the maid, on surrendering her share in its transparent life, was content to relapse into her own opaque flesh, in its dull shroud of days, into which she had been sewn by circumstance.

‘What will you call the baby?’ Belle Bonner asked her cousin.

‘I do not know,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘We must ask Rose.’

‘Poor Rose!’ said Belle.

‘Why poor?’ asked Laura, quickly.

Belle laughed. She could not say.

Since her return from the Pringles’, the tawny Belle was also changed. She was a lioness prowling in the passages. Laura had escaped, she felt, leaving her alone in the empty cage.

Laura, however, would often remember, and look back affectionately at Belle.

‘Let us go together,’ she tried now to make amends, and touched, ‘let us go and ask Rose.’

Belle smiled sadly, but did consent to come, at a distance.

‘Rose,’ began Laura, very kindly, ‘what would you like to call your baby?’

Rose, who had risen from her bed, but continued to sit in the cool room, waiting to recover her strength, did not hesitate.

‘Mercy,’ she said.

Belle laughed, and Laura blushed.

‘That is a modest name,’ replied Belle.

‘Mercy, and nothing more?’ asked Laura.

‘Nothing,’ said Rose.

She cleared her throat. She looked down. She would have been better left alone.

‘I can see Mercy all in grey,’ Belle sang dreamily.

For the future was a dream.

‘You take Mercy, Rose, for a little,’ suggested Laura, offering the parcel of her child.

‘She is as well with you, miss,’ said the woman, quite unmoved and positive.

‘You are suited to each other,’ she added.

It did, indeed, seem as though this grey-skinned woman were made of a different stuff.

So that Laura felt wrung.

‘But if people should laugh at “Mercy”,’ she had to protest, ‘could we not give her a second name? Mary, for instance?’

‘Ah, people!’ Rose replied.

Then Laura knew that she herself must suffer any derision or opprobrium.

During this intercourse Belle was to some extent mollified by discovering Mercy to be the most amusing creature.

‘A whole chain of dreadful bubbles! Give her to me, Lolly,’ she insisted.

‘Then if Mercy it must be, I will speak to my uncle, and ask him to arrange with Mr Plumpton,’ Laura said. ‘There is no reason why the christening should not take place at once.’

‘Thank you, miss,’ said Rose.

So it was arranged.

But the morning that Mercy was dressed for the font, they began to suspect that her mother had overslept, and on going at last to rouse her maid, Laura Trevelyan discovered that she was gone.

Rose Portion had turned aside her face. The watery blood had stained the pillow, her leather tongue was already stiff, in fact, this poor animal had suffered her last indignity, with the result that the girl who had arrived breathless, blooming with expectation and the roses she had pinned at her throat, was herself turned yellow by the hot wind of death. She was chafing her arms for some time beside the bed. She was gulping uglily, and touching the poor, living hair of the dead woman, her friend and servant.

The christening of Mercy was, very properly, postponed. Instead, her mother was buried at the Sand Hills after a day or two had elapsed, and to that burying-ground the Bonners drove, in the family carriage and a hired fly, for there was the grateful Mr Plumpton to be considered, and Cassie, who was remembering Ireland, and Edith, the young girl, her red knuckles stuffed for the occasion into a first pair of gloves. The mourners smelled of fresh crêpe, supplied by the George Street store, and of the refreshment with which some of the weaker had fortified themselves. These sad smells were soon straying amongst those of baked ivy and thirsty privet at the cemetery gates, where there was an urn, besides, in which someone had left half a dozen apples to rot. The poor, sandy soil soon provided most difficult going, especially for the women, whose heels sank, and whose skirts dragged dreadfully. There were times when it seemed to the ordinarily unimpeded Belle that they were making hardly any progress; nor could the merchant help but suspect, while holding up his distressed wife, that the sun was burning a hole in his back. As for Mrs Bonner, she did suffer a good deal, less in sorrow for her dead servant, than from the presence, the very weight of Death, for while she had been struggling up the crumbly slope, recalling the different illnesses that had carried off her relatives and friends, He had mounted pick-a-back, and there He rode, regardless of a lady’s feelings.

Rather an isolated part of the cemetery had been chosen for the grave of Rose Portion, the emancipist servant, but, of course, as the conciliatory Mr Plumpton pointed out, the whole ground would in time be opened up. So they straggled on towards the mound, and a tree from which wind or insects had torn the foliage, leaving its essential form, or bones.

Now, when the party stood before the grave, and sun and wind were fighting for possession of the black clothes, it was Laura Trevelyan who saw clearest. The bright new box tossed and bumped as they lowered it. Then there was a thump and a spurt of sand, to reply to such human life as persisted in its arrogance. The girl who was watching flung aside the bitter hair that was blowing across her mouth. The terrible body of the dead woman, with its steady nostrils and its carved hands, was altogether resigned, she saw again, through the intervening lid. But what of her own expectant soul, or tender roseflesh of the child? Each grain of merciless sand suggested to the girl that her days of joy had been, in a sense, illusory.

While the thin young clergyman was strewing words, great clouds the colour of bruises were being rolled across the sky from the direction of the ocean. There was such a swirling and whirling that the earth itself pulled loose, all was moving, and the mourners lowered their heads, and braced their feeble legs to prevent themselves from being sent spinning.

Only Laura Trevelyan appeared to stand motionless upon a little hummock.

Laura is so cold, Aunt Emmy lamented. She shivered inside her hot dress, and tried desperately to cling to some comfort of the parson’s words.

But Laura was calm rather than cold, as, all around her, the mourners surrendered up their faces to the fear of anonymity, and above, the clouds were loading lead to aim at men. After the first shock of discovery, it had been exhilarating to know that terrestrial safety is not assured, and that solid earth does eventually swirl beneath the feet. Then, when the wind had cut the last shred of flesh from the girl’s bones, and was whistling in the little cage that remained, she began even to experience a shrill happiness, to sing the wounds her flesh would never suffer. Yet, such was their weakness, her bones continued to crave earthly love, to hold his skull against the hollow where her heart had been. It appeared that pure happiness must await the final crumbling, when love would enter into love, becoming an endlessness, blowing at last, indivisible, indistinguishable, over the brown earth.

‘We can do no more for Rose,’ Mr Bonner was saying; otherwise everyone might have continued to stand.

When she had resumed her body, and noticed the little mound that they had made for her friend, the clods of earth accused Laura’s exaltation, and she went away quickly after the others, holding her clumsy skirt.

As soon as they reached the vehicles, the ladies and the servants climbed inside. They were congratulating one another with elaborate relief that the threatening storm had not burst. But they looked nowhere in particular, certainly not at one another, for the skin of their cheeks had dried, and was feeling too tight. As Jim Prentice and the man from the livery stable were gathering up the reins, Mr Bonner led the parson behind the carriage to pay his fee. Hungry Mr Plumpton, whose name did not fit his form, had been standing there for some other purpose, he would have liked it to appear, but did also have to eat. Mr Bonner rewarded him substantially, for he was only too relieved to escape. And the young parson became gay. The shadow of death was lifted, and all were smelling the sea breeze and the good chaff which the horses had beslavered in their nosebags.

Life resumes possession thus simply. Mr Bonner was again stalking in the midst of his smoothly ordered women, in his impregnable stone house. Laura Trevelyan’s baby grew. She washed it, and powdered it, and wrapped it up tight, but with that humility which lately she had learnt, or rediscovered, for humility is short-lived, and must be born again in anguish.

Similar phases mark the cycle of love. Could I forget my own husband? Laura asked, as she nursed the baby that was playing with her chin. Yet, she did forget, frequently for whole days, and then was conscience-stricken. As one takes one’s own face for granted, so it was, at least she hoped, staring at her reflection in the glass. He is never farther removed, she said, looking at her own, woman’s face. Moreover, there was the baby, that visible token of the love with which she was filled. So a mother will persuade herself.

One evening after she had put her baby in its cot, and deceived it into sleeping, she had gone down and found her uncle talking to a stranger in the hall.

Mr Bonner was saying:

‘Then, if you call on Thursday, I will have the letter written.’

Noticing his niece, he mentioned:

‘This is Mr Bagot, Laura. He leaves on Friday for Moreton Bay, and will find a means of sending a letter through to Jildra. I shall, of course, take this opportunity of communicating with the expedition. One never knows but that Voss may see his way to get in touch with Mr Boyle.’

Soon afterwards, the otherwise unimportant stranger left the house.

‘It would only be civil,’ Laura ventured, ‘if I, too, were to send a line.’

‘Nothing is lost by civility,’ her uncle agreed, absently. ‘But is it necessary in this case?’

‘My dear Uncle, a great deal that is unnecessary is also nice. You are not nourished by your glass of rum and water, but I am glad to think you can enjoy it.’

‘Eh?’ said Mr Bonner. ‘That is beside the point. But write, Laura, by all means, if it will give you pleasure.’

He was preoccupied.

‘Thank you, Uncle dear.’ Laura laughed, and kissed him. ‘To give pleasure to Mr Voss was my intention.’

She went away then, refreshed by her inspired deception.

In the few days that remained till Thursday, Laura Trevelyan composed several tender, humorous, clever, even perfect letters, as she went about, or sat and watched the hem of her skirt. Soon, she said, I shall write it down, and then the last evening was upon her, and all the clumsiness of words.

She sat at her little desk, which had, in fact, been built for a child, in bird’s-eye maple, an uncle’s present for a fifteenth birthday. She took her pen from out of the conglomeration of writing tools, most of which she never used. She dropped the ink eraser. Seated before her exercise, she was both stiff and childish, sullen almost. She felt that she would bungle this, but did begin in that Italian hand, which was, mercifully, her automatic writing:

Potts Point,

— March, 1846

Dear Johann Ulrich Voss,

If I address you by so many names, it is because I do not dare confess to my favourite, for my choice might indicate some weakness that you have not already suspected. You will find, I fear, that I am all weaknesses, when I would like you to admire me for my strength! …

Now her blood began to flow. Her shoulders were the wings of birds. Her mind was a bower-bird, greedy for the shells and coloured glass that would transform the drab and ordinary.

How I wish my sentiments were worthy of communication, and, not content with one gift, I would ask for the genius to express them. Then I would dazzle you with the glitter of diamonds, although I am inclined to believe I would adopt something less precious, but more mysterious; moonstone, I think, would be my stone.…

Was she being affected? She thought perhaps she was, but enjoyed the opportunity. She loved the shape of words, and taste, even of the acid drops.

I imagine how you must frown at the frivolousness of this letter, but now that I have begun, I cannot deny myself the luxury of writing as it comes, almost with recklessness, to one who knows me scarcely at all, yet (and this is what is awful) who has complete possession of the most secret part of me. You have taken the important, essential core of the apple, including (one must not forget) the nasty pips, and scales (I do not know what you call those little things) which must be spat out.

There it is! I hope you will continue to think kindly of me, dearest Ulrich (I have now confessed that, too!), and cherish the blemishes on my character.

I will tell you more truths. I have thought about you, and thought about you, until recently I found, to my honest disgust, that you were no longer uppermost in my mind. This disconcerting discovery was turned to advantage, however, on my realizing that you had become a necessary part of me. I do truthfully believe that you are always lurking somewhere on the fringes of my dreams, though I seldom see your face, and cannot even distinguish your form. I only know it is you, I know, just as I have sat beside you beneath certain trees, although I could not describe their shape, nor recite their Latin names. I have touched their bark, however.

Oh dear, if I could but describe in simple words the immensity of simple knowledge.

We are close to each other, my dearest, and shall strengthen each other. Better than that I cannot do.

I must tell you of something pathetic that occurred lately, and which has affected us all. You may remember a woman called Rose Portion, an emancipist servant, employed here in my uncle’s house. Rose recently had a child, by whom, I cannot bring myself to say, but a pretty little girl called Mercy. On Rose’s dying a few weeks after giving birth to her baby, never having recovered, we are now positive, from the ministrations of an ignorant and rapacious midwife, I took this child, and am caring for her as if she were my own. Together with yourself, she is my greatest joy. Can you understand, dear Ulrich? She is my consolation, my token of love.

If I continue to dwell unduly upon the death of Rose, it is because of the great impression it left upon me, the morning I found her lying in her bed, and again, at the funeral. We buried her at the Sand Hills on an indescribable day, of heat, and cloud, and wind. As I stood there (I hesitate to write you all this, except that it is the truth), as I stood, the material part of myself became quite superfluous, while my understanding seemed to enter into wind, earth, the ocean beyond, even the soul of our poor, dead maid. I was nowhere and everywhere at once. I was destroyed, yet living more intensely than actual sunlight, so that I no longer feared the face of Death as I had found it on the pillow. If I suffered, it was to understand the devotion and suffering of Rose, to love whom had always been an effort!

Finally, I believe I have begun to understand this great country, which we have been presumptuous enough to call ours, and with which I shall be content to grow since the day we buried Rose. For part of me has now gone into it. Do you know that a country does not develop through the prosperity of a few landowners and merchants, but out of the suffering of the humble? I could now lay my head on the ugliest rock in the land and feel at rest.

My dear Ulrich, I am not really so proud as to claim to be humble, although I do attempt, continually, to humble myself. Do you also? I understand you are entitled, as a man, to a greater share of pride, but would like to see you humbled. Otherwise, I am afraid for you. Two cannot share one throne. Even I would not wash your feet if I might wash His. Of that I am now certain, however great my need of you may be. Let us understand this, and serve together.

How many people pass over that word, I wonder, and take it for granted. I will tell you something. In my foolishness I had made up my mind to work it in wool, for what purpose I had not decided, but to embroider it in some way for my own pleasure. First, I sketched the design on paper, and had actually begun in a variety of coloured wools: blue for distance, brown for the earth, crimson, why, I cannot say, except that I am obsessed by that colour. However, as I worked, the letters were soon blazing at me with such intensity that the most witless person alive must have understood their significance. So I put the work away, and now it is smouldering in the darkness of a cupboard.

My dearest, at this distance, what can I do to soften your sufferings, but love you truly. Now that you have left behind the rich and hospitable country you have described, probably for some heartless desert, I pray that you are not filled with doubts. The moments of severest trial are surely the obscure details of a design that will be made clear at last — if we can endure till then, and for that purpose are we given to one another.

Although my own happiness is incomplete, we continue here in a state of undisturbed small pleasures: picnics; morning calls (which you so despise, I seem to remember); a Mr McWhirter gave a lecture on the Wonders of India at the School of Arts at which my Aunt E. slept and toppled over. My Cousin Belle Bonner will dance her feet right off before she marries Lieut. Radclyffe. That event, for which we are already busily preparing, should take place in the early spring. There is every indication that Belle will reap all the rewards for her sweetness and beauty. I do hope so, for I love her dearly. Mr Radclyffe is resigning his commission, and they plan to settle on some land he has taken up in the Hunter Valley, at no great distance, I understand, from your friends the Sandersons.

Now, dear, I can only pray that this will reach you, which I must finish without further ado, as my Uncle is calling from below and Mr Bagot (our messenger to Moreton Bay) is impatient to leave.

I thank you for your kindness, and your thoughts, and await most anxiously the letter I know you will hasten to send me at the first opportunity for doing so.

Ever your sincere

LAURA TREVELYAN

‘Laura!’ they were calling. ‘Laura! Mr Bagot cannot wait.’

‘I am coming,’ cried Laura’s dry voice, which rattled the window-panes, ‘in one minute.’

But she had to read first.

Then she was appalled.

‘Oh,’ she protested, ‘I am not as bad as all this.’

As she blistered her fingers on the sealing-wax.

Immediately, her childishness, prolixity, immodesty, blasphemy, and affectations were intensified. They were opened up like wounds at which she would be for ever probing.

‘Laura!’

Yet, at the time, I was sincere, she persisted, from the depths of her disillusion.

Her own opinion did not console, however, and she went from her room, carrying in her hands extinguished fire.