Voss

by Patrick White

  But she added, from force of habit, and because she did always hope to be informed of something dreadful:

  ‘What is the news?’

  ‘The news,’ said Belle, ‘is that Una has decided at last to take Woburn McAllister.’

  ‘To take,’ protested the disgusted father, who maintained a high standard of ethics in the bosom of his family.

  ‘Money to money. Well, that is the way,’ said Mrs Bonner. ‘But poor man, he is certainly in the pastoral business. To add such a silly, frizzy sheep to all those he already has.’

  Her husband pointed out that Una Pringle was their friend.

  ‘She is our friend,’ said Mrs Bonner, biting her thread. ‘I will not deny that. And it is by being our friend that I have got to know her.’

  ‘I think I shall go to bed,’ Belle announced, nibbling without appetite at a little biscuit that she had picked up from the silver tray. ‘I am so tired.’

  Her eyelids were heavy. She was a golden animal that would fall asleep immediately on curling up.

  After that, everybody went. So the victim was saved up for the future.

  During the weeks that followed nothing more was said, and Laura could have been happy if she had not suspected silence. She also dreamed dreams, which she would try to remember, but could not, only that she had been engaged in some activity of frenzied importance far outside her reason and her cold limbs.

  If the nights were formidable, the days were bland, in which everyone was occupied with the preparations for Belle’s wedding.

  ‘I shall be married in white,’ Belle had said. ‘But I insist on muslin. Who ever heard of a satin bride go trapesing into the bush.’

  ‘Muslin is practical, of course,’ said Mrs Bonner, who, secretly, would have liked to shine.

  And the father was disappointed, who could have afforded satin for his daughter.

  This was the most important event in the merchant’s house since the departure of the expedition. Miss Lassiter came. There were yards of everything, and bridesmaids who giggled a good deal, and Chattie Wilson was pricked by a pin. All these women, whether the rusty, humble ones who knelt amongst the snippets, or the dedicated virgins who stood about in absorbed, gauzy groups, all were helping to create the bride, to breathe the myth of Belle Bonner, so that few people who saw her would fail to bore posterity. As the women worked, the origins of ritual were forgotten. As they built the tiers of sacred white, they debated and perspired. They unwound cards of lace, as if it had been string. They heaped the precious on the precious, until Belle, who laughed, and submitted, and did not tire – she was such a healthy girl – became a pure, white, heavenly symbol, trembling to discover its own significance.

  So the spirit of the explorer, the scarecrow that had dominated the house beyond all measure with his presence, and even haunted it after he had gone, was ruthlessly exorcized by the glistening bride. Who would think of him now, except perhaps Rose Portion, out of her simplicity, if she had been alive, the merchant, by resentful spasms, since his money was undoubtedly lost, and Laura Trevelyan. The bride had certainly forgotten that knotty man, but loved her cousin, and was wrung accordingly, as she looked down out of the mists of lace and constellations of little pearls that were gathering round her hair.

  The throats of the two girls were contracting. Two cats rolled together in one ball in the sun could not have led a more intimate life, yet there was very little they had shared, with the consequence that Belle, now that they were being drawn apart, began to ransack her mind for some little favour, preferably of a secret cast, to offer her cousin as evidence of her true affection.

  ‘Lolly,’ she said, at last, ‘we have not thought what I shall carry on the day. Everything will be in flower, yet nothing seems suitable. To me. You are the one who must decide.’

  Laura did not hesitate.

  ‘I would choose pear blossom.’

  ‘But the sticks!’ protested the bride. ‘They will only be unmanageable, and look ugly.’

  It was like Laura, herself at times stiff and awkward, to suggest anything so grotesque.

  ‘You are not in earnest?’ Belle asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura.

  And she looked at her cousin, who was the more poignant in that her pure poetry could transcend her rather dull doubts. The blossom was already breaking from her fingertips, and from the branches of her arms.

  Then Belle knew that she must do as Laura saw it.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, murmuringly. ‘If the wind will not dry it up before the day.’

  All this, trivial in itself, was spoken over the busy heads of the women who were clustered round the bride. The two girls alone read the significance of what their hearts received, and locked it up, immediately.

  At this period Mrs Bonner had every reason to feel satisfied, but her nature demanded that her whole house be in order. She must make her last attempt. With this end in view, she approached her niece one day as the latter was standing with the child in her arms, and said:

  ‘You must come in, my dear, and meet the Asbolds.’

  ‘The Asbolds? Who are the Asbolds?’

  ‘They are good people who have a little property at Penrith,’ Aunt Emmy replied.

  But Laura began protecting herself with her own shoulders.

  ‘I am not decent,’ she complained. ‘And I do not want to inflict Mercy on the kitchen.’

  ‘Then, indecent as you are,’ laughed the aunt, who was in a good humour. ‘You may bring Mercy, too. They arc quite simple people.’

  ‘These Asbolds,’ asked the niece, as she was swept through the house, ‘are they acquaintances of long standing?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Mrs Bonner, ‘although I have known them, well, some little while.’

  Which was true. All this time Laura’s wise child was looking at the older woman.

  Then they went into the little, rarely used parlour, where the visitors were waiting, as befitted quite simple people from Penrith.

  Mrs Asbold, who had risen and made some deferential gesture, was a large, comfortable body, with pink cheeks that the sun had as yet failed to spoil. On the other hand, her husband, who had led a life of exposure to all weathers in both countries, was already well cured; he was of seasoned red leather, and beginning to shrivel up. So clearly was honesty writ upon their faces, one felt it would have been dishonest to submit the couple to proof by questioning.

  However, when everyone was seated, and shyness dissolved, a pleasant talk was begun, in the course of which Mrs Asbold had to exclaim:

  ‘And this is the little girl. How lovely and sturdy she is.’

  The baby, who had but lately gone into frocks, was indeed a model child, both in her rosy flesh, and, it appeared, in her unflinching nature.

  ‘Would you come to me, dear?’ asked Mrs Asbold, her grey-gloved hands hesitating upon her comfortable knees.

  Mercy did not seem averse, and was soon planted in the visitor’s lap.

  ‘Are you as Christian as your name, eh?’ asked the husband, feeling the substance of the child’s cheek with his honest fingers, and grinning amiably, up to the gaps in his back teeth. ‘We could do with such a little girl. Eh?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the woman, as if she had been hungry all these years.

  Like Mr Asbold, Laura was also smiling, but stupidly. She felt ill.

  ‘She would be killed with kindness, I feel sure,’ said Mrs Bonner, fidgeting with the ribbons of her cap.

  The aunt remembered a play she had once seen in which all the actors were arranged in a semicircle, in anticipation of a scene the dramatist had most cunningly prepared, and just as he had controlled his situation, Mrs Bonner now hoped to manage hers, forgetting that she was not a dramatist, but herself an actor in the great play.

  ‘The Asbolds,’ said Aunt Emmy, looking at Laura, but lowering her eyelids and fluttering them as if there had been a glare, ‘the Asbolds,’ she repeated, ‘have the finest herd of dairy cows at Penrith. And the pretties
t house. Such pigs, too. But it is the house that would take your eye, Laura, so I am led to understand, and in the spring, with the fruit blossom. Is not the fruit blossom, Mr Asbold, looking very fine?’

  ‘They are nice trees,’ the man said.

  ‘In such healthy, loving surroundings, a little girl could not help but grow up happy,’ suggested Mrs Bonner.

  Mrs Asbold wetted her lips.

  ‘You have no children of your own?’ asked Laura, whose limbs had turned against her.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the woman, shortly.

  She was looking down. She was busy with the child’s short skirt, touching, and arranging, but guiltily.

  ‘It must be a great sadness for you,’ said Laura Trevelyan.

  Her compassion reached the barren woman, who now looked up, and returned it.

  Mrs Bonner had the impression that something was happening which she did not understand. So she said, almost archly:

  ‘Would you not be prepared to give Mercy to Mrs Asbold, Laura?’ Then, with the sobriety that the situation demanded: ‘I am sure the poor child’s unfortunate mother would be only too grateful to see her little one so splendidly placed.’

  Laura could not answer. This is the point, she felt, at which it will be decided, one way or the other, but by some superior power. Her own mind was not equal to it.

  ‘Will you take it, Liz?’ Mr Asbold asked, doubtfully.

  His wife, who was ruffling up the child’s hair as she pondered, seemed to be preparing herself to commit an act of extreme brutality.

  The child did not flinch.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, peering into the stolid eyes. ‘She knows I would not hurt her. I would not hurt anyone.’

  ‘But will you take her?’ asked the man, who was anxious to be gone to things he knew.

  ‘No,’ said the woman. ‘She would not be ours.’

  Her mouth, in her amiable, country face, had become unexpectedly ugly, for she had committed the brutal act, only it was against herself.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ she said. ‘I will not take her.’

  Getting up, she put the child quickly but considerately in the young lady’s lap.

  ‘She would have too many mothers.’

  Everybody had forgotten Mrs Bonner, who was no longer of importance in that scene, except to show the Asbolds out. This she did, and immediately went upstairs.

  Because she, too, was powerless, Laura Trevelyan continued to sit where left, and at first scarcely noticed the persistent Mercy. Important though it was that the child should remain, her considerable victory was by no means final. No victory is final, the unhappy Laura saw, and in her vision of further deserts was touching his face with a renewed tenderness, where the skin ended and the rather coarse beard began, until the little girl became frightened, first of her mother’s eyes, then of her devouring passion, and begged to be released.

  Because of her own duplicity, Mrs Bonner also was a little frightened of her niece, although they addressed each other in pleasant voices, when they were not actually avoiding, and it was easy to avoid during the days that preceded the wedding, there was such a pressure of events.

  Two days before the ceremony, the Pringles gave a ball in honour of Belle Bonner, whom everybody liked. It had been decided to take the ballroom at Mr Bright’s Dancing Academy in Elizabeth Street, on account of its greater convenience for those among the guests who would have to be brought by boat from the North Shore. From the hiring of such an elegant establishment, and references to other details let slip by the organizers, it became obvious that the Pringles were preparing to spend a considerable sum of money, with the result that their ball was soon all the talk, both amongst those who were invited, and even more amongst those who were not. Of the latter, some voiced the opinion that it was indelicate on the part of the hostess to show herself in her condition, until those who took her part pointed out that, in obedience to such a principle, the unfortunate lady must remain almost permanently hidden.

  On the morning of the event, Mrs Pringle, by now a martyr to her heaviness, proceeded none the less to the hall, accompanied by her daughters Una and Florence, where they arranged quantities of cinerarias, or saw to it, rather, that the pots were massed artistically by two strong gardeners, while they themselves held their heads to one side, the better to judge of effects, or came forward and poked asparagus fern into every visible gap. Mr Bright, the dancing instructor, who was experienced in conducting Assemblies and such like, offered many practical suggestions, and was invaluable in ordering their execution. It was he, for instance, who engaged the orchestra, in consultation with Mr Topp. It was he who was acquainted with a lady who would save Mrs Pringle the tiresomeness of providing a supper for so many guests, although how intimately Mr Bright was connected with the catering lady, and how well he did by the arrangement, never became known. For Mrs Pringle he remained quite omniscient and a tower of strength, while his two young nephews showed commendable energy in polishing the floor, running at the shavings of candle-fat until the boards were burning under their boots, and the younger boy sustained a nasty fall.

  As evening approached, the gas was lit, and activity flared up in the retiring- and refreshment-rooms, where respectable women in black were setting out such emergency aids to the comfort of ladies as eau de Cologne, lozenges, safety pins, and needles and thread, and for the entertainment of both sexes every variety of meat that the Colony could provide, in profusion without vulgarity, as well as vegetables cut into cunning shapes, and trifles and jellies shuddering under their drifts of cream.

  Only the room of rooms, the ballroom, remained empty, in a state of mystical entrancement, under the blue, hissing gas, as the invisible consort in the gallery began to pick over the first, fragile notes of music. Such was the strain of stillness and expectation, it would not have been surprising if the walls had flown apart from the pressure, shattering the magic mirrors, of golden mists and blue, gaseous depths, and scattering the distinct jewels from the leaves of the cinerarias.

  The Pringles’ guests, however, did begin to trickle in, then to flow, and finally to pour. Everyone was there who should, as well as some who, frankly, should not have been. Several drunken individuals, for instance, got in out of the street. Their pale, tuberous faces lolled for an instant upon the banks of purple flowers, terrifying in some cases, infuriating in others, those who had succeeded in thrusting ugliness out of their own lives. Then, order was restored. Attendants put an end to the disgraceful episode by running the intruders into the night from which they had come, and they were soon forgot in the surge of military, the gallant demeanour of ships’ officers, the haze of young girls that drifted along the edges of the hall or collected in cool pockets at the corners.

  The music played. The company wove the first, deliberate figures of the dance.

  Mrs Pringle, who had been receiving her guests in a disguise of greenery, came forward especially far to embrace her dearest friends, the Bonners. There was a clash of onyx and cornelian.

  ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Bonner, when she had extricated herself sufficiently from the toils of jewellery, ‘I must congratulate you on what appears to be a triumph of taste and festivity.’

  For once the scale of her enterprise prevented Mrs Pringle from drawing attention to her friend’s unpunctuality.

  ‘I must remember on some more appropriate occasion to tell you what has detained us,’ Mrs Bonner whispered, and hinted, and smiled. Then, raising her voice to a rather jolly pitch: ‘But delay will not detract from our enjoyment; first glances assure me of that.’

  No one had ever thought to remind her at a later date of her offer to explain, so perhaps ladies do respect one another’s stratagems. For Mrs Bonner, in the belief that fresh flowers will catch the eye when others are beginning to wilt, always arrived late at a ball.

  ‘Belle is radiant,’ said Mrs Pringle, accepting the part she was to play.

  ‘Belle is looking well,’ said her mother, as if she had but noticed.


  ‘Will you not agree that she is the loveliest girl in Sydney?’ asked Mrs Pringle, who could be generous.

  ‘Poor Sydney!’ protested Belle.

  At times she would grimace like some ugly boy, and even this was acceptable. But, on the present occasion, she returned very quickly to her high, white cloud.

  ‘And Laura,’ added Mrs Pringle, kindly.

  For Laura Trevelyan was also there.

  Belle Bonner at once sailed out with Mr Pringle, an ugly man, who smelled of tobacco, but respected for his influence and money. Belle was wearing satin for tonight, smoother than the music, whiter than the silences, for most men, and even conspicuously pretty girls stopped talking as she floated near. In their absorption, those who knew her intimately would not have obtruded the reality of their relationship. They only thought to support themselves on their own, prosaic legs, and watch Belle as she danced past.

  There was also Laura Trevelyan.

  Laura was wearing a dress that nobody could remember when asked to do so afterwards. Only after much consideration, and with a feeling that what they were saying had been dragged up from their depths and did not properly fit their mouths, some of them replied that the dress was probably the colour of ashes, or the bark of some native tree. Of course, the dress did not match either of these descriptions. It was only that its wearer, by the gravity of her face and set of her rather proud head, did make a sombre impression. Although she replied with agreeable directness and simplicity to all those who dared address her, few did, on account of some indefinite obscurity that they sensed, but could not penetrate, or worse still, because they began to suspect the presence of darkness in their own souls. So they were for ever smoothing their skins, and ruffling up their pink or blue gauze in mirrors, before allowing themselves to be thrown together again by that mad wind of concealed music. They, the larkspurs of life, were only appreciable in masses.

  At one point Laura was approached by Chattie Wilson, a plump, and rather officious girl, who was always giving good advice, who knew everything, who went everywhere, always the bridesmaid, but who had been overlooked, it seemed, because she was so obviously there.