Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Once Ellen had taken a deep enough breath to ask, ‘What decided Mr Garnet Roxburgh to emigrate to Van Diemen’s Land?’

The mother was so far caught off her guard that she launched herself immediately. ‘He didn’t decide — it was decided for him by Austin, Mr Daintrey, and several others who had his interests at heart. It was not his fault. He was headstrong and unwise, and fell amongst bad company.’ Here it must have occurred to the narrator that it might be imprudent to cast more light on an incident best consigned to obscurity, for she gasped, and sniffed, and dabbed a little before concluding, ‘They say there are compensations for living in Van Diemen’s Land — some very quaint marsupials. Garnet himself told me about them in a letter.’

Not long after, old Mrs Roxburgh died. Her son Austin was deeply affected by her death, as might have been foreseen, and all but his wife decided to avoid his company during the prolonged period of mourning. As for the old woman’s daughter (so Ellen considered herself and was considered by then) she wept as the earth was shovelled in unfeeling clods down upon the coffin. Her husband would have preferred her to restrain her grief, at least till later, because a red face smeared with tears reminded him in public of the farmer’s daughter he had married, when he had begun to congratulate himself on her being buried deeper than his mother. (Stricken by his private sentiments, Mr Roxburgh wrote off to London, ordering a dozen pair of gloves of the size he had noted at the back of his journal the year he married ‘Ellen Gluyas’.)

Persuaded to rest awhile in her husband’s bunk Mrs Roxburgh regretted her lethargy. Within the motion of the heaving ship and the rustle of the straw-filled palliasse she remained a core of inertia. She yawned uncontrollably. Oh for her down pillows and feather-bed at Cheltenham! Wishes did not prevent her ploughing her cheek deeper into the coarse slip upon which it was resting and where her husband’s cheek lingered: around her there was still the scent of sleep; she was pervaded and soothed by it. Soon, she promised herself, she would make up the beds, like any under-housemaid, but until then, she resigned herself to the undulations of her feathered thoughts. If she shuddered once or twice, and chafed the gooseflesh out of her arms, it was because she knew she would be led deeper than she would have chosen, and inevitably trapped in what she most loathed.

‘ Why? ’ he pondered in high anguish.

They were seated on deck in a warm corner on the lee side of the barque Kestrel . If the breeze held, they were but a day out of Hobart Town.

The warmth, the prospect, must have gulled Mr Roxburgh into meeting his wife’s disagreeable question with an uncharacteristically direct reply. ‘My brother was accused of forging a signature. Oh, nothing was proved ! The accusation was based on suspicion rather than evidence, and knowing my brother I am confident that he was not guilty.’ Mr Roxburgh thrust his hands back to back between his bony knees; sunken cheeks and clenched jaws contributed to the impression that he had suddenly aged. ‘Poor Garnet, he was never bad! Rash, admittedly, and too personable. He had the fatal gift of attracting almost everyone he met. The wrong people led him astray.’

‘When the wrong people led him astray, surely it was your brother who must have felt attracted?’ For her husband’s sake she would not have liked to think it.

Practically shouting, Mr Roxburgh repeated in his brother’s defence, ‘He is not bad ! It was never proved !’

Presently they gathered up their books, their rugs, and went below, where Mrs Roxburgh occupied herself writing in her journal until it should be dinner-time.

… asked the imprudent question and received the painful answer. Mr R. most distressed. But I had to know. If I cld only rid myself of my dislike for Garnet R. so as not to go against my husband. But I continue seeing the little boy with glossy lips, and shallow eyes determined to dazzle as he stares out of the likeness his mother loved to show visitors. I can imagine the ‘personable’ man grown out of this little boy — the mocking lips, the blue eyes hardened by conceit and — I shld not allow myself to write it —unproved dishonesty . I believe I have always detested Garnet R. for outshining his brother. I must not allow myself to think such thoughts when it wld pain my dearest husband, only that I must protect him from his innocent faith in one who I am sure was never worthy of it …

By the time they went in to dinner Mrs Roxburgh was entrenched in her own virtuous resolves, and wore a glow to which her husband could not but respond admiringly.

Berthed alongside the quay at Hobart Town the following morning, a shrouded mountain looming over all, Ellen Roxburgh was less confident of her armoury. She remembered she was the farmer’s daughter who had married an honourable gentleman, and corrected her speech, and learned to obey certain accepted moral precepts and social rules, most of them as incongruous to her nature as her counterfeit of the Italian hand and her comments on the books with which her husband wished her to persevere. But her meeting with that husband’s adored brother, a second gentleman whose doubtful honour led her to expect a subtler version of the first, could prove the severest trial of those to which she had so far been subjected.

In the circumstances, Mrs Roxburgh lingered below settling her very modest bonnet (an old one, as Mr Roxburgh had requested for their voyage), patting the carpet-bag into shape, locking her leather dressing-case (in which she also kept her journal), while Austin Roxburgh went on deck to take part in the joyful, if also unnerving, reunion with his sibling.

When she could no longer defer the moment of joining them, her confusion at first prevented her assessing ‘Garnet R.’ with any clearness. She was aware only of the blaze from blue sceptical eyes, an intensification of the milder, shallower stare of the child in the miniature, and a hand uncommonly hard, like that of some mechanic, or farmer. By contrast his clothes, without being ostentatious, suggested expense, even fashion. The shirt-cuff was of impeccable linen, as he stooped to retrieve a leather glove he had let fall on the deck.

Withdrawing her glance from the wrist, she listened to the unnaturally high-pitched inanities in which long separation had forced the brothers to engage each other. After the initial compliments and inquiries on Garnet Roxburgh’s part, the two gentlemen mercifully ignored her.

‘… Are you well , Austin? You look well, you old, creaking gate!’

‘Inactivity, or the long sea voyage, has put new life in me, dear fellow. Though naturally I must always take care. My heart, as you know, is not of the best.’

Mr Garnet Roxburgh smiled absently, if it was not incredulously, at the idea that someone might suffer from a heart.

‘And you, Mrs Roxburgh — Ellen, isn’t it? if you’ll allow me — have you no ailments — or at any rate, complaints?’ he inquired as he propelled her the short distance along the gang-board on to the quay.

‘None,’ she answered while he was still at her back, ‘unless the nervous fidgets I developed from not arriving sooner.’ She was glad to hear grit beneath the soles of her boots, which not only meant she was once more standing on solid land but her first abrasive contact with it might have disintegrated a reply which could have sounded insipid, insincere, or worse to her husband’s ears — indiscreet.

But the brothers were too busy organizing and explaining to pay attention to shades of meaning.

‘The baggage will follow by bullock-wagon,’ their host told them. ‘That is, all but your immediate necessities. Those, we can take with us in the buggy.’