Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

In the morning, however, she sent the girl to the master to tell him that, if he would not be overly delayed, she thought she would ride out with him that morning.

That he must be delayed, she knew, for she lingered over dressing, hoping that she might change her mind, or Garnet Roxburgh leave without her.

Holly, hooking her into the habit, was again in the sulks. ‘Ah,’ she sighed when questioned, and answered as usual, ‘’tis nothing.’

Then she said, ‘She’s a pretty little horse, and gentle — if you don’t lay whip or spur to her.’

‘Oh? Do you know?’

‘Mr Roxburgh allowed me to ride her. He taught me. He said I might use her sometimes — as a recreation — when she’s not wanted by anybody else.’

Mrs Roxburgh was adjusting her hat. Her hand trembled at the prospect of finding herself in the saddle again.

‘Is she so much in use?’

‘Oh, no. Only by Mrs Aspinall — when she comes.’

‘Mrs Aspinall?’

‘The doctor’s wife.’

‘Is she here often?’

The girl replied, ‘Not very,’ and held the glass for her lady to see whether she looked trim.

Mrs Roxburgh might have looked handsome, in her hard hat, from behind the tightly gathered net veil, had she allowed herself to approve. But her thoughts were so far distracted that she even forgot to take leave of her husband.

In the yard the assigned man who acted as groom stood holding the mare beside a mounting-block. She flashed the white of an eye in the direction of her prospective mistress, but seemed docile enough. Mr Garnet Roxburgh was already mounted on a thickset strawberry roan. He sat with the glimmer of a smile on his face, whether in approval or mild censure it was impossible to tell.

Their setting forth was sedate enough. After curveting briefly, the mare responded to her rider’s touch, perhaps sensing the hand of experience, for Ellen Gluyas had often bounced bareback for fun on their own hairy Cornish nag en route for serious labours in the fields, before she had ever ridden on more elegant and aimless expeditions on the slopes beyond Cheltenham.

Mr Garnet Roxburgh might have approved of his companion’s seat. He glanced sideways once or twice, and down at the fall of her bottle-green skirt, without comment, however.

‘What is her name?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked, and her voice, she thought, sounded flat enough to match her insipid inquiry.

He considered it unnecessary to name horses, but some liked to call the mare ‘Merle’. Mrs Roxburgh wondered which of Them it was.

When they had ridden a little way he suddenly raised his arm, embracing the landscape as it were, with a sweeping, almost passionate gesture. ‘Do you believe you would come across lusher pastures anywhere on earth?’

“I have not seen everywhere on earth.”

‘Oh, come! As dry as my brother. That was a manner of speaking. Out of your experience, I meant.’ He looked at her meaningly.

There was every reason why he should know that his brother had married her off a farm, so she did not hesitate in her reply. ‘Ours was for the most part poor land — swept by winds from the sea. It could not compare with such luxuriance as this. But for all its poverty, I loved it,’ she added.

To have humbled her seemed to have appeased him.

He said quite gently, ‘I did not mean to hurt your feelings.’

She was not so sure.

A little farther on a flock of sturdy lambs stood grazing in a field of brilliant clover. She was about to express her delight when Garnet Roxburgh, who had not at first noticed the lambs, caught sight of them, and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘God sod the bastard shepherds! But what can you expect of the scrapings from the streets of Dublin and London?’

There was no sign of any shepherd to prevent the flock pushing through a gap in a fence roughly built of logs. Garnet Roxburgh spurred forward, wheeled the lambs, and soon had them scampering back through the break. After which, he jumped down, and started to repair the collapsed fence by dragging three or four logs into place. Although not of the heaviest, they were awkward in shape and jagged where the branches had been lopped. As she rode up to rejoin him, she noticed the blood trickling from the back of one of his hands. His shirt was wet from his exertion and his face closed in anger.

She decided not to disturb what would have been silence except for his panting and a coughing from the now stationary lambs.

Still silent, Garnet Roxburgh re-mounted, and they made, purposefully it seemed, towards a patch of thinned-out scrub on a near-by rise. Here she saw a hut had been built out of its grey, natural surroundings from which it was all but indistinguishable.

The master started shouting again, and two slaves came tumbling out from under the thatch of leaves. ‘By Ghost,’ he cursed, ‘if those lambs bloat you’ll regret it! Do you suppose I employ you to grog yourselves stupid before the sun is properly up? If I wasn’t such a soft-hearted noodle I’d set up my own private triangle and see my own justice done. Now, go to it!’

As the two shepherds, bleary from sleep and spirits, stumbled past in the direction of their flock, Mrs Roxburgh detected the authentic blast of rum. She might have been more distressed by memories if the present situation had disgusted her less. She could not sympathize with the neglectful and unsavoury ‘miscreants’, but was sickened by the uncontrolled passion of their master, who let fly at their shoulders with his whip before they were out of range.

His rage abating somewhat, they continued their ride, though without any definite aim, she felt. Garnet Roxburgh had withdrawn to brood amongst his thoughts.

In the circumstances she was relieved to notice flies gathering where the blood had oozed from the gash on the back of his hand ‘Have you a clean handkerchief?’ she asked. ‘I’ll bind up the wound. My own handkerchief is too small to be of any use.’

He said no he had not, and proceeded to suck the wound with such concentration she thought she recognized more than a trace of his brother’s hypochondria.

Until dropping his hand to the pommel of his saddle he remarked in what was intended as a lighter tone, ‘You will not have a good opinion of me, Ellen.’

She was about to protest, against her true feelings, when he began afresh, ‘You have never, I think, found me in the least congenial.’ He laughed. ‘You had decided against me long before we had so much as met.’

His charges were the more intolerable for being wholly true.

The black mare whinged and jumped on experiencing her rider’s whip. ‘You are making such false accusations,’ Mrs Roxburgh lied unconvincingly.

‘And are not prepared to take into account — unless they have taught you to disbelieve — all that I have gone through.’

‘Oh, your wife! I know. And imagine how often you must re-live the dreadful moment!’

‘Which moment?’

‘Why — if you ask — when the gig overturned.’

They rode in silence; then Garnet Roxburgh kicked out with his nearside boot in what must have been an involuntary spasm and struck her stirrup-iron through her skirt.

‘It was not overturned,’ he had decided to tell her. ‘I took a corner too fast and the unfortunate woman was pitched out.’

Mrs Roxburgh could not decide whether she should sympathize more — or less. The fact that the subject had been raised at all, confused her.

‘Either way’, she said, ‘it was a tragedy;’ and hoped it could be left at that.

They rode a little.

‘You will not consider me sensitive enough to experience loneliness.’

She would have liked to believe, and guilt might have persuaded her had her glance not fallen on the wrist of the hand holding the reins; as on their drive from Hobart Town, she could feel repulsion rising in her.