Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

‘Perhaps sooner than she expects,’ Mrs Roxburgh answered with a warmth she might not have expended on Mrs Aspinall previously.

In fact her mind was leaping with the hope which springs from a sudden idea, or inspiration.

Although it was understood that the doctor should spend the night with them to rest his horses, Mrs Roxburgh followed him out into the passage so as to waste no time in broaching her idea.

‘When I said “sooner than she expects”, doctor, it was because it is my opinion that we should leave “Dulcet” as soon as we can find lodgings at Hobart. I am afraid’, Mrs Roxburgh said, and did look most distracted and appealing, ‘that my husband — in his delicate state of health — might suddenly be taken ill again — the next time perhaps fatally. In town he will have the benefit of your immediate attention. I would feel desperate if anything happened — and helpless — here at “Dulcet”.’

Dr Aspinall squeezed her hand and smiled a benevolent, brandy smile.

‘The simplest lodgings, provided they are clean,’ she hurried on, ‘where Mr Roxburgh can regain his strength before the voyage home.’

‘You can depend on me, my dear Mrs Roxburgh,’ the doctor promised, ‘but Garnet will be keenly disappointed.’

‘No doubt,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m sure he is fond enough of his brother not to wish to sacrifice him to his own pleasure.’

The doctor agreed.

After attending to the night-light and performing the ritual of kissing her husband on the brow (when, surprisingly, his lips were raised in search of hers) Mrs Roxburgh retired to the dressing-room, where Holly had made up a bed of sorts on the sofa. She was so weary she accepted thankfully this unyielding compromise, but not weary enough to neglect her duty to the one her mother-in-law had commended: the Divine Being, in old Mrs Roxburgh’s parlance.

Young Mrs Roxburgh kneeled beside the improvised bed, but her knees were too pointed, it seemed, or the carpet might have been strewn with glass, or in worst moments, upholstered like a mattress of rotting leaves.

‘Ellen?’ Mr Roxburgh called from the bedroom. ‘Are you praying?’

She replied yes, but so low he might not have heard.

She locked her hands faster, and screwed her eyes deeper into her skull. She longed to catch sight of old Mrs Roxburgh’s Divine Being, if only as a blaze of departing glory. Perhaps it was her origins which made her believe more intently in the Devil than in the Deity. So tonight her prayers were but vaguely directed, and the shudders took possession of her limbs.

Again Mr Roxburgh called to her. ‘I am in no mood for prayer. I am too tired — too fidgety. I could not succeed in concentrating.’ His voice trailed off in a string of yawns.

Mrs Roxburgh arranged herself upon the sofa, but was unable to sleep. Although she was careful to close her mind to any image which might suggest her fall from grace, such thoughts as she had, trickled out as tears; the wet pillow heightened the fever of her sleeplessness.

Time must have passed, for the pillow-case had dried out, when Mr Roxburgh called, ‘Are you awake, Ellen? I find it impossible to sleep. Come here, would you? I’d like to feel you lying beside me in this desert of a bed.’

She could only obey her sick husband’s whim. ‘But you will be less likely to sleep,’ she warned. ‘We shall disturb each other by our tossing and turning.’

‘I would like to comfort you,’ he said, ‘for all you have had to put up with — married to such a creaking fellow.’

Her body ached, less than her spirit however, as Mr Roxburgh began to demonstrate his love. Perhaps the shock he had sustained that day had melted a tenderness inside him commensurate with the love he had known in theory he ought to feel, and only now saw his way to offering a semblance of it.

Mrs Roxburgh was racked: gratitude was the most she was able to conjure in exchange, and that can quickly turn to the gravel of remorse.

‘Oh, no!’ she protested. ‘Please! I am afraid,’ she moaned as she moved her head from side to side. ‘You may have a relapse.’

But Mr Roxburgh remained gently obdurate: he could not impress his love too deeply on her now that he had been prompted to do so.

Mrs Roxburgh, finally, could only lie, holding her husband’s frail body to hers, and accept his miraculous gift.

After a night which, in retrospect, was less tormented than either of them had anticipated, she wondered whether to share with him the plan she had conceived for removing from ‘Dulcet’ to Hobart Town; when she found herself telling it.

Surprisingly, Mr Roxburgh replied, ‘Yes. I am in full agreement. I expect Garnet’s feelings will be hurt, but it cannot be helped. I’ve taken a dislike to this house. I swear it is still full of Dormers. I’ve heard them moving about overhead, as you claimed to hear, I remember, at the beginning.’

Mrs Roxburgh preferred not to embark on the subject of ghosts, and more practically suggested, ‘Do you think you should tell your brother that we plan to leave?’

‘I could — yes,’ Mr Roxburgh pondered, ‘unless you might do it more delicately. He could hold it against his brother for ever, whereas he can hardly blame a sensible wife for worrying about her husband’s health.’ His decision filled him with all the gravity of self-approval.

But Mrs Roxburgh grew hesitant. ‘Let us at least wait’, she said, ‘till the doctor has found us lodgings.’

While her husband kept to his bed it was easy enough to avoid her brother-in-law, but Austin Roxburgh at last tired of pampering; he took to rising in the morning and tentatively pottering about the house, but still retired in the afternoon; their dinner was brought to them, as usual since his illness, in their room.

Until Mr Roxburgh decided, ‘You should go in, Ellen, and dine with him. Otherwise he may take offence, and find your dedication to a husband ostentatious.’

‘If you wish it,’ she said.

The leaves falling in the orchard made for melancholy. If the twitter of little questing birds provoked tremors of pleasure in her, the cold cawing of transient crows sank her spirits immediately. On the morning of the day when her husband gave his order she heard shots from across the paddock, and a desperate cry, whether from man or beast she was unable to decide. Her closing the window, she realized later, had been an ineffectual response which shut out neither the echo nor her own disquiet.

The evening was cold for her return to the ritual of the dining-room. A white light was gathering above the decapitated cypresses and thick wall or hedge of box. In the fireplace two or three tree-roots snapped and crackled cheerfully enough. Even so, she was glad of her fringed shawl with the leaf-pattern; she drew it tight across her bosom, then thought better, and draped it loosely. As she waited for Garnet Roxburgh she could not determine whether the expression in Mrs Dormer-Roxburgh’s eyes was that of malevolence or sympathy.

Her host arrived as she had expected, casually, disinterested, and cold. His features, his lips, seemed to have coarsened since last she saw him, but the transformation could have been occasioned by surliness.

‘You have become a stranger, Ellen,’ he said, and bore down to commandeer the hearth.

His voice sounded thick, as though he had drunk a glass of wine to fortify himself against their meeting.

‘My husband’, she replied, ‘is a demanding invalid.’

‘Of course I would not begrudge my brother the attentions of a devoted wife.’

Then Holly produced the tureen, which should have dispelled any awkwardness. The girl went to stand it at the head of the table so that the master might serve from it.

‘Mrs Roxburgh will serve the soup,’ he decided.