Patrick White - Voss

‘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 prettiest 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.