Patrick White - Voss

‘You will see that everything is packed neatly, Aunt, because I would not like to create a bad impression. You will find almost everything in the small cedar chest. Excepting those six nightdresses — you will remember we had too many — and the gauffered cap which Una Pringle gave. They are on the top shelf of the tallboy on the landing.’

Mrs Bonner’s face, that had been pretty in girlhood, was visibly swelling.

‘I do not know,’ she answered. ‘You must speak to your uncle. He would not allow it. One cannot dispose of a soul as if it were a parcel.’

Again, in the afternoon, Laura said:

‘I expect they will hire a carriage, or some kind of sprung conveyance. They would not carry a little child in a dray. All the way to Penrith.’

Mrs Bonner occupied herself with a piece of tatting.

Towards evening Laura raised herself on the pillows, and said:

‘Do you not see that I shall suffer by it? I could die by it? But I must. Then he will understand.’

‘Who?’ cried Mrs Bonner, her breath rank from her own suffering. ‘Who?’

And, laying down her work, she looked at her niece’s black eyelids.

Laura Trevelyan, by this time at the height of her illness, was almost dried up.

‘O Jesus,’ she begged, ‘have mercy. Oh, save us, or if we are not to be saved, then let us die. My love is too hard to bear. I am weak, after all.’

That evening, when Mr Bonner came in, unwillingly, he inquired:

‘Is there any improvement?’

His wife replied:

‘Do not ask me.’

There was some little consolation in the unexpected return of Dr Kilwinning. He was smelling of a glass of port wine that he had been invited to taste at a previous house, but which the Bonners forgave him in the circumstances.

Dr Kilwinning controlled his rich breath, and announced that he proposed to bleed Miss Trevelyan the following day. As he left the room, an ill-fitting door of a wardrobe was jumping, and flouting the silence. It was not a very good piece of furniture, but Mrs Bonner did truly love her niece, in whose room she had put it.

All the evening the old people were flapping like palm leaves.

The sick woman conducted herself at times with such rational gravity that her hallucinations were doubly awful whenever she felt compelled to share them.

‘I think it better,’ she announced, ‘if I do not see Mercy again. After all. In the morning, that is, before she goes. You will be sure that she has only a light breakfast, Aunt, because of the jolting of the cart. And she must wear something warm that can be taken off in the heat of the day.’

Then:

‘You will attend to it, Aunt? Won’t you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Bonner, who was wrestling with her conscience as never before.

In search of air or distraction, she went and drew back the curtains. Such was her preoccupation with earthly matters, she did not often notice the sky, but there it was now, most palpable, of solid, dark, enamelled blue. Or black. It was black like well-water, so cold her body could not bear it. But the great gaudy jumble of stars did please the child in her. And a curious phenomenon. As she followed its broad path of light, she almost dared hope it might lead her out of the state of mortal confusion.

‘Look, Laura,’ she called, holding back the curtains, her eyes moist. ‘A most unusual and wonderful thing.’

She stood, flattening herself ingratiatingly against the sash, in hopes that the patient might be able to see merely by turning her head.

‘Do you not want to look at it, Laura?’ she begged.

But Laura Trevelyan, who was again with her eyes closed, barely answered:

‘I have seen it.’

‘Silly girl,’ said Aunt Emmy, ‘I have but just drawn the curtains!’

‘It is the Comet,’ said Laura. ‘It cannot save us. Except for a breathing space. That is the terrible part: nothing can be halted once it is started.’

When Mr Bonner returned, his wife was still holding the helpless curtain.

‘Ah,’ he said, and his eyes showed that he too had hoped to escape along the path of celestial light, ‘you have seen the Comet, about which they are all talking. It is expected to be visible for several days.’

‘I was drawing Laura’s attention to it,’ Mrs Bonner said.

‘In the absence of an official astronomer, Mr Winslow is recording his observations,’ the merchant revealed, ‘and will send a report Home by the first packet to leave.’

Then the two old people stood rather humbly watching an historic event. In that blaze, they were dwindling to mere black points, and as the light poured, and increased, and invaded the room, even Laura Trevelyan, beneath the dry shells of her eyelids, was bathed at least temporarily in the cool flood of stars.

*

Towards the end of the afternoon, when the rim of the horizon had again grown distinct, and forms were emerging from the dust, they seemed to have arrived at the farther edge of the plain, from which rose an escarpment. Slowly approaching its folds of grey earth, the party was at length swallowed by a cleft, furnished with three or four grey, miserable, but living trees, and, most hospitable sight of all, what appeared to be an irregular cloth, of faded green patchy plush.

All the animals became at once observant. Moisture even showed in the dry nostrils of the dragging horses, whose dull eyes had recovered something of their natural lustre. Little velvet sounds began to issue out of their throats.

Here, miraculously, was water.

In the scrimmage, and lunging, and groaning that followed, the riders were almost knocked off, but did, by luck and instinct, keep their seats. The blackfellows, who were laughing generously out of their large mouths, ran whooshing amongst the animals to restrain them, but soon desisted, and just laughed, or scratched themselves. After the exertions of the journey and emotion of their meeting with the whites, they themselves did not much care what happened.

It was their ant-women who were engrossed by the continuance of life, who wove into the dust the threads of paths, who were dedicated to the rituals of fire and water, who shook snake and lizard out of their disgusting reticules, and who hung golloping children upon their long and dusty dugs. For the moment, at least, it appeared that men were created only for the hours of darkness.

As for the white men, dazed by so much activity, they accepted to be set apart, while hands, or swift, black birds made a roof of twigs over them. Soon they were completely encased in twigs, beyond which voices crackled. It seemed that an argument of procedure was taking place. Some of the blackfellows would, some would not. Some were tired. Others shone with a light of inspiration and yearning.

Presently, Jackie came and sat down amongst the white men, whose ways he knew, but it soon became apparent, from his sullen manner, that he was but obeying orders.

‘What will they do to us, Jackie?’ Le Mesurier asked. ‘What ever it is, let it be quick.’

Jackie, however, did not intend to understand.

And Le Mesurier continued to sit, staring indifferently at the fragile, yellow-looking bones of his own hands.

Various blacks came and went. A young girl, of pretty, barely nubile breasts, and an older, very ugly woman, seated themselves behind Jackie, suggesting a relationship recently formed. The boy, though obviously possessive, was insolent to the two women. They, in their turn, were rather shy.

Some men came, who had painted their bodies, and who filled the twig shelter with the smell of drying clay. There was, in addition, the wholly natural, drugging smell of their bodies, and of ants. As the singing began, somewhere in the rear, in that cleft of the escarpment where they were encamped, round the trampled mud of the waterhole, under the quenched blue of the sky, the two women in the twig cage were playing nervously with the long hairs of their armpits; their eyes were snapping in the shadows.