Sleep in the Woods

by Dorothy Eden

  But someday, she told herself fiercely, she, too, would have things. People and things.

  On an impulse she left her room and began to steal softly through the silent house. There was no one about. The girls were in their room writing their letters home, Aunt Charity was resting, cook was out marketing, and Tom digging in the lower part of the garden. Uncle Hubert would be at his bank.

  She was able to go through the rooms lingeringly, looking at everything, the furniture and carpets brought from England, the crystal and china, the Chinese lacquer cabinet picked up perhaps on the voyage out, or brought by some trading schooner, the rich blue Bristol glass goblets in their glass-fronted cupboard, the piano draped with a long-fringed shawl. She stopped to touch the thick pile of the red plush table-cloth, then stared up at the portraits of Aunt Charity’s parents, one on either side of the fireplace. They were badly painted, and showed overweight people, heavy-jowled with small piercing eyes, strangely alike, but perhaps the painter had been able to paint features in one shape only. They were not at all attractive people, yet Briar yearned towards them, thinking of their solid flesh and blood, their realness.

  In the dining room there were twelve mahogany chairs set around the long shining table. The heavy oak sideboard, which Briar inquisitively opened and looked into, was crammed with china and glass. There was a dinner service, with enormous meat platters and vegetable dishes—Briar turned over a plate to study the Royal Worcester imprint—and a Rockingham tea set arranged carefully on a shelf to itself. These were valuable possessions, doubly treasured in a country as yet empty of the treasures of civilized life. How did Aunt Charity, that stout, ordinary, unimaginative person, come to have so much?

  In the top draw of the sideboard was the silver, wrapped in baize. This, Briar could not resist handling. She was balancing a Georgian soup ladle in the palm of her hand, delighting in its cool roundness, thinking that some day, and before long, she, too, would have things like that, when there was a sound behind her.

  “Har-rumph!” said Uncle Hubert. “That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? George the Third. Interested in silver?”

  Briar started violently. For a moment she gazed speechless into the long, dolorous face, trying to read the expression in the heavy-lidded eyes.

  “I—like pretty things,” she said at last. “I—was just looking.”

  “Of course, my dear. If you really like pretty things come into my study, and I’ll show you something.”

  Trembling, she laid down the soup ladle, closed the drawer, and followed him.

  In the study, a small dark room with leather-covered chairs, and book-lined walls, Uncle Hubert picked up an object made out of a smooth green substance and handed it to her. It was a curiously shaped little figure, made in whorls, and with a devilishly mischievous face, eyes aslant and a tongue poked impudently out of the grinning mouth.

  “It’s a greenstone tiki,” Uncle Hubert explained. “A Maori good luck charm. The Maori is a very superstitious fellow, you know. He always likes to have one of these. But he can’t always get one in greenstone. It’s the most valuable mineral in this country. He makes axeheads and other weapons out of it. It’s very hard. Feel.”

  The strange little ornament lay in Briar’s palm. She lifted entranced eyes.

  “I like it, sir. It makes me feel—” she shivered slightly, the delicious unexplainable excitement filling her again.

  “If it makes you feel lucky, you’d better keep it.”

  “Keep it!”

  “Of course. If you’d like it.”

  “But—” Briar tried to read the sardonic face. He had caught her prowling through his house, handling the silver. How did he know she wasn’t planning to steal it? She was an unknown servant girl just off a ship. Would he ever believe her if she tried to explain that she merely loved and longed to own beautiful things?

  “You’ll need luck, most likely,” the extraordinary man was saying. “You haven’t been endowed with the power of my wife’s blessing, as have those two pink and white misses upstairs. But you’ll do as well, maybe.” He stared at her broodingly. “You like books?”

  “How did you know, sir?”

  “I saw you looking at them. What have you read?”

  “Samuel Richardson, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, of course, Donne—” she hesitated, “Montaigne.”

  “In the original?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The devil! You don’t tell me your father taught you all that?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  “Well, none of my business. But if you ever have time from the needle, or the flat iron, or whatever you’re kept busy with, you have my permission to come in here.”

  Briar’s lip trembled. “You are very kind.”

  “Not at all, not at all.”

  “And—not surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  “To find this out about me—that no one else has found out.”

  “This is a very young country, my dear. All kinds come, under various guises. No, nothing surprises me. But some things,” he added kindly, “please me. I hope you will find whatever it is that you have come to New Zealand for.”

  Briar, clutching the smooth strange little charm in her hand, could only nod vehemently.

  In bed that night Aunt Charity, clad in a voluminous linen lace-trimmed nightgown, and with her daytime cap replaced by a more substantial night one, sat up and prodded the recumbent figure of her husband.

  “Hubert! You can’t be asleep yet!”

  “I am, you know.”

  “Hubert, you must listen. Saul Whitmore’s in town.”

  “So I heard.”

  “You heard and didn’t tell me!”

  “My dear, I didn’t think your grapevine would have failed you.”

  “Oh, tush! You just like to be secretive. Did you hear the rest of it?”

  “I heard a little. What did you hear, in far greater detail?”

  “Why, that he’s been in and out of Cooper’s public house for twenty-four hours, and that most of the time he’s been in the company of—well, not the kind of women we know.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Hubert murmured, and was rewarded with a sharp slap across his shoulders.

  “Hubert! Will you never be serious!”

  “I’m very serious, my love. I’m just wondering what it’s to do with me, or you, whose company Saul, after months in the bush, chooses to keep.”

  “Of course it’s to do with us, since I planned asking him to the luncheon on Friday. But is he the kind of person one introduces innocent young girls to? Am I doing the right thing?”

  “Right or wrong, my love, you’ll ask him. He’s Saul Whitmore, the cousin of an earl. You’re only the cousin of the Governor. Really.” Hubert humped the blankets irritably over his shoulders. “I don’t know why you wake me to ask me something you’ve already made up your mind about. Now blow out the candle and let’s get some sleep.”

  Aunt Charity sat a moment in the flickering candlelight looking at the humped back of her already deeply breathing husband. Her small mouth pouted discontentedly, her forehead creased in rebellion. Really, if this was where marriage led one, to share the same bed forever with a man who jibed at her in a gentle facetious voice, and whom she didn’t know one bit better today than she had twenty years ago, was it so all-important?

  If it came to that, she didn’t even care much about sharing the same bed. She never had. If one were to add up the time she had spent dressing and undressing with tortuous efficiency, concealing her body beneath petticoats and corsets, and then the all-enveloping nightgowns, so that what eventually happened at least happened unseen, it would come to days and weeks and months.

  Were her ardent, ambitious plans for her nieces to come to this dreary anti-climax?

  “Put that light out, Charity!” came her husband’s impatient voice.

  Automatically she obeyed, leaning over to blow out the candle, and then to lie down on the plump pillows, sm
elling the faint acrid smell of the smoke from the candle wick.

  But marriage to Saul Whitmore would not be like that. Whatever it was, it would not be dull. And one had always heard that there was no better citizen than a reformed rake. Dear Sophia, who was not timid or afraid, would manage him. Yes, of course he must come to the party. It was foolish of her even to have mentioned the matter to Hubert.

  V

  AT LAST, just as the first carriage rolled up, the girls went downstairs, holding up their voluminous petticoats, Sophia chattering at the top of her voice.

  Briar was left in the bedroom that was like a flower garden through which a gale had swept, petticoats tossed on the floor, lace fichus and flowery bonnets on the bed, discarded morning dresses over a chair.

  Sophia had changed her mind three times as to what she would wear. It had turned out to be so fine a day, for once both still and sunny, that Aunt Charity had suddenly decided to have the luncheon party in the garden; and everyone had been working frantically carrying out tables and chairs and linen tablecloths and china and glass.

  So that finally there had not been a great deal of time to dress. Then Sophie’s intention of wearing her white Swiss muslin sprinkled with pale blue flowers had had to be changed, because the flowers in her bonnet did not match the flowers in her dress. She had tried her striped foulard, and torn that off in exasperation, and had finally decided on her pink silk with the stiffened bodice and wide crackling skirts which Prudence had said was much too grand for what was virtually only a picnic.

  Prudence herself wore a much more demure gown, and looked nervous and unhappy. She had no wish to sweep impressively into Wellington society, as had Sophia. She had followed her elder sister downstairs reluctantly, sure that she would burst into tears when the first young man (because he was not Edmund) spoke to her.

  This was going to be Sophia’s day, there was no doubt about that.

  Briar, alone in the bedroom, began to tidy up. But she kept dropping a garment to dart to the window to watch new arrivals.

  Not many people could arrive grandly by carriage, for few of them yet owned carriages. Most of them had to walk up the narrow steep road, holding their skirts fastidiously out of the dust. The older women carried parasols, and were importantly enough dressed in flowery hats and rich silks. The girls did not appear to have any great style, mostly their dresses were simple and of last year’s fashion. They looked gauche, Briar decided critically, and as for the young men, they seemed ordinary enough. Moustaches were much in evidence, and even one or two vigorous beards which belied the youth of the faces above them.

  Which one of these polite strangers would marry Sophia? For one of them would surely enough. And which was for Prudence, if her heart mended?

  And which one for me, Briar wondered irrepressibly, and suddenly pictured herself downstairs, curtseying to the young men, looking at them demurely beneath her lashes.

  Then she caught sight of herself in reality in the mirror, a slender, unexciting figure, extinguished by her apron and her dove-gray gown.

  “Why, Miss Briar, haven’t you a more fetching dress than that?” she demanded, and on an impulse unbuttoned the sober garment, stripping it off and standing in her petticoat before slipping Sophia’s rejected Swiss muslin over her head.

  She tossed off her cap, pulled the pins out of her hair and let it fall into ringlets on her shoulders.

  The gown was too big. It slipped off her shoulders, but if she held it at the back, like that, ah, she was pretty! Her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks flushed the color of her own namesake, the wild briar rose.

  She curtseyed to an imaginary stranger, and said in a meek voice, “I’m Miss Briar Rose Johnson. Good-day, Mr. Fanshawe, good-day, Mr. Whitmore, good-day, Mr. Carruthers. I’m Briar Rose Johnson. I’m Briar.” Her voice rose in delirious excitement. “I’m me, me, me!”

  “Briar!” came Aunt Charity’s voice up the stairs.

  She stood a moment, petrified. She didn’t covet Sophia’s dress, just as she hadn’t coveted the silver Uncle Hubert had found her admiring. She just knew that one day she would have similar things. Or better.

  She felt so vivid and alive inside Sophia’s dainty dress, as if it had been the delicate flame to set her alight. This was how she was meant to feel. She would show people she was not a gray-clad meek shadow.

  But not yet, she reflected ruefully, as Aunt Charity called again on a rising note, “Briar!”

  The muslin dress slid off. Briar opened the door and stuck her head cautiously around. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “Tidying up, ma’am.”

  “Then leave that at present. I need you down here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Briar had grasped her own dress and was feverishly dragging it on.

  “Come at once. Mary has had an accident. She’s scalded her hand. You’ll have to help wait at table.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her hair was unpinned and her apron crooked. She was sticking in hairpins as she ran downstairs.

  But this is still me, fetching and carrying dishes, she told herself. This gay vivid person is only just hidden under my working dress. And anyway, this was a chance to share in the gaiety and look at the guests.

  “Just do as cook says,” Aunt Charity hissed. “Put your cap straight. Briar, have you been using rouge?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I should hope not. But you look very flushed. Now don’t get nervous. And don’t spill things.”

  The sun was shining with the clear brilliance peculiar to antipodean sunshine. Fantails swooped and flirted, spreading their fan-shaped tails like miniature peacocks, the young gum trees at the bottom of the garden rustled, and cast thin shadows over the laden tables. The women in their full skirted dresses moved about in a stately fashion, giving cries of admiration for the garden, the sunshine (presumably specially arranged by Aunt Charity) and the two nieces, so newly arrived, so fashionably dressed, so impressively connected.

  Mrs. Hunt was giving a dinner party, it was dear Sarah Jane’s coming out ball next week, there was a seaside picnic on Saturday. Dear Sophia and Prudence must come to everything, it was so refreshing to see new faces, one was so hungry for news of the home country. The young men bowed and made stiff conversation. Prudence was trapped by a dowager with a lorgnette and a monstrous hat. Sophia had, with surprising skill, extricated herself from a group of talkative young ladies and was annexing for herself the most handsome young man.

  It was clearly Sophia’s day. Briar, carrying a bowl of fruit punch, heard her saying, “I’m such a silly, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Fanshawe. Peter Fanshawe, Miss Carruthers.”

  He was tall and sandy-haired, with a fair skin that flushed easily and bright blue eyes.

  “I would like to be talking to him,” thought Briar, and this wasn’t quite the same as the silver and Sophia’s borrowed dress. She was conscious, for the first time, of a sharp resentment.

  “The cut-glass tumblers!” Aunt Charity was hissing in her ear.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And the silver ladle!”

  She scurried to the house. In the dining room she loaded up her tray and began the careful journey back to the garden, across the hall, down the passage.

  Someone hurrying in jolted her elbow. The tray tipped and the glasses crashed to the floor. She gave a cry of dismay.

  The person who had caused the damage, a very tall man, paused briefly to look down at her. She saw a lean sunburned face with narrowed dark impatient eyes and very black brows.

  “I’m sorry! My fault. I’ll apologize to your mistress.”

  And he was gone, leaving her sitting among the broken fragments of Aunt Charity’s precious cut-glass tumblers.

  The thoughtless clumsy beast! she thought wrathfully. This she would not tolerate, being walked over the moment she arrived in a new country. Who did he think he was, anyway? The Governor
himself?

  “Saul!” came Aunt Charity’s rich cooing voice from the garden. “I’m so glad you could come. You’re such a busy person. Let me introduce you to—”

  Saul! The name had a curious harsh sound that somehow rasped her nerves. Or was it just that she had cut her finger on a broken tumbler.

  “What’s happened here? You’ve had an accident?”

  Briar looked up sharply to see the sandy-haired Peter Fanshawe, with the startlingly blue eyes, bending over her. His face was full of concern.

  “Can I help you? Let’s pick this debris up. Look, it’s not too bad, there isn’t much broken. Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying!” Briar snapped indignantly.

  He looked at her with slight surprise. “No, I can see you’re not.” His gaze lingered. No doubt he hadn’t previously met a young woman who would not, in these circumstances, have dissolved into floods of tears. “Your hair’s coming down,” he said, with sudden interest.

  Briar fumbled at her insecure hair. She hadn’t had time to pin it up properly when Aunt Charity had called her down from upstairs. Now, although not in tears, she was embarrassed. Because a few moments ago she had longed to talk to Peter Fanshawe, and now she was doing so, but in a state of dishevelment, with her hair falling down and blood dripping from her cut finger.

  “Oh, I say! You’ve cut yourself! Here, you must wrap it. Take my handkerchief.”

  Before she could protest he had wrapped her hand in a snowy linen handkerchief. “There! Is that better? You must get it bandaged properly.”

  Briar scrambled to her feet. “Cook will do it for me. I’ll take the tray. Thank you so much!” And she fled.

  The cut was not serious, and presently she was able to appear again, bandaged and generally tidied up by a disapproving and contemptuous cook.