The Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

  ‘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.

  ‘I am surprised’, she said, ‘that at your age you did not re-marry.’ Although younger herself, she could enjoy the prerogative of the married woman to advise her widower brother-in-law.

  He snorted somewhat bitterly. ‘Marriage does not always cancel loneliness. And desirable partners have for the most part been whirled off in the dance by others more fortunate.’

  Almost poetic, and coming from Garnet Roxburgh it did make her slightly sympathize.

  She went so far as to say, ‘Now it is your turn not to believe, but I am sorry for you.’ At the same time she became aware that she had stiffened herself against the motion of her horse.

  They must have returned by another way, for there, nestled in a hollow below them, she noticed the homestead, a picture of idyllic landed ease.

  Garnet Roxburgh leaned down and stripped the head from a stalk of grass. ‘In any case it will soon be Christmas, and then perhaps you will unbend, Ellen.’

  ‘You are the one’, she cried, ‘who holds unmerited opinions of others!’

  He grinned and threw away the crushed grass-seed. ‘I have invited friends to keep us company. Dear old Austin will love the opportunity of subjecting Dr Aspinall to interrogation on the moral, aesthetic, and scientific development of Van Diemen’s Land, while you, I hope, will take to the doctor’s wife. Maggie Aspinall is a lively and amusing young woman—not altogether appreciated by Hobart Town.’

  Mrs Roxburgh confined herself to general murmurs of anticipated appreciation. ‘Is that the river?’ she asked, pointing with her riding-crop.

  He looked at her sharply. ‘Why, yes—that is the Derwent—beyond the house.’ He had a certain expression for those he suspected of evading him, which she could not resist turning to catch before it left his face.

  ‘It has been a lovely outing,’ she said, ‘but I am glad to be home—to describe for Mr Roxburgh all that I have seen.’

  As they rode into the yard the same marionette of a servant was waiting to receive their horses.

  That night she slept soundly, but awoke once to find tears on her cheeks and pillow, and realized that she had been dreaming of their misfortune, her second, consummate child, of whom they had never spoken again. She was glad to hear Mr Roxburgh snoring beside her; it would have been too painful had he asked her the reason for her tears, and soon, thanks to the fresh air and exercise that day, she was again soundly asleep.

  Before long, Mrs Roxburgh was able to record in her journal:

  Christmas Day, 1835

  At ‘Dulcet’, Van Diemen’s Land

  … so little like what we know, I can scarcely take it seriously. Mild, but a sultriness could be preparing to descend upon us. No sign of rejoicing. After all, most of the poor wretches are ‘prisoners’ and what have they to rejoice about beyond the prospect of getting drunk in the course of the day? I would like to talk to them, but there is a gulf between us, and I have lost the art of common speech.

  Mr R. gave me a nice kiss, saying he had forgot my present this year. Told him we have each other and need no presents, though I had embroidered him a book-mark.

  Garnet R. has not come to life. I am not surprised since last night.

  On the Eve the Aspinalls arrived from Hobart Town and we shall be subjected to them while the festivities last. Don’t know why I shld seem to complane. They are in every way aimiable—at least Dr A. who is what one knows from Home as a reliable provinshul physician. I am less sure of his wife. She has a mole above her left eyebrow which I constantly find myself staring at. After we had left the gentlemen to finish their wine, she says ‘I hope you will call me “Maggie”. I am sure we will be great friends.’ In replying I did not commit myself to words, but mumbled a few sounds which she cld interpret any way she chose. Mrs A. understood and was not put out, because this is the way she expects herself and others to behave. She began a great chatter about her friends in town, said I must pay her a prolonged visit and make the acquaintance of all these people, some of them ‘charming’, more of them ‘ridiculous’, while implying that this did not lower them in her esteem. I said I would pay her a visit only if my husband agreed, and again we understood each other. She asked whether I played or sang, and I replied, both a little, but so badly I never performed in public, and for myself only on wet days. She then sat down and went into a few runs at the Dormer piano, and tried out her voice in a rehersal for her audience of gentlemen.

  Mrs A. is what passes for pretty. Dark curls ajingle in her livelier moments which occur very frequently. Her cap all French lace and forget-me-nots, and her gown, in which I recognized the fashion of several years ago (not surprising in Van Diemen’s Land) low-cut to show a handsome bust, the bodice trimmed with numerous little pink bows. Mrs A. informed me that the material of her dress was gro de Naples and she had paid a fortune for it.

  What with the gentlemen lingering over their wine, the musician and I grew pale with yawns. Mrs A.’s colour returned as her audience arrived in the drawing-room. Mr R. would have liked to benefit from Dr Aspinall’s medical advice, but the dr too far gone. Garnet R. leaned on the piano, all attention, and the lady was soon playing for him alone. I might have left them to it if ‘Maggie’ wld not have thought I was shirking a duty by not staying to pour tea.

  I did go out to take the air and stroll a little. The moon was in its first quarter, the river a faint, silver coil in the distance. Often on such a night at Z., a country to which I belonged (more than I did to parents or family) I wld find myself wishing to be united with my surroundings, not as the dead, but fully alive. Here too, in spite of gratitude and love for a husband as dependent on me as I on him, I begin to feel closer to the country than to any human being. Reason, and the little I learned from the books I was given too late in life to more than fidget over, tells me I am wrong in thinking thus, but my instincts hanker after something deeper, which I may not experience this side of death.

  So it seemed this Christmas Eve at ‘Dulcet’. I might have grown disgusted with the inhuman side of my nature had I not realized that the music had stopped, and that the vastness was filled only with silence and the call of a single melancholy bird. As I returned in the direction of the house I began to hear voices, muffled at first, in opposition to my night-bird. By such a watery moonlight I cld not have distinguished the forms of those engaged in conversation, who in any case remained the other side of the box hedge. My heart bumped as I trod the uneven ground, and I almost fell by catching a foot in a cow-print which had set hard. Then I heard from across the hedge a hoarse female laughter which conveyed to me the picture of Mrs Aspinall’s throat. Afterwards her words, ‘Oh no, you will spoil my dress! Please, Garnet!’ More laughter as he fumbled (I could not tell for sure, but sure I was). He mumbled ‘Maggie!’ over and over, as drunkenly as one of his despised shepherds. �
�And tomorrow is Christmas Day.’ ‘Should we not go in?’ Mrs A. asked. ‘Your sister-in-law may realize we are gone too long, and disapprove. She seems to me lacking entirely in human warmth, and prickly with moral principles.’ G. R. might have been retching. ‘Ellen is morality itself!’ ‘Then let us—shall we? go in?’ sighed Mrs A. There was the sound of what could have been a man’s hard palm sliding exasperated down a stone surface as they disengaged.

  I wld have liked to retire immediately had Holly not brought the tea things and I was forced to preside. When we were at last in our own room I cld not make up my mind how much to tell Mr R. So I told him nothing of what I had not seen, but experienced more or less, from the other side of the box hedge.

  And now it is Christmas Day …

  After he had risen and breakfasted, Garnet Roxburgh sent warning through Mrs Brennan that they would be driven to church in the carriage. Mrs Roxburgh relayed the information to her husband in what may have sounded an apathetic tone.

  ‘Isn’t it what we have done all our lives in accordance with what is expected of us?’ Austin Roxburgh asked of his wife.

  She replied, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I ask you—whatever you may feel—to prepare yourself as soon as possible—so that Garnet’s friends may not take offence.’

  Mrs Roxburgh obeyed.

  The carriage, a large, open affair, not inelegant for the country, was drawn up beside the wicket-gate. Their host looked morose and livery, but did the honours by the ladies in handing them up to the middle seat. The two husbands sat facing their wives, backs to the coachman.

  Mrs Aspinall was so busy accommodating her sleeves and expressing fears for her feather hat in an open carriage, she had no eyes for Garnet Roxburgh. His sister-in-law could not resist glancing his way, but once, whereupon he climbed up, and seated himself out of view of the ladies.

  Those of the assigned men who were of the Protestant faith had been sent off in advance to walk the two or three miles to the church, while those who were beyond the pale she had noticed loitering in the yard with the barely concealed expression of anticipated carousal on their Irish mugs. On the other hand, the two women standing in the porch, watching the gentry depart, might have been remembering the last occasion they had received the wafer on their tongues: their faces were so altered in shape by melancholy sentiments.

  Nothing happened on the journey except that Mrs Aspinall’s hat almost blew off as they crossed the bridge.

  Arrived at the church, Garnet Roxburgh, seemingly a warden, left them to attend to his duties. The congregation eyed his companions, particularly the relatives from Home. When they entered the commodious, though rather cold and forbidding church, the assigned population was already seated at the rear. Mr Garnet Roxburgh’s party was ushered to the most prominent pews, an arrangement which Mrs Aspinall accepted with evident satisfaction, but this being Christmas Day, their company was unavoidably split, the doctor and his wife squeezed into the front row, immediately in front of the Austin Roxburghs, beside whom, between the aisle and Mrs Austin’s right, a place was reserved presumably for Garnet. Mrs Aspinall made a considerable show of devotion, kneeling in rapt prayer, her plumed hat inclined above suppliant hands. So Mrs Roxburgh observed, who could not give herself to prayer this morning; her only thought was whether she dare suggest to her husband that they change places.

  There was little in this austere temple to provoke those who look upon decoration as an incitement to sin and Popery, nor inspire others of shy sensibility who need signposts before they can venture along the paths of private mysticism. The only aesthetic stimulus to worship was provided by the lilies and roses bunched too tight and too upright in a pair of narrow-necked brass vases, one at each end of the communion table, and round the central arch a riband on which was inscribed in letters of gold, HOLY HOLY HOLY LORD GOD OF HOSTS.

  While Mrs Roxburgh was pondering why the text should not be altogether to her taste, her brother-in-law came and took his place beside her. She thought he might have smiled at her, but was busy making more room for him by moving closer to her husband. Even so, Garnet Roxburgh tended to overflow against her. As he leaned forward in prayer, she could hear the cloth stretched to cracking across his shoulders, and when he eased himself back in his seat, she felt his thigh pressed inescapably into her skirt.

  Mrs Roxburgh glanced at her husband, who sat staring straight ahead with characteristic gravity, waiting for the service to begin. Although hardly a man of implicit faith, respect for his mother and his dedication to ipse Pater had induced him to pay lip-service to the Christian religion. His wife was not to guess where faith ended and principle took over, but knowing her own limits and her husband’s trusting nature, she would have liked to squeeze his hand, to demonstrate that they were the solid core in a largely incomprehensible world.

  The service at All Saints was conducted with a fervour only convincing in that the season was Christmas. The ‘prisoners’ at the rear belted out the psalms and hymns as if they could not have done other than give of their best and heartiest. As the hosts swept onward against the foe, Mrs Roxburgh was again disturbed by her reluctance to accept the text on the riband garlanding the archway ahead. Yet there was no reason to complain when she belonged on the winning side.

  It was in this frame of mind that she grew over-conscious of Garnet Roxburgh’s voice, a not-unpleasing baritone. He might have been singing for her alone, whereas on Christmas Eve, she realized, he had not sung a note for the lively Maggie Aspinall. Mrs Roxburgh became distracted, vague, lost her place, which her brother-in-law found for her. His hand still had a scab on it from repairing the log fence the day they rode out together. Perhaps she would become indisposed, but it might not help; Garnet would surely carry her out.

  In fact it was Mrs Aspinall who staged the indisposition during the last hymn but one, and that did not help either, because her husband who was a doctor supported her as far as the porch. Mrs Roxburgh wondered whether she should follow, and lend her friend the moral support which only a woman can give another (at the same time it would remove her from the pressure of Garnet Roxburgh’s thigh) but she failed unhappily to extricate herself.

  At all events, it came to an end, not only the quavered sermon, but the turkey (one of the whites they had slaughtered for the occasion) and the martyrdom of Holly who all but dropped the dish on which she was bearing Mrs Brennan’s fiery pudding (‘it’ll singe the last of me eyelashes off’) and the roistering in the barn across the yard (somebody fell and the doctor was sent for). Her pale moon unusually flushed in its familiar wrack of grey-white cloud, Mrs Brennan made a brief appearance in a doorway, but must have thought better of her intention, for she drifted into obscurity.

  Mrs Roxburgh wrote in her journal with what was only to some extent satisfaction and restored equanimity:

  29 Dec 1835

  The Aspinalls have been gone these two days. We are again plunged in monotony and peace. I do not complane, nor that the days are droning ones. If we are to continue in Van Diemen’s Land, for what purpose even Mr R. can no longer see, I would not have it spring too many untoward surprises.

  Mrs A. repeated that she wished I wld pay her a long visit, and I agreed that nothing wld please me better than to leave the brothers to recall their youth. Thus we parted on a note of ‘friendliness’ and no expectations of each other.

  Mr R. and the doctor seem to have formed one of those friendships which fate and geography prevent maturing. They must content themselves with the wealth of useful facts they have exchanged in a short time.

  As for Garnet R., I wld say he does not regret the Aspinalls’ departure, if it was not for the scene on Christmas Eve which I overheard, and only yesterday a discovery I made through forgetfulness on the part of G. It was like this. Intending to write a line to Mrs Daintrey, I found I was short of letter-paper, nor could Mr R. help me out. My brother-in-law, who was present, joined in with, ‘You will find paper, Ellen, in the box on my desk.’ I went to avai
l myself of this offer. The box mentioned was a beautiful one I had already noticed, made from cedar, inlaid with panels of tortoiseshell, brass handles to the little drawers, the whole bound in a framework of the same metal. I opened the box and found a plentiful supply of paper and anything else I might have needed in the way of writing materials. Only on helping myself did I notice something which had no use in letter-writing: a small bow in pink ribbon such as might have trimmed a lady’s dress! I found myself smelling this trumpery object, like I was a dog, but could not detect a distinct perfume, only a faint scent of the woman’s body it had helped set off.

  On my returning to the room where Mr R. was studying an account of the colonization of Van Diemen’s Land, he looked up and asked, ‘Did you not find letter-paper?’ I replied yes, but felt I was in no mind after all to write a letter, because what was there to tell, and my head ached. I could only fidget and spin the globe and trace the possible routes of escape from this most hateful quarter …

  Garnet Roxburgh remarked soon after, ‘You no longer seem inclined to use the little mare I thought would win you over.’ On several occasions he invited her to accompany him on expeditions which might have proved of interest.

  Her husband encouraged her to accept. ‘Go with him if you are disposed to, Ellen. You are not holding back on my account, I hope?’

  She answered no, she was simply not disposed to ride round aimlessly.