‘And I shall leave soon too,’ Theodora said.
Not that this lessened the distance. Violet was already a prisoner in a house, arranging flowers in a cut-glass bowl.
‘Will you be sorry, a little, that I am going?’ Violet asked.
She had to probe the darkness, for one or two wounds received.
‘Violet,’ said Theodora, ‘you ask me to say such difficult things.’
‘What are you two doing in here?’
It was Una Russell, peering from the doorway.
‘We were talking,’ Violet said.
‘Well I never!’ said Una Russell.
Theodora went upstairs. She undressed. She lay face down so that she would find a thicker darkness, and lose all expression in the pillow.
Theodora cried, for what she did not ask herself, but it seemed immeasurable, the slow darkness and the days which jerked past. It was as if time were a magic lantern in which it was never omitted to change the slide. So Violet Adams came downstairs in her gloves, after the concert and the cakes, and laughed, and kissed, and cried, and went. So there were berries on the hawthorn tree and frost on the rut. So the lamb was born with two heads in the hollow, and they put it in a jar, in a cupboard at Meroã, to be shown to the curious until its wonder was forgotten.
At Meroã Theodora asked, ‘When shall I be coming home?’
Father said there was no hurry, she would find, there was no hurry for anything.
‘But at Meroã I shall be free,’ Theodora said.
‘Free?’ said Father. ‘Free from what?’
Handing it back it was a plate of air.
Father’s beard smiled and said she had a lot to learn.
Theodora went out. She walked up the black hill, that winter had blackened further, the black cone of Ethiopia that had once flowed fire. Near the summit there stood a wooden house, or what remained of it, a narrow lantern that was somebody’s folly. He had lived there with his madness and his dogs until he died, and now there were tins and bones. Theodora sat on a stone which had been part of the foundations of the madman’s folly. Nobody knew what his intention had been. Only that he had built this house and lived and died.
It was both desolate and soothing to sit on the black hill. There are certain landscapes in which you can see the bones of the earth. And this was one. You could touch your own bones, which is to come a little closer to truth. After the secrets and quotations, the whispers in the orchard at Spofforths’. Now the ghost of Violet Adams had begun to be expelled. She could not endure the bones and stones. Though Theodora bowed her head. It is still possible to love the ghost that has been exorcised. There remains the need.
On the whole Theodora felt older. At Spofforths’ she felt older anyway, and particularly when the letter from Violet came. Violet had found time between keeping house and doing the flowers.
Violet had a talent for writing. She could compose.
Dearest Theodora,
I wonder how you all are, but you especially, I do sincerely wonder! That will remain, I know, the happiest time of my life, that I shall cherish and remember! Not that my present existence hasn’t its own interesting side. I feel that I am making my own small contribution in helping dear Mother. But it lacks the finer things, dear Theodora, that I found with you. It is without aspiration! When I walk beside our big river, which runs some two hundred yds from the house, and which is now in flood, I like to remember our conversations. It is curious the connection between nature and life, and how one sustains the other!
I still contrive to read in an endeavour to improve myself.
I read poetry, and I am studying painting. I have even ventured to paint our river, but in gentler mood, before it was in flood, and friends have congratulated me on the veracity of my rendering. But I am not deceived! I wonder if you will ever write the poem, Theodora, you once said you would like to write. Do you know that very often you seemed to me a closed book! I wonder what you will do!
Now I must stop because the men are coming in from work and will expect their tea. They eat like wolves! We have three jackeroos at present, one of them a Charlie Simpson, who is a second cousin of Lottie Littlejohn! He is a cheery fellow, full of fun, and excuse me this frivolity, he is excellent in a waltz!
Please do give my love to Fanny, and Grace, and Una, and Lottie, and, in fact, everyone at Spofforths’, but you of course, dear Theodora, will always retain the major portion of the affections
Of your sincere friend
Violet Adams
‘Theodora has a letter,’ said Una Russell.
‘It is from Violet Adams,’ said Theodora. ‘She sends you all her love.’
She held the corner on the candle. She watched the paper curl.
‘Won’t you give it us to read?’ cried Una.
‘There is no need,’ said Theodora.
She watched the paper curl and flame, and it was for the burning of flesh that she winced.
‘Oh, it was one of those letters,’ said Una Russell, and she shook her bangles, because she hated Theodora still, she hated what was unexplained.
‘Violet Adams was a little insipid poor thing,’ Una Russell said.
She could not watch Theodora enough, whose face was as yellow as a candle, but candlelight does not reveal.
Theodora burned the letter because it was both like and unlike Violet Adams. It was after all the letter that you would expect Violet to write, telling nothing at all. I wonder what it was, said Theodora, after the candles had been snuffed, what it was that I saw in Violet Adams. She decided that she would not think about the letter, but it kept recurring, like something she had done herself.
‘I wonder what you will do?’ Violet Adams had said.
And again, ‘You will be leaving soon, Theodora. I wonder if you have thought about the future,’ Miss Spofforth asked.
Theodora had gone into Miss Spofforth’s dark room, the Study it was called, to take the book for which Miss Spofforth had sent. She had not bargained for this. Now she was caught in the wide spaces between the bookcase and the fire, becalmed in her own silence and uncertainty. Fire fell from the logs into the winter afternoon, but did not warm. A cold laurel pressed against the window out of the winter wind.
‘Have you thought how you can live most profitably?’ Miss Spofforth asked.
And the dark square of her face struggled to open. She very much wanted to communicate.
‘No,’ said Theodora. ‘I shall go home, for the present. I shall live — well, as I have always lived.’
Because living was still something that happened in spite of yourself. She did not really believe, as apparently Miss Spofforth did, that you could turn living to profit.
‘There is a great deal that happens,’ she said.
‘I am sure,’ Miss Spofforth agreed.
She watched Theodora’s hands move as if they were about to reach out and touch something.
‘And provided one is happy, it does not much matter where,’ Miss Spofforth said.
Miss Spofforth had made her own happiness, solid and unmoved as mahogany, and Miss Spofforth was unpleased. She listened to the rooms of the house around her, which was her solidly founded, profitable happiness, but the rooms did not communicate. And outside, the leaf of the cold laurel was stroking space. But this is ridiculous, Miss Spofforth said.
‘I expect you will also marry,’ she said, with the bright smile she offered to parents of backward or headstrong children. ‘Most of the girls do.’
‘I had not thought about it,’ Theodora said.
She did not want this thrust at her. She did not believe in it very strongly, nor in Miss Spofforth’s bright smile, which did not fit her face.