The Thorn in the Flesh. Paul Wenz
gruff voice: “Susie, what would you say to a property on the river? What do you think of the idea of becoming Mrs Ned Berry?”
A laugh as dazzling as a rocket, spontaneous as a spark, answered him, and Susie, between two fits which convulsed her, stammered and spluttered: “Ned, you’re too funny! No, really, it’s impossible!”
Ned took his defeat without a frown: he thought the laughter was a bit much, especially coming from such beautiful teeth. “All right, let’s not mention it,” he added, slowly erasing with his stick the plan drawn in the dust.
They galloped back to the homestead as if they had both forgotten the incident, and Ned, a fair player and a good loser, showed neither ill-temper nor resentment.
That night, the air was warm and without the slightest breeze. The silhouette of the orange trees closing off one whole side of the garden was like a sacred wood, a mass of mystery and dense shadow. You could make out the almost phosphorescent spots of their countless flowers; at their feet, the ground was white with their petals. The heavy, penetrating perfume lingered lazily in the air.
Each season spent at Tilfara, John felt intoxicated by this scent of orange flowers; it contained all the memories of his youth and came back each October, fresh, infiltrating, dominant for weeks on end. For him it was the harbinger of summer, the long evenings spent under the stars, the dawns thrusting up through the wide-open doorway of his bedroom a sun which seemed still damp with dew.
This perfume often gave him a headache; it stirred in him vague dreams which made him uneasy and paraded before his eyes strange hallucinations brought back each year with the flowering of the first buds.
He was sitting alone on the veranda; he had neglected to light his pipe in his strong desire to abandon himself to the intoxication emanating from the garden. The waves of perfume seemed to flow towards him like slow, invisible lava, penetrating everywhere, turning into a caress, then an embrace.
It was getting late, everybody had gone to bed; John, dozing in his deep chair, was suddenly aware of Susie in a kimono, standing motionless before him, her hair spread out over her shoulders. For an interminable second, he saw the woman’s eyes staring intently at him: he half rose as if coming out of a dream.
“I thought sir was sleeping... I need the key to the office to fetch some tincture of iodine; Charley has just turned up with his foot cut open by an axe.”
John went to get what was needed, picked up a bottle of whisky and a glass as he passed through the dining room, and followed Susie.
The injured man had just come 18 miles on horseback, with his right foot, bandaged, out of the stirrup. While the woman dressed the wound skilfully, John poured him a nip: the man drank it greedily, refused anything to eat, but asked for a pipe of tobacco.
The blood had ceased to flow; a bed was found for the man, who fell straight to sleep.
It was a long while before John could go to sleep; the vision was before him as if it had just come out of the little grove of orange trees. How long had Susie stood there gazing at him while he dozed in his chair? How long had those large brown eyes pored over him?
Then he thought of her long hair that he had admired from the beginning, but that he had never seen displayed with such intimate and glorious abandon. Draped in her black kimono, she looked like a fleeing princess on the night of an uprising.
John could indeed see in Susie’s attitude a hesitation to wake up her master; she had cared for the injured man with a dexterity made up of both natural tenderness and skill acquired in Ireland, where hunting accidents were frequent. In spite of that, he was scared by this fortuitous attraction, which was unprepared and perhaps unconscious.
He was afraid. He got angry with himself, accused himself of being a coward, felt he was being ridiculous to be alarmed by the shadow of a servant with her hair down and in her dressing-gown.
In the few seconds during which he had watched her, he had noticed her supple, silent walk, while the light silk kimono emphasized the movements of her body.
He had returned to sink back in his low chair, feeling his heart pounding and his whole being on alert.
He had wanted to get up several times, but a sort of cowardice that was unfamiliar to him kept him pinned to the canvas seat of the chair.
A scarcely perceptible breeze had risen; it played on his face like a long, fragrant veil. Something vague was telling him: “Wait, wait...”
Wait? Yes, he knew, wait for the woman to come back. She will speak... or I will speak...
He leapt up so hurriedly that the chair fell over and the noise broke through the silence so loudly that a dog barked in the night.
He went back into his bedroom.
And now he was still waiting, his heart beating so hard that it hurt; holding his breath, he listened, he listened for a long time. A shadow passed on the veranda, he saw it glide by like a phantom. Glass in hand, Susie was going off to fetch some water from the tank at the other end of the veranda.
After a short and restless night, he saw Susie again, exchanged with her the usual “good morning” and heard the satisfactory news about the injured man. He followed with his eyes as she walked away, and once again noticed her movement, the bearing of her head, her clothes, always spotless and well-groomed.
In the morning, as soon as he had finished his breakfast, Iredale got on a horse and rode straight to the Tarindi telegraph office, two hours from Tilfara. He sent a telegram expressed in the following terms:
MISS ROBERTS 43 NORTH TERRACE, ADELAIDE
READY TO BET EVERYTHING ON TRIXIE. REPLY. JOHN
The clerk, who was the oracle of the district for a hundred miles around because he was the first to receive the results of all the important races in Australia, sent off the telegram reply paid, surprised at not having received any tip about this Trixie, whose name he didn’t even know. John didn’t seem disposed to discuss with him Trixie’s pedigree or her form: he saw a ray of hope when John told him he would come back the next day for the answer.
The prepaid reply brought no satisfaction to the oracle of Tarindi, but John was delighted when he read:
BET ALL. YOU’RE ON A GOOD THING. BEE
The following day Iredale set off for Adelaide. In a hot bath at the South Australian Hotel, he left behind the dust and the stiffness of a long journey and then headed for North Terrace. He was glad to find himself in a dark, cool sitting-room, for what he had to explain to Miss Roberts required both darkness and coolness. Beatrice, who was Bee to some and Trixie to others, had been waiting for John’s proposal for two years. She was too sincere to tell him that it was “a bit sudden”; she contented herself with the thought that John had taken his time. Everything was arranged with a quite English simplicity. Miss Roberts let her fiance slip onto her finger a fine Australian opal as brightly coloured and glowing as a setting sun.
The Adelaide newspapers announced the engagement, and the Broken Hill papers repeated the news, which reached Tilfara’s ears before John got back.
Ned was the first to spread tidings of the event, and made sure he informed Susie himself.
She went to her room and fell onto her bed as if she had been struck by a sledge-hammer.
Then she suddenly knew how much she loved John. She loved everything that was his, she even loved the smell of his homespun clothing, which smelled of both peat and vetiver. Many a time she had deliberately cleaned his room at an unhurried pace, looking long at the portraits which hung on the wall in their rococo frames and at the photographs which were on the table. There was one photograph in a silver frame: that must be the fiancee.
That morning, she had once again changed the flowers, expecting his return at any moment. She realized everything that he meant to her, how little she meant to him. She saw a kind of gulf between them, deep and impassable.
Ned must know, must speak the truth! She suddenly felt something like a burning tide rise in her