Страница 36 из 125
Oscar and Lucinda
De
Before August was properly started, Bishop Dancer had him in to give him what he liked to call a "caning." They did not like each other, anyway. The Bishop was a hunter after hounds, a High Tory with no tolerance for the subtleties of Whig theology. This was not the first of their disagreements. There had been a fierce fight about a sermon in which De
The Bishop began this interview provocatively. He did not imagine himself provocative. Rather he saw himself as understanding-he came
A Game of Cards
right to the heart of what he thought the problem was: "Of course, Hasset, we all have our appetites."
De
The bishop was one to talk about appetites. He was a great fellow for hanging game until it was maggoty. De
"Then post the ba
"No, no," laughed the vicar of Woollahra, "we are too queer a pair to contemplate."
"Well," said Bishop Dancer, who was sick of trying to understand what the man was saying,
"you would be wise to marry someone."
"Indeed, yes."
And on that puzzling note, the interview ended. The Bishop imagined he had instructed the vicar to give up his "petite amie" and the vicar thought he had satisfactorily explained the i
Oscar and Lucinda
It was not nearly as grand as she had, in her country i
The house taught Lucinda almost as much about Mr Ahearn as it did about Mr d'Abbs. It was obvious that Mr Ahearn had never seen the house. It would have offended him in every way imaginable. He would have thought it to be wasteful, ostentatious, unchristian. He could not, Lucinda realized, know Mr d'Abbs at all, and yet such was his desire to deliver her to "the right hands" that he had pretended acquaintance of a man he had only heard of. Mr d'Abbs was a small man of forty years and very particular anid precise in all his movements. He dressed expensively, artistically. He favoured serge and corduroy in olive green or navy blue. His ties were wool or even silk. He liked a walking stick, although he had no limp. He had a small smile, quite ironic, and it twisted his thin moustache and made him look not quite respectable. He enjoyed being thought of in this way-it was no commercial liability in Sydneyand yet i.t was not the truth at all. Mr d'Abbs was married and had three children, and yet it seemed this family was insufficient for his needs. His wife was small and pretty.. Everyone remarked on her smile and her golden ringlets. Lucinda was immediately drawn to her. She wished to sit and talk quietly with her, but it was not a house of quiet talk and Mrs d'Abbs would sit at table with anger in her eyes and, more often than not, excuse herself halfway through the pudding. And perhaps it was because of this, because the marriage was so unhappy, that Mr d'Abbs liked to collect people around him and assemble them, not just one night a week, but every night, in his drawing room. Lucinda could not have imagined a room exactly like it, and although she had read descriptions of many grand rooms in novels, there was nothing in her literary experience which prepared her for the carelessness of Mr d'Abbs house, the way a rug might be thrown across a giltbacked couch to hide its bursting i