【荆棘鸟】第六章 13

what she truly was, or what he thought she was?

"Oh, Meggie," he said helplessly.

She turned her gaze to him and out of her pain gave him a smile of absolute, overflowing¹ love, nothing in it held back, the taboos² and inhibitions of womanhood not yet a part of her world. To be so loved shook him, consumed him, made him wish to the God Whose existence he sometimes doubted that he was anyone in the universe but Ralph de Bricassart. Was this it, the unknown thing? Oh, God, why did he love her so? But as usual no one answered him; and Meggie sat still smiling at him. At dawn Fee got up to make breakfast, Stuart helping³ her, then Mrs. Smith came back with Minnie and Cat, and the four women stood together by the stove talking in hushed monotones, bound in some league of grief neither Meggie nor the priest understood. After the meal Meggie went to line the little wooden box the boys had made, planed smooth and varnished⁴. Silently Fee had given her a white satin evening gown long since gone to the hue⁵ of ivory with age, and she fitted strips of it to the hard contours of the box interior. While Father Ralph put a toweling padding in it she ran the pieces of satin into shape on the sewing machine, then together they fixed⁶ the lining⁷ in place with thumbtacks. And after that Fee dressed her baby in his best velvet⁸ suit, combed his hair and laid him in the soft nest which smelled of her, but not of Meggie, who had been his mother. Paddy closed down the lid, weeping; this was the first child he had lost. For years the reception room at Drogheda had been in use as a chapel⁹; an altar had been built at one end, and was draped in golden raiment Mary Carson had paid the nuns¹⁰ of St. Mary d'Urso a thousand pounds to embroider¹¹. Mrs. Smith had decked the room and the altar with winter flowers from Drogheda's gardens, wallflowers and early stocks and late roses, masses of them like pink and rusty¹² paintings magically finding the dimension of scent¹³. In a laceless white alb and a black chasuble free of any ornamentation, Father Ralph said the Requiem¹⁴ Mass.

As with most of the great Outback stations, Drogheda buried its dead on its own land. The cemetery¹⁵ lay beyond the gardens by the willow-littered banks of the creek¹⁶, bounded by a white-painted wrought-iron railing and green even in this dry time, for it was watered from the homestead tanks.