All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred thirty)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Five

Collecting Debts

(part one hundred thirty)

“Ma’am,” Collinson said, working in, “the place is utterly real.” A sigh. “One of the most astonishing and spiritual of features natural to the Antipodes… No, to the globe! Art cannot do justice to the extraordinary experience of coming upon the sight, of viewing with one’s own eyes Heaven’s treasure, hid by the Almighty Intelligence upon this remote island to protect its magic from the ravages of mankind.”

In a nutshell, the elocutionary gifts.

Verbena, in the smallest persistent way, had wrested the print into her own hands. “Oh, my goodness! I didn’t hear half of that.”

“Where is it, again? And how do you get there?”

“The terraces are on the northern island of New Zealand, Miss, in a region called Rotomahana. One goes overland from a fairly remote inn run by an English couple, or I should say, by some of the ordinary residents, and afterwards by canoe…a native canoe. The natives are called Mah-oh-ree.

“The volcanic muds,” Collinson turned three-quarters, gaining Fannie, Carolina and Libby, the Metzes, “have excellent healthful properties. Though. Much of the time I breathed through my handkerchief…the air is chokingly sulphuric. It is all tremendously active, this region. Now here, where you see the limpid pools…”

Reclaiming his print, he walked a finger from this to that. “The people go to bathe. The waters are of differing temperatures, as one ascends…or, properly to say, the waters feeding the pools come down from the boiling lake.”

Between Verbena and Old Richard, Élucide took the seat she recalled being Nettie’s, an armchair with a reclining back, difficult to occupy with dignity. Collinson prefaced his Antipodean summonings with his long sea voyage…

“There are clusters of islands throughout the Pacific, but equally there are vast stretches of empty sea, and therefore ships must supply themselves at every chance. And then the reverse is true. The colonists in these places are eager and grateful for news, and the natives are eager to trade their island goods for modern trinkets.”

He had given everyone a booklet, for the following along. These at a dollar each were pricey, but difficult to refuse—both for charity, and the blue covers’ weakness for smudges. Collinson broke to take a sip, and to “…just remove the basket from the way.”

“Do you hear from Richard?” Élucide asked his mother.

His father answered: “How do you suppose he’d manage it? I ask you academically, as one of the lights of Cookesville thinking circles. Do you imagine my son has a friend, to carry his messages to Dominionville? Will he address a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Everard? Will Mrs. Lawrence, who despises him and finds his parents’ home uncleanly, take the visit upon herself for duty’s sake? Lawrence will not visit, of course. He has given his family up.”

Verbena shrank a bit. Collinson cleared his throat.

139

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred thirty-one)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)