The Transit of Venus Read Online Free
Author: Shirley Hazzard
Tags: Fiction, General, Sisters, Australians
distance of earth from sun?" He was teaching them a lesson.
Again they looked at Caro, established as a child of Venus.
Tice said, "The calculations were hopelessly out." Siding with the girl. "Calculations about Venus often are."
Sefton Thrale said, "There were distortions in the disc of Venus.
A phenomenon of irradiation in the transit." It might have been his own expedition, or experience, he defended. "We call it the Black Drop."
The girl marvelled. "The years of preparation. And then, from one hour to the next, all over."
The young man explained that there were stages. He said,
"There are the contacts, and the culmination."
They both blushed for the universe.
Professor Thrale said, "Now you are speaking of eclipse. Venus cannot blot out the sun." He flicked crumbs from his cuff. One could not relate in the presence of two virgins how, at Tahiti on that blazing day of June 1769, Venus had been busy in other matters.
While their officers were engrossed with James Short's telescopes, the crew of the Endeavour had broken into the stores at Fort Venus to steal a heap of iron spike-nails—with which they procured for themselves the passing favours of Tahitian women; and the permanent infection of a venereal disease no subsequent floggings could cure.
Ted Tice said, "Another astronomer crossed the world to see that same transit, and was defeated." The inward tone in which men speak, casually, of what moves them. Tice could not teach a lesson, but would pay tribute. "A Frenchman had travelled to India years before to observe a previous transit, and was delayed on the way by wars and misadventure. Having lost his original opportunity, he waited eight years in the East for that next transit, of 1769. When the day came, the visibility was freakishly poor, there was nothing to be seen. There would not be another such transit for a century."
He was telling this to, and for, Caroline Bell. At that moment he and she might have been the elders at the table, elegiac. She said,
"Years for Venus."
"His story has such nobility you can scarcely call it unsuccessful."
Ted Tice was honouring the faith, not the failure.
Professor Thrale had had enough of this. "And the poor devil returned to France, as I recall, to find himself declared dead in his absence, and his property dispersed." If that wasn't failure, nothing was.
The girl asked Ted Tice: "What was his name?"
"Legentil. Guillaume Legentil."
Mrs. Thrale had made custard. A mottled Irish maid brought dishes on a tray. Mrs. Thrale had been brought up to believe, on pain of losing her character, that her back must never touch the chair: never, never. This added to her air of endurance, and made it seem also that she looked you in the face more than is usual. It was she who had thought of the summer seaside in regard to the quality of Ted Tice—the speckled mirror dangling among the tags for deck-chairs and the keys for bath-houses, all vibrant with a warm padding of sandy feet. On the other hand, there were his nights spent among primitive stones.
Charmian Thrale's own reclusive self, by now quite free of yearn-ings, merely cherished a few pure secrets—she had once pulled a potato from a boiling pot because it showed a living sprout; and had turned back, on her way to an imperative appointment, to look up a line of Meredith. She did not choose to have many thoughts her husband could not divine, for fear she might come to despise him.
Listening had been a large measure of her life: she listened closely
—and, since people are accustomed to being half-heard, her attention troubled them, they felt the inadequacy of what they said. In this way she had a quieting effect on those about her, and stemmed gently the world's flow of unconsidered speech. Although she offered few opinions, her views were known in a way that is not true of persons who, continually passing judgment, keep none in reserve.
The girls' curved necks were intolerably exposed as they spooned their
Again they looked at Caro, established as a child of Venus.
Tice said, "The calculations were hopelessly out." Siding with the girl. "Calculations about Venus often are."
Sefton Thrale said, "There were distortions in the disc of Venus.
A phenomenon of irradiation in the transit." It might have been his own expedition, or experience, he defended. "We call it the Black Drop."
The girl marvelled. "The years of preparation. And then, from one hour to the next, all over."
The young man explained that there were stages. He said,
"There are the contacts, and the culmination."
They both blushed for the universe.
Professor Thrale said, "Now you are speaking of eclipse. Venus cannot blot out the sun." He flicked crumbs from his cuff. One could not relate in the presence of two virgins how, at Tahiti on that blazing day of June 1769, Venus had been busy in other matters.
While their officers were engrossed with James Short's telescopes, the crew of the Endeavour had broken into the stores at Fort Venus to steal a heap of iron spike-nails—with which they procured for themselves the passing favours of Tahitian women; and the permanent infection of a venereal disease no subsequent floggings could cure.
Ted Tice said, "Another astronomer crossed the world to see that same transit, and was defeated." The inward tone in which men speak, casually, of what moves them. Tice could not teach a lesson, but would pay tribute. "A Frenchman had travelled to India years before to observe a previous transit, and was delayed on the way by wars and misadventure. Having lost his original opportunity, he waited eight years in the East for that next transit, of 1769. When the day came, the visibility was freakishly poor, there was nothing to be seen. There would not be another such transit for a century."
He was telling this to, and for, Caroline Bell. At that moment he and she might have been the elders at the table, elegiac. She said,
"Years for Venus."
"His story has such nobility you can scarcely call it unsuccessful."
Ted Tice was honouring the faith, not the failure.
Professor Thrale had had enough of this. "And the poor devil returned to France, as I recall, to find himself declared dead in his absence, and his property dispersed." If that wasn't failure, nothing was.
The girl asked Ted Tice: "What was his name?"
"Legentil. Guillaume Legentil."
Mrs. Thrale had made custard. A mottled Irish maid brought dishes on a tray. Mrs. Thrale had been brought up to believe, on pain of losing her character, that her back must never touch the chair: never, never. This added to her air of endurance, and made it seem also that she looked you in the face more than is usual. It was she who had thought of the summer seaside in regard to the quality of Ted Tice—the speckled mirror dangling among the tags for deck-chairs and the keys for bath-houses, all vibrant with a warm padding of sandy feet. On the other hand, there were his nights spent among primitive stones.
Charmian Thrale's own reclusive self, by now quite free of yearn-ings, merely cherished a few pure secrets—she had once pulled a potato from a boiling pot because it showed a living sprout; and had turned back, on her way to an imperative appointment, to look up a line of Meredith. She did not choose to have many thoughts her husband could not divine, for fear she might come to despise him.
Listening had been a large measure of her life: she listened closely
—and, since people are accustomed to being half-heard, her attention troubled them, they felt the inadequacy of what they said. In this way she had a quieting effect on those about her, and stemmed gently the world's flow of unconsidered speech. Although she offered few opinions, her views were known in a way that is not true of persons who, continually passing judgment, keep none in reserve.
The girls' curved necks were intolerably exposed as they spooned their
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