Voss

1

‘THERE is a man here, miss, asking for your uncle,’ said Rose.

And stood breathing.

‘What man?’ asked the young woman, who was engaged upon some embroidery of a difficult nature, at which she was now forced to look more closely, holding the little frame to the light. ‘Or is it perhaps a gentleman?’

‘I do not know,’ said the servant. ‘It is a kind of foreign man.’

Something had made this woman monotonous. Her big breasts moved dully as she spoke, or she would stand, and the weight of her silences impressed itself on strangers. If the more sensitive amongst those she served or addressed failed to look at Rose, it was because her manner seemed to accuse the conscience, or it could have been, more simply, that they were embarrassed by her harelip.

‘A foreigner?’ said her mistress, and her Sunday dress sighed. ‘It can only be the German.’

It was now the young woman’s duty to give some order. In the end she would perform that duty with authority and distinction, but she did always hesitate at first. She would seldom have come out of herself for choice, for she was happiest shut with her own thoughts, and such was the texture of her marble, few people ever guessed at these.

‘What will I do with this German gentleman?’ asked the harelip, which moved most fearfully.

The flawless girl did not notice, however. She had been brought up with care, and preferred, also, to avoid an expression of longing in her servant’s eyes. She frowned rather formally.

‘We cannot expect Uncle for at least another hour,’ she said. ‘I doubt whether they have reached the sermon.’

That strange, foreign men should come on a Sunday when she herself had ventured on a headache was quite exasperating.

‘I can put the gentleman in your uncle’s study room. No one ever goes in there,’ said the servant. ‘Except, there is no knowing, he could lay his hands on something.’

The squat woman’s flat face suggested it had experienced, and understood, all manner of dishonesty, but was in the habit of contemplating such behaviour from a dull distance since she had become the slave of virtue.

‘No, Rose,’ said the girl, her mistress, so firmly at last that the toe of her shoe thumped against her petticoats, set them sawing at one another, and the stiff skirt, of a deep, lustrous blue, added several syllables to her decision. ‘There is no avoiding it, I can see. It would not be civil. You will show the gentleman in here.’

‘If it is right,’ her thoughtful servant dared to suggest.

The young woman, who was most conscientious in her needlework, noticed how she had overstitched. Oh, dear.

‘And, Rose,’ she added, by now completely her own mistress, ‘after we have talked for a little, neither too long, nor too short, but decently, you will bring in the port wine, and some of my aunt’s biscuits that she made yesterday, which are on the top shelf. Not the best port, but the second best. It is said to be quite nice. But make sure, Rose, that you do not wait too long, or the refreshment will arrive with my uncle and aunt, and it would be too confusing to have so much happen at once.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said Rose, whose business it was not. ‘Will you be taking a glass yourself?’

‘You may bring one,’ said the young woman. ‘I shall try a biscuit, but whether I shall join him in the wine I cannot yet say.’

The servant’s skirts were already in motion. She wore a dress of brown stuff, that was most marvellously suited to her squat body.

‘Oh, and Rose,’ called the young woman, ‘do not forget to announce Mr Voss on showing him into the room.’

‘Mr Voss? That is the gentleman’s name?’

‘If it is the German,’ replied the girl, who was left to consider her embroidery frame.

The room in which she sat was rather large, darkened by the furniture, of which the masses of mellow wood tended to daunt intruding light, although here and there, the surface of a striped mirror, or beaded stool, or some object in cut glass bred triumphantly with the lustier of those beams which entered through the half-closed shutters. It was one of the first sultry days of spring, and the young woman was dabbing at her upper lip with a handkerchief as she waited. Her dress, of that very deep blue, was almost swallowed up, all but a smoulder, and where the neat cuffs divided it from her wrists, and at the collar, which gave freedom to her handsome throat. Her face, it had been said, was long-shaped. Whether she was beautiful it was not at first possible to tell, although she should, and could have been.

The young woman, whose name was Laura Trevelyan, began to feel very hot as she listened for sounds of approach. She did not appear to listen, however, just as she did not appear nervous; she never did.

The keenest torment or exhilaration was, in fact, the most private. Like her recent decision that she could not remain a convinced believer in that God in whose benevolence and power she had received most earnest instruction from a succession of governesses and her good aunt. How her defection had come about was problematic, unless it was by some obscure action of antennae, for she spoke to nobody who was not ignorant, and innocent, and kind. Yet, here she was become what, she suspected, might be called a rationalist. If she had been less proud, she might have been more afraid. Certainly she had not slept for several nights before accepting that decision which had been in the making, she realized, several years. Already as a little girl she had been softly sceptical, perhaps out of boredom; she was suffocated by the fuzz of faith. She did believe, however, most palpably, in wood, with the reflections in it, and in clear daylight, and in water. She would work fanatically at some mathematical problem, even now, just for the excitement of it, to solve and know. She had read a great deal out of such books as had come her way in that remote colony, until her mind seemed to be complete. There was in consequence no necessity to duplicate her own image, unless in glass, as now, in the blurry mirror of the big, darkish room. Yet, in spite of this admirable self-sufficiency, she might have elected to share her experience with some similar mind, if such a mind had offered. But there was no evidence of intellectual kinship in any of her small circle of acquaintance, certainly not in her own family, neither in her uncle, a merchant of great material kindness, but above all a man, nor her Aunt Emmy, who had upholstered all hardnesses till she could sit on them in comfort, nor her Cousin Belle, with whom she did share some secrets, but of a hilarious nature, for Belle was still young. So really there was nobody, and in the absence of a rescue party she had to be strong.

Absorbed in the depths of the mirror and her own predicament, Laura Trevelyan forgot for these few flashing instants her uncle’s caller, and was at once embarrassed when Rose Portion, the emancipist servant, stood inside the room, and said:

‘Mr Voss, miss.’

And closed the door.

Sometimes, stranded with strangers, the composed young woman’s lovely throat would contract. Overcome by breathlessness, she would suspect her own words of preparing to lurch out and surprise, if not actually alarm. Then they would not. To strangers she was equable, sometimes even awful.

‘You must excuse my uncle,’ Laura Trevelyan said. ‘He is still at Church.’

Her full skirt was moving across the carpet, sounding with petticoats, and she gave her cool hand, which he had to take, but did so hotly, rather roughly.

‘I will come later. In perhaps one hour,’ said the thick voice of the thin man, who was distressed by the furniture.

‘It will not be so long,’ answered the young woman, ‘and I know my aunt would expect me to make you comfortable during that short time.’

She was the expert mistress of trivialities.

The distressed German was rubbing the pocket of his jacket with one hand. It made a noisy, rough sound.

He began to mumble.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

But grumblingly. It was that blundering, thick accent, at which she had to smile, as superior, though kind, beings did.

‘And after the journey in the heat,’ she said with that same case, ‘you will want to rest. And your horse. I must send the man round.’

‘I came on foot,’ replied the German, who was now caught.

‘From Sydney!’ she said.

‘It is four kilometres, at most, and perhaps one quarter.’

‘But monotonous.’

‘I am at home,’ he said. ‘It is like the poor parts of Germany. Sandy. It could be the Mark Brandenburg.’

‘I was never in Germany,’ said the firm young woman. ‘But I find the road to Sydney monotonous, even from a carriage.’

‘Do you go much into your country?’ asked Voss, who had found some conviction to lean upon.

‘Not really. Not often,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘We drive out sometimes, for picnics, you know. Or we ride out on horseback. We will spend a few days with friends, on a property. A week in the country makes a change, but I am always happy to return to this house.’

‘A pity that you huddle,’ said the German. ‘Your country is of great subtlety.’

With rough persistence he accused her of the superficiality which she herself suspected. At times she could hear her own voice. She was also afraid of the country which, for lack of any other, she supposed was hers. But this fear, like certain dreams, was something to which she would never have admitted.

‘Oh, I know I am ignorant,’ Laura Trevelyan laughed. ‘Women are, and men invariably make it clear to them.’

She was giving him an opportunity.

But the German did not take it. Unlike other men, English officers stationed there, or young landowners coming coltish from the country for the practical purpose of finding a wife, he did not consider himself under obligation to laugh. Or perhaps it was not funny.

Laura Trevelyan was sorry for the German’s ragged beard, but it was of a good black colour, rather coarse.

‘I do not always understand very well,’ he said. ‘Not all things.’

He was either tired, or continued to be angry over some experience, or phrase, or perhaps only the room, which certainly gave no quarter to strangers; it was one of the rich, relentless rooms, although it had never been intended so.

‘Is it long since you arrived in the Colony?’ asked Laura Trevelyan, in a flat, established voice.

‘Two years and four months,’ said Voss.

He had followed suit when she sat down. They were in almost identical positions, on similar chairs, on either side of the generous window. They were now what is called comfortable. Only the cloth was taut on the man’s bony knees. The young woman noticed thoughtfully that his heels had frayed the ends of his trousers by walking on them.

‘I have now been here so long,’ she said almost dreamily; ‘I do not attempt to count the years. Certainly not the months.’

‘You were not born here, Miss Bonner?’ asked the German.

It had begun to come more easily to him.

‘Trevelyan,’ she said. ‘My mother was Mrs Bonner’s sister.’

‘So!’ he said. ‘The niece.’

Unlocking his bony hands, because the niece was also, then, something of a stranger.

‘My mother and father are dead. I was born in England. I came here when’ — she coughed — ‘when I was so young I cannot remember. Oh, I am able to remember some things, of course, but childish ones.’

This weakness in the young woman gave the man back his strength. He settled deeper in his chair.

So the light began to flow into the high room, and the sound of doves, and the intimate hum of insects. Then, too, the squat maid had returned, bearing a tray of wine and biscuits; the noise itself was a distraction, the breathing of a third person, before the trembling wine subsided in its decanter into a steady jewel.

Order does prevail.

Not even the presence of the shabby stranger, with his noticeable cheekbones and over-large finger-joints, could destroy the impression of tranquillity, though of course, the young woman realized, it is always like this in houses on Sunday mornings while others are at Church. It was therefore but a transitory comfort. Voices, if only in whispers, must break in. Already she herself was threatening to disintegrate into the voices of the past. The rather thin, grey voice of the mother, to which she had never succeeded in attaching a body. She is going, they said, the kind voices that close the lid and arrange the future. Going, but where? It was cold upon the stairs, going down, down, and glittering with beeswax, until the door opened on the morning, and steps that Kate had scoured with holystone. Poor, poor little girl. She warmed at pity, and on other voices, other kisses, some of the latter of the moist kind. Often the Captain would lock her in his greatcoat, so that she was almost part of him — was it his heart or his supper? — as he gave orders and told tales by turns; all smelled of salt and men. The little girl was falling in love with an immensity of stars, or the warmth of his rough coat, or sleep. How the rigging rocked, and furry stars. Sleeping and waking, opening and closing, suns and moons, so it goes. I am your Aunt Emmy, and this is your new home, poor dear, in New South Wales, I trust that you will be happy, Laura, in this room, we chose the curtains of a lighter stuff thinking it might brighten, said the comfortable voice, which smelled beneath the bonnet of a nice carnation soap. It did appear momentarily that permanence can be achieved.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Laura Trevelyan, bending forward and twisting the stopper in the long neck of the decanter; glass or words grated. ‘I am forgetting to offer you wine.’

Then the visitor moved protestingly in his chair, as if he should refuse what he would have liked to accept, but said:

‘Danke. No. A little, perhaps. Yes, a half.’

Sitting forward to receive the full, shining glass, from which he slopped a drop, that Miss Trevelyan did not, of course, notice.

His throat was suddenly swelling with wine and distance, for he was rather given to melancholy at the highest pitch of pleasure, and would at times even encourage a struggle, so that he might watch. So the past now swelled in distorting bubbles, like the windows of the warehouse in which his father, an old man, gave orders to apprentices and clerks, and the sweet smell of blond timber suggested all safety and virtue. Nothing could be safer than that gabled town, from which he would escape in all weathers, at night also, to tramp across the heath, running almost, bursting his lungs, while deformed trees in places snatched at his clothes, the low, wind-combed trees, almost invariably under a thin moon, and other traps, in the shape of stretches of unsuspected bog, drew black, sucking sounds from his boots. During the Semester, however, he had a reputation for bristling correctness, as befitted the great surgeon it was intended he should become, until suddenly revolted by the palpitating bodies of men. Then it was learnt he would become a great botanist instead. He did study inordinately, and was fascinated in particular by a species of lily which swallows flies. With such instinctive neatness and cleanliness to dispose of those detestable pests. Amongst the few friends he had, his obsession became a joke. He was annoyed at first, but decided to take it in good part; to be misunderstood can be desirable. There were certain books, for instance. He would interrupt his study of which, and sit in the silence of his square room, biting his nails by candlelight. The still white world was flat as a handkerchief at that hour, and almost as manageable. Finally, he knew he must tread with his boot upon the trusting face of the old man, his father. He was forced to many measures of brutality in defence of himself. And his mother crying beside the stove, of which the green tiles were decorated with lions in relief. Then, when he had wrung freedom out of his protesting parents, and the old people were giving him little parcels for the journey, not so much as presents as in reproach, and the green forests of Germany had begun to flow, and yellow plains unroll, he did wonder at the purpose and nature of that freedom. Such neat trees lined the roads. He was wondering still when he stood on the underside of the world, and his boots sank into the same, gritty, sterile sand to which he used to escape across the Heide. But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.

Fetched up at this point, Voss made a polite gesture that he had learnt somewhere, cleared his throat, and said gravely to Miss Trevelyan:

‘Your health.’

She drew down her mouth then, with some almost bitter pleasure, again twisted the stopper in the neck of the decanter, and drank to him, for formality’s sake, a sip of shining wine.

Remembering her aunt, she laughed.

‘For my aunt,’ she said, ‘all things that should be done, must be done. Even so, she does not approve of wine for girls.’

He did not understand. But she was beautiful, he saw.

She knew she was beautiful, but fleetingly, in certain lights, at certain moments; at other times she had a long, unyielding face.

‘It is fine here,’ said Voss at last, turning in his chair with the greater ease that wine gives, looking about, through the half-open shutters, beyond which leaves played, and birds, and light, but always returning to the predominant room.

Here, much was unnecessary. Such beautiful women were in no way necessary to him, he considered, watching her neck. He saw his own room, himself lying on the iron bed. Sometimes he would be visited by a sense of almost intolerable beauty, but never did such experience crystallize in objective visions. Nor did he regret it, as he lay beneath his pale eyelids, reserved for a peculiar destiny. He was sufficient in himself.

‘You must see the garden,’ Miss Trevelyan was saying. ‘Uncle has made it his hobby. Even at the Botanic Gardens I doubt there is such a collection of shrubs.’

They will come, she told herself, soon, but not soon enough. Oh dear, she was tired of this enclosed man.

The young woman began to wriggle her ankle. The light was ironical in her silk dress. Her small waist was perfect. Yet, she resented the attitude she had begun to assume, and liked to think it had been forced upon her. He is to blame, she said, he is one of the superior ones, even though pitiable, those trousers that he has trodden on. And for her entertainment, she began to compose phrases, between kind and cold, with which she would meet a proposal from the German. Laura Trevelyan had received two proposals, one from a merchant before he sailed for Home, and one from a grazier of some substance — that is to say, she had almost received, for neither of those gentlemen had quite dared. So she was contemptuous of men, and her Aunt Emmy feared that she was cold.

Just then there was a crunching of soft stones, and a sound of leather and a smell of hot horse, followed by the terrible, distant voices of people who have not yet made their entrance.

‘There they are,’ said Laura Trevelyan, holding up her hand.

At that moment she was really very pretty.

‘Ach,’ protested Voss. ‘Wirklich?’

He was again distressed.

‘You do not attend Church?’ he asked.

‘I have been suffering from a slight headache,’ she replied, looking down at some crumbs clinging to her skirt, from a biscuit at which she had nibbled, in deference to a guest.

Why should he ask this? She disliked the scraggy man.

But the others were all crowding in, resuming possession. Such solid stone houses, which seem to encourage brooding, through which thoughts slip with the ease of a shadow, yet in which silence assumes a sculptural shape, will rally surprisingly, even cruelly to the owner-voices, making it clear that all the time their rooms have belonged not to the dreamers, but to the children of light, who march in, and throw the shutters right back.

‘Mr Voss, is it? I am truly most interested to make your acquaintance.’

It was Aunt Emmy, in rather a nice grey pelisse from the last consignment.

‘Voss, eh? High time,’ Uncle said, who was jingling his money and his keys. ‘We had all but given you up.’

‘Voss! Well, I am blowed! When did you return to town, you disreputable object?’ asked Lieutenant Radclyffe, who was ‘Tom’ to Belle Bonner.

Belle herself, on account of her youth, had not yet been encouraged to take much part in conversation when company was present, but could smile most beautifully and candidly, which she now did.

They were all a little out of breath from precipitate arrival, the women untying their bonnet strings and looking for reflections of themselves, the men aware of some joke that only the established, the sleek, or the ordinary may enjoy.

And Voss was a bit of a scarecrow.

He stood there moving woodenly at the hips, Laura Trevelyan noticed. She personally could not assist. She had withdrawn. But nobody can help, she already knew.

‘I came here unfortunately some considerable time in advance,’ the German began in a reckless lather of words, ‘not taking into account your natural Sunday habits, Mr Bonner, with the result that I have spent the patience of poor Miss Trevelyan for the last three-quarters of an hour, who has been so good as to entertain me during that period.’

‘That would have been a pleasure for her,’ said Aunt Emmy, frowning and kissing her niece on the brow. ‘My poor Laura, how is the head?’

But the young woman brushed aside all questions with her hand, and went and stood where she might be forgotten.

Aunt Emmy’s thoughts would swim close to the surface, for which reason they were almost always visible. Now it was obvious that pity for one who had been born a foreigner did not exceed concern at her niece’s indiscretion in offering, perhaps, the best port wine.

So Mrs Bonner was moved to tidy up the tray, although decanters will not tell.

‘Now that you have come, Voss,’ said her husband, who was inclined to jingle his money, for fear that he might find himself still apprenticed to the past; ‘now that you are here, we shall be able to put our heads together over many little details. It goes without saying I will fit you out with any goods in my own particular line, but shall also be pleased to advise you on the purchase of other commodities — victuals, for instance, Voss — do not attempt to patronize any but the houses I recommend. I do not suggest that dishonesty is rife; rather, you will understand, that business is keen. Then, I have already approached the owners of a vessel that might carry your party as far, at least, as Newcastle. Yes. You will gather from all this that the subject of your welfare is never far distant from my mind. No doubt you will have been giving your own earnest consideration to many of these matters, although you have not seen fit to inform me. Last Friday, by the way, I received a letter from Mr Sanderson, who is preparing to entertain you on the first stage of your journey. Oh, there are many things. We must, indeed, tear ourselves away from these ladies, and,’ said the draper, dreadfully clearing his throat, ‘talk.’

But not yet. The two men implored not to be surrendered so mercilessly to the judgement of each other’s eyes. They were two blue-eyed men, of a different blue. Voss would frequently be lost to sight in his, as birds are in sky. But Mr Bonner would never stray far beyond familiar objects. His feet were on the earth.

‘I must say I am glad to see you again, old Voss,’ said Lieutenant Radclyffe, with no evident signs of pleasure.

He was a third blue, of a rudimentary handsomeness. He would thicken later into more or less the same shape as the man who was to become his father-in-law, which perhaps was the reason why Belle Bonner loved her Tom.

‘Where have you been?’ the Lieutenant pursued his unimportant acquaintance. ‘Lost in the bush?’ He did not expect, nor listen to answers. ‘Are you back with poor Topp? I hear that all his thoughts are for a certain young lady who is taking lessons in the flute.’

‘A peculiar, and not very suitable instrument for a young girl,’ Mrs Bonner was compelled to observe. ‘If difference is desired — and there are some who are averse to the piano — there is always the harp.’

‘Yes, I am again lodging in the house of poor Topp,’ said Voss, who was by this time almost crazed by people. ‘I was not lost. Although I have been in the bush; that is, in the more populous part of it. I have lately made a journey to the North Coast, gathering some interesting plant and insect specimens, and to Moreton Bay, where I have spent a few weeks with the Moravian Brothers.’

All this time Voss was standing his ground. He was, indeed, swaying a little, but the frayed ends of his trouser legs were momentarily lost in the carpet. How much less destructive of the personality are thirst, fever, physical exhaustion, he thought, much less destructive than people. He remembered how, in a mountain gorge, a sandstone boulder had crashed, aiming at him, grazing his hand, then bounding away, to the mutilation of trees and death of a young wallaby. Deadly rocks, through some perversity, inspired him with fresh life. He went on with the breath of life in his lungs. But words, even of benevolence and patronage, even when they fell wide, would leave him half-dead.

‘We must make that journey some day, Belle,’ said Tom Radclyffe, who had already set forth with his desirable bride. ‘To Moreton Bay, I mean.’

Although indifferent to travel, he was not blind to the advantages of their being lost together in some remote place.

‘Yes, Tom,’ Belle agreed, idly, quietly, with golden down upon her upper lip.

These young people had a habit of looking at each other as if they might discover an entrance into some yet more intimate chamber of the mind. She was still quite unformed and breathless. She was honey-coloured, but rather thick about the throat. These characteristics, together with an excellent constitution, Belle Bonner would pass on to her many descendants, for the creation of whom she had been purposely designed.

‘You will have everyone in a fever of exploration, Voss,’ laughed Mr Bonner, the man who unlocked situations, who led people by the arm. ‘Come on in here now,’ he said, ‘while the ladies are getting themselves up for dinner.’

Then they are committed to each other, Laura Trevelyan saw. Uncle is so good, she yawned. But the German was antipathetic, while offering prospects to be explored. He had a strong back, sinewy rather, that began to obliterate the general seediness. Now that she could no longer observe his face, she remembered it, and might have sunk deeper, than she had at first allowed herself, into the peculiarly pale eyes.

The two men had gone, however. It was a deliberate, men’s departure once they had begun. They went into a smaller room that was sometimes referred to as Mr Bonner’s Study, and in which certainly there stood a desk, but bare, except of useless presents from his wife, and several pieces of engraved silver, arranged at equal distances on the rich, red, tooled leather. Gazetteers, almanacs, books of sermons and of etiquette, and a complete Shakespeare, smelling of damp, splashed the pleasing shadow with discreet colours. All was disposed for study in this room, except its owner, though he might consider the prospects of trade drowsily after Sunday’s beef, or, if the rheumatics were troubling him, ruffle up the sheets of invoices or leaves of a ledger that Mr Palethorpe had brought out from town. The study had flowered with Mrs Bonner’s ambition. Its immaculacy was a source of pride, but it did make some people afraid, and the merchant himself was more at ease in his hugger-mugger sanctum at the store.

‘Now we can discuss,’ suggested Mr Bonner, and thought to add: ‘Privately.’

He had a certain love of conspiracy, which makes Freemasons of grown men, and little boys write their names in blood. Moreover, in the company of the shabby German, he began to enjoy the power of patron over protégé. Wealthy by colonial standards, the merchant had made his money in a solid business, out of Irish linens and Swiss muslins, damask, and huckaback, and flannel, green baize, and India twills. The best-quality gold leaf was used to celebrate the name of EDMUND BONNER — ENGLISH DRAPER, and ladies driving down George Street, the wives of officers and graziers, in barouche and brougham, would bow to that respectable man. Why, on several occasions, he had even been consulted in confidence, he told, by Lady G—, who was so kind as to accept a tablecloth and several pair of linen sheets.

So Edmund Bonner could afford to sit with his legs stuck out, in the formidable study of his stone house.

‘You are quite certain you are ready to undertake such a great expedition?’ he now dared to ask.

‘Naturally,’ the German replied.

He had his vocation, it was obvious, and equally obvious that his patron would not understand.

‘You are aware, I should say, what it could mean?’

‘If we would compare meanings, Mr Bonner,’ said the German, looking at each word as if it were a round pebble of mystical perfection, ‘we would arrive perhaps at different conclusions.’

The thick man laughed the other side of the red desk. It pleased him to have bought something he did not altogether understand. Refinements are acquired in this way, and eventually clothe the purchaser like skins, which he will take for granted, and other people admire. Mr Bonner longed to experience the envy of others. So his nostrils now grew keener.

‘I am compelled into this country,’ continued the oblivious Voss.

‘That is all very well,’ said the merchant, easing his thighs forward, ‘that is enthusiasm, I suppose, and it is as well that you should have it. I can attend to a number of the practical details myself. Stores, up to a point. The master of the Osprey will carry you to Newcastle, provided you are ready to embark by the date of his intended departure. There is Sanderson at Rhine Towers, to see you on your way, and Boyle at Jildra, which will be your last outpost, as we have decided. Each of these gentlemen has generously volunteered to contribute a mob of cattle, and Boyle, in addition, he tells me, will provide sheep, as well as a considerable herd of goats. But any scientific equipment, that is your province, Voss. And have you recruited suitable companions to accompany you in this great enterprise?’

The German sucked in the fringes of his moustache. He could have been suffering from indigestion, if it was not contempt.

‘I will be ready,’ he said. ‘All arrangements are in hand. I have engaged already four men.’

‘Who?’ asked the man whose money was involved, together with that of several other daring citizens.

‘You are not acquainted,’ said Voss.

‘But who?’ persisted the draper; his vanity would not allow him to think there might be anyone he did not know.

Voss shrugged. He was indifferent to other men. On the several short expeditions he had made, he had gone accompanied by the sound of silence, the chafing of leather, and sighing of his own solitary horse.

‘There is Robarts,’ he began, and it was unnecessary. ‘He is an English lad. We are met on board. He is good, simple.’

But superfluous.

‘There is Le Mesurier,’ he said. ‘We have also travelled together. Frank has great qualities, if he does not cut his throat.’

‘Promising!’ laughed Edmund Bonner.

‘And Palfreyman. You will approve of Palfreyman, Mr Bonner. He is an exceptional man. He is the ornithologist. Of great principles. Also a Christian.’

‘I do believe,’ said the draper, a little comforted, ‘I believe that Palfreyman is known to my friend Pringle. Yes, I have heard of him.’

‘And Turner.’

‘Who is Turner?’

‘Well,’ said Voss. ‘Turner is a labourer. Who asks to be taken.’

‘And you are confident that he is a suitable associate?’

‘I am of every assurance that I can lead an expedition across this continent,’ Voss replied.

Now he was a crag of a man. He beetled above the merchant, who wondered more than ever with what he had become involved, but was stimulated by it.

Still, it was in his nature to play with caution.

‘Sanderson has two men he will recommend to you,’ he said.

So that Voss became cautious in turn. Anonymous individuals were watching him from behind trees as well as from the corners of the rich room. He suspected their blank faces. All that was external to himself he mistrusted, and was happiest in silence which is immeasurable, like distance, and the potentialities of self. He did not altogether trust those he had chosen for his patron’s comfort, but at least they were weak men, he considered, all but one, who had surrendered his strength conveniently to selflessness.

‘I would like to avoid the conflict of opinion that a large party will certainly involve.’

‘You will be gone a year, two years, nobody knows; in any event, a long time. During that period you will profit by being able to draw upon a diversity of opinion. Great distances will tax physical strength. Some of your party may be forced to fall out; others, one must face the melancholy fact, may pass on. You appreciate my point of view? It is also Mr Sanderson’s. He is convinced that these men will be of value to the expedition.’

‘Who are they?’ asked the cloudy German.

The merchant at once mistook indifference for submission. The expression on his face had clarified as he sat forward to continue in full pride of superior strength.

‘There is young Angus. You will like Angus. He is the owner of a valuable property in the neighbourhood of Rhine Towers. A young fellow of spirit — I will not say hot-headed of anyone so amiable — who visited the Downs several years ago, and was at that time anxious to pursue fortune farther to the west, though just then conditions happened to be unfavourable.

‘Then,’ said Edmund Bonner, to his ivory paper-knife, that his wife had put on his desk one birthday, but which he had never used, ‘there is also Judd. I have not met Judd, but Mr Sanderson swears by him as a man of physical strength and moral integrity. An improviser, besides, which is of the greatest importance in a country where necessities are not always to hand. Judd, I understand, has shown himself to be most commendably adaptable. Because he came out here against his will. In other words, was a convict. Free now, naturally. The circumstances of his transportation were quite ridiculous, I am led to believe.’

‘They always are,’ interrupted Voss.

The merchant suspected that he might have been caught in some way. He was suspended.

‘Most of us have committed murders,’ the German said, ‘but would it not be ridiculous, Mr Bonner, if, for that murder which you have committed, you have been transported to New South Wales?’

Mr Bonner, who was left with no alternative, laughed at this joke, and decided to withdraw from deep water. With the elegant but strong paper-knife he began to tap a strip of canvas he had unfolded on the scented leather of his desk

‘I expect you will consider it imprudent, Mr Voss, if I ask whether you have studied the map?’

Here, indeed, was a map of a kind, presumptuous where it was not a blank.

‘The map?’ said Voss.

It was certainly a vast dream from which he had wakened. Even the draper suspected its immensity as he prodded at the coast with his ivory pointer.

‘The map?’ repeated the German. ‘I will first make it.’

At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity and sincerity, though it was usually difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish those occasions.

‘It is good to have a good opinion,’ laughed the merchant.

His honest flesh heaved, and himself rather drunken, began to read off his document, to chant almost, to invoke the first recorded names, the fly-spots of human settlement, the legend of rivers.

Mr Bonner read the words, but Voss saw the rivers. He followed them in their fretful course. He flowed in cold glass, or dried up in little yellow pot-holes, festering with green scum.

‘So you realize how much must be taken into account’ — the merchant had recovered himself. ‘And tempus fugit, tempus fugit! Why, I am blessed if it is not already time for dinner, which provides us with an excellent illustration of what I have been trying to convey.’

Thereupon, he slapped his strange, but really rather pleasing, because flattering, protégé on the knee. Flattering was the word. Edmund Bonner, once a hollow, hungry lad, was flattered by someone whose whole appearance suggested that he was hungry in his turn.

Now the whole stone house was booming with bronze, for Jack Slipper had come in from the yard and struck the great gong, his naked arms tensed and wiry, as Rose Portion went backwards and forwards, with dishes or without, ignoring all else but her own activity.

‘You must be feeling peckish,’ the expectant Mr Bonner remarked.

‘Please?’ asked Voss, perhaps to avoid making a decision.

‘I dare say’ — the merchant gave it extra weight — ‘you could put away your share of dinner.’

‘I am not prepared,’ replied the German, who was again unhappy.

‘Who ever had to prepare for a plate of prime beef and pudding!’ said the merchant, already surging forth. ‘Mrs Bonner,’ he called, ‘our friend will stay for dinner.’

‘So I anticipated,’ said Mrs Bonner, ‘and Rose has laid a place.’

The men had come out to her and, in fact, to all the company, who were now assembled in a cool hall, shifting their feet upon the yellow stone. Cool stone drank the laughter of the young people, and their conversation, which they made purely for the pleasure of speaking. Tom and Belle would sometimes play for hours at this kind of bat and ball. And there were the Palethorpes, who had arrived since. Mr P., as Mrs Bonner would refer to him, was her husband’s right hand, and indispensable as such, if also conveniently a Sunday joke. Mr P. was bald, with a moustache that somewhat resembled a pair of dead birds. And there was his wife — she had been a governess — a most discreet person, whether in her choice of shawls, or behaviour in the houses of the rich. The P.s were waiting there, self-effacing, yet both at home, superior in the long practice of discretion.

‘Thank you, I will not stay,’ Voss said, now in anger.

A rude man, saw Mrs Bonner.

A foreigner, saw the P.s.

Someone to whom, after all, I am completely indifferent, saw Laura Trevelyan, although he is not here, to be sure, for my benefit. What is? she was compelled to add.

Laughter and the society of others would sometimes drive this young woman to the verge of self-pity; yet she had never asked for rescue from her isolation, and now averted her eyes from Mr Voss in particular.

‘You will not stay?’ blustered the host, as if already potato-in-mouth.

‘If that is the intention of Mr Voss,’ said Mrs Bonner, ‘then we shall sustain a loss.’

‘You have made a bad poem!’ laughed Belle, kissing at her mother’s neck.

The young girl was inclined to ignore visitors when any of her family was present.

‘The more beef for Mr P.!’ cried Lieutenant Radclyffe, who was chafing even in his humour.

‘Why, pray, for Mr. P.?’ exclaimed the gentleman’s wife in discreet protest, but giggled to please her patrons. ‘Is he a lion, then?’

Everybody laughed. Even Mr P. showed his teeth beneath his dead birds. He was a man of all purposes.

Consequently Voss was almost forgotten.

‘I am already bidden,’ he said.

Although it was really unnecessary to assure those who were so little anxious for assurance.

Expectation was goaded by smells that drifted past the cedar doors, with the consequence that the yellow flags were becoming intolerable to most feet.

‘Then, if Mr Voss is already engaged,’ said Mrs Bonner, to release someone who was unacquainted with the convolutions of polite behaviour.

‘Too bad, old Voss!’ said the brisk Lieutenant, who would cheerfully have abandoned this unnecessary acquaintance, to rush in himself, slash with a sword at the sirloin, and watch the red juices run.

But the owner of the house continued to feel the weight of his responsibilities. He was compelled to offer parting advice, even if imperiously:

‘We must keep in touch, Voss. Daily communication, you know. There will be many things to decide. You will find me at my business premises any morning. Or afternoon, for that matter. But keep in touch.’

‘Naturally,’ replied the German.

Sooner or later he was leaving, through the laughter and conversation of ladies, who had entered the dining-room, and were recalling the sermon and bonnets, as they seated themselves upon the chairs to which gentlemen blindly assisted them. However high his vision had soared, the now leaden German trod in thick boots along the gravel. The indifference of voices in a room, even of the indistinct voices, becomes a criticism. So that he went faster, and grew clumsier, and leaner.

He was an uncouth, to some he was a nasty man.

All the way along the gritty road this nastiness was apparent to Voss himself. At such times he was the victim of his body, to which other people had returned him. So he walked furiously. He was not lame, but could have been. On that side of the Point there were several great houses similar to the Bonners’, from which human eye could have been taking aim through slits of shutters. Barricades of laurels blinded with insolent mirrors. Rooted in that sandy soil, in the straggling, struggling native scrub, the laurels had taken possession; strengthened by their own prevalence, the houses of the rich dared the intruder, whether dubious man, or tattered native tree.

So Voss turned the corner and went from that locality. Gritty winds tended to free him. A wind off the sea, even off becalmed baywater and sea-lettuce, was stirring his beard as he descended the hill. Through the window of a slab cottage on the left, that sold little bits of pickled pork, and withered apples, and liquorice, an old woman was staring. But Voss did not look. There were other random cottages, or shops, and a drinking-house, with horses tied outside to a ring. But Voss did not look. He followed the ruts, raging at those flies which the wind did not seem to deter. His beard flew. He was very sinewy, a man of obvious strength when observed in the open, yet who could have been trailing some humiliation, and as he walked, really at an inordinate pace, from time to time he would glance anxiously through the trees upon his right, at nothing substantial, it appeared. There the bay flickered through the scrub that still stood along the road before the town. Glittering feverishly as the whites of certain eyes, its waters did not soothe, at least, in those circumstances, and in that light.

So the foreigner came on into the town, past the Cathedral and the barracks, and went and sat in the Gardens beneath a dark tree, hoping soon to enter his own world, of desert and dreams. But he was restless. He began to graze his hands, upon twigs, and stubble of grass, and the stones of his humiliation. His face had dwindled to the bone.

An old, grey-headed fellow who happened to approach, in fustian and battered beaver, chewing slowly from a small, stale loaf, looked at the stranger, and held out a handful of bread.

‘Here,’ invited the oldish man, himself chewing and quite contented, ‘stick this inside of you; then you will feel better.’

‘But I have eaten,’ said the German, turning on the man his interrupted eyes. ‘Only recently I have eaten.’

So that the man in the beaver went away, trailing crumbs for the little birds.

At once the German, beneath his tree, was racked by the fresh mortification to which he had submitted himself. But it was a discipline for the great trials and achievements in store for him in this country of which he had become possessed by implicit right. Unseeing people walked the sandy earth, eating bread, or sat at meat in their houses of frail stone foundations, while the lean man, beneath his twisted tree, became familiar with each blade of withered grass at which he stared, even the joints in the body of the ant.

Knowing so much, I shall know everything, he assured himself, and lay down in time, and was asleep, slowly breathing the sultry air of the new country that was being revealed to him.

*

‘Well, what do you think of him?’ asked Mr Bonner, wiping the fat from his mouth with a fine napkin.

‘Today confirmed the impression I received at our meeting a few months ago,’ said Lieutenant Radclyffe. ‘A madman. But harmless mad.’

‘Oh, Tom, what an accusation to make,’ said Mrs Bonner, who was in a mood for kindness, ‘and with no grounds, at least that we can see — yet.’

But Tom was not concerned. Such an individual could not further his own career.

‘And do you really intend to send the creature on an expedition into this miserable country?’ asked Mrs Bonner of her husband. ‘He is so thin. And,’ she said, ‘he is already lost.’

‘How do you mean lost, Mamma?’ asked Belle, taking her mother’s hand, because she liked to feel the rings.

‘Well, he is,’ said Mrs Bonner. ‘He is simply lost. His eyes,’ she said, ‘cannot find their way.’

She herself was groping after what her instinct knew.

But Rose Portion had brought in a big apple-pie that was more important to some of those present.

‘Do not worry,’ said the merchant, as he watched his wife release the greeny, steamy apples from the pie. ‘There will be others with him,’ he said, ‘to hack a way.’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Bonner, who loved all golden pastry-work, and especially when a scent of cloves was rising from it. ‘Nor did we really have time to understand Mr Voss.’

‘Laura did,’ said Belle. ‘Tell us about him, Lolly. What is he like?’

‘I do not know,’ said Laura Trevelyan.

I do not know Laura, Mrs Bonner realized.

The Palethorpes coughed, and rearranged the goblets out of which they had gratefully sipped their wine. Then a silence fell amongst the flakes of pastry, and lay. Till Laura Trevelyan said:

‘He does not intend to make a fortune out of this country, like other men. He is not all money talk.’

‘Other men are human,’ said her uncle, ‘and this is the country of the future. Who will not snap at an opportunity when he sees one? And get rich,’ he added, with sudden brutality of mouth. ‘This country,’ protested his full mouth.

‘Ah, this country!’ sighed his wife, who remembered others, and feared for her complexion.

‘He is obsessed by this country,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘That was at once obvious.’

‘He is a bit mad,’ pursued the Lieutenant monotonously.

‘But he is not afraid,’ said Laura.

‘Who is afraid?’ asked Tom Radclyffe.

‘Everyone is still afraid, or most of us, of this country, and will not say it. We are not yet possessed of understanding.’

The Lieutenant snorted, to whom there was nothing to understand.

‘I would not like to ride very far into it,’ admitted Belle, ‘and meet a lot of blacks, and deserts, and rocks, and skeletons, they say, of men that have died.’

‘But Laura, together with the obsessed Herr Voss, is unafraid. Is that it?’ asked Lieutenant Radclyffe.

‘I have been afraid,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘And it will be some time, I expect, before I am able to grasp anything so foreign and incomprehensible. It is not my country, although I have lived in it.’

Tom Radclyffe laughed.

‘It is not that German’s.’

‘It is his by right of vision,’ answered the young woman.

‘What is that?’

She was trembling. She could not say.

It is unlike Laura, felt her Aunt Emmy.

‘Here we are talking about our Colony as if it did not exist until now,’ Mr Bonner was forced to remark. ‘Or as if it has now begun to exist as something quite different. I do not understand what all this talk is about. We are not children. We have only to consider the progress we have made. Look at our homes and public edifices. Look at the devotion of our administrators, and the solid achievement of those men who are settling the land. Why, in this very room, look at the remains of the good dinner we have just eaten. I do not see what there is to be afraid of.’

‘Do not worry, Laura,’ said Aunt Emmy. ‘Is your head not better, dear?’

‘Why my head?’ asked Laura.

People were looking questions at her. The glances of some of them even implied that she was of the same base metal as the German.

‘Oh, my head,’ she remembered. ‘Yes. No, it is better, I think.’

Though presently, when they had got up from the table, she went away to her room.