Voss

5

THE morning Johann Ulrich Voss and his party were due to sail to Newcastle on the first stage of their attempt to cross the continent, a fair number of friends and inquisitive strangers was converging on the Circular Wharf. It was a still, glassy morning, from which the wind had but recently fallen after blowing almost continuously for three whole days. It would rise again, however, said those who knew instinctively of such things; it would rise later that afternoon, and more than likely take the Osprey out.

So there was a quiet conviction of preparation in the lovely morning, although at sight of green water lolling round the sides of ships and little blunt boats, all belief in oceans should have been suspended. Life was grown humane. No one would be crucified on any such amiable trees as those pressed along the northern shore. On all sides of the landscape there was evident at present a passionless beauty that recurred even in the works of men. Houses were honester, more genial, it seemed, in the crude attempt to fulfil their purpose. Then, there was the long, lean ship, smelling of fresh tar, of hemp, of salt, and a cargo of seed potatoes with the earth still on them. This ship that would carry the party on the first and gentle lap of their immense journey, and which had been evolved by some most happy conjunction of art and science, could never have known conflict of canvas, or so it appeared.

Most tackle had already been conveyed aboard, either the previous evening, or early on the present day, before the drunkards had begun to stir on the ruts of the streets, while cows with full udders were still filing towards the fringes of the town. The stars were not yet gone when Voss stuck his head into his cold shirt. His skin was soon taut. His light-coloured eyes, which were often surprisingly communicative to simple people, had made Mrs Thompson cry as she stood in her nightgown at the leave-taking, though, of course, as on all such occasions, she was remembering the dead. Topp, in nightcap, still puffy, and also moved, shook his lodger by the hand, but would come at the last, he insisted, to the ship’s side. Then Voss climbed upon the cart of an Irish emancipist, and was driven to the water. The straggly grass, wherever the town had not suppressed it, was full of dew.

All that morning Voss was coming and going at the ship. Some spoke to him as he passed, asked for directions, asked to be commanded. Some did not see him, but took him for granted. He was there, the leader. He had grown thinner overnight from thinking of the future. From all angles, this was so immense, he would suddenly grow exasperated and turn his back on those of his followers who were simple enough to expect explanations. It puzzled those honest people. Others would catch sight of his head and shoulders as he disappeared below deck, and feel relieved, because they were unable to resolve their relationship with such a man, yet even these were glad of his presence, unseen and hateful though he was. Others still were racked by the spasms of a jealous love.

Harry Robarts, who had got there earliest after his leader, to be ignored, would have felt lost in that perfect but oblivious scene, if later that morning he had not caught sight of Mr Palfreyman, the ornithologist, who was attempting to bring on board a number of awkward specimen cases, that a cynical carter had dumped upon the wharf and left. This kind of situation would rouse Harry’s gratitude and ardour. Only when serving was he purposeful.

So he came down, as quick as his boots would let him, his simple soul open to receive the superior will of whatever master. He touched his cap, and rather jerkily, said:

‘Why, Mr Palfreyman, sir, I will lend a hand with these ’ere articles, if you is agreeable. It passes the time to be of use, when it is all strange, like.’

Some would have taken Harry Robarts for servile. He had been sworn at, in fact, by certain individuals of that town. But the only concession made to the judgement of his critics was in the mottling and deepening of his skin, now a clear bronze, that had once been innocent pink. Otherwise, the lad continued to give of himself without shame, because it was in his nature to.

‘Yes, well, thank you, Harry. It is civil of you. If you please,’ said the ornithologist, who was taken by surprise.

The latter was, after all, a stiff, insignificant man, it appeared. Certainly, if there were no reason why he should assert himself, he might go whole days without being noticed. During the recent interval of preparation and expectation he had withdrawn to his own thoughts, and was only now emerging, as ropes were being freed, the voices of sailors calling to one another, wagons backing, landsmen swearing, bodies sweating. His grey eyes were now looking about him, and at the boxes which the boy proposed to lift. One of the man’s cheeks twitched, but once, and very shadowily.

‘These are most impracticable cases for muleback, but I am taking them because, in other ways, they suit my purpose. Do you see, Harry?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy.

He did not, but felt that he was being drawn into some confidence which was good and warm, and which promised contentment for the future.

Or was this wrong?

The boy looked over his shoulder, but did not see anyone. He had been guilty of a lapse, he suspected, in enjoying those moments of warm fellowship in the sun. Somewhere he had learnt that man’s first duty is to suffer.

The gentlemen, however, appeared to be ignorant of that lesson, as he bent over his cases, opened their flaps, and explained certain advantages of their design, which was his own, he suggested, smiling.

‘And these sections are for the skins which I shall prepare,’ Mr Palfreyman was saying; ‘and these little compartments for the specimens of eggs. Where are you from, boy?’ he asked.

The lad did not answer. He could have been absorbed.

‘You are not from London,’ the ornithologist pondered.

Then Harry Robarts began to mumble.

‘From thereabouts,’ he said.

As if it mattered. Now the blue sky was hateful.

‘We have that in common,’ the rather grey Mr Palfreyman replied, and would have continued, as a disguise, in that vein of enthusiasm which men tap for boys.

Then both of them knew that it did not convince. That they had become equal. They were perhaps glad. They would melt together more fiercely under that blue sky. Or burn to ashes.

They realized, standing on the wharf, that the orderly, grey, past life was of no significance. They had reached that point at which they would be offered up, in varying degrees, to chaos or to heroism. So they were shaking with their discovery, beside the water, as the crude, presumptuous town stretched out behind them, was reeling on its man-made foundations in the sour earth. Nothing was tried yet, or established, only promised.

Such glimpses are, of course, a matter of seconds, and Harry Robarts had shoved back his cap of somewhat scruffy kangaroo hide, and sliced his nose with a finger, and said:

‘Well, sir, this will not make us a shirt.’

He had begun to pile the cases, of fresh-smelling wood. By the strength of his body alone, he was a giant. So he was proud for a little. But the rather delicate ornithologist remained humble. While the boy’s animal nature enabled him to take refuge from revelation in physical strength, the man was compelled to shoulder the invisible burden of the whole shapeless future as his soul had briefly understood it.

Soon they were stumbling about below deck, looking for a place in which to lay the cases. The boy did not ask for more than to be led; the man, more sensible of strange surroundings, was also more noticeably diffident. Interrupting a conversation with the mate and boatswain over some matter of space and stores, Voss did glance for a moment at the incongruous pair, and recalled the scene on London River, which seemed to be repeating itself. Then Palfreyman, too, is weak, he realized.

Finally, the ornithologist and the boy stowed their cases in a dark corner beside the bundles of bridles and the mounds of pack-saddles. Their relationship was cut now. Harry, who had been set working, would return for another load. But Palfreyman began to wander in free captivity, amongst the blunt-toed, hairy sailors, all of whom had the power and knowledge to control unmanageable objects. It was only really through humility that his own strength was restored to him. Some of those sailors began to recognize it, and wondered how they could repair their error after they had shoved aside his apparently frail and useless body.

One man, apparently under the impression that restitution can only be made in a state of complete nakedness, resolved to part with a secret that he had told to no one. After thinking it over a while, and observing the gentleman’s face, and breathing, and spitting, he dropped the sail he was mending and took Palfreyman aside.

On that night of which he wished to speak, the sailor said, he happened to be full of the rum. It was not a habit with him, but it had occurred on some occasions, of which this was one. He had been walking on the outskirts of the town at no great distance from the house of a friend, whose wife, he suddenly noticed, was passing by. As his condition was not far enough advanced to give offence (he was never on no account so far gone as to be falling-drunk), he accompanied the wife of his friend a little of the way, making conversation that was agreeable to both parties. When, it seemed, they had lain down beneath a tree, and were taking advantage of each other’s bodies.

The sailor had fallen asleep, he said, in some quandary of pleasure or guilt, and when he had woke, the woman was gone.

Now it was his worry whether he had dreamed a dream, or not, for whenever he met the wife of his friend she made no sign. What was he to believe? the sailor asked, and looked at the convenient stranger, into whose keeping he was not afraid to give himself.

‘If it happened in a dream that was not distinguishable from the life, it is still a matter for your conscience,’ Palfreyman replied. ‘You wished to live what you dreamed.’

But the sailor was troubled.

‘Then, a man is caught all ways,’ he said, putting his hand in his chest, and scratching the hair of it.

‘But if it happened,’ he continued, and began to be consoled, ‘if it happened that the woman really had a part in it, then she was as much to blame, and never making so much as a sign.’

‘If the woman took part in it, in fact,’ Palfreyman said, ‘she is a bad woman.’

‘But in a dream?’ the sailor mused.

‘It is you that are bad,’ laughed Palfreyman.

‘Still, it was a good dream,’ the sailor said. ‘And she would have been willing, I know, if she was that willing in any dream.’

The sailor’s logic was made infallible by the dreamy accompaniment of green water soothing the wooden side of the ship.

I cannot blame the fellow, even if I condemn his morality, Palfreyman saw. The man had become more important than his ambiguous problem, which their association, elbow to elbow at the ship’s bulwark, did, in fact, seem to have solved.

It happened in this position that Palfreyman was reminded of his conversation with Voss as they stood in the Botanic Gardens at the rail of the little bridge. He realized that he did not wish to recall this scene, or that until now he had chosen to take refuge, as the sailor had, in a second possibility. Voss, he began to know, is the ugly rock upon which truth must batter itself to survive. If I am to justify myself, he said, I must condemn the morality and love the man.

The sailor had begun to sense some repugnance.

‘But you do not think ill of me?’ he asked. ‘Not altogether?’

Then Palfreyman, looking into the open pores of the man’s skin, wished that all difficulties might wear the complexion of this simple sailor.

‘I am glad to have heard your story,’ he said, ‘and hope to have learnt something from you.’

So that the sailor was puzzled, and returned to that work in which he had been engaged, of mending a sail.

Presently Palfreyman was addressed, and found that his colleague Le Mesurier had come up, somewhat dandified, considering the circumstances, in nankeen trousers, and a blue coat with aggressive buttons.

‘Then we are off at last to do,’ Le Mesurier said, though without a trace of that cynicism which he usually affected.

‘Yes.’

Palfreyman smiled, but did not at once come out of himself to meet the young man.

The latter remained unperturbed. Whether it was the radiant morning, or the presence of human kindliness, Le Mesurier did feel that something might eventuate from such beginnings, and expressed his thoughts along those lines.

But the ornithologist cleared his throat.

‘It is early days yet to say.’

‘You are an old hand, and cautious,’ Le Mesurier replied; ‘whereas I am a man of beginnings. They are my delusion. Or my vice. I have never got very far beyond indulging it.’

Palfreyman, who could not easily visualize a life without dedication, asked:

‘But tell me, Frank, what have you achieved? I refuse to believe there is not something.’

‘I am always about to act positively,’ Le Mesurier answered wryly. ‘There is some purpose in me, if only I can hit upon it. But my whole life has been an investigation, shall we say, of ways. For that reason I will not give you my history. It is too fragmentary; you would be made dizzy. And this colony is fatal to anyone of my bent. There are such prospects. How can I make a fortune from merino sheep, when at the same time there is a dream of gold, or of some inland sea floating with tropical birds? Then, sometimes, it seems that all these faults and hesitations, all the worst evil in me is gathering itself together into a solid core, and that I shall bring forth something of great beauty. This I call my oyster delusion.’

Then he laughed.

‘You will think I am drunk, Mr Palfreyman. You will not believe in my pearl.’

‘I will believe in it,’ said the quiet man, ‘when you bring it to me in your hand, and I can see and touch it.’

Le Mesurier was not put out. The morning, shimmering and floating, was for the moment pearl enough. Listening to the humdrum grind of enterprise, of vehicles and voices in the pearly distance, he was amazed that he could have hated this genial town. But with the impact of departure it had become at last visible, as landscapes will. The past is illusion, or miasma. So the leaves of the young Moreton Bay figs were now opening their actual hand. Two aboriginal women, dressed in the poorest shifts of clothing, but the most distinguished silence, were seated on the dirt beside the wharf, broiling on a fire of coals the fish that they had caught. And a little boy, introduced especially into this regretful picture, was selling hot mutton pies that he carried in a wooden box. He was walking, and calling, and dawdling, and looking, and picking his snub nose. The little boy would not have asked to live in any other surroundings. He belonged to that place.

The nostalgia of the scene smote Frank Le Mesurier, who feared that what he was abandoning might be the actuality for which he had always craved.

Palfreyman, irritated by the young man in spite of his intention not to be (he would make amends, he promised himself, at a later date), was watching with pleasure the approach of a party on horseback, that had negotiated the streets which petered out on the eastern slope, and had begun to cross the white space that opened out before the wharf.

‘I must leave you for a little, Frank,’ he said, with kindness covering relief, ‘and speak to some friends who are arriving.’

Le Mesurier agreed, in silence, that this should happen. His dark, surly nature had resumed possession. Palfreyman, who had friends of his own, was no longer any friend of his. Human beings, like intentions, he could never possess for long. So, surlily, darkly, he watched the other descend the gang-plank towards an encounter which made him a positive part of that place. Even Palfreyman. Le Mesurier would have condemned his former friend’s neat and oblivious back, if he had not known that, for some reason, the ornithologist could not be thus wounded.

The party that was approaching, and of which the horses’ flanks were shining with a splendid light, forelocks flirting with the breeze of motion, rings and links of accoutrements jingling and glancing, nostrils distended with expectation, and blowing foam, was also of some importance, it began to appear. As they came on, sailors’ eyes took the opportunity to observe a gentleman and two ladies, and farther back, an officer in scarlet, managing his mount with enormous virtuosity. If his horse was strong, the officer was stronger. It was not clear what the latter’s intentions were, but his performance was accomplished.

One of the ladies, young and pretty, too, in expensive habit, reined back in a glare of dust.

‘Tom!’ she called. ‘Oh, do be careful, Tom!’

She spoke with a coaxing warmth, without a trace of annoyance, in the voice of one who was still in love.

Nor did the officer quite swear, but answered in tones of curbed exasperation, vibrating with a manly tenderness:

‘This is the hardest mouth in all New South Wales!’

Drawing down the corners of his own, ruddy, masculine mouth, he jerked with all his strength at the snaffle.

They continued to advance.

There was the brick-coloured, elderly gentleman, swelling on his freshly soft-soaped saddle. His well-made calves controlled his solid hack. His hat was of the best beaver, and a firm fistful of reins proclaimed authority. The gentleman was looking about him from under indulgent lids, at the ship, and at those menial yet not uncongenial beings who were engaged in loading her — such was the frankly democratic bonhomie of the gentleman in the high hat. Years of sun had made him easier. Or was it the first suspicion that he might not be the master?

They came on.

A little to one side, and indifferent to her black mare, whose brilliant neck and head were raised at the tumbled wharfside scene, rode the second of the young ladies. She was singularly still upon her horse, as if she hoped in this way to remain unnoticed, whereas it did but attract attention.

At least, it was to this one that the eyes of the more inquisitive sailors and labourers returned from devouring the details which they understood. All the other figures were of their own flesh and thought. This one, though she did raise her face and smile guardedly at the sun, or life, acted according to some theory of bounty, or because it was time to do so. The men were frowning at her, not in anger, but in concentration, as they picked at warts on their skins, and at lice in their hair, or on other familiar parts of them. They were unsuspectingly afraid of what they could not touch. The young woman, leaping the gunnel on her black horse, could easily have surprised them, and inflicted wounds.

But at the same time, this girl — she was not above twenty, or leastways, little more — appeared to hesitate in some respects, for all the cold confidence of her rather waxy skin. She would not speak easily, as ladies were taught in all circumstances to do. The stiff panels of her black habit were boarding her up.

‘It is a grand sight, Laura,’ said the stout gentleman, less for his niece than for himself.

‘Nobody, I think, could fail to be impressed by these ships,’ replied the dutiful girl.

How insipid I am, she felt, and bit her pale lip. It was no consolation to remember that fire of almost an inspired kindling would burn in her at times; it is the moment, unfortunately, that counts. So she began secretly to torture her handful of reins, and the little crop that she held in the same hand, and which was a pretty though silly thing, with head of mother-o’-pearl, that she carried because it had been given, and she cherished the memory of the donor, an old man whom she had not seen since her childhood. But that it was a useless sort of whip, she had known for several years.

‘That one is a sour-faced lass,’ observed the sailor who had spoken to Palfreyman.

‘I have not got your eyes, Dick. I cannot see good,’ said his mate. ‘She is a lady, though.’

‘Sour-faced is sour-faced. There is no difference if it be a lady.’

‘There is, Dick, you know. It is somethink that you cannot put yer hand on.’

‘I would not have somethun that I cannot touch.’

‘You would not be invited.’

‘I am for the rights of the common man,’ grumbled the sailor who had dreamed the dream.

‘All right, Dick,’ said his mate. ‘I do not gainsay your rights, only there are some corners into which they will not penetrate. This lady will have some gentleman, with which she will fit together like the regular dovetails. It is the way you are made.’

‘Ha-ha!’ laughed the dreamer. ‘It comes down to that, though.’

‘It comes down?’ said his mate, whom the habit of thought and a lifetime on the open sea had raised from native simplicity to a plane of simple understanding. ‘You are like a big cat, Dick. And that is just what ladies do not take to, some big stray tom smoodgin’ round their skirts. Ladies like to fall in love. This one, you can see, has done no different.’

‘How in love, though? How do you know? When you cannot see furr, and her ridin’ down on a horse, at a distance, for the first time. Eh?’

‘It is in their nature, and what they do to pass the time, when they are not readin’ books, and blowin’ into the fingers of their gloves. I have seen ladies in windows. I have watched um writin’ letters, and puttin’ on their extry hair. In those circumstances, Dick, you do get to know whatever it is they are up to.’

‘Well,’ decided Dick, ‘you are a sly one, after all. And lookin’ in at windows.’

The cavalcade, which had crossed the white and glaring space before the wharf, was reining in the other side of such crates and cargo stuff as had not yet been loaded, amongst the straggling groups of early spectators, men who had taken off their coats in the warm sun, and their women who were wearing everything. The riders drew to a standstill, and were exchanging politenesses with the ornithologist, who was by now arrived at their stirrup-irons.

‘I can imagine your emotions, Palfreyman, on such an occasion,’ said the merchant.

How people act or feel on specific occasions had been reduced for Mr Bonner to the way in which he had been told people do act and feel. Within this rather rudimentary, if rigid, structure of behaviour, he himself did also behave with jolly or grave precision, according to rule. For such souls, the history primers and the newspapers will continue to be written.

Now he was enjoying the motions suited to the occasion, and although he took it for granted that others must be similarly moved, he would not really have cared if they were not. His own feelings were so positive they did not require reinforcing.

Palfreyman, who had opened his mouth a couple of times, could not find sufficiently innocent words.

‘It is too soon,’ he began at last, but left off.

The merchant, however, was not waiting on answers.

‘Only the wind is needed,’ he said anxiously. ‘There is no wind. Or not to speak of.’

While his cobby horse kept him revolving, he was able to consider all quarters of the compass.

‘I am told we may expect the change at three o’clock,’ Palfreyman contributed, how unnecessarily, he himself knew.

‘The change? The wind,’ recollected the merchant. ‘Oh, yes. The brickfielder commonly gets up round three o’clock of an afternoon.’

And at once, he began to shrug his shoulders, as if his excellent coat did not fit, or else it was some other physical discomfort, of rheumatism perhaps.

‘Where is Voss, though?’ he asked, looking about him in hopes of not seeing.

‘Mr Voss is below.’ Now Palfreyman had no intention of being disloyal, but did smile. ‘He is about some business of seeing that the equipment is safely stowed.’

‘In a battle between German precision and German mysticism,’ laughed Lieutenant Radclyffe with kindly unkindness. ‘Wonder which will win.’

Battles of his own were still fresh, although he was not thinking at that moment of his conversation with Laura Trevelyan at the dinner-party. He would forget the causes of his suffering while continuing to suffer. He was like a man in his sleep, who will lunge out at an actual mosquito, but return always to his more convincing dream. Still, the mosquito continues to buzz, and if, for Tom Radclyffe, Laura was that mosquito, by some calculation of the sleeping man, Voss was the sting.

So he must take steps to protect himself.

‘When Voss is concerned,’ the Lieutenant laughed, ‘I will put my money on the clouds of theory rather than the knife-edge of practice.’

‘I have to admit there have been few signs of method,’ blurted the merchant with frightful daring, though he did not look over his shoulder.

It began to seem terrible to Palfreyman that Voss should be the subject of criticism. If he himself criticized, he did so in private, and in a state of some considerable distress.

‘His methods are not those of other men, perhaps,’ his principles forced him to say.

How dull it is when people cease to talk about things, sighed Belle Bonner, whose glance had begun to stray, and did seize most sensuously on the sight of a red apple from which a little boy was tearing the flesh with noisy bite.

‘No,’ said Mr Bonner, realizing his slip. ‘He is different from other men. How different, only time will show. I am encouraged that you are confident, Palfreyman. It justifies my own initial confidence in Mr Voss.’

Palfreyman was sorry for the merchant, who chewed beef more happily than words.

‘In any case,’ said the man on foot, who should have been at a disadvantage, ‘Mr Voss has every confidence in himself, and that is the chief necessity.’

This more or less brought the discussion to a close, which was as well, for several spectators looked as if they might learn to interpret the moon-language that was being spoken. Mr Bonner dismounted and, after giving the reins of his horse to the subordinate Palfreyman to hold, soon restored his spirits to the full by going about and looking at actual objects. The rich man glowed to find himself once more in possession of the physical world.

Laura Trevelyan, who had listened to the conversation, was grateful that the rather inconspicuous, she had thought even characterless ornithologist, with whom she had never exchanged more than half a dozen necessarily polite words, had been the champion of the man whom, on the whole, in spite of her intentions, yes, she despised. Now she wanted desperately, she felt, to talk to the German’s friend, in spite of the German himself, purely, she told herself, out of admiration for moral strength. So she waited upon an opportunity.

This came quickly, but not without humiliation. It might have been expected, she decided later, of anyone foolish enough to expose herself to a scene as humiliating as that which had taken place so recently in the garden. Now this other, certainly minor, but still distasteful incident occurred.

The elegant riding-crop that Laura Trevelyan was carrying in her hand, fell, by purest accident as it happened, though to any observer it must have appeared the most obvious design, at the feet of Mr Palfreyman, who bent down, of course, and in a rush of blood, and all politeness, returned the little whip to its owner.

‘I see the handle is of some Eastern design,’ Palfreyman remarked.

He made it very quickly into something of scientific interest.

‘Yes. Indian, I believe. It was given to me when I was a child by a sea-captain, an acquaintance of my uncle’s, whose ship would sometimes call at Sydney.’

The young woman was looking most intently at the object of her shame, but could not concentrate enough. Hot, insufferable waves were surging in her contracted throat. Moreover, she could not remember with clearness her motives for wishing to speak, however discreetly, to this man.

‘It is a pity to use such a thing, and perhaps break it,’ Palfreyman said. ‘Would it not be seen to greater advantage in a cabinet?’

Sensing that the young woman was emotionally upset, he treated the riding-crop with exaggerated solicitude, which made her sorrier for herself, and him to wonder what secrets she was withholding from him. There was no reason to suppose that he was of greater importance to her than he had been on the night of the party. He would not allow himself to believe that she was in any way using him. Palfreyman, who was a man of some intuition, did not understand the female sex, in spite of his respect for it.

Nothing was altogether satisfactory, Laura felt, who continued to look at her little whip. She was no longer pale, however, and her cheeks and mouth had filled out, with self-pity, it could have been.

‘It is not of great use,’ she said, ‘and not of exceptional beauty. I no longer give it much thought, except to bring it. From habit, you know. In the beginning it pleased me because it was something unusual, and foreign. I liked to think I might visit foreign places, such as the one from which my present had come. I would dream about the Indies. Mauritius, Zanzibar. Names should be charms, Mr Palfreyman. I used to hope that, by saying some of them often enough, I might evoke reality.’

All the while her black mare was pawing up the dust, some of which, she noticed from a distance, was settling on the hem of her skirt.

‘But I did not succeed. Most probably I shall never travel. Oh, I am content, of course. Our life is full of simple diversions. Only I envy the people who enjoy the freedom to make journeys.’

‘Even this journey? Of dust, and flies, and dying horses?’

The young woman, whose hand appeared to be rejecting the glare, or some particles of grit that had gathered on her face, said slowly:

‘Of course, I realize. I am not purely romantic.’

She laughed in rather a hard manner.

‘There will be dangers, I know. Won’t there?’

She began to search him, he saw, as if she suspected a knife might be hidden somewhere. A knife intended for herself.

‘On any expedition of this nature, there are always dangers,’ Palfreyman answered dryly.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Her own lips, that other emotions had been filling, were grown thin, and dry.

‘Oh, I would welcome dangers,’ she said. ‘One must not expect to avoid suffering. And the chance is equal for everyone. Is that not so?’

‘Yes,’ he said, wondering.

‘Then’ — she laughed a hard laugh — ‘if it is all equal.’

But Palfreyman was not convinced by what he heard and saw.

‘Though I do not care to think about the horses,’ she admitted, patting her mare’s neck. ‘It is different for men. Even a man of little or no religious faith. He creates his own logic.’

She spoke with such force of feeling, of contempt, or tenderness, that her hand was trembling on the horse’s skin. Palfreyman observed the stitching on her glove.

‘And is, therefore, less to be pitied,’ she said or, rather, begged.

Remembering a contentment she had experienced in the garden either from illumination or exhaustion, after the daemon had withdrawn from her, the dry mouth of any dying man was a thing of horror.

The girl’s lips, in spite of her youth, were dry and cracked, Palfreyman noticed with surprise.

Then the world of light was taking possession, the breeze becoming wind, and making the dust skip. The whole shore was splintering into grit and mica, as down from the town several equipages drove, with flashing of paint and metal, and drew near, bringing patrons or sceptics, and their wives, in clothes to proclaim their wealth and, consequently, importance.

So that Palfreyman and Miss Trevelyan were reduced to a somewhat dark eddy on the gay stream of trite encounters and light laughter that had soon enveloped them. They looked about them out of almost cavernous eyes, before Palfreyman could conform. He was the first, of course, because less involved. He suspected he would not become involved with any human being, but was reserved as a repository for confidences, until the final shattering would scatter all secrets into the dust. He looked at the hair of the young woman where it was gathered back smoothly, though not perfectly, from those tender places in front of the ears, and was saddened.

‘Here are your friends,’ he said, and smiled, twitching the rein of the horse he was holding. ‘I must leave you to them. There are one or two things that need my attention.’

‘Friends?’ she repeated, and was rising out of her dark dream. ‘I know nobody very well. That is, of course, we have very many acquaintances.’

She was looking about her out of her woken eyes.

Then she noticed the sad ones of the small man who was fidgeting on foot, and who had prevailed at last upon a lad to take the rein of her uncle’s horse.

‘I am most grateful to you,’ she said, ‘for our conversation. I shall remember it.’

‘Has it told you anything?’ he asked lightly.

It was easy now that he was going.

‘Not,’ she said, ‘not in words.’

Now she was become too wooden to struggle any further in the effort to express herself. She seemed altogether humble and contrite, small, even hunched, she who had been proud, on her powerful horse.

‘Laura,’ cried Belle, from the back of her old, gentle gelding, ‘the Wades are here, and the Kirbys, and Nelly and Polly McMorran. Poor Nelly has sprained her ankle, and will not come down from the carriage.’

Belle Bonner was looking and looking, drinking up the crowd with her eyes, that were always thirsty for people with whom she was slightly acquainted.

‘And here is Mr Voss himself,’ Lieutenant Radclyffe announced. ‘He has shaken the moths out of those whiskers for the occasion.’

Laura did turn then, too suddenly, for it alarmed her horse into springing sideways. But she was moulded to it by her will, Palfreyman saw, and she possessed, besides, an excellent pair of hands.

The Lieutenant heard, but did not interpret the long, agonized hiss of breath.

‘Sit her, Laura!’ he laughed.

How he disliked the thin line of her lips, from which forked words would dart at him on occasion, but which were now taut.

‘Laura, can you control her?’ called the frightened Belle.

‘Yes,’ breathed Laura Trevelyan, on her calmer, but still trembling, mare.

She looked towards Palfreyman. As he withdrew through the already considerable crowd, he received the impression of a drowning that he was unable to avert, in a dream through which he was sucked inevitably back.

Ah, Laura was crying out, bending down through that same dream, extending her hand in its black glove; you are my only friend, and I cannot reach you.

As it had to be, he left her to it. And she continued to sit sculpturally upon her mastered horse, of which the complicated veins were throbbing with blood and frustration.

Voss, who was by now walking amongst the crowd, had recovered authority, presence, joviality even, and worldliness. He was looking into the eyes of his patrons and forcing their glances eventually to drop, which did please and impress them, convincing them of the safety of the money they had invested in him. As for the ladies, some shivered. His sleeve brushed them as he passed. In one instance, surprisingly, he kissed the hand of a rich tradesman’s elderly wife, who withdrew her member delightedly, looked round, and giggled, showing the gaps in her side teeth.

What kind of man is he? wondered the public, who would never know. If he was already more of a statue than a man, they really did not care, for he would satisfy their longing to perch something on a column, in a square or gardens, as a memorial to their own achievement. They did, moreover, prefer to cast him in bronze than to investigate his soul, because all dark things made them uneasy, and even on a morning of historic adventure, in bright, primary colours, the shadow was sewn to the ends of his trousers, where the heels of his boots had frayed them.

Yet his face was a lesson in open hilarity.

‘No, no, no, Mr Kirby,’ he was saying. ‘If I fail, I will write your name and that of your good wife upon a piece of paper and seal it in a bottle and bury it beside me, so that they will be perpetuated in Australian soil.’

Even death and eternity he translated into a joke at which people might laugh by sunlight.

The simplicity of it all was making him enjoy himself. The terrible simplicity of people who have not yet been hurt, and whom it is not possible to love, he thought, and explored his laughing lips with his tongue.

Some of those present were patting him on the back, just to touch him.

Oh yes, he was enjoying himself.

Only once did Voss ask: Is all this happening to me, a little boy, clinging to the Heide by the soles of his boots, beneath a rack of cloud and a net of twisted trees?

At the wharf the sun was shining. It was the lovely, lyrical, spring sun, that had not yet become a gong.

Mr Bonner had returned from his stroll, and was standing between the German and his own horses. His back was square, his calves imperious. Laura would have been glad to shelter behind her uncle’s back, if it had not also been, on final consideration, pathetic.

‘You will take every opportunity of sending back dispatches, of keeping us informed’ — he was issuing orders to his servant, saying the same thing over and over again in many different ways, as was his habit, to increase his own confidence.

Voss was smiling and nodding, to humour the man who considered himself the master.

And he patted the Lieutenant on the knee, beside whose horse he was passing, and raised his hat to the young ladies, as it was expected of him. None could have found fault with him on that morning.

Only that he did not raise his eyes higher than the saddle-flaps, Laura Trevelyan observed. She did not, however, censure this behaviour; she was, in fact, bitterly glad. She was perspiring. Her face must surely be greasy, and her jaw so controlled that she would have assumed the long, stubborn look which frequently displeased her in mirrors. It was her most characteristic expression, she had begun to suspect, after long and fruitless search for a better, without realizing that beauty is something others must surprise.

As she sat upon her horse, knowledge of her superficiality and ugliness was crushing her.

Mr Bonner, who had been trying all this time to take the German aside, to talk to him intimately, to possess him in front of all the others, was growing more and more preposterous, as he frowned, and shook the jowls of his heavy face, and made little stamping movements with his heel, which caused his spurs to jingle, and emphasized his opulent calves.

Finally he did succeed.

‘I want you to feel you may depend upon me,’ he said, when he had hedged the German off against a crude wooden barrow on which lay some stone-coloured pumpkins, one of them split open in blaze of orange. ‘Any requests that you care to make, I shall be only too willing to consider. Your family, for instance, you have not mentioned, but they are my responsibility, you know, if, in the event of, if you will only inform me of their whereabouts, write me a letter, you could, when you reach Rhine Towers, with any personal instructions.’

It was badly expressed, if honestly intended. Mr Bonner was honest, but also demanded submission, which he was not always certain of getting. So he picked at the German’s lapel, hoping to effect a closer relationship by touch, and it transpired that the crowd, at least, was impressed. Little ripples of admiration ran along the faces, as they appreciated the daring of this citizen whose hand was upon the foreign explorer. Mr Bonner’s anxiety subsided. He did now honestly love the man, who at times had appeared hateful to him, and scraggy. The merchant’s eye grew moist over a fresh relationship that he had created by magnanimity and his own hand.

Voss did not find this relationship distasteful, for he could not believe in it. It was not even ludicrous. It was simply unreal.

He fingered the seeds of the orange pumpkin, and considered what the merchant had said about his family.

‘My family,’ he began, arranging the pointed seeds of the pumpkin. ‘It is long since I corresponded with them. Do you not think that such arrangements of birth are incidental, even if in the beginning we try to persuade ourselves it is otherwise, and are grateful for the warmth, because still weak and bewildered? We have not yet learnt to admit that destiny works independently of the womb.’

Mr Bonner looked at the clear eyes, and did not understand.

‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘Does it, though? Does it? Who can say?’

Not Mr Bonner.

‘But I will write, I expect, when it is time. My father is an old man. He is a timber merchant. He is perhaps dead. My mother is a very sentimental woman. Her own mother was Swedish, and the house is full of painted clocks. Na, ja,’ he said, ‘striking at different times.’

This lack of synchronization alone was threatening to upset him. He smelled the stovy air of old, winter houses, and flesh of human relationships, a dreadful, cloying tyranny, to which he was succumbing.

Resentment of the past forced him out of himself, and he looked up into the face of that girl whose hands had been tearing the flesh of camellias. For an instant their minds were again wrestling together, and he experienced the melancholy pleasure of rejecting her offered prayers.

Laura Trevelyan was sitting her horse with a hard pride, it seemed, rather than with that humility which she had desired to achieve.

She is a cold, hard girl, he decided, and I could almost love her.

The less discriminate sunlight did.

Then Laura Trevelyan had to turn her face away from the glare, that was making her eyes glitter, or from the form of the German, that was filling her whole field of vision. I am, after all, too weak to withstand tortures, her eyes seemed to say.

And he turned away, too, no longer interested.

Just at that point the crowd parted to admit an open landau that was arriving with every sign of official importance. The liveries would have snubbed the most intrepid radical. Some mouths frankly hung open for the gold, and for the dash of scarlet that blazed and rocked above the black lacquer.

It was the Governor himself, some maintained.

But those who knew better were contemptuous of such ignorance, as if the Governor himself would arrive upon the scene in an unescorted vehicle.

Those who knew most, who were in touch with the Household, or whose cousin, even, had dined once at the vice-regal table, said that His Excellency was confined with a severe cold, and that this was Colonel Featherstonhaugh come to deputize for him at the leave-taking.

It was, in fact, the Colonel, together with some young anonymous Lieutenant, of sterling origins and pink skin, that apologized at every pore. The Colonel, however, was a man of self-opinion, of rigidity, and least possible flesh. He waited for the German to be led up and, because it was a duty, would acquit himself, it was suggested, with all dignity. His personal feelings were controlled behind his whiskers, or perhaps not quite; it was possible to tell he was an Englishman.

His Excellency the Governor wished Mr Voss and the expedition God-speed and a safe return, the Colonel said, with the littlest assistance from his fleshless face, which was of a rich purple where the hair allowed it to appear.

And he clasped the German’s hand in a gloveful of bones.

Colonel Featherstonhaugh did say many other things. Indeed, when a space had been cleared, he made a speech, about God, and soil, and flag, and Our Young, Illustrious Queen, as had been prepared for him. The numerous grave and appreciative persons who were surrounding the Colonel lent weight to his appropriate words. There were, for instance, at least three members of the Legislative Council, a Bishop, a Judge, officers in the Army, besides patrons of the expedition, and citizens whose wealth had begun to make them acceptable, in spite of their unfortunate past and persistent clumsiness with knife and fork. Important heads were bared, stiff necks were bent into attitudes that suggested humble attention. It was a brave sight, and suddenly also moving. For all those figures of cloth and linen, of worthy British flesh and blood, and the souls tied to them, temporarily, like tentative balloons, by the precious grace of life, might, of that sudden, have been cardboard or little wooden things, as their importance in the scene receded, and there predominated the great tongue of blue water, the brooding, indigenous trees, and sky clutching at all.

So that Mr Voss, the German, listening with the others to that talk of soil, flag, and Illustrious Queen, in music of speech at least, for he had taken refuge in his own foreignness as a protection from sense of words, was looking rightly sardonic. He was compelled to shift his gaze from the faces of men, and to cast it out into space. Any other attitude would have been hypocritical, but, on the other hand, no one else present was justified in aspiring to that infinite blue.

When Colonel Featherstonhaugh’s speech had unwound, right down to the last inch of buckram, and the Queen had been saved, in song and with loyal hats, and the pink, young Lieutenant, whose name was Charlie Tatham, Tom Radclyffe remembered, had become entangled in an important personage with his sword, Mr Voss roused himself, and in his usual, stiff, reluctant manner, presented to His Excellency’s envoy Mr Palfreyman and Frank Le Mesurier, who were at his side, Mr Bonner, and other supporters of the expedition — or rather, some of these last more or less presented themselves, as they were in the habit of dining with, and on several occasions had even got drunk with, the Colonel.

Then a horse neighed, dropped its fragrant dung, and life was resumed.

As the spectators were circulating again, making every effort to whirl the leader of the expedition out of one another’s grasp, Mr Bonner realized that he had finally lost control of his plaything, and began to sulk. It seemed to him that nobody had paid sufficient tribute to his initial generosity, without which the present function would not have been taking place.

‘Well, Bonner,’ said the Colonel, in whose vicinity he was left standing, and who now saw fit to extend some measure of informal joviality to the Colonials amongst whom his lot was temporarily cast, ‘there is little for ordinary mortals like you and me to do. It is up to the Almighty and the wind.’

‘Oh, the wind,’ exclaimed Mr Bonner, looking gloomily at the sky, ‘the wind suits itself when it comes to filling canvas. We shall be kept here mumbling the same words till tomorrow at dark. That is the wind all over.’

The Colonel, who had no intention of remaining five minutes beyond official necessity, smiled his conception of a jolly smile.

‘Then it is up to the Almighty, eh, Bonner?’

And he summoned his Lieutenant to summon their vehicle, that he might abandon the whole damn rout, and dispatch his dinner. His duty done, his long legs folded up, the door of the landau closed, the Colonel looked about him from under his eyebrows with the superiority of his class and rank. Not even the Almighty would have denied that.

Then he was driven away, and almost everybody, certainly Mr Bonner, was glad.

Feeling suddenly released from any further obligation whatsoever, the latter was determined to punish someone, and resolved to do it in this manner.

‘Our presence here is superfluous,’ he decided, ‘now that we have paid our respects. So let us take it that we may slip away.’

‘Oh, papa!’ Belle cried.

‘I will ride round by the store. Palethorpe is an excellent fellow, but will depend to his dying day on someone else’s judgement.’

‘But Papa, the ship,’ pleaded Belle, who was again a little girl, ‘we shall not see her sail!’

Mr Bonner did not say: Damn the ship.

‘You, Mr Radclyffe, will escort the ladies home, where Mrs Bonner will have been expecting them this little while.’

The Lieutenant, who was still in a position where he must appear exemplary, answered:

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then, at least,’ protested Belle, ‘let us shake hands with Mr Voss, who is our friend, whether we like him particularly or not. Papa, surely you agree that this would be only right? Laura?’

But Laura said:

‘If Uncle will shake hands, I feel nothing further will be necessary.’

‘How peculiar everybody is,’ Belle remarked.

She was only just beginning to suspect rooms that she might not enter.

‘I wish I was free,’ she paused, and pointed, ‘like that black woman. I would stay and wait for the wind. I would wait all night if need be. And watch the ship out.’

‘Does it mean so much to you?’ asked Tom Radclyffe, who was bored by Belle for the first time, and realized that similar occasions would occur.

‘Nothing,’ she cried.

‘You are exciting yourself, Belle,’ said her father, who did not consider that his daughter or his niece needed to be understood.

‘It is not what the ship means to me,’ said Belle.

It was that she had been made drunk by life, and the mysterious wine that spilled from the souls of those she loved, but whom, perhaps, she would never know.

‘I do not care for the ship,’ she persisted, ‘or anyone in her. Do you, Laura?’

Laura Trevelyan was looking down.

From this jagged situation the party was saved by Voss himself, who came up and said to Mr Bonner with a spontaneous thoughtfulness which was unexpected:

‘I regret that my departure must be causing you so much inconvenience, but I have not learnt yet to influence the wind.’

Mr Bonner, who had begun to wonder what he could influence, and whether even his daughter was giving him the slip, laughed, and said:

‘We were on the point of disappearing. You would not have noticed it in these circumstances.’

The German squeezed Mr Bonner’s hand, which made the latter sorrier for his situation. The way people treated him.

‘I will remember your kindness,’ Voss said.

He could have become fond of this mediocre man.

I will not give him the opportunity, Mr Bonner thought, on sensing it.

‘If you should find yourself in need of anything,’ he hastened to say, ‘you will inform us.’

His mind snatched at packing-needles.

Belle was happier now that the departure was taking a more personal shape.

‘You may send me a black’s spear,’ she called, and laughed, ‘with blood on it.’

Her lips were young and red. Her own blood raced. Her thoughts moved in pictures.

‘Indeed, I shall remember this,’ the important explorer called back, and laughed too.

‘Good-bye, Tom,’ he continued, grasping the Lieutenant, who had bent down from his horse, and offered his hand with rather aggressive manliness to preclude all possible sentiment; one never knew with foreigners.

‘Good-bye, old Voss,’ Tom Radclyffe said. ‘We shall plan some suitable debauchery against your return. In five years’ time.’

He was forced to shout the last words, because his big horse had begun to plunge and strain, as the horses of Tom Radclyffe did, whenever their master took the centre of the stage.

‘In five years’ time,’ his strong teeth flashed.

Foam was flying.

‘With a beard over my arm,’ laughed Voss, matching his friend’s animal spirits with a less convincing abandon of his own.

All this was spoken as he was touching other hands. The fingers of Belle Bonner slid through his. The hands of women, even of the younger ones, he took as a matter of course, but always as an afterthought.

‘Tom! Do, please, take care!’ Belle Bonner begged. ‘That horrible horse!’

One woman screamed, whose cheek was lashed by horsehair — she felt it in her mouth, a coarse, stinging dustiness. Her bonnet had become disarranged.

While everybody was apologizing, and Voss was smiling and watching, still rather pleased with that scene of horseplay in which he had acted a minor but agreeably unexpected part, he was reaching up and taking Miss Trevelyan’s hand, which the glove made quite impersonal. Fascinated by the movement and colour, the turmoil and laughter, the confusion of the good woman who had bit upon the horse’s nasty tail, he did contrive to shake hands, if only after a fashion.

As soon as a decent interval had elapsed, Laura withdrew her hand. If Voss did not notice, it was because he was absorbed.

There is no reason why it should be otherwise, Laura told herself. But shivered.

‘Belle,’ she called, in a white voice, as low as she could make it above the noise, ‘let us go now. Everything has been said.’

Soon the party was riding away, and Voss looked after them, and realized that he had not spoken to Laura Trevelyan. He watched the coil of hair in the nape of her neck, which revealed nothing, and her shoulders which suggested none of the strength she had displayed on that strange evening in the garden.

He stood there wetting his lips in the crowd, as if he were about to call some last remark; but what? And, of course, his words would not have blown so far. Still, when Frank Le Mesurier fetched him to settle some matter that had to be decided, the lines of his face did appear somewhat relaxed.

‘Can you not sometimes make a decision in my absence, Frank?’ he asked.

‘What is this, sir?’ exclaimed the amazed Le Mesurier. ‘When would my decisions have been accepted?’

But Voss only laughed.

All that forenoon the crowd loitered, waiting for the wind. Some were swearing at the dust, some had got drunk, and were in danger of being taken up. One individual in particular was falling-drunk. His hat — that was gone; but on no account would he be parted from a little keg, which he carried like a baby in his arms.

He would be ashamed in the morning, one honest body remarked.

‘It is me own business,’ he heard enough to reply, ‘and this is the last time, so let me alone.’

‘It is always the last time with the likes of you,’ the lady said. ‘I know from experience and a husband. Who is dead of it, poor soul.’

‘I will not be dead of this,’ drooled the man. ‘Or if I am, it is a lovely way to die.’

The lady, morbidly attached to a situation over which she had no control, was sucking such teeth as remained to her.

‘It is a scandal,’ she said, of that which she could not leave be.

‘Why, if it is not Mr Turner,’ interrupted Harry Robarts, who had come up.

‘Who is that accusin’ me now?’ complained the man. ‘Oh, it is you, boy,’ he said more quietly.

‘We had all forgot you, Mr Turner, an’ if the wind had rose, you would have had no part in the expedition; the ship would have sailed.’

‘It is not my fate,’ said Turner. ‘The wind is with me. Or against, is it?’

Either way, he blew out such a quantity from his own body, that the lady who had been solicitous for him, removed herself at speed.

‘Come now, Mr Turner,’ said the boy, ‘you are not acting as you ought. Come on board quiet like, with me, an’ lay down for a bit. Then you will feel better.’

‘I do not feel bad,’ insisted Turner.

But he came as best he could, with his little keg, and fell down a hatchway without breaking his neck, and lay there.

Once, only, as the ship began to move later that afternoon, he rose up in a dream, and cried:

‘Mr Voss, you are killing us! Give me the knife, please. Ahhhhh! The butter! The butter! It is not my turn to die.’

So he was saved up out of his dreams, and preserved for the future.

*

The future? Laura Trevelyan could not bear to think of it, even though the present, through which the riding party moved, was still to some extent an unpleasant dream. They were riding home, however. Tea trees were scratching them, a stink of stale fish was rising out of Woolloomoolloo, and an Irish person, wife of the boatswain, it transpired, ran out of a humpy to ask whether they did not have news of Osprey. The boatswain’s wife, with a baby clawing at her bodice, and several little boys at heel, had every belief in that life.

After escorting them as far as Potts Point, Mr Radclyffe left the young ladies to change their habits for loose gowns and a kind of informal, private beauty, that admirably suited the spring afternoon in which they finished a luncheon of cold meat and bread and honey. But the dream persisted disturbingly. Laura Trevelyan, drawing back her lips to bite the slice of bread and honey, saw whole rows of sailors’ blackened teeth gaping from a gunnel. The knife with which she slashed the butter, had a mottled, slippery handle, and could have been made from horse’s hoof.

Afterwards the two cousins went up to Laura’s room.

‘I am going to rest,’ the latter announced.

‘So will I,’ said Belle. ‘I will lie here with you.’

Which she had never done before.

So the two girls lay down, in some way grateful for each other, even in uneasy sleep, which was half present, half future, almost wholly apprehensive. Even Belle, touching her own hot cheek, was conscious of the future, not as the gauze that it had always been in the past, but as some inexorable marble thing. It was forming.

Tom, she was saying, men fall in love, over and over again, but it is always with themselves.

Do you really think to escape? he asked. You will not, even though I may sometimes wish it. It is Laura who will escape, by putting on canvas. She has sailed.

Belle Bonner sat up.

‘She has sailed.’

But it was Rose Portion speaking.

‘What?’ asked Belle, whose face was in an afternoon fever.

‘Oh, miss, the ship. Osprey,’ said Rose, who had come in a hurry, with a dish of preserved cumquats in her hand.

Laura still lay in long folds of uneasy marble. Her hand was curled, and could have been carved, if it had not been for a twitching.

‘Miss? Miss Laura!’ called Rose. ‘It is the ship. It is such a sight.’

Belle touched her cousin.

The two women who were awake realized that the event was somehow of greater concern to the third who was still asleep.

Laura Trevelyan woke then, raised herself upon straight arms, got up, and went out without word or second thought to the long balcony. Her skirt, which was of a pale colour and infinite afternoon coolness, streamed behind her.

There, indeed, was the ship.

The wind was moving Osprey out towards the Heads. The blue water, now ruffled up, was full of little white waves. It had become an animal of evident furriness, but still only playful, because the mood was a recent one. Osprey continued in her pride of superior strength. She was not yet shaken.

‘Yes, they have got away,’ said Laura, in a clear, glad, flat voice.

Her face also was rather flat for that moment, just as its expression of gladness, which she had flung on while rising from her sleep, was inadequate and transparent; it did not quite conceal.

‘Oh, I will pray for them,’ exclaimed Rose Portion, clutching the saucer with the cumquats.

‘But you do not know them,’ said Belle, to whom her maid’s concern was consequently absurd.

‘I do not need to know them.’

‘They may not need praying for. It is ridiculous.’

Rose did not answer.

The three women watched the ship.

Laura Trevelyan threw back the sleeve of her creamy gown, as if it had been heavy.

‘Do you think Mr Palfreyman is nice?’ Belle Bonner asked.

‘From what little I have seen of him, I think exceptionally nice,’ her cousin replied.

‘But quiet.’

‘He says whatever has to be said.’

The women were watching the ship.

‘He is a man of education, I expect,’ said Belle. ‘Not an ignorant colonial savage. Like us.’

‘Oh, miss!’ protested Rose.

‘But he is kind,’ Belle continued. ‘And kind people do not mind.’

‘Oh, Belle, do not chatter so!’ said Laura.

‘But is it not true?’

‘All that you have said. Though beside the point.’

The three women watched the ship.

Presently Rose Portion, who had taken upon herself that chastening which was intended for Miss Belle, said in a whisper, holding her stomach:

‘These are a few cumquats that I was bringin’ to you for a taste, when I saw the ship had sailed.’

And she set the saucer, with two forks, upon a little bamboo table, and went softly away.

Neither girl thanked the woman for her trouble, except in spirit, for the words had been absorbed from them.

Wind and sea were tossing the slow ship. Gusts of that same wind, now fresh, now warm, troubled the garden, and carried the scents of pine and jasmine into the long balcony. The two young women could not have told whether they were quickened or drugged, until a kind of feverish melancholy began to take possession of them. Their bodies shivered in their thin gowns; their minds were exposed to the keenest barbs of thought; and the whole scene that their vision embraced became distinct and dancing, beautiful but sad.

Yet, it seemed to Laura Trevelyan, those moments of her life which had been of most importance were both indistinct and ugly. The incident with the German in the garden had been indescribably ugly, untidy, painful. She could not help recalling that, and in doing so, there came into her mouth a bad taste, as of blood oozing, as if she had lost a tooth. She bit her lip, but was reminded of his rather pointed teeth as he stood talking that morning at the wharf.

Then Belle, who was finally overwhelmed by the moist, windblown afternoon, began to be afraid.

‘Laura,’ she said, very quietly.

She was as determined to press against her cousin, as the latter was to hold her off.

But Belle could not bear it. She was both afraid, and filled with a desire to mingle with what she did not understand, which was the future, perhaps, hence her necessity.

‘Laura,’ she asked, ‘what has come over us? What is happening?’

She was crying, and pressing herself against the mysterious body of her cousin.

‘It is nothing. It is you who imagine,’ said Laura, resisting with her voice, with all her might.

Persistent touch was terrifying to her.

But neither could resist the force of that afternoon. Seeking protection, they were swept together, in softest sympathy.

‘Tell me, Laura,’ cried Belle, ‘what is it?’

Her hot tears shocked the other’s colder skin.

‘But I cannot,’ Laura cried, ‘when there is nothing — nothing to tell.’

As they rocked together on the balcony, in the shaggy arms of the honest trees, in the bosom of the all-possessing wind, they were soothed to some extent, and the light, touching the cumquats on the little bamboo table, turned these into precious stones, the perfection of which gave further cause for hope.