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 h
ave 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 c
onveniently to selflessness.
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