During the days that followed, the German thought somewhat surreptitiously about the will of God. The nurture of faith, on the whole, he felt, was an occupation for women, between the preserving-pan and the linen-press. There was that niece of the Bonners’, he remembered, a formal, and probably snobbish girl, who would wear her faith cut to the usual feminine pattern. Perhaps with a colder elegance than most. Then, there were the few men who assumed humility without shame. It could well be that, in the surrender to selflessness, such individuals enjoyed a kind of voluptuous transport. Voss would sometimes feel embittered at what he had not experienced, even though he was proud not to have done so. How they merge themselves with the concept of their God, he considered almost with disgust. These were the feminine men. Yet he remembered with longing the eyes of Palfreyman, and that old Müller, from both of whom he must always hold himself aloof, to whom he would remain coldly unwedded.
So he went about, and the day was drawing close.
Again on several occasions he recalled that old Brother Müller. Earlier in the year Voss had spent several days as a guest of the Moravian Mission near Moreton Bay. It was the harvest, then. The colours of peace, however transitory, drenched the stubbled fields. The scene was carved: the low whitewashed cottages of the lay brothers, the slim, but strong forms of the greyish trees, the little wooden figures of the sunburnt children. They were all in the fields, harvesting. Several women had taken rakes and forks, and were raking the hay, or pitching it up to their husbands upon the drays. Even the two old ministers had come, exchanging black for a kind of smock, of very placid grey. So all were working.
It was the form of Brother Müller, who had founded their settlement, that seemed to predominate over all others. Such peace and goodness as was apparent in the earthly scene, in the light and shadow, and the abundance of fragrant, wilting hay, might indeed have emanated from the soul of the old quietist.
‘I will come and work with you,’ called Voss, who, up till then, in fact, all the days of his visit, had been walking about restlessly, chewing at a straw, plucking at leaves, carrying a book which conveyed nothing to him.
Nobody had questioned his aloofness from the work, but now the guest began to tear off his awkward clothes – that is, he flung aside his rusty coat, loosened the neck of his pricking shirt, rolled up the sleeves on his wiry arms, and was soon raking with frenzied movements beside Brother Müller. One of the women who was pitching the fodder up to the drays went so far as to laugh at their guest’s particular zeal, but everyone else present accepted it placidly enough, taking it for granted that even the apparently misguided acts obey some necessity in the divine scheme.
Then Voss, who had spent several nights in speculative argument with the old minister over glasses of goats’ milk sweetened with honey, called out in the lust of his activity:
‘I begin to receive proof of existence, Brother Müller. I can feel the shape of the earth.’
And he stood there panting, with his legs apart, so that the earth did seem to take on something of its true shape, and to reel beneath him.
But the old man continued to rake the hay, blinking at it, as if he had got something in his eye, or were stupid.
Then Voss said, generously:
‘Do not think, Brother, because we have argued all these nights, and I have sometimes caught you out in a friendly way, that I want to detract at all from God.’
He was laughing good-naturedly, and looked handsome and kind in his burnt skin, and besides, was straddling the world.
‘Ach,’ sighed the old man; haymaking could have been his vocation.
Then he leaned upon his rake. There was behind him a golden aureole of sun.
‘Mr Voss,’ he said, with no suggestion of criticism, ‘you have a contempt for God, because He is not in your own image.’
So Voss walked quicker through the streets of Sydney all those days preceding the departure of the great expedition, of which that world was already talking. Men of business took him by the shoulder as if they would have had some part of him, or intended to share a most earnest piece of information. Young girls, walking with servants or aunts, looked at the hems of their skirts as they passed, but identified him to their less observant companions immediately afterwards. That was Mr Voss, the explorer.
So that, for the explorer himself, the whole town of Sydney wore a splendid and sufficient glaze.
3
SOON after this it happened that Rose Portion, the Bonners’ servant, was taken suddenly sick. One afternoon, just after Mrs Bonner and the young ladies had finished a luncheon of cold ham, with pickles, and white bread, and a little quince jelly, nothing heavy like, because of the Pringles’ picnic party that afternoon, Rose simply fell down. In her brown gown she looked a full sack, except that she was stirring and moaning, even retching. Dry, however. Mrs Bonner, who was a Norfolk girl, remembered how cows used to fall into the dikes during the long winter nights, and moan there, so far off, and so monotonously; nothing, it seemed, would ever be done.
Yet here was Rose upon the floor, half in the dining-room, half in the passage to the pantry, and for Rose something must be done at once.
‘Rose, dear! Rose!’ called the young ladies, leaping, and kneeling, and slapping the backs of her hands.
‘We must burn a feather,’ decided Mrs Bonner.
But Miss Laura ran and fetched her dark green smelling-bottle, which was a present from a girl called Chattie Wilson, with whom they were in the habit of exchanging visits and presents.
Then, when Rose’s head had been split almost in two by that long, cold smell, she got up rather suddenly, moaning and crying. She was holding her fists together at the brown knuckles, and shaking.
‘Rose, dear, please do tell us you are recovered,’ implored Belle, who was herself frightened and tearful; she would cry for people in the street who appeared in any way distressed. ‘Do stop, Rose!’
But Rose was not crying, not exactly; it was an animal mumbling, and biting of her harelip.
‘Rose,’ said Aunt Emmy at last, quite dryly, and unlike her, ‘Edith will give you a hand to clear the rest of the things. Then you must lie down and rest.’
Aunt Emmy sounded and looked drained, although perhaps it was the salt-cellar, one of the good Waterford pair, that should never have been used, and of which she was now picking up the fragments; it could have been this that had caused her some pain.
Then Laura Trevelyan, her niece, who was still kneeling, understood otherwise. It was awful. And soon even Belle knew, who was young, but not too young. The instincts of all three women were embracing the same secret.
They knew that Rose Portion, the emancipist servant, was with child.
Rose had come to work at Bonners’ only after she was freed. The merchant would not have employed a convict, as a matter of conscience, and on account of petty thefts. If they are free, he used to say, there is a chance that they are innocent; if they are not free, it is taken for granted that the assigned servant is to blame.
Free or restrained, it was the same to Rose. Fate, her person seemed to suggest, had imposed far heavier, far more dreadful, because invisible, chains. This did not affect her constitution, however. Though shackled, she would work like an ox. When Mr Bonner was laying out the rockeries that afterwards became so nice, she was carrying baskets of earth and stone, and leaving her heavy imprint on the original sand, while Jack Slipper and the lad were grumbling, and dragging and leaning, and even disappearing. Rose was not compelled to lend herself to heavy labour. Nor to sit up. Yet, there she was, when the young ladies went to balls, or lectures, or musical evenings, as they frequently did, she would be sitting up, her heavy chin sunk in her bosom, with her hands pressed together, almond-shape, in her great lap. Then she would jump up, still glittery from sleep, without smiling, but pleased, and help the young ladies out of their dresses. She would brush Miss Laura’s hair, even when the latter did not wish it.
‘Go now, Rose,’ Miss Trevelyan would say.
‘That is enough.’
But Rose would brush, as if it were her sacred duty, while her mistress remained a prisoner by her hair.
Because she was ugly and unloved, Rose Portion would attempt to bind people to her in this way. Yet Laura Trevelyan could not begin to like her maid. She was kind to her, of course. She gave her presents of cast-off garments and was careful to think about her physical well-being. She would make a special effort to smile at the woman, who was immediately grateful. Kindness made her whole body express her gratitude, but it was her body that repelled.
So it was, too, in the case of Jack Slipper, that other individual, as Mr Bonner almost always referred to him after the man had been sent away. Of undisclosed origin, the latter had performed odd jobs, scoured the pans and beat the carpets, worked in the garden although it was distasteful to him, and even driven the carriage at a pinch, in improvised livery, when Jim Prentice was down with the bronchitis. But whatever duties were allotted to him, Jack Slipper had always found time to loiter in the yard, under the lazy pepper trees, scratching his armpits, and chewing a quid of tobacco on the quiet. So Laura would remember, and again see him spit a shiny stream into the molten laurels. He used to wear his sleeves cut back for greater freedom, right to the shoulder, so that in his thin but sinewy arms the swollen veins were visible. He was all stains, and patches of shade, and spots of sunlight, if ever Laura was compelled to cross the yard, as, indeed, sometimes she was. It must be admitted he had always acknowledged her presence, though in such an insolent and familiar manner that invariably she would turn the other way on confirming that the man was there. Jack Slipper ended in the watch-house. The rum was his downfall. The night they took him up, you could have lit the breath upon him, they said. So he received a sentence. Mr Bonner went down and spoke to him, telling him it was his habit to stand by those he employed, but seeing as he did not care for Jack’s behaviour, he would have dismissed him, even without sentence being passed. The fellow only laughed. He wiped his hairy nose with his wrist, and said he would have gone, anyway.
So that was the end of Jack.
But Rose remained, her breasts moving in her brown dress. Laura Trevelyan had continued to feel repelled. It was the source of great unhappiness, because frequently she was also touched. She would try to keep her eyes averted, as she had from Jack Slipper. It is the bodies of these servants, she told herself in some hopelessness and disgust, while wondering how her aunt would have received her thoughts, if spoken. Similar obsessions could not have haunted other people. I will put all such things out of my mind, she decided; or am I a prig? So she wondered unhappily, and how she might correct her nature.
Now, when this calamity had felled the unfortunate Rose, Laura Trevelyan was more than ever unhappy. As life settled back, and the things were removed from the dining-table, and the smallest pieces of the Waterford salt-cellar had been recovered, she held herself rigid. Nobody noticed, however. Because she was practised in disguising her emotions, only someone with more than eyes in their head would have seen.
Aunt Emmy did not, who was holding a pretty but useless little handkerchief to her troubled lips. Aunt Emmy said:
‘Now, girls, this is something between ourselves, most emphatically. It is providential that the dining-room does not communicate directly with the kitchen, so that Cassie and Edith need not suspect. Mr Bonner must be told, of course, and will perhaps offer a helpful suggestion. Until then – nothing.’
‘We have forgotten the Pringles’ picnic, Mamma,’ said Belle, who was hearing the grandfather clock strike.
No event was so disastrous that Belle could not recover from it. She was still at that age.
Her mother began to suck her teeth.
‘Dear, yes,’ she said. ‘Mrs Pringle will be provoked. And the carriage is for half past, if Mr Prentice can rouse himself. Rose,’ she called, ‘ask Edith to run across to Jim, and remind him to bring the carriage round. Dear, we shall be late.’
Going at once to change her dress, Laura Trevelyan regretted all picnics. A strong day was bending the trees. The garden was a muddle of tossed green, at which she frowned, patting a sleeve, or smoothing hair. Most days she walked in the garden, amongst the camellia bushes, which were already quite advanced, and the many amorphous, dark bushes of all big hospitable gardens, and the scurfy native paperbarks. At one end of the garden were some bamboos, which a sea-captain had brought to Mr Bonner from India. Originally a few roots, the bamboos had grown into a thicket, which filled the surrounding air with overwhelming featheriness. Even on still evenings, a feathery colloquy of the bamboos was clearly audible, with sometimes a collision of the stiff masts, and human voices, those of passers-by who had climbed the wall, and lay there eating pigs’ trotters, and making love. Once Laura had found a woman’s bonnet at the foot of the bamboos. A tawdry thing. Once she had found Rose Portion. It is me, miss, said her servant’s form; it was that airless in the house. Then Rose was pressing through the thicket of bamboos. On occasions the night would be full of voices, and unexplained lights. The moist earth was pressed at the roots of the bamboos. There were the lazy, confident voices of men, and the more breathless, women’s ones. I have give you a fright, miss, Jack Slipper once said, and got up, from where he had been propped upon his elbow beside the darkness. He was smoking. Laura had felt quite choked.
Now this young woman was holding her hands to her head in the mirror. She was pale, but handsome, in moss green. If Laura had more colour, she would be a beauty, Aunt Emmy considered, and advised her niece always to drop her handkerchief before entering a room, so that the blood would rush to her cheeks as she stooped to pick it up.
‘Laura!’ called Belle. ‘The carriage is here. Mamma is waiting. You know what Mrs Pringle is.’
Then Laura Trevelyan shook her shawl. She was really handsome in her way, and now flushed by some thought, or by the wind which was assaulting the trees of the garden with greater force. There were the needles from trees falling through the window upon the carpet. There was the dry sighing of the bamboos.
When the party had disposed itself in the carriage, and Mrs Bonner had felt for her lozenges and tried to remember whether she had closed the window on the landing, when they had gone a little way down the drive, as far as the elbow and the bunya bunya, there, if you please, was the figure of that tiresome Mr Voss, walking up springily, carrying his hat, his head wet with perspiration.
Oh dear, everybody said, and even held hands.
But they pulled up. They had to.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Voss,’ said Mrs Bonner, putting out her head. ‘This is a surprise. You are quite wicked, you know, with your surprises. When a little note. And Mr Bonner not here.’
Mr Voss was opening his mouth. His lips were pale from walking. His expression suggested that he had not yet returned from thought.
‘But Mr Bonner,’ he was forming words, ‘is not at the store no more than here. He is gone away, they say. He is gone home.’
He resented bitterly the foreign language into which he had been thrown back thus precipitately.
‘He is gone away, certainly,’ said Mrs Bonner gaily, ‘but is not gone home.’
Occasions could make her mischievous.
Belle giggled, and turned her face towards the hot upholstery of the dark carriage. They were beautifully protected in that padded box.
‘I regret that they should have misinformed you so sadly,’ Mrs Bonner pursued. ‘Mr Bonner has gone to a picnic party at Point Piper with our friends the Pringles, where we will join him shortly.’
‘It is not important,’ Voss said.
He was glad, even. The niece sat in the carriage examining his face as if it had been wood.
She sat, and was examining the roots of his hair, the pores of his skin, but quite objectively, from beneath her leaden lids.
‘How tiresome for you,’ said Mrs Bonner.
‘It is not, it is not of actual importance.’
Voss had put his hat back.
&n
bsp; ‘Unless you get in. That is it,’ Mrs Bonner said, who furiously loved her own solutions. ‘You must get in with us. Then you can give Mr Bonner such information as you have. He would be provoked.’
So the step was let down.
Now it was Voss who was provoked, who had come that day, less for a purpose, than from a vague desire for his patron’s company, but had not bargained for all these women.
He bumped his head.
Then he was swallowed by the close carriage with its scents and sounds of ladies. It was an obscure and wretched situation, in which his knees were pressed together to avoid skirts, but of which, soft suggestions were overflowing.
He found himself beside the pretty girl, Miss Belle, who had remained giggly, as she sat holding her hands in a ball. Opposite were the mother and her niece, rocking politely. Although he recognized the features of the niece, her name had escaped him. However, that was unimportant. As they rocked. In one place a stench of putrid sea-stuff came in at the window and filled the carriage. Miss Belle bit her lip, and turned her head, and blushed, while the two ladies seemed oblivious.
‘Fancy,’ said Mrs Bonner with sudden animation, ‘a short time ago a gentleman and his wife, I forget the name, were driving in their brougham on the South Head Road, when some man, a kind of bushranger, I suppose one would call him, rode up to their vehicle, and appropriated every single valuable the unfortunate couple had upon them.’
Everybody listened to conversation as if it were not addressed to them personally. They rocked, and took it for granted that someone would assume responsibility. Mrs Bonner, at least, had done her duty. She looked out with that brightness of expression she had learnt to wear for drives in the days when they first owned a carriage. As for the bushrangers, she personally had never encountered such individuals, and could not believe in a future in which her agreeable life might be so rudely shaken. Bushrangers were but the material of narrative.
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