Only Dugald was squatting inactive on the ashy fringe of a small fire. The old native was more than ever a man of ash and charred wood; his brittle hams might have crumbled at a touch.
‘What is it, Dugald?’ asked the German. ‘Are you not pleased?’
‘Blackfeller old,’ said the old man, in a voice that was his oldest. ‘This feller too old.’
How the notes of lamentation twangled on his bone harp.
‘This feller sick. Sick old. Wanta go back Jildra. This no place old feller die.’
‘I will not let you die, Dugald,’ Voss consoled lightly.
‘You let Mr Voss die. You no stop Dugald,’ answered the old black, looking gravely at the white man.
‘How let myself die?’
‘Not now. No ready. You no stop when ready.’
This melancholy conversation that was taking place at the fire’s edge had its gaiety for Voss.
‘You old devil,’ he laughed, ‘you will see us all put in the ground.’
Then the old man himself began to laugh.
‘No here,’ he laughed ashily. ‘Jildra. Jildra good place. Please,’ he said, quickly, quietly. ‘I go away Jildra.’
But the German dismissed that possibility with his hand, and walked on.
The old man continued to nurse what was, indeed, a sickness of foreboding and fear. He was holding his old ashen head as he squatted by the fire. The hostile spirits of unfamiliar places were tormenting him.
Later, in the camp which had begun already to dissolve in anticipation of the morning’s move, Voss caught something of the old native’s melancholy, and began to look about at their blackened pots, at the leather tackle which sweat had hardened, and those presumptuous notebooks in which he was scribbling the factual details of their journey. Then the palms of his hands knew a great helplessness. The white sky, for it was again evening, was filled with empty cocoons of cloud, fragile and ephemeral to all appearance, but into which he would have climbed, if he had been able. As he could not, he continued to walk about the camp, and his men looked up from whatever work they were engaged upon, searching his face with the eyes of children who have not yet learnt to reject appearances.
So Voss, who was exhausted, besides, by the illness from which he had not fully recovered, went and sat by his own fire.
‘Dugald!’ he called, when he had decided, and taken paper.
The breeze was lifting the stiff paper, and rattling it slightly against his knee, as if it had been bark or twig, but, without his protection, would have scrabbled and tormented it, for such white constancy is anathema to the mouths of dust.
The old native came.
‘Dugald,’ said Voss, who was by this time somewhat feverish, or irritated, ‘hör’ wohl zu. Tomorrow morning you will leave for Jildra. Verstanden? You will take the horse from Mr Turner. He old, poor horse, better to stay Jildra.’
‘Yes,’ laughed Dugald. ‘Old man same belong Jildra.’
‘That is exact,’ the German said. ‘Warte nur. Give Dugald’s horse to Mr Turner.’
‘Yes,’ murmured the old black, who was now preparing to suffer all else with patience.
‘I write paper, give Dugald letter,’ Voss explained.
How the unborn letter rattled against his knees.
‘Dugald take same letter Mr Boyle.’
His words were lead bullets.
‘Now do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the old man.
Darkness sighed.
When he was alone again, the German spread the sheet of paper, on which the whole darkness converged, spread it on the boards of a notebook, and was prepared to write. His knees were trembling, but, of course, he had been ill. And firelight flickers. Dugald had been gone a long time, but Voss still hovered over the heading of his letter. Had he been in fullest possession of himself, he would have consulted his neat journal and copied down their latest estimated position. He was not, however, at that moment, self-possessed. He was sitting in the middle of nowhere. Which, naturally, was of too fantastical a nature, too expressive of his nothingness. Yet, out of nothing, he did finally begin, smiling painfully at the prospect of certain words, of which the sentiments remained unfamiliar.
Voss wrote:
My dear Laura,…
Addressing her thus intimately, as if he knew her, again the man hesitated. He knew that part of himself, the weakest, of which was born the necessity for this woman. With the latter he was acquainted from several cold conversations and one heated argument. They had met, besides, by flashes of intuition and in dreams. Whether or not such knowledge, haunting and personal though it was from some aspects, sufficiently justified his attitude, he touched the L gently with his pen, and so continued:
… Your letter has brought me great happiness. I will not say my only happiness, since I am underway to accomplish my also great, and long-conceived ambition. All these prizes falling to me at last make me at times confused, so that you will see you have inspired some degree of that humility which you so admire and in me have wished for! If I cannot admire this quality in other men, or consider it except as weakness in myself, I am yet accepting it for your sake.
There are many points of criticism in your letter that I could answer, but do not here in the circumstances in which I am placed, for those arguments appear to me rather as subjects for the tea-table, and here I have no such furniture from behind which I might make a stand. Indeed, we are reduced almost to infinity. In consequence, I will pass instead to those of your sentiments which, you profess, underlie your arguments, and which have been the cause of so much cordial happiness, while accompanying me these many weeks. That we should love each other, LAURA, does at last appear inevitable and fitting, as I sit here alone in this immense country. No ordinary House could have contained my feelings, but this great one in which greater longings are ever free to grow.
Do I take too much for granted, my dearest wife? I have forgotten, perhaps, some of the pretences, living and dreaming as I do, but life and dreams of such far-reaching splendour you will surely share them, even in your quiet room. So we are riding together across the plains, we sit together in this black night, I reach over and touch your cheek (not for the first time). You see that separation has brought us far, far closer. Could we perhaps converse with each other at last, expressing inexpressible ideas with simple words?
I will send this shameful letter tomorrow by an old native, to Jildra, to Mr Boyle, together with all necessary information on the progress of the expedition for your Uncle, and the formal request of his niece’s hand. I would postpone this, Laura, to enjoy our privacy a little longer. Such a precious secret will be stolen only too soon. Am I mad? It is the gold that I have found in these rocks, in these desert places. Or I am delirious still, having been kicked in the stomach by a mule before several days, and suffered considerable pain.
You need not fear that I have not received every attention in my sickness, my chief Angel (a rather hairy one) being Mr Judd, an emancipist convict and neighbour of Mr Sanderson’s, of whom I recollect it was also spoken at your Uncle’s. Judd is what people call a good man. He is not a professional saint, as is Mr Palfreyman. He is a tentative one, ever trying his dubious strength, if not in one way, then, in another. It is tempting to love such a man, but I cannot kill myself quite off, even though you would wish it, my dearest Laura. I am reserved for further struggles, to wrestle with rocks, to bleed if necessary, to ascend. Yes, I do not intend to stop short of the Throne for the pleasure of grovelling on lacerated knees in company with Judd and Palfreyman. As for yourself, take care! At the risk of incurring your serious disapproval, I will raise you up to the far more rational position at my side.
So, we have our visions. Frank Le Mesurier has experienced something of importance that he is keeping hidden from me. On the other hand, Harry Robarts must tell all, while growing simpler, I sometimes feel, with distance. His simplicity is such, he could well arrive at that plane where great mysteries are revealed.
Or else become an imbecile.
If I have not described every tree, every bird, every native encountered, it is because all these details are in writing for those who will not see beyond the facts. For you, our other journey, that you are now condemned to share, to its most glorious, or bitterest end.
I send you my wishes, and venture by now also to include my love, since distance has united us thus closely. This is the true marriage, I know. We have wrestled with the gristle and the bones before daring to assume the flesh.
Your
JOHANN ULRICH VOSS
In the morning, when the now shrunken cavalcade pushed westward, Dugald took the old horse which had been assigned to him, and which was gone in the feet, with girth galls, and saddle sores besides. The native was still standing at the stirrup looking shy when the last of the surviving sheep and a heavy, palpitating cow had shambled past. The men had finished calling, some correctly, others affectionately, one obscenely, to the old black. Now, all were gone, except the dust, and Voss.
‘Good-bye, Dugald,’ said the German from his horse, bending down, and offering a hand.
Then the old man, who was unskilled in similar gestures, took the hand with both his, but dropped it, overwhelmed by the difference in skin, while laughing for happiness. His face was filled with little moons of greyish wrinkles.
‘You will go direct to Jildra,’ said the German, but making it a generous command.
‘Orright, Jildra,’ laughed the old man.
‘You will not loiter, and waste time.’
But the old man could only laugh, because time did not exist.
The arches of the German’s feet were exasperated in the stirrup-irons.
‘You will give those letters to Mr Boyle. You understand?’
‘Orright,’ Dugald laughed.
‘Letters safe?’ asked the man in bursting veins.
‘Safe. Safe,’ echoed the scarecrow.
He put them in a pocket of his swallowtail coat. They were looking very white there.
‘Well,’ cried the writer of them, ‘was stehst du noch da? Los!’
The black mounted. Kicking his bare heels into the sides of the skinny horse, he persuaded it to stumble away.
Then Voss turned and rode in the direction of the others. Always at that hour he was a thin man juggling impotently with hopes. Those great, empty mornings were terrible until the ball of the sun was tossed skyward.
*
Dugald continued to ride. Several days he spent jogging on the back of the old horse, which sighed frequently, and no longer swished its tail at flies.
The old man, who was contented at last, sang to himself as he rode along:
‘Water is good,
Water is good….’
The truth of this filtered fitfully through the blazing land.
Sometimes the old man would jump down at the butt of certain trees, and dig until he reached the roots, and break them open, and suck out the water. Sometimes he would cut sections of these precious pipes, and shake the moisture into the cup of his hand, for the old horse to sup. The hairs of the drawn muzzle tickled his withered skin most agreeably.
The old man killed and ate goannas. He ate a small, dun-coloured rat. As he had reached an age when it was permissible for him to eat almost all foods, it was a pity so little offered itself.
He experienced great longings, and often trembled at night, and thrust his skin against the protecting fire.
When the horse lay down and died, one afternoon in the bed of a dry creek, the black was not unduly concerned. If anything, his responsibilities were less. Before abandoning the dead horse, he cut out the tongue and ate it. Then he tore a stirrup-leather off the saddle, and went forward swinging it, so that the iron at the end described great, lovely arcs against the sky.
The veins of the old, rusty man were gradually filling with marvellous life, as his numbness of recent weeks relented; and in time he arrived at good country of grass and water. He came to a lake in which black women were diving for lily roots. In the dreamlike state he had entered, it seemed natural that these women should be members of his own tribe, and that they should be laughing and chattering with him as he squatted by the water’s edge, watching their hair tangle with the stalks of lilies, and black breasts jostle the white cups. Nor was it unnatural that the strong young huntsmen of the tribe, when they burst through the wiry trees, clattering with spears and nullas, should show contempt, until they realized this was a man full of the wisdom and dignity that is derived from long and important journeys. Then they listened to him.
Only his swallowtail coat, by now a thing of several strips, was no longer dignified enough, with the result that the tallest huntsman solemnly tore off one of the strips, followed by a pocket.
Remembering the white man’s letters, Dugald retrieved the pocket, and took them out. The shreds of his coat fell, and he was standing in his wrinkles and his bark-cloth. If the coat was no longer essential, then how much less was the conscience he had worn in the days of the whites? One young woman, of flashing teeth, had come very close, and was tasting a fragment of sealing-wax. She shrieked, and spat it out.
With great dignity and some sadness, Dugald broke the remaining seals, and shook out the papers until the black writing was exposed. There were some who were disappointed to see but the picture of fern roots. A warrior hit the paper with his spear. People were growing impatient and annoyed, as they waited for the old man to tell.
These papers contained the thoughts of which the whites wished to be rid, explained the traveller, by inspiration: the sad thoughts, the bad, the thoughts that were too heavy, or in any way hurtful. These came out through the white man’s writing-stick, down upon paper, and were sent away.
Away, away, the crowd began to menace and call.
The old man folded the papers. With the solemnity of one who has interpreted a mystery, he tore them into little pieces.
How they fluttered.
The women were screaming, and escaping from the white man’s bad thoughts.
Some of the men were laughing.
Only Dugald was sad and still, as the pieces of paper fluttered round him and settled on the grass, like a mob of cockatoos.
Then the men took their weapons, and the women their nets, and their dillybags, and children, and they all trooped away to the north, where at that season of the year there was much wild life and a plentiful supply of yams. The old man went with them, of course, because they were his people, and they were going in that direction. They went walking through the good grass, and the present absorbed them utterly.
9
MRS BONNER had come out in a rash, due to the particularly humid summer, or to the shortage of green vegetables at Sydney (neither would she be robbed), or sometimes she would attribute her physical distress – privately, in case any of her family should laugh – attribute it to the impossible situation in which she had been placed by the pregnancy of her servant, Rose Portion. For Rose was still with them, very heavy, very shameful. Mrs Bonner would refer to her maid’s condition as Rose’s illness. It was intolerable, as was her own helplessness.
‘I understood,’ said Mrs Bonner to her friend, Mrs Pringle, ‘that there was this institution of Mrs Lauderdale’s for fallen women, but I find, on making inquiries, it is not for those who exhibit, shall we say, material proof of having fallen.’
Mrs Bonner dabbed her lip.
‘I really do not know what to suggest,’ sighed Mrs Pringle, who was herself legitimately pregnant, and who could take no serious interest in a convict woman’s fall.
‘In a normal family,’ complained Mrs Bonner, ‘responsibility for such matters would not be left entirely on one’s hands.’
‘Oh, but Mrs Bonner, no family is normal,’ Mrs Pringle cried.
‘Is it not?’
This did not comfort as it should have.
‘Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory.’
Mrs Bonner looked shocked.
‘I will not deny that children are dear little things,’ conceded Mrs Pringle, who had a lot of them.
‘Nobody would expect a tender child to offer mature advice,’ Mrs Bonner pursued, ‘but a husband should and does think.’
‘A husband does think,’ Mrs Pringle agreed, ‘but that, again, is a different kind of thinking. I believe, between ourselves, Mrs Bonner, that these machines of which all the talk is at Home would never have been invented, if men were not in sympathy, so to speak, to a great extent. I believe that many men, even respectable ones, are themselves machines.’
‘Really, Mrs Pringle?’ Mrs Bonner exclaimed. ‘I would not suspect Mr Bonner of this, though he does not think my way; nor will he offer suggestions.’
Mrs Bonner was again unhappy.
‘It is I who must bear the burden of Rose.’
Ah, Rose, Rose, always Rose, sighed Mrs Pringle. Mrs Bonner had become quite tedious.
‘We must think of something for the wretched soul,’ said the kind friend, and hoped with that to close the subject.
Mrs Bonner, who was a tidy woman, would have turned her maid into the street and learnt to think no more about it, if her family might not have reminded her. In the circumstances, she did not dare, and the question of Rose’s future continued nagging at her martyred mind.
One afternoon of deepest summer, when a brickfielder was blowing, and the hideous native trees were fiendish, and the air had turned brown, Mrs Bonner developed a migraine, and became positively hysterical. She flung herself too hard upon that upright sofa in the drawing-room, on which it was her habit to arrange people to listen to music, and was sobbing between gusts of eau de Cologne.
‘But what is it, Aunt Emmy?’ asked her niece, who had swirled in.
They were alone on that afternoon, except for the heavy Rose, since Belle had been driven to the Lending Library, and Mr Bonner was not yet returned from the establishment in George Street, and Cassie and Edith had started, unwisely, on a picnic with acquaintances while the gale was still threatening.
‘What is it?’ Laura asked, and was smacking the backs of her aunt’s hands.
Voss Page 25