‘That is all,’ said Judd, out of a mouthful of thread. ‘I had it on a chain. I never did tame it.’
‘What did you do, then?’ asked Turner.
‘I shot it.’
‘Go on,’ whispered Turner, and saw the whole incident.
‘It was a sick, mangy thing,’ said Angus, ‘if it was the one I saw at Judd’s.’
Yet, the young landowner had grown to like the lag turned squatter, and sensing this himself, Judd was made melancholy for his captive fox, which had flamed on occasions, he had seen it with his own eyes, at dusk, picketed on the edge of the scrub.
One day, not long after the lamentable incident of the mustard and cress, Voss approached the three men, who were seated together as usual at the fire. Turner and Angus, who were idle, at once began to look intently at the burning sticks, while Judd continued to patch the belly of a canvas water-bag.
‘Mr Judd,’ began Voss, ‘I have intended now for some time that we should take steps to preserve our navigation instruments from the wet.’
He waited.
Then Judd replied, forcing the needle through the canvas:
‘Nothing will preserve our instruments from the wet that they are getting.’
‘How so?’ asked Voss, although it was possible that he knew.
One of his knees was bent forward. It quivered very slightly.
‘They were lost aboard the raft,’ said Judd.
It did hurt him. He could have pricked himself to distract his mind.
‘It is unfortunate,’ said Voss, ‘that you did not employ your instinct on the instruments, instead of upon the flour.’
‘Ah, that flour!’ cried Judd, suffering, as, indeed, was intended. ‘Can you not leave it alone?’
This massive man was trembling.
‘You are very touchy, I fear,’ sighed Voss.
It was not known for certain whether he had achieved his whole purpose.
‘It is a sore point with me, sir,’ said Judd, ‘the instruments.’
There was a hissing of water upon the fire, from one single drop, that fell with the greatest regularity through the rock sleeve, or chimney.
‘There is one compass, sir,’ admitted the man who was again a convict, ‘that I was carrying in my own saddle-bag.’
‘One compass?’ said Voss. ‘That will be an embarrassment if, for any reason, we are compelled to form ourselves into two parties.’
Because the implications were so insidious, nothing more was said, and he returned to that side of the cave, almost a little alcove, which he shared with Le Mesurier.
In Ralph Angus, compassion for the convict began to struggle with the conventions he had been taught to respect. Always conspicuous for his manliness, he did, however, bring himself to say:
‘I must apologize to you, Judd. I mean, for the behaviour of others.’
Guilt experienced for past behaviour of his own stiffened his already wooden words.
‘Huh,’ spat Turner. ‘To form ourselves into two parties. If there is any question of that, we are with you, Albert. With or without compass. Ain’t we, Ralph?’
Angus did not answer. He did not yet know how far he was prepared to go, and was unhappy about it, although from that moment he was drawn closer to Turner and Judd.
The incident did not develop further, or so it seemed. There were other problems, of which Le Mesurier’s illness was not the least. The sick man was recovering slowly, while remaining weak. He had reached the stage where he could sit up again in clothes that appeared too large, the bones of his hands locked together. He had grown very yellow, and the eyes in his hairy, melted face were become quite visionary, as he stared out from the mouth of the cave upon the world of grey water and the sticks of trees.
Now, from time to time, the rain would lift, literally, he felt, of something so permanent and solid. Then, in the stillness, the grey would blur with green. In the middle of the day the body of the drowned earth would appear to float to the surface; islands were breeding; and a black dust of birds, blowing across the sky, seemed to promise salvation.
Voss, for ever observing his patient, was encouraged one day on seeing the latter attempt to hobble.
‘That is right, Frank,’ he said. ‘It is good that you should make efforts, so that you will be fit to push on with me when the wet season is past.
‘You will?’ he added.
As it had never occurred to Le Mesurier that there might be an alternative, he did not ask for explanations, but answered with a flatness that matched the blue-grey water with which the afternoon was filled.
‘Of course.’
He did not look at Voss, however.
There were occasions, this fever-gutted man suspected, when his leader was not sensible of their common doom, and so, he must see for him, he must feel for him. By now he was able to read the faintest tremor of blood or earth, the recording of which was perhaps his sole surviving reason for existence.
*
Exhausted by the first few steps he had taken, he was quick to drop off that night, and Voss, after he had listened long enough to his companion’s breathing, and watched the other shapes of sleep slowly form around him in the cave, decided at last to examine the notebook. This was done quite simply once the conscience had been overcome, for the book was protruding from a saddle-bag, within easy reach, and unprotected by its sleeping owner. Le Mesurier was lying in a state of fretful innocence, in the congested light from a fire as dull and still as dusty garnets.
Voss took the book. Then, he hesitated, as if about to look in a mirror and discover the deformities he most feared.
Never one to be advised by prudence except spasmodically, he did look, of course, and was at once standing in the terrible arena of childhood, deafened by the clapper of his own heart. These are the poems of a maniac, he protested rather primly, to protect himself. If the book had not been nailed to his hands, he might even have subjected the poet to some act of brutality. Instead, he had to read, one poem in particular which Le Mesurier had, in fact, called Childhood. Under the word was drawn a line so deep it defended like a moat.
Voss read:
When they had opened us with knives, they took out our hearts. Some wore them in their hats, some pressed them to keep for ever, some were eating them as if they had been roses, all with joy, until it was realized the flesh had begun to putrefy. Then they were afraid. They hung their flowers upon a dark tree, quickly, quickly.
As for the children, they break off their tears and put them in the parents’ hands. How the tears of parents flow, their innocence returned. The dead, red flowers go gaily on the water. Beside the river, a white tablecloth is spread to celebrate the feast of children. Everyone is chattering. Bees are bumbling down the golden tunnels. Sweets of honey bribe the children to forget. Sticky mouths no longer care. Children soon forget from whom they have learnt to use the knife.
There is another side of the house on which the pine-trees stand. Contradictory messages arise, some in songs of long, low voices, some in harsh bark. We carve our intentions, but lose the key. So the trees are full of secrets and moss.
It is not known that we shall rise above the trees any afternoon we choose. We are only waiting to pin the calico wings on our backs. Parents and governesses assemble to watch, and some old people, who do perhaps see. We run, and flap, and crow, and rise – one foot? Everyone applauds, and pretends, and disperses, unaware that we have flown above the pointed trees. We enjoy the immense freedom of dreams, in which nobody believes, except as a joke, to share on coming down to breakfast.
The house of nettles is sadder. It is choked with nettles. They are growing high beneath the windows. The plaster is falling from the cornices. In the summer afternoons it rains.
Men and women exchange ideas, and grow exasperated; they cannot lean farther forward, or they would. They accept that bread-and-butter knives do not cut, and have come provided with others, which are waiting in the bedrooms. Have you noticed the veins on the thick, t
hinking necks?
Children are not expected to think, but are allowed to suffer, and rehearse the future, even to practise kisses on the cotton counterpanes. In at the windows floats the scent of hot, wet nettles and the long summer. The yellow dressing-table drawers are smelling of emptiness. We have not aranged our things, who will not be staying long in this house.
O childhood of moonlight and monkey-puzzles, and the solid statues! How solid, I broke off an arm to prove, and the smell of the wound was the smell of gunpowder and frost. Often the footsteps were not mine that fell along the gravel paths, but yew and laurel intervened; other voices would carry my song out of my control; the faces were not the faces I knew. All were turning gravely in the dance, only I was the prisoner of stone.
When I no longer expected, then I was rewarded by knowing: so it is. We do not meet but in distances, and dreams are the distance brought close. The glossy mornings are trampling horses. The rescue-rope turns to hair. Prayer is, indeed, stronger, but what is strong?
O childhood, O illusions, time does not break your chain of coloured handkerchiefs, nor fail to produce the ruffled dove….
During the reading of the poem, Voss hated and resented it. As mad people will turn in the street, and stare, and enter into a second mind, and mingle with the most personal thoughts, and understand, so this poem turned upon the reader, and he was biting his nails to find himself accused.
If he continued to glance through the notebook, and peer at the slabs of dark scribble, on the smudged pages, with the fluffy edges, he no longer did so with enthusiasm. To be perfectly honest, he did not wish to see, but must. The slow firelight was inexorable.
So his breath pursued him in his search through the blurred book. At that hour of night, sound was thin and terrible. Even the sleepers, who would stir, normally, and call to one another, were turned to rock, a dust of pale sleep lying on their rigid forms, of pale brown.
Then Voss found the poem, and was tearing the book apart, the better to see it. This poem had been headed by the poet Conclusion, in the same rather diffident hand, with a deep, defensive line scored underneath. He had written:
I
Man is King. They hung a robe upon him, of blue sky. His crown was molten. He rode across his kingdom of dust, which paid homage to him for a season, with jasmine, and lilies, and visions of water. They had painted his mysteries upon the rock, but, afraid of his presence, they had run away. So he accepted it. He continued to eat distance, and to raise up the sun in the morning, and the moon was his slave by night. Fevers turned him from Man into God.
II
I am looking at the map of my hand, on which the rivers rise to the North-east. I am looking at my heart, which is the centre. My blood will water the earth and make it green. Winds will carry legends of smoke; birds that have picked the eyes for visions will drop their secrets in the crevices of rock; and trees will spring up, to celebrate the godhead with their blue leaves.
III
Humility is my brigalow, that must I remember: here I shall find a thin shade in which to sit. As I grow weaker, so I shall become strong. As I shrivel, I shall recall with amazement the visions of love, of trampling horses, of drowning candles, of hungry emeralds. Only goodness is fed.
Until the sun delivered me from my body, the wind fretted my wretched ribs, my skull was split open by the green lightning.
Now that I am nothing, I am, and love is the simplest of all tongues.
IV
Then I am not God, but Man. I am God with a spear in his side.
So they take me, when the fires are lit, and the smell of smoke and ash rises above the smell of dust. The spears of failure are eating my liver, as the ant-men wait to perform their little rites.
O God, my God, if suffering is measured on the soul, then I am damned for ever.
Towards evening they tear off a leg, my sweet, disgusting flesh of marzipan. They knead my heart with skinny hands.
O God, my God, let them make from it a vessel that endures.
Flesh is for hacking, after it has stood the test of time. The poor, frayed flesh. They chase this kangaroo, and when they have cut off his pride, and gnawed his charred bones, they honour him in ochre on a wall. Where is his spirit? They say: It has gone out, it has gone away, it is everywhere.
O God, my God, I pray that you will take my spirit out of this my body’s remains, and after you have scattered it, grant that it shall be everywhere, and in the rocks, and in the empty waterholes, and in true love of all men, and in you, O God, at last.
When Voss had finished this poem, he clapped the book together.
‘Irrsinn!’ said his mouth.
He was protesting very gutturally, from the back of his throat, from the deepest part of him, from the beginning of his life.
If a sick man likes to occupy himself in this fashion, he decided.
But the sane man could not assert himself enough in the close cave.
He lay down again on his blanket, and was trembling. His mouth and throat were a funnel of dry leather.
I am exhausted, he explained, physically exhausted. That is all.
There remained his will, and that was a royal instrument.
Once during the night she came to him, and held his head in her hands, but he would not look at her, although he was calling: Laura, Laura.
So a mother holds against her breast the head of a child that has been dreaming, but fails to take the dream to herself; this must remain with the child, and will recur for ever.
So Laura remained powerless in the man’s dream.
11
THAT winter two ships of Her Majesty’s Navy, cruising in Southern waters, put in at Sydney for the purpose of refitting, and at once it seemed to the inhabitants that, for a very long time, their lives had been wanting in some important element. Whether commerce or romance, depended upon sex and temper, but many a citizen, walking at the water’s edge, in good nankeen or new merino, did entertain secret hopes, as the vessels rode woodenly upon the accommodating little waves. If one or two professional sceptics, possibly of Irish descent, remarked that Nautilus and Samphire were insignificant and very shabby, nobody listened who did not wish to; moreover, everybody knew that a coat of paint will work wonders, and that the gallant ships were already possessed of those noble proportions and inspiring lines, which confirm one’s faith in human courage and endeavour, as one young lady recorded in her diary.
It was not long before genteel society was on terms of intimate friendship with the officers from these vessels, assuaging its own boredom and nostalgia for Home, by discovering in the strangers the finest qualities of English manhood. Pregnant though she was, Mrs Pringle, for one, could have eaten the commanding officer of Nautilus, with whom the official bond was Hampshire.
‘I find it difficult to speak too highly of him,’ she confided in Mrs Bonner. ‘Such true tact and admirable firmness are seldom found united in one and the same man. Mr Pringle,’ she hastened to add, ‘has quite taken to him.’
‘I am happy to think you have been so fortunate in your acquaintance,’ murmured Mrs Bonner, who had not yet succeeded in meeting any of the visiting officers.
‘Have you received them in your own house?’ she inquired somewhat languidly of Mrs Pringle.
‘On Friday evening, several of them,’ the latter replied. ‘All jolly, yet respectful young men. We prepared a punch cup, and several cold dishes. It was all so quickly arranged, my dear, there was little opportunity to send over for your girls.’
‘On Friday evening,’ said Mrs Bonner, ‘our girls were otherwise engaged. They had been promised a fortnight to the Ebsworths, although, at the last moment, Laura refused to go.’
Then it was Mrs Pringle’s turn to murmur.
‘And how is the baby?’
Mrs Bonner no longer cared for Mrs Pringle, but had decided it would be politic to keep her as a friend.
‘Oh yes, thank you, the baby is well,’ she answered, high and bright, descending with some
skill to a darker key: ‘I wish I could say the same of Laura, who devotes herself to the child so unselfishly, her own health must suffer in the end.’
Mrs Pringle tilted her head in a certain polite way. Although Dear Laura’s Baby had become an institution in their own immediate circle, she was aware that in other quarters unwholesome references frequently were made to Miss Trevelyan’s Child.
So that it was pure magnanimity on the part of Mrs Pringle, when, at a later date, she dispatched Una with Miss Abbey to the Bonners, to suggest a picnic party.
‘At short notice,’ Una had composed, ‘but Mamma did think you might possibly be free.’
They were all seated in the drawing-room – that is to say: Mrs Bonner, determined to disguise her gratitude; Belle, who had barely had time to put up her hair after washing it; Una Pringle, in new gloves; Miss Abbey, a governess in her late thirties; Dr Badgery, surgeon of Nautilus; and a midshipman so shy that nobody had caught his name. Arriving at the Pringles’ on shore leave, the two latter, although not unwilling, had at once been conscripted to escort the ladies on their morning call.
‘On Thursday afternoon, at Waverley,’ Una Pringle continued, to fulfil her duty.
‘Now, you are sure it was Thursday, dear? I cannot remember precisely what Mamma said. I have an idea it could have been Wednesday,’ interrupted Miss Abbey, who would catch thus at a conversation, as it flowed by, and hope to be carried along.
Una Pringle ignored the governess of her younger sisters.
‘Mamma suggests we all gather at our house; then we shall give one another protection on the way.’
‘Oh dear, do you think we shall need it?’ laughed Miss Abbey, and looked at the gentlemen.
She would have liked to make a clever remark, but could not think of one.
‘I mean,’ she said, ‘one no longer meets the ruffians one is promised.’
It was very still in the drawing-room.
Then Mrs Bonner frowned, and sighed, and let it be understood she was engaged in a kind of higher mathematics:
‘Let me see. Thursday?’
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