Voss

by Patrick White

  ‘You cannot expect a man returned from the bush to be obsessed by information of significance when faced with whipped cream,’ Colonel Hebden replied.

  ‘Yet, you are obsessed,’ said Mrs de Courcy, whom he had intended to please.

  A woman of some intelligence, she had set to work early in life to disguise her share of intellect, out of regard for the exigencies of Society, and a liking for the company of men. Such ruthlessness was almost justified by her triumphs as a hostess, the success of her late husband’s career, to which she had devoted herself unceasingly, and the continued admiration of all gentlemen. If most ladies were guarded, if not actually cold in their relationships with Mrs de Courcy, it suited her, for ladies did not enter into her scheme, except to keep the ball rolling through the hoops of social intercourse.

  ‘Obsessed,’ she repeated, patting a bow of the dress which she could no longer feel suited her.

  ‘I have lost the habit of civilized life,’ explained the Colonel.

  ‘You are in love with the country!’ cried Mrs de Courcy, with deliberate raucousness, making it sound like a lesson a parrot had learnt.

  Today, however, he was not pleased by a display of mere skill.

  ‘If you had been a man, Effie, you might have become an explorer. You are sufficiently tenacious. Your thirst for conquest would have carried you over the worst of actual thirst.’

  ‘Though my character may be nasty enough, as you suggest, I would have become an explorer out of sheer boredom,’ Mrs de Courcy broke in.

  ‘Voss appears to have been inspired.’

  ‘Oh, Voss, Voss, Voss! And noble You? Do not tell me that you are not inspired also!’

  ‘I am a tentative explorer,’ said the Colonel, quite humbly for an imposing man, ‘or less than that, even – one who follows in the tracks of another, not so much to find him alive at the end, as to satisfy curiosity.’

  ‘You are honest,’ cried his companion, ‘and that is why I love you.’

  That you no longer love me, and I am not honest enough to admit, was what she did not add.

  Instead, she said, extending her throat, until it reached the point where youth returns:

  ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  The Colonel expressed gratitude, even though he did not hope to experience surprise.

  ‘Strawberries,’ he said, dutifully.

  ‘Strawberries, certainly. But also a bitter draught. At least, I am told it is bitter by those who know. A young woman who was acquainted with your German. How intimately, those who are close to her refuse to admit. But it is common knowledge that they were conducting a correspondence.’

  ‘This is capital, Effie!’ shouted the Colonel, at last forgetful of the furniture.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Effie. ‘Capital. Then I shall claim my reward.’

  And did.

  Just then, one of the three old servants who had waited on Mrs de Courcy for years came to announce the arrival of the first guests. The mistress was unperturbed, since old Margery, although still able to function so admirably at her duties, was almost deaf and blind, as well as unsurprised.

  ‘Let us go down, then,’ said the hostess to Colonel Hebden, not without glancing moist-eyed at herself in a convenient glass, ‘let us go down and allow the worthy people to demolish what remains.

  ‘The young woman, by the way,’ she thought to add, ‘is under the impression that it is you who have sent for her.’

  ‘If it were I, not you, the situation could be embarrassing.’

  ‘I do not doubt that, in either event.’

  As he followed his cousin, the Colonel was busily lowering his head to avoid cracking it upon the lintels, and in consequence did not attempt to prolong the conversation.

  Guests were arriving all the time. The more established among them stood about between the flower-beds, on the springy lawns, and examined with an exaggerated interest the magnificent shrubs for which Mrs de Courcy’s garden was famed, while others pretended not to eye the tea-tables, which had been set up beneath the natural canopy of a weeping elm. Except for an enormous silver urn, ornamented with shells, wreaths, and mythical figures in a variety of positions, the load of these tables was protected from flies and eyes by nets, so weighted with festoons of little crystal beads that the valleys were green with mystery and the snowy peaks thrillingly exposed. While some of her guests were indulging in the ecstasies of soul that such a garden usually provokes, and others wondered whether they were correctly buttoned or whether to recognize the Joneses, Mrs de Courcy regarded everything as inevitably humorous, weaving in and out, in her expensive dress, refusing to countenance a segregation of the sexes, ladies who would talk bonnets and preserves, or gentlemen who must discuss wool and weather. Such was the skill of the hostess, everyone was soon daringly mixed, and in no time had she organized a game of croquet for the completely inarticulate.

  ‘I cannot bear it if we are a mallet short. Perhaps Mr Rankin will look in the little summer-house behind the tea trees. I see that he is the practical one.’

  Young girls fell to neighing.

  With her experience behind her, and a cool southerly breeze, the hostess could not help but succeed. Simple people, worthy tradesmen and their wives, and sheep-and-bullocky gentlemen from the country, were prevented by their very simplicity from wondering whether Mrs de Courcy might be considered fast, whereas those others who were of the same worldly category as herself were always far too busily engaged to notice. She was accepted, then, through ignorance and by collusion, and should have been satisfied. Yet she would sometimes halt within the frame of the conventions, like some imperious lily and, while eyes admired her for her beads and spangles, know that she would have preferred the summer’s coup de grâce.

  ‘Almost everybody as obedient as one would wish.’ She frowned at the Colonel.

  ‘My dear Effie,’ he laughed, ‘if I am a disappointment to you, it is because I am in some way deficient. You must learn to accept the deficiencies of human beings.’

  ‘There, at least, is your surprise,’ his cousin revealed, giving the most exquisitely tragic inflexions to flat words.

  ‘Why, Mary!’ boomed the Colonel, and had to embrace the vision of his niece.

  The latter had forgotten that agreeable smell peculiar to her uncles, her father, and all acceptable men, and was, in consequence, taken aback. In her embarrassment and pleasure, she was warning him about her good hat.

  ‘What! Grown so old?’ protested Colonel Hebden.

  ‘And Miss Trevelyan, who has so kindly accompanied Mary from her school.’

  Now he did notice the person in the grey dress, whom Mrs de Courcy had summed up – wrongly – at a glance. The Colonel, who was accustomed to walk carefully on approaching nests and waterholes, so as not to break sticks and cause alarm, proceeded to question his niece quite professionally on her scholastic achievements. He would ignore the schoolmistress for the time being.

  Laura Trevelyan was perfectly at home in the environment to which she was no longer expected to belong. There were few by now who recognized her. New arrivals in the Colony, of whom invariably there seemed to be a preponderance, were unaware of her origins, and those who were safely established had too little thought for anything but their own success to point to an insignificant failure. This judgement of the world was received by Laura without shame. Indeed, she had discovered many compensations, for now that she was completely detached, she saw more deeply and more truthfully, and often loved what she saw, whether inanimate objects, such as a laborious plateful of pink meringues, or, in the case of human beings, a young wife striving with feverish elegance to disguise the presence of her unborn child.

  This young woman, arranging stole, gloves, and a little, fringed parasol, did approach the schoolmistress with some defiance, and remark:

  ‘Why, Laura, fancy meeting you. Mamma understood from Mrs Bonner that you had renounced the world.’

  ‘Why, Una,’ Laura replied, ‘if Mrs Pringle unders
tood that I had entered an enclosed order, that was misunderstanding indeed.’

  Then the two friends stood and laughed together. If Mrs McAllister laughed too long, it was because she had always disliked Laura, and Laura had lost in the game of life. Now was the moment for Una to produce her husband, which Una did, as further evidence of her triumph; whereupon Laura recognized the eligible grazier of the picnic at Point Piper. So what more remained for Una Pringle to achieve? Unless the days upon days upon days.

  ‘How happy you must be at Camden,’ Laura said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Una was forced to admit. ‘Although there are still a great many alterations to be made. It is one of those houses. And the white ant, I do believe, is in every sash.’

  Una’s orange giant stood with his fists upon his hips, and grinned. His teeth were broad, and wide-set, which fascinated Laura.

  ‘And lonely,’ continued Una McAllister, closely examining Laura Trevelyan. ‘You would not believe it could be lonely at Camden.’

  Una’s husband almost split his excellent coat.

  ‘You will soon have the baby,’ Laura consoled.

  Una flushed, and mentioned strawberries.

  So her husband followed, with the patience of a man accustomed to coax a mob of sheep through a gateway.

  After that, Laura Trevelyan remained standing, in her grey dress, in the midst of the company, and it appeared as though, for once, Mrs de Courcy had failed, it could have been deliberately, until Colonel Hebden approached, on his long and rather proppy legs, and announced without preamble:

  ‘Miss Trevelyan, I would be most interested to have a few words with you on a certain subject, if you would spare me ten minutes.’

  Knowing that he was to be her torturer, Laura Trevelyan had not looked at Colonel Hebden until now. His face was kind, although its remaining so would perhaps depend on whether he attained his object.

  ‘I do not imagine I shall be able to satisfy your curiosity,’ Miss Trevelyan answered at once, clasping her hands together as they walked away. ‘I had heard that you wished to question me. It would give me great pleasure. But –’

  They were marching rather than walking, and regimented words filled her mouth.

  ‘I do not want to open old wounds, nor intrude upon your private feelings,’ the equally stilted Colonel pursued.

  Although wooden, he continued, nevertheless, to walk firmly towards a little summer-house that he had spied out beforehand, behind some tea trees. The schoolmistress, through necessity, was trying to match his gait, almost like a man. She was rather dark, but pleasant.

  ‘I am grateful for your concern in the matter,’ she was saying. ‘But I assure you your delicacy is misplaced. Mr Voss was an acquaintance of a few days, indeed, no more than a few hours, if one stops to consider.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Colonel, putting his hand in the small of her back to guide her into the summer-house. ‘It is natural, Miss Trevelyan, to form impressions even in a few hours. But, if you are unwilling to share those impressions, who am I to force you?’

  They continued to stand, although there were some benches and a small, rustic table. The furniture moved grittily as the man and woman jostled it.

  ‘But I know so very little,’ Miss Trevelyan protested.

  If that little is not everything, the Colonel felt.

  They were sitting down. They were putting their hands in front of them on the table.

  ‘And besides,’ she said, ‘if my memories are partly of an unpleasant nature, I do not care to tell them of somebody who is, or, rather, who could be, dead. I do know, however, that Mr Voss had some very undesirable, even horrible qualities.’

  ‘That is of the greatest interest,’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Otherwise,’ she said, ‘I do not believe that he would have been a man.’

  If it had been Mrs de Courcy who had spoken, the Colonel would have understood that this was the point at which to make a joke.

  But the schoolmistress was moistening her lips.

  ‘Such horrible qualities,’ she added, ‘one wonders whether one has not interpreted them according to what one knows of oneself. Oh, I do not mean what one knows. What one suspects!’

  She was very agitated. Although still a young woman, and beautiful, she had aged, he realized, and recently. Her dark eyes were filling the little summer-house. They were brimming and swimming.

  ‘Do you consider the unfortunate qualities of which you speak might have grated on the men under his command and weakened his hold as a leader?’

  She was looking about her. Now she was caught. The little summer-house was most skilfully constructed, of closely plaited twigs. It had a deserted smell.

  She could not answer him, nor look, not even at his bony hands. The silence was stretching. Then, when it had almost broken, she shuddered, and cried out:

  ‘You would cut my head off, if letting my blood run would do you any good.’

  ‘It is not for my sake. It is for Mr Voss.’

  ‘Mr Voss is already history.’

  ‘But history is not acceptable until it is sifted for the truth. Sometimes this can never be reached.’

  She was hanging her head. She was horribly twisted.

  ‘No, never,’ she agreed. ‘It is all lies. While there are men, there will always be lies. I do not know the truth about myself, unless I sometimes dream it.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I know?’ asked the Colonel keenly. ‘About Voss? Or are you not sufficiently interested in the fate of a mere acquaintance?’

  ‘For all your kindness, you are the cruellest,’ she said, looking at the table.

  ‘On my travels I spent several nights at Jildra Station, the property on the Darling Downs from which the expedition started out. Mr Boyle, the owner, was helpful, but unreliable, owing to his inordinate liking for rum. Two blackfellows from Jildra accompanied Voss to the west. One, an old man, returned soon after setting out. The second reached the station, how long afterwards I am unable to calculate owing to Boyle’s vagueness, but certainly a considerable time. The old man, Dugald, talked to this boy, who seemed to be in a state of perpetual mental distress, even unhinged, in Boyle’s opinion. Boyle questioned Dugald, who professed to have learnt from the lad that a mutiny had taken place. Then the boy – Jackie, I think his name was….’

  ‘Jackie,’ said Laura Trevelyan.

  The Colonel frowned at his audience for the interruption, and continued.

  ‘Jackie wandered away from Jildra. He returns on and off, but his movements and behaviour are incalculable. I would have questioned Dugald personally, but was informed that the old native had died a few weeks before my arrival at the station.’

  Colonel Hebden, who was accustomed to tearful women, had become conscious of a dry, burning misery. He did not look at Miss Trevelyan, however.

  ‘Another fact of interest. Some time after the apparent disappearance of the expedition, a tribe of aboriginals, driven eastward by drought, put in at Jildra, were entertained by the station natives, and fed by the owner. On one occasion, it appears, the visitors held a corroboree, in the course of which they enacted a massacre of horses. Again, Boyle, who was almost continually in his cups, could not provide me with satisfying details.’

  In the silence the two people listened to the pricking of the tea-tree walls.

  ‘What of Jackie?’ Laura Trevelyan said.

  She did not ask. She was too heavy. Her intonation was one of statement, rather.

  ‘You know,’ said the Colonel, ‘that is where I have failed. I will go back. You have convinced me, Miss Trevelyan, that I should. Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she begged. ‘Do not go back. They are dead. It is over. Let them be. We suffered enough, all of us.’

  ‘Of all those men, some could have survived. Jackie did. And we must not forget the mutineers. However blameworthy their behaviour, we cannot abandon them, poor devils.’

  Miss Trevelyan bit her mouth.

  ‘Voss could have been the
Devil,’ she seemed to remember, ‘if at the same time he had not resembled a most unfortunate human being.’

  How unfortunate, the Colonel saw, now that the pride of this young woman had crumbled into a distorted pity. For a man, he was extraordinarily interested in women. He had always been interested rather than in love, except in the case of his wife, and there his love was, perhaps, more a mingling of ‘appeased convention and affectionate respect.

  But he could not continue to look at the schoolmistress, waiting for her to resume her shell, nor would words of comfort have been other than clumsy, so he simply said:

  ‘I am sorry. Perhaps you would rather I left you.’

  She refused his offer, however, saying:

  ‘One must resist the impulse to hide in corners.’

  Then she got up, smoothing her rather suitable dress of plain grey.

  As they walked between the trees towards the guests, she continued to tremble, and Mrs de Courcy, who had been expecting them, came forward looking anxious.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked of Miss Trevelyan, in accents that expressed sympathy, while her face was searching for some clue.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Laura replied, but gratefully.

  Nobody could be ungrateful to anyone as beautiful and condescending as Mrs de Courcy.

  There was soon no reason to remain at the party. The luxurious tea-tables had begun to look derelict, and little Mary Hebden, running hot and sticky amongst the guests, had become, regrettably, a nuisance.

  At one old gentleman, who had been entertaining her by knotting his handkerchief into a variety of clever shapes, she shouted at last:

  ‘I could push you over if I liked. I am stronger than you.’

  So that her governess decided to remove her. In doing so, and in thanking Mrs de Courcy for the pleasure her charge had experienced, Miss Trevelyan omitted to take leave of Colonel Hebden.

  ‘Did you like my uncle?’ asked Mary, almost as soon as they were seated in the carriage.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Trevelyan. ‘He was extremely agreeable. And kind.’