The party that was approaching, and of which the horses’ flanks were shining with a splendid light, forelocks flirting with the breeze of motion, rings and links of accoutrements jingling and glancing, nostrils distended with expectation, and blowing foam, was also of some importance, it began to appear. As they came on, sailors’ eyes took the opportunity to observe a gentleman and two ladies, and farther back, an officer in scarlet, managing his mount with enormous virtuosity. If his horse was strong, the officer was stronger. It was not clear what the latter’s intentions were, but his performance was accomplished.
One of the ladies, young and pretty, too, in expensive habit, reined back in a glare of dust.
‘Tom!’ she called. ‘Oh, do be careful, Tom!’
She spoke with a coaxing warmth, without a trace of annoyance, in the voice of one who was still in love.
Nor did the officer quite swear, but answered in tones of curbed exasperation, vibrating with a manly tenderness:
‘This is the hardest mouth in all New South Wales!’
Drawing down the corners of his own, ruddy, masculine mouth, he jerked with all his strength at the snaffle.
They continued to advance.
There was the brick-coloured, elderly gentleman, swelling on his freshly soft-soaped saddle. His well-made calves controlled his solid hack. His hat was of the best beaver, and a firm fistful of reins proclaimed authority. The gentleman was looking about him from under indulgent lids, at the ship, and at those menial yet not uncongenial beings who were engaged in loading her – such was the frankly democratic bonhomie of the gentleman in the high hat. Years of sun had made him easier. Or was it the first suspicion that he might not be the master?
They came on.
A little to one side, and indifferent to her black mare, whose brilliant neck and head were raised at the tumbled wharfside scene, rode the second of the young ladies. She was singularly still upon her horse, as if she hoped in this way to remain unnoticed, whereas it did but attract attention.
At least, it was to this one that the eyes of the more inquisitive sailors and labourers returned from devouring the details which they understood. All the other figures were of their own flesh and thought. This one, though she did raise her face and smile guardedly at the sun, or life, acted according to some theory of bounty, or because it was time to do so. The men were frowning at her, not in anger, but in concentration, as they picked at warts on their skins, and at lice in their hair, or on other familiar parts of them. They were unsuspectingly afraid of what they could not touch. The young woman, leaping the gunnel on her black horse, could easily have surprised them, and inflicted wounds.
But at the same time, this girl – she was not above twenty, or leastways, little more – appeared to hesitate in some respects, for all the cold confidence of her rather waxy skin. She would not speak easily, as ladies were taught in all circumstances to do. The stiff panels of her black habit were boarding her up.
‘It is a grand sight, Laura,’ said the stout gentleman, less for his niece than for himself.
‘Nobody, I think, could fail to be impressed by these ships,’ replied the dutiful girl.
How insipid I am, she felt, and bit her pale lip. It was no consolation to remember that fire of almost an inspired kindling would burn in her at times; it is the moment, unfortunately, that counts. So she began secretly to torture her handful of reins, and the little crop that she held in the same hand, and which was a pretty though silly thing, with head of mother-o’-pearl, that she carried because it had been given, and she cherished the memory of the donor, an old man whom she had not seen since her childhood. But that it was a useless sort of whip, she had known for several years.
‘That one is a sour-faced lass,’ observed the sailor who had spoken to Palfreyman.
‘I have not got your eyes, Dick. I cannot see good,’ said his mate. ‘She is a lady, though.’
‘Sour-faced is sour-faced. There is no difference if it be a lady.’
‘There is, Dick, you know. It is somethink that you cannot put yer hand on.’
‘I would not have somethun that I cannot touch.’
‘You would not be invited.’
‘I am for the rights of the common man,’ grumbled the sailor who had dreamed the dream.
‘All right, Dick,’ said his mate. ‘I do not gainsay your rights, only there are some corners into which they will not penetrate. This lady will have some gentleman, with which she will fit together like the regular dovetails. It is the way you are made.’
‘Ha-ha!’ laughed the dreamer. ‘It comes down to that, though.’
‘It comes down?’ said his mate, whom the habit of thought and a lifetime on the open sea had raised from native simplicity to a plane of simple understanding. ‘You are like a big cat, Dick. And that is just what ladies do not take to, some big stray tom smoodgin’ round their skirts. Ladies like to fall in love. This one, you can see, has done no different.’
‘How in love, though? How do you know? When you cannot see furr, and her ridin’ down on a horse, at a distance, for the first time. Eh?’
‘It is in their nature, and what they do to pass the time, when they are not readin’ books, and blowin’ into the fingers of their gloves. I have seen ladies in windows. I have watched um writin’ letters, and puttin’ on their extry hair. In those circumstances, Dick, you do get to know whatever it is they are up to.’
‘Well,’ decided Dick, ‘you are a sly one, after all. And lookin’ in at windows.’
The cavalcade, which had crossed the white and glaring space before the wharf, was reining in the other side of such crates and cargo stuff as had not yet been loaded, amongst the straggling groups of early spectators, men who had taken off their coats in the warm sun, and their women who were wearing everything. The riders drew to a standstill, and were exchanging politenesses with the ornithologist, who was by now arrived at their stirrup-irons.
‘I can imagine your emotions, Palfreyman, on such an occasion,’ said the merchant.
How people act or feel on specific occasions had been reduced for Mr Bonner to the way in which he had been told people do act and feel. Within this rather rudimentary, if rigid, structure of behaviour, he himself did also behave with jolly or grave precision, according to rule. For such souls, the history primers and the newspapers will continue to be written.
Now he was enjoying the motions suited to the occasion, and although he took it for granted that others must be similarly moved, he would not really have cared if they were not. His own feelings were so positive they did not require reinforcing.
Palfreyman, who had opened his mouth a couple of times, could not find sufficiently innocent words.
‘It is too soon,’ he began at last, but left off.
The merchant, however, was not waiting on answers.
‘Only the wind is needed,’ he said anxiously. ‘There is no wind. Or not to speak of.’
While his cobby horse kept him revolving, he was able to consider all quarters of the compass.
‘I am told we may expect the change at three o’clock,’ Palfreyman contributed, how unnecessarily, he himself knew.
‘The change? The wind,’ recollected the merchant. ‘Oh, yes. The brickfielder commonly gets up round three o’clock of an afternoon.’
And at once, he began to shrug his shoulders, as if his excellent coat did not fit, or else it was some other physical discomfort, of rheumatism perhaps.
‘Where is Voss, though?’ he asked, looking about him in hopes of not seeing.
‘Mr Voss is below.’ Now Palfreyman had no intention of being disloyal, but did smile. ‘He is about some business of seeing that the equipment is safely stowed.’
‘In a battle between German precision and German mysticism,’ laughed Lieutenant Radclyffe with kindly unkindness. ‘Wonder which will win.’
Battles of his own were still fresh, although he was not thinking at that moment of his conversation with Laura Trevelyan at the dinner-pa
rty. He would forget the causes of his suffering while continuing to suffer. He was like a man in his sleep, who will lunge out at an actual mosquito, but return always to his more convincing dream. Still, the mosquito continues to buzz, and if, for Tom Radclyffe, Laura was that mosquito, by some calculation of the sleeping man, Voss was the sting.
So he must take steps to protect himself.
‘When Voss is concerned,’ the Lieutenant laughed, ‘I will put my money on the clouds of theory rather than the knife-edge of practice.’
‘I have to admit there have been few signs of method,’ blurted the merchant with frightful daring, though he did not look over his shoulder.
It began to seem terrible to Palfreyman that Voss should be the subject of criticism. If he himself criticized, he did so in private, and in a state of some considerable distress.
‘His methods are not those of other men, perhaps,’ his principles forced him to say.
How dull it is when people cease to talk about things, sighed Belle Bonner, whose glance had begun to stray, and did seize most sensuously on the sight of a red apple from which a little boy was tearing the flesh with noisy bite.
‘No,’ said Mr Bonner, realizing his slip. ‘He is different from other men. How different, only time will show. I am encouraged that you are confident, Palfreyman. It justifies my own initial confidence in Mr Voss.’
Palfreyman was sorry for the merchant, who chewed beef more happily than words.
‘In any case,’ said the man on foot, who should have been at a disadvantage, ‘Mr Voss has every confidence in himself, and that is the chief necessity.’
This more or less brought the discussion to a close, which was as well, for several spectators looked as if they might learn to interpret the moon-language that was being spoken. Mr Bonner dismounted and, after giving the reins of his horse to the subordinate Palfreyman to hold, soon restored his spirits to the full by going about and looking at actual objects. The rich man glowed to find himself once more in possession of the physical world.
Laura Trevelyan, who had listened to the conversation, was grateful that the rather inconspicuous, she had thought even characterless ornithologist, with whom she had never exchanged more than half a dozen necessarily polite words, had been the champion of the man whom, on the whole, in spite of her intentions, yes, she despised. Now she wanted desperately, she felt, to talk to the German’s friend, in spite of the German himself, purely, she told herself, out of admiration for moral strength. So she waited upon an opportunity.
This came quickly, but not without humiliation. It might have been expected, she decided later, of anyone foolish enough to expose herself to a scene as humiliating as that which had taken place so recently in the garden. Now this other, certainly minor, but still distasteful incident occurred.
The elegant riding-crop that Laura Trevelyan was carrying in her hand, fell, by purest accident as it happened, though to any observer it must have appeared the most obvious design, at the feet of Mr Palfreyman, who bent down, of course, and in a rush of blood, and all politeness, returned the little whip to its owner.
‘I see the handle is of some Eastern design,’ Palfreyman remarked.
He made it very quickly into something of scientific interest.
‘Yes. Indian, I believe. It was given to me when I was a child by a sea-captain, an acquaintance of my uncle’s, whose ship would sometimes call at Sydney.’
The young woman was looking most intently at the object of her shame, but could not concentrate enough. Hot, insufferable waves were surging in her contracted throat. Moreover, she could not remember with clearness her motives for wishing to speak, however discreetly, to this man.
‘It is a pity to use such a thing, and perhaps break it,’ Palfreyman said. ‘Would it not be seen to greater advantage in a cabinet?’
Sensing that the young woman was emotionally upset, he treated the riding-crop with exaggerated solicitude, which made her sorrier for herself, and him to wonder what secrets she was withholding from him. There was no reason to suppose that he was of greater importance to her than he had been on the night of the party. He would not allow himself to believe that she was in any way using him. Palfreyman, who was a man of some intuition, did not understand the female sex, in spite of his respect for it.
Nothing was altogether satisfactory, Laura felt, who continued to look at her little whip. She was no longer pale, however, and her cheeks and mouth had filled out, with self-pity, it could have been.
‘It is not of great use,’ she said, ‘and not of exceptional beauty. I no longer give it much thought, except to bring it. From habit, you know. In the beginning it pleased me because it was something unusual, and foreign. I liked to think I might visit foreign places, such as the one from which my present had come. I would dream about the Indies. Mauritius, Zanzibar. Names should be charms, Mr Palfreyman. I used to hope that, by saying some of them often enough, I might evoke reality.’
All the while her black mare was pawing up the dust, some of which, she noticed from a distance, was settling on the hem of her skirt.
‘But I did not succeed. Most probably I shall never travel. Oh, I am content, of course. Our life is full of simple diversions. Only I envy the people who enjoy the freedom to make journeys.’
‘Even this journey? Of dust, and flies, and dying horses?’
The young woman, whose hand appeared to be rejecting the glare, or some particles of grit that had gathered on her face, said slowly:
‘Of course, I realize. I am not purely romantic.’
She laughed in rather a hard manner.
‘There will be dangers, I know. Won’t there?’
She began to search him, he saw, as if she suspected a knife might be hidden somewhere. A knife intended for herself.
‘On any expedition of this nature, there are always dangers,’ Palfreyman answered dryly.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Her own lips, that other emotions had been filling, were grown thin, and dry.
‘Oh, I would welcome dangers,’ she said. ‘One must not expect to avoid suffering. And the chance is equal for everyone. Is that not so?’
‘Yes,’ he said, wondering.
‘Then’ – she laughed a hard laugh – ‘if it is all equal.’
But Palfreyman was not convinced by what he heard and saw.
‘Though I do not care to think about the horses,’ she admitted, patting her mare’s neck. ‘It is different for men. Even a man of little or no religious faith. He creates his own logic.’
She spoke with such force of feeling, of contempt, or tenderness, that her hand was trembling on the horse’s skin. Palfreyman observed the stitching on her glove.
‘And is, therefore, less to be pitied,’ she said or, rather, begged.
Remembering a contentment she had experienced in the garden either from illumination or exhaustion, after the daemon had withdrawn from her, the dry mouth of any dying man was a thing of horror.
The girl’s lips, in spite of her youth, were dry and cracked, Palfreyman noticed with surprise.
Then the world of light was taking possession, the breeze becoming wind, and making the dust skip. The whole shore was splintering into grit and mica, as down from the town several equipages drove, with flashing of paint and metal, and drew near, bringing patrons or sceptics, and their wives, in clothes to proclaim their wealth and, consequently, importance.
So that Palfreyman and Miss Trevelyan were reduced to a somewhat dark eddy on the gay stream of trite encounters and light laughter that had soon enveloped them. They looked about them out of almost cavernous eyes, before Palfreyman could conform. He was the first, of course, because less involved. He suspected he would not become involved with any human being, but was reserved as a repository for confidences, until the final shattering would scatter all secrets into the dust. He looked at the hair of the young woman where it was gathered back smoothly, though not perfectly, from those tender places in front of the ears, and was sad
dened.
‘Here are your friends,’ he said, and smiled, twitching the rein of the horse he was holding. ‘I must leave you to them. There are one or two things that need my attention.’
‘Friends?’ she repeated, and was rising out of her dark dream. ‘I know nobody very well. That is, of course, we have very many acquaintances.’
She was looking about her out of her woken eyes.
Then she noticed the sad ones of the small man who was fidgeting on foot, and who had prevailed at last upon a lad to take the rein of her uncle’s horse.
‘I am most grateful to you,’ she said, ‘for our conversation. I shall remember it.’
‘Has it told you anything?’ he asked lightly.
It was easy now that he was going.
‘Not,’ she said, ‘not in words.’
Now she was become too wooden to struggle any further in the effort to express herself. She seemed altogether humble and contrite, small, even hunched, she who had been proud, on her powerful horse.
‘Laura,’ cried Belle, from the back of her old, gentle gelding, ‘the Wades are here, and the Kirbys, and Nelly and Polly McMorran. Poor Nelly has sprained her ankle, and will not come down from the carriage.’
Belle Bonner was looking and looking, drinking up the crowd with her eyes, that were always thirsty for people with whom she was slightly acquainted.
‘And here is Mr Voss himself,’ Lieutenant Radclyffe announced. ‘He has shaken the moths out of those whiskers for the occasion.’
Laura did turn then, too suddenly, for it alarmed her horse into springing sideways. But she was moulded to it by her will, Palfreyman saw, and she possessed, besides, an excellent pair of hands.
The Lieutenant heard, but did not interpret the long, agonized hiss of breath.
‘Sit her, Laura!’ he laughed.
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