If at this point silence seemed to fall in the lesser parlour, it could have been because the chaplain walked out of the garden, across the veranda flags, past the open shutters, and into the room, unannounced. Her attention was necessarily distracted by the presence of Mr Cottle, a small man, bright-lipped, eager-eyed, perhaps not entirely happy in the honorary tunic which had displaced his frock, but which did not disguise an abundant spiritual energy. The nervous cocking of his head and plaiting and unplaiting of fingers failed to suggest that the rebuffs he had received would deter him from continuing to exercise that energy in the rescue and cure of souls.
‘Mrs Roxburgh!’ He smiled, and if his smile too, was nervous, he had fired his first, tricky shot in a siege by enthusiasm. ‘I believe — according to my wife — that you and I come, more or less, from the same part of the Old Country.’ The dimple in a shaven, pointed chin appealed to her out of its blue surrounds.
Poor Mr Cottle, he was so small, his army boots were too large for him, his tunic inadequately patched where the right elbow had worn through (only vaguely could she recollect a small, but eager wife as one of Mrs Lovell’s morning callers).
‘From which part?’ it was Mrs Roxburgh’s duty to inquire.
‘From Somerset — Withycombe, to be precise.’
‘Oh,’ she replied, and with a sad look which doubted his credentials, ‘there’s the river between us. You are from England.’ She laughed, not unkindly, but to dispel any illusions he might have about their consanguinity. ‘I was born to poor country, and perhaps for that reason take more than usual notice of pastures. I admired your fat fields, Mr Cottle, as I drove with Mr Roxburgh, after our marriage, into Gloucestershire.’ Again she smiled amiably enough, and the chaplain grew dewy with relief, if not actual gratitude.
‘I hope you will not be disinclined to listen,’ Mr Cottle was becoming every instant more nervously ardent, ‘if I remind you of the comfort your faith could bring — in a bereavement which the circumstances must have made doubly painful.’
Mrs Roxburgh lowered her eyes.
‘Others have clothed and fed you since what all of us see as your miraculous escape. I would offer you the Gospels,’ Mr Cottle patted his pocket to give his statement shape and substance, ‘and an invitation from your fellow believers to join them in bearing witness this Sunday, and any other on which you find yourself at Moreton Bay.’
‘Oh,’ Mrs Roxburgh moaned, ‘I don’t know what I any longer believe.’
‘I can’t accept that your lapse in faith is more than a temporary backsliding,’ Mr Cottle asserted, and ventured to add, ‘that of a truly Christian soul.’
‘I do not know, Mr Cottle, whether I am true, leave alone Christian,’ Mrs Roxburgh murmured.
The chaplain was halted.
‘If I was given a soul, I think it is possibly lost,’ she said.
Mr Cottle appeared to poise himself on the balls of his feet inside his large-size army boots. ‘If that is the case, I suggest you might be recovered for the faith here in our Moreton Bay communion.’
Mrs Roxburgh confessed, ‘I was never able to live up to all that others expected of me.’
‘Humility has its peculiar rewards, as you will realize if you join us. It will rejoice your heart only to hear the men doing justice to the hymns.’
‘Have you a church at the settlement? I’ve not noticed one on my walks.’
‘No,’ he told her, ‘we haven’t, as yet. Our services are held in a hall at the prisoners’ barracks.’
‘I could hardly worship under the eyes of prisoners, some of them condemned for life.’
‘You would not see them, Mrs Roxburgh. You would sit at the front of the congregation, with the Commandant and Mrs Lovell and the officers of the garrison. The prisoners are ushered in after the arrival of the official party, and are seated at the rear of the hall, where the guards keep a close watch on them. You will have nothing to fear, I assure you.’
‘Only my conscience, and that can be more terrifying than any unseen criminal.’
The chaplain’s lips moved wordlessly until he managed, ‘In case you might find it more to your liking, I ought to mention a small unconsecrated chapel built by an unfortunate individual with whom you are already acquainted — Pilcher of Bristol Maid, now employed at the Commissariat. Soon after his arrival here, he started working, in his own time and with his own hands, to build this chapel, which some might call a folly. It is not commendable as architecture, but I do not doubt the sincerity of the builder’s intention. It might appeal to you, Mrs Roxburgh.’ His eye grew hectic as he thought he might have penetrated this Cornishwoman’s opacity and reached the quietist inside.
But Mrs Roxburgh said, ‘I would not care to break in upon Mr Pilcher’s prayers.’
‘It can be arranged, if you wish. He’ll be flattered to feel you take an interest in him and his creation.’
Mrs Roxburgh smiled, but her expression had more of sadness in it. For a moment, but only a moment, Mr Cottle feared he might have floundered out of his depth. Then his faith flung him a lifeline, and he sprang to, and stationed himself in the centre of the carpet, determined to effect the rescue of a fellow being bent on spiritual immolation.
‘Mrs Roxburgh,’ he announced, ‘I am going to ask you to join me in a short prayer. Let me but guide you, and like many others, you will find that Jesus is expecting you.’
Mrs Roxburgh sat looking petrified. ‘I’ve forgotten the language!’ her stone lips eventually ejected.
Now that the spirit was working in him the evangalist was not to be discouraged. He had got down upon his knees, from where his military boots, the best fit the Commissariat could provide, looked more noticeably roomy, his fluttered eyelids whiter and more exposed in their closure.
Still seated, her hands on her sash, Mrs Roxburgh could feel herself looking desperately brutish.
But the chaplain had begun to pray, ‘Our Lord and Maker — you who have shown mercy to one whose life was most grievously threatened, lighten I pray you, a heavy heart, and spare the soul its torments real or imagined …’
Suddenly it was the chaplain who found himself most grievously threatened: the other side of his devout eyelids the Cornishwoman had started to scream.
‘What — yes, it is! Don’t let them, for God’s sake! They’ll flay the skin off ’is back. They’ll beat the soul out of ’n — and that’s worse, a thousand times, than killing a man!’
Still on his knees, Mr Cottle had opened his eyes, to see the woman who was also Mrs Roxburgh screeching like a peacock in Mrs Lovell’s lesser parlour; while out of the distance, from across the creek, through the humid ranks of lemons, shaddocks, citrons and guavas, the voice of a human being answered or appealed in such unearthly tones the chaplain might not have realized had his intended convert not drawn his attention to them.
‘Go!’ she screamed. ‘Do! Do! We can — surely? Oh, we must!’
The chaplain could feel her nails eating into the wrist she had torn from its prayerful attitude. Her insistence allowed him little dignity as he tottered to his feet in his wretched boots.
‘Dear Mrs Roxburgh,’ his voice trembled from arriving at the upright in double time, ‘this is a penal settlement for hardened criminals. Captain Lovell is humane by comparison with his predecessor. But punishment must be administered, in certain cases, when it is due.’
He could feel the blood trickling down his wrist where she had siezed him.