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.’
Mary Hebden sighed, for all the men she knew, or it could have been that she was feeling sick from over-eating. Then the two passengers huddled against each other, in the stuffy atmosphere of oats and chaff that distinguished all vehicles from a livery stable.
‘And what are your plans?’ asked Mrs de Courcy of Colonel Hebden under the weeping elm.
‘I intend to return to Bathurst tomorrow,’ the Colonel volunteered.
‘I am happy to think Amelia and the children will benefit from your consideration,’ Mrs de Courcy said.
‘But shall leave shortly for Brisbane and Jildra. I realize that I did not fulfil my undertakings in those parts.’
‘You realized today. Thanks to Miss Trevelyan. I am jealous.’
‘You have no cause to be. I do not doubt that Miss Trevelyan is a young woman of considerable attainments. Quite beautiful, too. But beauty of an intellectual cast.’
‘Do not tell me!’ cried Mrs dc Courcy in mock rage.
In fact, all emotions must now be simulated, she knew from experience. If their relationship was to endure at all, it must do so on the frail thread of irony.
‘You devil,’ she added.
‘I have heard that word before,’ he laughed, opening his rather craggy face. ‘But, in this instance, its use is unjustified. Truly it is.’
It would have taken a far more serious accusation to quench the high spirits that the prospect of his journey had aroused. The attempts of the schoolmistress to discourage him had acted as a spur, and he had remained in a state of elation ever since. A man of less developed vanity might have inquired more deeply into Miss Trevelyan’s fears. But Colonel Hebden did not. In fact, he would give little further thought to one who could be of no more use to him.
15
FORCED to spend several months on his property at Bathurst in the company of his amiable wife, whose unselfishness tended to make her dull, and his children, who did not notice him at all, Colonel Hebden passed the time, somewhat irritably, in attending to his own affairs, and in dispatching letters to a number of acquaintances who shared his vice, the insatiable desire for perpetual motion through the unpleasanter portions of Australia. Finally, when all arrangements were made, the Colonel began to move north, gathering his party as he went. The company, however, was not fully assembled until they reached Jildra.
Brendan Boyle, who had been informed by Hebden of his intention to continue the search for Voss and who had responded with his usual rather flamboyant generosity, promising a mob of sheep, two native stockmen, and various articles of tackle that he personally would not have been without on such a journey, was waiting on the veranda, bursting out of his trousers, the shirt straining on his hairy navel, when the expedition arrived. The leader and the host had barely exchanged civilities, the members of the exploratory party had scarcely begun to ease their limbs, and the station blacks to enjoy an examination of the strangers’ goods, when Hebden asked anxiously: