So, now, the young grazier knew that he must ingratiate himself also with the hateful, the unfeeling, worst of all, the superior Judd, whose back it was ahead.
‘Judd!’ he called, lifting up his voice from the depths where it lay. ‘Judd, I have a suggestion to make.’
Judd neither answered, nor turned, although it was evident that he was waiting to receive.
Angus rode, or forced his horse almost level with the man who had become his leader.
‘Let us open the veins of one of these horses that are almost done. And wet our lips. Would it not be an idea?’
Judd did not answer.
Angus felt relieved that he was not quite level with the convict, and could fall back, bumping on his iron saddle, he who had once been a fine figure on a horse. In his mouth he could taste the clotting of disgust.
But, now that he rode alone again, the young man could have cried for the distance that separated him from Judd.
As they were approaching an outcrop of rock, an event in time such as these relics of human life seldom experienced now, Turner, who was in the rear, felt that a great weight had begun to drag him down. Magnificently, cruelly salient rocks, glassy-sharp, he knew he was not intended to reach them. So he threw up his sticks of hands, and was falling, falling. Nothing could have stayed him, except, perhaps, a suspension of personal destiny. Even so, when he struck the ground, which he did very lightly, on account of his poor condition — no umbrella, in fact, could have landed lighter — he set up a wildly importunate shrieking.
‘Save me, you beggars!’ Turner shrieked. ‘You devils! You are not leaving me to die?’
His bowels were protesting at the last injustice humanity would inflict upon him. Then he lay, spread out, a thing of dried putrescence and the scars of boils. His skin was grinning.
The rocks now became a most desirable goal for the two survivors, though what they would achieve by satisfaction of that desire was not at all clear. With terrible slowness, the horses approached their destination. The riders’ breath rose in a stench of almost mystical intensity. There was some possibility, of course, that Judd might open the cupboard of the rock, and step inside, to find himself at last. But Ralph Angus was haunted by a fear that he might not know how to die, when it came to the moment, in a manner befitting a gentleman.
Naturally he could not expect reassurance or advice from the convict on such a matter. Moreover, they were already treading upon the outer defences of the citadel, where the young landowner’s horse stumbled, and he half jumped free, half was flung out of the saddle, to slide down the infernal incline of the first molten pyramid. Arrived at its base, he lay, and when he had recovered sufficiently, which he was allowed to do, began to knock his head against the soothing rock. So the great gong boomed in his ear and Ralph Angus died, as young ladies of his own class offered him tea out of Worcester cups. Deliciously their fingers of rose and lilac braided him up in their possessive hair. They smothered him, and mothered him, until, at the last, he was presented as a swaddled baby. In this, his beard could have caused doubts, but he had parted from it: there it was, sprouting from the sand, independently, like a plant.
Judd now occupied the desert.
If the convict was taking longer to die, it was because of his great physical resources, and because he was determined to find some shade.
After slithering from the back of his horse, tearing his papery hands on several buckles, he had begun to shamble round the rocks. On this incalculable journey, which he was accomplishing in the manner of a surprised orang-outang, looking, and swaying, blinded by fatigue and mica, he was mumbling continually:
‘A little piece of shade. A little piece of shade.’
Stumbling.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he sighed.
He did not pause to consider whether his companions were already dead, let alone ponder over their way of dying, because death is such an absorbing matter; his mind could only contend with his own. That he would die now, he was fairly confident. Nor was he afraid at the prospect. It seemed the only right end to his plain, practical life.
If only God would take him at once into His rocky bosom. He did earnestly pray for this, who had in his time seen animals lie squirming, and men too.
Miraculously, he had found a little shade, very thin, against his own monument, and when he had got down, into the shadow of the rock, making himself as acceptable as he could, then he ventured:
‘If it is your will, Lord, let me die now.’
Two horses still stood drooping in the sun as the man lay beneath his eyelids, but horses, he remembered, could take a long time, then go off with very little fuss.
*
All night long the hoofs of horses were stumbling back and forth.
In the early hours, while a moon still lay upon the muddy surface of the waterhole, Colonel Hebden awoke, breaking a particularly horrible dream, of which he could not remember the details. Since he had decided to abandon his mission, it was only natural that he should await somewhat anxiously the approach of daylight, and with it the opportunity to inform his companions of his intention. The morning finally came, and it was with obvious relief and delight that the members of the expedition found they were of one mind. To none had it occurred that others might have been harbouring the same secret thoughts. So that animal spirits were let loose, and there was much laughter and joking as these hitherto solitary individuals emerged from their isolation, to make plans for a hopeful future, while consuming their normal breakfast of muddy tea, dusty damper, and splintery strips of dried beef.
When the two aboriginals had brought in the hobbled horses, which had struggled back as always in the direction from which they had come, it did not take long to prepare for departure. Only Colonel Hebden himself gave one last look to westward, and at those inhospitable rocks in the near distance. Perhaps the fact that they were the only feature in the landscape made them most terrible.
So the expedition turned back.
That he had failed, was, of course, obvious to the Colonel, but he did not altogether blame himself. He blamed the boy Jackie, who had become, because of his elusiveness, the key to all secrets. Trailing back with his party in the direction of Jildra, Colonel Hebden’s private resolve was eventually to find Jackie, or to ‘apprehend’, as he noted that night in his journal.
He remained unsatisfied, however. If he had but known — there was a great deal that Colonel Hebden did not know; it was almost as if there had been a conspiracy against him — if he had but known, Death had just apprehended Jackie, crossing a swamp, during a thunderstorm, at dusk. The boy had not attempted to resist. He lay down, and was persuaded to melt at last into the accommodating earth, all but his smile, which his tight, white, excellent teeth showed every sign of perpetuating.
16
IN the absence of its present owners, the Parburys, on a pleasure voyage to Europe, the Radclyffes had taken the old house for at least six months, so that the children might benefit by the sea air and their mother enjoy such distractions as Sydney had to offer. So the whole household was transplanted — maids, nurses, governesses, a selection of grooms, the canaries, which otherwise would have been neglected, and Mrs Radclyffe’s favourite pug. Mr Radclyffe, who was grown rather red and fleshy, although still most personable, did not allow the management of his property at Merivale to prevent him paying occasional visits to his family. He derived great satisfaction from their sojourn in the house at Potts Point, and would entertain the children with humorous, not to say satirical reminiscences of the life lived there when it had belonged to their grandparents, twenty years before. But Mrs Radclyffe was divided in her feelings.