‘To decide the colour of truth! If I but had Bridget’s conviction!’
The two women were grateful for this humble version of the everlasting attempt. Laura was smiling at Mercy. It was as though they were seated in their own room, or at the side of a road, part of which they had made theirs.
Strangers came and went, of course. Young people, moved by curiosity. An Englishman, a little drunk, who wished to look closely at the schoolmistress and her bastard daughter. A young man with a slight talent for exhibiting himself had sat down at the piano and was reeling off dreamy waltzes, whereupon Mrs de Courcy persuaded the Member of the Legislative Assembly to take a turn, and several youths were daring to drift with several breathless girls.
At one stage, the headmistress began to knead the bridge of her nose. She had, indeed, been made very tired by the episode in the Domain.
The platform had groaned with officials and their wives, to say nothing of other substantial citizens — old Mr Sanderson, who was largely responsible for the public enthusiasm that had subscribed to the fine memorial statue, Colonel Hebden, the schoolmistress who had been a friend of the lost explorer, and, of course, the man they had lately found. All of these had sat listening to the speeches, in the pleasant, thick shade.
Johann Ulrich Voss was by now quite safe, it appeared. He was hung with garlands of rarest newspaper prose. They would write about him in the history books. The wrinkles of his solid, bronze trousers could afford to ignore the passage of time. Even Miss Trevelyan confessed: it is agreeable to be safely dead. The way the seats had been fixed to the platform, tilted back ever so slightly, made everybody look more official; hands folded themselves upon the stomach, and chins sank in, as if intended for repose. The schoolmistress was glad of some assistance towards the illusion of complacency. Thus, she had never thirsted, never, nor felt her flesh shrivel in crossing the deserts of conscience. No official personage has experienced the inferno of love.
So that she, too, had accepted the myth by the time the Premier, still shaky from the oratory prescribed for an historic occasion, pulled the cord, and revealed the bronze figure. Then the woman on the platform did lower her eyes. Whether she had seen or not, she would always remain uncertain, but applause informed her that here was a work of irreproachable civic art.
Soon after this everyone regained solid ground. Clothes were eased, civilities exchanged, and Miss Trevelyan, smiling and receptive, observed the approach of Colonel Hebden.
‘You are satisfied, then?’ he asked, as they were walking a little apart from the others.
‘Oh, yes,’ she sighed. ‘I am satisfied.’ She had to arrange the pair of little silken acorns that hung from the handle of her parasol. ‘Though I do wish you had not asked it.’
‘Our relationship is ruined by interrogation,’ laughed the Colonel, rather pleased with his command of words.
Each recalled the afternoon in Mrs de Courcy’s summer-house.
‘Years ago I was impressed by your respect for truthfulness,’ he could not resist saying, although he made of it a very tentative suggestion.
‘If I am less truthful now, it is owing to my age and position,’ she cried with surprising cynicism, almost baring her teeth at him.
‘No.’ She recovered herself. ‘I am not dishonest, I hope, except that I am a human being.’
Had he made her tremble?
To disguise the possibility, she had begun speaking quickly, in an even, kind voice, referring not so much to the immediate case as to the universal one:
‘Let none of us pass final judgement.’
‘Unless the fellow who has returned from the grave is qualified to judge. Have you not spoken to him?’
As her appearance suggested that she might not have heard, the Colonel added:
‘He appears to share the opinion you offered me at our first meeting: that Voss was, indeed, the Devil.’
Now, Miss Trevelyan had not met the survivor, although old Sanderson, all vague benevolence since time had cast a kinder light upon the whole unhappy affair, had gone so far as to promise him to her. Seated on the platform, listening to the official speeches, she had even been aware of the nape of a neck, somewhere in the foreground, but, deliberately, she had omitted to claim her right.
‘I do not wish to meet the man,’ she said, and was settling her shawl against a cold wind that was springing up.
‘But you must!’ cried Hebden, taking her firmly by the elbow.
Of dreadful metal, he towered above her, with his rather matted, grizzled hair, and burning desire for truth. Her mouth was dry. Was he, then, the avenging angel? So it appeared, as they struggled together.
If anybody had noticed, they would have made an ugly group, and he, of course, the stronger.
‘Leave me,’ she strained, out of her white mouth, ‘I beg of you, Colonel Hebden!’
At that moment, however, old Sanderson, whom no one of any compassion would willingly have hurt, emerged from the group still gathered round the statue, bringing with him a man.
‘Miss Trevelyan,’ said the grazier, smiling with genuine pleasure, ‘I do believe that, after all, I have failed to bring the two of you together, and you the most important.’
So it was come to pass.
Mr Sanderson smiled, and continued:
‘I would like you to meet my friend Judd.’
The leaves of the trees were clapping.
She was faced with an elderly, or old-looking man, of once powerful frame, in the clothes they had provided for him, good clothes, fashionable even, to which he had not accustomed himself. His large hands, in the absence of their former strength, moved in almost perpetual search for some reassuring object or position, just as the expressions were shifting on his face, like water over sand, and his mouth would close with a smile, attempt briefly to hold it, and fail.
‘So this is Judd, the convict,’ said Miss Trevelyan, less harshly than stating a fact, since she must stand on trial with him.
Judd nodded.
‘I earned my ticket-of-leave two years, no, it would be four years before the expedition left.’
All the old wounds had healed. He could talk about them now. He could talk about anything.
His lips parted, Colonel Hebden watched quite greedily. Old Sanderson was bathed in a golden glow of age. Such warmth he had not experienced since the lifetime of his dear wife.
‘Yes, yes,’ he contributed. ‘Judd was a neighbour of mine in the Forties. He joined the expedition when it passed through. In fact, I was responsible for that.’
Miss Trevelyan, whose attention had been engaged by the ferrule of her parasol, realized that she was expected to speak. Judd waited, with his hands hanging and moving. Since his return, he had become accustomed to interrogation by ladies.
‘And were you able to resume your property?’ Miss Trevelyan asked, through her constricted throat.
There was something that she would avoid. She would avoid it to the end. So she looked gravely at the ferrule of the parasol, and continued to interrogate a man who had suffered.
‘Resume?’ asked Judd, managing his tongue, which was round like that of a parrot. ‘No. It was gone. I was considered dead, you know.’
‘And your family?’ the kind woman asked.
‘All dead. My wife, she went first. It was the heart, I think they told me. My eldest boy died of a snakebite. The youngest got some sickness, I forget what.’ He shook his head, which was bald and humble above the fringe of white hair. ‘Anyways, he is passed on.’
The survivor’s companions expressed appropriate sympathy.
But Judd had lived beyond grief. He was impressed, rather, by the great simplicity with which everything had happened.
Then Colonel Hebden took a hand. He could still have been holding the lady by an elbow. He said: