It appeared that he was fascinated by the insect, glittering in its life with all the colours of decomposition, and that he had barely attended to the words of Voss.
The latter was glad, but not glad enough. He would have liked to be quite certain, not from any weakness in his own armour, but from his apparent inability to undermine his companion’s strength. Naturally it was unpleasant to realize this.
But it was only a matter of seconds. And there was the oblivious Palfreyman pointing with taut finger at the insect, which obviously was all that existed.
Immediately the fly had flown, the two men embarked on some further conversation of a practical nature, and Voss agreed to take Palfreyman to Mr Bonner the very next day.
‘He is an excellent man, you know,’ said Voss. ‘Generous, and trusting. The patron par excellence.’
Palfreyman merely smiled, almost as if it had been the shadow of his illness on his greenish, full, contemplative face.
‘Now, look after yourself, my dear fellow, in this city of unexpected dangers,’ said Voss nicely, as they were taking leave of each other in the sun at the gates.
He could be very nice, and wanted badly to be nicer. He smiled with a genuine charm, although his teeth were inclined to be pointed. He put his hand on his colleague’s arm, which was an unusual gesture for him.
Then they parted. Palfreyman, who was frequently very happy in this insubstantial world, walked with the slowness of leisure. But Voss hurried about some business, the wind whipping his trouser legs.
During the days that followed, the German thought somewhat surreptitiously about the will of God. The nurture of faith, on the whole, he felt, was an occupation for women, between the preserving-pan and the linen-press. There was that niece of the Bonners’, he remembered, a formal, and probably snobbish girl, who would wear her faith cut to the usual feminine pattern. Perhaps with a colder elegance than most. Then, there were the few men who assumed humility without shame. It could well be that, in the surrender to selflessness, such individuals enjoyed a kind of voluptuous transport. Voss would sometimes feel embittered at what he had not experienced, even though he was proud not to have done so. How they merge themselves with the concept of their God, he considered almost with disgust. These were the feminine men. Yet he remembered with longing the eyes of Palfreyman, and that old Müller, from both of whom he must always hold himself aloof, to whom he would remain coldly unwedded.
So he went about, and the day was drawing close.
Again on several occasions he recalled that old Brother Müller. Earlier in the year Voss had spent several days as a guest of the Moravian Mission near Moreton Bay. It was the harvest, then. The colours of peace, however transitory, drenched the stubbled fields. The scene was carved: the low whitewashed cottages of the lay brothers, the slim, but strong forms of the greyish trees, the little wooden figures of the sunburnt children. They were all in the fields, harvesting. Several women had taken rakes and forks, and were raking the hay, or pitching it up to their husbands upon the drays. Even the two old ministers had come, exchanging black for a kind of smock, of very placid grey. So all were working.
It was the form of Brother Müller, who had founded their settlement, that seemed to predominate over all others. Such peace and goodness as was apparent in the earthly scene, in the light and shadow, and the abundance of fragrant, wilting hay, might indeed have emanated from the soul of the old quietist.
‘I will come and work with you,’ called Voss, who, up till then, in fact, all the days of his visit, had been walking about restlessly, chewing at a straw, plucking at leaves, carrying a book which conveyed nothing to him.
Nobody had questioned his aloofness from the work, but now the guest began to tear off his awkward clothes — that is, he flung aside his rusty coat, loosened the neck of his pricking shirt, rolled up the sleeves on his wiry arms, and was soon raking with frenzied movements beside Brother Müller. One of the women who was pitching the fodder up to the drays went so far as to laugh at their guest’s particular zeal, but everyone else present accepted it placidly enough, taking it for granted that even the apparently misguided acts obey some necessity in the divine scheme.
Then Voss, who had spent several nights in speculative argument with the old minister over glasses of goats’ milk sweetened with honey, called out in the lust of his activity:
‘I begin to receive proof of existence, Brother Müller. I can feel the shape of the earth.’
And he stood there panting, with his legs apart, so that the earth did seem to take on something of its true shape, and to reel beneath him.
But the old man continued to rake the hay, blinking at it, as if he had got something in his eye, or were stupid.
Then Voss said, generously:
‘Do not think, Brother, because we have argued all these nights, and I have sometimes caught you out in a friendly way, that I want to detract at all from God.’
He was laughing good-naturedly, and looked handsome and kind in his burnt skin, and besides, was straddling the world.
‘Ach,’ sighed the old man; haymaking could have been his vocation.
Then he leaned upon his rake. There was behind him a golden aureole of sun.
‘Mr Voss,’ he said, with no suggestion of criticism, ‘you have a contempt for God, because He is not in your own image.’
So Voss walked quicker through the streets of Sydney all those days preceding the departure of the great expedition, of which that world was already talking. Men of business took him by the shoulder as if they would have had some part of him, or intended to share a most earnest piece of information. Young girls, walking with servants or aunts, looked at the hems of their skirts as they passed, but identified him to their less observant companions immediately afterwards. That was Mr Voss, the explorer.
So that, for the explorer himself, the whole town of Sydney wore a splendid and sufficient glaze.
3
SOON after this it happened that Rose Portion, the Bonners’ servant, was taken suddenly sick. One afternoon, just after Mrs Bonner and the young ladies had finished a luncheon of cold ham, with pickles, and white bread, and a little quince jelly, nothing heavy like, because of the Pringles’ picnic party that afternoon, Rose simply fell down. In her brown gown she looked a full sack, except that she was stirring and moaning, even retching. Dry, however. Mrs Bonner, who was a Norfolk girl, remembered how cows used to fall into the dikes during the long winter nights, and moan there, so far off, and so monotonously; nothing, it seemed, would ever be done.
Yet here was Rose upon the floor, half in the dining-room, half in the passage to the pantry, and for Rose something must be done at once.
‘Rose, dear! Rose!’ called the young ladies, leaping, and kneeling, and slapping the backs of her hands.
‘We must burn a feather,’ decided Mrs Bonner.
But Miss Laura ran and fetched her dark green smelling-bottle, which was a present from a girl called Chattie Wilson, with whom they were in the habit of exchanging visits and presents.
Then, when Rose’s head had been split almost in two by that long, cold smell, she got up rather suddenly, moaning and crying. She was holding her fists together at the brown knuckles, and shaking.
‘Rose, dear, please do tell us you are recovered,’ implored Belle, who was herself frightened and tearful; she would cry for people in the street who appeared in any way distressed. ‘Do stop, Rose!’
But Rose was not crying, not exactly; it was an animal mumbling, and biting of her harelip.
‘Rose,’ said Aunt Emmy at last, quite dryly, and unlike her, ‘Edith will give you a hand to clear the rest of the things. Then you must lie down and rest.’