So Mrs Pringle and Mrs Bonner looked hopefully in that direction in which the gentlemen were said to be.
‘You girls go down with Mr Voss,’ insisted Mrs Pringle, conscripting an impregnable army, ‘while Mrs Bonner and I have a little chat.’
‘Shall we?’ asked Una, though there was no alternative.
They all walked decently off. Their long skirts made paths along the sand, dragged fallen twigs into upright positions, and swept ants for ever off their courses.
‘Do you like picnics?’ asked Una Pringle.
‘Sometimes,’ Belle replied. ‘It depends.’
‘Where is Lieutenant Radclyffe?’ Una asked.
‘It is his afternoon for duty,’ answered Belle, importantly.
‘Oh,’ said Una.
She was a tall girl, who would be married off quite easily, though for no immediately obvious reason.
‘Have you met Captain Norton of the Valiant?’ Una asked.
‘Not yet,’ yawned Belle, who aspired to no further conquests.
Belle Bonner had adopted a flat, yet superior expression, because Una Pringle was one of those girls for whom she did not care, while forced by circumstance to know. Force of circumstance, indeed, had begun to inform the whole picnic. Till several children came, pulling, and jumping, shouting through shiny lips, inspiring Belle, whom they sensed to be an initiate, with a nostalgia for those games which she had scarcely left off playing. The boisterous wind soon flung her and several bouncing children amongst the fixed trees. Her blood was at the tips of her fingers. Her rather thick but healthy throat was distended. She herself was shouting.
‘Such vitality Belle has,’ sighed Una, who was left with that Laura and the foreigner.
‘Do you run and jump, Mr Voss?’ she inquired with an insipid malice.
‘Please?’ asked the German.
‘I expect he does,’ said Laura Trevelyan, ‘if the occasion demands it. His own very private occasion. All kinds of invisible running and jumping. I do.’
Voss, who was brought back too abruptly to extract the full meaning from her words, was led to understand that this handsome girl was his ally. Though she did not look at him. But described some figure on the air with a muff of sealskin that she was carrying for the uncertain weather, and as a protection against more abstract dangers.
Trevelyan was her name, he remembered. Laura, the niece.
The gay day of wind and sharp sunlight had pierced the surface of her sombre green. It had begun to glow. She was for ever flickering, and escaping from a cage of black twigs, but unconscious of any transformation that might have taken place. This ignorance of her riches gave to her face a tenderness that it did not normally possess. Many tender waves did, besides, leap round the rocky promontory along which they were stumbling. There was now distinctly the sound of sea. As they trod out from the trees and were blinded, Laura Trevelyan was smiling.
‘There are the men,’ said Una rather gloomily, and did not bother to refrain from squinting, for all those gentlemen to whom she had pointed were already known to her.
The other members of her party held their hands above their eyes, and then distinguished, through the sea glaze, the elderly gentlemen perched on golden rocks, and younger men who had taken off their hats, and boys wrestling or throwing stones. The drama of that male black was too sudden against the peacock afternoon.
‘We had better go down,’ said Laura, ‘and deliver Mr Voss.’
‘But I would interrupt,’ protested the German. ‘What are they talking about?’
‘Whatever men do talk about,’ said Laura.
‘Business,’ suggested Una.
Some situations were definitely not his.
‘And the English packet. And the weather.’
‘And vegetables. And sheep.’
As they descended relentlessly towards that male gathering, the girls’ fears for their ankles would sometimes crack the enamelled confidence of their voices. In the circumstances they would accept a hand or two. And Mr Voss had a strong wrist. He flung himself into this activity less in the cause of chivalry than in an endeavour to remain occupied.
They did arrive, however, and there were many eyes, looking up, showing their whites, because it was not yet evident what defences would have to be erected.
Only Mr Bonner leaped all incipient barricades, clapped his protégé on the shoulder, and cried in a very red voice:
‘Welcome, Voss. If I did not suggest you take the steps you have clearly taken of your own accord, it is because I was under the impression it might not be in your line. That is, you are of rather a deep dye. Although, I am of the opinion nevertheless, that every man has something for his fellow, and it is only a matter of hitting on it. In any event, here you are.’
Mr Bonner bristled with apologies for anyone who needed them.
Some of the younger men, with leathery skins and isolated eyes, braced their calves, and shook hands most powerfully with the stranger. But two elderly and more important gentlemen, who would be Mr Pringle and the unexplained Mr Pitt, and whose stomachs were too heavy, and whose joints less active, merely cleared their throats and shifted on their rocks.
Then it was told how Voss had come. He smiled a great deal. Anxious to convey goodwill, he succeeded only in looking hungry.
‘He was a godsend,’ said Laura, hearing the unnatural tones the situation was forcing her to adopt. ‘We used him as a protection against bushrangers.’
The younger men laughed immoderately. Those of them with whom she was acquainted did not care for Laura Trevelyan, who was given to reading books.
Mr Pringle and Mr Pitt were slower in their mirth, more sceptical, for it was they who had been conducting that dialogue of almost mystical banality which had suffered interruption.
Mr Bonner continued to look red. His pride in his German could not rise above his shame. So men will sweat for some secret gift they have failed to reveal to others, and will make subtle attempts openly to condemn what is precious to them.
‘Voss, you know, is to lead this expedition we are organizing. Sanderson is behind it, and Boyle of Jildra, and one or two others. Young Angus of Dulverton is to be a member,’ he added for those of his audience who were of the same age and temper as the young landowner.
The younger men looked smilingly incredulous in a solid majority of tight, best cloth. They had folded their arms. Their seams and their muscles cracked.
‘It is a great event,’ said the congested Mr Bonner, ‘and may well prove historical. If they bring back their own bones. Eh, Voss?’
Everybody laughed, and Mr Bonner was relieved to have made his sacrifice with an almost imperceptible movement of the knife.
Voss could always, if necessary, fail to understand. But wounds will wince, especially in the salt air. He was smiling and screwing up his eyes at the great theatre of light and water. Some pitied him. Some despised him for his funny appearance of a foreigner. None, he realized with a tremor of anger, was conscious of his strength. Mediocre, animal men never do guess at the power of rock or fire, until the last moment before those elements reduce them to — nothing. This, the palest, the most transparent of words, yet comes closest to being complete.
Mr Pringle cleared his throat. Because his material status entitled him to attention before anyone else present, he would speak slowly, and take a long time.
‘It seems to me, though, from such evidence as we have collected — which is inconsiderable, mark you — as the result of mere foraying expeditions from the fringes, so to speak, it seems that this country will prove most hostile to anything in the nature of planned development. It has been shown that deserts prefer to resist history and develop along their own lines. As I have remarked, we do not know. There may, in fact, be a veritable paradise adorning the interior. Nobody can say. But I am inclined to believe, Mr Voss, that you will discover a few black-fellers, and a few flies, and something resembling the bottom of the sea. That is my humble opinion.’