She was the expert mistress of trivialities.
The distressed German was rubbing the pocket of his jacket with one hand. It made a noisy, rough sound.
He began to mumble.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
But grumblingly. It was that blundering, thick accent, at which she had to smile, as superior, though kind, beings did.
‘And after the journey in the heat,’ she said with that same case, ‘you will want to rest. And your horse. I must send the man round.’
‘I came on foot,’ replied the German, who was now caught.
‘From Sydney!’ she said.
‘It is four kilometres, at most, and perhaps one quarter.’
‘But monotonous.’
‘I am at home,’ he said. ‘It is like the poor parts of Germany. Sandy. It could be the Mark Brandenburg.’
‘I was never in Germany,’ said the firm young woman. ‘But I find the road to Sydney monotonous, even from a carriage.’
‘Do you go much into your country?’ asked Voss, who had found some conviction to lean upon.
‘Not really. Not often,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘We drive out sometimes, for picnics, you know. Or we ride out on horseback. We will spend a few days with friends, on a property. A week in the country makes a change, but I am always happy to return to this house.’
‘A pity that you huddle,’ said the German. ‘Your country is of great subtlety.’
With rough persistence he accused her of the superficiality which she herself suspected. At times she could hear her own voice. She was also afraid of the country which, for lack of any other, she supposed was hers. But this fear, like certain dreams, was something to which she would never have admitted.
‘Oh, I know I am ignorant,’ Laura Trevelyan laughed. ‘Women are, and men invariably make it clear to them.’
She was giving him an opportunity.
But the German did not take it. Unlike other men, English officers stationed there, or young landowners coming coltish from the country for the practical purpose of finding a wife, he did not consider himself under obligation to laugh. Or perhaps it was not funny.
Laura Trevelyan was sorry for the German’s ragged beard, but it was of a good black colour, rather coarse.
‘I do not always understand very well,’ he said. ‘Not all things.’
He was either tired, or continued to be angry over some experience, or phrase, or perhaps only the room, which certainly gave no quarter to strangers; it was one of the rich, relentless rooms, although it had never been intended so.
‘Is it long since you arrived in the Colony?’ asked Laura Trevelyan, in a flat, established voice.
‘Two years and four months,’ said Voss.
He had followed suit when she sat down. They were in almost identical positions, on similar chairs, on either side of the generous window. They were now what is called comfortable. Only the cloth was taut on the man’s bony knees. The young woman noticed thoughtfully that his heels had frayed the ends of his trousers by walking on them.
‘I have now been here so long,’ she said almost dreamily; ‘I do not attempt to count the years. Certainly not the months.’
‘You were not born here, Miss Bonner?’ asked the German.
It had begun to come more easily to him.
‘Trevelyan,’ she said. ‘My mother was Mrs Bonner’s sister.’
‘So!’ he said. ‘The niece.’
Unlocking his bony hands, because the niece was also, then, something of a stranger.
‘My mother and father are dead. I was born in England. I came here when’ — she coughed — ‘when I was so young I cannot remember. Oh, I am able to remember some things, of course, but childish ones.’
This weakness in the young woman gave the man back his strength. He settled deeper in his chair.
So the light began to flow into the high room, and the sound of doves, and the intimate hum of insects. Then, too, the squat maid had returned, bearing a tray of wine and biscuits; the noise itself was a distraction, the breathing of a third person, before the trembling wine subsided in its decanter into a steady jewel.
Order does prevail.
Not even the presence of the shabby stranger, with his noticeable cheekbones and over-large finger-joints, could destroy the impression of tranquillity, though of course, the young woman realized, it is always like this in houses on Sunday mornings while others are at Church. It was therefore but a transitory comfort. Voices, if only in whispers, must break in. Already she herself was threatening to disintegrate into the voices of the past. The rather thin, grey voice of the mother, to which she had never succeeded in attaching a body. She is going, they said, the kind voices that close the lid and arrange the future. Going, but where? It was cold upon the stairs, going down, down, and glittering with beeswax, until the door opened on the morning, and steps that Kate had scoured with holystone. Poor, poor little girl. She warmed at pity, and on other voices, other kisses, some of the latter of the moist kind. Often the Captain would lock her in his greatcoat, so that she was almost part of him — was it his heart or his supper? — as he gave orders and told tales by turns; all smelled of salt and men. The little girl was falling in love with an immensity of stars, or the warmth of his rough coat, or sleep. How the rigging rocked, and furry stars. Sleeping and waking, opening and closing, suns and moons, so it goes. I am your Aunt Emmy, and this is your new home, poor dear, in New South Wales, I trust that you will be happy, Laura, in this room, we chose the curtains of a lighter stuff thinking it might brighten, said the comfortable voice, which smelled beneath the bonnet of a nice carnation soap. It did appear momentarily that permanence can be achieved.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Laura Trevelyan, bending forward and twisting the stopper in the long neck of the decanter; glass or words grated. ‘I am forgetting to offer you wine.’
Then the visitor moved protestingly in his chair, as if he should refuse what he would have liked to accept, but said:
‘Danke. No. A little, perhaps. Yes, a half.’
Sitting forward to receive the full, shining glass, from which he slopped a drop, that Miss Trevelyan did not, of course, notice.
His throat was suddenly swelling with wine and distance, for he was rather given to melancholy at the highest pitch of pleasure, and would at times even encourage a struggle, so that he might watch. So the past now swelled in distorting bubbles, like the windows of the warehouse in which his father, an old man, gave orders to apprentices and clerks, and the sweet smell of blond timber suggested all safety and virtue. Nothing could be safer than that gabled town, from which he would escape in all weathers, at night also, to tramp across the heath, running almost, bursting his lungs, while deformed trees in places snatched at his clothes, the low, wind-combed trees, almost invariably under a thin moon, and other traps, in the shape of stretches of unsuspected bog, drew black, sucking sounds from his boots. During the Semester, however, he had a reputation for bristling correctness, as befitted the great surgeon it was intended he should become, until suddenly revolted by the palpitating bodies of men. Then it was learnt he would become a great botanist instead. He did study inordinately, and was fascinated in particular by a species of lily which swallows flies. With such instinctive neatness and cleanliness to dispose of those detestable pests. Amongst the few friends he had, his obsession became a joke. He was annoyed at first, but decided to take it in good part; to be misunderstood can be desirable. There were certain books, for instance. He would interrupt his study of which, and sit in the silence of his square room, biting his nails by candlelight. The still white world was flat as a handkerchief at that hour, and almost as manageable. Finally, he knew he must tread with his boot upon the trusting face of the old man, his father. He was forced to many measures of brutality in defence of himself. And his mother crying beside the stove, of which the green tiles were decorated with lions in relief. Then, when he had wrung freedom out of his protesting parents, and the old people were giving him little parcels for the journey, not so much as presents as in reproach, and the green forests of Germany had begun to flow, and yellow plains unroll, he did wonder at the purpose and nature of that freedom. Such neat trees lined the roads. He was wondering still when he stood on the underside of the world, and his boots sank into the same, gritty, sterile sand to which he used to escape across the Heide. But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.