Fetched up at this point, Voss made a polite gesture that he had learnt somewhere, cleared his throat, and said gravely to Miss Trevelyan:
‘Your health.’
She drew down her mouth then, with some almost bitter pleasure, again twisted the stopper in the neck of the decanter, and drank to him, for formality’s sake, a sip of shining wine.
Remembering her aunt, she laughed.
‘For my aunt,’ she said, ‘all things that should be done, must be done. Even so, she does not approve of wine for girls.’
He did not understand. But she was beautiful, he saw.
She knew she was beautiful, but fleetingly, in certain lights, at certain moments; at other times she had a long, unyielding face.
‘It is fine here,’ said Voss at last, turning in his chair with the greater ease that wine gives, looking about, through the half-open shutters, beyond which leaves played, and birds, and light, but always returning to the predominant room.
Here, much was unnecessary. Such beautiful women were in no way necessary to him, he considered, watching her neck. He saw his own room, himself lying on the iron bed. Sometimes he would be visited by a sense of almost intolerable beauty, but never did such experience crystallize in objective visions. Nor did he regret it, as he lay beneath his pale eyelids, reserved for a peculiar destiny. He was sufficient in himself.
‘You must see the garden,’ Miss Trevelyan was saying. ‘Uncle has made it his hobby. Even at the Botanic Gardens I doubt there is such a collection of shrubs.’
They will come, she told herself, soon, but not soon enough. Oh dear, she was tired of this enclosed man.
The young woman began to wriggle her ankle. The light was ironical in her silk dress. Her small waist was perfect. Yet, she resented the attitude she had begun to assume, and liked to think it had been forced upon her. He is to blame, she said, he is one of the superior ones, even though pitiable, those trousers that he has trodden on. And for her entertainment, she began to compose phrases, between kind and cold, with which she would meet a proposal from the German. Laura Trevelyan had received two proposals, one from a merchant before he sailed for Home, and one from a grazier of some substance — that is to say, she had almost received, for neither of those gentlemen had quite dared. So she was contemptuous of men, and her Aunt Emmy feared that she was cold.
Just then there was a crunching of soft stones, and a sound of leather and a smell of hot horse, followed by the terrible, distant voices of people who have not yet made their entrance.
‘There they are,’ said Laura Trevelyan, holding up her hand.
At that moment she was really very pretty.
‘Ach,’ protested Voss. ‘Wirklich?’
He was again distressed.
‘You do not attend Church?’ he asked.
‘I have been suffering from a slight headache,’ she replied, looking down at some crumbs clinging to her skirt, from a biscuit at which she had nibbled, in deference to a guest.
Why should he ask this? She disliked the scraggy man.
But the others were all crowding in, resuming possession. Such solid stone houses, which seem to encourage brooding, through which thoughts slip with the ease of a shadow, yet in which silence assumes a sculptural shape, will rally surprisingly, even cruelly to the owner-voices, making it clear that all the time their rooms have belonged not to the dreamers, but to the children of light, who march in, and throw the shutters right back.
‘Mr Voss, is it? I am truly most interested to make your acquaintance.’
It was Aunt Emmy, in rather a nice grey pelisse from the last consignment.
‘Voss, eh? High time,’ Uncle said, who was jingling his money and his keys. ‘We had all but given you up.’
‘Voss! Well, I am blowed! When did you return to town, you disreputable object?’ asked Lieutenant Radclyffe, who was ‘Tom’ to Belle Bonner.
Belle herself, on account of her youth, had not yet been encouraged to take much part in conversation when company was present, but could smile most beautifully and candidly, which she now did.
They were all a little out of breath from precipitate arrival, the women untying their bonnet strings and looking for reflections of themselves, the men aware of some joke that only the established, the sleek, or the ordinary may enjoy.
And Voss was a bit of a scarecrow.
He stood there moving woodenly at the hips, Laura Trevelyan noticed. She personally could not assist. She had withdrawn. But nobody can help, she already knew.
‘I came here unfortunately some considerable time in advance,’ the German began in a reckless lather of words, ‘not taking into account your natural Sunday habits, Mr Bonner, with the result that I have spent the patience of poor Miss Trevelyan for the last three-quarters of an hour, who has been so good as to entertain me during that period.’
‘That would have been a pleasure for her,’ said Aunt Emmy, frowning and kissing her niece on the brow. ‘My poor Laura, how is the head?’
But the young woman brushed aside all questions with her hand, and went and stood where she might be forgotten.
Aunt Emmy’s thoughts would swim close to the surface, for which reason they were almost always visible. Now it was obvious that pity for one who had been born a foreigner did not exceed concern at her niece’s indiscretion in offering, perhaps, the best port wine.
So Mrs Bonner was moved to tidy up the tray, although decanters will not tell.
‘Now that you have come, Voss,’ said her husband, who was inclined to jingle his money, for fear that he might find himself still apprenticed to the past; ‘now that you are here, we shall be able to put our heads together over many little details. It goes without saying I will fit you out with any goods in my own particular line, but shall also be pleased to advise you on the purchase of other commodities — victuals, for instance, Voss — do not attempt to patronize any but the houses I recommend. I do not suggest that dishonesty is rife; rather, you will understand, that business is keen. Then, I have already approached the owners of a vessel that might carry your party as far, at least, as Newcastle. Yes. You will gather from all this that the subject of your welfare is never far distant from my mind. No doubt you will have been giving your own earnest consideration to many of these matters, although you have not seen fit to inform me. Last Friday, by the way, I received a letter from Mr Sanderson, who is preparing to entertain you on the first stage of your journey. Oh, there are many things. We must, indeed, tear ourselves away from these ladies, and,’ said the draper, dreadfully clearing his throat, ‘talk.’
But not yet. The two men implored not to be surrendered so mercilessly to the judgement of each other’s eyes. They were two blue-eyed men, of a different blue. Voss would frequently be lost to sight in his, as birds are in sky. But Mr Bonner would never stray far beyond familiar objects. His feet were on the earth.