Voss appeared to glow.
‘These are good people. One can see,’ he said. ‘Have they all been free settlers?’
‘Some. Some are emancipists,’ Sanderson replied from over his shoulder. ‘There are both kinds. And there are good and bad of each.’
Because he was a better man than Voss, he also had fewer transitory illusions. Just then, exalted by hopes of regeneration, the German was ready to believe that all men were good.
‘It goes without saying there are such distinctions,’ he agreed, but with the air of suffering of one who has been misunderstood by a superficial companion. ‘If you will look into the skin of a beautiful young lady, you will see perhaps one or two blemishes: a patch of slight inflammation, let us say, the holes of the pores, even a pimple. But this is not to deny the essence of her beauty. Will you not concur?’
‘If it is a question of essence,’ Sanderson replied, with appropriate gravity.
The way he was placed, Voss could see only his host’s back, which was that long, discreet, civilized one already mentioned.
Sanderson was a man of a certain culture, which his passionate search for truth had rid of intellectual ostentation. In another age the landowner might have become a monk, and from there gone on to be a hermit. In the mid nineteenth century, an English gentleman and devoted husband did not behave in such a manner, so he renounced Belgravia for New South Wales, and learned to mortify himself in other ways. Because he was rich and among the first to arrive, he had acquired a goodish slice of land. After this victory of worldly pride, almost unavoidable perhaps in anyone of his class, humility had set in. He did live most simply, together with his modest wife. They were seldom idle, unless the reading of books, after the candles were lit, be considered idleness. This was the one thing people held against the Sandersons, and it certainly did seem vain and peculiar. They had whole rows of books, bound in leather, and were for ever devouring them. They would pick out passages for each other as if they had been titbits of tender meat, and afterwards shine with almost physical pleasure. Beyond this, there was nothing to which a man might take exception. Sanderson tended his flocks and herds like any other Christian. If he was more prosperous than most, one did not notice it unduly, and both he and his wife would wash their servants’ feet in many thoughtful and imperceptible ways.
‘We are how many miles now from your property?’ Voss would ask on and off.
And Sanderson would tell.
‘I am most anxious to see it,’ Voss said invariably.
Places yet unvisited can become an obsession, promising final peace, all goodness. So the fallible man in Voss was yearning after Rhine Towers, investing it with those graces which one hopes to find at the heart of every mirage, entering its mythical buildings, kindling a great fire in the expectant hearth. Its name glittered for him, as he rode repeating it to himself.
Sanderson accepted the eccentricity of his guest’s inquiries, because there was much of which he had been forewarned, even though his informant’s account seemed to diverge somewhat from fact. The German wore a blandness of expression, and appeared to be endowed with a simplicity of mind that was, indeed, unexpected. They rode on. In the clear, passionless afternoons of spring, the landowner wondered what evidence of passion he had anticipated. But his own mind could not conceive darkness. They forded streams in which nothing was hidden. A truth of sunlight was dappling the innocent grass. In this light, he felt, all that is secret must be exposed. But he could not accuse the German of a nature different from his own.
It was true, too, that there was no difference — at that moment, and in that place. An admirable courtliness and forbearance had possessed Voss. He would ride back along the line informing himself on the welfare of his party, point out features of interest, ask opinions, offer suggestions, and return to his position in file behind his host, there to drink fresh draughts of his new friend’s benevolence, for which, it appeared, he had a perpetual thirst.
All but Sanderson were in some way conscious of this.
Harry Robarts accepted gladly that his idol should deceive their host by borrowing the latter’s character. This was not theft, that Mr Voss had demonstrated to be honest. But Le Mesurier and Turner sniffed, as dogs that have been caught before by kind words, and then kicked. And Palfreyman looked and listened, in conflict between the scientific study of behaviour, and his instinctive craving to believe that man is right, even if, to establish this, he would have to prove that he himself had been wrong.
Late in the afternoon of their arrival, the party descended from the hills into a river valley, of which the brown water ran with evening murmur and brown fish snoozed upon the stones. Now the horses pricked their ears and arched their necks tirelessly. They were all nervous veins as they stepped out along the pleasant valley. They were so certain. Which did, indeed, inspire even strangers with a certain confidence and sense of homecoming.
Soon domestic cows had run to look, and horned rams, dragging their sex amongst the clover, were being brought to fold by a youthful shepherd. But it was the valley itself which drew Voss. Its mineral splendours were increased in that light. As bronze retreated, veins of silver loomed in the gullies, knobs of amethyst and sapphire glowed on the hills, until the horseman rounded that bastion which fortified from sight the ultimate stronghold of beauty.
‘Achhh!’ cried Voss, upon seeing.
Sanderson laughed almost sheepishly.
‘Those rocks, on that bit of a hill up there, are the “Towers” from which the place takes its name.’
‘It is quite correct,’ said the German. ‘It is a castle.’
This was for the moment pure gold. The purple stream of evening flowing at its base almost drowned Voss. Snatches of memory racing through him made it seem the more intolerable that he might not finally sink, but would rise as from other drownings on the same calamitous raft.
Sanderson, too, was bringing him back, throwing him simple, wooden words.
‘You can see the homestead. Down there in the willows. That is the shed where we shear our sheep. The store, over by the elm. And the men’s cottages. We are quite a community, you see. They are even building a church.’
Skeins of mist, or smoke, had tangled with the purple shadows. Dogs dashed out on plumes of dust, to mingle with the company of riders, and bark till almost choked by their own tongues. The men were silent, however, from the magnificence through which they had passed, and at the prospect of new acquaintanceships. Some grew afraid. Young Harry Robarts began to shiver in a cold sweat, and Turner, who had now been sober several days, feared that in his nakedness he might not survive further hazards of experience. Even Palfreyman realized he had failed that day to pray to God, and must forfeit what progress he had made on the road where progress is perhaps illusory. So he was hanging back, and would not have associated with his fellows if it had been possible to avoid them.
A woman in grey dress and white apron, holding a little girl by the hand, approached, and spoke with gravity and great sweetness.
‘Welcome, Mr Voss, to Rhine Towers.’ To which immediately she added, not without a smiling confusion: ‘Everybody is, of course, welcome.’
Sanderson, who had jumped down, touched his wife very briefly, and this woman, of indeterminate age, was obviously strengthened. For a second, it was seen, she forgot other duties. Then her husband called, and two grooms came, parting the fronds of the willows, to take the horses.
‘Come on, Voss. They will be seen to,’ Sanderson announced. ‘Are you so in love with the saddle? Come inside, and we shall hope to make you comfortable.’