‘I must say I am glad to see you again, old Voss,’ said Lieutenant Radclyffe, with no evident signs of pleasure.
He was a third blue, of a rudimentary handsomeness. He would thicken later into more or less the same shape as the man who was to become his father-in-law, which perhaps was the reason why Belle Bonner loved her Tom.
‘Where have you been?’ the Lieutenant pursued his unimportant acquaintance. ‘Lost in the bush?’ He did not expect, nor listen to answers. ‘Are you back with poor Topp? I hear that all his thoughts are for a certain young lady who is taking lessons in the flute.’
‘A peculiar, and not very suitable instrument for a young girl,’ Mrs Bonner was compelled to observe. ‘If difference is desired — and there are some who are averse to the piano — there is always the harp.’
‘Yes, I am again lodging in the house of poor Topp,’ said Voss, who was by this time almost crazed by people. ‘I was not lost. Although I have been in the bush; that is, in the more populous part of it. I have lately made a journey to the North Coast, gathering some interesting plant and insect specimens, and to Moreton Bay, where I have spent a few weeks with the Moravian Brothers.’
All this time Voss was standing his ground. He was, indeed, swaying a little, but the frayed ends of his trouser legs were momentarily lost in the carpet. How much less destructive of the personality are thirst, fever, physical exhaustion, he thought, much less destructive than people. He remembered how, in a mountain gorge, a sandstone boulder had crashed, aiming at him, grazing his hand, then bounding away, to the mutilation of trees and death of a young wallaby. Deadly rocks, through some perversity, inspired him with fresh life. He went on with the breath of life in his lungs. But words, even of benevolence and patronage, even when they fell wide, would leave him half-dead.
‘We must make that journey some day, Belle,’ said Tom Radclyffe, who had already set forth with his desirable bride. ‘To Moreton Bay, I mean.’
Although indifferent to travel, he was not blind to the advantages of their being lost together in some remote place.
‘Yes, Tom,’ Belle agreed, idly, quietly, with golden down upon her upper lip.
These young people had a habit of looking at each other as if they might discover an entrance into some yet more intimate chamber of the mind. She was still quite unformed and breathless. She was honey-coloured, but rather thick about the throat. These characteristics, together with an excellent constitution, Belle Bonner would pass on to her many descendants, for the creation of whom she had been purposely designed.
‘You will have everyone in a fever of exploration, Voss,’ laughed Mr Bonner, the man who unlocked situations, who led people by the arm. ‘Come on in here now,’ he said, ‘while the ladies are getting themselves up for dinner.’
Then they are committed to each other, Laura Trevelyan saw. Uncle is so good, she yawned. But the German was antipathetic, while offering prospects to be explored. He had a strong back, sinewy rather, that began to obliterate the general seediness. Now that she could no longer observe his face, she remembered it, and might have sunk deeper, than she had at first allowed herself, into the peculiarly pale eyes.
The two men had gone, however. It was a deliberate, men’s departure once they had begun. They went into a smaller room that was sometimes referred to as Mr Bonner’s Study, and in which certainly there stood a desk, but bare, except of useless presents from his wife, and several pieces of engraved silver, arranged at equal distances on the rich, red, tooled leather. Gazetteers, almanacs, books of sermons and of etiquette, and a complete Shakespeare, smelling of damp, splashed the pleasing shadow with discreet colours. All was disposed for study in this room, except its owner, though he might consider the prospects of trade drowsily after Sunday’s beef, or, if the rheumatics were troubling him, ruffle up the sheets of invoices or leaves of a ledger that Mr Palethorpe had brought out from town. The study had flowered with Mrs Bonner’s ambition. Its immaculacy was a source of pride, but it did make some people afraid, and the merchant himself was more at ease in his hugger-mugger sanctum at the store.
‘Now we can discuss,’ suggested Mr Bonner, and thought to add: ‘Privately.’
He had a certain love of conspiracy, which makes Freemasons of grown men, and little boys write their names in blood. Moreover, in the company of the shabby German, he began to enjoy the power of patron over protégé. Wealthy by colonial standards, the merchant had made his money in a solid business, out of Irish linens and Swiss muslins, damask, and huckaback, and flannel, green baize, and India twills. The best-quality gold leaf was used to celebrate the name of EDMUND BONNER — ENGLISH DRAPER, and ladies driving down George Street, the wives of officers and graziers, in barouche and brougham, would bow to that respectable man. Why, on several occasions, he had even been consulted in confidence, he told, by Lady G—, who was so kind as to accept a tablecloth and several pair of linen sheets.
So Edmund Bonner could afford to sit with his legs stuck out, in the formidable study of his stone house.
‘You are quite certain you are ready to undertake such a great expedition?’ he now dared to ask.
‘Naturally,’ the German replied.
He had his vocation, it was obvious, and equally obvious that his patron would not understand.
‘You are aware, I should say, what it could mean?’
‘If we would compare meanings, Mr Bonner,’ said the German, looking at each word as if it were a round pebble of mystical perfection, ‘we would arrive perhaps at different conclusions.’
The thick man laughed the other side of the red desk. It pleased him to have bought something he did not altogether understand. Refinements are acquired in this way, and eventually clothe the purchaser like skins, which he will take for granted, and other people admire. Mr Bonner longed to experience the envy of others. So his nostrils now grew keener.
‘I am compelled into this country,’ continued the oblivious Voss.
‘That is all very well,’ said the merchant, easing his thighs forward, ‘that is enthusiasm, I suppose, and it is as well that you should have it. I can attend to a number of the practical details myself. Stores, up to a point. The master of the Osprey will carry you to Newcastle, provided you are ready to embark by the date of his intended departure. There is Sanderson at Rhine Towers, to see you on your way, and Boyle at Jildra, which will be your last outpost, as we have decided. Each of these gentlemen has generously volunteered to contribute a mob of cattle, and Boyle, in addition, he tells me, will provide sheep, as well as a considerable herd of goats. But any scientific equipment, that is your province, Voss. And have you recruited suitable companions to accompany you in this great enterprise?’
The German sucked in the fringes of his moustache. He could have been suffering from indigestion, if it was not contempt.
‘I will be ready,’ he said. ‘All arrangements are in hand. I have engaged already four men.’
‘Who?’ asked the man whose money was involved, together with that of several other daring citizens.
‘You are not acquainted,’ said Voss.
‘But who?’ persisted the draper; his vanity would not allow him to think there might be anyone he did not know.
Voss shrugged. He was indifferent to other men. On the several short expeditions he had made, he had gone accompanied by the sound of silence, the chafing of leather, and sighing of his own solitary horse.
‘There is Robarts,’ he began, and it was unnecessary. ‘He is an English lad. We are met on board. He is good, simple.’
But superfluous.