Patrick White - Voss

Then he laughed.

‘You will think I am drunk, Mr Palfreyman. You will not believe in my pearl.’

‘I will believe in it,’ said the quiet man, ‘when you bring it to me in your hand, and I can see and touch it.’

Le Mesurier was not put out. The morning, shimmering and floating, was for the moment pearl enough. Listening to the humdrum grind of enterprise, of vehicles and voices in the pearly distance, he was amazed that he could have hated this genial town. But with the impact of departure it had become at last visible, as landscapes will. The past is illusion, or miasma. So the leaves of the young Moreton Bay figs were now opening their actual hand. Two aboriginal women, dressed in the poorest shifts of clothing, but the most distinguished silence, were seated on the dirt beside the wharf, broiling on a fire of coals the fish that they had caught. And a little boy, introduced especially into this regretful picture, was selling hot mutton pies that he carried in a wooden box. He was walking, and calling, and dawdling, and looking, and picking his snub nose. The little boy would not have asked to live in any other surroundings. He belonged to that place.

The nostalgia of the scene smote Frank Le Mesurier, who feared that what he was abandoning might be the actuality for which he had always craved.

Palfreyman, irritated by the young man in spite of his intention not to be (he would make amends, he promised himself, at a later date), was watching with pleasure the approach of a party on horseback, that had negotiated the streets which petered out on the eastern slope, and had begun to cross the white space that opened out before the wharf.

‘I must leave you for a little, Frank,’ he said, with kindness covering relief, ‘and speak to some friends who are arriving.’

Le Mesurier agreed, in silence, that this should happen. His dark, surly nature had resumed possession. Palfreyman, who had friends of his own, was no longer any friend of his. Human beings, like intentions, he could never possess for long. So, surlily, darkly, he watched the other descend the gang-plank towards an encounter which made him a positive part of that place. Even Palfreyman. Le Mesurier would have condemned his former friend’s neat and oblivious back, if he had not known that, for some reason, the ornithologist could not be thus wounded.

The party that was approaching, and of which the horses’ flanks were shining with a splendid light, forelocks flirting with the breeze of motion, rings and links of accoutrements jingling and glancing, nostrils distended with expectation, and blowing foam, was also of some importance, it began to appear. As they came on, sailors’ eyes took the opportunity to observe a gentleman and two ladies, and farther back, an officer in scarlet, managing his mount with enormous virtuosity. If his horse was strong, the officer was stronger. It was not clear what the latter’s intentions were, but his performance was accomplished.

One of the ladies, young and pretty, too, in expensive habit, reined back in a glare of dust.

‘Tom!’ she called. ‘Oh, do be careful, Tom!’

She spoke with a coaxing warmth, without a trace of annoyance, in the voice of one who was still in love.

Nor did the officer quite swear, but answered in tones of curbed exasperation, vibrating with a manly tenderness:

‘This is the hardest mouth in all New South Wales !’

Drawing down the corners of his own, ruddy, masculine mouth, he jerked with all his strength at the snaffle.

They continued to advance.

There was the brick-coloured, elderly gentleman, swelling on his freshly soft-soaped saddle. His well-made calves controlled his solid hack. His hat was of the best beaver, and a firm fistful of reins proclaimed authority. The gentleman was looking about him from under indulgent lids, at the ship, and at those menial yet not uncongenial beings who were engaged in loading her — such was the frankly democratic bonhomie of the gentleman in the high hat. Years of sun had made him easier. Or was it the first suspicion that he might not be the master?

They came on.

A little to one side, and indifferent to her black mare, whose brilliant neck and head were raised at the tumbled wharfside scene, rode the second of the young ladies. She was singularly still upon her horse, as if she hoped in this way to remain unnoticed, whereas it did but attract attention.

At least, it was to this one that the eyes of the more inquisitive sailors and labourers returned from devouring the details which they understood. All the other figures were of their own flesh and thought. This one, though she did raise her face and smile guardedly at the sun, or life, acted according to some theory of bounty, or because it was time to do so. The men were frowning at her, not in anger, but in concentration, as they picked at warts on their skins, and at lice in their hair, or on other familiar parts of them. They were unsuspectingly afraid of what they could not touch. The young woman, leaping the gunnel on her black horse, could easily have surprised them, and inflicted wounds.

But at the same time, this girl — she was not above twenty, or leastways, little more — appeared to hesitate in some respects, for all the cold confidence of her rather waxy skin. She would not speak easily, as ladies were taught in all circumstances to do. The stiff panels of her black habit were boarding her up.

‘It is a grand sight, Laura,’ said the stout gentleman, less for his niece than for himself.

‘Nobody, I think, could fail to be impressed by these ships,’ replied the dutiful girl.

How insipid I am, she felt, and bit her pale lip. It was no consolation to remember that fire of almost an inspired kindling would burn in her at times; it is the moment, unfortunately, that counts. So she began secretly to torture her handful of reins, and the little crop that she held in the same hand, and which was a pretty though silly thing, with head of mother-o’-pearl, that she carried because it had been given, and she cherished the memory of the donor, an old man whom she had not seen since her childhood. But that it was a useless sort of whip, she had known for several years.

‘That one is a sour-faced lass,’ observed the sailor who had spoken to Palfreyman.

‘I have not got your eyes, Dick. I cannot see good,’ said his mate. ‘She is a lady, though.’

‘Sour-faced is sour-faced. There is no difference if it be a lady.’

‘There is, Dick, you know. It is somethink that you cannot put yer hand on.’

‘I would not have somethun that I cannot touch.’

‘You would not be invited.’

‘I am for the rights of the common man,’ grumbled the sailor who had dreamed the dream.

‘All right, Dick,’ said his mate. ‘I do not gainsay your rights, only there are some corners into which they will not penetrate. This lady will have some gentleman, with which she will fit together like the regular dovetails. It is the way you are made.’

‘Ha-ha!’ laughed the dreamer. ‘It comes down to that, though.’

‘It comes down?’ said his mate, whom the habit of thought and a lifetime on the open sea had raised from native simplicity to a plane of simple understanding. ‘You are like a big cat, Dick. And that is just what ladies do not take to, some big stray tom smoodgin’ round their skirts. Ladies like to fall in love. This one, you can see, has done no different.’

‘How in love, though? How do you know? When you cannot see furr, and her ridin’ down on a horse, at a distance, for the first time. Eh?’

‘It is in their nature, and what they do to pass the time, when they are not readin’ books, and blowin’ into the fingers of their gloves. I have seen ladies in windows. I have watched um writin’ letters, and puttin’ on their extry hair. In those circumstances, Dick, you do get to know whatever it is they are up to.’