‘As my uncle’s tastes are similar — he is always bringing in mosses to dry, and plants to press — the parish suffers the most shocking neglect. But the sheep remain fond of their shepherds, and will go to great lengths to protect them. I have noticed that if a man is afflicted with what one might call an honest weakness, people do tolerate that fault, and will love its victim, not in spite of, but because of it. Then, there is my sister’s infirmity.’
This sat upon the brother also, the German saw.
‘My sister is several years older than I. She is become rather frail, although she continues to drive herself with her astonishing will. She is a very passionate woman. She will smash things deliberately, and cry over them afterwards, and try to fit the pieces together. Some of those glass ornaments of which I spoke. Once, when I was a boy, she flew into a rage, and threw me out of an upper window. It happened like this. On hearing a suspicious silence, I had crept into the room, and found my sister at her looking-glass. She had outlined her lips completely in red ink, giving them the arch of a perfect, but horrifying mouth. I was very frightened, which impressed itself upon her the moment she noticed me, and she immediately rushed, in her passion, and pushed me through the open window. Then, when I lay upon the ground below, calling breathlessly that I had broken my back, she raced down, screaming that she had killed me, or else I would recover, and for the rest of our lives I would be her image. It was her shoulders, she meant,’ Palfreyman explained. ‘My sister is deformed.’
Miss Palfreyman stood over the two men. She was twisting a bunch of small flowers, violets they could have been, which were her offering, but from which the flesh was coming away in terrible jerks. Of all the blots and distortions of evening, the shadow of her hump upon the ground was the most awful.
‘She was kissing me, and crying, and blaming herself, and hoping,’ Palfreyman said, ‘until I became more terrified of her love than of my own condition. Especially when the pain subsided, and I got up. For the fall had only knocked the wind out of me. Then my sister was ashamed. We both were. Only, she was resentful too. On thinking it over since, I am convinced that she would have liked to keep me in her own image, as she expressed it, so that I should be completely hers. The most I can do for her is pray constantly that I may take some of her suffering upon myself, and that I may learn to return her love in the measure that she needs. But so far, I have failed. I know when I watch her stooping on the borders of the garden, to look at flowers, or to pull a piece of southernwood or rosemary, and smell it, and throw it away, useless, and glance over her shoulder, and walk on. Or she will fly at the duties she has been neglecting: the work of the parish; and the parishioners, like uneducated people who have inherited a book they cannot read, but which flatters their pride, will be quite pleased to have her amongst them, in spite of her strangeness. None of this, unfortunately, alleviates the pain of my sister’s situation. She feels that she is doomed to remain unique. I forgot to say she has had all the mirrors removed from the house, for her reflection is a double that she has grown to hate. Of course, there are all those other objects in glass, which I have mentioned, but they, she says, distort in any case.’
‘And your uncle,’ the German asked, ‘has he not taken note of the disappearance of the looking-glasses?’
‘My uncle has been engaged for many years on a key to the Revelation of St John the Divine. I doubt he would notice the disappearance of my sister, let alone a mirror.’
The evening in which the two men were sitting had dissolved into a vast oblivion. The grey had consumed the green mist by natural process. The men themselves were cornered by it at the roots of the tree, from where the face of each appeared to the other as desirable as rafts to shipwrecked sailors.
‘Where I have failed most wretchedly,’ Palfreyman continued, ‘is in my inability to rescue my sister from her hallucinations. She cannot believe in the possibility of redemption for herself, because she does not feel she is acceptable to God. She is too plainly marked with the sign of His disapproval. Recently, she attempted to take her own life by opening her veins.’
‘And was trailing through the rooms that are filled with the jewels of glass,’ dreamed the German. ‘Her hump is less noticeable in the warm, grey cloak. By the time you reached her, she was already rather weak but glittering with blood, as she spattered the humming birds and other musical instruments.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you rescued, or condemned, your sister,’ Voss accused, ‘by denying her the Gothic splendours of death. Her intention was glorious, but you rushed and tied a tourniquet, when all you had to offer was your own delusion.’
‘You cannot destroy me, Mr Voss!’ Palfreyman insisted.
‘Then,’ continued Voss, ‘not very long after, you left for the Antipodes, and retreated farther and farther from your failures, until we are sitting beneath this tree, surrounded by hazards, certainly, but of a most impersonal kind.’
‘Yes,’ said Palfreyman. ‘Yes.’
He broke a stick.
‘I think I have realized all this,’ he said. ‘And that I did not have the strength to endure it. And must make amends.’
Then Voss, who had been watching his companion’s blurry face, knew that Palfreyman could never rescue him, as he had almost hoped during the story of the hunchback sister. Although the brother would be saved, by the strength of his delusion, the hunchback sister, together with himself, were reserved, the German suspected, for the Gothic splendours. So the moon rose in the thicket of the brigalow, and was glittering in the eyes of the condemned.
Next morning the expedition rose, and proceeded along the southerly bank of the rejuvenated river, that wound in general direction westward. Green disguised the treacherous nature of the ground, and in places, where heavier rain had fallen, there was the constant danger of pack animals becoming bogged, which did occur at intervals. Then the German’s hatred of mules became ungovernable. He would ride a hundred yards off his course in order to arm himself with a branch from a tree. At such times, the animals would smell danger from a distance, and would be sweating and trembling against his return; there were even some mules that would snatch at him with their long teeth as he passed, and jangle their bits, and roll their china eyes.
Of dogs, however, Voss showed every sign of approbation, and would suffer for them, when their pads split, when their sides were torn open in battle with kangaroos, or when, in the course of the journey, they simply died off. He would watch most jealously the attempts of other men to win the affection of his dogs. Until he could bear it no longer. Then he would walk away, and had been known to throw stones at a faithless animal. In general, however, the dogs ignored the advances of anyone else. They were devoted to this one man. They could have eaten him up. So it was very satisfactory. Voss was morbidly grateful for the attentions of their hot tongues, although he would not have allowed himself to be caught returning their affection.
By this stage of the journey the number of dogs had been reduced to two, a kind of rough terrier, and Gyp, the big mongrel-Newfoundland that had given good service as a sheep-dog in the days of sheep.
‘Gyp is in fine condition, sir,’ Judd remarked to Voss one day as they rode along.
He knew the leader’s fondness for the dog, and thought secretly to humour him in this way.