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the cheek. It was not something she had ever done before. The effect of Mr d'Abbs's visit was that Lucinda chose to believe that 1

A Reconciliation

Mr d'Abbs had accused Mr Jeffris falsely. What touched her was the picture she made of Mr d'Abbs grappling with the demons of his own falsehood. She did not know what to make of it, except that she was moved, as it seems she was by almost everything in that month of March as they prepared to make the journey. She was in an emotional state where the smallest thing, the frailness of a twig, the unravelling of a cloud in a blue sky, was filled with poignancy and that bursting love which is the anxious harbinger of loss. She saw goodness everywhere, perhaps attributing much of her own character or longings to others, and thus chose to see Mr d'Abbs's

'confession' of his falsehood as the keystone of his character, the main thrust of his speech. It is curious that Lucinda, while rejecting most of Mr d'Abbs's accusations, chose to believe that Mr Jeffris was in love with danger. Believing this allowed her to like Mr Jeffris more. She imagined she knew the disease he suffered from, that she too was in love with danger, not, of course, as it applied to blood and body wounds, but as it applied to the more general business of life. It was not just risk, but actual loss that quickened her. And on the day Mr d'Abbs found her in her office she had come from a Pitt Street solicitor's where she had, in the face of not inconsiderable resistance, formalized her bet in a document which she placed, that night, in her dusty-smelling cedar secretaire.

She did not tell Oscar what she had done and yet it was through the medium of this document that she believed that Oscar would, magically, triumph on his journey. She did not express what she believed, not even to herself. But the confidence she felt when she touched the rolled-up document (which she did often, at least twice each day), could only have its source in this simple superstition: that if she could manage to lose this bet, then Oscar Hopkins would not die. She was a thorough woman and she had a great capacity for detail, and so she did not tmst her beloved's safety solely to this voodoo in a cedar box. She had meetings with Mr Jeffris, far more than Mr Jeffris at first thought necessary. She went through his shopping lists and his accounts and if Mr Jeffris was at first outraged to suffer this from a woman, he soon discovered that his patron-far from being the niggardly boarding-house marm he had at first imagined-would question no expense that might relate to safety. But at first he had not understood her. She had spoken philosophically of the nature of danger. It was hard for him not to smirk at her. He thought her ridicu'ous, a monkey in a top hat, a woman acting like a man. But when 369

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the philosophy had finished he saw she would pay up for any item which might be seen to lessen danger. And she begged him to tell her the dangers. He took great pleasure in obliging her. He enjoyed himself. He made her very frightened.

Lucinda was too much in love to think of how masculine hierarchies are created, but it was a mistake to have these meetings with Oscar absent. It encouraged Mr Jeffris in his habit of thinking of Oscar scornfully.

Lucinda thought only that she loved him, that he must be safe.

When she had imagined 'love' it had always been with someone broad and square. Even Mr Hasset had been taller than this comforting prototype. When picturing her future husband she had seen strong square hands and a black square beard. She had never imagined the snaky insinuating passion she would feel to hold a thin white man whom she called (although not out loud) 'my sweet archangel.'

'He is a brave man,' she told Mr Jeffris, 'far braver than you or I.'

'He is an extraordinary chap,' said Jeffris.

'You will deal with mountains and rivers, but he will do battle with demons.'

'One can only respect him, ma'am,' said Mr Jeffris.

Mr Jeffris's eyes were soft and sympathetic, but his mind was totally dedicated to the satisfaction of his present ambition: to extract a cheque for twenty pounds for the purchase of three brass chronometers from Mr Dulwich of Observatory Hill.

91

A Man of Authority

J

Horses and bullocks were scarce in consequence of the long drought and although it was not Mr Jeffris himself who went to Parramatta sales in search of decent beasts, the worry of this item lay heavily on him, for it was no use at all tearing up the road to Wiseman's Ferry with

17f

A Man of Authority

all the finest men, all perfectly kitted out, if all he had to pull them were beasts like you saw everywhere around the colony, with their spines showing like ridgepoles under the baggy canvas of their hides.

He had become a man of authority. He felt himself uncramped at last, free from the petty limitations of Mr d'Abbs's employ. He could say to one man, go, and he went, to another, come, and he came. He was conscious of standing straighter. He could feel the girth of his chest pressing against the buttons of his shirt. He employed tall men he knew he could control with the strength of his eyes. He was stern with them and unsmiling. He dispatched his overseer and bullock driver both with instruction that no beast he bought but that they both be in agreement. They took this order meekly, although they surely found it most distasteful. The bullock driver called him 'Captain,' Later this misunderstanding was to spread. Mr Jeffris engaged a storekeeper, two blacksmiths, a medical attendant, a collector of birds and a collector of plants (although these last two were entered on the paybook as 'riflemen'), a groom, a trumpeter, two carpenters, a shoemaker, a cook.

Miss Leplastrier did not query him on a single point.

He borrowed two mountain barometers and entrusted one of these to the collector of birds and another to the collector of plants, telling them that it was to be their main duty whilst actually travelling to guard the safety of these barometers for he planned to go about this journey like a trigonometrist, knowing always, exactly, where he was in space, and he would not be, he told the red-necked, Belfast-born plant collector, like some fart-faced Irishman crashing through the undergrowth like a wombat.

They would carry axes and they would be razor-sharp at all times, for there is nothing a surveyor despises more than a tree that obscures his trig point.

Miss Leplastrier made a horse and sulky available to him so he might move about smartly. He was soon a familiar sight on the road out to Mort Bay, standing straight and flaying the poor animal to get a skip on. He was on his way to Harrison's shipyards where old Oliver Crawley, a wide, bow-legged shipwright with a white cataract on his left eye, was constructing two light whale boats, the smaller designed to fit inside the larger when the thwarts of the larger one were removed for travelling. The larger boat was then to be suspended within a frame of belts and canvases and the canvas most in contact with the boat was to be guarded with sheepskin and greased

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hide, and this whole sling, of course, was to be fitted into the boat carriage, that machine which rolled silently through the tracks of Oscar Hopkins's nightmares.

Mr Jeffris took each man, as he was engaged, to Anthony Hordern's store where they were kitted out, on account of Miss Leplastrier, with a suit of new clothing. There were strong grey twill trousers, a red woollen shirt which, when crossed with white braces, provided a military appearance. This was as Mr Jeffris had calculated it. He would require absolute obedience and he made it clear from the beginning.

It was his intention that Oscar Hopkins also dress in this manner. It was important that he not place himself, as it were, above the law. And yet Mr Jeffris could not come at the matter directly. He could hardly demand it, and yet he could not countenance any exception to his rule. He broached the subject with Miss Leplastrier but she only laughed and said it was something he must discuss with Mr Hopkins. When she laughed like that he would like to put her on her back in bed. He bowed formally and said nothing, but he went to Hordern's, anyway, and bought the correct items of clothing in sizes he guessed would suit the stick-limbed Mr Smudge. He cantered back across the city and out to the Darling Harbour glassworks where he was told Mr Hopkins was 'in preparation.'

He was amused at the idea of Mr Smudge preparing for anything. He had never, in all his experience, met anyone so mentally and physically unprepared for life. In the world that Mr Jeffris called the 'real world,' an imaginary place with neither parliaments nor factories, Mr Smudge would simply die. When he heard he was 'preparing' he had a vision of him in baggy combinations, with pencil-thin arms, working with his dumbbells. Thus