Sara Dane

by Catherine Gaskin

  For Sara herself they were weeks lived in a kind of daze; it was a period, not of trying to forget Andrew, but of rediscovering his mind, of tracing back the growth of every ambition and plan he had conceived during their marriage. Alone in the small, plain room she took down the heavy books that recorded each business transaction he had completed since the first land grant on the Hawkesbury. The store, the Toongabbie farm, Priest’s … the first Thistle, then the new one bought in London, the purchase of Hawk and Thrush … the accounts of all of them were here, and copies of Andrew’s instructions to his London agents. The hours spent here grew to be not only a process of schooling herself, but like a communication with Andrew himself. The records set down badly on paper were the framework of the life they had built up together. ‘Store commenced business.’ Back into her mind came that crowded, uncomfortable day, when the store had opened its doors for the first time. ‘Purchase of farm at Toongabbie.’ Those words represented Andrew’s return from England, with the new Thistle ‒ the period when Glenbarr had been building. Each line of his writing could be filled out with a hundred different details; they were bare notations of Andrew’s vision and ambition, his belief in the future of the colony. It was like reading the intimate journal of the life she had shared. She gently touched the pages, and seemed to hear again his voice, eagerly explaining the possibilities of some new scheme he had in mind. Andrew had not possessed the soul of a poet, he had left no letters for her to weep over ‒ but the careful entries were a tangible record of his love.

  When the last of the account-books had been read and studied, she wrote to Louis. It was a long letter, containing the story of the convict rising at Castle Hill, and Andrew’s death. In it she outlined her plans for carrying on his affairs, just as he had left them and, there and then, made Louis an offer for the outright ownership of the Thrush and Hawk ‒ preferring, she wrote, to risk her own money, than to force him into placing their management into a woman’s hands. She settled to wait, with what patience she could gather, for his reply. It would take, she imagined, at least a year.

  II

  It was a morning less than a month after Andrew’s death when David came running down the stairs to tell Sara that, from the schoolroom window, they had sighted the Hawk coming to anchor in Sydney Cove. Sara heard the news with a sense of misgiving; she felt that she was hardly ready for the problems that were ahead of her over the matter of the Hawk’s cargo, but she sat down immediately to write a note to the master, Captain Sam Thorne, bidding him to come to Glenbarr.

  The next day Captain Thorne waited upon her in the small room he remembered as Andrew Maclay’s study. He had already determined what the outcome of this interview would be ‒ not for any money on earth would he remain in the employ of a woman-owner. He, Sam Thorne, was not accustomed to receiving polite notes, telling him the hour at which he might call to discuss the cargo waiting aboard. In his experience, owners had agents, or else they handled the business directly ‒ and, by directly, he meant actually boarding the ship. Transactions with the owner were properly carried out over rum in his cabin ‒ not in a drawing-room, sipping tea!

  It was an enlightening two hours that followed. He sensed immediately that the woman who faced him across the table was not completely sure of her ground ‒ but whenever he assumed authority not rightfully his, she had an uncanny knack of stripping it from him. She accepted nothing on faith, examining, one after another, each purchase and bill of sale, in a manner that, had she been a man, he would have considered downright insulting. She was nervous ‒ he knew that very well; and yet she made no mistakes that would give him licence to point out that it was madness to believe she could, from this desk, and from this house, control the fortunes of three ships on the high seas.

  The Hawk sailed from Port Jackson a month later, bound for London. In that time, Sara and Sam Thorne had reached an understanding. He still didn’t approve of women-owners, and he still considered that she didn’t know as much about the business as she laid claim to. But, by the same rule, she wasn’t as ignorant as might be expected; and, though a haggler down to the last penny, she was strictly fair and just in her dealings. They fought their battle, Sara and Captain Thorne, and the victory did not go completely to either one.

  On the afternoon the Hawk left the harbour, Captain Thorne called at Glenbarr to take leave of the woman under whose orders he was to sail for perhaps many years.

  She walked with him to the veranda steps.

  ‘Well, Captain,’ she said, turning to him, ‘I hope you have a good voyage. And may God speed your return.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am, I’m sure. And you may depend that I’ll do my best for you. I’ll see that those London agents treat you right.’

  ‘Yes, I know you will,’ she said quietly. She smiled, then, and extended her hand.

  He went down the steps feeling that maybe Andrew had left his business to a head almost as shrewd and hard as his own.

  In the town itself there was an outburst of curiosity when it was observed that Sara’s first appearance after her husband’s death was a visit, accompanied only by Annie Stokes, to the Hawk. Then, when it was known that she had made her third visit to the vessel, the idea began to seep through the settlement that she had no intention of instructing the London agents to sell the three ships. People shook their heads, saying to one another what a great pity it was that Sara Maclay didn’t realize when she was over-reaching herself.

  III

  Andrew’s death ended the three-year-old quarrel between Richard and Sara. Although Richard called at Glenbarr several times during the following few weeks, he had not been admitted; then he came one day at the time when Captain Thorne was beginning to spread the news that he would continue to sail under Sara’s orders, and he was not, as before, greeted with the reply that Mrs. Maclay was not receiving visitors, nor was he shown into the drawing-room. Instead, Bennett led him into the little room where he and Andrew had so many times talked over business matters. Sara rose from the desk to take his outstretched hand. He accepted the chair she indicated, and sat studying her ‒ the set of her head above the high, black collar, the fine, pale face, and drawn-back hair. It was three years now since he had been alone with her like this ‒ a long time in which to regret the words used to herself and Jeremy on the road to Kintyre, and to reflect on the qualities he had not seen before or appreciated. He felt an immense, but almost unwilling, respect for the woman facing him, this person who seemed to bear little relations to the girl he had known at Bramfield. In the three years of their separation he had learned her pride and spirit, the unbending determination he could no longer sway by a mere smile, or a lightly expressed wish. He no longer felt towards her any of the rash confidence of his first year in the colony. By Andrew’s death, she had reached her full stature; he recognized it immediately, and he approached humbly and cautiously, almost afraid of her.

  He didn’t know how to talk of Andrew. He began clumsily, hesitantly.

  ‘It seems … strange to see you here, Sara. Andrew always …’

  She gestured vaguely ‒ he couldn’t tell whether in impatience to have him come to the point of what he wanted to say, or whether it pained her to have Andrew spoken of.

  ‘I know …’ she said. ‘But what else should I do? I was not made to sit over a piece of needlework all day.’ She spread her hands on the littered papers before her. ‘There’s enough occupation here for three heads … and it keeps me too busy to think.’

  But as she spoke, she rustled the papers nervously, and he did not miss the brightness of tears in her eyes. She spoke with quick, jerking phrases, and he sensed that, for all her show of calm efficiency, she was afraid of what she had undertaken. He thought of the ship in the harbour, the captain who was accustomed to taking his orders from men like himself. Richard owned that, among women, Sara might be outstanding, almost formidable; but now she was entering into a world of men where only wits sharper than theirs, a need more compelling, a sense of opportuni
ty more acute, would enable her to survive. A petticoat government was a precarious thing; she would need every last ounce of shrewdness and courage that Andrew had taught her to pull off what she was attempting. He looked again at her nervous hands on the papers, and he felt afraid for her.

  He faced her directly.

  ‘What I’ve come here to talk to you about concerns Andrew … I’ve come about the money I owed him.’

  She didn’t reply, merely raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve come to assure you that it will be repaid, Sara.’

  ‘Repaid?’ she repeated quietly. ‘Andrew didn’t press for payment. It’s not my intention to do so now.’

  ‘You don’t see my point at all. There is a vast difference in owing money to Andrew, and …’ his voice dropped, ‘owing it to you.’

  Her gaze left his face, and for a moment she stared down at the desk, at the writing materials laid before her. There was a maddening precision in their array, set out by Annie’s careful hands.

  ‘How do you mean to raise the money, Richard?’ Sara said suddenly, looking up. ‘You don’t mean to sell Hyde Farm?’

  ‘No ‒ not that. I’ll keep Hyde Farm ‒ no matter what happens. Lady Linton would advance the money if I wrote and told her the facts of the case.’

  She shook her head violently, holding up her hand to silence him. He thought, for a moment, that her face betrayed anger ‒ a definite irritation at the very mention of Lady Linton’s name.

  ‘I don’t want you begging money from her. I’m in no hurry …’

  He cut her short, stung by her choice of words. Her father’s arrogance and hauteur were still there, he thought, when she needed them. Since the Bramfield days, she might have learned prudence ‒ but she was never humble. He watched her settling back with a greater show of confidence into the chair that her husband had always used, watched her spread her hands on the desk and prepare to refuse the money of a woman many thousands of miles away, a woman who had long ago forgotten Sara Dane’s very existence.

  ‘I had no thought of applying to Lady Linton,’ he said quietly, ‘unless you wished to have the money repaid immediately. If you’ll give me time, I’ll find it myself.’

  ‘How?’ she said. Her tone was gentler.

  ‘I’ll do what I should have done in the beginning. Expenditure will have to be cut ‒ somehow. There must be ways and means of making Hyde Farm pay more. Alison and I should be able to live on far less than we do. Andrew went on lending us all the money we wanted. It was so easy ‒ too easy ‒ to continue taking it from him ‒ but now we must put an end to that.’

  She listened eagerly as he began to talk, outlining plans he had for improving the farm, the ways in which he could cut expenses, of certain business deals which he had, from lack of interest, never entered into before. He was determined he would waste no more opportunities. The flow of his talk ran on, and she didn’t check him. She knew perfectly well that he was building up an impossible ideal, he saw himself the man of energy and acumen he never could be. But to hear him talk in this way was to bring back to her the first few weeks after his arrival in the colony, and the months after he had acquired the farm. While she listened, she was able to imagine that their quarrel had never existed; their three years of near-silence was as completely forgotten as if it had not been at all. With brief nods and a question now and then, she encouraged him. If Richard achieved only half of what he planned, he would far outstrip any effort he had yet made in his whole life. She had no particular need of the money he owed, and its repayment was safely insured by Alison’s eventual inheritance from Lady Linton, but she would not say a word to halt him. His pride had been touched, and he showed more spirit now than she had ever seen in him before. It wouldn’t harm him, she thought, to learn at last how money was made, to watch every penny of expenditure to see if it couldn’t be reduced to a halfpenny. He would soon get used to wearing last year’s coat, and choosing his wines with an eye to the price. For too long Richard had been unhampered by such necessities; he would learn them now, quickly, rather painfully, and be far better for having done so.

  It was noon before he rose to go. They stood together wordlessly for a few moments, and then he bent and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Good-bye, Sara. It won’t be possible to see you alone like this very often. But it won’t be the hell it has been during the last three years ‒ not again.’

  She knew quite well what he meant. It seemed that at last Richard had learned the prudence she had tried to impose upon him in the beginning. He knew now the smallness of the society to which they belonged, and the power of rumour and gossip. With a kind of wisdom and gentleness he had not possessed when he had first come to the colony, he was bowing to the inevitable.

  She smiled at him. ‘We’re fools if we haven’t learned by this time that we can never successfully quarrel with one another. You and I were not made to quarrel.’

  Still smiling, she shook her head when he tried to kiss her a second time. Instead she took his hand and covered it with both of hers.

  IV

  During the next few months Jeremy watched Sara carefully, concerned that the look she had worn when she arrived in the colony first had returned to her face. Her eyes were cold, a little harsh; when she spoke, her voice was quick and brittle. He thought her afraid, unhappy, even tormented. She grew thinner, her beauty sharp and fine ‒ something to touch a man strangely when he looked at her. And yet she herself seemed to be interested in no man.

  Helpless to prevent it, he saw her driving herself to master the tasks it would normally have taken three people to do. Clapmore was promoted from his desk at the store, to one in the room next to where Sara herself worked. He took notes at her dictation, toiled over long columns of figures, prepared letters to the London agent, and was general liaison between Sara and the people with whom she did business.

  The colony was learning the hopelessness of expecting to keep Sara Maclay out of any business transaction which she had made up her mind she wanted to enter. They didn’t much like it, but in time accepted it, and almost learned to regard each communication from her as if it came from Andrew himself. Their acceptance of her part in the best of their commerce was, after a while, fairly good-natured ‒ except for the fact that they were, whether consciously or unconsciously, waiting for the fatal mistakes to creep in, the false moves that would bring the structure crashing.

  When Jeremy’s sentence expired, Sara marked the occasion with a gift of cash and credits with her agents that staggered him. He returned it promptly, and rather curtly. She took it back, not at all embarrassed, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘You’re a fool, Jeremy Hogan! You’re free now, and you’ll need the money ‒ but, if you choose to be as stiff-necked as a mule, that’s your own affair.’

  But he cherished the memory of the dinner she gave him at Glenbarr to celebrate his day of freedom. David was allowed to stay up later than usual to eat with them; the dining-room windows were open to the soft spring air, the wine was chilled and the candles shed a kindly light on the faces of Sara and the child. There was laughter between them, and some of the strain that now seemed to be Sara’s habitual expression left her.

  Suddenly Sara raised her glass, smiling at him down the length of the table. ‘To the future, Jeremy!’

  He heard her words, phrased ambiguously because of David’s presence, and caught up his glass eagerly, as anxious as she was to toast his freedom. Fourteen years were gone out of his life, fourteen years since he had seen his home, or the things that had made his world ‒ the pretty women, the gentle manners, the beautiful horses to ride to hounds with on sharp winter’s mornings. It was all gone now, but so were the years of serving other men. He could not return to what he had known, but life here in the colony could be fashioned into something to his liking. He was his own master now … Here he checked himself; he was not his own master while Sara chose to have him do her bidding. Telling himself he was a fool, still he drank the wine
with her gladly.

  The recollection of how Sara had behaved to him that evening had to suffice him for the future. He looked vainly for the return to life she had shown then; she was not so much being aloof with him, he thought, as withdrawn and preoccupied. It was almost as if, while she talked with him, her mind was already racing ahead to her next duty. He knew quite well how much she still relied on him, coming to him for advice, and even, occasionally, taking it. But, it seemed to him, he made a useless effort when he tried to come close to her. Andrew was not dead, he thought, again and again ‒ his ships sailed the high seas, his crops grew in rich soil, and Sara lived with his memory and a closed heart.

  His freedom had brought little change to Jeremy’s life. He divided his time between the Maclays’ three farms ‒ up early each morning, remaining in the fields with the labourers while the light held. Often at night, working over the account books in the silence of Kintyre or Priest’s, he thought of Sara ‒ probably similarly employed at Glenbarr ‒ and he cursed her for the servitude in which she kept him. Occasionally he rode down to Parramatta or Sydney to find himself a woman, one of the easy ladies who sprinkled the streets after dark, decked in finery probably paid for by one of the soldiers of the Corps, or a farmer in town on a spree from one of the outlying districts.

  But there was little satisfaction for him in this, thinking all the time of Sara, who shut herself up at Glenbarr, never admitting him unless Clapmore was there, or Annie paraded the hall. Sometimes he woke in the night, sweating from a dream of her, a dream in which her hair was twined about his throat, strangling him. He fretted and fumed under her yoke, and yet he could not break free of it.