Two days ago Richard had sent a note to Sara, asking if he might come to see her at Glenbarr. The note put an end to her hours of questioning and wondering since Jeremy had told her of Lady Linton’s death, and the Barwells’ plans to return to England. She had replied, telling him to come at a time when she could be quite certain Louis would be away from the house. And then she had settled to wait, her mind unnaturally clear and calm. She knew what Richard would say to her, almost knew the words he would use. This would be the unsatisfactory ending to the relationship that had existed between them since the day they had talked together on the little beach below the garden. For ten years their lives had run parallel ‒ a time of being very close to one another, of love and tenderness, interspersed with quarrels and estrangements. This was not the feeling they had known for each other in the Bramfield days, when they had thought of love with children’s minds; this feeling had brought Richard across the world to be at her side, and had given him ten years of frustration and bitterness.
She knew all this was coming to an end as she walked across the lawn towards him. She came up close to him, and put her hand into his.
‘I’m glad you’ve come, Richard,’ she said.
He nodded, but made no reply.
She plucked at the sleeve of his tunic to lead him forward on to the veranda. He followed her up the steps, and along to the French window opening into the drawing-room. As she passed through into the room beyond, she caught the flutter of Henriette’s dress, like a pale blue flower under the lofty pines.
At all but one window the shades and curtains were drawn against the sun, and the room was dim. There was a cool look to the wax polish of the floors between the rugs, and the clean white walls. But flowers that had been put in fresh that morning were already fading in the heat. Many changes had been made in this room since Sara’s marriage to Louis, but, in feeling, it was essentially as it was the first evening Richard and Alison had come for dinner. He looked about him carefully as he entered, and Sara guessed that the same thought was running through his head.
He stood by the mantelpiece, one hand resting on it, his gaze fixed on her face as she sat down on the sofa near him. His eyes wore a brooding look as they followed her movements.
‘I suppose you’ve heard my news, Sara?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I imagine most people have heard it by this time.’
He spoke hesitantly. ‘Then … you don’t mind me coming here … like this? It’s five years since I’ve been here to see you alone … five years, Sara!’
Suddenly her composure deserted her. Her mouth worked nervously; she stretched out her hand to him.
‘Oh, Richard! Richard! If you hadn’t come, I don’t know how I could have borne it!’
In an instant he was with her, crouching on a low stool at her feet, both her hands clasped tightly in his own.
‘My darling, Sara! I won’t let go of you! There isn’t any need for us to be apart again. Somehow I’ll make Alison stay here … She must stay, if that’s what I want!’
She bent until her face was against his forehead; she moved gently, and her lips brushed his cheek.
‘Oh, hush, Richard! Hush! No more of it! This is what we said to each other ten years ago ‒ and it didn’t do any good, to either of us.’
He pressed his face closer to her shoulder.
‘God!’ he said, in a low voice. ‘What a mess I’ve made of everything! You don’t have to tell me that I behave like a child, Sara ‒ I know that I do! And yet I can’t help myself. I can no more stop loving you, than breathing. But we’ve been nothing to each other all these years, but a constant torment.’
With gentle hands she stroked his hair. ‘Don’t blame yourself, my dearest. There’s no blame …’
Abruptly he flung his head back, so that he was looking at her directly.
‘But there is blame! Through my stupidity I’ve ruined Alison’s life and my own. She’s not happy ‒ she’s not been happy since …’
‘But Alison loves you!’ she protested. ‘You are her whole world ‒ she doesn’t see beyond you.’
‘That’s what she would have everyone believe,’ he said. ‘That’s what she made me believe. Oh … she loves me all right. There’s no doubt about that. She loves me in a way I don’t deserve ‒ there’s room in her heart for nothing else. But she also knows and understands me far better than I thought.’
Sara was frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that my loving, adoring wife has known what I felt for you since the first evening she met you.’
‘Richard …!’
‘It’s true! When the letter came to tell us that Lady Linton was dead, I told Alison that I wanted to stay in the colony. I tried to convince her that, with money in my hands, I could make much more money ‒ as Andrew did. She told me then.’
‘What did she tell you ?’
‘She said that she wasn’t having any more of the colony. She said she had been bored from the very moment she set foot in the place ‒ and tired of the dull, stupid receptions, of seeing the same people every time she went out, of hearing the same talk. It appears that every year she’s stayed here, it’s grown worse and worse. And then …’
‘Yes …?’
He ran his hand distractedly across his face.
‘Then she talked about you, Sara. She recalled to me the night we first came here, and then almost every other meeting we’ve had when she has been present. She remembers how we each acted, what we said. Step by step she built it up, and put it to me. She made me see what I had done to her life, and yours. I have been useless to you ‒ she pointed that out ‒ it would have been much kinder and better if I’d left you in peace.’
‘And Alison …’ she said slowly. ‘She kept silent all this time … and she still stayed with you, knowing what she did ? Why?’
‘I’ve already said that she loves me more than I deserve. I am not good enough ‒ either for Alison, or for you, Sara. But she still loves me. It shames me to think of the way I’ve treated her ‒ and you.’
She said reflectively, ‘A long time ago, when I first heard that you and Alison had come to Sydney, I remarked to Julia Ryder that at last the colony would have a real lady to fuss over. At the time I said it, I didn’t mean it generously, because I hated and feared the very thought of Alison. Now, when I think of her knowing of our love all these years, and yet being silent, I’m shamed also. She is a far greater lady than I believed.’
His grip on her hands tightened. ‘It was a strange thing, seeing the wife I’d always dominated suddenly take control. She didn’t cry, Sara ‒ she didn’t cry at all over the love I’d given you uselessly, and which she’d wanted for herself. But I hadn’t heard the worst of it, even then.’
‘The worst of it?’ she said, alarmed. ‘Richard, what …?’
‘A few months ago D’Arcy Wentworth told her she hadn’t much longer than twelve months to live ‒ perhaps more if she took a sea voyage. She hadn’t talked of this to me because she knew there was no possibility of leaving the colony until her aunt died. But now she has the money, and she’ll go. Her lungs are diseased. You’ve seen her yourself, Sara ‒ she’s like a shadow …’
He thrust his head against her shoulder again. ‘So … whether I want to or not, I can do nothing else but go back with her to England. If I’ve made her wretched all this time, then at least I owe her the last year.’
Then he let go of her hands, and his arms went around her.
‘Oh, Sara! Sara, what can I do? I’m lost without you ‒ and yet I can’t stay.’
She cradled his head against her breast, her arms holding him tightly. ‘Dearest, go with Alison. You’ll find some sort of peace away from me. We’re no good to each other ‒ we torture and destroy, both of us. I have Louis and the children, and I will be happy here. And you ‒ in London, when you have money, you will find distractions. That’s your world, Richard. That’s where you belong.’
‘Do I really belong any
where in the whole world without you, Sara? Ever since we were children …’
His words were stilled abruptly as she bent over him and kissed him on the lips.
‘There is nothing more to say, my dearest. I love you, always. Just kiss me, Richard, and let this be our goodbye.’
Slowly he rose to his feet. He pulled her up with him, and gathered her into his arms.
‘Oh, Sara! Sara! What shall I do without you?’
She put her arms about his neck, and as they kissed she could feel the hot tears on her cheeks.
Already she had the sense of him having gone beyond her reach.
III
Richard and Alison sailed from Port Jackson, in the Hindostan, at the beginning of May, 1810, with the rest of the disbanded New South Wales Corps. To Sara, the period of waiting for their going seemed endless. The Hindostan and the Dromedary were to travel back to England together, but they had first to be victualled and repaired. The round of farewell parties dragged on, and the months passed slowly.
Bligh, who had returned to Sydney in the leaking old Porpoise, too late to be reinstated as Governor, was also to sail in the Hindostan. His enforced stay in Port Dalrymple had sharpened his temper, and the delays seemed to give him a perverse delight.
He and Macquarie had hated each other on sight; Bligh’s presence in Sydney was a perpetual embarrassment to the new Governor. At the end of April, he gave a ball and a fête in his predecessor’s honour, to speed him thankfully on his way.
Sara was nervous and unable to rest while the two ships remained at anchor and she knew that Richard had not yet embarked. She suggested to Louis that they should return to Banon, and he, understanding her unease, made arrangements immediately for their departure to the Nepean.
She was at Banon, in May, when the news reached her that the two ships had at last left the harbour.
The knowledge that Richard was finally gone, gave her a peace that helped cover her feeling of solitude and loneliness. Now there could be no more shared memories of the Romney Marsh ‒ there was no one who might ever mention her father’s name. Richard had taken with him the image of the young Sara Dane.
IV
Governor Macquarie had small liking for the state of affairs in which he found the colony when he arrived. He knew exactly into what shape he wanted to mould the small world he ruled, and he set about it with determined energy. The dilapidated buildings of Sydney annoyed him ‒ he visioned them replaced by solid, prosperous-looking stone; he wanted better roads, and he got them, paying for them by constructing turnpikes. A new hospital was started; St. Philip’s Church was finished and consecrated. Macquarie’s energy touched everything; it reached everywhere.
Offered the example of his own lavish hospitality, the social life of the colony blossomed. It was fashionable to take picnics along the newly finished South Head Road, and to make an occasion of Sunday morning church-going. There was a regular promenade in the evenings in Hyde Park, to the music of the Regimental Band; private parties and balls ‒ always overcrowded with the officers of the 73rd ‒ punctuated the weeks. A racecourse had been laid out in Hyde Park, and the annual Race Week, in October, became Sydney’s greatest social event. On the other side, the fierce, bawdy, often grim life of the town persisted, but in three years Macquarie had pushed it back to its own district ‒ known as The Rocks ‒ and confined it to the convict barracks. He liked and encouraged the veneer of genteel and polite society, and society, such as it was, rewarded him by a determined effort towards elegance.
But there was another quirk to the Governor’s character less to the liking of the colony’s elite; he had a curious partiality for emancipists. He favoured them whenever possible, and encouraged them to mix in the social junketings. But he was not as strong as the traditions which excluded the emancipists. He might bid them to dine at Government House, and appoint them to committees ‒ but he could not force their entry into the drawing-rooms of the officer and merchant class. When His Excellency pointed out the degree of acceptance Sara de Bourget had won, he was gently reminded that all emancipists were not fortunate enough to marry men too powerful, too well-born, and too wealthy to be snubbed.
For Sara the three years following Macquarie’s coming were, on the surface, tranquil ones. But she had to learn gradually an acceptance of the fact that Richard was gone; beneath her calmness there was a sense of loss. He had been so small a part of her daily life since her marriage, and yet she had known as much about him as local gossip knew ‒ had seen him quite often at the gatherings they both attended, and had sometimes spoken of him. But with his going even these familiar things were gone. No one spoke of him any more, and there was no excuse for mentioning his name. Hyde Farm had changed owners twice in that short time, so that not even there had he left a permanent mark. Richard had never belonged at the heart of the colony’s affairs, and the colony forgot him quickly.
By this time Louis was reconciled to a life passed half at Banon, half at Glenbarr; Sara no longer went to the store, but merely looked over the accounts when Clapmore brought them to Glenbarr. Nor did she ride so often to Kintyre, Priest’s, or Toongabbie; Jeremy Hogan still had the greater part of the control of Kintyre, and the overseers of the other two farms were efficient enough, in their fashion. She had learned by now that she must pay the price of lower profits from both, if she was to have peace with Louis. She was not over-anxious about the fall in the profits from the farms; she looked on this time simply as a period of waiting until David and Duncan were old enough to take charge themselves, and when their own ambition would make it unnecessary for her to exert herself. With each year the acreage of cleared land at Dane Farm was increasing, and the merino flocks spreading wider. The Hawk, Thistle and Thrush carried, on every voyage, a substantial cargo of her wool to the London market. At times Louis still called her a shopkeeper, but she was amused to notice that his former contempt was missing from the title.
It was at the beginning of 1812 that she received her only letter from Richard. He wrote simply and quite briefly, telling her of Alison’s death, at Lady Linton’s house, in Devon. She was saddened by the news. Poor Alison! she thought ‒ she had loved so futilely. Richard was unworthy of such love, and yet Sara knew so well that it was as natural to give it, as it was to breathe. She wondered about his life now, and pictured him, surrounded by the London gaiety he had always leaned towards, left in possession of the fortune Alison had not been able to spend. She tried to make herself believe that Richard would be happy now, in the new wealth and freedom he had found.
Chapter Eight
There were lights and an air of bustle through the whole of Glenbarr as Sara mounted the stairs to her bedroom, on the last night of 1812. Below, she clearly caught the sound of the servants’ voices, chattering in the hall, and on their way to the kitchen; here, close at hand, she sensed the excitement and the careful dressing that went on behind the closed bedroom doors. Glenbarr was gay; it wore a festive look. She paused at the head of the stairs, and glanced about her. The balustrade was hung with garlands of Elizabeth’s fashioning, and bowls of wild flowers, in great masses, stood in every corner. In the dining-room, the supper tables were laid; the drawing-room was prepared for cards, and sofas lined the walls for those who preferred simply to gossip.
Suddenly the excitement communicated itself to Sara herself; she picked up her skirt and half ran along to the window at the end of the landing. This window overlooked the garden at the side of the house, where a marquee had been erected for the dancers. It was brightly lit, two sides open to the warm night, and to the view of the harbour. The sky was clear; later there would be a moon. She stood still and listened, and even above the voices of the men as they put last-minute touches to the decorations, and the scrape of a fiddle from a solitary member of the orchestra, who sat on a wooden box by the entrance to the marquee, playing a tune for the benefit of himself and two gardeners, she could hear the gentle murmur of the water on the rocks below. The tune went on ‒ one of To
mmy Moore’s lovely, sentimental ballads, which she hummed to herself as she stood there. Then the mood changed ‒ a lively Irish jig this time, with a touch of laughter in it. She could not recognize the man seated there, silhouetted against the light, but she knew she listened to a cry from the heart of an exile. The gardeners moved off, and for a few moments there was nothing but the sound of the water as a faint accompaniment to the tune on the fiddle.
She swung round at a step beside her. David had come out of his bedroom, and was walking towards her with a smile.
‘Not dressed yet, Mother?’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t take me as long as Elizabeth. I’m no belle ‒ besides, I’ve been doing it for many more years than she has!’
‘Elizabeth won’t outshine you, for all that!’ he said, and suddenly leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’re still the most beautiful woman in the colony ‒ and what’s more, you know it!’
Sara laughed, reaching out to take hold of his hair and pull it. Then her hand dropped. ‘I can’t even do that, can I? You’re much too immaculate, David.’
‘And that’s the way I mean to stay!’
She looked at him with satisfaction. He was nineteen, taller even than Louis, handsome, with his fair hair above the blue coat he wore. He had grown into a thoughtful, quiet young man, but Sara felt that she was very seldom able to reach into his mind and discover what he believed in. She had his love and loyalty, but not his confidences. David was, in a small way, a perfectionist ‒ he attempted nothing that he was not sure could be well and efficiently completed. He had left Michael Sullivan’s care now, and was preparing to take over some of the management of Priest’s. He seemed happy enough with this, contented ‒ and yet she was afraid that his enthusiasm had no passion in it; he seemed to be doing this because there was nothing else for him. He shot and rode well, he was polite, charming, anxious to please ‒ and yet he constantly wore a slightly aloof air. He shared their family life readily enough, but always seemed relieved when the time came for him to make one of his solitary trips to Priest’s, or one of the other properties. She knew quite well that David loved her, but he had never given her his heart completely. She felt a vague disquiet whenever she looked at him searchingly, especially this evening ‒ handsome, and suddenly appearing older than his nineteen years; he so completely lacked the passion that had been Andrew’s, and which Duncan possessed in such abundance.
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