But she shook off the feeling, smiling and tapping him lightly on the cheek with the palm of her hand. ‘Don’t you worry, I won’t disarrange you. Though I can imagine the flutter of feminine hearts …’
She broke off as a door was flung open noisily farther along the passage. Duncan came out of his room, grinning broadly.
‘How do I look, Mother? Am I all right?’
‘You look splendid, Duncan ‒ magnificent!’
He flushed a little with pleasure, and smoothed an imaginary crease in his trousers. Looking at him, Sara was touched. His coat was far too brilliant a red ‒ Louis, she knew, would privately deplore it ‒ but it was Duncan’s own choice, and he was happy in it. He had a graceless rather untidy charm about him, and a confidence that allowed no difficulties to stand in his way. The whole household adored and waited upon him; he had a heart for gossip, and he had friends in every possible level of Sydney’s widening population. He rode his mare and sailed his skiff in the harbour with a reckless, heart-warming fervour. In Duncan, there was nothing of his brother’s touch of introspection.
Sara reached automatically to smooth the ruffles at his throat.
‘Mother, will you be sure to save a dance for me?’ he said. ‘I’ve been practising with Elizabeth, but she says on no account am I to dance with anyone but you and herself ‒ or I’ll disgrace us all.’
‘I’ll be proud to dance with you, my dear.’
In the hall below, the clock began to chime. Sara looked at her sons in alarm.
‘I must go … or I’ll never be dressed and ready to dance with anyone!’
Again she picked up her skirt and hurried along the passage. David looked after her affectionately; but Duncan was absorbed in pulling his new coat into a better position.
II
Sara was almost finished dressing when Louis came into the bedroom. He walked slowly across the floor and stood behind her, for a few moments studying her reflection in the mirror. Then he bent towards the dressing-table and drew from its case the necklace of sapphires which he had given her two years earlier. When he fastened it about her throat, by contrast to her stiff, ivory brocade gown, its colour came to sudden life. He smiled, brushed his lips briefly against her shoulder, and then strolled over to the window.
‘The garden looks attractive,’ he said.
She nodded, remembering how it had looked when she had stood at the window on the landing outside. Small coloured lanterns had been placed to mark the edges of the lawn and the drive; they had been lit now, and glowed softly in the darkness. A sense of expectancy had fallen on the house and garden; they waited for the sound of music and laughter, the voices of couples who would walk arm in arm across the lawn.
‘But the mosquitoes will plague to death anyone rash enough to venture out,’ Louis added.
Sara glanced over her shoulder at him, but he still stood peering out, his hands clasped behind his back. From the way he spoke she knew that he was merely making conversation, while his mind turned over some other thought. But she waited, knowing that, in his own time, he would tell her what it was. She looked at herself again in the mirror, rearranging the set of a curl in her hair.
‘It will be scorching by noon tomorrow,’ he said, glancing at the cloudless sky and the moon that was now beginning to appear over the harbour. ‘Just the sort of day to put everyone in a thoroughly foul humour for the Races. I have an uncomfortable certainty that I’m not going to beat David for the Magistrates’ Purse.’
‘That would be a pity,’ she said slowly. ‘Perhaps it would do David good to be beaten at something. I think he’s almost afraid of the race, in case it proves to be an occasion on which he will fail to achieve what he wants. He’s a shade too successful at most things. It’s not good …’
‘Oh, a race …’ he said, shrugging. ‘I think it needs more than a race to shake David.’
A hint of impatience in his tone made Sara turn quickly. Behind his back, Louis’s hands clenched and unclenched rhythmically.
‘What do you mean, Louis?’ she said.
He wheeled round. ‘I’m not just talking of David. It’s all the children … Duncan, and Elizabeth, and even Henriette.’
Puzzled, she frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. What’s wrong with them?’
He flung his hands in a gesture that indicated his uncertainty.
‘I’m not at all sure. But I can’t help feeling that it’s a great pity there is nothing here to shake them occasionally. They’ve seen nothing … This party tonight, for example … To their minds, it represents the very peak of elegance and fashion ‒ because they don’t know anything better. They live, more or less, at the top of their world ‒ and they’re inclined to forget that it’s a very small one.’
She turned gravely back to the mirror. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said, her eyes meeting the reflection of his. ‘But what is to be done about it? Whenever I’ve talked to David about his going to England, he has always said he prefers to stay where he is. It’s too late for school, I know, but …’
‘School! That’s not where he’ll learn what life in England is like! David is just the right age for London. He is old enough to enjoy it ‒ and young enough to absorb it.’
Sara noticed that her hands were trembling slightly as she reached to pick up her long gloves.
‘And the others …? What of them?’
‘They need it, just as he does. Elizabeth is seventeen, Sara. She will fall in love with some young subaltern here from the regiment, without ever knowing that any other sort of men exist.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘I trust you’re not forgetting, Louis, that, in England, marriages for girls are not arranged quite in the same way as they are in France. Elizabeth should be allowed to choose for herself. And if she wants to stay here to marry …’
He held up his hands. ‘Mon Dieu! I’m not suggesting an arranged marriage for her! I hope ‒ and I feel quite certain ‒ she will return here to the colony to finally settle. Because this is where she has been happiest. But she should know, while she is still young enough to make a choice, what sort of face the rest of the world wears!’
Sara fumbled clumsily with her bracelet, struggling to fasten it over her glove.
‘You suggest the three should go, then?’
In the mirror she watched him cross the room to her. He stood behind her chair, tenderly taking her shoulders between his hands.
‘Let all of us go, Sara.’
Startled, her hand flew to her throat.
‘All of us! You and I also …?’
‘A year or two. No longer.’
‘But … To leave Glenbarr … Banon … I don’t think I want to do that, Louis.’
‘But why not? Must you be for ever chained here? I’m beginning to think that you need a glimpse of the outside world quite as badly as the children do.’
She made no reply. Her head bent forward, and she began to pluck at the ospreys in her fan.
Louis’s fingers on her shoulders tightened a little.
‘Sara … my darling! What is it?’
Suddenly she flung back her head, and her eyes met his directly in the mirror before her.
‘I’m afraid!’ she said passionately. ‘That’s what’s wrong with me! I’ve been in this colony for twenty years, and I’m afraid to move outside of it. Here, they all know my story ‒ and they’ve stopped whispering over it long ago. I have my own place here ‒ and you ask me to leave it, and go and face the gossip in London? You want me to hear my past raked over and over for all its juiciest pieces? Once, Louis, you reminded me that I arrived in the colony in a convict transport ‒ and you said I’d never again suffer like that. It would be possible to make me suffer in a much worse way. If you …’
His thick brows came together. ‘Hush, Sara! You let your imagination run away with you! Who is there in London to make you suffer? Truly, my dearest, you’re looking at the whole matter in the light in which Sydney would see it. Tell me, who wil
l point to your life and say you have cause for shame? London has long recognized what Sydney is afraid to acknowledge ‒ that there were many travesties of justice in the sentences of transportation. To those who know your story, you are guilty of nothing more than a childish prank. Have you forgotten the sophistication and cynicism of London? You have position, money ‒ London cares for little else. It would be a happy thing for England if the Prince himself were surrounded by people as guiltless as yourself. Can you not believe that?’
‘But that’s not all!’ she said, shaking her head, as if to thrust aside the reassurances he offered. ‘The children themselves …! What makes you so certain that they will want to go? Elizabeth, maybe ‒ but will David and Duncan want to go? If David refuses, I can’t force him. It would be natural if he wanted to stay here now that he has begun to take over the farming. I can’t believe that he will leave it readily.’
‘Ah, Sara … children are never the creatures we like to believe they are. You and Andrew built your fortune from a rough farmhouse on the Hawkesbury ‒ but you can’t expect your children to cherish their possessions as you have done. They haven’t had to work for them ‒ and they don’t remember much about the time before their father was a man of importance. You’d like to think that it is love of Kintyre that makes their hearts beat ‒ and that they couldn’t leave it, or any of the other places, for a year or two. But you are wrong. To them, the things they own are an established fact ‒ something they’ve always had, always waiting for their return. When a new side of life is offered them, it’s not in their nature to refuse.’
She fingered the sapphires nervously. She said quietly, ‘Louis, what makes you so sure of all this? How do you know what they will feel about it?’
He pressed her shoulders back until she leaned against him. She could feel the stiffness of his brocade waistcoat on her bare flesh. He bent over her slightly.
‘I know ‒ because I asked them, Sara,’ he said.
‘You … Without asking me first!’
‘Don’t be angry with me, my love. I knew quite well that you’d be afraid ‒ and I wanted to forestall that fear with every argument against it I could summon. I asked them, because I had to know before I spoke to you about it. Sara, they need to get away from this place, so that they can come back to it gladly. How can they appreciate what they’ve always lived with? How can they be expected to realize the peace you and I have found here, when they’ve known nothing else? It’s for their sakes that I want this trip to England. But they need you with them.’
Miserably she clenched her hands. ‘It won’t be as easy as you make it sound! Once they get a taste of London life, they’ll despise this one. They won’t want to come back ‒ and all the work of these years will go for nothing. I’ve struggled to keep the farms and the store working, so that they should be ready for them to take over. Give them a year of London’s gaiety, and they’ll want to sell up what they have here. Oh, Louis, don’t you see that?’
‘Do you have such little faith in their attachment to this place, Sara? My only thought was to convince them that, by comparison, their lives here were full and satisfying. You can’t possibly believe that they will never want to make the voyage. Let them go now …’
He broke off at the sound of running footsteps in the passage outside. There was a knock on the door. He released his grip on Sara’s shoulders, and stepped back a little.
‘Come in!’
The door burst open immediately, and Elizabeth stood there. She wore a gown of soft, white silk, that seemed almost the colour of her skin. This was her first ball-gown, and her father had decreed that it be completely simple, with none of the elaborate trimmings she had yearned for. Sara looked at her and smiled. Louis’s choice was a triumph; Elizabeth was radiant and beautiful in it.
‘You look wonderful, Elizabeth!’ she said admiringly.
‘You’re a picture!’
‘Yes …’ Elizabeth gave an excited little laugh. ‘David and Duncan have just said the same ‒ though Henriette seemed to think it was too plain, when I went to the nursery to show it to her. She didn’t actually say, but I expect she would have preferred something in a bright red. Duncan had paid her a visit before me, and his new coat was much admired by our young despot.’
She stepped into the room, and twirled before them.
‘Papa, do you like it?’
‘I do indeed, my darling. I’m extremely proud of you.’
Then Elizabeth’s gloved hand flew to her mouth in alarm.
‘Mercy, I’d forgotten to tell you what I came up especially for! The first of the guests has arrived. It’s only old Mr. Bridie. He made straight for the supper-room, and didn’t seem to notice that you weren’t down yet. He walked here ‒ that’s why you didn’t hear the carriage.’ Her tone implied complete mystification over people who walked, when they might just as easily have ridden.
She turned to leave them, but paused, looking back slowly.
‘Papa … have you talked about it yet?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I mean … you promised to speak to Mama this evening.’
‘Yes, Elizabeth ‒ we’ve discussed it.’
The girl’s face lit up. ‘Is it settled, then? Are we to go?’
‘It’s not completely settled,’ Louis said. ‘Not yet.’
Suddenly Elizabeth ran to Sara’s side. ‘Please, Mama, say we can go! I’m longing to see what London is like ‒ and to see the country. If I could just once hunt with a Midland pack, I’d be happy. Imagine how terrible it would be to grow old and fat without ever having ridden to hounds!’ She brushed a fleeting kiss on Sara’s cheek. ‘Do think about it ‒ and say we may go!’
Then she turned and fled. They could hear her calling to David as she ran down the stairs. Sara stood up, smoothed her long gloves over each arm, and opened the osprey fan out to its full width.
‘It seems,’ she said, looking at Louis, ‘that my mind is being quite firmly made up for me.’
A slow smile spread across his face. Leaning forward, he kissed her lightly on the temple.
‘I’ve always thought I should enjoy the chance of showing you off to London, my love.’
He offered her his arm, and they left the room together.
III
A sense of bewilderment and disappointment crowded in upon Sara all through the party. The guests arrived, and she greeted them smilingly, but always thankful when each one passed on, and she was spared the effort of making further conversation. The rooms filled with voices and laughter; music floated faintly from the marquee, where, as usual, the men were too numerous, and young subalterns ‒ not so much out of politeness, but simply because they had the urge to dance ‒ danced with grandmothers, three times their own age. The women were surrounded by admiring little groups, and Elizabeth, for whom nothing that evening could possibly go wrong, insisted upon splitting her dances in half, to fit in all her partners. She was the complete coquette, without a trace of shyness, and a flush of excitement on her cheeks. David, when he came to ask her to dance, got a laughing refusal; but when the Governor presented himself, she rose demurely and curtsied. There was no thought in her head of splitting this dance!
At last, when all but the few late-comers had arrived, David came to where Sara stood with Louis in the hall. He smiled, and offered his arm.
‘Mother has had enough now, don’t you think, sir?’ he said, looking at Louis. ‘If people arrive as late as this, they don’t deserve to be welcomed. I propose to take her to the supper-room for something cool to drink. And then perhaps she’ll dance with me.’
Louis nodded, glancing about him. ‘And I must go and find Mrs. Macquarie … David, do you suppose I’ll have to join a line of officers waiting for the favour of dancing with the Governor’s Lady?’
He wandered off into the drawing-room, straightening his gloves, and searching each sofa and card-table in turn.
In the supper-room, David led Sara to a chair and brought her a glass of champagne. It was chilled, and
she sipped it gratefully. He talked lightly to her, criticising some of the more pompous guests, describing, with impudent exaggeration, the florid details of the gown worn by the wife of one of the colony’s most prominent citizens.
‘… purple, Mother ‒ with large yellow bows! Truly, even the natives have more taste!’
Then he hurried away from Sara’s side to bring a chair for Julia Ryder, who had just entered on the arm of William Cooper. He called to Bennett for more champagne, and he went off himself to attend to the serving of some food.
‘David does you great credit, Sara,’ Julia remarked, nodding in his direction.
‘Indeed, Madame de Bourget, your son is known throughout the colony as a young man of the most graceful manners!’ William Cooper murmured this with heavy flattery.
Julia interrupted briskly.
‘I hope this rumour of your going to England is true. The children all need it, Sara. They shouldn’t grow up in this colony without a notion of what the rest of the world is like. They’ll be better for it ‒ all of them. You yourself have earned a few years of leisure, and so has Louis. You can’t expect a Frenchman not to get restless sometimes for the sort of life he’s known once.’
Sara smiled, making a non-committal reply, and thankful when David returned and insisted upon taking her to the marquee to dance.
‘I think I must have been the very last person to know of this visit to England,’ she said to him as they stepped out on to the veranda. ‘In the minds of everyone here, I’m sure we’re already packed and almost gone. And I hadn’t heard a whisper of it until a few hours ago!’
‘Oh, Elizabeth has been talking,’ David said. ‘She’s so excited about it.’
Sara Dane Page 48