“Anything, of course!”
“Have you not a prospect of trees, woods, forests, fields at our disposal? An oak, now, or beech—”
“Our only proper road goes out to Paramatta. Our principal view or prospect is thought to be the harbour with its shipping. In the circumstances, I do understand your disinclination for it. What else? Our buildings, as you see, are not metropolitan. I might take you by way of the foundations of the new church past the place where services are sometimes held in the open air—”
Miss Chumley fanned the flies vigorously from before the small portion of her face which straw and gauze did not cover.
“I have had a great deal of religion, you know, sir,” she said. “You can hardly conceive of the care which is lavished on the orphans of the clergy.”
“You sound wistful, Miss Chumley. I suppose there was no chaplain in Alcyone nor no random parson such as we once had. I quite see that might be an additional hardship for a young lady.”
“Yes. I suppose it was. Oh, what pretty birds!”
“We must go this way. There are savages down there and their appearance is not to be borne, the women in particular.”
“It is a great thing that Helen has allowed you to take us off like this.”
“It is a great compliment that Lady Somerset has confided you to my protection. No man ever had a more precious responsibility.”
“Do not have too high an opinion of me!”
“It is impossible that I should—but why should I not?”
“Because, because it is my ambition never to—be a disappointment! I hope that was prettily said, but fear—”
“It was exquisite. It moves me to distraction—oh, Miss Chumley!”
“Janet—are you comfortable? You would not care to change places with me for a while?”
I mastered myself.
“Would you not care to sit by me here, Miss Oates?”
But it was plain that Miss Oates would not care to sit anywhere but where she was, facing backwards and petrified.
“Here is some country for you, Miss Chumley.”
“Mr Talbot—those men! Are they—”
“Government men? Yes.”
She spoke in a whisper.
“They are not restrained!”
“They will not harm us. As for restraining—to what end? That wild country, those blue distances, may extend for all we know for three thousand miles!”
“You are quite, quite sure?”
“I would not have brought you this way had I not been sure! Only the violent or hopelessly depraved ones are restrained. If they are really wicked, then they are sent off to an island and beaten too. I was beaten myself at school and thanked the master afterwards! It was the making of me, I believe. Of course, as the Greeks said, you know, ‘Never too much.’ Our country is very high-principled and we ought to be proud of the fact. These fellows have found this shore in no way fatal to them! Why, a few days ago, on the King’s Birthday, I dined at the same table as a time-expired ‘government man’, a rich and successful one! Foreigners condemn us for what they call ‘slavery’. This is not slavery, not the galleys, the dungeons, the gallows, the torture chamber! It is a civilized attempt at reformation and reclamation. Do not look to your left. There are some aboriginals in the bush.”
Miss Oates squeaked. Miss Chumley spoke over her shoulder in a voice which I had not heard before.
“Do collect yourself, Janet! Mr Talbot assures me that the creatures will not harm us. But I am overcome with the strangeness of things—the trees, the plants, the air—Oh, what a butterfly! Look, look! And what flies!”
“One endures them, that is all, I am afraid.”
“One should live in a city after all. This craze for Nature must pass and society come to its senses!”
“Did you not have a great deal of Nature about in India, Miss Chumley?”
“Calcutta is a city, of course. But we spent some days ashore at Madras with the collector before proceeding to Calcutta. Devoted as I am to dry land, I do not know that the experience was valuable. There were so many directions in which the collector positively forbade us to go!”
“Because of the natives?”
“Oh no! They are harmless. He said he could not permit us to approach a heathen temple—yet he himself, I should have thought, was hardly a deeply religious man! Have you ever seen an Hindoo temple, Mr Talbot?”
“I believe not. I have read about them though.”
“I cannot see why buildings devoted to the practice of another religion, or superstition, shall I call it, should be out of bounds to a young person. In Salisbury, you know, we have many buildings devoted to Nonconformity and even a Quaker meeting house!”
It was too much for me.
“You are adorable!”
“I do not think I am, but am glad that you think so, though you should not say so, I believe. In fact, I would wish you to remain in that opinion for—I think our horse is going to stop.”
“This is agony, Miss Chumley—”
“Helen said we should take the collector’s advice, though I think myself that he meant it as an order! But then, Helen is not at all intimidated by old gentlemen, you know!”
“Not even by beautiful young gentlemen like Lieutenant Benét?”
Her answer was a peal of laughter.
“Oh, Mr Benét! He had such a tendre for Helen—the whole ship talked of nothing else!”
“And you, Miss Chumley—you?”
“We talked a great deal of French. I am always happy to talk French. Do you speak French, sir?”
“Not the way Mr Benét does.”
“I think your ship saved his reason, for he was most unhappy at the end. He had begged for an entretien, a tête-à-tête—oh, I should not talk like this!”
“Please continue!”
“Janet, you are not to listen. Sir Henry was quite unreasonable. I was to stand outside the door upwind, because anyone who entered would naturally come that way. Mr Benét rushed through. He fell on his knees before her and seized her hand, all the time reciting his verses—then the ship rolled and there they were, positively entangled. Then, as luck would have it, Sir Henry, against all custom, did come in through the downwind door! It was like a play.”
“And then?”
“He was so angry! Sir Henry, I mean! He was angry with me too. Can you understand that?”
“Perhaps. But I could never be angry with you myself.”
“Even Mr Benét was angry with me for a while, though not long. I threatened to tell Lady Somerset that his name rendered him conscious even to blushing. Which is why he altered the—”
“I do not understand.”
“It is complicated, is it not? You see, his father started the French Revolution but then had to flee from the guillotine, leaving their estates and everything—and took the new name in a kind of self-mockery, which is very French, I think.”
“So that—is why our quarrel boiled over—why Mr Prettiman was—why Mrs Prettiman—she called me—”
“I suppose he will change his name back when the war is over.”
I blurted it out.
“Miss Chumley—how old are you?”
Miss Oates squeaked again and Miss Chumley looked a little startled, as well she might.
“I am—I am seventeen, Mr Talbot. Nearly eighteen. You do not think that—”
“That what?”
We were looking at each other eye to eye. A positive tide of pink suffused what was visible of her face.
“You do not think me too young?”
“No, no. Time—”
“Come! I will not have you grieving!”
“I—”
“You are not to be sad, sir! Mr Benét will recover. Sir Henry is no longer angry with me. Does that satisfy you?”
“It does indeed. More than you can know.”
*
Did I say so? Did she? Was she really as anxious, so innocent or ignorant, and was I ever so moved by
her? It is the emotions of later life which are roused by these partial memories, memory of her extreme youth and beauty—and my youth too, lanky young fool with everything to learn and nothing to lose. We spoke something like that. I think we felt something like that.
“I believe, Mr Talbot, the episode is to be forgotten with no harm done. We shall treat it the way Mr Jesperson who instructed us in the Old Testament would sometimes tell us to go on. ‘Young ladies, you need not examine verses 20 to 25 too closely and Chapter 7 is to be omitted altogether!’”
“It is sometimes advisable.”
“India, you know, is not a biblical country. I am sure of that, because when we were in Calcutta I looked it up in my cousin’s copy of Cruden’s Compleat Concordance to the Old and New Testament. It goes straight from INDEED to INDIGNATION, with nothing in between.”
“A depressing thought!”
“I do not wish you to be sad!”
“Dear Miss Chumley, life is all sunshine and flowers. Who cares if tomorrow the clouds come?”
“It is well enough for gentlemen to be bronzed, for they are fortunate in not finding themselves hedged as we do. But a young person—you see how high these gloves button and I must hold a parasol every moment I am in the sun. The brown natives of India—they sometimes look quite elegant—the natives are positively awestrook like the angel in Comus when they see an English lady! We must not be bronzed, you know, or our influence for good among them would quite disappear. My cousin says that by the end of the century the whole of the Indian peninsula will be Christian.”
“All owing to the complexion of our English ladies.”
“Now you are laughing at me!”
“Never!”
“Janet, you are not to listen. Mr Talbot, my little note which I slipped into Lady Somerset’s letter to you—you discovered it?”
“I did indeed!”
“Believe me, the very moment it was sent off I would have given anything to have it back, for I seemed then to have presumed, to have made such a frank declaration—you did not find it too—too—?”
“Oh, Miss Chumley! It kept me—restored me to sanity, I would say! I treasure the little paper and could repeat the message to you word for word.”
“You must not. But you did not find the words too—”
“They are sacred.”
“Janet, you may unstop your ears now. Janet!”
I turned in the seat. Miss Oates had her bonnet pushed up and her hands pressed to her ears inside it. Her eyes stared back the way we had come. They were bolting like a hare’s. An aboriginal was following us. He was stark naked and he carried a wicked-looking spear. I shouted at him repeatedly and at last he turned aside and vanished into the scrub. I do not think it was because I shouted. I think he had lost interest in us, as they do after a while.
“I believe we should turn here.”
How the wretched horse pricked up his ears and trotted! He knew where he was going and went there for all I could do. He sketched out, as it were, the mores of his owner or the person accustomed to “drive” him. Who needs to stop by a particularly fine tree and then successively at two houses, a well and a boatyard? In the end, when my wrists were sore from unavailing persuasion, we came out to a slightly raised promontory with the harbour in full view. A wooden seat had been set there for weary travellers and I welcomed it, though an aboriginal stood by it, gazing out over the harbour as if he owned the place! The horse stopped by the seat. The native wandered off without a backward glance.
“My apologies for the wretched animal. Miss Oates, I will hitch him here and leave him in your charge.”
Her answer was the expected squeak. I handed Miss Chumley down and led her along the verge, over the water. Presently I stopped and faced her.
“Miss Chumley—I have said that you and I have been the sport of Neptune as much as ever Ulysses was. The ordinary rules of behaviour cannot apply to us. The many letters I have written to you—”
“I treasure what I have received!”
All this conversation was breathless but in a strange way distracted. Something spoke which was not either of us.
“Miss Chumley—You must understand how instantly I knew my fate—how deeply I am attached to you? Tell me—what I cannot believe—that your affections are engaged elsewhere and I will retire to nurse a broken heart. But, oh, ma’am, if you should be free and disposed to receive my addresses not unkindly—in short, if you was to regard me in the light of more than a friend—”
Miss Chumley faced me with smiling lips and sparkling eyes.
“A young person, Mr Talbot, could not receive addresses more calculated to please her!”
“Oh, I could proclaim it to the whole world!”
“I promise you, Mr Talbot, the whole ship shall receive incontrovertible proof of our understanding before it leaves the harbour—Why, what is the matter?”
The tide was low. There, a mile or two away but clear as an etching in that diamond air, the black ribs of our poor old ship stood out of the water. I remember the impossibility of speaking about it to Miss Chumley. We stood there silent while the whole history of that voyage flooded me and started out under my eyelids so that I had to disguise the effort to wipe the water away as an attempt to rid myself of the eternal and infernal flies! For she knew nothing, none of the people, nothing of the terror, horror, savagery, devotion, boredom and mortality which yet seemed to cling round those distant baulks of timber.
“Miss Chumley—what happened to Lieutenant Deverel?”
“He left the ship and took service with a maharajah. He was made a colonel, though they did not call it that. He wears a turban and rides an elephant.”
And then—
“Mr Talbot! That flag!”
I turned and looked to the right. Less than a mile away Alcyone lay alongside the quay.
“I very much fear, ma’am, it is the recall. The Blue Peter.”
We turned and looked at each other.
I pass over the mutual declarations, the farewells and promises. They are able to be found in a thousand romances and why should I add to their number? In the end, of course, I had to take her—them—back to the ship. I hit the wretched beast harder, I imagine, than he had ever been hit before and was able with difficulty to prevent him running over the little cliff. At least he got us to the quay more quickly than we had left it. Miss Oates scurried to the gangway as if someone were chasing her. I handed Miss Chumley down. The ship’s company was preparing for departure, there was no doubt about it. They showed considerable interest in us, there was no doubt about that either. I even heard the shouted order—“Eyes in the ship, curse you!” and the crack of a starter. But what was that to do with us? She turned to me with a smile.
“You have my word, sir, I will wait—if necessary for ever!”
“And I am yours for ever—there’s my hand on it!”
Impulsively I thrust out my hand. Laughing now, she laid her hand in mine.
“Dear Mr Talbot! Once more you have quite swept me off my feet!”
Her glowing face came near. I snatched off my hat, and careless of propriety, and indifferent to the furtive glances of the seamen, seized her in a firm embrace. We kissed. I believe I have never, except when occasionally disguised by drink, made such a public exhibition of myself. It occurred to me even in that moment of delirium that the whole ship now knew exactly where we stood. Miss Chumley had done precisely what she knew had to be done.
Then the ship sailed, taking my heart with it.
*
My dear readers—for I am determined we shall have more than one descendant—may now imagine that they have the “fairy tale” to the end. They may suppose a steady rise in the ranks of the colonial administration—but no! The fairy tale was about to begin!
It was only the next day that Daniels remarked that the bag brought by Alcyone was a heavy one. He invited me to fetch my letters which were cluttering up his desk. I was too absorbed in my loss and my happiness to
pay much attention. Letters from England at that time interested me but faintly. Indeed, it is a melancholy truth that letters commonly brought more bad news than good. It was therefore two days after Alcyone had left that I bothered to collect them. I read first a letter from my Lady Mother, who seemed, I thought, quite extraordinarily joyful for no detectable reason. Why was she “so comfortable”? Why did she refer to my dead godfather as a “dear, good man”? He had seldom merited such a description in public or private life! I turned to the letter from my father. My godfather’s will had been read. He had left me nothing but had bought up the mortgages and left them to my Lady Mother! Though we could not be called wealthy or even rich, we were now in comfortable and what my father described as “suittable” circumstances!
More than this—dear readers, I beg you to suspend your disbelief as willingly as you can contrive—but concentrate rather on the well-known example of Mr Harrison, who was elected to Parliament without his knowledge and only discovered the pleasing intelligence when he chanced on an English news-sheet which was loaned him by a traveller in a Parisian brothel! By agreement one of the incumbents of my godfather’s rotten borough had asked for the Chiltern Hundreds and I, Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, had been elected! Beat that, Goldsmith! Emulate me, Miss Austen, if you are able! The most striking expressions of astonishment are inadequate in the face of such a nearly unique experience! I read the joyful news over and over again—looked then at my mother’s letter, which now made complete and indeed what I could only think of as “suittable” sense! My first impulse was to communicate the interesting facts to the Fair Object of my Passion! My second was to request an immediate interview with Mr Macquarie.
He was very understanding. I had scarcely told him the news and shown him the relevant portion of my father’s letter when he besought me to regard him less as a governor than a friend.
What is there to add? Mr Macquarie pointed out the difficulties in the way of providing me with immediate transport. As soon as a ship should be available, of course—meanwhile, he thought that in view of this signal display of Divine Providence we should give thanks together. I humoured him. Indeed, good fortune and happiness seem to me much more compelling towards the Great Truths of the Christian Religion than their dreary opposites! Mr Macquarie, when we had risen from our knees, asked me humbly enough whether I would chuse to regard myself as entirely outside the ranks of government (“We are a happy family, Mr Talbot”) or whether in the interim I would, as it were, loan the Colony my talents? I put myself at his disposal at once. He had, he said, many reasons for wishing a closer liaison with the government at home. He thought I would be interested to view what he had accomplished in the short time which had been available to him. Such knowledge would be of inestimable value to one of our legislators!
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