The Opal Dragonfly

by Julian Leatherdale

  Aunt Louisa had been preoccupied for the last month or so. As the president of the Benevolent Asylum’s committee for the annual fancy bazaar to be held on New Year’s day in the Botanic Gardens, she had recently hosted an important high tea at Faulconstone for the members of the ladies’ fundraising committee. This had necessitated days of work for her gardener and handyman to make the house fit for such distinguished company, and, as no decision big or small could be undertaken without Mrs Blunt’s close attention, the work progressed slowly. This in turn had delayed the replastering and whitewashing of Isobel’s attic room. ‘You have gone to so much trouble, Aunt Louisa,’ said Isobel when they finally finished the tour on the landing outside her new bedroom. With its sloping roof and dormer window, the room was narrow and plainly furnished, but sufficiently light and private to be a comfortable retreat from the cares of the world.

  ‘dinner is served at half past seven as I like to retire no later than half nine,’ said her aunt, enumerating the rules of the house for Isobel’s benefit. ‘Morning devotionals are at six thirty with my staff in the breakfast room and again at half six in the evening. I choose a passage of scripture or read from the Book of Common Prayer. I attend church on Saturdays and Sundays and at least one other day a week.’ Aunt Louisa had converted to Methodism some years ago but did not, of course, require that Isobel attend the same church, unless she was curious. Isobel would continue to join her family for services at St James’ or St Mark’s as previously. She would also still attend her art, language and dance lessons in Woolloomooloo and Surry Hills when she could be spared from helping Aunt Louisa with her charity work.

  Isobel was familiar with such work. Her mother Winnie had served on the Married Ladies’ Committee for the Female School of Industry. This charitable institution had been founded with a grant from Governor Darling and with his wife, Lady Eliza, as its first patron. With one in three babies in the colony born out of wedlock, the school had declared its mission to rescue the daughters of convicts from destitution, brutality and ‘utter ruin’, otherwise known as prostitution. The school provided these neglected girls with the moral guidance that their parents had failed to give. Their mothers—‘fallen women’—had either been deserted by their husbands, rendered unfit by their attachment to vice, or, if employed as live-in servants, were unable to care properly for their offspring. There were sceptics who feared that the education given by the school to such humble girls would inspire ideas above their station and fill them with social discontent. Isobel somehow doubted that classes in scripture, housework, knitting, needlework, reading, writing and arithmetic were a breeding ground for revolution.

  Isobel’s chief exposure to the rigours of charity work was her mother’s efforts towards the school’s famous fancy bazaar. The Macleod women had already sharpened their needlework skills to fill the ‘Mission-basket’ or ‘Jew-basket’, passed each month from household to household in their congregation at St James’ to raise funds for the conversion of Jews and enlightenment of savages. Exhorted by Winnie, Isobel and her sisters then worked their fingers to the bone for the monumental undertaking of the annual fundraising bazaar. despite her sacrifice, Isobel had never been to this grand day and was curious to see the bazaar for herself.

  Whereas Winnie’s evangelical zeal for fancywork and fundraising was constrained by her other duties as mother and wife, the widow had no such limitations. Louisa was a generous subscriber and indefatigable worker for the Benevolent Society of New South Wales whose handsome asylum on Devonshire Street provided succour for the aged poor, and indigent mothers and their children. It had expanded considerably during the hard times of the 1840s depression, to meet the ever-growing influx of deserving poor.

  Isobel soon discovered that she barely had a moment to herself at Faulconstone. With less than six weeks to go until the grand bazaar, she and Aunt Louisa spent most afternoons and evenings seated by the fire, busy at their needlework and crocheting. The parlour quickly filled with patterns, fabric patches and scraps of flannel and brown holland; despite all attempts to keep everything orderly, their wicker work baskets overflowed with a tumult of needle books, cotton reels, ribbons and elastic, scissors, thimbles, pincushions and bales of Berlin wool. The results of these prolonged labours accumulated in admirable profusion in Mrs Blunt’s trunk in the morning room, especially reserved for bazaar fancywork.

  Some days they were joined by dear Mrs Palmer and other society ladies whom Isobel had never met before. The cast of this fancywork group variously included Mrs Cornwall, Mrs Burdekin, Mrs Thierry, Mrs Forbes, Mrs Herriott, Mrs Smart, Mrs Long, and Mrs Drummond. To her surprise, Isobel enjoyed these working circles with their lively conversation and frequent outbursts of laughter. It was obvious these women respected Isobel’s aunt greatly, and, as Louisa’s niece, Isobel was accorded great kindness and consideration. For the first time in an age, she felt protected, by the camaraderie of these older women, from the relentless assault of censure and gossip. What’s more, Aunt Louisa, a consummate mistress of fancywork, and her expert comrades were generous with their knowledge, happy to teach Isobel new skills.

  Truth was, Isobel had begun to realise that ever since Alice had left home and her mother died, she had often felt lonely at Rosemount. Her companionship with Grace and Anna had been poisoned years ago, and while she had good reasons to pine for her lovely harbourside home, Isobel welcomed the easy intimacy and enjoyment of these gatherings.

  During one morning’s work circle, two weeks after the ball at Juniper Hall, the conversation turned to Mr and Mrs Cooper and their family’s future. ‘I hear that they have plans to return to England with Mrs Cooper’s relatives and put five of the children into boarding school. Even more expense. And with money still owing to creditors!’ So said Mrs Forbes, whose husband had once partnered with Mr Cooper in business but had split acrimoniously soon after.

  ‘Can their son not help them out at all?’ asked Mrs Cornwall.

  ‘I believe Augustus has taken on some of his father’s debts,’ said Mrs Herriott. ‘Children must do their duty, of course, but they must also think of their own futures.’

  ‘On that subject, have you heard the rumour that a particular young lady has set her cap at Mr Augustus? With some certainty of success, so I hear!’ exclaimed Mrs Drummond.

  ‘Who is it, do you know?’ asked Isobel. She disliked the commonplace phrase ‘setting a cap’ but her curiosity was piqued.

  ‘Well, my dear, I am surprised you have to ask,’ said Mrs Drummond with a smile.

  Isobel stared at her blankly and then her cheeks coloured. She recalled the scene at the ball of her sister Grace and the scion of Juniper Hall talking closely. Was it possible this had progressed so quickly to courtship? And with the prospect of marriage, that Holy Grail for which Grace had prayed and pined but despaired of ever finding?

  ‘Oh, Isobel, you look so shocked. I did not mean to embarrass you, my dear!’ said Mrs Drummond, patting her on the arm. ‘It will be news to be celebrated if your sister Grace does indeed make a successful match with Mr Cooper. He is a wealthy and honourable gentleman and she would be well looked after, I can reassure you.’

  ‘Were you aware of this, Aunt?’ asked Isobel.

  ‘I have only heard what the ladies here have told me today, my dear,’ said her aunt, looking a tad annoyed at her friend’s indiscretion but not enough to be upset. ‘Neither your father nor Grace has mentioned it to me. Yet. I am sure we will learn more soon enough.’

  ‘Well, I’m very happy for Grace, of course,’ said Isobel warmly, not wishing to appear peevish. ‘It’s just unexpected news! I think I should pay Rosemount a visit soon.’

  Isobel’s greatest hope arising from this intelligence was the possibility that she and her sister would finally be reconciled. For too long she had been shut out from the love that Grace had borne her when they were children. Grace still blamed Isobel for many of her life’s disappointments, most painfully her betrayal by the erstwhile Captain Trante
r. This wound had festered into such a chronic condition of distrust between them that it seemed only the hope of matrimony could remedy it. There was the not insignificant hurdle to clear of securing the Major’s acceptance of an emancipist’s son in the family. But if anyone could sway her father’s opinion, it was Grace.

  Whenever Isobel’s mind dwelt on the awkward meeting at the ball with Ralph Tranter, her former suitor, she found that the sting of that remembrance was growing duller. This was especially the case when her thoughts alighted on the face of the drawing master, Mr Probius, whom she associated with feelings of the greatest satisfaction and curiosity. There had been no further communication from this gentleman since the night of the ball but she thought of their intimate dialogue often.

  ‘When Mr and Mrs Cooper leave Juniper Hall, I suppose you have not heard what their intentions are for their staff? I met their drawing master, Mr Probius, at the ball and Mrs Cooper seemed well pleased with his service to the family.’

  ‘I am sure she is,’ smiled Mrs Cornwall, and there were grins all around the work table. ‘I suspect Mr Probius may have to seek new employment. I would guess that he is a luxury Mr Cooper cannot afford in the straitened circumstances in which he finds himself.’

  ‘I do not think Mr Cooper shall weep too many tears at the loss of his drawing master,’ rejoined Mrs Forbes. There were more meaningful glances and chuckles.

  ‘More tea, my dears?’ asked Aunt Louisa, bringing that topic to a close.

  Eighteen days after the ball at Juniper Hall and only three since his name was mentioned in the ladies’ fancywork circle, Mr Probius paid a visit to Faulconstone. Aunt Louisa and Isobel were engaged at their writing desks in the morning room. Isobel was composing a letter to her sister Alice, expressing her concern for her welfare and that of her little boy (‘you are in my thoughts and prayers every day, my sweet sister’) and her hope that she would see them both soon. She had already penned another long letter to her brothers (‘I pray that your sea passage has been a safe and not too tedious one, my dearest William’) addressed to the offices of the company in Madras where they were to be employed.

  The butler knocked on the door and presented Mr Probius’s card. ‘The gentleman says he has the honour to be an acquaintance of Miss Macleod’s. He is anxious to meet her esteemed guardian, an opportunity denied him at Juniper Hall a fortnight heretofore.’

  ‘An acquaintance of yours?’ Aunt Louisa turned the card over. ‘do I know him?’

  ‘He is the drawing master at Juniper Hall,’ explained Isobel, struggling to disguise her true feelings about the man. ‘We were introduced at the ball. He was kind to me when I was feeling unwell.’ It was a small and harmless lie.

  ‘The drawing master?’ Louisa had evidently forgotten all about the sewing circle’s discussion a few days ago. ‘And why, pray, does he wish to see you?’

  Isobel coughed. ‘He is an admirer of the Major’s sketches and has heard favourable things about my modest efforts,’ she said. At this point she became a little more inventive with the truth. ‘I asked him if he would be so kind as to look at my work to see if I might benefit from some tutoring. He is a highly accomplished artist.’

  Aunt Louisa looked sceptical. ‘Well, I think this is a matter for your father to adjudicate. A man calling on a young lady is no paltry matter.’

  ‘But, Aunt, Mr Probius has no intentions of that kind!’ protested Isobel, who, to be perfectly honest, was not at all sure what his intentions were. ‘I am hopeful that he may agree to take me on as his student. I’m sure Father would have no problem with that.’

  ‘Well, be that as it may, I feel a little fatigued this morning and am not fit to have company.’ She turned to the butler. ‘Please thank Mr Probius for his courtesy and inform him we are not at home for visitors today.’

  Isobel was surprised at how bitter was her resentment at her aunt’s interference. Her leash of moral guardianship was beginning to chafe. Isobel feared that Charles Probius would read this rebuff as a final rejection. He was a man held in high esteem in Sydney’s loftiest social circles and had no shortage of people to take an interest in. His brief infatuation with Miss Macleod’s case would soon pass and be forgotten.

  She could not deny the tender stirrings of her heart when she pictured his face or recalled the timbre of his voice. She did not want to anticipate the course of their friendship too hastily for fear of driving it away like a startled deer, chanced upon in the forest. Even so, she could not help wondering if her father could possibly approve of such a man as Charles Probius. If the Major might be willing to accept Augustus Cooper, son of an ostrich feather thief and gin distiller, then why should he have any objections to a famous artist?

  She calculated the points for and against Charles in her father’s estimation. He had lived in Paris (a definite liability given her father’s Francophobia) but as he also had the Germanic-sounding birth name of Ludiger, she had reasons to hope otherwise. While there were rumours to the contrary, his politics might be liberal and reformist (overlapping with some of her father’s views) rather than tend towards the radical or revolutionary. He had something about him of the dandy in dress and bearing, if the parrot-headed cane and the way he wielded it were anything to go by. Even if it was just a costume for a fancy-dress ball, there was no disputing that the cut, shade and accoutrements of Charles Probius’s outfit were exquisitely tasteful and eccentrically individual. What her sensible father would make of this élan and stylishness in a gentleman was anyone’s guess! There was the fact that Probius was a widely acclaimed artist, at least in the colony, with a wealthy clientele and steady income, possessing skills her father had always admired and aspired to with some degree of success and recognition himself. On the other hand, Major Macleod might not regard the profession of artist as a calling fit for a gentleman or as a secure basis for his daughter’s future as a gentleman’s wife.

  No, no, no, stop this folly! she scolded herself. What was she thinking? The man had simply taken a kindly interest in her as an artist and asked to see her work. And here she was, inflating this pleasant if accidental encounter into a romantic tryst! What madness, Isobel! she heard her mother’s scolding voice. You must not fret away your heart like this in such foolish, idle speculation. I must not, she told herself.

  Even so, how was she ever to see him again?

  As she returned to writing her letter to Alice (who had been so grievously deceived and punished in love), Isobel tried to heed her own inner voice of caution: silly girl, do not, do not, I tell you, give away your heart too easily!

  Chapter 21

  THE ROCKS

  The fancywork circle continued in their arduous labours, spinning and stitching, sewing and knitting, with the tireless dedication of Odysseus’s Penelope. Even so, Aunt Louisa found time in her busy schedule to fulfil her other charitable obligations. As a volunteer visitor, she had been asked to call on a poor woman and her children who lived in The Rocks. The deserted mother had made a claim for assistance from the Benevolent Asylum and now had to be inspected to be eligible for relief.

  ‘It will be instructive for you to see why our hard work is so worthwhile,’ Louisa told her young companion. ‘I am sure it will inspire you to even greater efforts, my dear.’

  In all her young days, Isobel had never visited The Rocks. It was the name given to the crowded area of dwellings and dockside buildings on the peninsula separating Sydney Cove and Cockle Bay (renamed darling Harbour by the self-same governor). From the first days of settlement it had remained the domain of convicts and, later, ex-convicts. A few fancy villas had been built on the high ridgeline to the north for the harbour views. On the eastern side was the ghetto where poor convict families lived and worked in a riot of tumbledown cottages, terraces, shops and small businesses, cheek by jowl with the government’s bond stores and merchants’ warehouses facing Circular Quay. Clinging to the peninsula’s craggy flanks like fleas to a dog, The Rocks presented the visitor with a labyrinth of croo
ked streets, narrow laneways and steep flights of stairs.

  Isobel was too ashamed to admit to her aunt, who had paid many visits there, that she was afraid. If you gave any credit to the lurid accounts in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Rocks was a place to be feared and reviled. With its reputation for crime, drunkenness, prostitution and violence, it was the chief site of the city’s moral pestilence, detested by the good citizenry of Sydney for spoiling their enlightened self-image.

  Isobel may have been tempted to dismiss much of this talk as melodramatic had she not heard about two famous murders in The Rocks the year she turned nine. The first was the cold-blooded killing by Norfolk Island convict John Knatchbull, who clove the skull of a poor widow with a tomahawk while being served in her shop. But it was the second sensational murder that year that made the deepest impression on Isobel: that of Mr Thomas Warne, a debt collector, by his French valet and ex-convict Mr Videlle. This atrocity had done nothing to improve the Major’s opinion of convicts or Frenchmen.

  In a nasty, mischievous mood, her brother Joseph had tormented his sisters by reading aloud every grisly detail of the case: how Warne and Videlle argued; how the servant struck him in the head with an axe; how the dead man’s blood stained the ceiling of the house; how the murderer dismembered the body and tried to burn it in the fireplace; how the melted fat of the corpse caused the fire to roar out of control and had to be put out; how the charred body parts were then conveyed in a chest to Cadman’s Cottage; how a waterman was hired to throw it into the harbour; how the alarm was raised with a constable and the gruesome contents discovered. Isobel had nightmares for weeks afterwards.