Sukie went downstairs to be ready to greet Dr Kerr when—or if—he arrived. She didn’t want Mrs Hackett letting him in and telling him some lying story about how she had birthed the baby on her own while Sarah and Sukie stood about, helpless. Oh, yes, life had taught Sukie some hard lessons and knowing what the Mrs Hacketts of this world were capable of was one of them.
She did not have long to wait.
Tom Dilhorne was as good as his word. He gave up his afternoon’s pleasure and finally discovered Alan Kerr at a farmstead on the edge of the bush, drinking tea on its veranda while a new-born baby squalled inside the house.
‘The third today,’ sighed Alan on hearing Tom’s news. ‘At this rate Sydney’s population will be likely to rival that of Europe’s towns. I suppose that by the time we reach the Langleys’ home our fine lady will already have gone to the Races. Never mind, I’ll make my way there as soon as possible.’
If Tom thought that his friend misjudged Sarah Langley, he did not say so. Nor did Tom twit him when they arrived at the Langleys to be admitted by a triumphant Sukie.
‘We done it! Miss Sarah and I done it. That Hackett was a useless old bitch—she tried to turn poor Nellie out of the house when the baby started to come, but Miss Sarah was a brick. You’d have thought she’d birthed babies all her life! Nellie and the baby are doing fine. They’re all upstairs.’
Alan took the stairs two at a time, leaving an amused Tom at the bottom. He reached the bedroom to discover there a most sentimental tableau. Nellie and Sarah were sound asleep, and the baby, too, in an improvised cot made from a drawer out of one of Sarah’s tallboys: its original contents had been emptied on to the carpet.
He paused for a moment. Sarah awoke on hearing the door open and stared at him. She was immediately conscious of her appearance: her hair had come down and her overall was bloodstained and crumpled.
‘Oh, you came, at last.’
Alan was quite overcome. Whatever he had expected it was not this. For a moment he could say nothing, and then managed, ‘Yes, I’m sorry I took so long, and you did stay with Nellie—Tom said that you would.’
‘What else could I do?’ she said simply. ‘I couldn’t let Mrs Hackett turn her out and you couldn’t come. I can only hope that I haven’t done all the wrong things.’
Alan looked at the sleeping child. ‘I’m sure that you didn’t.’ To his astonishment he had a strong desire to take Sarah into his arms and kiss her weary, dirty face. The face of a woman who had forgone her own pleasure to help her erring servant. He shook his head to clear it before saying, ‘I don’t know another woman of your station who would have done what you did for Nellie this afternoon.’
‘Oh, come,’ she returned spiritedly. ‘You must know that I’ve run a great household since I was a girl—although I must confess that my duties didn’t include acting as a midwife until today.’
She yawned. ‘How do you manage it, Dr Kerr? One afternoon of only half-doctoring and I feel nearly as exhausted as the poor mother herself.’
‘And you missed the Races, too,’ he said softly, still overwhelmed by his insane desire to kiss a woman whom he had previously thought of as a selfish termagant, but who had displayed a compassion for a poor amateur prostitute and her illegitimate child that had led her to forgo her own pleasure and risk the contempt of the respectable when what she had done became known.
‘Oh, the Races,’ Sarah said, almost with a yawn. ‘What do they matter compared with Nellie’s safety. You are going to look at Nellie and the baby, aren’t you?’
‘You remind me of my duties,’ returned Alan, amused. ‘Yes, if you promise to rid yourself of that overall, and rest a little.’
Sarah went downstairs, still yawning, stripping off her overall on the way. She entered the kitchen to discover Tom Dilhorne there, drinking tea with Sukie. He rose to greet her and his expression on seeing her was an admiring one. ‘I’ve been hearing of your accomplishments, Miss Langley. Sukie is full of them.’
‘They were Sukie’s as well—you mustn’t forget that. I couldn’t have managed without her.’
Sukie had risen in order to pour her some tea, but Sarah waved her down and picked up the pot herself, saying, ‘Let’s drink to the baby, shall we?’
‘She’s got a name,’ Sukie told Tom. ‘Nellie wants to call her Sarah—that is, if you don’t mind, Mum.’
Sarah was conscious of them all looking at her, and of the amusement on Tom’s normally impassive face. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I shall be delighted.’ She laughed inwardly when she thought of what her London friends might have found to say on hearing that her name was to be given to a convict girl’s by-blow after she had delivered it herself. What would they think if they could see her now?
‘That was well done, Miss Langley,’ murmured Tom, ‘but what is going to happen now to Nellie and the baby?’
Sarah did not immediately grasp what he meant. He smiled. Miss Sarah Langley might now fancy herself a great woman of the world, but she had a charming naïveté in some matters.
‘Well, leaving aside Mrs Hackett, who has flounced off to the market, I can’t see your brother being very happy at the acquisition of an invalid mother and her crying baby to the household.’
Sarah sat down. She suddenly felt very tired. ‘Of course, I really am being stupid. You are right. What in the world am I going to do with Nellie and the baby? I feel so responsible for them both.’
Before Tom or Sukie could answer her, Alan Kerr walked into the kitchen. ‘Everything’s A1 at Lloyds upstairs,’ he told them. ‘I’ve given Nellie something to help her sleep.’
‘And you need a cup of tea,’ Sarah told him, conscious of how tired he looked. He had probably been on the go since early morning.
‘Thank you,’ and he sank gratefully into Mrs Hackett’s armchair.
‘We have been discussing what to do with Nellie and the baby,’ Sarah told him, handing him his tea.
‘I could look after her,’ offered Sukie.
Alan shook his head, ‘No, that won’t do. Tom will know, won’t you, Tom?’ and he smiled knowingly at his friend.
‘Oh, aye,’ Tom riposted. ‘Pass the responsibility on to Tom Dilhorne as usual,’ but his eyes were twinkling. ‘Now Miss Sarah’s a practical lass, but it’s not possible for her to help here. Yes, I’ve an idea or two, but you must leave me to think them over. You’ll not be able to move Nellie and the baby yet, but by the time you can I’ll have thought of something.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ smiled Alan, raising his cup to toast Tom.
Sarah had failed to notice that Tom had, for the first time, not used the formal Miss Langley when speaking to her. This was because she was too busy grasping that, seated in her kitchen, and mingling with those whom she had always previously thought of as her inferiors, she was feeling happier than she had done since Charles Villiers’s defection.
Tom’s downright practicality seemed to be affecting her, too. ‘They’re in your hands, then, Tom,’ she offered. ‘I’m going to have some explaining to do to John, anyway.’ She laughed ruefully. ‘I suppose that what happened here today will be all over Sydney before I can turn round.’
Alan was gazing at her in admiration. Here was quite a different creature from the one he had first encountered in Sydney Harbour. He leaned forward. ‘One thing of which I am sure, Miss Langley,’ he said, ‘is that such gossip will not affect you. When you decided to save Nellie you did the right thing, and that matters more than all the malicious chatter in the world.’
‘I second that,’ added Tom, raising his teacup first to Sarah, then to Sukie and finally to Alan.
Sarah coloured a little, and flashed her green eyes at them. ‘The pair of you did the right thing, too. I’m mindful of the fact that you both gave up your chance of a day’s pleasure in order to help Nellie.’
Alan, overcome, thought that he might drown in Sarah’s glorious eyes—and failed in consequence to notice that his observant friend was well aware of his
reaction. ‘It was our duty,’ he said. He could not tell Sarah that it wasn’t only for Nellie that they had done it, it was for her, because he was becoming aware that Tom shared his admiration for the beauty sitting so pleasantly with them in her kitchen.
What Alan was beginning to feel for her was more than admiration. He had believed that the ability to respond so strongly to a woman had deserted him after his unhappy experiences back home, but no such thing. Sarah Langley, without even trying, was sounding a chord in him that he had long since thought silenced.
Sukie decided that they all needed another pot of tea, and also brought out a barm loaf, which Mrs Hackett had made the day before, and buttered it vigorously. Soon they were all, including Sarah, enjoying themselves immensely, eating it and listening to Tom telling a comic story about one of the convicts who had wandered through the bush and thought that he had reached China until a party of soldiers arrived to disillusion and arrest him.
He was an excellent mimic and they were all laughing heartily at its riotous ending, when John, somewhat overset, after spending the day drinking with the officers of the 73rd, made an arrival home so noisy that it woke the baby.
He roared into the drawing room, shouting, ‘Sarah! Where have you been all day? The Middletons told me some nonsense about your clothes. Why is Dilhorne’s gig outside?’
He finally entered the kitchen and looked about him in surprise, his red face growing redder.
‘Where has a crying baby come from? And why are you all in the kitchen? And what are Dilhorne and Kerr doing here?’
Sarah rose. ‘Which question would you like me to answer first, John? We have had such a commotion today as you would not believe. We can have a fête day of our own—that is, if you dare indulge yourself any more.’
Her tiredness was such that her high spirits were verging on hysteria.
Tom and Alan Kerr had also risen when John Langley had burst into the room. It was Alan who spoke first. ‘Your sister has behaved extremely well, Langley. She will tell you about it when Tom and I have left. After that, you must be sure to see that she gets some rest.’
‘I’ll look after Miss Sarah.’ Sukie’s experiences that day seemed to have unlocked some reserve of character in her never before displayed. John stared at her as though one of the kangaroos had been gifted with speech.
‘Well, you all seemed to have had a good time even if you didn’t go to the races. But that doesn’t explain the baby.’
He was astonished at the reception of these simple words. When Sarah had stopped laughing, she took her brother by the hand. ‘Come into the drawing room, John, and I will tell you everything. Doctor Kerr and Mr Dilhorne you will excuse us, I am sure.’
Alan and Tom put their heads together and found a solution to the problem of what to do with Nellie’s baby. Mrs Grimes, the farmer’s wife whose baby Alan had delivered on the same day as Nellie’s, needed a kitchen maid and she agreed to take in Nellie and the baby. ‘Two will be no more of a problem than one,’ she said, untruthfully, but kindly.
The day after the baby’s birth Mrs Hackett called Sarah into the kitchen. There she found a tall young Irishman, his battered felt hat in his hand.
‘This is Kevin Riley, Nellie’s brother. He would like to see his sister and the baby, if you will so allow.’
‘Certainly.’ Sarah had not known that Nellie had a brother, let alone one so personable as Kevin Riley appeared to be. Sukie ushered him upstairs where he remained for about half an hour, and when he returned to the kitchen he asked Mrs Hackett if he might speak to Miss Langley alone. Sarah received him in her pleasant drawing room. Fortunately, John, who would have disapproved of such a liberty, was absent, and although Riley refused her offer of a seat he spoke to her in tones of frank equality.
‘Nellie has just told me that she owes her life and that of her baby to you, Miss Langley, when that dragon of a housekeeper would have turned her into the street.’
‘I only did my Christian duty,’ Sarah said.
‘More than that, I think, considering everything. I know that what she says is true. It is the talk of Sydney today that you acted as her midwife. You have my undying gratitude, Miss Langley and if there is anything I can ever do for you, then I will do it. I consider it a debt of honour.’
His manner was so oddly formal that Sarah felt constrained to answer him in kind.
‘There is no need, Mr Riley. In common humanity I could not abandon Nellie when she was threatened with eviction nor when the doctor was unable to arrive in time.’
‘But you did it for my sister, and that I shall not forget.’
‘I suppose that Nellie told you that Dr Kerr and Mr Dilhorne have arranged for her to work at Grimes’s farm.’
‘Yes, and I shall not forget that kindness, either. Nellie will be better out of town—there will be few temptations in the country. God knows that I have not been able to protect her in Sydney.’
‘Let us hope that the baby will steady Nellie,’ said Sarah hopefully. He seemed a most worthy young man, of a different calibre from his sister, and she respected his independence in a way that would have been difficult for her before she had come to New South Wales. In England she would have offered him money, but delicacy restrained her.
A proud reticence was written in every line of him, and she was relieved that he had visited her during John’s absence. Her brother’s most frequent complaint about the natives of Sydney was of their lack of the proper respect due to his station. His disapproval of the whole affair was manifest. He had made it plain to Sarah that, while he would not have gone so far as Mrs Hackett and turned Nellie out, he thought she ought to have found some solution that did not involve her in the actual birth.
‘You mean that I should have gone to the Races and left her to Sukie,’ retorted Sarah, exasperated.
‘Well, not exactly, that,’ John began, harassed, if resigned to the fact that Sarah had managed to land herself in yet another scrape.
‘Then what did you mean?’ exclaimed Sarah, indignantly.
‘I only know,’ said John, ‘that most people in good society here will not approve of what you did. Think of what Nellie is—and think of your reputation.’
‘Oh, pooh to that,’ said Sarah—and left the room.
She found, though, that he was right. The news ran round Sydney and lost nothing in the telling.
‘I wonder at you, Miss Langley,’ said Mrs Menzies, ‘but I take it that a gel as young as you did not stop to think of what kind of creature she was assisting to give birth.’
‘Do you take me for a fool?’ replied Sarah fiercely, before she could stop herself. ‘Of course I knew how Nellie came by the baby. All that she did was sell herself to the privates of the Regiment for a few pence before she found employment with me. At least she didn’t set herself up in Madame Phoebe’s establishment and cater for the officers. Or are you pretending that you don’t know of Madame Phoebe? Where do you think half the children in my school come from—and your own servants?’
Two red spots appeared on Mrs Menzies’s cheeks. ‘Well, really, Miss Langley, I never thought to hear such a speech from a lady of quality. Your brother should speak to you.’
‘I am sorry,’ replied Sarah, stiffly. ‘I should not have spoken to you as I did. I helped Nellie in the name of common humanity, as I would have cared for a servant at home. The only difference here is that I had to do the work myself instead of ordering someone else to do it for me. Is that so very wrong?’
Mrs Menzies refused the olive branch which Sarah had offered her. ‘My dear, no lady should know of such things.’
Sarah was exasperated all over again. ‘You cannot expect me to pretend that I do not know that the young servant girls are not safe from half of the men who visit us—and also that I am not aware of the consequences, be they never so distant. If I had Race Day to do again I would do nothing differently. Pray, let us turn to another topic.’
Her escapade, however, as John chose to call it, co
uld not be so lightly dismissed. None of the young officers of the Regiment referred to it when she met them, but she was agonisingly aware that they knew of what she had done.
She half-expected Mrs Middleton to prevent Lucy from visiting her, but that lady, whilst deploring Sarah’s behaviour, was too proud of the Langley connection to forfeit it. Lucy came to see the baby before Nellie moved to the Grimes’s farm. She hung wistfully over the cot, which Sarah had bought from Tom’s shop, the drawer having been returned to its rightful place.
Sarah had been surprised by the quality of wood used in Sydney. Her chest of drawers, and now the baby’s cot, had been made of cedar, and the heavy doors, well bolted, which hung in every room of the house, were of a weight that would have been envied in England. They were odd luxuries in a place where much else was primitive and makeshift.
‘Are you sorry that the baby will soon be leaving, Sarah?’ asked Lucy, trying to force a bone rattle into baby Sarah’s unresisting fingers.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but John will be relieved. She’s rather noisy at night and John needs his sleep. He was quite shocked when I rose the other evening and walked the baby in order to quieten her. He said that he had never thought to see me act as a nursemaid.’
‘Oh, the men are all the same,’ said Lucy, easily. ‘They prefer babies to live in the nursery, well away from their quarters, and there aren’t many nurseries in Sydney.’
Sarah walked to the window. ‘I suppose that a great deal of gossip about Nellie and me is running around Sydney.’
‘Yes, but it’s not all unkind. I overheard Papa tell Mama that Frank threatened to knock down one of the officers in the Mess the other night for saying unkind things about you—and Pat Ramsey is quite fierce in your defence.’
‘It’s very good of them and I’m sorry that I need to be defended at all,’ said Sarah glumly, ‘but I don’t honestly see what else I could have done.’
An Unconventional Heiress Page 10