Marry and true love will last!
(You will have to reverse the lines to make them appropriate to our own seasons.)
Eden Observer and South Coast Advocate, 25 August 1905
If, When Washing Dishes
Sometime in the small hours of the next night – that is, the night after the Plain and Fancy Dress Ball – and as foretold somewhat obliquely by the blue and white teacup left unwashed – Darcy and Louisa ran away to be married. I awoke suddenly that morning to find Louisa’s side of the bed cold and empty; immediately a sense of unease overtook me. Hastily I dressed, and as I hurried into the kitchen, I saw my father standing there with a note in his hands. His face was drained of all its colour and, without speaking, he thrust the note at me to read.
‘Dear Dad,
Darcy and I are to be married. We love each other and wish to be together. DO NOT TRY TO FIND US OR KEEP US APART, I MEAN IT. Do not worry as we have some money and will be all right.
Your loving daughter,
Louisa’
‘I can scarcely believe it!’ I cried, and even as I did so, I was horrified at the falseness ringing out in my voice. My father looked up at me, and for a moment I feared he had detected the falseness also.
‘Did you know about this?’ he asked. I could barely stand to look at him, for his face was haggard with shock.
‘No, I did not,’ I responded. My father’s grief was bad enough without having to admit to my own foreknowledge.
‘Go and wake your brothers,’ he said, turning away from me.
When the boys were woken, my father sent Dan to rouse the whalers, for his plan was to immediately send out a search party. But here Harry had a very strange response, for he refused to participate.
‘She says in her note not to try to find her,’ he said, and he went very red in the face because defiance of this kind did not come easily to him.
‘Are you not concerned for her safety and wellbeing?’ demanded my father.
‘She has Darcy,’ said Harry. ‘Darcy will look after her.’
‘Yes, but who will look after Darcy?’ said Annie. (A curious thing happened upon Louisa’s departure whereby Annie, just turned eleven years of age, dispensed with all the Whinny and horse-nonsense of her girlhood, and instead assumed Louisa’s place as the smart mouth in the family. In some ways, this proved a comfort to my father, although in other ways was an annoyance.)
‘Anyway, you are joining the search party, and that is the end of the matter,’ said my father.
By this time, the whale men were all getting up, and there was much shouting and commotion and coming and going. My father went outside to speak to Darcy’s father, Percy, who seemed very shocked and upset and kept shaking his head and wiping away tears with the back of his hand; others joined them and an earnest discussion ensued about the best way in which to tackle the search. I realised at this point that I could better assist matters by getting the stove lit quick-smart and putting the kettle on, and so I was busying myself with this task when I suddenly turned to see John Beck standing in the doorway of our kitchen. He looked somewhat bleary-eyed, as if he had just woken up, and he was gazing at my father apprehensively.
‘You wanted to speak to me?’ he asked.
‘Yes. What do you know about this business?’ said my father.
He passed Louisa’s note to John Beck, who read it in silence before passing it back to my father.
‘I don’t know much,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I saw you talking to Darcy outside at the ball,’ said my father. ‘That’s why I ask.’
My heart started, for of course I realised he must be referring to the exchange in the shadows under the mulberry trees that I had myself witnessed. Perhaps it surprised John Beck too, for it took him a moment to answer.
‘Well, it’s true, sir. Darcy did tell me he was going to get married,’ he said. ‘But he did not say who to.’
‘He told you he was going to get married?’
‘He asked me if I might officiate. But I told him I could not, on account of my not being a proper Methodist minister.’
My father stared at him. ‘Did you ask him who he was marrying?’
‘No, I didn’t. But I never suspected it was your daughter, sir. That’s the honest truth. I never suspected for a moment.’
I had my back turned through most of this exchange, for I was now busily occupying myself with the making of damper, so I am not sure exactly what then transpired except it all went very quiet and when I turned around next, I saw that John Beck had in fact left the room. My father stood staring down at Louisa’s note, and then a moment later he departed also, without a word, to join the search party.
The runaways had planned their escape with some thoroughness. Darcy had his small portion of the profits of the whaling season (not a very large amount, as can be imagined after such a season), and Louisa had her gold sovereign for winning Best-dressed and Most Prepossessing at the Eden Show. As well – I discovered after taking inventory of our supplies – they had taken half a loaf of bread, a box of matches, a portion of salted beef and some tea. As far as I could judge, however, they had not thought to take any sugar, and this grieved me more than anything, for Louisa had a sweet tooth and needed plenty of sugar in her tea. Dan went so far as to leave a small bowl of sugar on a tree stump at the very top of our property in the hope that they might venture back for it, but of course it just became infested with ants.
In spite of the best efforts of the search parties, it seems probable that the pair of them may have hidden out in the bush for several days before boarding the S.S. Merimbula and travelling as far as Sydney. Louisa may have disguised herself by wearing my mother’s hat with the veil netting (hence her reluctance to use the veil as a trimming on her dress) and stuffing her other clothes under her coat so as to resemble a stouter person. A ‘Miss Nicholson’ was recorded in the steamer’s log as purchasing a single ticket to Sydney; further, a crew member reports seeing a ‘stout lady’ in a coat and veiled hat sitting on deck, a sight that struck him as unusual owing to the heat of the day. He also stated that he thought he saw this woman disembark at Tathra, but he could not be sure. He only wished to state that he felt like he might have seen the ‘stout lady’ walking up towards the township from Tathra wharf in the company of a young Aboriginal boy who he considered to be about fourteen years of age. This was odd, because Darcy did not look like he was fourteen; he was a tall boy who looked his age, which was eighteen. Also, why would ‘Miss Nicholson’ go to the expense of purchasing a ticket all the way to Sydney only to disembark at Tathra? It made no sense. Years later, when the S.S. Merimbula ran aground off Bermagui, this same crew member was found to have been drinking below deck in the company of several women, so it is doubtful whether his story can be entirely relied upon.
Late on the morning of their disappearance, while most of the men were out combing the surrounding bushland in search of them, I stepped outside the kitchen and to my surprise saw John Beck standing there beneath the jacaranda tree. It appeared that he may have been preparing himself in some way, for he seemed startled, as if he was not quite yet ready for our encounter.
‘Good morning,’ I said, for in truth I was startled also. He stood in exactly the same position as had the old grey kangaroo who had regarded me so contemptuously on the morning of my mother’s death. It was odd that I should think of this at that moment, but I did.
‘Yes, good morning,’ he responded.
‘Are you off then with the others to go searching?’
‘Yes, I believe we are shortly rowing into Eden.’ At this, he turned his head suddenly, and again I was reminded of that old grey kangaroo. But it seemed he was simply checking to see that no one else was in earshot.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he said quietly. ‘If I were you.’
‘Why not?’ I responded, for it seemed such an odd thing
to say, given the circumstances. As far as I could see, there were a great many things to worry about, whichever way you viewed the situation.
‘It will be all right,’ he said. ‘I feel sure.’ And he gave a small nod of his head, as if to reassure us both.
I stared at him. A flower, a small violet trumpet, drifted down between us from the jacaranda tree and, looking down, I saw that fallen flowers surrounded us where we stood. He looked down too. The flower had landed on his boot – he moved his foot impatiently, as if this was the last thing he needed at the present time, a flower on his boot, and then suddenly he spoke.
‘Mary, I had been going to ask your father something, but now I find I cannot.’
‘Why not?’ I asked, for a strange constriction had gripped my heart.
‘Circumstances have arisen,’ he said. ‘And so . . .'
‘And so?’
‘And so . . .'
We stood there for a moment, the two of us. Then he took my hand and he kissed it, and it seemed for a brief instant that he might be about to say something else. But he must have thought better of the idea, for instead he simply tipped his cap. He turned and headed off down the hill – and that is the last time I ever saw him, with Mr Maudry going after him, wings extended, shrieking shrilly.
A Letter From Louisa
Some eighteen months after she’d run away with Darcy, a letter turned up from Louisa, quite out of the blue, addressed to me:
‘Dear Mary,
I believe there is a story going about that Darcy and I were never legally married. Will you kindly inform those that seek to spread this muck that we were married by the Reverend John Beck (Methodist), and I have the documents to prove it, which I would be pleased to show anybody upon request. Certain people should spend more time minding their own business and looking after their own affairs than seeking to spread lies about others. I hope this letter finds you all in good health. We are exceedingly well and the parents of a fine fat boy (Albert George) expecting another any day now.
With fondest wishes to all, especially Dad,
Louisa
P.S. We have our own dog now, a cattle dog named Jack he is 100 times smarter than Bonnie or Patch.’
This was the first that we had heard from Louisa since their departure, and it is not untypical of her that she found the space within this brief missive to brag that her new dog was smarter than our own dogs. For some reason, miss her as I did, this boast infuriated me. What did I care about her smart dog? Perhaps Bonnie and Patch were not so very clever, but nor had we ever claimed them to be; still, they were nice enough dogs in their own way, and companionable to a fault. I felt the urge to write back immediately and ask if this Jack could sing along with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, but remembering Darcy’s skills on the gum-leaf, the chances were that Jack could sing along, and in harmony. Besides which, Louisa had not thought to supply a return address.
The envelope, however, was postmarked Coonabarabran. It arrived in early July 1910, right at the commencement of what looked to be a promising whaling season; a pair of good-sized humpbacks had been captured right off the bat. While many (myself included) felt that my father should ‘drop everything’ and travel directly to Coonabarabran to bring her home, he did not. I urged him to at least write to the police sergeant stationed there and beg him to make enquiries as to her whereabouts and wellbeing. Here also my father demurred, and although he said nothing of it to me at the time, I have since come to believe that perhaps he was concerned about the possible ramifications for Darcy if he did so. My father had been fond of Darcy, and although understandably distressed by this liaison, he did not like to hear Darcy referred to disparagingly by others. I remember one visitor, in the weeks following their departure, telling my father he must not blame himself. ‘You must remember,’ said this visitor, ‘that these people are several rungs below Palaeolithic man in the ladder of civilisation. It is a wonder to me that they were able to invent the boomerang.’ My father got up at once and left the room, and did not return until this visitor had left.
Instead, my father wrote to a gentleman of Mrs Pike’s acquaintance who lived on a property near Coonabarabran and asked that he make enquiries on his behalf. The gentleman responded that he had conducted discreet investigations around the township, but had learned nothing of any white woman living with an Aboriginal man in the area. However, he continued, it was possible that they were living out at the Aboriginal mission at Forky Mountain; he would make enquiries forthwith. A short while later, the gentleman wrote to say that he had visited the mission, and there had been told of a white woman living ‘as a lubra’ with an Aboriginal man and two half-caste babies; it seems they may have camped there briefly before moving on in search of work. By all accounts, the woman appeared to be in good health, although one of the babies was colicky.
‘What will we do?’ I asked my father, upon reading this letter.
‘Well, there is not much we can do,’ he responded. ‘She has made her own bed, let her lie in it.’
I cannot adequately describe how dismayed I felt, how sick at heart, to hear this from my father. I wanted more than anything that he go and find her and bring her and her babies home as soon as possible, for I would happily help care for all of them. The thought of Louisa struggling in camp with those two small babies filled me with a gnawing anxiety. How on earth did she manage? My own sister, who would never willingly lift a broom or wipe a dish and had no time whatsoever for small children, how was she surviving out there? Did her love for Darcy make all these hardships endurable? She has made her own bed, let her lie in it.
But now I wonder if perhaps my father was right to leave her be, for what point was there in dragging her away from her husband, no matter how reduced their circumstances? This was Louisa, after all, who could never be induced to do anything against her will; she would not come easily, we all knew, and my father had a horror of any kind of shouting or unpleasantness. Looking back, I wonder if my father was not in fact a little scared of Louisa. Well, why not? I suppose we all were. She had a sharp tongue and a very forceful personality.
And certainly, when I went back to reread her letter, she did not sound as if she was struggling, what with her ‘fine fat boy’ and her smart dog Jack. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that she was feeling sufficiently like her usual self to stir up some trouble for me. For in stating that John Beck had married them, without parental consent and without the requisite publication of the banns, she was making a very serious allegation; in fact, it was tantamount to accusing him of a criminal offence. And yet for all she knew, given her knowledge of my feelings for him and his attentions towards me at the ball (which did not pass unnoticed by many), I could very well have been married to John Beck by this time. Looking back at our friendship, I do not think I imagined the fact that he had grown fond of me. I may as well admit that since my discovery of his sermon notes, I had begun privately to entertain the possibility that he might ask me to marry him. Furthermore, I know that my father considered it practically a certainty. In fact, he informed me sometime later that, on the occasion of the ball, several of the whalers were wagering even money that John Beck would ask my father for my hand that very evening. Hence, in making these allegations, Louisa must have reasoned that she might be causing a person who might well be my husband (but was not) an enormous amount of embarrassment and difficulty. And yet this was so typical of Louisa: although apparently content with her own domestic situation, she wished to set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons for me.
‘Well, at least one thing is clear,’ my father said. ‘I was a fool to believe a word the Reverend said. That man couldn’t lie straight in bed.’
It was distressing to hear my father say this of the man I had nurtured such feelings for, but perhaps it was also understandable. I need to explain, of course, that by the time we received Louisa’s letter, John Beck had long since
disappeared. Shortly after that last exchange we had shared under the jacaranda tree, he and Harry had rowed over to Eden with instructions to conduct further investigations in town. When John Beck did not return the following day, I learned from my brother that they had met a gentleman in the front bar at the Great Southern Hotel who, upon hearing that they were whale men, had bought them a drink in tribute to their courage. He then offered to give them a ride out to the gold diggings at Yambulla with the idea of pooling their money and trying their luck out there. This gentlemen had made a great impression on Harry, for he wore a snakeskin band upon his hat and his boots were made of iguana, and while Harry had had to decline on account of the fact that they were searching for Darcy and Louisa (although I do not know why they were searching for Darcy and Louisa in the front bar at the Great Southern), John Beck had decided to take the gentleman up on it.
Of course, everyone knew that the goldfields at Yambulla were practically worked out, so although I was surprised and disappointed at his sudden disappearance, I comforted myself with the thought that he would not be gone for long. I even imagined that he might be attempting to ‘strike it lucky’ in a bid to improve his situation and better provide for me. And although the weeks turned into months, summer turned to spring and spring to autumn, I continued to hope that he would come strolling up the path again, whale bones crunching underfoot, just as soon as the whaling season came around again. But he didn’t.
When the whaling season of 1909 passed by and there was still no word of John Beck, my thoughts grew darker. I began to entertain the hope that he may have fallen down a mineshaft and died of his injuries or perhaps inadvertently blown himself up with a stick of dynamite or become entangled in the crushing wheel and pulverised, for such were the only possible explanations I could bear for the fact that he had utterly deserted me. I scoured old newspapers dating back to the time of his departure for reports of calamities. I questioned anybody I met who had been to the area, but no one had ever seen or heard of him. After a while, feeling foolish, I stopped asking.
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