A World Apart

by Peter McAra

  As the sun rose over the wide, calm river next morning, she took a seat on the balcony adjoining her bedroom, basked in the moment. A rustling from the nearby undergrowth caught her eye. She watched as a furry creature the size of a cat waddled into view. As it drew closer, she saw it had webbed feet, a huge duck-like bill. As she watched, it scurried to the riverbank and dived into the water. A platypus!

  She had read of the strange animal which laid eggs but suckled its young, which lived in ponds and rivers. Now she had seen the creature which had set the world of natural history agog. What if she studied the strange animal, wrote scholarly papers about it? She mused as she sat. Gentlewoman Mrs Alice Bentleigh of Shoalhaven, late of Sydney Town, might one day make her mark on the natural history of the colony of New South Wales. She sat for a while to see if the creature returned, but it did not. She slid back into her dreams.

  As she stepped inside her gleaming new house, Eliza sat and confronted the challenge she had too often put aside. She must now admit to the longing that had kept her awake for too many nights, ever since the disastrous day of her wedding. She must confront it, resolve it. She was a woman of substance. A visit to England was well within her means. She would go. She would seek out Harry De Havilland. And when she found him he would hold her close, kiss her as they had done so many times over the sensuous summer by the lake at the Great House, tell her that they must honour their blood oath to marry. Or not.

  It had been years since the vengeful Louisa had looked down on their nakedness as they lay beside the lake, and run to tell her father. Years, and a shipload of suffering, adventure, and blessings. By now Harry would have graduated from Oxford, or perhaps returned to the Great House, bored with years of wrestling with the tangled philosophical arguments of his learned tutors. Harry was not a natural born scholar. Doubtless he would have attended the London Seasons. Pounds to peanuts, he would have married Agatha Thurber. Eliza pictured the couple as they sat overlooking the gardens, watching their little children run about, laughing, playing, falling, picking themselves up to play again...

  If she did not resolve once and for all the matter of Harry’s adolescent promise to marry her, the rest of Eliza’s life would be inundated by the pain of lost love. She must act.

  That night, as she dined with the ever-hospitable Mr Cathcart, a peculiar look in his eye, an awkwardness in his manner, made her sense that something prickly stirred in his mind.

  ‘My dear Mrs Bentleigh,’ he murmured as they sat on his modest veranda in the warm dusk. ‘May I…may we…not call each other by our Christian names? It has, after all, been nigh on two years since we met.’ She smiled. ‘Indeed it has…Horatio. You may have learned, after all this time, that my name is Alice.’

  She found herself mildly annoyed by her hesitation. For a moment she had toyed with the notion of telling him that her birth name was Eliza. No. One thing might easily lead to another. Fate held a dangerous sword poised above her head. In the eyes of the law she was an escaped convict. She might be punished by a lifetime in chains, or, more likely, by hanging. She must do anything, anything, to avoid that fate.

  ‘My dear Alice.’ He raised his glass. ‘To our…friendship. May it last for all our lifetimes.’ She lifted her glass, sipped from it. He returned her polite smile.

  ‘You may be aware, Alice, that for some time I have…’ His face took on a new earnestness. Eliza flinched. The moment she had long dreaded now loomed.

  ‘I, er, we… Alice, we have been friends for what seems like an age. Shared happiness, tribulations, pleasant times together. We have the same ambitions — to build, to grow, to prosper as we take up our lives in this delightful province.’ Eliza watched his expression, bracing herself for the words which must soon come. Mr Cathcart had launched himself into the speech he had evidently prepared beforehand. He cleared his throat to calm his nerves, and continued.

  ‘Since the moment of our first meeting, I have dreamed that our futures might be joined in a lifetime of happiness and love. Dearest Alice, I humbly ask for your hand in marriage.’ He bowed towards her from where he sat at the large table, set for an unusually sumptuous dinner. ‘I’ve dreamed for so long…for…’ He coughed. His nervous paroxysm choked any further words.

  Eliza liked the man, owed him gratitude for the thousand kindly deeds he had done on her behalf. She must not hurt him. She let forth a long sigh.

  ‘Dear Horatio.’ She smiled at him — the smile of a good friend, a confidante. ‘I must say you honour me beyond my wildest dreams.’ She paused, embarrassed at that white lie, hesitated as he swallowed a mouthful of wine to still his coughing. ‘But I cannot accept your proposal.’ The silence grew. ‘I plan to pay a visit to England very soon. You know that I am a widow. There are matters regarding my past I must resolve. Matters of…love. Matters which I must address for the sake of my future. I cannot say more.’

  ‘You have a sweetheart back home?’ His voice turned low, laced with sad acceptance.

  ‘I can hardly say yes to that. I can simply say that my heart is torn. I must, must, contrive to heal the pain I’ve suffered ever since I left the Olde Country. And the only way I can do that is to return.’ She watched sadness fall across his face like a cloud over the sun. ‘Not forever. Only until I resolve unfinished business.’

  ‘You mean…? I may still…we may yet…?’

  ‘Dear Horatio. I’m in no position to make a promise of any kind. All I ask is that you forgive me. I have valued our friendship, your always-kindly ways. I…’

  She stopped. She had said everything she could on the matter. It pained her to see his anguish. She must not hurt him more by giving him vain hope. Any decent, upright, sensible woman might have answered that if she returned defeated from her quest for the love of her life, she might marry him. No. She watched as he filled his glass, sat back, looked beyond her into the night.

  ‘Alice. I respect your honesty,’ he said after some minutes of silence. ‘And I will allow myself to hope that one day you will return. I will wait, Alice. And I will watch over your land, your house, your enterprises. You may trust me. Always.’

  CHAPTER 30

  A week later, Eliza found herself aboard the Princess Amelia, a small ship owned by Augustus Burton, a neighbour grown wealthy through years of enterprise and toil on his fertile farmlands. The passengers, in the main, comprised his prolific family of sons and daughters and their children, being taken to Olde England for a holiday. Eliza scored a berth by volunteering to act as part-time teacher, giving the children entertaining and educational diversions from the monotony of months at sea.

  The voyage proceeded pleasantly enough. The ship called at The Cape, Lisbon and Brest en route to Southampton. In the privacy of her comfortable cabin, Eliza rejoiced in the contrast with her previous voyage as a shackled convict, kept below decks on a diet of miserable rations. Now, as a guest aboard the Princess Amelia, she ate fine food and sipped fine wines as the months at sea passed. Where each day of her nightmare voyage on the Swan took her further away from Harry’s arms, she now rejoiced that each day brought her closer to him. The prospect cast a glow over her life.

  When she disembarked at Southampton, she at once began to put in place the plans she had hatched during those long, pleasantly indolent evenings on the voyage. She boarded a coach which carried her, over three days, to the town of Dorchester, a few miles from Marley, then took a room at the Bull Inn. A shy young woman in apron and maid’s bonnet escorted her to her room.

  ‘I hope you like this room, ma’am.’ The maid curtseyed. ‘It’s quiet-like. Away from the tavern where the menfolk drinks their ale. We don’t often have the likes of fine ladies taking our rooms.’

  ‘Why thank you.’ Eliza sensed the maid’s shyness, and her determination to serve her guest well. ‘Here’s a little something for your kindness.’ From force of habit, she pressed a guinea into the shy girl’s hand.

  ‘Oh, ma’am. Thank you ever so.’ The maid sniffed away a tear of gratitude. �
�My name, it’s Meg. If ever you should…’ Then she bowed low and tiptoed away.

  Left alone, Eliza gave thought as to how she should begin her quest. To walk into Marley and boldly ask after the whereabouts of one Harold De Havilland, gentleman, would be dangerous. She decided to pose as a distant relative of Harry’s, seeking to advise him of a possible inheritance left him by a maiden aunt. She would engage a lawyer, ostensibly to advise her on the legalities of Harry’s possible inheritance. Though a town the size of Dorchester might host few lawyers, it was likely that one or other of them might know of nearby Marley and its viscount, John De Havilland. Enquiries soon led her to a lawyer’s rooms. She walked in and spoke to the gaunt young man who sat at a battered wooden bench.

  ‘I seek news of the whereabouts of Mr Harold De Havilland of the estate of Morton-Somersby, regarding a possible inheritance.’ The man looked up at her quizzically but said nothing. She continued. ‘He is the only son of the viscount who owns much of the land in the village of Marley, so I understand. I should be happy to pay for such information, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. May I ask your name? My master requires to know it before he delivers information.’

  ‘Mrs Alice Bentleigh, widow, from New South Wales.’ The man’s face twitched at her mention of the faraway colony.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. Excuse me. I will ask my master.’ He disappeared through a small door which he closed behind him. In the adjoining room an elderly man, his face pinched, sat hunched over a desk littered with papers. If Eliza had seen him, she would have recognised him as Obadiah Shaw, the lawyer who had once visited the schoolroom at the Great House. He had sat for a while at the back of the schoolroom, silently scrutinising the golden-haired child as she devoured the tutor’s lecture. Years later, at the viscount’s request, Shaw had represented him during the court hearing at which Eliza was sentenced to transportation beyond the seas.

  ‘Speak, man.’ The crotchety lawyer looked up from his writing. At the man’s mention of New South Wales, followed by a reference to Marley, something clicked in the old man’s memory. He rose stiffly, took hold of his walking stick, tiptoed to the wall, and peered through a hole into the adjoining room where Eliza waited. Over the years, that hole had served him well, often giving him a tactical advantage in any discussion which might follow.

  ‘My God!’ He whispered to himself. ‘As I live and breathe, that is the maid brought to the court in Marley by John De Havilland. That golden hair, those sky-blue eyes. Though she is now dressed in extravagant finery, I’ll wager ten to one it is her. How can it be? She was sentenced to, what was it? One-and-twenty years transportation. For that damnable crime of administering unlawful oaths. And that not more than a couple of years gone.’ He smiled to himself as he limped back to his desk. Shaw must not let the woman recognise him. He snuffed the candle on his desk and pulled the hood of his jacket over his face.

  ‘Show the lady in, Carruthers.

  ‘Be seated, ma’am.’ He cleared his throat as Eliza entered the dingy room. ‘How may I assist you?’

  ‘Sir, I seek one Harold De Havilland, only son of Viscount De Havilland of Marley.’

  ‘Indeed. Why so?’

  ‘I…am a distant relative. Originally from Yorkshire. An elderly aunt has died, and there is a possibility that Mr De Havilland may have inherited some assets from the estate.’ She fell silent, peered into the man’s face, puzzled. Where had she seen him before? She must not show her unease. ‘The family solicitor told me to find a lawyer who might know Viscount De Havilland, perhaps with a practice in a town near to Marley, De Havilland’s seat.’

  Obadiah Shaw leaned back in his chair and took time to think. He knew De Havilland well enough, but there would be little money to be made by helping the wench to find his son. No, it would be more lucrative to do business with his daughter Louisa. During those memorable court proceedings, he had divined that Louisa nursed a positive hatred for the pretty young maid in the dock — likely for her looks, as much as anything.

  Louisa, always plain of face, had begun to acquire a corpulence; a double chin, lips which perpetually drooped downwards at the sides. This disparity in the appearance of the two young women would doubtless make Louisa jealous. The more so since the gifted child had shared her lessons, and her brother’s company, during Louisa’s long, painful years under Mr Harcourt’s tutelage. Shaw remembered the drama played out in the court, that Louisa’s evidence against the maid had been vicious, vitriolic, doubtless soured by this oft-seen hatred of a pretty woman by a plain one. He needed more time to shape a plan.

  ‘You come from the colony of New South Wales.’ He looked into Eliza’s face. ‘A long voyage. Why, pray?’

  ‘Oh, I accompanied friends. Neighbours to be precise. A rather wealthy family who own a small ship.’

  ‘Wealthy? From a distant colony, a prison for convicts?’

  ‘Indeed. Many free immigrants have lately migrated from England. Made fortunes. The land is bountiful.’

  ‘Mmm. And you have relatives in Yorkshire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your accent. It sounds somewhat more…local than one expects from a resident of Yorkshire.’

  ‘I was born in Essex. My father was a…teacher. He worked in different towns, villages while I was a child. We moved house frequently.’ She must stop these fabrications. Every word she uttered sounded less believable than the last. ‘But I digress. Mr Harold De Havilland? Do you perhaps…?’

  ‘Mmm. I shall engage my connections. Please visit me again. One week from today.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, if I may be excused. I have much work…’ He waved a hand over his cluttered desk.

  Eliza rose. ‘Thank you. Do you require payment on account?’

  ‘Thank you. Ten guineas should suffice for the time being. And kindly advise me of your address. I may require your presence in the next day or two.’

  ‘The Bull Inn. But a few minutes’ walk distant.’ She counted the money into his outstretched hand.

  ‘Good day to you, ma’am.’ He slid the coins into a leather pouch he took from a drawer, then rose painfully from his chair. Eliza let herself out and walked to the inn. Irritating thoughts began to buzz in her head like a cloud of flies over a dung heap. Why? Was there something afoot that was not as it seemed? Why was the old man’s voice so tantalisingly familiar?

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘Oh, sir.’ The stablehand greeted Harry as he reined in his horse outside the stables of the Great House, tired and despondent after his long ride from the London Stock Exchange, returning to the fate he had desperately wished to escape. Roberts took the reins and bowed. ‘I fear we have some sad news, sir. Your father — ’

  Harry didn’t wait. He ran to the house, up the stairs, along the hall to his father’s room. Doctor Hargraves sat beside the bed. As Harry stopped in the doorway, the grey-haired, stooped physician looked up.

  ‘He’s gone, Mr Harry. A blessed release.’ Harry bit back a sob. It would not do for the servants to see him weep. For as long as he could remember, his father had been a cold, distant disciplinarian. A man who had never shown his son the least portion of fatherly affection. Harry looked at the corpse, its face grey and still, lying rigid on the bed. As he watched, the doctor draped a sheet over the dead face.

  ‘It’s for the best, Sir Harry — you’ll forgive my using your rightful title so soon. I will leave you now. If you wish to pay your last respects…’

  ‘Thank you.’ Harry whispered. The doctor took his bag and left. Alone in the sickroom, Harry knelt by the bed.

  ‘Goodbye Father.’ He reached under the sheet, found the cold, stiff hand, held it. ‘You were not the father I’d have wished for, sir. You were not one to treat his son kindly. Show him his path in life.’ The sobs which Harry had blocked in the doctor’s presence now ran free in the privacy of his dead father’s bedchamber.

  ‘But I mourn you, sir,’ he whispered. ‘And I vow that I will choose a path that will make f
or a better world. If I should be blessed with children, I will try to be a good father to them. If I learned aught else from you, sir, I learned that a boy needs a father. A wise man who can love his son while he teaches him the things a man must know in order to be a man.’

  An hour later, Harry left the room, closed the door. He walked downstairs, back into the realities of his life. Now he must return to the burning problem of naming the date to propose to Agatha.

  A thought fluttered into his brain like a wild bird landing in a tree. His father was dead. Harry no longer faced that fateful obligation to him. If he fled the village, the country even, then he would be free to make a new life for himself. Certainly he would lose the estate. But that would be better than losing his future to a marriage he would hate from the moment he slid the ring onto his bride’s finger. And once his estate was lost to him, why should he stay?

  Now there was nothing to stop him from sailing to Botany Bay to Eliza’s loving arms. Surely, there could be problems. Eliza might have been granted freedom, married. She might be dead. The only way to heal his aching heart would be to seek her in the distant land of New South Wales. He would go.

  He had heard that in the faraway colony, convicts who had served their time quickly became rich. It was a land of opportunity. Indeed, the fine wool grown by those emancipated convicts had, however indirectly, driven his father, then himself, courtesy of the London Stock Exchange, to ruin. Now he saw that there was nothing to be lost by leaving, and everything to be lost by staying. He could set sail for Botany Bay with a clear conscience. Money? He could sell the knick-knacks which had lain scattered about the Great House for centuries — paintings, furniture, the occasional jewel — and make enough to pay his fare. And he should do it quickly, lest Louisa should return from the London Season before he left.