The Commandant

by Jessica Anderson

  ‘I should be much obliged,’ said Letty, ‘if you would also avoid all mention of his wecklessness.’

  ‘Recklessness, Mrs Logan?’

  ‘That he rode away alone,’ said Louisa, ‘after having been threatened by so many blacks.’

  ‘His enemies may say,’ said Letty, ‘that such wecklessness amounts to a sort of suicide, and that he wished to avoid appeawing against Mr Smith Hall.’

  ‘Ah, no, madam! These are wild thoughts.’

  ‘They are not my thoughts, captain. I guess only what wicked persons may say.’

  ‘No person in authority can avoid calumny entirely, Mrs Logan, do what he will.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Louisa, ‘if a reason could be stated for his riding away—’

  But Letty, as if visibly to cut herself off from this indirect tack, took a step in advance of Louisa.

  ‘I am penniless,’ she said curtly.

  Clunie could no longer hide his discomfort. It was in his silence, and in his stare. What could be the purpose of such a remark? Did she want him to take up a subscription for her? Impossible that she should ask for that.

  ‘More than that,’ she said. ‘He died deeply in debt.’

  He continued to stare as if to divine her meaning in her cold and passive face. But now he felt Louisa’s eyes upon him, and heard her say softly, ‘Of course, Mrs Logan will have the military pension.’

  Her slight emphasis on the word ‘military’ made their whole purpose clear at last. ‘Oh,’ he said. He turned on a heel and took a few steps about the room. Her military pension would be about fifty pounds a year. If his own wife had two children, he should hate her to be forced to manage on that. ‘Oh,’ he said again.

  Suddenly they were all sitting down. He hardly knew how it had happened, except that they were now in conclave, their three chairs drawn together. Louisa’s hands were clasped in her lap. Letty’s gauzy shawl had dropped to her shoulders. It occurred to Clunie in passing that she might marry again, but that too, he knew, would be likely to depend on how much money she had. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you do know—’ he was looking at each of them in turn—‘that colonial pensions to widows and families are no longer allowed. It’s a great shame, in my opinion. The disallowance is too recent to test whether exceptions would be made. But they ought to be, they ought to be.’

  ‘I should think,’ said Louisa, ‘that when a man loses his life in exploration of benefit to his country—’

  ‘Yes, yes, so do I. Upon my word I do. And I believe, madam,’ he said, turning to Letty, ‘that you are not without influence at home?’

  Over her distorted face there passed such an expression of bitterness and weariness that Clunie was never to forget it, and was to wonder, in later years, if she had had in that moment a premonition of the long-drawn and humbling intricacies into which her role of appellant would take her: of petitions rejected, indefinitely delayed, or simply lost; of favours granted only to be withdrawn, and of the army agent’s tax taken from the pittance granted at last. But at the time he thought only that she was exhausted, both by her grief and her worry, and most of all, perhaps, because her worry would not let her lose herself in grief; and he admired her when she said, straightening her shoulders and settling her gauzy shawl, ‘No, I am not without influence. For myself, I would not use it. For my childwen, I shall use it for all it is worth.’

  ‘You are right to do so,’ he replied. ‘And we must remember that even if a colonial pension is refused, there could be a gratuity, or a royal bounty.’

  ‘There are any number of ways,’ said Louisa with firm optimism.

  ‘And I feel sure,’ said Clunie, ‘that you may count on General Darling’s strongest recommendation.’

  Now that Patrick Logan is safely dead, he added to himself. He remembered the letter from Macleay, and suddenly realised that to hold it back would be to announce his doubts about it. It must be given to her. He no longer believed that it would make her break down; he saw that she had determined on her stand.

  ‘And for what my recommendation is worth,’ he said, ‘it goes without saying that you will have that too.’

  Unsmilingly, she set him right. ‘My husband will have it.’

  ‘Of course. He will have it. I shall do everything you have asked. It is Edwards’ duty, not mine, to inform his commanding officer, but we all know Edwards. A good fellow. A good young fellow. Pray, don’t leave for a moment. There is a letter in my office you must take.’

  Edwards was waiting in the office. ‘I shan’t be more than another three minutes,’ Clunie told him. ‘Yes, yes, smoke by all means.’ He took the letter and went back to the sitting room. Both women were standing again, ready to leave.

  ‘Here is something long awaited,’ said Clunie. He had decided on boldness. ‘It would have removed from his mind every shred of doubt on the governor’s benevolence towards himself. Well, too late! But if you have ever entertained any such doubts, ma’am, here it is, to remove them from yours.’

  She opened it and held it slightly to one side so that Louisa could read it over her shoulder. Louisa read quickly. When she raised her eyes, Clunie was careful not to meet the shaft of her questioning glance, directed at him over Letty’s bowed head. It seemed as if Letty would never finish reading. She must have read it over and over again, but neither by movement nor sound did she indicate what she was thinking.

  Her face, when she raised it, was quite expressionless. She folded the letter, and ran the fold between a thumb and forefinger. She folded it a second time, and perhaps, in the deliberate way she passed it between finger and thumb, and in her avoidance of it by crooking her other three fingers, there was some disdain.

  She said quietly, ‘I shall tweasure it always.’

  Clunie bowed low. ‘I take it your escort is waiting?’

  ‘My servant escorted us both,’ said Louisa. ‘If you could provide—’

  Clunie was already at the door. ‘Edwards!’ he called into the passage.

  Lieutenant Edwards was delighted to escort Letty. He bounded into the room, bowed as he apologised for smelling of tobacco, and, as he offered her his arm, managed to combine eagerness, sympathy, and deep respect. Louisa and Clunie watched them pass through the door.

  ‘Does she really put such a value on that letter?’ Louisa then asked softly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Poor lady!’ he added.

  ‘Poor lady, indeed! Well, better not to ask. Better to take her at her word. At first, captain, I thought you would never comprehend.’

  ‘About—?’

  ‘About the pension.’

  ‘I was exceedingly dense.’

  ‘I thought you were going to make her state it crudely, word by word. And she would have, you know. Oh, yes, she would have. You are busy, but I must keep you one minute more. It is my turn to ask a favour.’

  Clunie sighed; Louisa smiled. ‘Though it can hardly be called a favour. I believe all the kindness is on my part. Mrs Logan has taken a great dislike to Madge Noakes. She can’t abide her in the house another day. With your permission, I offered to take her.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clunie, laughing, ‘I suppose you did. She is the best servant on the settlement.’

  Louisa made a face. ‘She has those hideous scars, and won’t keep them covered.’

  ‘My wife will induce her to.’

  ‘Letty couldn’t, for all her clever ways.’

  ‘Then let them show. I doubt if my wife will be much affronted.’

  ‘Ah. Then I shall have her only till Mrs Clunie arrives, so that her skills may be kept burnished.’

  ‘Have her until the week before, so that Mrs Clunie may arrive at a burnished house.’

  ‘Very well. But you are unkind.’

  Clunie laughed again. It was amazing
how such a plain woman could be so pleasing. And indeed, he thought, looking at her white forehead between the two wings of smooth red hair, there were times when she appeared almost handsome. It was a pity her clothes were so shabby, but Logan had told him that she had not a penny of her own, and unless Harbin, who was a light feckless fellow, got money from somewhere to purchase his captaincy, he supposed (as he bowed her out) that she would always be poor.

  ‘My dear Edwards,’ he said, ‘I do agree. It seems positively disrespectful. And yet, what can we do? Send a few men? Where shall we send them? And can we spare them from the settlement? The mood here is curious. The commandant’s murder has made them bold. And you may be sure of this, Edwards—the murderers are not sitting in the bush, near where they killed him, waiting to be taken. No, the thing is impracticable, unhappily. If we even had horses! But we have one. One!’ repeated Clunie, holding up a forefinger. ‘And he, poor beast—have you seen him since he returned?’

  ‘Lord, yes,’ said Edwards.

  They were in Clunie’s office, Clunie in a chair turned sideways from his desk, and Edwards, his forehead sweating and his jacket undone, in the armchair in which Logan used to sit. ‘I daresay you’re right, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I repeat, I see Mrs Logan’s request as quite reasonable.’

  ‘It is enough that she makes it.’

  ‘The only certain culprits, after all, are the blacks.’

  ‘Yes. Though I’m bound to say,’ said Edwards, ‘that I see the hand of a runaway in it somewhere. It’s not long since that fellow Lazarus said he saw Boylan out there.’

  ‘I questioned him about it this morning. He says he wanted only to see a party sent out for nothing.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I believe I’ll never shake him. If Boylan is really somewhere inland, and should one day be taken, Lazarus will admit to nothing that may hang him. So it’s all very fine seeing the hand of a runaway, Edwards, but precious hard to prove it’s anything more than imagination.’

  ‘Imagination? Well, I expect that’s an infection I caught from Cowper.’

  ‘Oh, Cowper.’

  ‘Don’t think me a bird of that feather, sir. When all’s said and done, I’m of your mind. In my report I shall hold to the only thing I know. It was the blacks. And you say I ought also to write—’

  ‘You are to write what you wish, Edwards. This is between you and Colonel Allen.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But you think it better that I give a reason for his riding off alone. So do I. Collison says he rode off on the track of a horse or bullock. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It may be said that he followed it for an unreasonably long way.’

  ‘Well, he rode towards Mount Irwin. I shall say he meant to bring back some basaltic formations. As he may well have done. He spoke to me of basaltic formations a few days before leaving. He talked a great deal about mountains. It wasn’t a matter of fine scenery. In fact, you might say,’ said Edwards with a laugh, ‘that the stonier and lonelier, the better he liked them.’

  ‘Some men are drawn to lonely places.’

  ‘Sir, you don’t believe his death was a sort of suicide?’

  ‘I do not. And neither does Mrs Logan. I beg you, Edwards, be clear on this—what Mrs Logan asks is only a provision against what his enemies, what the radical faction, may say or publish.’

  ‘I think Cowper believes it, sir.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘He says there was a last straw put on Captain Logan’s load.’

  ‘Does he say what it was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or what the load was?’

  ‘Oh, Cowper runs on, sir. But I take it that part of the load was his having to appear against Smith Hall. Words in court, Cowper says, are more inflammatory than cold facts set down in records.’

  ‘I will see Cowper. I will suggest that he keeps his wild opinions to himself.’

  Edwards puffed on his cigar for a moment, then took it out of his mouth and said, ‘All the same, to go off alone like that, knowing there were hundreds of hostile blacks about—it was damned reckless.’

  ‘Reckless?’ repeated Clunie. He recalled his second night on the settlement, and how he had walked alone down the dark road from Mrs Logan’s assembly. Reckless was what he had called Logan then. Reckless, impatient, and confoundedly moody. He had been right in every adjective, and could now have added many more. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was certainly imprudent. There is no need for you to write to Colonel Allen tonight, Edwards. Your report may go by the next ship. But mine goes on the Alligator.’

  Edwards sprang to his feet. ‘I’ll take my leave, sir.’

  ‘Yes, one must say of him,’ continued Clunie, ‘that he was neither prudent nor fortunate. Goodnight, Edwards.’

  Collison, who is guarding the lead coffin at the hospital, is also giving his opinion of the late commandant. He is speaking to James Murray, who stands with his feet and fingertips together, and frowns at the floor.

  ‘Since I been here, they been coming to me and saying he was this, and he was that, but mostly that he was cruel. But he was never cruel in a hot way. It was more that he thought of them as so many building blocks to be put to his use. Some thought nothing of this in him, but some couldn’t bear it. And those that couldn’t, they say to theirselves, Well, cock, I will make you hate me. Because you can’t hate a building block, can you? To show theirselves as more than building blocks, that made them do the mad things they done. Take Lewis Lazarus, for one . . .’

  Henry, in his office, can hear the sound of Collison’s voice as he writes to his father. He does not look up. His rum bottle is on his desk, and his pen speeds unfalteringly across the page. This is one letter he will finish in time to catch the mail, for at last he has a subject he can use in a way that is certain to find favour. ‘I had an account direct from my son Henry,’ his father will say. ‘Indeed, he was one of the search party that found the unfortunate man. A dreadful business. Bridget, bring me that letter from my desk.’

  Even as he writes, he finds it incredible that he should continue to seek the approbation of this old and secret enemy of the blood, and even as he wonders at himself, his pen continues to speed across the page.

  ‘And as I rode back, I confess there were tears in my eyes . . .’

  He grimaces at this, but still continues. He wonders if there is any limit to his abasement, and rather thinks (as he stops for long enough to take a drink) that there is not.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was often remarked by Amelia during the next three weeks that the packing was a blessing.

  ‘Must she do so much?’ asked James Murray.

  ‘My dear Mr Murray, unless you expressly forbid it—’

  ‘I do forbid it. She takes no notice.’

  ‘Then pray let her be. She does less than you might think. We all help her. The packing is a blessing.’

  The children at the school were given an indefinite holiday, and Louisa’s house was in Madge Noakes’s hands. Louisa, Amelia, Letty, and Frances spent all of their mornings and some of their afternoons with aprons over their skirts and their hair in caps. Big Annie came every day, barging about with wild laughter which changed into awed silence whenever she encountered Letty.

  The packing was a blessing in more ways than one: Letty constantly spoke in praise of Patrick Logan, and as she spoke threw sharp or begging glances over her audience, and at these times Louisa and Frances were able, while agreeing with their voices, to hide their dissenting eyes by bending to the contents of a drawer or by snatching up their aprons to wipe their sweating faces.

  The men, of course—usually Murray and Clunie, on solicitous calls—could always bow.

  Only Amelia had no need for subterfuge.

  ‘This is a stone he bwoug
ht back from his discov’wy of the gweat downs, those he named after Governor Darling.’

  Everybody in the room knew that Mr Allan Cunningham had discovered the downs. Murray bowed. Clunie bowed. Frances looked quickly away from the stone in Letty’s hand. ‘Lucy, put down that dish. And you, Robert—’

  While Louisa rose gratefully from her knees and said that she would take the children to Elizabeth.

  But Amelia said, ‘That stone? Show me! But of course, you mean to keep it?’

  ‘I shall keep it for Wobert.’

  ‘Quite right! It will speak to him of his papa’s achievements. Well, well, he is a woeful loss to the colony.’

  Clunie bowed. Murray bowed.

  Amelia and Letty began to work as a pair, while Louisa and Frances, often with the children under their supervision, spent many mornings in the scullery, washing and packing the dinner services. It was now sultry November weather. Letty agreed that the indoor privy should be shut, and that the women and children should use the privy in the garden. ‘It is for only a vewy short time,’ she said, ‘else I should never permit it.’

  All changed their clothes twice a day, keeping Big Annie busy with their laundry. Frances had become thin and darker skinned. ‘You had better rest and shelter on the voyage to Sydney,’ remarked Louisa, ‘or you will make a sallow bride.’

  Frances laughed. Louisa’s assumption that she was to marry Edmund Joyce, and her denials, had become like a game they played to ease the tedium of their work.

  ‘Sometimes I think you are Letty’s emissary,’ said Frances.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Robert.

  He was always asking her questions now, with an anxious note in his voice. ‘A kind of messenger,’ she said. ‘I thought you were over there, Robert, helping Lucy with her letters.’

  Lucy caught her name. ‘Aunt Fanny,’ she called, ‘I can make a good “N”.’

  ‘She can not,’ cried Robert, limping over to prove it.

  ‘But if you are Letty’s emissary,’ continued Frances to Louisa, ‘it will do neither her, nor me, nor Edmund, the least bit of good. I have no notion what I intend to do, only what I have determined not to do.’