Taste of Victory

by Sandra Dengler

  The mother looked near tears. She sat obediently and her little boy stood close to her side. Samantha recognized the lad at last. This was the child she had pulled from the river! The father stood stoically, watching her. She sat down. He sat down. There was a careful formality to every movement these people made, and yet it was not a nervous or strained politeness.

  Samantha smiled at the child. “Ye look none the worse for wear, lad. Meself is delighted y’re recovered.” She looked at the father. “Be there some way I might serve ye?”

  “We are Chinese. My wife, Sun Luk—” She bowed while seated, an interesting skill. “My son, Ah Loo. I am Ah Ching Yet.” The father spoke each syllable as if it were a separate word. Oh, that Englishmen would enunciate so clearly! “How do you do?”

  “Samantha Connolly. How do you do.”

  He dipped forward gravely and sat erect again. “You see I have cut off the queue. The pigtail. Still, we hold many of the old ways.”

  “I’m nae sure I understand.”

  “Many Chinese come, work, go back home to China. They must keep long hair. No queue, hard to go home. Maybe never go home. Some of us, the hair is short. We will stay here pert—all time. Always.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes.” The tight mouth almost smiled. Not quite. “In China, if you save the life of a person, you are responsible for that person always. You see, that person would be dead, but he is not dead because of you, so you are responsible.”

  “I see the logic in that, aye.”

  “When Ah Lin came running, he said my Ah Loo fell in the river. We came quickly, but I knew—my heart knew—that already we were too late. Too late. Boy dead. River takes him away, gone forever. We came, and our Ah Loo is alive, safe in your arms. Our hearts filled up, poured out joy. With the happiness of the seven heavens now, we give you our son.”

  One reluctant step after the other, the lad moved from his mother’s chair to Samantha. In one stunning moment, Samantha had become a mother.

  “The auld ways, aye.” She must think. She sat back and took a long, deep breath. “Ye came from China, aye? Ye speak English well.”

  “Ah Loo, he speaks very well. Much better than I. My wife, not much English.”

  Samantha nodded. “I am very fortunate. I came from far away also, two years ago. From Erin. But I did nae have to learn another language as did y’rself, for the Irish speak English. Well—” She smiled and shrugged. “After a fashion, as ye see.”

  Tears welled in the mother’s eyes and now the lad looked on the verge of weeping. Think quickly, Samantha!

  I don’t want this! I don’t want any of this! I want the whole three days to just go away. This is too much. I can’t! She spoke, past thinking or reasoning. She dipped her head forward. “What wonderful people ye be, to serve honor so faithfully.” She laid her arm across the boy’s shoulders. “I need a lad. And this boy is strong and brave. But there be a serious problem.”

  “Problem? I will help.”

  “’Tis nae a thing either of us can help. In English society—among the English—only married ladies have children. I have never married. And yet, I can use a strong, bright lad.” She frowned deeply.

  She let the frown sit a moment, then brightened it to a happy smile. “Ah! There be a way we can serve the auld ways and the English ways as well. If ye please, sir. According to Chinese ways, I accept y’r son. I thank ye ever so much. And now I give him back into y’r keeping, for I cannae keep him. ’Twould nae be proper according to English ways, ye see. He belongs to all of us, aye?”

  “You need him, you say?”

  “Indeed. So if ye agree, I shall hire him on the spot to work for me when he be nae in school. I just accepted a job down at the wharf. There is much work to do. Might I pay him to work for me down at the wharf?”

  “No. He work hard for you. He belong to you. But you do not pay.”

  “Ah, but if we share in his ownership—rather, our parenthood—sure ’n I must contribute to his upbringing. Meself would be nae good parent if I dinnae give a little something toward his upkeep, aye?”

  The father studied the floor in silence, his face impassive. She was not fooling him in the least. She could see that. And the mother had no idea what was happening. The lad beside her, the object of all this, held his peace, but Samantha could practically hear his little body vibrate with nervous hope.

  Finally, after half an eternity, the father lifted his eyes to her and spoke. “I salute your wisdom. Yes. I agree. You are sure this is satisfactory, all of it?”

  “Aye, most satisfactory for me, if the auld ways are served well and you are satisfied.”

  “The old ways are served well. Yes.” And now it was he who looked on the brink of tears.

  The boy bounded to his mother’s side and pressed in close. The mother’s face took on the most wondrous look of puzzlement. She had truly and actually prepared herself to surrender her son in the name of tradition. What amazing people!

  Why was neither father nor son explaining all this to the mother? Of course! Samantha thought. It is impolite to use a language not known to all present; that must be it. These people had mastered not only the complex social expectations of their own culture but those of the English as well.

  The father stood and bowed. “My son will begin service immediately. You apologized you did not make tea. He is very good at making tea. And I am a launderer. I specialize. I do all, but I do wool very well. Please, I wish to launder the clothes you soiled yesterday in the river.”

  “Eh, I wouldnae ask ye to undertake such a task. I be certain they’re ruined. And the smell from the lad’s—” She bit her tongue. “If it please ye, sir, ye may.”

  The man smiled, the first indication of emotion he had indulged since he arrived. He muttered a few nasal syllables and his wife hastened over to scoop Samantha’s wet garments into a compact ball. The lad hurried just as quickly out back to the kitchen, no doubt to start tea. With much nodding and bowing and appropriate pleasantries, the parents made their exit.

  Samantha put her chair back by the window and sat down again, absolutely overwhelmed. In this very position less than two hours ago, she had mused that this day could not by any means be as wildly improbable as yesterday.

  But this day was not two hours old, and already she had a son!

  Chapter Nine

  Fantasia on a Pair of Songbirds

  November 26, 1906

  My dear Samantha,

  Just today we received here at Barmah the latest edition of the Riverine Herald. I shall be so bold as to assume the Herald’s account of your daring rescue is filled with inaccuracies. I’ve learned from sad experience that newspapers never seem to get it all correct. Yet even with that assumption, your exploits thrill me. The paper mentions, too, that you are now employed on the wharf. If that be true, I rejoice! I have been keeping your employment a matter of earnest prayer. I still feel badly about the shabby manner in which the board handled your situation. You were invaluable to Barmah, Samantha!

  Work proceeds well here. We have the donkey engine up and running. Toby is a genius at adapting it to all manner of heavy chores. Invention is no orphan. Necessity may be its mother, but Laziness is the father. The roofs are all on, and I have commenced building an infirmary. The high proportion of elderly blacks among our growing group requires it. The school is closed at the moment for lack of children. Their parents traditionally go elsewhere at this time of year—off on walkabout—and the families simply disappear. Ellen assures me they will return with the rain. Planning such things as supply orders, not to mention school curricula, is a challenge. How many mouths will we feed next week? One never knows. Fortunately, for I am inadequate to many tasks, I am not the Chief Shepherd, but only an assistant. The Chief Shepherd will see well to the souls and bodies of our sheep. He is adequate to every task.

  At our parting I asked to present my Lord’s petition in this letter. I thought writing would be easier than speaking. Alas, I fi
nd it’s nothing of the sort. Please bear with my scratch-outs and mis-phrasings.

  The newspaper describes how you saved a small lad. “Saved”—the Christian’s favorite word! We tell people, “You must be saved!” Our hearers quickly understand salvation from drowning. But rarely do we adequately explain how to be spiritually saved.

  From infancy I have been a member of the church, and for as long as I can remember I have loved to sing. A choirboy, later a soloist at St. Andrew’s, I was the perfect Christian lad. Samantha, I might as well have been singing in the town hall next door, for all the good my memorized expressions of faith did my soul. My head knew the facts of Christ’s lordship, but I did not act on them. My mouth said the words of the liturgy by rote. I did not possess them in my heart.

  I matriculated at age seventeen and as a gift traveled to my uncle’s in Scotland. There in Edinburgh I heard the evangelist D. L. Moody and the matchless voice of Ira Sankey. Fifteen years ago almost to the month, I remember it as clearly as yesterday. The words and the music pierced to my heart. I became a true Christian that day.

  Samantha, you value honor highly, and that is splendid. You value moral behavior and Christian ethics. Wonderful! But the only ethical, moral, honorable folk who will enter heaven are those who know Jesus Christ personally, in their hearts. I want more than anything else—more than Barmah itself—that you be one of them.

  To do that you must first admit your sins—not to human ears but to God. God has decreed the payment is blood, not pious acts; life itself, either yours or His Son’s. Pretend you went to pay a fine in court. You lay your pound note on the counter. Jesus lays a pound note down also, to pay your fine for you. You can say “Why, thank you!” and let Him do it, or you can cry “Never!” and pay the fine yourself. Lifeblood is infinitely more precious than a pound note, but you see the picture, I trust.

  Accept Jesus’ largess. He has already paid your debt, if you will allow it. Accept the gift. Ask His Spirit to enter and dwell in you. Then get to know Him through prayer and His Word.

  That is the bare bones of the gospel, but there is so much more! No matter how deeply I plumb its depths, I find no bottom. Its ramifications, its meanings and richness are infinite, and yet a small child can grasp its essence. What an awesome God, to reveal His power in such simplicity!

  God bless you richly, dear Samantha, and God bless the lad you rescued!

  With enduring affection,

  I am your servant in Christ

  Jesus,

  Reginald

  December 3, 1906

  Dear Reginald,

  Your eloquent letter arrived in yesterday’s post.

  My sister Meg recently married a young preacher named Luke Vinson. In the year prior to their nuptials, Luke addressed both Meg and me on the same subject, namely, salvation not by works but by God’s gift.

  I understood his allusions and exhortations, but I steadfastly refused to accept that they pertained to my own circumstance. I was born into the church; let the church save my soul. Besides, I lived a good life.

  I made moral choices, and was proud of them. Only yesterday did I fully grasp that although I be relatively free of the more dastardly and blatant sins of commission, my sins of omission alone would condemn me. Only yesterday as I read your letter did I realize that you and Meg and Luke are speaking to me—nay, begging me—out of love. You stand to gain nothing from my spiritual state, neither yea nor nay.

  When Meg announced to me that she had become a Christian, I did not understand; for she, like I, was raised in a Christian land. So were you. Now, through your testimony, I see.

  At last I perceive I am powerless to usher myself into eternity. Neither the church nor good deeds suffice. I now seek to commit myself to Jesus Christ, following earnestly with my heart (as best I may) the path you so carefully laid out, for I know the short span of this life is nothing compared to the expanse of infinity. I am not ashamed of the manner of my walk in this life; I accept God’s terms as He offers them that I might walk unashamed in the next.

  A few weeks ago, you rescued my physical life from death by thirst. Yesterday you rescued my eternal life from death by stubbornness. I am forever indebted to you.

  In unspeakable gratitude,

  I am yours sincerely,

  Samantha

  ****

  The railway from Geelong up through Melbourne and the mining country passed through some fairly interesting landscapes. But once past Ballarat and Ararat, Sloan’s train droned relentlessly through flat, arid, monotonous wasteland. He was confronting his greatest enemy right here. It whipped by outside the window of his railway car; it pried apart Australia’s pockets of civilization and shoved them into remote corners. Distance. Sheer, uncut distance.

  Distance so brutally separated supply from demand that it made his job as broker, already a chancy undertaking, nearly impossible. Distance slowed the pace of business to the speed of an outback mail train. Men attacked their enemy distance with rails and roads, bullock trains and camel trains, and noisy little paddle boats on the Murray drainage. Yet distance won the contest handily.

  For all the travel Sloan had endured recently, he really hadn’t covered much of the nation. Vastness beyond comprehension separated him from Perth, from the pearl fishery at Broome, from the sugar fields of north Queensland that he had once called home. As stultifying as this journey seemed, it was blessedly short when one considered the full enormity of Australia’s distance.

  A clangor woke him up. It was dawn, or near it, for the light came from behind them. They were lurching and rattling across an iron bridge. Murray Bridge. Adelaide lay fifty-five or sixty miles from here. He was almost there.

  Sloan glanced out the window at the narrow stream that was the mighty Murray River in the off season. His mind leaped to the scene of Samantha on the shores of the Murray—she, almost at its headwaters; he, here near its mouth. He remembered the way his heart thumped and his jaw dropped open when he recognized the willowy young woman approaching in the gloom beneath the Great Echuca Wharf. He could not recall ever having been so utterly dumfounded.

  It had been months since she worked for him, and she still called him “Mr. Sloan.” Would she ever call him “Cole”? Probably not. She had erected a wall like ice between them, and not even this summer heat would melt it down.

  Level distance humped and twisted itself into jumbled hills. The nice, straight railway tracks began looping and doubling themselves into a road that would make a snake sick. They were steaming south, the wrong direction, and now west and north, south again, east a bit, north…. At last they left the dry and ragged hills behind and rolled up a pleasant valley. At eleven-thirty-five A.M., Sloan stood on the platform of Adelaide’s North Terrace railway station and watched uncaring porters toss his trunk off the baggage car.

  He inquired about accommodations, had his trunk sent to a hostelry in Franklin Street, sight unseen, and asked directions to the university. “East on this street right here, less than half a mile. A pleasant walk.” Cole stepped out into the hot sun, adjusted his hat, and began walking.

  The University of Adelaide was not quite so imposing an institution as Sydney’s, but considering that South Australia was at best a poor sister to New South Wales (well, anyway, Sloan had always thought so), it looked all right. Here was a huge, pompous building labeled Elder Conservatorium, the sort of structure you’d expect for university blokes who thought a lot of themselves. Sloan had no time for nonsense such as higher education, or for its stuffy fatheads who knew little and said much.

  If Linnet were taking a music curriculum, she ought to be in or about this conservatorium. He stood under a gum tree and waited for classes to disperse.

  Even before distant church bells chimed the noonday, students materialized all over, streaming everywhere, passing each other, some bewildered, seemingly lost. Many of the young men wore loose, open gowns over their street clothes. More pomposity. Sloan was impressed with the number of women. Scores
of young women attended here.

  Would he easily recognize Linnet? Surely so; it hadn’t been that long. There she was. The red-brown hair was Sam’s. The slim figure was Sam’s, though not the height. She carried a violin case and folios. Beside her, a dumpy woman with a white cane tapped her way along. They nodded and smiled in animated conversation.

  Sloan let them pass. He hastened up behind them, reached down, and hooked a finger in the handle of her violin case.

  “Chris!” Linnet blurted peevishly. She turned. The luminous gray-green eyes meeting his were Sam’s eyes. Gorgeous! Good thing he was holding on to the case, for she let go and clapped both hands to her face. The shocked surprise brightened to delight. “Mr. Sloan!”

  She wrapped her arms around him impetuously, in a bold and happy hug. Propriety quickly got the better of her. She leaped back, self-conscious.

  He handed her the violin, and she reached down to gather her scattered pages. “When I greeted your sister, she dropped her bag. So I figured it ran in the family.”

  She grinned joyously. “What a lovely surprise! Oh! Elizabeth Mapes, Cole Sloan. Libby, Mr. Sloan is the man who brought us over from Ireland to work on his plantation.”

  Miss Mapes extended a hand. When he took it she gripped firmly, so he did also. “Mr. Sloan, thank you for that. Linnet is a splendid musician, and we’re lucky to have her.”

  “Are ye here for a while, or, uh…” Linnet waved a hand.

  “In town briefly on business and wanted to look you up. I’d love to take you to luncheon—both of you—if your schedule permits.”

  “Mine does not, alas. I’d love it, but I have a student in half an hour.” Miss Mapes extended her hand again. “Perhaps another time, Mr. Sloan?”

  He made the appropriate responses and she did also, as polite and cultured people do; they expressed their mutual pleasure in meeting, and all the while Sloan’s mind dwelt on the amazing resemblance between Linnet and Sam. When both were in his employ, he had taken scant note of any similarities. Sam had been the sun, Linnet a pallid moon in comparison. Now he could see how alike they were. There was, however, a towering difference: no wall of ice loomed between Linnet and him.