Chris grabbed her arms and danced her in circles. “Sydney! Less than three months from now—Sydney! We’re on our way, Linn!” He wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug that nearly squashed her lovely flowers; then he kissed her—impetuously, firmly, delightfully.
With the most unusual expression on his face, he backed her off to arms’ length as if he were looking at a stranger.
“Chris, ye needs control y’rself a bit more decorously in public, aye?”
He laughed suddenly. The spell, whatever it was, had broken. “What? And live a dull life?” He swooped her off across the lawn toward North Terrace. “Linn, we’re on our way!”
“So ye’ve said. But where?”
“The sky, the stars, the world. Wherever you wish to go.” He put a lean arm across her shoulders and pulled her in close. Suddenly he moved away, stopped, and turned. “And in keeping with your emerging importance in the world of music, you need lessons in deportment.” He adjusted his cape as he walked off ten paces. He wheeled. “All right. I’m the mayor of Sydney. I come up to you backstage.”
Linnet nodded and licked her lips.
Before her eyes, Chris changed from a bouncing, lilting artist into a pompous politician. He stood taller. His chest puffed out as his nose tipped up. Magisterially, he strode across the grass to her. As he took her hand in his and grandly kissed it, his voice rumbled, “My dear, you were marvelous.”
He was the mayor! Abashed, Linnet curtsied deeply. “Thank ye, m’lord.”
“No! No, no, no!”
She cringed. Now what had she done?
“You curtsy to the king. You curtsy to the archbishop. To everyone else in the world, except maybe the prime minister, you dip your head in a single nod, like this, and close your wonderful eyes so that when you raise your head and open them again—like this—they simply engulf the man.”
“I dinnae curtsy to the Lord High Mayor?”
“No. It’s servile.”
“I am a servant, Chris. A domestic.”
“You are not!” His ringing tenor vibrated to the stars. He must have seen the fear in her eyes, for he lowered his voice a few decibels. “You must retrain your mind, Linnet. You must understand that you are no longer a servant. You are an artist. And more! You are an exceptionally talented world-class artist.”
“Oh, really now! I—”
He laid both hands on her shoulders; his black eyes penetrated her whole being. “You curtsy to the king because you are his subject. You are not his inferior. You curtsy to the archbishop because he’s the top rung of divine representation. You may curtsy to the pope also, if you wish. But you are Linnet Connolly, consummate artist. You have earned your position of honor, and you will assume it.”
“Honestly, Chris.”
“Assume it! Not presume it. This is not presumptuous, don’t you see? You are worthy of honor! The gifts you were born with make you the equal of men and women who were born to their positions. Now step into the role God ordained for you.”
He released her and stepped back. “We’ll do it again.”
The “mayor” came striding toward her, magnificent in his power. Again he praised her. To her dip of the head she added the slightest of bows, a tiny movement of the shoulders. She raised her head and took care to open her eyes slowly.
His dark face lit up like the sun. “Pure elegance!” He stood staring at her a moment, and the look in his eyes was almost one of awe. He took a deep breath. “Good. Next we’ll work on how you’ll handle the ugly, suggestive little notes that are going to be slipped under your door.”
****
Reginald Otis, while certainly no Notre Dame hunchback, was not an exceedingly handsome man. Because God had given him important other gifts far more beneficial and enduring, he accepted his rather ordinary appearance gladly—until now. Now, despite his best intentions, he felt a pang of envy.
Across the table from him sat a darkly handsome man, the kind of man to turn a lady’s head. And at the table to his right sat Samantha. She was as sensible a young woman as you’ll find, but her head was surely turn-able. Samantha and this Mr. Sloan, her former employer, shared an easy sort of comfort. When Sloan addressed her as “Sam,” he sounded like a brother. Yet, deep inside Reginald, a tiny green-eyed demon poked at his heart with the trident of jealousy.
In spite of himself, Reginald found himself counting out the strokes against him. Stroke one: beauty attracts beauty. Stroke two: Sloan’s injuries could not help but invoke sympathy and warm feelings from a lady as tender-hearted as Samantha. Stroke three: they knew each other well, and obviously liked each other well. Worst of all, four, Sloan was here—here—with time on his hands. Reginald’s days would be stuffed full with business during most of his stay in town. He would have to make at least two trips to Melbourne. And as he dashed about preoccupied, trying to do the Lord’s work with—financially speaking—one hand tied behind his back, Sloan would be wandering free.
Free to do what? To court Samantha? If he had even half an eye for quality, he’d be doing everything in his power to win her.
In Samantha’s presence Reginald lost twenty years of sophistication and fumbled about like a schoolboy. His mouth said things without first consulting his mind—too frequently, disastrous things. She filled his thoughts whether he was in her presence or not. Reginald Otis, you silly goose; you’re in love worse than when you courted Darla.
Samantha passed the dish of chicken with rice. “Gentlemen, do try to finish it. I’d much prefer starting anew tomorrow.”
Sloan shook his head no and raised a hand. “But I’m glad this high-powered executive job of yours didn’t take the edge off your splendid cooking.”
She smiled modestly. Reginald knew the modesty was genuine, and from her it was so fetching. Were it just he and she, he would take a second helping. She excelled indeed as a cook. But Sloan had refused, and Reginald must not appear self-indulgent and greedy.
Schoolboy thinking! he reprimanded himself. Reginald held out his hand. “I’d like just a tad more, please. It’s too good to pass up.” With thirty-two years to grow up in, he ought to be in firmer command of himself. Honestly.
Sloan began to wilt visibly as they finished with tea. He would surely excuse himself any minute now and return to the hotel. Time ticked on.
Samantha set down her empty cup. She studied Sloan intently. She drew a deep breath. “Now I shall be an absolutely boorish hostess, undeserving of ever receiving a kind word again. Meself will freshen y’r poultice, Cole, and then I’m sending ye home to sleep. Sure’n I ken y’re being polite in y’r after-dinner company, but ye need the rest.”
Sloan chuckled. “The day you’re boorish, Sam, the Coral Sea will freeze over. I appreciate your care. Thank you.”
She nodded and stood up. Reginald and Sloan rose as one. She glided away, scooping up the poultice on her way out to the kitchen.
Reginald sat down again. “Where are you staying?”
“Esplanade.”
“I’ll accompany you, if you don’t mind. I’m there also.”
“I welcome your company.” Was there an edge of irony in Sloan’s reply, or was Reginald’s imagination running away with him?
Samantha returned presently. She handed Sloan the stained green cheesecloth bundle. They all said their goodbyes and Samantha’s door closed, she on the inside of it and the men outside. Almost before he knew it, Reginald was where he didn’t want to be. He wanted to be in the stuffy little cottage absorbing Sam’s good company. He didn’t want to be out in these hot, dark streets. Ah, well.
The two strolled casually through dappled blackness. They emerged from under the red gums into the treeless main thoroughfare and the world brightened to silver. The first- quarter moon was just now pulling itself high enough to make its presence felt.
Reginald suddenly realized he was walking not upstreet toward the hotel but at an angle toward the river. He continued in that direction, though, for Sloan seemed similarly inclin
ed, as if drawn to the water. Without speaking they ambled through the moonlight, out onto the Great Echuca Wharf.
The sluggish summer remnant of the Murray River wound out around its S-curve, white in the light. Huge black globs of red gums on the far shore contrasted sharply with the bright water. Would that life were as black and white as this tranquil scene! Sloan’s baritone purred in the darkness. “I’m glad she’s found something better than housemaid work. She’s too intelligent for scullery.”
Reginald nodded. “You can’t begin to know how efficient she was in keeping all my affairs in order. I’d scrawl a hasty little note telling what I needed, and instantly a boat would come pulling up to the dock with as many items as she could ferret out. We can never get everything we need; some things are nonexistent, some too costly. But she worked miracles, and I don’t use the term lightly.”
Sloan was looking at him. Smirking at him, in fact. “You deal in miracles, too, don’t you? Another preacher.”
“Another preacher?”
“Bible bashers. Luke Vinson. The only preacher north of Innisfail, and he had to set up housekeeping in my very dooryard. Here you are, supposed to be wandering out beyond the black stump and you’re right here under my nose. That backblocker Frobel telling me what’s divine providence and what isn’t. I can’t get away from them.”
Reginald smiled. “Could be God is trying to tell you something.”
“God’s never done me any favors.”
“None you’ll admit to, you mean.”
Sloan glared at him. Either Sloan was about to start laughing, or Reginald was about to get thrown off the wharf into the Murray.
Reginald risked the Murray option and pressed on. “You’re a highly intelligent man, Sloan, modern in your outlook. It’s the fashion among modern thinkers to dismiss the Bible. That’s fatal, and a little logic will tell you it’s fatal. Exodus, written two thousand B.C., described the Lamb to be sacrificed for sins. John the Baptist saw Jesus and cried out, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.’ We’re the world, Sloan.”
“This discussion isn’t doing my headache a lot of good.”
“Then in Revelation Jesus appears again as the Lamb. Isaiah said, ‘All we like sheep have gone astray,’ and Jesus said, ‘I am the Good Shepherd.’ It’s a multiple reference; Ezekiel prophesied against the false shepherds of Israel—the heartless and uncaring priesthood. Bad shepherds, Good Shepherd.”
He watched Sloan a moment; no overt rejection. He went on. “David, a thousand years before Christ, described crucifixion in detail, a means of execution he himself never knew about because it wasn’t invented yet. Deuteronomy promised that a man hanged from a tree is accursed; and when Christ was crucified, He cried out to his Father, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’”
Reginald raised his hands in illustration, and laced his fingers together. “It all fits, Sloan. Dovetails together, you might say. A book that was written across a span of two thousand years fits together perfectly, theme to theme, passage to passage, as firmly knit together as a Shelley poem. You discount it at your peril.”
“What makes you think I discount it?”
“What reason would I have not to think so?”
Sloan stared at him a moment and laughed loudly, mirthlessly. At least he wasn’t tossing Reginald into the drink. The laugh faded into the darkness. “Did Sam tell you I indentured her and her sisters because I couldn’t afford to pay them a decent wage? And the courts nullified the arrangement?”
“She’s never mentioned you. Indentured, like the Kanakas?”
“You might say so.”
Reginald nodded. “I understand they’re sending the Kanakas home and bringing in Italians for the labor.”
“So I heard.” A pause. “Then you wouldn’t know I killed a man while Sam watched. The official determination was self-defense. She thinks I did it on purpose.”
“Did you?”
Silence.
A frogmouth flitted by, its wing feathers, barely audible, whispering, wshwshwshwsh.
Sloan stood awhile in the moonlight examining infinity. “What are you looking for, Otis? I mean, in life.”
“I don’t think you’re going to like the answer: the soon return of Jesus Christ. Then joy and glory will replace misery.” He shrugged. “Until then, I’m looking for some way to keep Barmah mission afloat.”
“That’s the kind of thing bronzewings and silvertails like to put their money into. Makes them look charitable. You should have plenty to work with. What would sink it?”
“Not enough bronzewings and silvertails who care. An entrenched bureaucracy half a world away. A thousand random factors working against me.”
“I see. In other words, you’re looking for glory at the end of it. Maybe a few pounds to sweeten the prestige. If your mission flops, no glory.”
Reginald felt his ire rise; it took him a few moments to beat it down. “I suppose that’s what it looks like from the outside.”
“Outside of what?”
“Outside the fold. You’re outside the peace and safety of the Good Shepherd’s sheepfold.”
Sloan scowled into the darkness. “Let’s quit the talk about stray sheep, all right?”
“It’s the most important conversation you can ever engage in, but I agree. For now, let’s let sleeping sheepdogs lie, enjoy the night, and return to our beds. I’m very weary.”
“That’s about the first thing we agree on.”
They turned their backs to the silver water and black trees and walked out into the street, hotel bound. Beyond the handsome face and weary body, what was this man beside Reginald? He obviously possessed a full measure of self-confidence and then some.
And suddenly Reginald realized his dilemma, a conundrum he never anticipated when he knocked at Samantha’s door this evening. There is a teaching among some, an interpretation of Second Corinthians, that a Christian should not yoke up in marriage with an unbeliever, with anyone not wholly given over to the Lord. Samantha, though quite new, had espoused the faith. Sloan opposed it. Sloan therefore was, in the spiritual sense, unsuitable as a prospective mate for a woman in Christ.
But Reginald’s duty as a servant of Christ was to present the gospel to this lost soul. If by some miracle (and all salvations are miracles) Sloan came into the fold, Reginald could count still another stroke against himself, quite possibly a killing stroke: Sloan would become as handsome a man spiritually as physically. He would appear even more attractive to that fair Irish woman, and Reginald, plain Reginald, would be left further back in the ranks of desirability.
The soul of Reginald Otis, pillar of the Barmah Mission, cried out to God as it had cried out more than once in years past: Why, God?! Why me?
Chapter Thirteen
Cutting Deals
Silence. Hot, heavy silence. Still-as-death silence. Samantha took a few steps more just to hear the sound of her feet in the dry duff. So this was Barmah Forest. Samantha Connolly was no authority on forests. But she’d walked through two of them now—the rain forest of Queensland and this one—and the only thing they shared was the word forest.
In the darkness of Queensland’s coastal forest, birds flitted far aloft in the warm, humid air. Unseen creatures rustled. Strangler vines tied the dense canopy to the fern-covered floor. And though it was tropical, the Queensland forest did not force its warmth upon you. Shade muted the sun’s heat and brilliance.
Not so this place. Nothing stirred—no living things, not even a gentle breeze. The legendary red gums did not crowd together here as did the many kinds of rain forest trees in distant Queensland. Instead, they maintained a discreet distance from each other, like polite butlers, and let the torrid summer sun beat down.
Which way lay the river? She shouldn’t have wandered off. How could she find her way back? Every direction looked the same. The sun burned precisely overhead, casting no slanted shadow, permitting no hints regarding north or south. Even in this heat, the chill hand of pani
c seized Samantha’s heart and squeezed.
Wait! She no longer belonged to herself. As Reginald explained it, she had given Jesus Christ permission to purchase her with His very lifeblood. From somewhere in her past, the line a very present help in time of trouble—or something like that—nudged into her consciousness. Was her Owner truly present? Might the Lamb who redeemed her soul possibly do her body a favor as well?
Once upon a time, Cole Sloan had purchased her services through indenture, a prelude to this most recent acquisition when Jesus Christ purchased her completely. Cole took care of his own. Surely Jesus would do no less. Samantha sat down on a gray stump, suddenly overcome with a remarkable sense of confidence. Peace. That was it. Peace. Never before had she tasted peace. Never had she experienced the likes of this amazing victory over fear and uncertainty. She would be cared for. And were she to die this day, she would be cared for all the same.
She closed her eyes and tried to address God simply, without the thees and thous of formal prayer. Luke Vinson talked one-to-one with God. So did Reginald. So might she.
But it was a far more difficult thing than she had imagined. How do you engage in conversation a divine person who is completely beyond your senses? Besides, God knew her situation. Nothing she told Him would be news. At a loss for words, she shifted her prayer efforts to thinking about how wonderful God was; the Creator of the universe—of this sultry forest—cared enough for a simple servant girl that He would sacrifice His very Son. Inconceivable. The heat was penetrating to the quick despite her broad straw hat. She should ask God to send someone soon, for she had no idea which way to turn.
Huuuuuuuuuuhhhnnn!
That was Echuca Charlene’s steam whistle! It came from her left. She had become completely twisted about in this senseless maze of open wood. She leaped up, turned to face the sound and began walking.
Huuuuuuuhhhhhnnnn!
Certain now of her course, she increased her pace through the dry, crackling duff.
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