The Far Horizon (23 page)

PART FIVE

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Island of Mull

Scotland

The letter from Australia, when it eventually reached Gruline, was nine months old.

Lachlan read it carefully, then raised his eyes from the pages and gazed stonily out of the window. It was less than three years since he had left Australia, yet he knew with certainty that if he did not act quickly, it would be too late.

The window of his study looked out on green fields surrounded by woodlands. The setting was idyllic and there was no other place, according to Elizabeth, more restful on Earth.

The door flew open and his son came into the room, young and healthy and golden, full of life and vitality and impatience. ‘Are you coming, Papa? If we don't go soon, there'll be no time to fish.’

Lachlan looked at his son, and smiled gently. Life was so short, yet for the young even a long summer's day was still not long enough for all the things they wanted to do.

‘No fishing,’ he said, ‘not today. There are too many other things I need to do. Why not ask George to take you?’

‘I'll ask George,’ the boy agreed, and dashed off as if there was not a moment to waste.

A short time later, from the window, Lachlan saw his son and George Jarvis setting off together in the sunshine, saw the way they walked and talked companionably together, and suddenly Lachlan felt himself ravaged by a desolate sense of loss. Much worse than the ravaging pain that had been torturing his body for months.

He now knew that he would never experience the joy and fulfilment of seeing his son grow into manhood, but he had known and loved the boy for ten years, and he thanked God for even that.

Elizabeth walked in on him a few hours later, surrounded by a litter of his personal possessions. He had cleared out his desk and boxed up all his personal papers.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked in bewilderment. ‘I thought you had gone fishing with Lachlan.’

Still silent, he pushed aside some papers on his desk and handed her the letter from Australia.

She took it and read it thoroughly, angry emotions moving over face, and then she looked at him. ‘So what will you do? What
can
you do?’

‘I can go to London. That’s
all
I can do.’

When?’

‘As soon as possible … tomorrow morning.’

She was nodding, she understood and agreed with his motives for going to London immediately.

‘But why all this?’ She slowly looked around at the boxes on the floor. ‘You are only going to London. Not back to Australia.’

He made a careless gesture with his hand. ‘Oh, I was just in the mood, and I thought it was about time I sorted my papers into some sort of order, if only to help me find them more quickly when I need them.’

She gazed at him in silence. An insect was buzzing loudly in the quiet warmth of the room. ‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you are well?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Just, as you say, a little tired.’

‘Then if you are intent on travelling to London tomorrow, you will have to make sure you are in bed early tonight. No more staying up to read a book into the small hours. Promise me that, you will, Lachlan, an early night, before your journey.’

‘I promise.’

She stood looking at him for a moment, satisfied, knowing that was one thing he had never done – given his promise and then broken it.

And she also knew that his need now to go to London as soon as possible, was due to that last promise he had given to the people of Australia on the day he had left its shore.

When she had left the room he turned away to the window, realising he would have to take an extra dose of laudanum to prevent the pain from waking him – and Elizabeth – in the night.

He turned back into the room and sat down at his desk Throughout his life, and especially in Australia, he had driven people hard, but never harder than he had driven himself. Through overwork he had strained his physical constitution, the doctor had said. And now he must pay the price.

But he still had one last battle to fight, and it had to be fought in London.

A battle with politicians.

‘
Politicians are not born, they are excreted
,’ Cicero had said. And that old First Consul of ancient Rome had known his politicians, Lachlan reflected wryly.

Many English politicians – men whose only personal knowledge of him was the tittle-tattle of his foes and the biased reports of Commisioner John Bigge, had spoken out against him and his government of New South Wales; but Lachlan knew that he still had many friends in high places. And on that alone, everything now depended.

*

He left Scotland at dawn the following morning, accompanied only by George Jarvis.

In London he took rooms at a hotel in St James, a distance of just a short walk to Whitehall’s offices of power.

His old friends received him warmly, and although at times he felt almost giddy with sickness, he put on a cheerful face and accepted every social invitation and used every contact he had.

At the end of June he finally took his cause to the Duke of York, who sat and listened seriously to his plea on behalf of the emancipists in Australia.

The following afternoon he was received by the King at Carlton House. It had been almost twenty years since those days when he had dined with Lord Harrington and the Prince of Wales – now George IV – but the King remembered him well.

They discussed the petition that the emancipists of New South Wales had sent to him, in the desperate hope that he would be able to personally present it to His Majesty.

The King slowly read the petition which had been signed by 1365 of — ‘
those persons by whose labour your Majesty's Colony has been cleared and cultivated, its towns built, its woods felled, its agriculture and commerce carried on. Yet your petitioners, retrospectively and prospectively, are to be considered as convicts attaint, without personal liberty, without property, without character or credit, without any one right or privilege belonging to free subjects.

‘Your Majesty,’ Lachlan said, ‘these emancipists believe it is wrong and unfair that despite a generation of good conduct and hard industry, they are now thrown back to a state of degradation from which they thought they had deservedly risen.’

The King looked thoughtful, and then distressed. He sighed indecisively, and then changed the subject altogether – to the happier subject of India. After all, India was now part of the Empire, a jewel in his crown, and the architecture of his magnificent Pavilion at Brighton had been inspired by the beauty and splendour of the Indian Pavilions.

Such was the wayward jollity of King George IV that Lachlan was almost cheery at the end of his visit, but he was none the wiser.

And then, finally, after weeks of endless meetings with senior politicians, Lachlan was officially informed by the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Peel, that a new clause was to be inserted into the
Transportation Act
, restoring to emancipists all their former rights and privileges – not only in Australia – but in all of His Majesty's dominions.

Lachlan returned to his hotel rooms in Duke Street, took up his pen and wrote a letter to his friends in New South Wales, giving them the good news. His last fight for his beloved Australians had been won. They had served their sentences, and paid their debt. Nothing more could be taken away from them now. Not now. The new clause had received the Royal Assent.

When he had signed the letter, he threw the pen from him and sat back in his chair, staring at the wall like a man who is staring at his whole life. He frowned – not at the stabbing pain, which he had become used to – but at the new and unexpected inner calm he suddenly felt.

George Jarvis came up behind him and put a hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Come, you need to rest now. Let me help you to bed.’

Lachlan refused, and then changed his mind, deciding he would like a rest after all.

Once he was in bed and lying back on the pillows, his eyes closing in sleep, George stood looking at him for a long time, and then quietly left the room and sent a message post-haste to Elizabeth, telling her he believed she should come to London as quickly as possible.

Returning to the bedroom, George sat down on a chair by the bed, and lifted Lachlan's hand in his own.

Lachlan opened his eyes and looked back at George with an expression of extreme tenderness.

‘George.’

‘Yes, my father.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Whatever you ask me to do.’

‘I have already asked so much of you …’ And then a dark shadow of sorrow came into Lachlan’s eyes and he said anxiously,

‘Eight months, George, eight months before they receive my letters in Sydney, eight months before they know about the Royal Assent to the restoration of their rights and dignity.’

George could not answer, because his heart was breaking. Even though he had known for weeks that Lachlan was dying, and had been sworn to secrecy, the reality of it now was almost beyond his endurance.

‘But … my son,’ Lachlan went on worriedly. ‘George … he is only a child.’

‘Don’t worry,’ George assured him quietly. ‘I will take good care of him.’

‘And Elizabeth?’

‘And Elizabeth also.’

‘Lord Strathallan is the executor of my Will, so he will become Lachlan’s
legal
guardian, he will insist upon that. He will also see to the administration of the Jarvisfield estate on Elizabeth’s behalf; but, George, I have also set up the
Macquarie Trust
, which is for you.’

‘I don’t want or need anything from you,’ George replied. ‘You know that.’

‘Yes, I know that … but who knows the future …’

The tears were sliding down George’s face. ‘I have sent for Elizabeth … and asked her to bring Lachlan with her … you will see them both again, in just a few days.’

George held Lachlan’s hand even tighter, as if silently telling him,
‘so hang on, fight as you have always fought for everyone else, and hang on until they arrive …’

Lachlan smiled faintly. He knew what George was silently saying, and nodded. ‘I understand, George … I’ll do my best.’

‘You always do.’

And then an overwhelming sense of peace came over Lachlan as he looked into George's dark eyes. A feeling of trust and faith that he knew would never be broken. With George Jarvis there at Gruline, the boy would always have a man around, a man who truly loved him. A man who would help him in the ways that only another man can, a fine man.

Cool mind, clear judgement, warm heart. That was George Jarvis.

Lachlan closed his eyes and let his mind drift along a path of memories that led all the way back to that day in India when he had first set eyes on that small struggling slave-boy in the bazaar at Cochin … It had been a long road from Cochin to here, a long road through long years, but it would be that same little slave-boy who, as a man, would take good care of his own little boy now.

He smiled to himself. Oh yes, as always, George Jarvis was right: ‘Heaven's way always comes around.’

Epilogue

When the news of Lachlan Macquarie's death in London reached Australia, the bulk of the population of New South Wales went into mourning. Shops and houses put up their shutters for a week, and the
Gazette
draped its pages in black.

The church bells of St Philip’s church tolled at dawn and at dusk for seven days. Emancipists met in sad groups in each other’s houses. Old swags wept openly on roadways, and streams of young male and female convict servants joined the long silent procession through the shuttered town towards Sydney harbour where – at sunset on the seventh day, scarlet lines of soldiers stood with hands raised to their hats in silent salute as a bugler played
The Last Post.

To a stranger arriving in Sydney, it must have seemed as if a monarch had died. But to the people, Lachlan Macquarie was more than merely a king. He was, and always would be, ‘
The Father of Australia.
’

‘
He was a perfect gentleman, and a supreme legislator of the human heart … Whenever the sculptor shall imagine a guardian angel for New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the chisel of gratitude shall portray the beloved and majestic features of General Lachlan Macquarie.

Hobart Town Gazette, 1824

JARVISFIELD

A mixture of the Arabic blood of her father, and the English blood of her mother, Elizabeth (Beth) Jarvis grows up on the estate of Jarvisfield in Scotland. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of uncommon beauty who enslaves the hearts of two young men, while loving only one.

Lachlan Macquarie Junior, rich and golden, and the heir to his famous father’s estate, is the joy of his mother’s heart, until she finally realises that the only man her son is capable of respecting, and the only one who can control him, is Beth’s father, George Jarvis.

Based on the true-life stories of the
Macquarie,
Jarvis
and
Dewar
families, and set in the natural beauty of the Island of Mull,
JARVISFIELD
is the third book in
The Macquarie Series.