The Gallant (6 page)

Dr. Morecombe, a portly, red-faced man in shirtsleeves and breeches, greeted Luke with brisk cheerfulness.

“Not doing too well, our little Elizabeth, eh?

Well, don’t you worry, lad-I’ll

soon put things to rights. I anticipated that the birth wouldn’t be easy. I warned you, didn’t I?” He yielded up his shabby medical bags and, with maddening deliberation, paused to don his jacket before following Luke into the house and, at the door, again halted to wave to Dickon, who was leading his horse away.

“She needs you sorely, Doctor,” Luke urged. “She-was

“There, now,” the doctor reproved him.

“Don’t rush me, boy. I came as soon as I could, and it’s a long drive in this heat. You cut along and tell the good Mrs. Lee that I’m here, and then tell them in the kitchen that I’m going to need boiling water, lots of

it,

you understand?” He stumped into the dining room and, to Luke’s dismay, was still there ten minutes later when he returned, his own errands completed.

But at last, when Luke’s self-control was near to deserting

William Stuart Long

him, the plump doctor set down the glass of brandy Rick had poured for him and announced that he was ready to do battle.

“Compose yourself, boy,” he advised, not unkindly. “I know fatherhood’s a strain the first time.

When it’s your third or fourth, you’ll have learned better. But I’ve brought hundreds of young Australians into the world, so you just sit back and leave Elizabeth to me, eh? Take a

drink-Mr. Tempest keeps an excellent brandy.”

Shamefacedly, Luke took his advice. As he was sipping the lavish tot his father-in-law had given him, Dickon came

in

and, with more understanding than the doctor had shown, put a big, muscular arm about his shoulders in wordless sympathy, before seating himself at the table to eat his belated meal.

After that, time passed on leaden wings. As before, Rick and Edmund talked of the colony’s affairs, but now Luke gave up all pretense of listening.

The brandy glass still unemptied, he sat slumped in his chair, a prey to nameless fears and ever-growing despair, straining his ears for the sound of a baby’s cries-the sound that would signify Elizabeth’s ordeal was ended.

But that sound did not come. After what seemed several hours-but, according to the clock on the mantel, was barely one-Katie Tempest came down, to snatch a brief respite from the vigil in the sickroom.

“It’s going slowly, Luke,” she confessed, unable, for all she tried, to keep the anxiety from her voice. “Dr. Morecombe is doing everything he can. We must just be patient.” A maid brought her tea, but she hardly touched it, jumping up suddenly and, with a whispered “I expect Mrs.

Lee could do with a cup,” returning upstairs with the tea tray, her visit adding to Luke’s despair.

An uneasy silence fell, and after a while Luke slept, a silent, inarticulate prayer on his lips as sheer weariness overcame him. He wakened with a start to the sound of voices and, struggling back to consciousness, realized that it was daylight outside and that Dr. Morecombe had come into the room.

The portly little physician had lost all his former jaunty cheerfulness; he looked wan and exhausted, and his voice was hoarse as he said, “I deeply regret to tell you that the child was stillborn and that, despite all I could do, I have now to say that only a miracle can save little

Elizabeth’s life. Miracles do happen, but .

. dis8He broke off, shaking his balding head sadly.

Luke stared at him in stunned dismay, unable at first to take in the news he had brought. That his firstborn child had died he could accept, but not, dear God, not Elizabeth! For a moment he could not speak, the words strangled in his throat, but then, sick with bitterness, he asked, “Can I go to her?”

“Luke?” The doctor stared back at him with red-rimmed eyes, seemingly without recognition.

Then, recovering himself, he nodded jerkily in assent. “You’re her husband, of course, you comyes, go to her by all means. You, too, Mr. Tempest … all of you. But I fear she will not know you.

She-the poor young soul is not conscious.”

Rick Tempest put an arm about Luke’s shoulders and together they climbed the narrow staircase to the upper floor.

As before, Elizabeth was lying very quietly in the curtained bed, which had been set to rights, its curtains half drawn to cut out the light from the nearby window, and, as before, her eyes were closed. But this time she did not rouse herself when he knelt beside the bed, and Luke knew, with bleak, instinctive certainty, that the miracle of which Dr. Morecombe had spoken was not to be. Her mother, unable any longer to hide her grief, was weeping openly, and Rick Tempest, after bending to drop a light kiss on his daughter’s brow, muttered something Luke did not hear and led his wife away, to stand by the window, holding her in his arms.

Edmund and Dickon came in briefly and left together, Dickon, his bearded face taut with pity, pausing, as he had done earlier, to touch Luke’s shoulder with a big, gentle hand. Silence fell, broken only by Katie Tempest’s stifled sobs, and Luke went on kneeling at the bedside, numb with grief. He held one of Elizabeth’s hands to his lips, pouring out his love for her in a choked voice and praying desperately to the God he had worshiped in the boyhood that now seemed infinitely far away.

“Save her, Father in Heaven-I beg you to save her! Of your infinite goodness and mercy, let her live. Take my life, not hers -I would gladly die for her! Elizabeth, my dearest, sweetest love, try to speak to me-try to rouse yourself! I love you so… .”

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But his frantic pleas elicited no response; Elizabeth’s small, work-roughened hand was limp, her face shuttered and remote, and her eyes remained tightly closed. Luke did not know for how long he knelt there as her life ebbed away, but after a while Dr. Morecombe bade him get to his feet and stand aside, and after a brief examination he said flatly, “She has gone, boy, God rest her soul. You’d better go downstairs.”

The next two days were a nightmare, during which Luke managed somehow to do what was required of him and keep his emotions under iron control. The funeral of his wife and stillborn child took place at Pengallon, conducted by a curate from Bathurst, who was a stranger to him, and attended by a host of people, most of whom were the Tempests’ friends and also strangers to him. He accepted their expressions of sympathy in a state of frozen acquiescence, locked in his own grief as if it were a cage, and even Elizabeth’s family, try as they might, could not reconcile him to his loss.

It was as if they, too, had become strangers, and the day following the funeral, Luke made up his mind to leave Pengallon. The place held too many memories; wherever he went, to the paddocks, to the stables, to the shearing shed, or to his own cottage, the memories of Elizabeth came flooding into his mind, haunting him like some small, beloved ghost that was never absent and was yet unreal.

Rick Tempest, to whom he made known his decision, proved sympathetic and understanding and did not attempt to dissuade him.

“Take time off by all means, Luke. I realize, indeed we all do, how hard this has hit you. But come back to us, lad, when you feel you can.

Elizabeth’s inheritance will be yours, and Pengallon is your home-remember that.”

Luke thanked him, his heart full. “I reckon I’ll go to sea again, sir,” he added.

“Maybe go back to the States for a while, if I can find a ship bound for “Frisco. But if I can’t-well, just about any ship will do, wherever she’s bound. I’ll ask Claus Van Buren if he can give me a berth in one of his traders.”

He took his departure soon after talking to Rick. Edmund, when the time came to bid him farewell, urged him to stay. “Or

at least,” he suggested, wringing Luke’s hand, “don’t make it too long an absence this time. Because I’ve thought about what my father said, and …

I owe it to him to do as he asked. I’m going to stand for the Assembly in his place, Luke, and do my share of electioneering, if that’s what he wants. So you’ll be needed here, to run the station and help the old man out when I can’t. That gives you a year’s freedom. It should be long enough, shouldn’t it?”

Would it? Luke wondered dully-would he be able to recover from Elizabeth’s loss in twelve short months? But he did not argue, and with Dickon and the boy, Billy Joe, he rode to Bathurst, gave his horse into their care, and took the Crane and Roberts coach to Sydney. Dickon’s

woebegone face and the little boy’s tearful waving, as the coach pulled out of the staging-post yard, were a measure of their disappointment at his departure, but Luke steeled himself against the impulse that bade him stay on their account. He waved once and then settled back on the roof of the lurching coach, resolutely refusing to look back.

He was stiff and cold when the coach decanted its passengers at the depot in Sydney, having covered the 140-mile journey in sixteen hours, with brief halts at changing stations to hitch up fresh teams of horses and enable the passengers to stretch their legs and refresh themselves.

Luke had not eaten; the mere thought of food was abhorrent to him, and he did not take advantage of the meal that was on offer at the coach depot.

Instead, unshaven and in crumpled clothes, he set off on foot for the Van Burens” residence in Bridge Street, his few possessions contained in a cloth-bound bundle slung over his shoulder.

The servant who answered the door peered at him uncertainly in the dim light of a distant streetlamp and brusquely directed him to the tradesman’s entrance, at the rear of the opulent house.

“But if you’ve come begging for charity,” the man added dismissively, “you’d best go elsewhere. The master’s at sea, and the mistress won’t receive you.”

Becoming belatedly aware of the spectacle he presented, Luke sighed but held his ground.

William Stuart Long

“Tell your mistress that Luke Murphy would like to see her,” he requested, and, ignoring the fellow’s attempt to impede him, he strode into the hall. Mercy Van Buren saved him from further embarrassment; evidently hearing and recognizing his voice, she came hurrying down the wide, curving staircase to fling herself into his arms with a glad cry of welcome.

It was over a year since he had seen the girl who had joined his pursuit of Jasper Morgan and traveled with him from San Francisco in Claus Van Buren’s clipper

Dolphin,

and Luke’s flagging spirits lifted at the sight of her. He started to stammer out an explanation for his sudden appearance at her front door, but Mercy waved him to silence.

“Luke dear, it does not matter why you are here-it’s enough that you’ve come! And clearly you need shaving water and a bath and-goodness, a change of clothing and, I fee! sure, a meal. Then you can tell me why you’ve come.” Turning, she issued brisk instructions to the manservant who had been so reluctant to admit him, and, when the man had gone to carry them out, she added, laughing, “And you may come and bid good-night to my sons when you are looking less like a scarecrow. I was putting them to bed when I heard your voice, and they won’t sleep until they’ve seen you.”

An hour later, freshly shaven and clad in a borrowed suit, Luke was introduced briefly to Mercy’s small, sleepy twin sons, Joseph and Nathan, and then, as if sensing his distress, she led him to the dining room.

“You must eat,” she insisted. “Then we can talk.

I wish Claus were here, but he’s at sea, on his way to Batavia in the

Dolphin.

He will not be home for six or eight weeks at the earliest, but I’m thankful he did not go to England with the wool crop this year. I’d have lost him for much longer.”

There was a wealth of affection in her voice, and Luke, forcing himself to sample the food she placed in front of him, reflected, without envy, that Mercy’s marriage was as happy as his own had been. They had come a long way together, he and she-the Mormon farm boy from the California valley and the waif from the wagon train who had lost her parents and her friends in the long, perilous overland journey to the American goldfields.

The meal over, a servant brought him pipe and tobacco, and then and only then did Mercy permit him to explain the reason for his presence. He told her in a clipped, controlled voice, and there were tears in her eyes as she listened.

“Oh, Luke, I’m deeply sorry, sorrier than I can find words to tell you. But you-you’ve left Pengallon?”

“Yes,” Luke confirmed, tightlipped. “I could not bring myself to stay. It’s-oh, the whole place is full of Elizabeth. I’d see her at every turn, Mercy. I hadn’t the heart to stay there.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I want to go back to sea. I-well, I’d hoped that Claus might be willing to sign me on as one of his hands. But if he’s on passage to Batavia, then I’ll just have to look elsewhere, find another ship-work my passage back to the States, maybe. But-was

“There are no American ships in port here at present,” Mercy told him. “They mostly berth at Port Phillip or Geelong, carrying Americans to the Victoria diggings. There is-was She hesitated, eyeing him uncertainly. “There is the

Mercedes

brig, one of Claus’s traders. She’s due to sail for New Zealand in the next few days, and Silas Deacon, who was mate of the

Dolphin,

if you remember, is in command of her. He is a very good man -Claus has always thought highly of him.

But New Zealand … perhaps you-was “No,” Luke put in quickly. “I don’t care where I go. I simply want to get away, to work till I drop, Mercy. I’m at the end of my tether, you see. I … do you suppose Silas Deacon would be willing to sign me on?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure he would. I can write him a note, if you wish, but-oh, he’ll remember you, Luke. And all our ships are short of hands these days, particularly experienced hands.”

Luke got to his feet. “Where can I find him?”

“He’ll be on the Van Buren wharf,” Mercy said. “But it’s late, Luke-after eight o’clock.

Stay here for the night, have a good night’s sleep, and-was

He shook his head. “I can’t sleep. I’ll go now, get it settled, if Silas is there. I … thanks for your hospitality and for offering to let me stay. But I’m not fit company for anyone, least of