The Gallant (7 page)

42

William Stuart Long

all for you and those boys of yours. I-was He gestured to the suit he was wearing. “I’ll send these garments back before we sail.” Mercy studied his face for a long moment and then rose too, making no attempt to argue or to detain him. At the door, she kissed him on the cheek and stood there, watching him out of sight.

Silas Deacon was in the small office on the wharf, a pile of cargo manifests in front of him. To Luke’s relief, the onetime mate remembered him. He asked no questions and, after hearing his request in silence, readily agreed to sign him on.

“You can go aboard right away, if you want to,”

he said. “I’ve done as much as I can with these blasted papers tonight, so I might as well come with you.” He grinned and laid a friendly hand on Luke’s, as he set down his pen. “It’s good to see you again, young Luke, though I have to say I didn’t expect to. Reckoned you were one who’d swallowed the anchor … but if you didn’t, then I’ll be glad to have you.” His grin widened. “You’ll find an old friend of yours on board the

Mercedes,

name o’ Yates-Simon Yates, my second mate he is now. Went gold digging with him and his brother, didn’t you, a few years back?”

Luke’s spirits lifted. “Yes,” he answered.

“Yes, I did, Captain. On the Turon

River. When I left, he and Rob were still hoping to strike it rich.”

“Well, they didn’t,” the master of the Mercedes

stated with finality. was Tis a fool’s game, this gold seeking. For every man that makes his fortune, there’s a thousand that never do. But you can’t tell “em, and they keep on coming, packing in good jobs, running from their ships, deserting their wives and kids. But some learn sense, like the Yates lads-and like you, seemingly.”

“Yes,” Luke agreed flatly.

“All right, lad, I’m not bothered as to why you’re signing on with me. You proved yourself useful enough on the passage from ‘Frisco, so I reckon I can rate you A.b. this voyage. That’s it, then, unless —” Deacon hesitated, his white brows knit as a thought occurred to him. “Well, just so long as you ain’t running from the law for any reason. You ain’t, are you?”

“No,” Luke assured him. “I’m not,

Captain Deacon.”

But, he reflected unhappily as he followed old Silas Deacon across the wharf to his waiting boat, he was running harder than he had ever run in his life, running he knew not where, from the memory of Elizabeth’s dead face, just as he had run from the memory of Dan’s-and it felt suddenly as if the devil himself were after him.

“I heard tell,” Deacon said, coming unexpectedly to a halt, “as you were mixed up in the Eureka Stockade affair at Ballarat. I don’t rightly recall who told me, but-were you there, Luke?”

Luke made an effort to remember. It seemed a long time ago, part of another life. “I was there,” he admitted. “But I was a police trooper then, not a digger. Don’t worry, there’s no price on my head.”

“And did you find the feller you were after, the one you left America to hunt for?” Deacon persisted.

“Yes, Captain,” Luke answered. “I found him. He was killed at the Stockade.”

“All, then that’s all right, then,” the old man said, relieved. “I was just a mite afraid of what you might have done when you found him.” He gestured to the boat. “Least said, soonest mended, eh? I’ll ask no more questions. Into the boat with you, lad-and you can pull an oar, if you ain’t forgotten how. You’ll have to earn your rate, you know.”

“I’ll earn it, Captain,” Luke promised.

“I’ll earn it, never fear.”

I

It was the habit of Henry Osborne and his family to attend morning service every Sunday at the parish church at Dapto, six miles from Marshall Mount, Henry’s prosperous sheep and cattle station near Lake Illawarra.

The male churchgoers went on horseback, forming a sizable cavalcade to escort the two big drays in which Sarah Osborne and her younger daughters traveled, with the female members of the establishment, who included stockmen’s wives and children and domestics.

Jenny De Lancey, invited by her hostess to take a seat in the family dray, accepted with relief. She and her husband had ridden, in admittedly easy stages, from Sydney to the Illawarra, but, unaccustomed to such strenuous exercise, she was saddlesore and stiff, and the dray was comfortably cushioned, its occupants shielded by an awning from the glare of the sun.

William, for all he had been convalescent on his arrival from England two months earlier, had very swiftly recovered from the toll the Crimean campaign had taken of him, and Jenny’s gaze was proud as she watched him ride past at Henry Osborne’s side. True, he was still painfully thin, and his empty right sleeve bore witness to the ordeal he had endured, but, if anything, his loss of weight had enhanced his good looks, and the flecks of gray in his hair and his immaculately trimmed cavalry mustache and side-whiskers added to his air of distinction. Although in civilian dress, he still contrived to maintain

his soldierly bearing, adding credence to the reasons he had given for his decision to accept the appointment he had been offered in the East India Company’s Army of Bengal.

“I’m a soldier,” he had insisted, when both Henry Osborne and his wife had urged him to stay in Australia and settle on the land. “Soldiering is all I’m fitted for, and, deuce take it, the fact is I know India a great deal better than I know the land of my birth! I’m utterly ignorant of farming-unlike you, Henry, it’s not in my blood. And besides, my sweet wife is willing to come with me to India, aren’t you, Jenny my love?”

She had, of course, assured him of her willingness, Jenny reflected a trifle ruefully. She was deeply in love with her husband of a month, reluctant to refuse him anything he might ask of her, but … She sighed. It would be a wrench to leave Australia, to part-perhaps for years-from her family and friends, and to begin life anew in a strange land, with which William was familiar and she was not. A land, moreover, that was peopled by the seething multitudes of a dark and warlike race, whose language she did not speak and whose religions and customs were alien to her.

“You will live like a queen, my darling,”

William had asserted, when she had ventured to express her doubts. “With a score of excellent servants to wait on you, a fine house, and a social life that has its equal nowhere else . .

. and certainly not in Sydney, believe me.”

She did believe him; indeed, she trusted him implicitly. Yet for all that, Jenny found herself wishing that he had paid more attention to the Osbornes”

persuasive arguments, instead of shutting his mind to them.

She bit back another regretful sigh. This was such a lovely place, a place in which she would have been happy to stay for much longer than the scant few days William had allowed for their visit. In the distance, as the wagon wound its way slowly along a well-worn cart track through the bush, she glimpsed the lake-Lake Illawarra-gleaming silver in the bright sunlight, behind its screen of trees and flowering shrubs. Nearer at hand, but also hidden by the close-growing gums, a stream flowed placidly by, and all around it were great tracts of lush green pasture, with cattle grazing and, on the gentle slope of hillside

William Stuart Long

to the east, the white dots that her hostess had told her were sheep.

As far as the eye could see was, she knew, Osborne land-a vast acreage, sustaining countless flocks of sheep and the herds of prime beef and dairy cattle that the family now owned. And their holding was not confined to this station, Henry Osborne had said, in no spirit of boastfulness but with simple pride.

His eldest son, Harry, had leased from him the Narrow Plains station at Colombo, across the Dividing Range, and-a month or so before she and William had arrived to pay their promised visit-his second boy, Patrick, had set off to establish a new sheep run on land at Lake Urana, between the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers.

It had taken years-a lifetime, in truth-to build up to their state of prosperity. Henry and Sarah had talked of the early, pioneering days, of the initial hardships they had endured, of the cares of a young and growing family reared in a primitive cabin, many miles from any other human habitation, always with the risk of drought or bushfires, of aboriginal raids or the predatory attention of convict escapers on the run. But shrewdness, enterprise, and skillful planning, as well as prodigious hard work on both their parts, had brought success and a happy, united family.

Henry Osborne smilingly described himself as a squatter now, his tone when he claimed the title at once deprecating and oddly defensive.

“Where my livestock spread out in search of new pasture, I took possession of the land, as did many others. The land was empty, unexplored and unsurveyed, certainly unsettled. But we had no security of tenure. At first we could only take out annual licenses-pastoral licenses, they were called-with the risk of being dispossessed. It took ten years of struggle with the government, but finally, by banding together, we won the right to purchase at a favorable price the freehold of the land we leased. It took an Order in Council from the British government to gain us that right, and the public, as well as successive governors of the colony, opposed us at every turn.”

Perhaps, Jenny thought, if William had stayed in Australia and become a pastoralist five years ago, when he had come on

leave from India, the challenge would have had its appeal-a stronger appeal than fighting his country’s battles in the Punjab or the Crimea had offered. But as it was … She was conscious of a sudden feeling of intense sadness. It was too late to cherish even the smallest hope that her husband would change his mind or that anything the Osbornes might show him would deflect him from his chosen path; yet-against all reason-the hope persisted, and she felt tears well into her eyes.

William was like her brother Red, she told herself-for had not Red put his naval career before the ties of home and family? Besides, if she herself had really wanted to settle on the land, she would have married Edmund Tempest-as everyone had supposed she would-instead of choosing to wed the man in the bemedaled British cavalry uniform, who was now about to take her away from the world she had always known to one that, however secretly, she feared.

As if sensing her unvoiced distress, Sarah Osborne touched her arm and pointed to a line of low stone buildings that came into view just ahead. Most of the buildings appeared to be of utilitarian origin-store sheds and stables or the like-but in the center stood a white-painted cottage, with an overhanging shingle roof. The cottage was picturesque, its walls and the veranda that fronted it covered by a vividly flowering creeper, and its garden, behind a low picket fence, was ablaze with color. Vines, fruit trees, and flowers grew in healthy profusion in well-cared-for plots to the sides and rear of the flower beds, and the path to the front door was paved, with white-painted stones placed at intervals to mark its course.

The cottage appeared to be unoccupied, despite the neatness of its garden; no smoke rose from its single cookhouse chimney, and a flock of brilliantly colored parakeets, disturbed by the approaching cavalcade, took wing with shrill cries of alarm, to seek refuge in a nearby apple tree.

“That was our first home-Pumpkin Cottage, Jenny,” Sarah Osborne said. “And the first garden I stole from the bush and planted with flowers and trees that reminded me of home. The vines and the vegetables came later-even the potatoes had to take second place to my flowers! Originally it was a bark cabin. It’s been added to, of course-as our family grew, so did our

William Stuart Long

dwelling place. But then we couldn’t add to it any more, and Henry built our present homestead, Marshall Mount, and planted the Moreton Bay fig tree you admired-goodness, it must be almost ten years ago that we moved! I still love this little house though, and the homestead garden has never quite matched this one. Dear Pumpkin Cottage!”

She smiled reminiscently, and, studying her serene, still-beautiful face, Jenny thought how much she liked and admired Sarah Osborne.

The years and the strain of childbearing had robbed her of her once slim and elegant figure; her hair was graying, brow and cheeks were deeply lined, but she had retained in full measure all her charm and her zest for life.

And her husband and those of her children still living under the paternal roof made no secret of the fact that they adored her… . Jenny echoed her smile.

“It’s lovely, Mrs. Osborne,” she said, referring to the cottage and its surroundings. “But is there no one living here now?”

“There will be very soon,” her hostess assured her.

“The family of our two young stockmen from the old country, Tom and Joseph, will be coming out within the next few weeks.” Her smile widened. “It’s quite a romantic story, really. Henry had always maintained that he owes his start out here to the proprietor of an inn called the Gillespie Arms, in Dungannon, County Tyrone.”

Sarah launched into the story, smiling the while, as she described her husband’s eagerness to reach her father’s rectory in Dromore, which had led to his forgetting the draft for a thousand pounds-his entire capital-in the pocket of the cloak he had left in the inn to be dried.

“Old Mr. Doakes preserved the draft for him,” she concluded. “And it was on his advice that Henry invested the money in a cargo of Irish linen, which he sold for three times its cost in Sydney when we arrived. And on the proceeds he was able to stock the land grant he was given as a new settler.”

It was, indeed, a romantic story, Jenny thought. And evidently, being the kind of man he was, Henry Osborne had not forgotten the debt he owed to the proprietor of the Gillespie

Arms in far-off Ireland. The two young men, Tom and Joseph, must be the innkeeper’s sons, and …

“The boys are his grandsons.” Sarah Osborne answered her unvoiced question. “The old man died several years ago, but his son Benjamin-the boys’

father-was a shipping clerk in Liverpool. Henry entrusted him with the arrangements for the trade goods and livestock he has imported ever since we came out to Australia-a trust he fulfilled most admirably. He sent Tom and Joseph out under indentures, and they-as well as Henry himself-have long urged Benjamin and the rest of the family to emigrate, too. Well, now they are coming here, and Pumpkin Cottage is ready and waiting to receive them.”