He addressed Mrs. Ryder abruptly. ‘Ma’am, if,’ he gestured towards Sara Dane, ‘this woman suits you, Captain Marshall has given instructions that she need not return to the convict quarters. May I report now to the captain?’
‘Please do, Mr. Maclay. I think Dane will meet my requirements.’ She gave him a quiet smile. ‘You’ll convey my thanks to Captain Marshall?’
He bowed. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’
He turned and left the cabin.
Chapter Three
The two men in the wardroom looked up from their papers when Andrew burst in upon them. Brooks was checking a list of medical supplies in a bored fashion and welcomed the diversion. Harding, flicking over a page of the log, raised mildly astonished eyebrows at the sudden noise of Andrew’s entry.
‘What is it?’ he said.
Andrew had only taken one step into the room. He looked from one to the other.
‘Have you seen her?’ he said to Brooks.
‘Her?’
Andrew was impatient. ‘The girl. Sara Dane.’
Brooks smiled slightly. ‘I saw her yesterday. Dirty little wretch, but I’d say she had more possibilities than any of the others.’
‘Yesterday!’ Andrew echoed. ‘Then you ought to see her today!’
Harding had taken his cue from Brooks. He began to smile. ‘I suppose she’s washed away the dirt of the prisons and uncovered a dazzling beauty?’
Andrew slammed the door behind him. ‘Well ‒ if I’m any judge of women, she’s beautiful enough to set the whole ship talking.’
‘The dirt is really gone, then?’ Brooks’s tone was still bantering.
‘Yes, it’s gone,’ Andrew replied. ‘She’s washed her hair …’ He finished lamely, because their faces had too clearly revealed their amusement. ‘It’s … fair ‒ almost white.’
Harding glanced at Brooks. ‘There’ll be some defiance of Captain Marshall’s orders now, with all this beauty let loose among us.’
‘Wait till Wilder sees her!’ Brooks said. ‘She’ll give him something to think about. The poor fellow is dying of boredom.’
‘If he gets half a chance!’ Harding mused.
Andrew turned away from them. He walked to the table, looking down at the papers scattered about. For no particular reason he scowled.
‘She’s extremely intelligent,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps she’s not the sort Wilder likes.’
No one spoke.
He looked up, bursting out, ‘God in heaven, what is she doing here on a convict ship?’
After a moment Brooks shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. Harding said nothing.
Andrew left them to their papers. He picked up his own report-book and sat down at a table, testing the point of a quill before jabbing it into the ink-pot. He thought unashamedly of the girl he had just seen on deck with the Ryder children, her golden head bare and soft in the sunlight. What a fool he must have seemed ‒ gaping at her. She had worn a blue cotton dress belonging to Martha Barratt, and a bright red shawl about her shoulders. The transformation was unbelievable and, reading his expression, she had looked at him steadily for a second or two, and then smiled. He remembered her eyes, an indefinable colour, more green than blue. He was a trifle shaken by the impression she had made on him. It lingered, as the memory of her voice had lingered.
He glanced over at Brooks and Harding, but they were completely absorbed again. Sara Dane was forgotten by them. He dipped the quill in the ink, but his mind was not on the report he wrote. A girl’s enquiring eyes came before him. He bent his head, and tried to concentrate.
Sara made her presence felt aboard the Georgette in a strange fashion, Andrew thought. Almost from that first day he had seen her in her place by the bulwark with the Ryder children, it seemed as if she had always been there.
The transition from convict to confidential servant might have been an impossible one for almost any other woman. Andrew watched her closely during the long, dull weeks of the voyage to the Cape, and found himself compelled to admire the way she managed it. Her methods were not subtle, but they were clever. She was far too shrewd to make herself a target for disapproval. Day after day, she sat on deck with the children’s lesson books open on her lap, her eyes never wandering from them for more than a second. But if one of the officers stopped beside the group to talk to Ellen and Charles, Sara was willing enough to talk also, though she always waited to be addressed first.
The trouble, he thought, was that none of them knew quite how to treat her. They were all conscious that she had been, on her own admission, convicted of theft. On the other hand, she had charm and undeniable beauty and it was too much to expect that men, cut off from the society of women, would not stop to talk with her and the children; too much to expect them to keep their eyes from following her movements. After a while they stopped being self-conscious about speaking to her, they forgot that she had come up from the convict quarters in rags.
She established herself finally in her own niche when the captain paused one morning by the little group to ask how their lessons progressed. Andrew, watching the scene, saw that Sara answered quietly and with no undue meekness. Coquetry or servility would have been out of place, and she did not make the mistake of employing either. Clever minx, he thought. He knew that the captain would soon make it a daily practice to stop to listen to the lessons, commend the children’s industry, and watch Sara working neatly and expertly at the needlework Mrs. Ryder had given her.
To Andrew, the most astonishing thing about Sara was her gaiety. She made Ellen and Charles laugh continually, and they plainly loved her for it; she was tireless in keeping them interested and occupied during the days that followed each other with dreadful sameness. He admired the spirit which let her throw off the effect of her imprisonment so quickly, and settle to her place naturally in the Ryders’ family life. It was quite obvious that she did not expect or want pity from any of them.
He was conscious as he watched her, day after day, of growing approval of the way she set about making the best of her strange situation.
II
The tiny space of the cabin was full of the sounds of rustling silk, the scents of warm flesh and perfumed clothes, as Sara helped Julia Ryder prepare for bed. Julia was tired, and had very little to say; Sara fell in with her mood, folding garments and settling the cabin to order almost in silence. A gown of pale blue silk, which Julia had worn that evening at the captain’s table, lay across the cot, and Sara gathered it up in her arms; she smoothed the thin stuff between her fingers appreciatively, listening to its rustle with attentive ears. The sound and feel of the material brought back the London days, when gowns, far more elaborate than this, had been an everyday sight. With the whisper of silk she could hear again the light-hearted gossip of the dress-salon; she saw the fashionably bored faces under feather-trimmed hats, the jewelled hands slipping into soft gloves. For just a second the crumpled silk in her arms gave that world back to her.
Then she glanced across at Mrs. Ryder, seated before the small, littered toilet-table. The other woman’s dark hair was loose, and fell about her shoulders, shining under the swinging lantern. The picture she made in that gentle light satisfied Sara’s sense of beauty; while Julia Ryder was here, this cramped cabin did not seem such a far cry from the London salon. She wore now her loose wrapper of primrose brocade; her nightgown was trimmed with lace that was hardly whiter than the skin of her shoulders and breast.
As Sara watched, Julia leaned forward to study her reflection in the mirror, at the same time picking up a hairbrush from the table.
‘Let me do it, ma’am!’ Sara said. She laid aside the gown and stretched out her hand for the brush.
She took her usual place behind Julia, pulling the brush evenly through the long hair, watching it tighten, and then slacken and curl back. She brushed in silence; and Julia’s eyelids drooped. After a few moments Sara’s attention wandered to the toilet-table. The mate of the silver-backed brush she held had been car
elessly thrown down. The mirror, which was always propped against the bulkhead when they were not in heavy seas, reflected the scene back in a kindly fashion. The frame of the mirror was a light silver scroll-work; on a lace mat close to it lay a crystal phial of perfume. Sara’s eyes went slowly from one thing to another while her hands moved mechanically.
Julia’s voice broke in quietly.
‘You love pretty things, don’t you, Sara?’
Sara lifted her gaze from the table to the mirror; it met Julia’s there.
After a pause, Sara said, ‘I shouldn’t admit how much I like having these things about me.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know very well, ma’am, that I was transported for theft. If I say I admire them, you may think I want to steal them.’
In the mirror Sara saw Julia frown suddenly, and a look almost of sternness came across her face. Her eyes didn’t leave Sara’s for a second.
She said sharply, ‘Sara, I have only asked you one question about how you came to be on this ship. I don’t intend to probe. If you wish to tell me, I’m ready to listen. But I leave the decision to yourself.’
Sara had never felt for any other woman the respect which Julia had won from her. She had worked for her, had tended her when she was ill, and helped her through days when she couldn’t stand upright with the rolling of the ship; she believed that in these weeks together she had come to know her completely. She decided now that she must take a risk on her judgement of Julia Ryder.
She didn’t attempt to answer the question. Instead she lifted her head and stared into the mirror again.
‘Are you satisfied with me, ma’am?’
‘Yes, Sara ‒ I’m very satisfied.’
Sara nodded, and said slowly, ‘And Mr. Ryder ‒ he’s satisfied also, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I get on well with the children, ma’am …? I mean they’re fond of me, in a way?’
‘You manage them better than anyone we’ve ever had. They obviously pay attention to you because they like you.’
Sara’s voice went quietly on. ‘And the captain, ma’am, he doesn’t find anything to disapprove of in my behaviour? He doesn’t object to the officers talking with me ‒ why, he talks to me himself!’
Julia frowned again, puzzled. ‘Yes, Sara. I hear nothing but praise for you from everyone. But why …?’
‘Why?’ Sara repeated. Then she paused to let the other have the full effect of her words. ‘Because I wanted to hear you admit those things, ma’am! I wanted to hear you say them, so that I’ll be certain whenever I admire your possessions, I don’t need to wonder if you think I’ll steal them.’
At that Julia twisted in her seat, until she was looking directly at Sara.
‘I think it’s time we stopped this fencing, Sara,’ she said. ‘Let us be plain with one another.’
Sara’s hand, holding the brush, dropped to her side.
‘I’ve watched you very carefully,’ Julia said. ‘You’re ambitious and proud ‒ but you’ve also got a head full of sound sense. My servant, Barratt’s, death was your good fortune. You seized your opportunity when it came, and I don’t imagine you’d be likely to throw it away by doing something foolish.
‘We’re going to a new country,’ she went on. ‘The life will be difficult and strange … An impossible life, Sara ‒ unless you’re prepared to be as fair with me as I’m willing to be with you. I’m not blind. Believe me, I’m as well aware of your good qualities as you are yourself. But I beg you not to forget that in this case we both have something to offer. When we reach New South Wales, you’re going to need my help just as much as I’ll need yours.’
She paused, tapping the edge of the table reflectively with her finger-nail. ‘As long as you’re with us, Sara, I’m willing to forget that you were convicted at all ‒ I’ll forget that you have ever occupied any other position but this one. But, if I’m to trust you, then you must stop mistrusting me.’
Sara was disconcerted that the other had read her motives so truly; but swiftly this feeling was replaced by satisfaction because this attitude was exactly what she had sought to bring about in Mrs. Ryder. It was the position towards which she had painstakingly worked her way for weeks. This was an assurance of her future.
She dropped her eyes. ‘Then I think we understand each other, don’t we, ma’am?’
‘I think perhaps we do, Sara,’ Julia said.
III
In a tiny aft cabin of the Georgette, reeking of cooking smells because of its closeness to the galley, Sara struggled with the weight of a studded sea-chest which had belonged to Martha Barratt. Stowed in the small space under the cot, the chest would yield only a few inches at a time to her tugging; she paused frequently to straighten her back and take a deep breath. The cabin had no port-hole; it was airless, and hardly large enough to allow her to move. She had occupied it since the day Andrew Maclay had brought her up from the convicts’ quarters. It contained a cot, at the end of which, piled one on top of the other, were three wicker baskets of clothes belonging to Julia Ryder and the children. The only other furniture was a wash-table holding a metal jug and basin and Martha’s few toilet articles, which Sara now used. On pegs behind the door hung a cloak and a second striped gown like the one she was wearing.
Her attempts to drag the chest into the space between the cot and the wash-table had brought the first prickle of sweat to her forehead and neck. She passed the back of her hand across her hairline, and stretched out to open the cabin door fully, so that whatever air the passage-way offered might enter the stifling little apartment. Beside the chest was another wicker basket, containing the belongings which Martha had collected during her long service with the Ryders. This basket Sara already had had full access to ‒ the plain, neat clothes excited her very little, apart from the novel experience of having more than rags to wear. But in the chest, ponderously locked, were Martha’s few treasures, seldom worn or used, kept more for the joy of possession than any other reason. Mrs. Ryder had given Sara the key that morning and told her she might have whatever she found useful. Now, in the hour of the midday meal, she had time to herself to haul the chest out and look through the contents.
She dragged steadily at the handle until at last it came clear of the cot. Martha had kept the lock lovingly oiled, and the key turned without protest. Sara gently removed the folded sheets of paper which lay on top, breathing, as she did so, a wordless little apology to the dead woman whose cherished possessions were being touched by strange hands.
She lifted the lid of a white box, and fingered the pieces of neatly rolled ribbon, a few scraps of fancy lace, and lastly a soft pair of embroidered gloves. She laid these aside, turning her attention to a dark blue cloak. There was a narrow trimming of fur at the neck which gave a touch of luxury, fabulous in the clothes of a servant; Sara pressed it against her face. Then her gaze fell on a pile of blue muslin; she dropped the cloak and pulled eagerly at the other garment. It was a gown, beribboned and billowing, and neither new nor fashionable. Obviously, she thought, holding it up against herself, this was Martha’s best, and only brought out on the grandest occasions. It did not matter to Sara that it was out of fashion ‒ it was still graceful and delicate. She took another look at the soft folds of the skirt and decided to try it on.
But when she tried to close the door before taking her own dress off, she found that the chest was in front of it. Unless she pushed the chest back under the cot again, the door would have to stay as it was. She felt herself flush with annoyance and irritation as she considered what she would do with the unwieldy thing.
It was unlikely at this hour that anyone would pass down the passage-way, the midday meal occupied those on board who might have used it. Sara looked thoughtfully from the dress to the open door, and decided then that she might take the risk of leaving it that way. She whipped off the cotton gown, and pulled the blue muslin over her head. Martha had been as tall as she, but of heavier build. The gown was too bi
g; the waist-line fell below her own, and the neck, cut to fit a broader figure, hung open in the front and slipped off her shoulders. She would alter it to fit and some time, she hoped, there might be occasion to wear it. Certainly, it was rather an elaborate gown for a servant, but if Martha, middle-aged and dignified, thought it suitable, then she, Sara, wasn’t going to pass it by.
Searching among the more sober garments for something with which she could adorn the muslin, she came upon a long scarf of the finest black lace. It was probably Chantilly ‒ something she was not unfamiliar with, as smuggled lengths were often seen about the shoulders of the richer women of Rye. She examined it critically ‒ it was quite faultless and very beautiful. She draped it over her head, letting it trail across her shoulders. Quickly she turned to the wash-table for the small, handled mirror which lay there.
The only light in the cabin came from the lamp above her head, so that she saw her reflection dimly. She imagined that her mother might have looked a little as she did now. The face she saw pleased her; her pale gold hair and bare shoulders showed through the black lace. She went on gazing, reflecting that it was a comfort, sometimes, to be able to take pleasure from one’s own face.
She gave a little shrug and adjusted the lace scarf to better effect. Then a sound from the doorway caused her to lower the glass and turn swiftly. She found Wilder watching her.
Their eyes met as they both strove to weigh up the situation. Sara folded her lips, waiting for him to speak. She took in his nonchalant leaning position against the door-frame, and the unpleasant smile that flickered thinly across his good-looking face.
When he spoke it seemed that his drawl was deliberately insulting. He jerked his head on one side, and his eyes moved quite openly over her body.
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