‘Then give me some of your own news ‒ quickly!’
Her eyes darkened a trifle. ‘I had been writing you a letter when you arrived this evening. It was mostly news of Banon … But all that can wait till tomorrow. There is one thing, though, which I’m sure will interest you. They say the Governor has had reports of Matthew Flinders. Do you remember him, Louis ‒ the young lieutenant who sailed in the Investigator, to map the continent for the Admiralty?’
He nodded. ‘But, of course! What of him?’
‘He set out for England in the Cumberland ‒ by the route through Torres, to the Cape. He put into Île de France for repairs, and the news is that the Governor there, General Decaen, is holding him as prisoner of war.’
‘The man must be mad!’ Louis said thickly. ‘Flinders was carrying a passport for a voyage of scientific exploration from the French Minister of Marine himself. Mon Dieu, what a return for the hospitality and sanctuary Governor King gave the French expedition, when they came under Baudin! There must be something more to this, Sara.’
‘Flinders’ charts and maps,’ she said, ‘… they’re all with him on Île de France. You know what that means, Louis. If he is held there any length of time, Baudin will publish his own account of the voyage, and the explorations he made for France. And then Flinders’ discoveries may be discredited.’
Louis shook his head slowly. ‘So purposeless … so stupid! Was he married?’
‘Yes. Three months before he left England, in 1801. Apparently he was bringing his wife, but at the last moment she wasn’t allowed to sail with him in the Investigator. And now she must wait until Decaen decides to let him go.’
He fingered his glass, moving it round in a circle, and watching the wine gently tilting. ‘These men of science ‒ what sacrifices they make for their mistress! Here is young Flinders, with logs and maps that are exquisite models of skill and patience, cooped up on Île de France ‒ and a bride of three months waits for him in England! Which of them, I wonder, does he love the better? Which would he sacrifice …?’ Then he looked up. At a tap on the door, Madame Balvet entered, followed by a manservant, carrying an iron-bound box on his shoulder.
‘Thank you,’ Louis said. ‘Put it there, by the fire.’
He addressed the housekeeper. ‘Elizabeth ‒ is she in bed now?’
The Frenchwoman nodded. ‘The nurse has attended to her. I imagine she sleeps already.’
‘Excellent! She will be better in the morning. Poor little one ‒ she is so tired.’
Madame Balvet cleared the last dishes from the table. She hesitated before the wine and the two glasses. Louis shook his head. ‘No, leave them.’
She made no reply, and did not raise her eyes to either of them while she stacked the tray with dishes. She handed it to the manservant, lingering for a minute or two longer ‒ purposeless lingering, which Sara quickly noticed. Then she left, closing the door noiselessly behind her.
Louis leaned forward to refill Sara’s glass; his action was slow and deliberate.
‘Now, Sara … we can be peaceful. The voyager has returned to his own fireside, and the clamour of Europe fades! I am glad to be back ‒ far more glad than I would have said was possible five years ago.’ He paused there. ‘And you, my dear …? How has this past year gone with you?’
She hesitated, looking sideways into the fire, twisting her glass nervously. The wine was dark; she moved it to see the play of the firelight through it, struggling to find the words to talk to him. He sat opposite, silent. She would almost have preferred his light-hearted mood of banter. There was no sense of peace here, as he had suggested. Suddenly she thrust back her chair, half-turning to the fire. Her movement shook the table, and a little of the wine spilled.
‘This past year, since Andrew died, has been ‒ damnable,’ she said. ‘Oh, you must be able to imagine how it’s been. I’m occupied and busy from the moment I wake in the morning until I go to bed again ‒ and it all feels as if it’s to no purpose. What point is there in the life of a woman who lives as I do now, when I remember what it used to be?’ Her voice had dropped, and she kept the side of her face turned to him. ‘I’m a successful businesswoman, I’m the mother of three children, but, with all that, I’m lonely. I go out and inspect the farms, and I’m pleased ‒ but who is there to share my pleasure? I buy a new gown, but it’s black, and there’s no one to care how I look in it.’
She swung round, looking at him passionately. ‘That is not a woman’s life, Louis ‒ that is just existence! I grow inhuman and withdrawn. I feel it myself, and yet I can’t prevent it.’
Then she sank back in the chair. ‘They hung Andrew’s murderer as high as the rest of the rebels, but justice gives me so little comfort. It cannot give me back the reason why I was content ‒ happy ‒ to work as I did. Now I busy myself in the affairs of my sons, but I have no heart for it.’
He nodded, his hands resting on the arms of his chair. ‘This is all so true ‒ and I can offer you no comfort. I have thought of you often, Sara, since I had your letter. Andrew’s death brought me back here sooner than I planned ‒ as soon as I could find the ship to take me. I suffered for you, but somehow I felt I was merely hearing news I had known in my heart for a long time. You and Andrew were too perfectly matched, too lucky. Everything was yours ‒ and no thought stirred in either that didn’t find its counterpart in the other. Heaven can well be jealous of such happiness. Mon Dieu, how others must have envied you ‒ as I envied you!’
He lifted his hands expressively. ‘Well, it’s gone now. Don’t weep for what is gone, Sara. You’re a greedy woman if you cannot be grateful for what you’ve had.’
She stirred restlessly, frowning. ‘That is not enough to make me stop wishing for that time over again. Have you no heart, Louis?’
He smiled thinly. ‘I have a heart ‒ but it doesn’t overflow with pity for you. You have been lucky, my dear, and luck doesn’t last forever. I grieved for Andrew, also ‒ I know I shall miss him in a thousand ways. I cared for him as a friend, more than any man I have ever known. But he is dead, and, at some time, there must be an end to one’s grief. Be glad for what you have had, Sara, and forget your self-pity.’
A look, half of surprise, half irritation, crossed her face. ‘Self-pity …? No one has ever suggested …’
‘No. No one has suggested it, because everyone is too afraid of you. Only I myself am not afraid of you ‒ myself, and possibly your overseer, Jeremy Hogan. Though even he, I doubt, would dare suggest such a thing to you. Oh, I knew exactly how you would pattern yourself to widowhood. I thought about you so often, and I believed I knew you well enough to see how it would be. And I fear that I was right.’
Humbly now, she said, ‘Tell me!’
He began slowly. ‘I knew you would fling yourself into Andrew’s affairs ‒ and work yourself to death in the mistaken notion that you were assuring the future of your sons. You would shut the world out of Glenbarr, and at the same time give it a model of how a widow should behave. You would make-believe that your heart was buried with Andrew, denying and holding back your own vigour and spirit ‒ which you’ll never succeed in stifling. You could lose the whole world, Sara, and you’d still remain yourself. Tell me, am I right? Isn’t this what you’ve done?’
She answered thoughtfully, without looking at him, ‘You could be right. But I haven’t learned to look at it in this way.’
‘Then it’s high time you did. A year has gone since Andrew was killed, and you’re not a woman of so little courage that you can’t learn to live without him more successfully than you’ve done in the past. I expected more of you than this ‒ and yet somehow I knew how well you would play the role your notions of respectability set you. Mon Dieu, Sara, you are not like the other gentle, simpering ladies of the colony, who must sit in their drawing-rooms and knit. You arrived here in a convict-transport. You have learnt harder lessons than those others will ever know; life can’t now give you worse than you’ve already had. Why try to pretend th
at Andrew’s death is a blow from which you’ll never recover? This is false to yourself ‒ wrong!’
‘Enough, Louis!’ she burst out. ‘You’ve said quite enough! I won’t stand any more of it.’
‘Enough, then, it is!’ His eyes were crinkled up with teasing laughter. ‘You sat there so meekly through it all, that I began to think you had indeed changed since I went away!’
Unwillingly she smiled also, though still annoyed and bewildered by what he had said, and yet unable to resist his mood. She felt his amusement at all her ideas of conventional behaviour, and she resented his parody of her position at Glenbarr. But there was rough justice in his remarks. No one, in recent years, had dared to recall to her her convict past, or to draw such sharp contrast between herself and the colony’s other prominent women. He was right in saying she would never suffer again as she had during her imprisonment and the voyage in the Georgette ‒ but only he would have dared to reason in this way, to trace the influence and effects of such experiences through her whole life, and because of them, pronounce judgement on her present behaviour. She thought on and around the subject, and she was forced to admit to herself that he was also right in saying that she was false to her true self in this effort to preserve the conventional aspects of widowhood; the young Sara of the Georgette would have scorned such practices, would have mocked the older Sara for pretending like this before Louis.
She smiled across at him now, quite broadly, thinking of how, ten years ago, she would have flung herself back into the business of rearranging her life to complete satisfaction after Andrew’s death. In particular, she would not have given Louis the picture she had displayed of herself in the last half-hour. Too many years of comfortable, secure existence had dulled her wits, she told herself. Realizing this, she suddenly relaxed completely, laughing, the strain wiped from her face.
He leaned forward again.
‘You encourage me now,’ he said. ‘I thought the time would never come when it would be appropriate to present my gift.’
‘Your gift …?’
He had begun to search in his pockets, and at last brought out a ring of keys.
‘I pictured you languishing in your black gowns, Sara ‒ and in the little time I had to prepare before we sailed, I found something for you which I hoped might bring you to revolt against them.’
With this he rose and put the key he had selected into her hand, motioning towards the small chest.
‘I should like you to look at it,’ he said.
She dropped to her knees before the chest, her fingers trembling slightly with excitement as she fumbled with the lock. It was well-oiled, and it sprang back easily. She was madly impatient.
Behind her, Louis said, ‘At great inconvenience, my dear Sara, I’ve kept it with me in my cabin. I was determined that this was one thing the sea-water would not spoil.’
She was lifting out quantities of soft paper, scattering them on the floor about her; then she came on a loose, calico wrapping and, underneath it, the sheen of satin. She laid reverent hands upon it, bringing it up slowly to catch the light of the candles and the fire. It was a ball gown of the deepest blue, with clusters of small pearls sewn into its folds ‒ a gown to take her breath away. She sat back on her heels, looking at it.
She was silent for so long that at last Louis spoke.
‘I presumed upon our friendship in choosing this for you. A personal gift, you’ll think ‒ even an intimate one. Perhaps a set of books for Glenbarr would have been more suitable. But if you’ll accept this, you’ll show me that you are the woman I believe you to be ‒ that you …’
‘Wait, Louis!’ Her voice was harsh.
Quickly, with nervous fingers, she turned the shining gown around, holding it against her body, fitting it close to her. Its colour swam before her eyes, its richness ‒ and it was like a challenge to her. She recalled the hour she had spent before Louis’s arrival, the painfully-written letter, the frustration of believing him beyond her reach. He was so necessary to her plan and her purpose. Should she now try to carry him forward on the mood of their hour here together? Faced with this sort of situation Andrew himself would not have hesitated, nor, ten years ago, would she herself have hung back. She had good reason to curse the caution and prudence she had acquired. Why should she not reach out to what was well within her grasp, to secure it before other influences attempted to take it away? Was he teasing her with the intimacy of his gift? ‒ he was capable of teasing her for many months yet, and Madame Balvet would always be there in the background. If she had the courage, she could end the doubts here ‒ and within a few minutes.
‘Louis …?’
‘I am listening,’ he said quietly.
Still on her knees, she twisted until she was facing him, the gown pressed against her.
‘Louis …’ She repeated his name slowly, conscious of holding back the next words. Then she looked up at him fully. ‘Would you marry me, Louis?’
He dropped to his knees beside her, gently taking the gown from her grasp and flinging it across the chest. He put his hands on her shoulders, looking at her.
‘Do you realize what you have said, Sara? Do you know what you have done?’
‘I suppose …’
‘No supposition, this!’ he said firmly. ‘You have asked me to marry you.’
His arms went about her, and he pulled her body in close to his. When he kissed her it was in a calculated fashion, as if he had known how he would do it. And yet she sensed that he found little satisfaction in it. His kiss was not an answer to her question ‒ it might yet be another piece of provocation. She started to draw away from him.
He didn’t release her, as she expected. He looked searchingly into her face for more than a minute. There were faint lines puckering his forehead, a look of inquiry. Then it faded, to give place to a gradual smile. The corners of his mouth twitched, and straightened themselves, as if he pulled them back before she should notice. Holding her by his left arm, he reached behind her to take the two cushions from the large chair that faced the fire. They made soft, dull thuds as they dropped to the floor. Carefully he caught her up in his arms, and laid her like a child with her head upon the cushions. She made only a slight motion to rise, and then her lips met his again. This time his kiss was not calculated, nor had she thoughts to analyse it; it gave her an exquisite sense of warmth and life, and the deepening feeling of discontent, which had hung upon her for so long, was stifled. It was deadly quiet in the room, and she heard, with a sharp, gratified pleasure, the sound of their breathing close together. Her hand moved slowly upon the roughness of his face, caressing it, and telling herself that the emptiness which had surrounded and oppressed her through these last months would be there no longer.
At last he drew back from her. She turned her head upon the cushions to watch him. He lay full length on the hearthrug beside her, leaning on one elbow, his chin resting in his hand.
‘I thought,’ he said quietly, ‘that it would take you many, many months to speak to me like this. In Sydney they told me how it was with you ‒ shut up there at Glenbarr, and never venturing out except for business. I knew I should never ask you to marry me while you persisted with that parody.’
Suddenly he pointed a finger at her. ‘I was determined that I would make you want me. Sara. I would make you confess that you were tired to death of living alone ‒ that your own passion would force you to make this demand of me. I swore ‒ yes, I swore I would marry no woman who gave herself to me with a show of reluctance, even if to give herself the desired cloak of respectability. I will not live with this pretence you try to maintain. You will marry me because you want to ‒ and not after a decorous interval of courtship either. It must be quickly, so as to give the gossips nothing to say but that we did it because we wanted each other, and not to suit our mutual conveniences. In a month, perhaps ‒ yes, I will send you away from Banon tomorrow, and in a month we shall be married.’
‘A month …?’
�
��That is not too soon, Sara ‒ because we need each other.’
He leaned over towards her, brushing his lips against her hair, which lay tumbled in a dishevelled mass.
‘You are so beautiful with the firelight on you,’ he said. ‘Your skin is warm, and I am tired of the marble-white English skins. Your hands are strong and possessive, Sara, and I have imagined their touch on me all these months past. I am filled with a mad longing to kiss your throat, and yet I hold back for the pure pleasure of looking at it. Oh, beauty …’ His voice was barely a whisper.
He put his head on the cushion beside hers, his lips almost against her cheek. But he was content to rest there only a few moments. He shifted his body closer to hers, and, leaning over her, he gathered her up tightly in his arms.
Chapter Three
Five days after the notice of Sara’s coming marriage to Louis de Bourget appeared in the Sydney Gazette, Jeremy presented himself at Glenbarr. Unannounced, he opened the door of the study where she was working, filling its frame with his bulk, standing silently until she turned to see who had entered.
Her startled glance took in his dishevelled clothes, and beyond him, in the hall, she could glimpse Annie Stokes, wringing her hands in her habitual, nervous gesture.
Jeremy closed the door with a bang. He took a few steps towards Sara, extending a crumbled copy of the Gazette. ‘This reached me yesterday,’ he said. ‘Is it true?’
She looked at him coldly. ‘If you refer to the announcement of my marriage ‒ yes, it is true.’
In sudden fury, he twisted the paper between his hands. ‘God in heaven, Sara! Have you gone out of your mind? You can’t be serious about this!’
‘I’m perfectly serious. Why should I not be?’
‘But you can’t marry him! Not de Bourget!’
‘And what objection have you to him?’
‘None ‒ in any position other than that of your husband. There were never two people less suited to live together. Think of it, Sara! I beg you to think again before you do this.’
Sara Dane Page 39
