Peter’s eyes met mine and I said quickly: “Of course you can live with us, dear.”
“Just until I’m married m’self.”
Tom came back then with Mr. Cudlipp, and Ruth and I sat with the old man while Peter and Tom went into the yard to see about the box. I thought about Mr. and Mrs. Bushell upstairs “resting” and envied them their married privacy. Ruth may have been thinking the same thing about Tom, for after a little while she burst out: “I wish we could all go to Parramatta right now.”
Mr. Cudlipp turned to her. “Are we not going to Toongabbie? Tom told me we were going to Toongabbie.”
I said: “You are, sir. You are going to Toongabbie.”
It was hard to reassure him, however, and Peter, on seeing the old man’s anxiety, judged it best to be off directly. A quick public embrace and the promise of seeing each other tomorrow (Mr. Bushell having engaged to drive us all to Parramatta in his new carriage) and they were away.
6.
For reasons I did not discover until my wedding night, Mr. and Mrs. Bushell quarreled on the evening of the day we arrived in Sydney. Ruth and I first heard raised voices when we came upstairs. The prospect of a proper bath and a feather-bed had led us to retire early, but my bedchamber was next to the one occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Bushell, and the desultory sounds of their argument kept me awake. I lay in a great bed festooned with green gauze (mosquito netting, I later learned) and tried not to listen, but every so often Mr. Bushell would start shouting and in the end I could bear it no longer. I picked up my pillow and went and knocked on the door of Ruth’s room.
She was awake and had heard them too. Her room was farther away, however, and the voices less audible. “You can sleep with me,” said she. “This bed is more’n big enough.”
But as we settled ourselves, there came an especially loud shout, followed by the sound of a door slamming and footsteps. I waited, holding my breath, but the footsteps continued on downstairs. They were a man’s footsteps—heavy and booted—and after a few minutes Ruth let out a sigh: “I reckon Pa’s an awful bully.”
I could not immediately reply. I could not even think of a comforting quotation. Finally I said—it was the best I could do: “My father used to bully me—though in quite a different way.”
When I awoke, it was starting to grow light and the house was quiet. Ruth was fast asleep. I picked up my pillow and crept back to my room, but I did not go back to bed. Instead I unpacked my writing-box and began a letter to Elizabeth—a continuation of the penciled letter I had begun on board the Odyssey. After relating my safe arrival in Sydney and my happiness at seeing Peter, I embarked on a brief description of Mr. Bushell’s store and house. It then occurred to me that I had not yet described Mr. Bushell. I reached for a fresh sheet of paper and suddenly the habitual reserve I practiced with Elizabeth gave way:
I have to confess I do not like him. I do not like either of my prospective parents-in-law. Mrs. Bushell is a very odd woman—never cheerful—and he is a selfish bully. Pray do not judge me for speaking ill of them, Lizzy. I must unburden myself to somebody and you are aware of the family history, after all. It cannot come as a complete surprise.
But it has just struck me that you and Jane have had no experience of this sort of thing. Neither Mr. Darcy nor Mr. Bingley has parents living—and now that I come to think of it, neither has Mr. Wickham. You are all of you married to orphans! Alas, my future father- and mother-in-law are very much alive—
I stopped writing. Did I then wish Mr. and Mrs. Bushell dead? I crossed out the last line, but after glancing back over the preceding paragraphs I tore the page into little pieces and on a fresh sheet of paper began an account of Bungaree and his two wives.
I had all but finished when I imagined Elizabeth reading aloud my letter to Mr. Darcy. I imagined how he would look as he listened to the description of Cora Gooseberry throwing off her blanket and dancing about on Church Hill naked. I was about to tear up this page too but then I recalled Maria Lucas telling me how long ago she had heard Mr. Darcy speak disparagingly of dancing—how he had informed her father that “every savage can dance.” I added a postscript:
I hope Mr. Darcy will not be too shocked to hear about Cora Gooseberry—she is a savage, after all.
Mr. and Mrs. Bushell did not appear at breakfast—another excellent meal of oatmeal and sweet cream together with bacon and poached eggs and a variety of fruit. Ruth and I both ate well, but I kept thinking of the text in Proverbs: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
Mr. Bushell walked in just as we were finishing. He looked rumpled and untidy and his eyes were red. I had a sudden fear that he had been drinking. He poured himself a cup of coffee with a steady hand, however, and without sitting down said: “You girls are going to have to shift your quarters. M’lady-wife wants a room to herself—and a dressing room besides.”
Ruth and I looked at each other. Mr. Bushell cut himself a chunk of bread and bit into it without buttering it. “There’s a couple of rooms on the floor above. They’re full of shop stuff but I’ll have one of m’men clear ’em out.”
He looked at me, chewing, and laughed suddenly so that I could see the bread inside his mouth. “All these years I worked like a dog. Even when I were a ticket-of-leave man I never absented m’self—not once—and I never once touched a drop ’cause I gave her m’word. And this is the thanks I get for it.”
He gulped down his coffee and then perhaps in an effort to appear more normal said: “Well. What’s your plans for the day then? I got to be at the Poacher by ten.”
Ruth said: “But you said you was going to drive us to Parramatta.”
“That’ll have to wait.”
“But you promised, Pa!”
I spoke quickly, more to deflect him: “Ruth and I might call at Government House.”
“Government House!” It was as if I had said I was going to the moon.
“I have a letter of introduction to the Governor. My brother-in-law has a cousin in the Colonial Office.”
“Oh, he has, has he? And which brother-in-law would that be? Not the one what ran off with your little sister?”
I hated the thought that Peter had been talking to this vulgarian about my family. “I was referring to my brother-in-law, Mr. Darcy.”
Mr. Bushell grunted. “A letter of introduction? A proper formal letter of introduction?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could I see it?” He was like a child.
When I returned with the letter, I feared that father and daughter had been arguing. Ruth was sitting, studying the tablecloth, while Mr. Bushell stood looking out the window into the yard.
The letter had not been sealed and Mr. Bushell now unfolded it and read it, his lips moving. It took him several minutes. He said: “I met him y’know—not to speak to—I shook his hand. It was in the year ten—not long after he first come. It was at a fete.”
Ruth lifted her head. “I don’t want to go with you, Mary. I don’t want to go to Government House.”
I guessed what they had been arguing about. I said: “Of course you don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”
“Oh yes, she does! If she knows what’s good for her.” Mr. Bushell handed me back the letter. “One of m’men can show you the way.”
Ruth sulked most of the way to Government House—along George Street and down and up Bridge Street—and I found myself talking to her in the rallying tones Cassandra had once used with me. “’Tis the way of the world, Ruth, and foolish to set your face against it. Connections can be very useful.”
I tried again: “I know people are apt to set too much store by such things—an old neighbor of ours was forever prating about the Court of St. James’s—but permit me to offer you one of Francis Quarles’s little emblems: ‘Be wisely worldly; be not worldly wise.’”
Ruth’s response was a sniff. Under her best bonnet, her sharp little face was mutinous. I said: “If not for your own sake, then
for Tom’s. From what I hear, his brother is none too prosperous.”
“Don’t preach at me, Mary.”
We walked on then without talking. I would not speak of my own disappointment at not going to Parramatta lest it seem like a reflection on her father.
Bridge Street is a busy thoroughfare, connecting as it does George Street with the eastern slope of the Tank Stream, and there was much to see—carriages and carts rumbling down and up, gentlemen on horseback, and people on foot. I saw a convict work-gang going to the lumber-yard. They wore garish canary-yellow jackets and overalls, all daubed over with broad arrows. I could not look at them for long, but Ruth gazed after them. I wondered whether she was thinking of her father.
Mr. Bushell’s man was keen to point out the sights. He had already drawn my attention to a large brick, balconied house on the corner, which he said was the Female Orphan School. He said that a new institution was now being built for the orphans at Parramatta.
“Are there so many orphans?”
“Aye, mum. Soldiers’ spawn.”
At the time, I had not known what he meant.
Ruth remained silent as we crossed the bridge over the Tank Stream (an unpleasant-smelling brackish creek) and began the climb to Government House. Mr. Bushell’s man now pointed to the Chaplain’s house—a pretty cottage with a verandah and two well-grown orange trees standing on either side of the path.
“The Chaplain?” Ruth gave my arm a little punch. “Would that be the one what’s going to marry you?”
I was relieved that her sulks seemed to be over, but as we approached the guardhouse of Government House she said: “I don’t see why there has to be kings and queens and governors—people holding court and lording it over you. I reckon it’s silly.”
I said: “If the Governor receives us, it will be only for a very few minutes—it will be a purely formal visit.”
In the event, it was anything but formal, and it was Mrs. Macquarie who received us, not the Governor. The visit was to have important consequences nonetheless, although it did not begin well. Mrs. Macquarie struck me as very stiff and Scottish—a tall, white-skinned woman with pale-blue eyes—and at first Ruth’s little rusticities met with a chilly response. But everything changed when the child was brought in.
I have somewhere read or heard it said that on every formal visit, a child ought to be of the party by way of providing conversation, and little Lachlan Macquarie answered the purpose wonderfully. He was at the time some eight or nine months old, small for his age but precocious, and while he would have nothing whatsoever to do with me—apart from some solemn, unfriendly looks—he took an instant liking to Ruth, thus furnishing us all with plenty to talk about.
His mother clearly doted on him, and after the nurserymaid placed him in her arms, her reserve disappeared. Ruth then took him on her knee to sing “Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross,” varying the words to suit the occasion:
To buy little Lachlan a galloping horse;
It trots behind and it ambles before,
And Lachlan shall ride till his bottom is sore.
I was horrified, but Mrs. Macquarie, I saw, was highly amused: “I have never heard that version, Miss Bushell!” And then perhaps seeking to include me in all the fun: “Do you ride, Miss Bennet?”
“Alas, no. I tried to learn when I was twelve but could not conquer my fear of horses.”
She nodded. “It has a lot to do with balance—balance and letting the horse know who’s in charge.”
“You are a horsewoman yourself, ma’am?” (I later learned that Elizabeth Macquarie was capable of spending six hours in the saddle.)
She nodded again. “Yes, I enjoy riding.”
Her attention then returned to her son, but as we were leaving (with Lachlan still holding fast to Ruth) she turned to me and asked if I wished to make another attempt to learn: “If so, I could speak to our coachman. I’m sure he could find a quiet, steady mount for you. And you might go out with one of the grooms. Clayton is a very sensible lad.”
She cut short my thanks. “I shall arrange it then, shall I?”
My riding lessons commenced the very next day, and very different was the experience from my first nervous attempts at Netherfield. I was given the quietest of horses to ride—a little bay gelding named Bob—and the art of balance I had acquired on board ship (a kind of bandy-legged equipoise) now served me wonderfully. After only my third lesson, I wrote to Jane:
Give me joy: I have just ridden in the Governor’s Domain without a leading rein, and tomorrow we are to complete the circuit, a distance of some two miles. I have quite made up my mind to become as proficient a horsewoman as yourself—Peter having promised to ride with me every day at Parramatta.
7.
Peter and I were finally married on the 26th of November, two years after my elder sisters’ weddings and four years after Mrs. Knowles’s unfortunate second venture. I wore the white silk gown given to me by Elizabeth and Jane and the veil of Honiton lace, and St. Phillip’s Church, so unprepossessing on the outside, looked surprisingly beautiful on the inside, with its clear-paned, arched windows letting in the late-afternoon sunshine. (I like to think of it as somehow emblematic of our marriage.)
Our wedding night had a bad beginning, however, for just as the last guests were leaving the Jolly Poacher and Peter went to see about the horses for our journey to Parramatta, a handsome, overdressed woman hailed me from the verandah. She was sitting at one of the trestle tables under the grape-vine and was clearly the worse for drink, introducing herself as Mrs. Tasker and inviting me in a strongly accented Scots voice to sit with her a “wee while”: “You’ll be missing your mother, I’m thinking. You’ll be wanting someone to tell you what’s what on your wedding night.”
Seeing me hesitate, she reached up and seized my hand. “Sit down now. It won’t take a minute.”
It took rather more than a minute, however, and her advice consisted of turning a blind eye to my new husband’s philandering. (“He’s a chip off the old block and you’d be wise when it happens to look the other way.”) She then informed me that she had been Mr. Bushell’s mistress, that they had lived together openly as man and wife, but that when Governor Macquarie had issued a proclamation against couples living in sin, Bushell had deemed it prudent that they part. “He just wanted to get into the Governor’s good books—he’s such an old hypocrite. But we had a high old time while it lasted so I’m not complaining.”
The whole time she was talking she kept blotting her face with a fine cambric handkerchief, embroidered with what I first thought were strawberries but which she explained were a species of native flower called waratahs. Mr. Bushell had given it to her as a parting gift: “Practically the only present he ever gave me, he’s such an old miser.” She hiccoughed and laughed. “Perhaps you’ll have better luck with the son.”
So shocked was I by Mrs. Tasker’s revelation that as soon as Peter and I were alone together on the road to Parramatta I blurted it all out and we had the first quarrel of our married life. Peter defended his father, saying that Mrs. Tasker had received an extremely generous settlement: “You don’t want to believe everything you hear, love.”
I could not see Peter’s face clearly in the growing dark but I fancied I could hear amusement in his voice. I said: “So you knew about her, did you?”
“Course I knew.” He was obliged to check the horses, for a small animal had run out from the surrounding scrub onto the road. When he spoke again he sounded more serious: “Mary, you must remember—this place—it’s hard for men having to live apart from their wives—a wife on the other side of the world—you have to make allowances.”
“I don’t have to wink at adultery. Your father has broken the Seventh Commandment.”
I felt him withdraw from me then and for a time neither of us spoke. I no longer held his arm. I stared ahead at the horses and breathed to calm myself. This then was the explanation for Mr. and Mrs. Bushell’s quarrel: Mr. Bushell must have c
onfessed his adultery to his wife and she had been unable to forgive him. I kept thinking, “But this is my wedding night. Why should I have to worry about Mr. and Mrs. Bushell on my wedding night?” I looked at Peter and thought: “Why does he not tell me he loves me?” And increasingly the darkening strangeness of the place—the smell of the bush, the sound of the insects people called cicadas—everything was making me feel more alienated.
I tried then to conciliate. I described to him Mrs. Tasker’s handkerchief: “It made me think of Othello—of the handkerchief in Othello.”
“What handkerchief?”
The realization that he did not know what I was talking about shocked me anew. I felt of a sudden the most awful loneliness. I tried to keep calm. I tried to say over in my head the 121st psalm: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.” In suiting the action to the words, however, I perceived that the stars were all wrong.
That was my undoing. I had looked up unthinkingly, anticipating the familiar and, finding it gone, began to cry like a baby. Whereupon Peter stopped the gig and took me in his arms, kissing me so that my face was soon sore both from kissing and crying.
After that, there was no more arguing, and in the early hours of the morning, while the sky was still dark and wearing only our nightclothes, we went out into the field at the front of the house to look at the stars. Peter pointed out Orion (“It’s still there, sweetheart, it’s just upside-down.”) and, lower on the horizon, the constellation that cannot be seen in the northern sky—the Southern Cross.
8.
The first of the very few letters I received from my father came when Peter and I had been married only a week. I well remember the opening sentence: “By the time you read this you will be married and I trust not too disillusioned with your partner in life.”
Beyond that, I recall only the news that Elizabeth was now expecting a child and that Kitty was betrothed to a clergyman, one Dr. Slipper, a widower who lived near Pemberley and who was (according to my father) “a hearty old fellow with a costive head.”
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice Page 33
