By Eastern windows

by Gretta Curran Browne

  But then, none of them yet knew of his experiences in China, or of the nightmare that began that summer dawn of the 15th July in Macao. And with the dawn of each new day since then, his life without Jane became harder to deal with, impossibly hard since his return to India.

  China had been alien and hostile, but India was now a reflecting mirror for every memory of her. Wherever he looked, he saw only her absence. The long empty years of his future stretched before him like an arid and lonely wilderness.

  To John Forbes, with whom he lived, it was the most dreadful study of grief after bereavement he had ever witnessed, and helplessly so, because Lachlan would not even allow himself to be consoled. He stood apart, walked alone, convinced there was no consolation, not for him. Without Jane he was emotionally dead, spiritually dead, and only the dead can comfort the dead.

  He spent the days in solitude of lonely walks, or in the horse rides he took into the country. Often he rode out to their first home, their bridal home, and in his mind he saw her again in full health and youth, saw her face, her smiling eyes, heard her questioning and laughing voice. And in these times she became the light that banished the darkness in his life.

  But it came only in flashes, and when his mind returned from that distant place where no one could reach him, to the desolate world in which he now lived, his memories only made his grief worse.

  He tried to reason with himself. He had loved a girl and he had lost her. As simple as that. But there was a real and constant physical pain in the region of his heart that nothing could alleviate. In the rare times he slept his sleep was troubled, full of images and voices from the past.

  It was easier not to sleep at all, nor to eat. He wanted nothing, asked for nothing, and longed to feel nothing. All he wanted was Jane back in the world and back in his life, but he knew that was as impossible as trying to tie a ribbon around the sun.

  John Forbes became so worried he sought the private advice of Dr Kerr, who declared it all to be ‘A tragedy,’ and then demanded, ‘Describe to me the symptoms of Major Macquarie’s state of mind.’

  Upon hearing the symptoms Dr Kerr shook his head and again declared it all to be ‘A tragedy,’ then insisted he visit the patient immediately.

  ‘No, no!’ John said swiftly. `He stays in my house because we are friends. He trusts me implicitly. I would hate him to know that I have been discussing him behind his back.’

  ‘My dear Forbes, I get the impression he would not care if you stuck a knife in his back. The man needs the help of a doctor!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said John with impatience, ‘but he won't have one! So I thought, perhaps, some form of medicine that could be slipped in his tea?’

  ‘You do realise that Macquarie is quite ill?'

  John nodded sadly.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Dr Kerr said emphatically. ‘I suspected it at the funeral. And now my diagnosis has been confirmed by a letter I received only last evening from Dr Duncan in Macao. Shocking. Quite shocking. Enough to make any man crack. Did you know that he had to smuggle his wife's coffin onto a junk in the dead of night and sail God knows how far up the Canton River in order to board a ship back to Bombay?’

  ‘No, I did not know that.’

  ‘And that was four months after his wife had died. Four months! And during all that time he refused to bury her, refused to return to India without her, refused to lay her down in unconsecrated ground. No, some kind of madness took possession of Macquarie in Macao, a madness that kept him going for those four months and the voyage back. But now that his purpose is accomplished, his life has collapsed. Has he spoken to you much about his sojourn in China?’

  ‘He never speaks about China at all.’

  ‘The problem is,’ Dr Kerr looked bleak, ‘there is so little a doctor can do in cases like this. This is something he must come through on his own. But as for medicinal healing, the only medicine we have for pain of any kind, is opium.’

  ‘Well he won't take that!’ John exclaimed. ‘He's seen the terrible effects it's had on too many other soldiers. He has often said he would prefer to shoot himself and be done with it than degenerate into eventual death from opium.’

  Dr Kerr assumed a tolerant expression, and said in the professional tones of a doctor: ‘In the treatment of illness, in the deadening of pain, if used carefully, in measured and restricted doses, opium is the greatest narcotic discovery the world of medicine has known for centuries. It is the money-baggers that have abused it and earned it such a vile reputation! Any drug, taken habitually and in unrestricted dosage, becomes addictive and destructive.’

  ‘He won't have it,’ John said stubbornly. ‘He won't have opium under any circumstances. And knowing how he feels about it, I could not, in all conscience, give it to him secretly in his drinks.’

  ‘But he needs sleep, you say? And sleep is a great healer. How about laudanum? Would your conscience allow you to slip a few drops of laudanum in his drink at night in order to help him sleep?’

  ‘Why, yes … I had quite forgotten about laudanum. Nearly everyone I know has used that at some time or another in sickness.’ John brightened. ‘If it will help him to sleep I'd have no qualms about slipping him a few drops of laudanum.’

  ‘Oh, good! So we can help our poor friend after all!’ Dr Kerr exclaimed with relief, and then moved to his medicine cabinet, lifted down bottles and sighed wearily to himself as he made up a measure of laudanum, which was mainly opium prepared for use as a sedative.

  Dr Kerr came back to John Forbes carrying two bottles. ‘I am also giving you a tonic mixture to encourage his appetite. Slip it in his drink in the morning. I suggest very strong tea. This small bottle is the laudanum. Five drops at night. I suggest a glass of the richest wine or even a small glass of brandy. No more than four or five nights, mind you. Then every second night until the bottle is empty. The supply I have given you is a restricted dose.’

  *

  Unbeknown to Lachlan, he began to take Dr Kerr’s medicine every morning. He even unwittingly took the laudanum in a glass of wine each night and began to sleep long and deeply. And as the days passed, his physical recovery began.

  He was even beginning to smile naturally, and converse with friends again. Finally he decided he was well enough to face the world. He insisted he had imposed too long on John’s hospitality and wanted to leave.

  John would not allow him to leave. ‘Not yet, not until we have sorted out what you are going to do with your life now and in the future.’

  ‘The man is a soldier!’ General Balfour said to John Forbes. ‘The sooner he gets back into uniform and back to soldiering, the sooner he will be fit again. Macquarie loves the Army. Always has done. Meat and drink to the man.’

  Balfour looked down at a paper on his desk. ‘Now then, after eight years of continuous service in India, he was given a years leave. There is still a month or so of that left, but I think we should get him back to work as soon as possible. I'll give him just a couple more days, then I'll have him recalled.’

  On the day Lachlan received the order to return to his duties at Headquarters, he also received a visit from a man named Mr Phineas Hall, a lawyer.

  ‘Major Macquarie?’ said Mr Hall as he held out his hand. ‘I was most distressed to hear of your wife's death. A most charming girl.

  ‘You knew her?’ Lachlan looked at John Forbes then stared again at the lawyer. ‘You met Jane? When?’

  ‘Oh, not long after you were married, when she came to me to draw up her Will. It seems there was some dispute about money between you and her family.’

  ‘She made a Will?’ Again Lachlan looked at John Forbes, but John clearly was as surprised as Lachlan.

  Mr Hall accepted the chair offered and sat down behind John Forbes's desk, then laid a leather folder on top from which he drew out a sheaf of documents. ‘The Will is quite short,’ he said, ‘so I shall take up as little of your time as possible.’ He put on his spectacles, lifted a document, and began to read:

&nbs
p; ‘I, Jane Jarvis Macquarie, being in sound health of mind and body...’

  When he had finished reading, Mr Hall looked up and peered over his spectacles at Lachlan who had gone white around the lips. ‘It is a very short Will,’ Mr Hall said. ‘Quite the shortest I have ever drawn.’

  It was indeed a short Will, in which Jane had bequeathed to Lachlan Macquarie, her lawful husband, and his heirs for ever, the sum of her fortune held in English funds and in Antigua, should she predecease him.

  Mr Hall turned a page and looked at Lachlan.

  Lachlan looked back at him with tear-dimmed eyes. The money! He had forgotten all about Jane's money. And what damned bloody use was it now? The one person who should have benefited from Jane's money, was Jane.

  ‘There is a codicil,’ said Mr Hall, ‘in which she requests that should she predecease her husband, she trusts him to expend every effort and as much money as is necessary to buy the bond and freedom of her Negro Mammy, Dinah, in Antigua. She also expresses a wish that five other named slaves in Antigua be bought their freedom.’

  Mr Hall looked up. ‘The codicil, however, is signed but not witnessed, and therefore not legal. So you are not bound to adhere to it. Other than that...’ Mr Hall smiled, ‘you are now quite a wealthy man.’

  ‘Her brother in Antigua ... her trustees...’

  ‘Have all been dealt with,’ Mr Hall assured him. ‘I made very sure of that before coming to see you. Mr Thomas Jarvis relinquished charge of his sister's money, which became hers by legal right on her twenty-first birthday. Now the entire sum, and all the interest accruing therefrom, is safely lodged in your name at the bank of Messrs Francis and Gosling in London, and you may draw the entire sum if you wish, whenever you wish, without the prior consent of any second party.’

  Mr Hall reached for his leather folder. ‘In accordance with your late wife's wishes, and by legal right, her money is now yours.’

  *

  Money was also the subject of a discussion in a house far away in a small and rainy country miles across the sea.

  James Morley, who was still in London, was sitting by the fire in the drawing room of his house at 27 Wimpole Street, angrily shaking out the pages of his newspaper and complaining biliously. ‘Now we'll see if I was right or wrong! Now we will see all the spending! Damn me if Macquarie don't go through the lot in a year – just like that blackguard Woodward!’

  ‘Oh, really, James!’ Maria said wearily, almost at the end of her patience as she clutched a copy of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, endeavouring to keep a firm grip on the book and herself. ‘Lachlan Macquarie is not in the least like Woodward. Not in the least!’

  ‘You wouldn't think so, would you? Because he gulled you with his charm just as he did your poor sister.’ Morley unstoppered a decanter of brandy at his side. ‘Well, Macquarie should be happy now. He's finally got what he married her for – her money.’

  Maria's temper finally snapped. ‘I'm just about sick of all this petty viciousness about Lachlan,’ she cried savagely. ‘If you just knew, James, if you just knew...’

  She stopped her mouth in time, for James knew nothing of the letter she had received from Lachlan, a very long letter that spoke of nothing else but Jane. And with the letter he had forwarded the assortment of lovely presents Jane had bought for her in Macao, the presents that James could not be told about, because they were bought with the money of Lachlan Macquarie, the nobody from nowhere whom James had grown comfortably accustomed to hating and maligning.

  Suddenly, a great weariness overcame Maria. Her heart still grieved for Jane and in Lachlan's letter she had found solace, and gratitude, because his letter had contained a detailed account of everything he believed Maria would want to know.

  She had immediately written back to him, a long letter full of tenderness and consolation, ending with a plea for him to maintain a regular correspondence with her. And Maria now knew, without a shadow of doubt, that Lachlan had truly loved Jane. And having to listen to James's constant sniping was becoming unbearable. She looked across at her stubborn and irascible husband.

  ‘Oh, James,’ she said, ‘if only you knew...’

  ‘I know this, my dear …’ There was a pause as brandy gurgled down James's throat. ‘Now Macquarie has finally got his hands on Jane's money, there will be no stopping him. He'll spend it faster than the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Truly, James, I sometimes think Jane was right about you. On occasions you can be a very stupid man!’

  James lowered his newspaper and gaped at her.

  ‘Has it never occurred to you,’ Maria asked, ‘that you might be terribly, terribly wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’ James's voice came out much too high. Never before had Maria dared to criticise or answer him rudely. Never before today. And now she was making a habit of it!

  ‘And what, may I ask, might I be terribly, terribly wrong about?’

  ‘About Lachlan Macquarie. Wrong, James, about him and Jane's money.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ James was having none of that silly nonsense. ‘Oh, no! Whatever else I might or might not be wrong about, Madam, I am not wrong about Lachlan Macquarie!’

  In the pettishness of his anger, James had spilled his brandy. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped furiously at the stains on his waistcoat. ‘Now look what you've made me do!’ he accused. ‘If you hadn't been so bally awkward about your precious brother-in-law, I wouldn't have been reduced to shaking with anger and spilling my brandy!’ He threw the wet handkerchief onto the floor like a spoiled child, and then lifted the glass to his lips, where it paused.

  ‘Stupid, am I? Is that what Jane said? Well, we all know where she got that opinion from, don't we? If Lachlan Macquarie said red was green Jane would agree as if God had spoken. Don't interrupt! You seem to forget that I have friends on the board of the banking house of Messrs Francis and Gosling. And I'll wager that before six months is out, Messrs Francis and Gosling will be receiving drawings on that money that will leave them staggering!’

  SIXTEEN

  On Sunday evening John Forbes was sitting in the garden reading a book of Persian poetry, occasionally looking up to gaze at the sunset, when Lachlan appeared and sat down on the bench beside him, his face thoughtful.

  `I ‘ve been thinking,’ he said quietly.

  John smiled. ‘You’ve been doing little else since the day the lawyer left.’

  ‘About Jane’s money, yes,’

  ‘It is your money now. So what are you going to do with it? Leave it in London with Francis and Gosling? Or have it transferred over here?’

  ‘Into your bank?’

  ‘Of course into our bank.’

  ‘Well I do have a lot of my own money deposited in your bank already, but I’m going to need a lot more than that now, and as soon as possible. If we were to make arrangements immediately for part of the money in London to be sent over to your bank, could you advance me as much as I may need now, even before the London money arrives? At your standard rate of interest, of course.’

  ‘My goodness …’ John looked astonished, `more than the amount already deposited with us? What on earth do you intend to spend it on?’

  ‘Quite a few things, but I wish to get it all done quickly, before I return to active service.’

  ‘If time is short,’ John closed his book, ‘we can see to the documentation for the transfer tonight if you wish.’

  ‘And I will need quite a few bank drafts.’

  ‘Very well.’ John stood to turn indoors. ‘We shall work on them together. Have you drawn up a list?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I shall draw up the bank drafts tonight and have them authorised tomorrow.’

  *

  The first gift of money was sent to Mammy Dinah in Antigua, together with the beautiful silk shawl Jane had chosen for her in Macao. In the same post he also sent a letter to Thomas Jarvis, requesting to buy Dinah's freedom, for which he was prepared to pay any price.

  The second bank
draft went to Jane’s impoverished sister in England, Rachel Woodward, together with a trust deed that would see Rachel generously provided for over a period of ten years.

  Individual amounts of money were also sent to various cousins on the island of Mull, for the purpose of educating their daughters as well as their sons. An annual allowance was settled on his mother and brother Donald for life. The lease and rent of the farm at Oskamull would remain his responsibility. A one-off payment was sent to his Uncle Murdoch, but it was his mother and Donald that concerned Lachlan the most.

  In the accompanying letter he urged Murdoch to command his mother to abstain from all laborious work and to attend more to her own ease and comfort. The money he had settled on her would relieve her of all financial worries, so she should now consider employing at least one servant to help her in the house, and at least one male servant to help Donald with any heavy work on the farm.

  When the letter to Murdoch was finished, he sat for a long moment staring in front of him with a thoughtful frown. His concern about his own mother had caused him to remember something Jane had once said to him in a worried voice about Mammy Dinah. ‘She’s becoming a little infirm now, her knees are very stiff, yet she has to work from morning till night.’

  He abruptly lifted the pen and began writing another letter to Thomas Jarvis, reminding him of Dinah’s advancing age, and urging him, ‘in all humanity and compassion,’ to grant Dinah her freedom, ‘to allow the poor woman to spend her final years in some degree of ease and retirement.’

  *

  To Lachlan’s surprise, and in a shorter time than he had expected, he received a reply from the lawyers of Thomas Jarvis in Antigua.

  Dinah’s freedom, and that of the five other named slaves in Antigua, was formally and legally granted. Sums of money were then sent to the lawyers for all six, enough to allow them to buy their own homes and become financially independent, without the need to recourse to ‘unpaid slave labour’ with anyone on the island again.