An Unconventional Heiress Page 18

  The ladies retired to the drawing room while the gentlemen lingered over their port and cigars. Sarah endured the idle conversation of the women present with even less interest than usual, and sat up eagerly when the men finally arrived—but Alan was not with them.

  The glass doors on to the terrace had been opened and many of the company promenaded outside. Sarah took advantage of the general dispersal to approach Tom, who was staring at a singularly inaccurate oil of several kangaroos that was prominently displayed over the fireplace.

  After a little chit-chat she said, apparently carelessly, ‘I understood that Dr Kerr was to have been present this evening, but I must have been mistaken.’

  ‘No mistake, Miss Sarah. He sent his last-minute apologies to the Governor.’

  ‘Called out again, I suppose.’

  ‘Can’t say, no explanation offered.’

  Good manners demanded that she said no more, even though she gained the impression that Tom was a little troubled, too, by Alan’s sudden crying-off. She must at all costs avoid the appearance of desperation or disappointment. John, seeing that Sarah was talking to that rogue Dilhorne, made haste to join them. It was no use getting rid of Kerr—he, at least, had read Alan’s absence correctly—if, instead, Sarah turned to Dilhorne, who was an even worse choice for her than Alan Kerr was.

  ‘Happy to see you, Dilhorne,’ he said, ignoring Tom’s sceptical expression when he came out with this totally untrue statement. ‘I hear that you are increasing your investments in the whaling trade.’

  ‘Aye,’ returned Tom, who was always at his most uncouth when talking to John Langley. ‘Happen that some of the Yankees are running short of funds and need new agents in Sydney as well.’ Typically he made no attempt to explain or enlarge. ‘Seeing that I’ve to be up early to speak to their representative, I’d better leave now.’

  This remarkable statement, seeing that it was not yet seven of the clock, almost provoked Sarah to mirth, and John’s eyebrows rose alarmingly at the sight of Tom ambling across the room in order to take his leave of the Governor. He thought to take advantage of the shining hour by stressing Tom’s total unsuitability for civilised intercourse by remarking, ‘Off to see that widow of his, I suppose.’

  Sarah was sweetness itself. ‘You mean Mrs Mahoney?’ she trilled.

  John was surprised, ‘You know of her, Sarah? Really, you shock me yet again.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such an old woman, John. Everyone knows of Tom’s Mrs Mahoney. Even Lucy Middleton knows. Sydney’s a goldfish bowl. There are no secrets here, though gentlemen don’t like their ladies to know of their bits of muslin and their excursions to Madame Phoebe’s house.’

  Disappointment made Sarah indiscreet. She usually took a proper, ladylike tone with John and tried to avoided revealing to him that her knowledge of the seamy side of the world was a great deal deeper than he thought it was.

  ‘All I can say, my dear, is the sooner that we leave these latitudes, the better. They obviously have a bad effect on gentlewomen.’

  Sarah shrugged impatiently. After her disappointing evening it was the outside of enough to be lectured by John. She was almost tempted to let him know how much of his life was in the public domain and how little right it gave him to admonish her about her own language.

  Wisdom prevailed. She turned away. ‘If you are finished here, John, I am ready to go home.’

  ‘Then I will instruct Carter to drive you there. O’Connell, some of the officers and myself intend to go on to the Mess and make a night of it.’

  It took her all her strength of will not to make some acid comment on the nature of the night of it which he hoped to spend. What began in the Mess would most likely end at Madame Phoebe’s. She made her adieux to the Governor, and waited, a disappointed woman, for Carter to come and drive her home.

  Sarah did not enquire at what time John returned there. He did not come down for breakfast in the morning. She and Lucy had arranged to go shopping for further trifles needed for Lucy’s wedding, which loomed nearer and nearer. They walked down George Street laughing and talking together.

  ‘Look, Sarah,’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘Doctor Kerr is coming towards us on his big grey.’

  Sarah’s heart gave a great leap. He would stop, he would get down and talk to them, and all would be well again: last night’s absence would be explained. She let down her parasol and composed a welcoming sentence in her mind.

  Alan, however, did not bring his horse to a halt. He swept off the large felt hat that he was wearing, and his words to them both were as cold and formal as he could make them. ‘Miss Middleton, Miss Langley, your servant, ladies,’ and in a moment he had ridden by them and was turning the corner at the end of the street.

  The expression on his face had been as hard and unwelcoming as it could be. It was as though the last few months of their camaraderie had never been. Even at their most quarrelsome, in her early days in the colony, he had never been so indifferent. Even Lucy was struck by his manner.

  Sarah stood as though frozen. It could not be. She could not be treated thus for the second time. When Charles had betrayed her she had been hot-tempered, voluble. She felt now that she never wanted to speak again. She could have been sick on the spot.

  No, she must be wrong. They must be reading into his behaviour something which was not there. He could not have changed so much in three days. She would see him on the morrow when he came to examine the children and all would be well again. She was sure of it. How could she wait until then?

  Oh, to be a man and be able to go freely to him and ask him what was wrong—if there were anything wrong. A woman could only wait and wonder.

  Lucy was speaking to her and she must answer. She must not expose her feelings of betrayal before others. Her reply was mechanical and somehow she managed to sleepwalk her way successfully through the morning as though nothing had happened, even though her seething brain was full of suppositions, questions and conclusions.

  If Alan, too, has cried off, she thought, then there must be something wrong with me. John is right. Men cannot endure a woman who is other than their echo. I should have encouraged Stephen Parker in his suit. There would have been little real love for him on my part, but I could have managed him and I should not be feeling this dreadful hurt. Her mind went round and round like a mouse on the wheel in its cage. She remembered John being given one when he was a boy.

  She was so distrait when she reached home that she found herself unable to swallow her dinner, or take part in any of the occupations that filled her evening. John noticed her white face and wondered uneasily whether it was the result of Kerr’s non-arrival at the Governor’s dinner. He comforted himself with the thought that it was all for the best and in the bustle of going home she would soon forget her unsuitable lover.

  When she finally reached her bed Sarah could not sleep, and tried to comfort herself with the thought that she must not mope without reason. She was sure to see him tomorrow when all would be explained. Yes, that was it, by tomorrow all might yet be well.

  Sarah was not the only one who could not sleep. Seeing her in the street, looking at her most charming, had reinforced in Alan the sense of her goodness: the goodness that she had shown in looking after first Sukie and then Nellie, when most of the women in the colony would have shrugged their shoulders and left fate to settle the matter.

  It had almost broken his heart to treat her so coldly, but it was all for the best, her best, was it not? He must, at whatever the cost, avoid her, lest he forget himself. True love often demanded a sacrifice for the loved one’s benefit. The pain it brought him was a sharp one, but he had lived his life since his downfall by the strictest principles and it was these that were guiding him now. The one thing that surprised him was, given that he was so sure of Sarah’s goodness, why was it that she had never approached him herself—or mentioned that she had left a prospective husband back in England?

  For the first time he asked himself whether John Langley had been
telling the whole truth—but he dismissed it as the whim-whams of a sleepless man in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, the seed had been sown.

  It was only in the early hours that he fell asleep at last, and then it was to dream of loss and loneliness, telling himself when he awoke with the dawn that he must be strong and bear all that life threw at him without complaining.

  By the morning Sarah reproached herself for her panic-stricken folly of the previous day. She felt positively cheerful after nuncheon when she changed into an old dress, laid out her brown Holland apron and helped Sukie to pack some of the toys which she had bought to take with her to her little class.

  In her renewed state of happiness the afternoon flew by until the time for Alan’s arrival drew near. She was seated at her desk, watching the children copy down some words on their slates when she heard him arrive and rose to her feet to welcome him.

  The door opened and it was a moment before she realised that it not Alan who stood before her. It was Drew McMaster, the boy whom he had taken on as his assistant. He was carrying a little black bag, and there was a proud, but diffident, expression on his face.

  ‘Where is Dr Kerr?’ Sarah demanded before she could stop herself.

  Drew advanced into the room. ‘He’s sent me, Miss Langley. He says that I am now capable of looking after the little ones and it will free him for more duties in the hospital. I shall be coming in future.’

  Sarah was so shocked that she found it difficult to speak. ‘Did Dr Kerr send me any message?’ she finally managed.

  Drew looked puzzled. ‘Why, no, Miss Langley. Were you expecting one?’

  ‘No.’ She turned away to see Sukie’s surprised face, and turned back again to avoid it. Was I expecting a message? she thought. Of course I was. I expected one two nights ago—and more than a message, a proposal. Oh, Alan, what can have happened?

  She could no longer deceive herself. He wanted to have no more to do with her. He was removing her from his life. He had missed the Governor’s dinner. He had virtually cut Lucy and herself, and now he had sent Drew in his place without a word of explanation or regret.

  His message was, however, quite plain. Yet another man had cast off foolish Sarah Langley! It was all that she could do to prevent herself from crying out loud.

  She and Sukie helped Drew with the little ones. He was a good boy and deserved her undivided attention. She must not let her suffering prevent her from carrying out her duties. It was not Drew’s fault that he was the bearer of ill tidings. It was her fault. She spoiled everything that she touched. She felt that she could no longer blame Charles from turning away from her. It was her fate.

  The reclusive life that Alan had followed since he reached New South Wales, and which first Lachlan Macquarie and then Sarah had breached, claimed him again. He not only avoided John and Sarah, he avoided all human contact, other than with his patients, to whom his manner remained unfailingly gentle and considerate. Even Tom Dilhorne saw little of him.

  Others beside Sarah noticed the change in him with surprise and regret. Lachlan Macquarie stopped him one day on his rounds and asked him where he was hiding these days.

  Alan’s reply was courteous but firm. ‘The medical claims of the colony are taking up my time.’

  He would not be drawn further and, after a few monosyllabic exchanges, the Governor walked on, no wiser than before. He was the only person in Sydney—beside Tom Dilhorne—to notice that the Langleys were included in Alan Kerr’s ostracism of all social life. He was not the only person to regret that Alan’s interest in Sarah seemed to have come to an abrupt end, but, like the rest of Sydney, he had no clue as to why this had happened.

  The only person who could have told him—other than Alan himself—was John Langley, and John Langley was saying nothing. If he was a little concerned at his sister’s descent into quiet misery, he still comforted himself with the thought that when she returned home she would soon recover.

  Their demand for a passage had been noted, but it might be some time before they could leave. He had expected Sarah to protest, to ask for delay, but she was as apathetic about this as she was about everything else—other than Lucy’s wedding.

  ‘Sarah, I must ask you,’ said Lucy one day when they sat sewing in the Langleys’ parlour, ‘are you quite well? Frank was saying yesterday that you haven’t looked quite the thing for some weeks now. We both hope that you aren’t going to be ill when the wedding is due. You are my chief bridesmaid—I positively insist that you must be well.’

  ‘I fear I may be homesick,’ said Sarah untruthfully, ‘which is not helped by the heat.’ They were rapidly running through the Sydney spring and to the anniversary of their arrival.

  ‘Frank was saying that Dr Kerr has become a hermit again,’ said Lucy, apparently inconsequentially. ‘Have you any idea why he has abandoned society?’

  ‘None at all,’ replied Sarah, painfully. ‘One moment he came out of his shell and the next he was back in it again. I don’t think that I have seen him, other than in the distance, for weeks now.’

  ‘He doesn’t come to see the children in your little school, then,’ said Lucy, contemplating a delicate rosebud which she had just finished embroidering.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah, trying to sound as impersonal as possible and fearing that she was failing. ‘Drew McMaster comes now. Doctor Kerr has far too much to do at the hospital and the work there is beyond Drew.’ She tried not to betray how desolate she felt.

  Lucy decided not to pursue the matter further. Whilst unaware of how far Sarah and Alan had gone towards an understanding, she did realise that Sarah was missing him. She had asked Frank if he knew why Dr Kerr had withdrawn from society again, but Frank’s answer was that while he thought Alan Kerr was a good fellow, his senior officers were only too pleased that they did not constantly have to meet him in the Governor’s company.

  ‘Frank was telling me,’ Lucy went on, ‘that the Governor is a little worried about the Irish prisoners. He thinks that lately they have been showing signs of rebelling again. He is concerned that we might have a repetition of what happened in 1804. What is particularly troubling him is that this time the ordinary convicts are behaving as though they might support them. Frank says that Colonel O’Connell is pooh-poohing the whole thing. He believes that the Governor spends far too much time thinking about the convicts and the Emancipists and far too little time thinking about the rest of us.’

  ‘I know that Tom Dilhorne is worried about the Irish, and Tom doesn’t take fright easily,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Tom Dilhorne—you talk a lot to him these days. What does John think of your being so friendly with him? I’ve wanted to ask you before, but I didn’t like to.’

  ‘Now, Lucy, you know that you may ask me anything. John doesn’t like my friendship with Tom and that is one of the reason why he is so pleased that we are going home. I like Tom. I know that the military don’t approve of him, but he has been so kind to Nellie and Sukie. After Annie’s death, once he had bought Dempster’s Mill, he arranged for Dr Kerr to look after the children there. There are worse men in the world than Tom Dilhorne.’

  Lucy worked away at her rosebud. ‘There was a time when I thought that you might marry Stephen Parker. We could have been Regimental wives together, but I collect that you showed no inclination to be his wife, so that dream was soon over. I do understand why you discouraged him. He’s a nice enough fellow, full of charm, but he’s what Frank calls a lightweight?’

  Sarah agreed. ‘He’s like a man I knew back home. You’d never be safe with Stephen. Frank now, he’s much more dependable. I once thought that you and John might have made a match of it, but I don’t think that you are really suited.’

  ‘Oh, I could never have been Mrs John Langley of Prior’s Langley,’ said Lucy decidedly. ‘I haven’t the right manner for that at all. I envy you when you organise things for John. I need a man to look after me, You don’t.’

  And that is the trouble, thought Sarah sadly. I don�
��t need anyone to look after me. Perhaps that put Alan off—although from something he once said, I thought that he liked my independence. Oh, it’s useless repining. I must think of other things.

  Chapter Twelve

  Like Sarah, Alan Kerr was trying not to repine and, equally unsuccessfully, was trying to forget the past. To pass her in the street with only the coldest of acknowledgements had nearly broken his heart. He became a recluse once more because otherwise he would surely see her again and the sight of her would be like a blow to his already battered emotions.

  He avoided his old friend Tom Dilhorne because he knew that Tom would be sure to query his reversion to his behaviour in his early days in the colony and that would cause him even more pain, more than he might be able to bear.

  One afternoon he met Sukie in the street. He had tried to pass her by with a nod and an aloof smile, but she had stopped him by confronting him, arms akimbo.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing, Dr Kerr, to distress Miss Sarah so?’

  ‘Now, Miss Sukie,’ he had said, gently, ‘You must know that I cannot speak of this to you.’

  Her eyes on fire, she sniffed at him, ‘Oh, that’s the sort of thing the gentry say. I take no note of that. Why not?’

  ‘I can’t speak to you of Miss Langley behind her back. It would not be proper. She would not be pleased if she knew that we were gossiping about her.’

  Sukie began to whimper. ‘You’re fools, both of you, fools. Why don’t you ever speak to her now? You used to.’

  He could not say that he had been hurt too often. He still had bitter memories of the girl in Scotland who had thrown him off without a word and married another, and of his long-lost mother, father and sisters who had also disowned him. He seemed to be doomed by fate to suffer yet more hammer blows like those which had destroyed his past life.