The Gold Seekers (20 page)

“My master would give you employment,” Saleh suggested. “He has a large establishment in Sydney Town. I am in charge of his household when I do not accompany him to sea, but I am an old man, as you can see, Miss Mercy, not able to perform my duties as I did in the past. And …” He hesitated. “My master has no wife.”

Mercy stared back at him in startled bewilderment, trying to take in what he was implying. “Why,” she ventured, seizing on his last, oddly emphatic statement, “Saleh, why has Captain Van Buren never taken a wife?”

Saleh shrugged his bowed shoulders. “There are many reasons why he has not, Miss Mercy. His birth, his color … Sydney society is still divided. The gentlefolk, the officers, and the government officials mix more than they were accustomed to in the early days with those they see as their inferiors. But even now those of convict birth or convict descent bear a stigma, however rich and successful they may have become. And those of mixed birth, such as my master, they also bear a stigma, though it is never put into words. My master is a proud man. He asks for no favors. His Excellency the Governor receives him; he is welcome in all the best houses, but not as a husband for the daughter of one such family as I have described.”

“I see,” Mercy acknowledged uncertainly. The kind of society he had described was beyond her comprehension, and she started to say so, but Saleh ignored her hesitant interruption.

“Many years ago, when my master was only a little boy, his father, the Major Van Buren, would not permit him to claim Hs kinship. He was compelled to work as a servant, to wait on his father and his father’s wife, and both treated him cruelly.” Saleh sighed, his face clouding over, as if the memory were still painful to him, for all the lapse of years. “That is remembered by many of the influential inhabitants of Sydney even today, although my master is one of the wealthiest shipowners in the whole of New South Wales. He is respected and envied by many, yet he is not—how can I put it?—he is not fully accepted. Without a wife at his side, he is lonely, Miss Mercy. He should wed and beget sons to inherit what he has built up. I am often telling him so, but he does not listen to my words.”

Mercy said nothing. Saleh’s words to her held an underlying meaning, she was now certain, and it was not difficult to guess what that meaning was.

“Was there never any woman whom your master wanted to wed?” she asked, and saw the old man’s lined face relax in a smile of unexpected warmth.

“A long time ago,” he asserted. “When my master was still just a little boy, a young woman convict was assigned to the service of his father’s wife, Mevrouw Van Buren. My master loved her, and for all his tender years, he promised that he would take her to wife when he was old enough. He aided her escape from our household, but on their way, the two of them fell in with a man of God by the name of Nathan Cox— the Reverend Nathan Cox. Alice wedded him, and together they opened a school in the township of Windsor. My master became one of their pupils, and he remained with them until he was eighteen.” Saleh’s smile widened. “He has held the image of that good young woman in his heart throughout the rest of his life, but he has never found any woman to

equal Alice Cox. Until—” He leaned forward to grasp Mercy’s two hands in his. “Until you boarded this ship.”

Alarmed by his sudden intensity, Mercy drew back, the color rushing anew to her cheeks, his meaning now abundantly clear. Claus had never hinted, never spoken a word concerning his feelings, yet Luke had insisted that the Dolphin’s master was—how had he expressed it?—showing a strong interest in her.

Saleh said softly, “You resemble Alice Cox so closely that, when we first saw you, my master and I might have been in the presence of her spirit! We both remarked on it.” His brown fingers tightened about hers. “Do not fear, Miss Mercy—you have no cause to fear. My master is a good man, an exceptionally good man. Older than you are, it is true, but if he should ask you to wed him, you would be foolish to refuse.”

With that he left her, and Mercy spent an almost sleepless night, a prey to conflicting emotions and strange, alarming dreams, in which Jasper Morgan figured prominently.

Next day, Luke sought her out on deck, and as she had anticipated, he was in a state of eager optimism.

“I’ve been talking to Rob and Simon Yates,” he told her. “For half the night, after I came off watch. If their information is true—and they got it from the Sydney newspapers— the gold rush has begun in New South Wales. Morgan will be there, Mercy, I swear he will! I’m going to team up with the Yates boys, and we’ll head for Bathurst and the goldfields as soon as we land. I’ll find Morgan wherever he is, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“Have you told the Yates boys of your intentions?” Mercy asked, conscious of a sudden coldness about her heart when Luke shook his head. He talked excitedly about the plans he had made with the two young men from New Zealand, but it was not until she asked him what was to become of her when they reached Sydney that his excitement abated. It was evident that he had given the question no previous thought, and he returned, a trifle sheepishly, that he supposed Captain Van Buren would look after her.

“I’ll speak to him about it,” he offered, but biting back the temptation to reproach him, Mercy in turn shook her head.

“There will be no need, Luke. I can fend for myself.”

She walked away from him, her head held high That evening, with the coast of New South Wales already in sight as a distant blur on the horizon, Claus Van Buren asked her to become his wife. Mercy accepted his diffident proposal and for the first time, amid the shadows of the moonlit deck he took her into his arms and kissed her with yearning tenderness.

“I will love and care for you for as long as I live,” he promised softly. “You shall want for nothing, dearest Mercy I give you my word.”

Momentarily, Mercy saw his face through a mist of tears but then she blinked them back and faced him, smiling.

“I will be a good wife to you,” she whispered, and lifted her face to his.

Seated at the far end of the long, polished dining table, Red Broome looked about him at the family from whose midst he had been absent for almost fifteen years … indeed, he reflected unhappily, for all his adult life.

Ever since his father had come out in the pilot boat, when the Galah had brought to off the Port Jackson Heads, they had been at pains, all of them, not to reproach him or cause him to feel that he was a stranger.

His sister, Jenny—grown into a truly lovely, warmhearted young woman—had been particularly welcoming, seeking to bridge the gulf of years and to spare him their father’s censure, and he was grateful to her. But Johnny—the brother with whom, during their childhood, he had been on such close terms of friendship and understanding—Johnny, to his chagrin, held somewhat aloof. On the surface he was polite, but beneath it Red sensed a resentment that could not be put into words.

And their father … Red felt his throat tighten as he met Justin Broome’s searching blue gaze. They had not talked of his mother’s death save for the bare details, which Justin had supplied in a flat, expressionless voice.

“Your letter from Sheerness reached her the evening before she died,” he had stated, “and gave her immense pleasure. It meant so much to her to know that you were coming back, Red. I’m only desperately sorry that she did not live long enough to see you again.”

And so, Red thought, was he—bitterly sorry. But he had not known; none of them had written to tell him how ill his mother was, and she, poor, sweet soul, no doubt thinking to spare him anxiety, had made no mention of her illness in any of the letters he had received from her before leaving England.

Over luncheon they had talked of the influx of gold seekers now flooding the country and of the ill effects of Edward Hargraves’s discovery, which was beginning to leave the sheep farms denuded of labor and even Sydney itself hard put to it to retain the services of those employed in shops and stores and in the shipyards. It was a subject on which, as a newspaperman, Johnny was well informed and concerning which both he and their father waxed indignant.

Red, lacking knowledge, had been content to listen to their views—expressed, in Johnny’s case, very strongly—but he had seen the mass of idle shipping in the harbor for himself when he had brought the Galah in, and had been astounded at the number of different national flags he had been able to identify. Men were coming, it seemed, from all over the world—a great many of them from America—and word had spread that an even richer field than those near Bathurst and Goulburn had been newly discovered in Victoria, between Melbourne and Port Phillip.

“They’ll be off to Port Phillip as soon as they can find vessels to carry them there,” Johnny asserted. “They’re a fickle bunch, most of them—especially the ones who’ve been in California. Some, of course—those who got in early— have made fortunes in the Macquarie and Turon valleys, but the men that haven’t will be off, and Melbourne Town will be in the state we are here, with half the population quitting their employment for the diggings.”

“Cannot the government do anything?” Red inquired when his brother finally lapsed into a glum silence. “What about the new immigrants, those who come out as settlers and agricultural workers on assisted passages? There was talk of them in London, and the whole point of sending them out here under indentures was to provide skilled labor for the farms and sheep stations.”

“They are free men, Red,” his father answered with a rueful shrug, “not convicts, who can be assigned as laborers. Very few, when they reach here and learn that there is gold to be found, are willing to sign on as agricultural laborers— even when they are offered high wages and homes for their

families. A good many of the big landowners are having to slaughter their sheep and cattle for lack of men to tend them. If they contrive to shear their sheep, they cannot transport the wool to market—the ox wagons are being used to carry supplies to the diggings. And you cannot buy a horse in Sydney for love or money.”

“Some of the landowners are making money,” Johnny put in, a hint of disapproval in his voice. “In fact, they’re coming it—among them William Charles Wentworth, whose name will not be unknown to you. One of the major diggings is situated on his land in Frederick’s Valley, on the road from Orange to Bathurst. In an area of less than a mile along the creek, there were upward of six hundred men digging and panning when I was there a couple of weeks ago. They were living in conditions of considerable discomfort in bark gunyas and canvas tents, and most of them were taking two or three pounds’ worth—pounds sterling, that is—of gold a day, they told me. One lucky fellow reckoned that he had procured three hundred pounds’ worth of nuggets, unearthed from the clay. The largest weighed nearly four pounds troy. I saw it weighed, and he wasn’t exaggerating, I promise you. Some of them weren’t so fortunate, but—they simply move on, or if they can’t afford the prospecting licenses, which cost thirty shillings a month, they hire themselves out to work for those who’ve struck it rich.”

“Good heavens!” Red exclaimed. “Small wonder labor is at a premium on the sheep farms. And what of Uncle Rick, Father? Has he found gold on his land? It’s in the Macquarie Valley, isn’t it?”

“It is,” his father confirmed. “And I’m sure he has. But I haven’t heard from him recently, Red.”

“Weren’t you in partnership with him once?” Red questioned, as memory stirred. “The land at—what is it called?— Pengallon, was it not? It was yours originally, surely?”

“The original grant was mine, but I couldn’t afford to stock it,“Justin confessed. “And then I let Rick buy me out. I was at sea; I’d no time to farm.”

“Dad is not an acquisitive man, Red,” Johnny asserted, and now, Red noticed, there was a distinct edge to his voice, although his expression, as he looked across the table at their father, was indulgent, even oddly proud. “He doesn’t hanker for wealth or honors or even a just reward for his achievements, do you, sir? But you’re ambitious, aren’t you, brother—ambitious enough to make up for it?”

Red turned to him in hurt surprise, but before he could reply, his sister Jenny rose purposefully to her feet.

“I thought we would take coffee in the drawing room,” she announced, slipping her arm into that of her elder brother. “And I confess I’ve heard enough of the gold rush; it is all anyone seems to talk of these days. I want to hear Red’s news, news of England and—oh, Red, what of Timothy, our cousin Timothy? You did not bring him with you, but he’s one of your officers, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Red agreed. “My first lieutenant. He’s visiting the Dawsons. He—”

“And Francis De Lancey?” Jenny persisted.

Red smothered a sigh. Francis had been rebellious and intractable ever since the Galah had sailed from Fremantle. He had tried, heaven knew how hard he had tried, to bring the boy to his senses, but he had failed dismally. Francis had gone about his duties with sullen indifference, and the day before the ship made port, he had sought an interview to announce that he intended to quit the service at the earliest possible opportunity. He ought, by rights, to have faced trial by court-martial, which would almost certainly have resulted in his being cashiered, but for his family’s sake Red had decided to deal leniently with him and, in the hope that his father, Judge De Lancey, might exert some influence over him, had given him leave to visit his family.

“I’m sorry to say that Francis wants to end his naval career,” he answered guardedly. “And since I could not prevail on him to change his mind, I told him to go to Newcastle and talk to his father. I—”

“But Judge De Lancey is here,“Jenny interrupted. “And Aunt Rachel. They’ve given up their property at Broad-meadows and are living in the house they used to have, behind the judge’s chambers in Macquarie Street. They call it retirement, but they are both very active—Aunt Rachel particularly.” She glanced at her father, smiling, and he echoed her smile.

“Active is putting it mildly in your aunt Rachel’s case,” Justin said. “She breeds bloodstock, Red, and has a fine racing stable outside Parramatta. And His Honor Uncle George is on the Legislative Council still, and he’s a prominent member of Mr. Wentworth’s Pastoral Association, as well as the Committee for Constitutional Reform.”