This Golden Land (25 page)

     "You were wonderful!" Hannah enthused when she found Alice in the chaos backstage. Sam Glass was there, congratulating her, telling her that he was going to put her on last from now on. The acts that had followed Alice had not done as well as the ones before—either the performers' hearts were not in it, or the audience's mood had changed, or both. But everyone agreed that Alice had been the high point of the evening, and that was how Sam wanted his patrons to go home.

     "I owe you so much, Hannah," Alice said, as others crowded around to congratulate her. Alice couldn't put it into words, not yet, not until she was alone and could look back on this moment—but as she had sung out her soul and felt the emotions of the onlookers, had seen their faces, even their tears, Alice had been struck but a shuddering emotion that had overwhelmed her and even now left her at a loss for words. All she knew was that, while she had sung for these people, she had suddenly realized that this was what she was meant to do. Alice had found her calling in life.

     "Not at all," Hannah said, noticing that Alice no longer addressed her as "miss."

     She stood back to allow room for others to pay their respects to Alice, and when she was assured that her friend did not want for attention, Hannah withdrew from the crowd into a corner where she found an island of peace and privacy behind a tall potted palm.

     She reached into her purse and brought out her mother's book of poetry where she kept the photograph of Neal Scott tucked between Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" and "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats. Hannah looked into Neal's soulful eyes and conjured up his voice in her mind. Holding his photograph brought back the romantic weeks aboard the
Caprica.
The night of the storm when they had embraced and kissed in fear and desire.

     With a racing heart, she looked at an envelope she had tucked in with the photograph. It had arrived that afternoon at the Australia Hotel with the daily post, just as Hannah, Alice and Mrs. Guinness were getting ready to leave for town. Hannah had taken one look at the Perth postmark, and the familiar handwriting—she had written to Neal to inform him about her residential change from town to country, in the hopes that when the HMS
Borealis
docked, he would check for mail before setting sail for Adelaide—and she had wanted to open it at once. But this was Alice's night. Whatever Neal had to say, it could wait until after the performance. Hannah did not want to detract from Alice's special moment.

     But now it was time to read the letter. Since he was long overdue arriving in Adelaide, she assumed it contained an explanation why, and with a new date for when she could expect to see him.

     With trembling fingers, Hannah opened Neal's letter.

A
ND THERE WE WERE, ME AND
P
ADDY
, G
OD REST HIM, ALL
alone with this mob of Aborigines staring us down—"

     When Liza Guinness saw the handsome stranger enter the front door of her hotel, to step in from the warm April sunshine and come striding across the modest lobby toward her, she forgot what she was going to say next. Forgot, in fact, who she was talking to and why. She quickly checked her hair to make sure it was up in its chignon and no strays.

     Though a widow with two grown daughters, Liza Guinness still considered herself young and worked hard to keep herself so, with henna rinses, nightly facials, and an eye on her trim figure. And although she had run the Australia Hotel on this country road ten miles north of Adelaide for five years, she refused to "go bush," as so many women did after months in the rugged countryside so far from civilization—women who took to wearing divided skirts, simply because they rode horses in men's fashion instead of side-saddle, and who pinned their hair up any way that worked, and who wore men's bush hats and leather work gloves, and let the sun tan their faces.
Liza Guinness always wore presentable day gowns, with fashionable drop-shoulders and wide, ruffled sleeves, and a crinoline modest enough to let her maneuver behind the hotel's front desk.

     She was glad now that she kept up such practices, because the gentleman approaching the front desk with a charming smile was not only attractive but clearly well-to-do. He wore one of the new hats from Ecuador, made of white woven fibers with a black sweat band, that were becoming all the rage as they were light and comfortable in hot summer months. The stranger's clothes were all white as well, and the jacket was made of linen, the sign of a man who could afford a personal valet.

     Liza judged he was around twenty-six or twenty-seven, and found herself wishing she were fourteen years younger. "What can I do for you, sir?" she asked in her most charming voice, while plump and matronly Edna Basset, with whom she had been gossiping, and who had come to the hotel for her mail, watched with interest.

     He removed his hat to expose closely cropped dark brown hair, and looked around at the tidy lobby with plants, framed watercolors on the walls, and on the registry desk next to a vase of daisies, a hand-written sign that said, "Sleep fast, we need the beds."

     He smiled. "I'm looking for Miss Hannah Conroy. My name is Neal Scott."

     Two pairs of eyes widened. "Mr. Scott!" Liza enthused. "The American scientist? We've heard all about you, Mr. Scott, haven't we Edna? But Miss Conroy said you wouldn't be arriving for at least a year."

     "I know. There was a change of plans and no time to write ahead of time. Is Miss Conroy in?"

     "She went to Barossa Valley."

     His smile turned to a look of concern. "Do you know if she received my last message? I was here three weeks ago and was told I had just missed her. She was going to help with an influenza epidemic—"

     "In Barossa Valley!" Liza said again in dismay. The German wine country was a good thirty miles away, with hills in between, so who knew when Hannah would be back? Liza turned toward the wall of cubby holes that held room keys, messages, bills and mail. "Here," she said, retrieving a sealed envelope and handing it to him. "Is this it?"

     He looked at the envelop he had sealed three weeks prior and his heart sank. Hannah did not know he was in Adelaide! "I'm afraid so."

     "She should have been back by now," Liza said, replacing the envelope. "Can you wait for Miss Conroy? We have a lovely parlor and we serve a variety of teas and cakes."

     Neal glanced toward the open door where he saw a nicely furnished room that looked more like a parlor in someone's home than a public eatery. A few patrons sat on the sofas talking quietly, and an inviting fire roared at the hearth. It was so tempting . . . "I'm afraid I can't stay. I leave Adelaide this afternoon."

     "This afternoon!" Liza and Edna said in unison, both wishing to spend a bit of time with the intriguing American, and hoping to watch some romance blossom when Hannah returned. Life in the countryside could get monotonous. "We have heard that the epidemic has run its course," Liza said hopefully. "Which means Hannah is on her way home and could be here any minute. Just one cup of tea, Mr. Scott?"

     "I'm sorry, but I'm meeting up with an expedition, and if I'm late, I know Sir Reginald will not wait for me."

     Liza Guinness stared at this stranger who was the most exotic creature to ever cross her threshold—and the only American she had ever met. "Surely you don't mean Sir Reginald Oliphant?"

     "The same."

     "I have his books! I have read them all!" She turned to her friend with a glowing smile. "Fancy that, Edna. An
explorer
in my hotel." And Edna, who found herself wishing she was thirty years younger, returned the smile.

     Neal consulted his pocket watch, then looked at the clock on the wall, then glanced back at the front door, shifted on his feet, frowned in thought and indecision, and finally said, "I'll just have to leave another message. Have you paper and pen?"

     Mrs. Guinness loved romance, even when it was someone else's, and always helped it along when she could. She had heard all about the voyage on the
Caprica
, and had noted in particular that when Hannah spoke of the storm in which she and the American had almost died, her cheeks pinked and she cast her eyes down—classic signs, Liza thought, of a woman with a
secret. It had been a shipboard romance, Liza was certain, and it thrilled her to think so. Especially now that she had laid eyes on the man himself instead of his flat, black and white photograph which, granted, showed an attractive young man but which did nothing for the exciting, flesh and blood male who stood before her now.

     "Here you are, sir," Liza said, handing him a sheet of stationery and pointing to the pen in the inkwell.

     As Hannah guided the buggy along the lane, drifting in and out of pools of shade and lazy autumn sunshine, she couldn't wait to get back to the hotel, which was just up ahead and around the bend. A hot bath, a cup of Liza Guinness's mint tea, and a nap would set the world right again. Solving the mystery of the influenza—which had appeared suddenly in Barossa Valley, followed a strange meandering course, striking some homesteads but skipping others, and then had vanished just as mysteriously—would have to wait for another day. Hannah was exhausted. Although she herself had not contracted the illness, helping to nurse so many of those stricken, in various farms and houses, had taken everything out of her.

     She wondered if the mail had come. A letter from Alice perhaps, who was on tour with the Sam Glass Entertainment Troupe. With The Elysium such an astounding success, Sam was looking to open music halls in other cities, and the best way to gain backers and investors was to dazzle them with his best acts: two brothers who juggled flaming torches, a baritone who sang arias, a comic act involving cream pies and fire crackers, a sensational contortionist named Lady Godiva, and soloist singer Alice Star. They had gone first to Melbourne, and were traveling on to Sydney after that. Hannah knew that Alice was going to win hearts everywhere she went, as she had in Adelaide where, in a short time, adoring citizens had begun to call her the "Australian Songbird."

     Hannah almost hoped that there was no mail from Neal. Since his first letter back in November, he had written to Hannah regularly, giving her news and updates on the Oliphant expedition—"Soon to be launched!"—
and entertaining her with stories of the people he was meeting and fascinating facts that he was learning: "Did you know, my dear Hannah, that kangaroos cannot walk backwards?"

     Five months ago, on the night of Alice's premier performance at The Elysium, Hannah had been disappointed to open Neal's letter and learn that he was not coming directly to Adelaide after all. When the HMS
Borealis
had docked in Fremantle, Neal had met acclaimed explorer Sir Reginald Oliphant, who was putting together a massive expedition from Perth to Adelaide and who had invited Neal to join him. "I am still coming to Adelaide, dear Hannah, but my journey will not be a mere two weeks by ship, but rather a slow and arduous—but exciting and thrilling!—trek across Unknown Territory."

     Although they had expected to begin the trek in January, there had been one delay after another, keeping Neal in Perth. But if there was no letter waiting for Hannah today, it meant none had come during her three-week absence which could only mean that the expedition had finally launched and Neal was on his way to her.

     Hannah did not like the idea that Neal would be in the middle of Godforsaken wilderness, surrounded by deadly snakes, wild dingoes and hostile Aborigines, nor did she relish the idea of hearing no word from him in a year. But Hannah had learned that dangers from native elements were part of a colonist's—and an explorer's—life in this new world, and that being separated from loved ones for long periods of time was just one more unique element of life in Australia. Men came out to the colonies to start up a business or a farm, and then they sent for their wives and children, often being reunited two or three years later. Mail took a year, with six months for a letter or parcel to travel to England, and six months for the reply.