The Gallant (2 page)

The Irish coast was in sight and the wind had abated when Henry Osborne limped back to his cabin in search of dry clothes and a much-needed glass of brandy in the cuddy.

It was another sixteen hours before the Pyramus

entered Belfast Lough and he saw again the familiar gray buildings of the city. He wasted no time in going ashore and, on a hired horse, set off on the long road to Dromore. Through Lisburn and Lurgan, skirting Lough Neagh, he rode, urging his jaded hireling with voice and heels to a furious pace. The animal was incapable of further effort when he reached Dungannon, and it

was raining steadily when, wet and tired, he pulled up in darkness outside a hostelry on the outskirts of the town.

The landlord, a cheerful, hospitable fellow, made him welcome, supplied him with an excellent meal and a comfortable room, and, for the first time since leaving the ship, Henry was able to relax. His clothes were again soaked, but he had had the forethought to bring a valise with him, and he handed over his outer garments to be dried, satisfied that-provided the morrow did not bring more rain-he could present himself, respectably clad, at the rectory the next day.

As good fortune would have it, the following morning dawned bright and clear. He donned his best suit and, fortified by a substantial breakfast, set off eagerly on the last twenty miles of his journey, mounted on a more willing horse and leaving his still-sodden cape and jacket steaming before the inn’s kitchen fire, on the landlord’s promise that he could redeem them on his return to Belfast.

Henry reached Dromore in the early afternoon, and after stabling his borrowed horse, he presented himself at the rectory. To his joy, the doorbell brought his adored Sarah in person to admit him, and when she went, half swooning, into his arms, his joy knew no bounds.

“Oh, Henry-dearest Henry, you have come back!”

Sarah cried, as he held her tenderly to him. “I am so happy, I scarcely know what to say.”

Henry, too, was momentarily bereft of words to express his feelings, but when Sarah led him by the hand into the withdrawing room, where both her parents were seated, he was dismayed when-as Sarah had done-they took it for granted that he had returned for good.

“So you have thought better

of

the foolhardy notion of emigrating to New South Wales,” the old rector said, beaming his approval. “My dear boy, I am more

than pleased.”

Henry faced him unsmilingly. “No, sir,”

he denied, “I have not. The voyage is delayed and my ship is in Belfast to effect repairs to damage inflicted in a terrible storm in the Irish Sea. It is only by God’s grace that I am here, Mr. Marshall, and-was He hesitated and then plunged in. “Sir, I swear that the hand of God brought me back to Ireland to-to plead with you once William Stuart Long

more to permit your daughter Sarah to wed me. I love her, sir, more than life itself.”

The rector eyed him from beneath furrowed brows. He exchanged a questioning glance with his wife, as Henry stammered out a breathless description of the storm and the loss of the

Pyramus’s

foretopmast.

“Then it is your intention to continue the voyage, when the ship-when the

Pyramus

has completed her repairs?”

Henry inclined his head, jaw jutting obstinately.

“Yes, that is so, sir. She will sail within the next ten days, and I-Mr. Marshall, I beg you to allow me to take Sarah with me as my wife.”

“Ten days, you say?” Again the Reverend Benjamin Marshall glanced across at his wife, receiving an almost imperceptible nod in response. He sighed heavily. “That does not give us much time to arrange your wedding, does it, my boy? But …” He repeated his sigh, and Henry, realizing suddenly that his plea had been successful, put his arm round Sarah’s slim, muslin-clad shoulders.

“I suppose,” the rector said resignedly, “that it can be done and that, in these-ah-circumstances, one reading of your banns will be sufficient. I shall have to inquire, I-was His expression relaxed and he held out his hand.

Henry took it thankfully, his heart full.

“Thank you, Mr. Marshall-thank you. I will not be unworthy of your trust, sir -Mrs. Marshall-I give you my word.”

Judith Marshall smiled at him, tears in her eyes.

“It will not be the lovely wedding we had hoped for our daughter, Henry,” she reminded him. “But if, as it would seem to be, it is God’s will, then so be it. Certainly it is nothing short of a miracle that brought you back here.” She rose from her chair and embraced both Henry and her daughter in turn, the tears now flowing freely.

Henry was deeply moved. Over luncheon, which he took with the family, he talked at length of his plans.

“I have the money from the sale of my smallholding-a thousand pounds, which Alick and John assure me will be an adequate sum with which to set up as a fanner in the colony. I shall be given a grant of land and convict labor to work it. The money will amply suffice for the building of a homestead and the purchase of stock. It is in the form of a draft, cashable in Sydney and-was Intending to display the draft, in proof of his words, Henry felt in the pocket of his coat and found it empty.

Horror-stricken, he recalled that he had been carrying the precious document in the pocket not of the jacket he was wearing. but in the heavy outer cloak, which … He drew in his breath sharply. Which, thrice-damned, careless fool that he was, he had left with the landlord of the inn in Dungannon!

His bright, happy dream abruptly faded. Without capital, what future could there be for Sarah and him in New South Wales? He would be a virtual pauper, dependent on his brothers.

He … Somehow he contrived to talk on as if nothing had happened, keeping his anxiety hidden.

Plans for the wedding were proposed, discussed, and agreed upon. It would take place at the Dromore parish church on September 11-two days before the Pyramus

was expected to sail-provided the question of the banns could be cleared up; and Sarah and her mother would work day and night to make her wedding dress, calling in her sisters, if need be, to help them with their task.

The meal at long last over, Henry excused himself. He took lingering leave of his affianced wife, and, giving the impression that he intended to go to his own parents’ house in nearby Dernaseer to acquaint them with the news of his forthcoming nuptials, he mounted his horse again and rode, as fast as the animal would take him, back to Dungannon.

Darkness had long since fallen when, stiff and weary, he dismounted outside the inn. As before, the landlord greeted him with cheerful warmth, inviting him into the taproom and pouring him a glass of whiskey laced with spices, a wide grin on his homely face. Then, before Henry could state the reason for his return, he laid the crumpled bank draft on the counter between them.

“Well, now, would it be this that brought you back so swiftly, young sir?” he questioned. “Sure you had no call to worry-we are honest folk here. “Tis a mite damp, I’ll grant you, yet it’s quite legible. But-was His grin widened, as Henry put out a visibly trembling hand to pick up the precious draft. “I’d not carry a valuable paper such as this on my person, by the faith I

WHICH-LIAM Stuart Long

would not! And you just about to set sail for Botany Bay, if I remember rightly. Tis asking for trouble, so it is.”

Chastened, Henry gulped down his drink, relief loosening his tongue. “I have been foolish,” he confessed. “I … but how else can I carry it?

It is my capital, it’s what I need to set myself up-to set my wife and myself up on a farm out there.”

The landlord refilled his glass, then poured himself a generous tot of the same warming mixture, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You could use it to buy trade goods, sir,” he suggested

practically. “Before you leave Ireland. From what I hear, the folk in Botany Bay are in sore need

o” such goods-of silks and satins and woven cloth-aye, and of fine Irish linen, too. It has all to be imported, a seafaring man was after telling me a few weeks ago, and it sells for three or four times its cost, if it’s shipped out to Sydney Town. I doubt the master o’ your ship would ask you a large sum for carrying bales o’ linen, and it travels well.”

Henry stared at him, impressed by what he had said. It was an excellent suggestion, he recognized, and a thousand pounds would buy a fair quantity, but …

“It’s short notice … and I should have to get it to the ship,” he began. “She’s due to leave port in just over a week.”

“The mill here would supply you, sir,” the landlord assured him. “And they would attend to the loading, too, I fancy, if you were to explain the circumstances. The mill manager’s a friend o”

mine. I’d gladly give you an introduction to him in the mornin’, and you could fix things up in a couple of hours.”

He was as good as his word, and the next day, the mill manager, pleased by so large a sale, readily agreed to arrange for Henry’s purchase to be sent to Belfast and loaded aboard the

Pyramus.

“You need concern yourself no further with the matter, Mr.

Osborne,” he asserted. “The bales will be packed up, and they’ll be stowed on board your vessel by the time you rejoin her. The mill will pay transport costs, as a discount for your prompt cash settlement, if that is satisfactory to you.”

Elated, Henry agreed that it was eminently satisfactory. He signed over his draft and, with the landlord’s good wishes ring ing

in his ears, set off once again for Dromore and the family home he had never expected to see again.

The wedding, for all the haste with which, of necessity, it had been arranged, was the happiest day of his life. Virtually all the inhabitants of the little town attended the service, together with his and Sarah’s families and friends, and as he watched his bride walk up the aisle toward him on the arm of her eldest brother, Henry’s heart swelled with pride.

Sarah, he thought, had never looked more beautiful or more desirable, and her wedding dress, with its billowing skirts and its daintily ruched sleeves, set off her loveliness to perfection. From behind the veil that covered her face, she was looking up at him with a shy smile curving her lips and her dark eyes aglow, and he put out his hand to take hers as the rector started to read the wedding service.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocence, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and His Church… .”

Henry Osborne bowed his head, and, as the old rector’s deep, resonant voice woke echoes from the stone walls of the little church in which he had worshiped since his boyhood, he breathed a silent prayer of his own.

“Merciful Father in heaven, of Thy compassion my life was preserved and I returned here to claim my beloved Sarah to wife … let me not fail her in the far-off land to which we must journey. Grant us fields to sow and reap and cattle to breed, that we may by our toil enrich the land and render it prosperous for our children to inherit in the fullness of time.

Bless our going, O Lord, and bring us safely to our destination-was The rector’s voice broke into his consciousness.

“Henry Archibald, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health and, forsaking all other keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

William Stuart Long

Henry lifted his head. In a firm, strong voice he answered, “I will!” and the answer came from his heart.

Forty-eight hours later, entered in the ship’s books as Mr. and Mrs. Henry Osborne, he and his bride boarded the

Pyramus,

the brigantine have up her anchor, and with both their families and many of their friends waving from the wharfside, they stood together on deck, waving too, as the sails filled and the long voyage began.

Spring, 1856

The three-masted White Star Line clipper S.s. Spartan,

under charter to the Government Emigration Department and bound for Melbourne and Sydney, lay alongside Liverpool’s Water Street wharf, a long line of steerage passengers patiently waiting permission to board her.

The first feverish rush to the Australian goldfields had passed its zenith, but more than half those picking their way, with varying degrees of difficulty, through the dimly lit warehouse leading to the dock were bound for the diggings in Victoria. The rest were poor Irish emigrants, whole families of them, delivered-in some cases weeks ago-by the steam packet from Dublin and driven, by the continuing effects of the potato famine, to seek indentured employment on the sheep and cattle stations of the now-thriving colony.

They bore their worldly goods with them, men, women, and children, stumbling blindly over the mass of cordage and the heaped-up cargo that filled the warehouse. Bent under the heavy bundles with which virtually all were burdened, they were hard put to it to dodge the incoming and outgoing cargo slings that swung constantly above their heads, and they were roundly cursed by the stevedores if they tripped or strayed out of line.

But their ship was in sight, and they gazed at her in awe. The

Spartan

was the newest vessel of the Pilkington and Wilson White Star fleet, built only the previous year to an American design by the Hood yard in Aberdeen. Seen through the thin haze of a Mersey drizzle, with the distinctive swallow-tailed house flag of a white star on a red ground flying from her mainmast head, she made a splendid sight.

Her sides were painted green, with much gilded scrollwork and a gilt streak running their length, and her sharply raked bow was adorned with a magnificent figurehead, depicting a Spartan warrior, helmeted and armed with a spear.

Emerging at last onto the dock, those at the head of the line exclaimed in admiration, oblivious of the increasing downpour, which, now that they were no longer protected by the roof of the warehouse, threatened to soak them.