SONS OF THE FATHERS
Chapter 14: The Second Wives Club
"I know," she said. "I truly do know." He managed
a small smile. He knew she did. She also knew enough that she
offered, "Would you like to see him?" in response to his unvocalized
question. He nodded. "Thank you," and as she opened the door,
called softly after her, "I love you, Rose." She stopped, closed
her eyes, letting the words wash over her almost like baptismal waters.
***************
Almost awkwardly, Maximus stepped into Jack's hospital room. In the brief
moments since Rose had left, the Captain had fallen back asleep. Maximus stood
across the room, leaning against the wall, unsure whether to stay or go.
"It...it is all
right, Ma'am," Maximus said quickly. "I am his friend."
"I'm afraid you'll
have to...." the nurse started to say, but a voice from the bed said,
"Let him stay. Please." She turned, looking at Jack, her
brow creased, then left.
Jack smiled. "I
lay none of it to your account, my friend. I am only glad to see you
alive."
A wry look crossed Maximus'
face. "Not so very...alive, I think."
"Tell me," Jack
said. "You were with her?"
"How IS that?"
Jack asked. "How do you know she is in a particular place?"
This time the General
smiled. "Everything is as usual and, then, suddenly I'm
not...alone." He closed his eyes, remembering. Then looking at Jack again,
he continued, "We've been together...in the same space...twice before, you
know, and so when it happens...it is familiar...I know it, know she is there.
She is all about me, in me, through me and we are one in a way I think
only those in Elysium must know." He smiled again.
"The street,
Maximus?" Jack asked. "How did you come to be in the
street when you found her in the parlor?"
"She...moved, and I
simply followed her. It is almost like being in some great beam of light
and you just...go...with it."
"But I don't
understand why she would stand in some street like that," Jack pursued.
"I doubt it was a
street, Jack, not to her."
Two orderlies and the nurse came into the room. "Time to move you to
a regular room, Mr., er, Captain Aubrey," the nurse announced. "There
is some strange man in the waiting room...tall and thin...who is driving the hospital
staff crazy asking questions about your treatment. When we get you to your
room, would you care to see him?"
Jack managed an actual
laugh. "Ah, Stephen!" He grinned at Maximus. "The
good doctor has little trust in modern medicine, I fear."
Speaking of modern medicine, Bunny was greatly encouraged by the fact that the
epi had permitted Jack's leg to be treated in an actual hospital. "Perhaps
I might not have to give birth on a riverbank after all," she remarked
hopefully to Sid. Then again. Until now, the
medical treatment epi victims got was the same whether one were in 1818 or
2005. In fact, 1818 had a bit of advantage over 2005 as their doctor was
only up on 1803's medicine. She sighed. She would definitely make
him drop all his beetles before he got anywhere NEAR her!
Joimus and Elizabeth had returned cautiously to the house. The Governor
was deeply engaged in some vital colonial correspondence with London and didn't
join them for lunch. Young Lachlan, finished with his studies, found them in
the parlor. Elizabeth pulled him up onto her lap fondly.
"This is Mrs.
Meridius, Lachlan," she said. "She is from far over the sea and
has come to visit with us for a time."
"My Mama and Papa are
from over the sea, too," he remarked, looking at Joimus with bright,
intelligent eyes. "But I was born right here in Australia," he
added proudly.
"I understand you are
four," Joimus said.
"Yes," he said,
"and for my birthday in March, Mama arranged for 16 of my friends to come
with me by boat to South Head for a party!"
"Oh, I bet that was a
lot of fun!" Joimus replied, then looked at Elizabeth. "South
Head? Is that one of those bluffs that mark the
entrance to the harbor?"
Elizabeth started to
answer but Lachlan looked at Joimus puzzledly."Pardon me, Ma'am, but how can you not know that? Every ship that comes
into Sydney Cove has first passed through the Heads."
Hmmmmm? Perhaps the tyke
was a bit TOO bright. "I came to Sydney by land, Lachlan, not by the
sea," she tried to explain, though she hadactually come by air, now hadn't she? This time the elder Lachlan came inadvertently
to her rescue...or so it seemed at first.
"Ladies," he said, entering the parlor then nodding grandly at his
son, "and gentlemen, we must prepare for a departure to
Parramatta."
"Parramatta? Where is
THAT?" Joimus gasped. "I can't leave Sydney!"
“It will be all right, my
dear," Elizabeth said. "Government House in Parramatta is where
we live most often."
"You...you...don't
live...here...all the time?"
"Oh, not at all,
especially not since young Lachlan was born. Parramatta is much more
'home' to us than this."
Joimus looked devastated.
"But I MUST stay in Sydney!" She looked desperately at her
hostess. "You know I must!"
"Come now, Mrs.
Meridius," the Governor said in an attempt to be comforting, "it will
only be for a week and then I have business that will bring me back to
Sydney."
"How...how...far
away...is it?" she asked weakly.
"An hour and a half
by carriage. Not far at all."
Joimus gulped. An
hour and a half! He might as well have told her it was on the moon.
There seemed no help for it. She had no where else to stay, knew no one else,
so as soon as the trunks were packed and loaded onto the carriage, she,
Elizabeth and young Lachlan were seated inside, heading down the turnpike
almost due west. The Governor rode alongside the carriage, mounted on Sultan, his favorite horse. As they rolled along, Elizabeth
chatted about Parramatta, how she'd first seen the house in 1810 when it was
almost uninhabitable. She herself had drawn a new Palladian design for it
and over the last four years Lachlan had made her vision
of the house reality. It was two-storied, brick plastered to look like
stone, and had a central Georgian doorway like the house in Sydney.
Elizabeth had designed a wing on either side of the main house, plus a
large addition at its back, adding a fine portico over the main door.
"Wait till you see
the gardens!" she enthused. I've made an English garden in front of
the house so that it looks like home, and there is an alley of lemon trees, and
a pigeon house."
"Don't forget the
bark hut, Mama! Don't forget that!"
She smiled at him.
"It's his favorite place, a garden house, actually, on a hill."
As much as Joimus enjoyed
the description, she found herself counting revolutions of the wheels as each one
took her further and further from her husband.
During the week Joimus was in Parramatta, Jack healed well. The hospital
staff was glad when he was discharged to go back to Woolloomooloo, though, as
his friend, the strange doctor, gave none of them a moment's peace about
the care the Captain was receiving.
Maximus wandered the
Botanic Gardens and the museum plaza endlessly, but never encountered that
sense of Joimus' presence.
Sometimes, when Steve had come with Laura to the eastern curve of Farm Cove to photograph
the always-different settings of the sun, the two of them would see him there, running
the long end of the gossamer scarf over and over through his fingers.
Steve still had fears that the General would just suddenly break one day
and wipe Sid off the face of the earth. Everyone noticed the deepening
darkness of the black looksthe General sent Sid's way each time their paths crossed. The combination
of the losses was straining the seams of Maximus' self control to its limits.
Joimus' due date grew ever
closer and, with it, grew the bleakness in Maximus' heart. How could Dess
be born 187 years ago? How could his Joimus' go through that with him so
separated from her? And where WAS she? She had not come to the
parlor nor to the chair in all these endless days.
Joimus spent most of her days in Elizabeth's company, growing ever fonder of
the woman as she got to know her better and better. She discovered that,
like herself, she was not the irst wife of her husband. Lachlan had been
married in 1793 when he was 32 to Jane Jarvis
while he was in India. He had kept nothing from Elizabeth as to his
feelings for his first wife. Lachlan had always, always been entirely
open, entirely honest with her. He had adored Jane with the big,
passionate heart of his younger years.
She had, indeed, been
permitted to read his journals of that time wherein he called Jane "my
beloved and dearest of women," referring to her as "delightful,
glorious, and generous." She was but 21 and he a Captain at the
time, unworthy in the eyes of her family to court a wealthy heiress. He
set about single-mindedly "engaging himself in a breathless race to
produce
the conditions in which he could propose marriage." He wanted her
more than he had ever wanted anything and the day he became a Major, he proposed
to "this genteel piece of femininity."
They married in Bombay and
when he had to be apart from her on his
military campaigns, he wrote her a letter every day. She developed a
severe cough, for which the doctor prescribed "buffalo milk, mercury, and
long walks along the quay." He had to leave for Ceylon and she cried
bitterly, but the army sent him and he had to go. Finally he was able to sail
for India and while on horseback on the last leg of his journey back to his
wife, a messenger approached him with letters from Jane. He got off his
horse and sat in the middle of the road, reading each one 20 times over,
kissing them, his joy inexpressible.
"My health is much improved," she wrote, "and I have every reason to believe I am pregnant and will soon make you a happy, happy father." Oh, HOW he wanted to be a father! He arrived in Bombay grinning from ear to ear. It was all delusion. Jane was not better. She was nearly at death's door. She was not pregnant. She had but convinced herself she was. He was almost demented with the grief of it. He wrote, "I sink under it, and I am actually at this moment as miserable a wretch as any that lives on the face of the earth." The doctor recommended sea air, so he took her on a voyage to Macao, China. Jane laughed and chattered, making pathetic little lists of baby toys she wished to buy. She tore at his heart with her merriment. In Macao he read to her, walked arm in arm with her on the terrace as she spoke of the child she expected and of the good things the future held for them.
Twelve days
later she died in his arms. He was "stupefied
with horror and affliction," and the maid could hear him sobbing in his bed
in the night. He wrote long, stricken letters to his many friends, some
of them 48 pages in length. "Oh, memory forever dear, forever to be
mourned, honored, adored," he wrote. He had a lead coffin made for
her, writing, "O dearest and best of women...never, never shall other ill
your place." He sailed with her body back to Bombay and ordered a
black marble headstone to be made and shipped from England. He wrote a
457 word epitaph for it. Jane had been only 23 when she died.
Joimus stared at Elizabeth in amazement as the story unfolded. She
thought of Maximus' grief over his first wife. He mourned differently.
He had not written a 457 word epitaph. He had merely toppled the
government of Rome. She tried to explain his story to Elizabeth without
including details that would be incomprehensible to her. That made it
very hard, but she managed after a fashion. Then the two women sat and
looked silently at one another, each understanding much of the
other's heart.
Jane had died in 1796. In 1804 he was back in England and met Elizabeth.
They had never seen one another before despite the fact that she was the
younger sister of his uncle's wife and that her brother, John Campbell, was one
of his best friends. He was 44, she 26 when they arrived at the same time
at the manor house on the Island of Mull,
Scotland, where his uncle lay on his death bed. He had been a widower for
10 years. In his journal he wrote that he "had been introduced to this
most amiable young lady." They walked along the shore, dined together,
went fishing...at which he wrote, "Miss C. is particularly expert and
successful." By the time they left Mull, he would write, "What a most excellent soldier's wife she would make...and happy, in my
mind, will that man be whose good fortune it may happen to get her!"
Several months later he was to be sent back to India, possibly for four years.
They had been seeing one another in London and in March of 1805 he
proposed "after very mature and deliberate consideration and reflection on all the consequences of so important a step."
Elizabeth smiled at
Joimus. "I knew from the beginning he didn't love me with the grand passion
he'd had for Jane. But he was older, had learned much of life, and was
ready for a true partner. During the time he was gone to India, I
reflected thoroughly on what marrying him would mean. And we have come to
have something so good, so sweet, so full. He loves me straight across,
equally, in a way he never did with
Jane."
Joimus knew this was so.
She had watched the manner in which the Governor treated his wife, the way
his eyes looked when he spoke to her. The man quite simply loved his wife
with that special sort of relationship that would last a lifetime. He had
worn a black band on his arm for 4 years and 2 months after Jane died.
When he met Elizabeth, he was ready to live again, ready to hope there
might yet be that
devoutly-desired child. She knew him, understood everything about him,
and loved him not in spite of how he had handled his past, but because of it.
When their baby girl had
been born 10 months after their wedding, his delight had known no bounds. He
had named her Jane Jarvis Macquarie and still Elizabeth understood. Jane
was a family name for her, too. Both her mother and sister bore it.
The Jarvis she could live with. But little Jane had lived only 3
months. In the intervening years,
she had had 6 miscarriages, one in England and 5 after they'd come to Sydney.
When she became pregnant with Lachlan, they'd scarce dared to hope.
"The day he arrived,"
Elizabeth recounted, "Lachlan and I were having soup together and my pains
started. We had 38 people coming for dinner that night and Lachlan had to
host them by himself. Then two minutes before midnight our dear boy came
into the world. When Lachlan found out it was a son, I thought he would explode
with the joy of it."
The phrase "explode with the joy of it" kept repeating over and over
in Joimus' head. She knew what Dess meant to Maximus. He must be wild at
their disappearance. And what of Bunny and her son? How great was
his torture there?
"Yes," Elizabeth
agreed. "You must."
The week was finally over and done. Joimus leaned back in the carriage,
smiling as the turning wheels brought her closer and closer to Sydney, closer
and closer to Maximus.
"I'd like to go back
out to your chair as soon as possible," she said. "Perhaps there is some
clue...something...that will show me how to return to him."
It was mid-afternoon when
they arrived at the Government House in Sydney. "Let's have a picnic
out by my chair," Elizabeth suggested. She looked at her son.
"Would you like that, Lachlan?"
"Yes, Mama!" he
laughed. "You know how I love picnics."
Joseph drove them in the light, open, 2-wheeled curricle. The days were
slightly cooler now and Elizabeth wore a short Spencer jacket, loaning a spare
to Joimus. At first they walked along the edge of the cove. Joimus was
falling in love with the view across the harbor. "I've never seen
anything to match it, Elizabeth," she said.
"Maybe Rio,"
Elizabeth replied. We stopped there on our voyage here from England.
It was simply breath-taking. I shall never forget it.
Then they went up the
slope to the area of the sandstone ledges. Both women searched around,
but came up with nothing. Joimus sat down on the bench, looking dejected.
To distract her, Elizabeth handed her her journal. "Here," she
said, "why don't you sketch the view. I'd like to see how you do it
as I've done it so often I'm growing tired of my own scratches."
Joimus took the journal and
looked pensively for a while at the western harbor. Then she began to
sketch the familiar curves of the coves.Her hand moved quickly and Elizabeth noted that she had stopped looking up as she
sketched, keeping her eyes only on the page. A few moments later and she handed
the journal back to Elizabeth, whose eyes widened considerably as she looked at
what Joimus had drawn. It was the view she'd seen hundreds of times...yet
there were two strange things placed within it. One she could recognize
as a large, arched bridge. The other she had never seen the like of
before. She turned toward Joimus, her eyes full of questions.
"It's how it looks in
my time," Joimus said. That's the harbor bridge and the Opera
House."
"But that's the point
where Lachlan is having Fort Macquarie built," Elizabeth said.
“That's been gone a long
time, I fear," Joimus replied.
Elizabeth ran her finger
over the unique roofline. "I vow," she whispered. "It
is quite marvelous." Then she lifted her eyes, staring at the point
where nothing so grand now rose, at the narrows of the harbor where no great
arch spanned from shore to shore. Looking down at the picture, she
noticed Joimus had neither signed nor dated it. She handed back the journal,
requesting that Joimus do so.
Taking the pen, Joimus
wrote, "May-1818" and above that a simple "J. M."