Read Online Wild Island by Jennifer Livett - Free Book Online Page B

sister, Fanny, preferred to stay in London; Mary was a babe-in-arms. Her father had encouraged Jane’s endless reading, writing and learning because he had no son. Her brother had died, full of promise, at fourteen. Her Uncle Guillemard, her mother’s brother, had seen her eagerness for travel and study and had seemed to encourage it, but sometimes now, in retrospect, she could not help seeing in his methods a desire to show her she was not so clever as she thought.
    In algebra, for instance, he would sometimes give her theorems far beyond her capacity, and was not displeased to see her cry with frustration at her own stupidity. One of his fond names for her was ‘Poll-parrot’. Fond, but carrying the criticism that she repeated things she did not understand. She knew she irritated him, which made her awkward in his company. He had not meant to be unkind. She had much to thank him for and was grateful. It was just that he saw her father too proud of her, unwilling to curb, and wanted to warn her that women could not be like men, they were unfitted for it mentally and bodily.
    Jane began to speak then of how one’s actions could be misunderstood, and Booth found himself telling her how he had shot the albatross two days out of Tristan da Cunha because he wanted to test Coleridge’s story of the Ancient Mariner. He would not be satisfied with superstition, even from a great poet whose works he loved and venerated. He wanted to know the truth of the world.
    If she had not stopped dead in surprise at what he was saying, he would have gone on to tell her how much he had been affected by what he had done. He had learned that day how much an experiment may affect the experimenter. But her pause had given the main party a chance to catch up with them, and Sir John took her arm and asked her what they had been talking about so intently. ‘Ancient Mariners,’ she said, smiling fondly at him.

    And after all this, on the last day and almost at the last minute, just as the official party was boarding the cutter to go back to Hobart, Montagu had handed Booth the letter. There had been a hundred opportunities to speak of it earlier, but this was planned, of course. Montagu had looked directly at him and said with a faint smile, ‘A confidential matter, Booth.’
    Booth handed it to his clerk with an order to take it up to his cottage, and had no time to think of it again until he returned there in the late afternoon. Two pages, one of them a letter, the other a covering note from Montagu. He read Montagu’s first.
    . . . treat the enclosed as strictly confidential. You
should not
reply directly, but oblige by calling at the Colonial Office to discuss the matter when you are next visiting Hobarton in the course of your duties. You
need not
make occasion for a special journey up to town. Private enquiries must not be allowed to interrupt the business of His Majesty’s Government.
    Emphatic. And then the letter itself, from a firm of solicitors in England: Gray, Walsh and Tilney. Addressed to Mr John Montagu,Colonial Secretary in Hobart Town, and dated seven months ago. Which probably meant that Montagu had kept it at least a month before handing it over.
    We present our compliments and take leave to beg the Colonial Secretary’s assistance in furthering our enquiries concerning a Mr Rowland George Fairfax Rochester, Esquire. Would Mr Montagu kindly oblige by determining whether any official records are held by His Majesty’s Government in the colony under Mr Rochester’s name? To wit; grants of land issued, application for rescinding of quit rents, records of arrival, departure, marriage, or death?
    Mr Rochester’s family was given to understand that he had been killed in 1823 in the Slave Rebellion in Demerara, however more recent advice suggests he may have recovered from his injuries and emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land. We are further advised that Captain Charles O’Hara Booth, now stationed in Van Diemen’s Land with the