A Mother's Shame (31 page)

Meanwhile, Kitty was dashing back and forth fetching towels and yet more hot water.

Robbie came in soon after, shaking the rain from him like a dog, and he too was instantly bowled over by the new arrival.

‘Och, will ye look at the wee bairn,’ he cooed. ‘Isn’t she just the prettiest little thing you ever did set eyes on?’

Kitty smiled at him affectionately before scuttling off to help Binda again.

Time passed slowly. Everyone was tense, and Josh commented, ‘They’re rather a long time in there, aren’t they? Is Isabelle all right?’ The words had barely left his mouth when Binda appeared, looking infinitely weary.

‘Take the child through to her mother,’ she said. ‘She wishes to see her.’

‘But she’s all right, isn’t she?’ pleaded Josh. ‘Surely the worst is over now?’

‘I cannot stop the missy’s bleeding,’ Binda informed him. ‘I have done what I can, Master Joshua, but the rest is up to the spirits now.’ She then sat down on the settle at the side of the fire, her chin drooped onto her chest and she slipped instantly into an exhausted sleep.

Josh headed for the door with the child in his arms and a look of dread on his face.

Isabelle had been washed, and as he entered the room she turned her head towards him. He was shocked at the sight of her. Her eyes seemed to have sunk deep into their sockets and on her face was a look of suffering. She was ghastly pale but she managed a smile and looked expectantly towards the precious bundle he was carrying.

‘F-Faith,’ she murmured as she struggled to lift her hands. She was obviously very weak and Josh’s heart broke as he laid the baby gently in her arms.

Isabelle sighed with delight as she kissed her daughter’s downy hair. ‘She is beautiful, isn’t she?’

Josh nodded. ‘Yes, just like her mother. Now you must get strong again so that you can watch her grow. If you still wish to keep her, that is.’

Isabelle looked at him strangely for a moment before saying, ‘Maria must remember her promise. I want Faith to go home to Mama.’

Josh could only begin to imagine the scandal that this would cause; his sister turning up with an illegitimate baby. But now that he had seen her and held her, he could understand why Isabelle did not wish to part with the child.

‘Why don’t you just concentrate on getting well and then we can discuss everything?’ he suggested tactfully.

Again Isabelle looked at him strangely but then her attention returned to her daughter and as she lay there with her hair fanned out on the pillow and a smile of pure joy on her face, Josh thought that she looked like an angel.

‘Take her now – I must sleep,’ Isabelle said some moments later. ‘And Josh, remember – I wish her to be called Faith.’

Josh was feeling more emotional by the second; it was almost as if Isabelle was saying goodbye. He made a conscious effort to clear such thoughts from his mind. The birth was over now; surely she would soon start to recover?

With Faith back in his arms he gazed down at his sister, whose eyes had already fluttered shut, and then softly he crept from the room.

Kitty had concocted some sort of feeding utensil with a teat and filled it with warm goat’s milk, and from the second she placed it in Faith’s tiny mouth she fastened onto it and began to suck greedily.

‘Well, she may only be a little mite but she knows how to feed,’ Kitty chuckled as she rocked the baby to and fro. The rest of them apart from Binda were seated at the table eating the salt pork and beans that Kitty had cooked for them, although none of them had much of an appetite.

Josh joined them after a while, but he too merely pushed the food about his plate. A sense of foreboding had invaded him and he couldn’t seem to shift it.

‘It would have been nice if we could have got word to my uncle and Esperanza about the birth,’ he commented eventually, and they all nodded in agreement. Now that the weather conditions had worsened yet again, they were now virtually cut off until the roads improved.

‘I’ll take some grub out to Lennie,’ Robbie said after a while and Kitty immediately hurried away to fill a plate with food for him whilst Robbie shrugged his huge frame into his outdoor clothes.

Maria sat back and watched the interaction between the two of them and suddenly felt sad. It was quite obvious that Kitty loved him, and Robbie’s eyes seemed to soften whenever he looked at the girl – and yet he had still not shown any sign of wishing to be more than a friend. Now that the baby had been born their days at the ranch were numbered and they would be returning to England, but she wondered how Kitty would cope with leaving Robbie behind. She had blossomed in the time they had spent here, and now there was barely a sign of the timid girl who had left Hatter’s Hall. It was all very sad. She could only hope that Isabelle’s mother would find a position for Kitty at Willow Park when they returned to England – otherwise what was the girl to do? What was she herself to do, for that matter? Her job at the post office was long gone, so once they returned she too would have to look for a new position. She shrugged the sombre thoughts aside as she thought of Isabelle lying so ill. For now she would just concentrate all her efforts on trying to make the girl well and worry about her own future when the time came.

Binda roused from her doze shortly after. The light was gone by then and Kitty was flitting about like a busy little bird lighting the oil lamps.

Without a word the woman hurried away to check on her patient but she had been gone for no more than a few seconds when she shouted, ‘Maria, Kitty!’

In their haste to get to her the two girls almost collided in the doorway then they were racing down the corridor.

They both stopped abruptly as they saw Isabelle lying in a pool of blood. She had haemorrhaged.

‘More towels!’ Binda shouted and Kitty shot away to fetch them as Maria hurried into the room.

Binda swished the blankets aside and instantly began to press yet more towels between Isabelle’s legs in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of blood, but all too soon it was clear that her efforts were in vain.

Maria clasped Isabelle’s hand tightly and willed the blood to stop, and it was as she was silently praying that Isabelle’s eyes fluttered open.

‘Y-you have been so good to me,’ she murmured and her voice was so faint that Maria had to lean towards her to hear her.

‘Don’t talk,’ Maria urged tearfully. ‘Just save your energy.’

Isabelle smiled weakly – and then her eyes closed.

After another twenty minutes Binda threw a clean blanket across the girl before telling Maria, ‘Go and fetch her brother. He may wish to sit with her before she goes to the other side.’

‘No!’ Maria sobbed. ‘She can’t die, Binda. She is so young. There must be something more you can do?’

Binda shook her head resignedly. ‘The spirits have decided – it is her time.’

Isabelle passed away in the early hours of the following morning, with Josh and Maria at either side of her.

Her ending was so peaceful that she looked as if she was merely asleep, and as Josh wept, Maria held him to her chest and uttered words of comfort. They were just two people grieving the loss of a loved one. And it came as a shock to Maria to realise that she had come to love Isabelle.

‘She had her whole life in front of her,’ Josh raged. ‘It’s all just so unfair.’

‘I know.’ Maria stroked his hair back from his damp face. ‘But now we must do what we can for baby Faith. It was what Isabelle wanted.’

‘But my father will never accept her if we take her home,’ he wavered.

‘I understand that. But could you really leave her here to be brought up by strangers now that you have seen her and held her?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t suppose I could,’ he admitted brokenly. ‘It’s bad enough losing Isabelle but to lose Faith too would be beyond endurance.’

‘Then we shall take her home and face whatever comes.’

They stood with arms entwined looking down on the beautiful girl on the bed.

Shortly afterwards Binda entered the room and after laying two shiny pennies on Isabelle’s closed eyelids, she ushered the others from the room, telling them, ‘I must prepare her for her last journey now.’

They found Kitty crying in Robbie’s arms and once again it struck Maria how right the couple looked together.

‘Poor love,’ Kitty choked. ‘It ain’t fair, is it?’

‘There are many things that aren’t fair in this life,’ Robbie said, and then they all looked towards the child who was sleeping soundly in the little crib that Esperanza had sent over from the ranch some time before. ‘But just look at the legacy yon Isabelle has left behind. While you have that bonnie wee bairn, Isabelle will never be far away. She’ll live on in her little girl.’

Realising the wisdom of his words, they all nodded in agreement.

During the next two days the rain continued to pour down, and Maria and Kitty began to wonder if it was ever going to stop.

Binda spent much of that time locked away in Isabelle’s room, chanting.

‘She is asking the spirits to accept her and guide her safely over to the other side,’ Robbie informed them. And then on the third morning Binda left the room to tell Robbie, ‘She is ready now for burial.’

He took up his coat. ‘I’ll go and make a coffin up from the wood that’s stored in the barn.’

Maria was horrified. ‘But we can’t bury her without a proper Christian service.’

Robbie frowned. ‘An’ how are we supposed to arrange that when we’re cut off from everyone? The nearest church is in Hobart an’ there’s no way we could get her there.’ Noting Maria’s distress, he explained to her more gently, ‘We need to do it now, as quick as we can. The body is beginnin’ to . . . well!’

He had no need to say any more. Maria had noticed that the corpse had begun to smell. At least they could all be present at the burial, which was something at least.

Robbie entered the barn to the usual string of abuse from Lennie but he simply ignored him as he strode towards the woodpile to select some suitable timber.

‘What the bleedin’ ’ell is goin’ on?’ Lennie demanded. ‘An’ ’ow much longer are yer plannin’ on keepin’ me ’ere?’

‘Not a second longer than I have to, you weasel,’ Robbie growled. ‘And now shut your ugly mouth. I’ve a coffin to make.’

‘Why? Who’s died?’

‘Miss Isabelle, if you must know!’

Lennie peered at him. ‘An’ what about the babe? Did that die an’ all?’

‘No she didn’t,’ Robbie informed him shortly. ‘As soon as this weather clears I shall be getting you back to hand you over, then when the baby’s strong enough she’ll be going home. And now, whisht, for God’s sake, man. I’ve more important things to do than listen to you whining.’

Lennie sank back down onto his bed of straw. His wrists were red raw from the ropes that bound him but the pain vanished as he suddenly saw a way of getting his revenge on the woman who, he felt, had wronged him so badly. A plan began to form in his mind. So the stuck-up bitch’s flyblow was going home to England, was it? It was perfect for what he intended to do, and all of a sudden, facing the wrath of the port authorities didn’t seem quite so bad.

Later that day, after being lovingly wrapped in a blanket and placed in the crude wooden coffin that Robbie had made for her, Isabelle was laid to rest in the shade of some huge gum trees not too far away from the small homestead. It had taken Robbie and Josh hours to dig the grave, for it kept filling with water – but there was nothing they could do about that. They returned to the homestead tired and drenched – but there was no point in changing their clothes until the burial had taken place. They carried the coffin to Isabelle’s final resting-place with the women trailing miserably behind them whilst the newborn slept the sleep of the innocent in her crib at the side of a roaring fire.

Within seconds of being outside the women were as wet as the men as the rain lashed at their faces and their skirts trailed soddenly behind them. They found themselves ankle-deep in mud but the sorry procession must continue on its way. They all knew that there was no alternative.

The coffin looked in danger of floating as it was lowered into the grave, but at last it was done and Maria muttered, ‘Shouldn’t we say something? Perhaps say a prayer?’

Josh cleared his throat as the tears on his cheeks mingled with the rain before saying brokenly, ‘Our Heavenly Father, we ask that You take the soul of our dearly departed Isabelle into Your care. May she rest in eternal peace. Amen.’

It wasn’t much but they all felt that it was better than nothing. They were slipping in the mud now and at serious risk of sliding into the open hole with Isabelle, so Josh told them, ‘Get back to the homestead now. Robbie and I will finish up here.’

Robbie had told him that he could do the job by himself, but Josh felt that it was the last service he could ever do for his sister and was adamant that he wanted to help.

The three women turned miserably away. It was done now. Each of them had said their final goodbye.

*

Three days later, the rain finally slowed then stopped, and the sun came out. In no time at all steam was rising from the sodden ground. The following day, the ground was firm enough for Robbie to manage to ride to the ranch to inform his uncle and Esperanza of Isabelle’s death. The couple accompanied him back.

‘What a beautiful child,’ Frederick commented sadly as he stared down at the baby. ‘We must think of finding her a home now.’

‘We could keep her,’ Esperanza told him. ‘She eez your flesh and blood, after all, Freddie.’

But before Frederick could answer, Josh cut in, ‘Faith will be coming back to England with us.’

Frederick frowned. ‘But surely the whole point of you all coming here was to avoid anyone knowing about the child? Your father will not be best pleased if you take her back now.’ He knew that his brother-in-law Charles Montgomery could be very inflexible.

‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes,’ Josh informed him. ‘Maria and I promised Isabelle that we would take Faith home to Mama and that is what I intend to do.’

His uncle did not argue. A deathbed promise was a sacred matter, and it seemed that Josh had made his mind up.