The Larnachs Read Online Free PDF

the same high, round forehead, although Mary was not even her full aunt.
    I was conscious of being unwed, because I was almost thirty, if not turned, and had only recently declined a offer of marriage from an Anglican vicar who played the organ tolerably, but had little else to recommend him. And I was at once experiencing and resisting the attentions of Josiah, one of Alfred’s married legal colleagues. I had talked to Father concerning the offer that was proper, but of course made no mention of that which was not. He would have been pleased, I think, to have seen a daughter happily married. None of us then were, and my sisters are spinsters still, but he fully supported my refusal of the clergyman.
    In a glancing, light-hearted way the matter came up in William’s presence after the meal and he joined in the banter. Later, though, when he was preparing to leave, and we were a little apart from the others for a moment, he said warmly, ‘Who wouldn’t envy the man fortunate enough to marry you, Conny.’ It was said quite openly, and perhaps others heard it, but accompanied by a steady gaze rather than a smile or laugh. I was conscious for the first time, I think, of William’s admiration for me as a woman.
    Father died three years afterwards. The 22nd of September1886 was the saddest day of my life, for he was not only a great man in the colony, but a liberal and loving parent. During one of our last conversations, when he was seriously ill, he said that he had been lucky in life, and that he had found his greatest satisfaction in family. ‘There’s been so much fun, hasn’t there,’ he said.
    ‘You carried it with you,’ I told him. His skin had become almost yellow and folded on his neck like soft, pale fabric.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, and I knew that was a part of his farewell. Mother has never really recovered, and resigned most of the household direction to me.
    Mary Larnach died the next year. I knew, when William continued his visits, that I was the object of them. Alfred, now head of the family, was not warm to the idea, and my sisters brought home whispers of William’s past, but such tales are spun around every man of consequence, and embroidered over the teacups with mock solicitation.
    I imagine that every woman has a clear recollection of each proposal of marriage made to her, and how the manner of it differs from the depiction in romantic novels. The clergyman was earnest and embarrassed, perhaps almost resigned to refusal even as he made the offer. His pronounced Adam’s apple made a distracting appearance above his collar whenever he swallowed. We were acquainted through a musical society, and he was at pains to tell me that he had some financial expectation from an uncle who was a prosperous chandler in Sydney. Every meeting we had after I declined him occasioned a certain awkwardness.
    William had a deal more aplomb, but then we had seen more ofeach other, and an understanding had grown up. I have no patience with the notion that one should get to know a partner after the marriage rather than before. William talked a great deal about himself, but men do, and most of them are bores in the process. William is not: he has seen much of life at all levels of society, from the drunken tents of the Victorian goldfields to this colony’s Cabinet table, and has a good ear and a good eye for a story, and the human nature revealed in it.
    William’s was not a parlour proposal, with Annie, or Fanny, hushed in anticipation behind the door. A group of us, including Thomas Cahill, the Seddons and the Montague sisters, took a carriage to Island Bay and walked there on the beach. There were Shetland fishermen who, despite the stiff swell, rowed some of the party out and around the small crag that gave the bay its name. William and I stood watching. ‘If we were married,’ he said, ‘we could do so many things together without the need for others.’
    ‘Would that increase our happiness?’ I