Sydney Cove

By J H M Abbott

Sydney Cove by J.H.M. Abbott is about Patrick Cartwright of the Marines and his uncle, Colonel Jack Cartwright as they walk the Magnus Hall gardens. Excerpt: "NOT far from the ancient cathedral city of Rochester, and the war-like town of Chatham, there still stands an old, square, red-brick mansion in a lovely garden. Gardens in Kent are always lovely, but the garden of Magnus Hall, stretching down its gentle hillside to the waters of the Medway…"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 4066338059239

Book preview

J H M Abbott

Sydney Cove

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4066338059239

Table of Contents

A Romance of the First Fleet.

by

J.H.M. ABBOTT

Chapter I.—Magnus Hall.

Chapter II.—The Murder in the Library.

Chapter III.—Partridge and Cooper.

Chapter IV.—The Son of His Mother.

Chapter V.—The New South Wales Adventure.

Chapter VI.-The Lady Penrhyn.

Chapter VII.—Mary Urquhart.

Chapter VIII.—An Innocent Victim.

Chapter IX.—Mary's Story.

Chapter X.—The Voyage.

Chapter XI.—The Village of Sydney.

Chapter XII.—The Founding of a City.

Chapter XIII.—The Gold Finder.

Chapter XIV.—The Natives.

Chapter XV.—The Absence of Mary.

Chapter XVI.—Prisoner 749.

Chapter XVII.—The Chase.

Chapter XVIII.—The Forked Waters.

Chapter XIX.—The Fight at Narrabeen.

Chapter XX.—As High as Haman.

THE END

SYDNEY COVE

Table of Contents

A Romance of the First Fleet.

Table of Contents

by

Table of Contents

J.H.M. ABBOTT

Table of Contents

---

---

Chapter I.—Magnus Hall.

Chapter II.—The Murder in the Library.

Chapter III.—Partridge and Cooper.

Chapter IV.—The Son of His Mother.

Chapter V.—The New South Wales Adventure.

Chapter VI.-The Lady Penrhyn.

Chapter VII.—Mary Urquhart.

Chapter VIII.—An Innocent Victim.

Chapter IX.—Mary's Story.

Chapter X.—The Voyage.

Chapter XI.—The Village of Sydney.

Chapter XII.—The Founding of a City.

Chapter XIII.—The Gold Finder.

Chapter XIV.—The Natives.

Chapter XV.—The Absence of Mary.

Chapter XVI.—Prisoner 749.

Chapter XVII.—The Chase.

Chapter XVIII.—The Forked Waters.

Chapter XIX.—The Fight at Narrabeen.

Chapter XX.—As High as Haman.

---

Chapter I.—Magnus Hall.

Table of Contents

NOT far from the ancient cathedral city of Rochester, and the war-like town of Chatham, there still stands an old, square, red-brick mansion in a lovely garden. Gardens in Kent are always lovely, but the garden of Magnus Hall, stretching down its gentle hillside to the waters of the Medway, is still, as it has been for over three hundred years, one of the loveliest of them all.

About the old house stretches, on sides and rear, a wooded park—of oak, and beech, and chestnut, and elm—which grows most densely in its vicinity, thinning out into occasional clumps of shade and foliage in the green meadows that reach to the outskirts of the estate. Before the house is a wide, stone-flagged terrace with a balustrade, and a flight of steps leading down to a green lawn, shaded at either end by two immense cedars of Lebanon, which reach out their flat layers of branches over the velvet turf, and are very ancient, very stately, and very sombre. From the lawn the land slopes gently down to the river, and across the water are hop-fields and rolling downs, of a softly verdant aspect, that merge into a blue and purple sky-line across miles of open field and belts of timber, and the occasional grey splashes of old villages that nestle among trees. Windmills and oast-houses were numerous at the time with which this story has to do—towards the end of the eighteenth century—and, here and there, the dark, flint-cased, square towers of Norman churches, which are still there, rose above the low-lying, far-stretching countryside.

It was drawing towards evening, and already a colony of rooks in some tall elms behind the old house were noisily settling down for the night. On the lawn below the terrace, two men, who had already partaken of the principal meal of the day, were seated over their wine, beside a little round table placed beneath the roof-like branches of one of the big cedars. It was the tree on the right beneath which they sat, and they were contemplating the gathering blue hazes of evening across the country before them, in the quiet, satisfactory fashion that is possible after a good dinner and over good wine. Within their vision, as they looked diagonally across the lawn, was the ivy-clad front of the house, standing out darkly against the brightening glow of the western sky.

They are both clean-shaven, good-looking, well-groomed men, but there was a difference of more than thirty years between their ages. Colonel John Cartwright, late of His Majesty's 16th Regiment of Foot, was a man of about sixty. His white wig set off his red and suntanned face. Dressed in the garments of civil life, he still looked what he was—a soldier from neck to heel—and the contrast of his sober raiment with the uniform of his younger companion was not so pronounced as it would have been were he less obviously of the military caste.

Ensign Patrick Cartwright, of the Marines, was a young man, dark-complexioned and good-looking, of about twenty-two or twenty-three years. His features were clean cut and regular, and his body was that of an athlete, but there was a lurking devil of mischief or waywardness in his eyes that gave him the aspect of one who might be spoken of as a bit of a lad. He was listening, patiently enough, to a homily from his uncle.

You see, Patrick, you have it in you to be a young rip, a blood, a chocktaw—something a little out of hand. Your father never succeeded in sowing all the wild oats he had to sow, and your poor mother—God bless her sweet memory—was one of the wild Irish, if ever there was one. In some respects, I think, it's possibly a good thing for you that they died when you were a baby, for though you would have had the most charming of parents—they were both good follows—you'd have found your father's pace a little too hot, and your mother's sympathies demoralising.

The young man looked up, wonderingly.

How so, Uncle Jack—how could that be?

She was a good woman, your mother, but she loved a scamp, and to her, for that reason, all scamps were excusable. I don't know how many times she sheltered and helped young fellows who outraged all the conventions, or how many elopements she didn't counsel and assist. She was for ever doing some young villain a good turn—or backing him up in a bad one.

I'll wager she was ably seconded by her brother-in-law, laughed the nephew.

Nonsense. I was more than once one of her victims. She ran me into helping people I'd never have given a thought to by myself. I don't mean to help with money, altogether. It was rather standing between them and somebody's just wrath. Damme, I once came near getting cashiered over one of her proteges—a worthless one, too, if ever there was one.

A story?

No. Not to-night. Some other time, perhaps. I've too much to say to you, Pat, my boy, that cannot wait. Perhaps to-night will be the last chance that I may have. You know, my boy, you're going a long way from me—and even if you are a young devil, and an unlicked cub, and all that, you're all I've got of my own.

He laid his hand affectionately on the young man's knee, and the latter seized it and wrung it with fervor. He said nothing, but there was a look in his eyes that the older man recognised and understood.

You're all I've got, Patrick, he went on, and I was very fond of your poor father and your dear mother. So I want to have some serious talk with you this last evening here.

Anything you like, uncle. Hot and strong as you wish it.

Colonel Cartwright laughed.

I have cursed you sufficiently often for you to understand my opinion of you, haven't I? It has not been expressed flatteringly, at times. But I'm only blessing you to-night, my boy. Altogether, I think I may say I've been glad to have you. Your parents might have left me a worse legacy. You've been an entertainment at times. God knows—for I never knew a youngster who practised original sin with more originality.

And I've never heard of an uncle or a guardian who was a better fellow, sir. You've treated me like a man—ever since I wore a bib and tucker.

Well, well, Pat—there's something about a lifetime under arms that teaches you how to deal with other men. You learn, above all else, to respect manliness. And I think that, however you've fallen short of being the model boy and young man, you have, at any rate, never wanted in manliness. That's a comfort. When I think of some of the young fops whom I encounter at White's, or in the other coffee-houses, or at Ranelagh or Epsom, I am filled with thankfulness that you haven't become such as they are. Poodle-dogs, scent-bottles, fan-carriers! Pet monkeys. No, you've got the makings of a man in you—very likely of a good man. But there's a devil of a lot of good picking for the devil in you, my boy!

Well, yes. Uncle Jack—possibly. But——

The colonel held up his hand to discourage interruption, and went on.

Some things you have in your character that will develop with the years—and some things you'll have to sit on all your life. But come into my study. Will you carry in the table? Marvel's getting old, and he's a little clumsy when the light fades. Eyes beginning to go, I fancy. But he's the prince of butlers still. No one like him. Can trust him with anything. Come in, Patrick, my boy—I have something to show you—something that has to do with your future, so far as I am able to control it.

They entered the house, and passed through the hall into the library. At the farther end of this large apartment a door opened into a smaller room. An ancient serving man—Marvel, the butler—was drawing the curtains across the mullioned windows as they came in. Already he had lighted candles upon the table and in brass sconces of a curious Eastern design that were affixed to the walls. The room was bright and cosy-looking, evidently the snug sanctum of the master of the house. Side by side, above the mantelpiece, hung two portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds—the one of an exceedingly beautiful, fair-haired woman with laughing eyes, the other that of a bold-looking, handsome man in naval uniform, which might have served as a prophecy of what young Patrick Cartwright would be in another twenty years.

Ah, Marvel, the colonel addressed the old servant, making ready for us, eh? The evenings are drawing in, to be sure—'tis scarce eight o'clock yet, and already the light is failing. Ah, well, September marks the change of the seasons, and 'twon't be long before you'll have to light your fires o' nights again.

'Tis so, indeed, y'r honor, said the old man, in a tone that was serious enough to have been used in assenting to some dismal prediction of impending calamity. He turned from the window, and shuffled hesitatingly towards his master, standing by the table in the centre of the room. When he spoke his voice sank to a wheezy whisper, and the expression on his lined old face was one of sombre anxiety. Y'r honor, he half mumbled, if you please, your honor, he's back in the village again. Came there last night, sir, an' I misdoubt he's up to no good. I've made bold to tell y'r honor so soon's I've heard the news. Young Jimmy, the gardener's lad, has just been a-telling me of him. He nigh killed a man at the Red Lion yesternight.

The colonel turned and faced his butler. His nephew saw the quick change that came over the expression of his handsome face-the sudden look of anxious concern that seemed to age it quickly. It appeared to make him look years older, to have in it something of a sort of haunted fear that was altogether foreign to its usually jovial optimism and the expression of a kind of jaunty dignity that was its commonest characteristic. When he spoke, it was in a low tone of almost hopeless resignation.

Again, Marvel! Well, well. I never thought that he'd come back from America. And he's at the Red Lion? Drinking, I suppose—oh, of course, he's drinking. He'd hardly be his mother's son if he were not. You said he nearly killed someone?

Tom Beazeley, y'r honor, so young Jimmy told me. Tom Beazeley, th' poacher. They had a fight over some foolish matter—some bet, or something. An' Tom's got a broken head an' three ribs stove in, so young Jimmy says. Doctor Horne—he does take a ser'ous view o' th' case, so 'tis said, and be of opinion 'twill need all Tom's hardihood for to pull through, after such a beatin' as he's had. A powerful man, Tom, but seeming he's met a powerfuller. Ah, y'r honor, the old man's voice quavered. I knowed well th' villain 'd come back again. That sort never gets shook off for good—never. Think ye he'll come here, y'r honor?

Nothing more certain, Marvel. 'Tis his only object in coming to the village. I should not wonder if we had him here to-night. Well, you must tell him, Marvel, that I refuse to see him. If he wishes to communicate with me he must do it through my lawyers, Messrs. Partridge and Cooper, of Gray's Inn, in London. I'll not see him again. Make that clear to him. You understand?

The old man nodded, shaking his head. He hobbled to the door leading into the library, and paused, with his hand on the knob. Tears were running down his furrowed cheeks. Falteringly, he spoke before he went out.

Oh, Master Jack, Master Jack, 'twas trouble, indeed, ye planted thirty-two year agone. A bitter reapin', a bitter reapin'!

Colonel Cartwright sank into an armchair, his head bowed, and eyes staring at the carpet, whilst his nephew stood by the mantelpiece, regarding him with troubled concern. It was something he did not understand, but it was easy to see that his uncle was face to face with some old sorrowful thing that brought back bitter memories. There was a real bond of affectionate regard between the young man and his senior, and Patrick Cartwright had a helpless sense of somehow failing his uncle in a crisis. But he could not meddle with an affair that the elder man might regard as no concern of his. He must wait until his uncle took him into his confidence. So he kept silent and waited.

Presently the colonel looked up at him and spoke.

Pat, he said. 'Tis a strange thing—a strange thing, indeed, that the very matter as to which I meant to speak to you to-night should have come up in such a manner as this. Ye'll have been wondering what all this is about, who this fellow is that gives old Marvel and myself so much concern? Well, presently I'll tell you. 'Tis a story I would have had to tell you sooner or later, and, indeed, to-night I was going to take you into my confidence, even if the news that Marvel brings had not been forthcoming in this queer fashion. 'Tis the story of the trouble of my life. The skeleton in my cupboard. The bitter curse of my existence. I pray God that you may have nothing like it in yours. Sit down over there, Patrick. My tale will take some time. Yes, smoke by all means.

Pat Cartwright sat himself down in an easy chair on the other side of the table, and waited for his uncle to begin. There was nothing for him to say—though he was greatly troubled by the colonel's obvious distress, and anxious to learn what was the occasion of it. Perhaps when he understood it be might be able to do something. But there was nothing that he could do or say whilst he was altogether is the dark concerning it.

After he had filled and lit a churchwarden pipe and was settled again in his chair, his uncle began:—

Listen now, Pat, my boy, and I'll tell you the queerest story you've ever heard. Or are ever likely to hear. Even to me, sometimes, it seems to be so incredible as to be nothing else but some fantastic dream. Heavens above! I wish it were, he said with a sigh.

---

Chapter II.—The Murder in the Library.

Table of Contents

THE colonel rose from his chair, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and walked over to a corner of the room where there stood a carved oak