4

Captain Wynch caught a chill out hunting, which he neglected, and died of pneumonia. Jane was fretting to go to England to her mother, who was left dazed and heart-broken. She and Sim and Sophie Jane left by the same ship as the Henry Montforts. They took a red-headed nurse named Sarah. On the ship were two young men, a doctor and a lawyer, with whom Sim made acquaintance. They had come from Melbourne, but were unknown to the Montfort circle. Arthur described them as clever cads and cast doubt on Sim’s social taste. Sim spent the greater part of the day with them in the smoke-room, drinking and discussing the origin of species and the probability of the existence of the Trinity. They arrived with a sense of freedom and intellectual daring, at the conclusion that only one person was God.

Arthur did not associate with many of the other passengers. He sat between his mother and Jane, with whom he discussed the origin and failings of most people in Melbourne society. At the Cape, three young Englishmen joined the ship. With one of these, who was the grandson of a peer, Arthur became intimate.

Immediately on arriving in England, Sim and Jane left for Devonshire, where they found Mrs. Wynch more frail and gentle and ineffectual than ever. She was bewildered by her loss and by the management of the place. On their first evening at Boongah, near Buck, she sat holding Jane’s hand and would not leave her side. This adhesiveness scarcely lessened as the weeks and months passed. She insisted on Sim and Jane living with her in the Gothic mansion, and, if occasionally they went away for a visit, was so tearful at their departure, that they were compelled to make their absences as few as business and Sim’s boredom would permit.

They stayed three years at Boongah, during which Jane bore another child, a boy, who was christened Simon Wynch. In the winter Sim hunted, but for the rest of the year he was dissatisfied with life. He had no occupation nor position of his own. To the neighbours he was ‘poor Captain Wynch’s son-in-law.’ He had already made himself unpopular by one or two sharp retorts to people who were being conscientiously kind and patronizing to ‘the young Australian.’ Jane, although still devoted to him, now paid more attention to the children. They used to have one-sided arguments in their bedroom at night.

‘I’m sick of being here,’ Sim would say. ‘I’m wasting my life. I hate all these dam’ dull people.’

‘Yes, it is quiet,’ was Jane’s reply, ‘but of course, we can’t leave mama.’

‘I don’t see why I should be imprisoned.’

‘No, of course not, my dear, but what would you do?’

It always ended by Jane’s saying, ‘But what would you do?’ and Sim’s grunting and getting into bed.

In the summer he made excursions to neighbouring churches and continued his genealogical investigations. But at length he announced that he was going to London to read for the Bar.

In London he made the acquaintance of more ‘clever cads,’ whom he brought indiscriminately to stay at Boongah.

Finally he was called at the Inner Temple and there was no further excuse for his remaining in London, as he did not intend to practise and they could not afford to live there in the style which would permit of their enjoying its social amenities. Captain Wynch had left everything to his wife for her lifetime, after which it was to come to Jane. Sim would not have cared to live in London unable to associate easily with the friends of his Cousins Philip, Francis, and William, the sons of Raoul and Phillipa.

He came down to Buck and announced his intention of returning to Australia. Mrs. Wynch was so upset that she had to spend a week in bed and Sim felt as if he were bound and gagged with innumerable apron strings. He rode moodily about the park, thinking round and round the matter as he had done at Boongah Station.

‘I don’t see why my life should be sacrificed,’ he said to Jane.

But a ram in the thicket was provided by the death of Mrs. Wynch’s brother, Captain Seymour, who left a daughter, Katie, a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, forty, unmarried, and capable, and in search of a home. She was only too thankful to be made free of the Gothic halls and flesh-pots of Boongah, and Sim, with Jane and his two children, and Sarah the nurse, returned to freedom and the open spaces.