There were twelve hundred people in Sydney Cove, but, with the Abbotts sent to the secondary settlement at Norfolk Island, there was one woman, and one only, whose company was suitable for the wife of an officer: Mary Johnson, the wife of the parson.
Lord, but Mary was dull. Ignorant, narrow, and with a habit of bringing the Almighty into every sentence that was utterly wearying. Time spent with Mrs Johnson could offer neither profit nor pleasure.
Yet she was a good woman, and so was her husband, the two of them ministering to the sick from their own supplies and never despairing—in spite of all evidence to the contrary—of being able to open the hearts of the prisoners to salvation.
In their company I felt sinful, cold-hearted, selfish. When I mocked them in my mind I was ashamed. I recognised that their faith gave them a comfort I had never known, and that my mockery sprang out of a complicated feeling that I see now was very like envy.
Mr Macarthur had no time for the windy parson. Richard Johnson knew no Greek and little Latin, spoke the broad dialect of the Yorkshire farmer he had once been. Not a gentleman, then, and so of no account to my husband.
– Oh, my dear wife, he said, seeing me set out to pay a call on Mary. This is indeed a high price for our sojourn in New South Wales. Had I known the Reverend and Mrs Johnson were lying in wait, I might have reconsidered the plan!
He thought this excessively diverting.