Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean (читать книги бесплатно полностью без регистрации сокращений .txt) 📗

He came to the kitchen often. He would look through the window and he would flirt a little with Esther and Margery, and sometimes Jin. He was cool to Carolan, but in her newly found power she knew that she could dispel that coldness with a glance. She, in her turn, would flirt with Tom Blake, and he, poor man, was only too happy to be flirted with.

She was acting for Marcus, he for her. That was how she saw it. She was angry, seeing him smile at Esther. She wanted him to stop this foolish game, to beg her to give him her favours. Imperious as a queen, she was, for every time she saw the master of the house she was more and more aware of the devastating effect of her charms. On such a man! she marvelled. How much stronger must be the desire of Marcus!

And still he flirted and philandered, played that game he knew so well how to play; and there must be occasions when she was with the mistress and he came and flirted with Esther.

Margery looked on and laughed, and rocked herself with laughter. Ha ha! Mistress Carolan. What airs you give yourself since the mistress took you up. Pride, even for a little beauty such as you are, goeth before a fall, so I’ve heard. And Margery chuckled and slapped herself and rocked herself, waiting for the : fall. For James’s visits were less and less frequent, and she suspected that gipsy Jin of trafficking with him in the yard. Stolen opportunities … she knew how sweet they could be, and a woman has to do something I The climax of Carolan’s triumph came with her possession of the green frock. It was an afternoon frock, sober enough, but becoming.

“I never liked it,” said Mrs. Masterman.

“I am too ill for green. Your hair looks really red beside it. My poor hair is falling out; that is a sign of great weakness.”

“How I should love to wear it!” Carolan’s eyes went to the chest of drawers, and Mrs. Masterman’s followed her gaze. Caro-Ian saw the thoughts come into her eyes. Carolan was more than a servant, a confidante, a friend. They shared secrets; she owed Carolan something surely. But what would he say? He hated his rules to be broken. A convict in an expensive green dress! But she was too tired to think of him.

“You must have it, Carolan. After all, I never wear it.”

“Oh, thank you, M’am. How kind you are.” Carolan hugged the dress and skipped over to the workbasket in a corner of the room.

“What animal spirits!” said Mrs. Masterman.

“How I wish I could feel so pleased with life, and all for a cast-off dress!”

“Shall I give you your pills now?”

“No, I think I will have a draught of the tonic.”

Carolan poured it out, her fingers itching to get to work on the dress. She smoothed the pillows. She picked up the dress and set to work. She let it out a little; she lengthened it. And all the time she talked soothingly to Mrs. Masterman of her grandmother’s illnesses. For an hour she worked on the dress; she slipped out of her own and tried it on. The change was effective. Never again, thought Carolan, shall I wear that hideous convict’s yellow.

Mrs. Masterman began to be nervous.

“What will the master say?”

“Do you think he will notice?” asked Carolan, slyly.

“Perhaps he will not,” said Mrs. Masterman.

“Read to me a little, Carolan.”

She read, but she did not know what she was reading; she was longing to get down to the kitchen, to flaunt her new dress. Margery’s face! Jin’s, Poll’s, Esther’s! She hoped Marcus would look in at the window. She laughed inwardly. Life was turning out to be quite amusing after all. What other woman, arriving on the convict ship, had found such an easy way of life as she had! What others would be wearing a green afternoon frock such as this! Some of those in the brothels perhaps. What a life! She did not need to use her body; she could use her brains.

Mr. Masterman came in while she was reading. He often came in while she was there. He saw her in the green dress, her red hair falling about her face. She smiled at him demurely, yet with a challenge daring him to suggest it was not in order for her to wear it. He said to his wife in his clear, pseudo-cultured voice: “How are you today?”

“Much the same I’m afraid, thank you.”

“The Jenkinsons want us to dine there tomorrow if you are well enough.”

“I rather doubt that I shall be.”

“I thought so.”

He stood by the bed. Carolan busied herself with her sewing, but she was aware of his attention focused on her, and she knew that the words were spoken automatically; he was not thinking of the woman on the bed, because he could not tear his thoughts and eyes away from her.

He went out.

Mrs. Masterman said: “He did not say anything. I do not believe he would notice anything outside business. He is a most unobservant man!” Carolan was silent.

“Although,” went on her mistress, “I did think I saw him looking in your direction rather curiously.” Carolan laughed. That was the supreme moment of. triumph.

She was the real mistress of the house; mistress of them both if she cared to be.

The girl, Margery told herself, was intolerable. What airs! Who ever heard the like? A convict, not three months in the house, and riding rough-shod over all! She had come to giving orders in the kitchen!

“Mrs. Masterman will not like the table laid this way. Mrs. Masterman hates dirty glasses!” Mrs. Masterman this and Mrs. Masterman that! Then Mr. Masterman … “Mr. Masterman is asking some friends tonight. This is the menu.”

Who was in charge of this kitchen? That was the question Margery wanted to ask.

Once it was not Mrs. Masterman nor yet Mr. Masterman, but II “I cannot have these flowers any longer in Mrs. Masterman’s room. The water positively stinks!”

The airs! The graces! Wearing the mistress’s cast-off clothes. Oh, she had bewitched the mistress completely. But what was wrong with the master? Why didn’t he put down the foot of authority?

If you ask me, said Margery into her glass of grog-for whom else had she to talk to, with Jin, the slut, for ever creeping out to the backyard for a word or something more with James, and Poll with her slavering mouth and her doll, little more than an idiot, and Esther walking on air because she was in love? -if you ask me, he’s only too glad to quieten the mistress; he’d put up with anything, even a convict servant, flaunting all over the house.

Oh, but she was lovely! So lovely it did something to your inside to watch her. Made you think of years and years back, and wish you were young again. And what was the -good of getting angry, wouldn’t most women have been the same?

Funny it was to see what love did to people. Herself and James, Jin and James, Poll and her doll, Esther with that Marcus, and Tom Blake with Carolan.

People do funny things when their emotions are aroused -didn’t she know it! She hadn’t known life and known men for nothing. And when you have been young and full of adventure, it comes hard to take a back seat. Fun too to try your hands at working things… not necessarily the way you want them to go, but just poking about here and there … a jerk at this one, a push at that… It gives a feeling of being something more important than just an old woman taking a back seat by the chimney corner, grumbling into her grog.

Pride goeth before a fall, Miss Carolan, and you’re mighty proud; the proudest piece I’ve ever clapped eyes on. Oh, but so lovely to the eyes, soft skin and budding beauty, and eyes of green behind whose haughtiness passion could burn and tenderness glow. It wasn’t surprising that Marcus loved her, and Tom Blake loved her, and the mistress had got interested in her. But she was walking with her head in the clouds, the silly puss, who thought herself so sly, she didn’t watch her steps. You had to watch your step all the time in life. When you were eighteen and so beautiful your head got tilted too high so that you couldn’t see the ground, you didn’t know so much, you weren’t so very wise and the trouble lay in the fact, that you thought yourself the wisest soul on earth. Now Marcus, he wanted her sure enough, for all his goings on with the other, but he was a man who could love halt a dozen women at once, and that sort has to be watched. And Tom Blake, he might be the faithful sort, but he wasn’t her sort; she’d tire of him in a month, that’s if she ever liked him enough at the start. And the graces of a mistress are like a house built on shifting sands … there right enough one minute, and gone the next.