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

“Mamma!” cried Katharine; and then Mamma saw who it was behind the curtains, and the colour came back to her face, and she came nearer, and Katharine did not know whether she was very, very angry or not.

“Did you think I was a ghost?” said Katharine.

“What nonsense!” retorted Mamma.

“There are no ghosts.”

“You looked very frightened.”

“You were peeping out at me, you bad girl!” Mamma’s voice was soft and loving, not as though she thought Katharine was a bad girl at all; so Katharine stood on the bed and put her arms round Mamma’s neck, and Mamma hugged her suddenly and fiercely, and when Mamma did that Katharine loved her more than anyone in the world. It meant that Mamma loved her best too, even though she was not a boy and everybody wanted boys.

“Katharine, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the schoolroom?”

“Because the boys are doing dictation, and I am studying in my own room.”

Mamma raised her eyebrows, and when she did that she did it so funnily that it always made Katharine laugh.

“And I came downstairs and when I got to the first floor I thought I wanted to have a look at it.”

“Katharine, you are always prowling about the first floor.

What is prowling?” , “Well… just going there and peeping about. Why?

“I don’t know,” lied Katharine, because somehow it was impossible to talk of the ghost of the First Wife to Mamma.

“You shouldn’t do things without knowing why you do them.”

“Do grownups always know why they do things?”

Carolan, shaken more than she cared to admit to herself, smiled at this disconcerting daughter who had evidently heard some gossip about these rooms … possibly about Lucille. What? And how could one ask a child without making it seem very important? Was she to be haunted all her life?

“I do not think they do, always.”

Katharine brought her knees up to her chin, and rolled about on the bed that had been Lucille’s This was delightful. This was delicious. A tate-d-tate with the most exciting of all grownups. Mamma!

“Why do they do them if they do not know why?”

“Because they are stupid.”

Stupid? So grownups were stupid as well as children. It was exciting; surely there was nothing you could not ask Mamma when she talked like that. Mamma was unlike herself today.

“Why is it so quiet here, Mamma … on this floor, I mean? Why doesn’t Margery like coming here … even in daylight?”

“What?” said Mamma sharply.

“Margery told you that!”

“She didn’t tell me. She just doesn’t. Why, she would even bring Edward … Edward … rather than come alone. Edward wouldn’t know what to do if he saw a ghost. I don’t suppose he even knows what a ghost is!”

Mamma stood up suddenly. The dignified Mamma, grownup now, no longer ready to share a confidence.

“You are very silly, Katharine. If Edward knows nothing of ghosts he is wiser than you, for there are no ghosts, and let me hear no more of this foolishness. It is time you went back to your lessons. It is cold in here.”

“But Mamma, I am boiling… It is hot!”

“It is cool after the rest of the house,” said Mamma, and Katharine noticed that her hands were very cold.

“Come along,” said Mamma, and pulled her off the bed quite roughly. And then Mamma’s mood changed. Mamma did change quickly all the time.

“What about a pick-a-back?” Katharine leaped onto the bed, and Mamma presented her back, and she put her arms round Mamma’s neck and Mamma ran with her out of the room. Katharine was shrieking with laughter.

“Now, back to your room at once! And see that you learn your lessons.” Mamma started up the stairs with her.

“Miss Kelly is in a bad mood today,” said Katherine.

“It is because I dreamed it was Christmas, and that made her remember about her brother in Van Diemen’s Land, because he will never, never spend Christmas with her again!”

“Be kind to Miss Kelly, because she has been unhappy.”

“You told me that before. I am kind to her. I see that the boys are too.”

Mamma picked her up suddenly and they ran up the rest of the stairs just as though, thought Katharine, Mamma was afraid someone would catch them if they did not hurry.

It was a queer morning.

Mamma had dinner with them because Papa was not at home, and Edward spilled the contents of his plate into his lap.

Then Miss Kelly said that Edward deserved to be whipped, or at least to go without his dinner, which set Edward crying. But Mamma comforted him: she said it was not Edward’s fault, and people should never be blamed unless the wrong things they did were their own faults.

Mamma took Edward onto her lap and fed him with a spoon so that it was as though he had done something clever instead of naughty.

Then followed the drowsy afternoon. Mamma slept; so did Edward. Martin and James went off together. That left Katharine to herself.

She went down to the kitchen. She liked the kitchen in the afternoon. Margery usually dozed in her chair, and it was while dozing that Margery could be relied on to be even more indiscreet than usual. Poll always washed the kitchen floor in the afternoon. Katharine liked to watch her mop swamping the stones.

“Hello, young mischief!” said Margery, She was sitting there, her knees apart, a fat hand on each knee. Amy washed the dishes; Poll was getting ready to start on the floor.

“I dreamed it was Christmas,” said Katharine.

“Glad I’ll be when that’s all over! There was never anything for making work like Christmas. I’d rather have twenty men about the house than Christmas.”

“Twenty is rather a lot.” said Katharine, pulling a chair close to Margery’s.

“I’d manage ‘em,” said Margery with a wink.

“And keen ‘em in order every man jack of ‘em!”

That was where Margery differed from Miss Kelly. Miss Kelly dispelled illusion; Margery developed it.

“Would you make them do all the work, Margery?”

“That I would!”

“Mop the floor and peel potatoes?”

“You bet I would.”

“Then what would Amy and Poll do?”

“They’d run round after the men give “em half a chance! Not that I’d say they was the sort to attract men neither of ‘em!”

“Wouldn’t you, Margery?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Katharine knew about Poll’s baby; she had got that out of Margery.

“And don’t you let on to your Ma or your Papa that I’ve told you,” she had said.

“Why not, Margery?”

“Because it ain’t right you should know such things.”

“Why Margery?”

“You being only a child.”

“How long will it be before I can know things like that?”

“Well, that I can’t say. There’s some as picks it up sharp, and there’s some as don’t. You … being your mother’s daughter… There! Me tongue’s running away with me.”

At the time Katharine had been so intrigued by the thought of Margery’s tongue running away with her, that she had forgotten the real issue. That was like Margery; you had to watch her or she would draw a red herring across the path, which afterwards you would discover was not worth pursuit. But in spite of this trick of Margery’s she had many unguarded moments. Poll had murdered her baby because it wasn’t right that she should have a baby. Amy had been sent out for hiding a highwayman. Amy was middle-aged and cheerful. She didn’t talk very much about herself, but Margery liked to talk about her. Katharine heard quite a lot about Amy; how she had loved the highwayman, but how he was a rollicking, roistering type of fellow who had just made use of her. and when he was hanged by the neck, poor Amy had been sent for transportation for seven years for letting him use her house to hide himself and his plunder.

Margery could give her pictures of the Old Country, that were far more real than anything Miss Kelly taught. Miss Kelly taught words; Margery taught life. Margery could be coaxed into telling of journeys with one of her husbands, a pedlar. Could there be anything more desirable than to be the wife of a pedlar?