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

“Audrey! Audrey! Come here.”

Audrey came and stood by the bed.

“Bring a chair, Audrey, and sit down. I would hear more of this Mrs. Fry.”

Audrey kept telling the story of her coming. It was like a miracle. Dead silence, and her standing there. An angel. And she picked up the little child. And he was naked and his face was half eaten away … Only those who had lived in Newgate could understand that that was a miracle. Carolan, her face pressed against her pillow, saw it clearly, as though she had been there when it happened.

Audrey stumbled over her words, but she gave a picture of a changing Newgate. People who were taken in now did not suffer quite so intensely, as Carolan had suffered. Change had been worked by an angel in a Quaker gown. Audrey talked of the readings, of the sewing; how it was possible to earn money while you were in Newgate. There had been the visitation of this angel, and she had spread her wings over the prison and given her loving care to those sad people.

Tell me about her! Tell me about her! What does she look like?”

“I couldn’t say … She’s different … M’am. That’s all you know…”

“Different? Different from me? Different from you?”

“She makes you feel you ain’t all bad, M’am. She makes you feel you might have a chance.” A chance? A chance?

that’s how she makes you feel.

“What sort of chance?”

“I dunno. Just a chance She’s different.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Not like you, M’am. Not that sort of beautiful. She’s different … I dunno. She makes you feel you’ve got a chance.”

“Why did you not tell me about her before?”

“I dunno, M’am. You didn’t ask. She come to us, Ma’m, when we was waiting on the ship, to sail, and she talked to us … she talked lovely.”

“What did she say?”

“I dunno. She made you feel you wasn’t all bad. She made you feel you’d got a chance … And it was ‘cos of her we’d come down closed, they said. She wanted us closed in. She said it ought to be …” Carolan said: “Leave me now, Audrey. I want to sleep. I have a headache.” And Audrey went.

It was all coming back vividly. The arrival in Newgate, the fight, the talk, the smell, the ride to Portsmouth. Mamma, Millie, Esther so young and pure, praying in that foul place and the whale-oil lamp flickering in the opening high in the wall. The ship. The deck. Hot morning, and coloured birds of brilliant plumage, and the horrible man with the eyeglass, and Gunnar… What was the good of having lived I wanted to be a saint. I wanted to be like Mrs. Fry. I would have gone there; I would have been unafraid. I would have picked up the little child. I… I… I could have made them feel there was still a chance. But what have I done with my life? What indeed!

She began to shiver.

“You should have been a pioneer. You could have been, Carolan!” No, Esther, no! I should have passed by on the other side of the road.

But I wasn’t all bad. I should have been a good wife to Everard. I should have cared for the poor and I should have understood their troubles and helped them. Perhaps if I had married Everard I should have been different. I might have been good -not wicked. I might even have been like you, Mrs. Fry.

“Marcus!” she cried.

He leaped from his saddle and tied his horse to the tree. She noticed his hands; they were brown with the weather.

He said: “I knew you would come!” with all the old confidence, and as though years had not passed since their last meeting.

“Carolan! Carolan! Why, you have scarcely changed at all!”

“Rubbish!” she said.

“I am years older. I am the mother of six children.”

“Well, Carolan, Carolan!”

She remembered his old habit of repeating her name; it still had power to move her.

This is a great day in my life!”

The old flattery that meant nothing. He would flatter old Margery just because he could not help flattering women.

“Are you glad to see me, Carolan? Do you find me changed?” He had come forward; he had taken her hands; his eyes were older, with experience, with weather; but the charm persisted.

“Naturally! Since I have come a fair ride to see you. But we did not come to talk of ourselves.”

“Did we not?” He was still holding her hands.

“Not such an uninteresting subject! Carolan, how has life been treating you, Carolan?”

“Very well, thanks. You too, I think.”

Very badly, Carolan, since I lost you.”

“Oh, Marcus, you are too old for that sort of talk, and I am too wise to listen to it. It is of our children that we must talk.”

“My Henry,” he said, ‘and your Katharine. What a sly old joker life is, Carolan! Would you have believed eighteen years ago, when we looked forward to our happiness, that one day we should meet in this wild spot to discuss the marriage of my son to your daughter?”

She was determined not to fall into that reckless mood which he was trying to draw round her like a web. She felt strong in her pride and her dignity and her knowledge that she was Mrs. Masterman of Sydney.

“It certainly does seem ironical, but as it happens to be a fact, shall we say what we came to say? Why did you want to see me?”

To beg you to put no obstacles in our children’s way, Carolan. They are so young, and the young are so lovely, so helpless. It would be unbearable if they too were to lose their happiness. Could history repeat itself so cruelly? We must prevent that happening.”

“You are still the same,” she said, angry without quite knowing why.

“You talk, and your words must not be taken seriously. You are suggesting, of course, that we lost our happiness; we did not. We are both well pleased with ourselves.”

“You found perfect happiness, Carolan?”

“Oh, let us stop this absurd, sentimental talk! Who ever found perfect happiness yet?”

“But if you cannot find it, Carolan, it is something to think you see it in your future. I thought that, Carolan, eighteen years ago in old Margery’s kitchen.”

“When you decided to marry Esther? How is Esther?”

Real pain seemed to come into his eyes, but of course he was an adept at endowing each mood with a semblance of truth.

“No,” he said, ‘not then! It was when I thought I should marry you. Oh, Carolan, Carolan, what a witch you were. You bewitched me. I had to obey you. I dreamed of you all day and all night. I believe I never stopped dreaming of you.”

She looked beyond him to the mountains. She thought of them as Katharine’s mountains, because Katharine had loved to talk of them when she was a little girl.

“Listen, Marcus,” she said.

“I love my daughter, more than anyone in the world, I love her, and I am very unhappy because she is angry with me. She is going away from me. If she were your daughter, would you not want the best possible for her?”

“Indeed I would, Carolan.”

“Well, understand this. There is a man who would marry her. He has everything money, position. He is kind and tolerant, and, I think, very much in love with her. He can take her to England; he can make her happy. But she is obsessed, and it is your son who has obsessed her. She sees no happiness but with him, and I will not have my daughter spoil her life!”

“Spoil her life, Carolan!” he said earnestly.

“Why should she spoil her life?”

“You know the life as well as I do. What is it, for a woman? She would have to live in the wilds; she would meet scarcely anyone. I can see her in London, sparkling for she is only budding and will bloom gloriously. London is her proper setting. Money… Position… that is what I want for my daughter. How do we know what will happen here? This is a new country, heard stories of the terrible things that can happen on lonely stations. Men are more desperate here; laws are less rigid. No no! She would very soon forget your son. Oh, I imagine he is very like you were once; I imagine he knows how to charm a young girl. He will hurt her, I know he will… as you hurt me, as you must have hurt Esther and your Lucy and Clementine Smith and God knows who else. I want her to have security. Who knows better than I what can happen to a woman who is unprotected and …”