Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные .TXT) 📗

He told of summer. The appalling heat of houses crowded together, and the stench of decaying rubbish in the gutters. Of armies of bed-bugs that could not be kept down himself a campaigning general, a candle his weapon of rats that lived on the stores in the warehouses near the river and who overflowed into the house.

The candles flickered. They would be out in a moment. She had no idea of time, nor did she care. She thought of Lucille, sleeping her drugged sleep in the nearby room, who knew nothing of this man’s life before he had married her; and if he had told her, what would she understand of stinking gutters, of rats and bugs, of a praying father and a drunken mother!

She saw his face, set, determined, and it was easy to see the young Gunnar there, the boy who made up his mind, as he looked across the ill-smelling river, that he would escape.

“You do not wish to go back to England, Gunnar?”

“No!” he said fiercely.

“No!”

“Nor II England for you is poverty, chilblains, and pumping water from a pump in the yard. I know. The water used to freeze, and it was slippery in the yard. You could have cried with the cold, if you had been anyone but yourself, Gunnar. You would never cry at anything; however bad it was, you would only say “I shall escape from this.”

He said: “Why did you not come here ten years ago? Why did I not find you here when I came?”

“You would have married me … a convict! Why, you married Major Gregory’s daughter. It was a good match. It gave you a position in this town.”

He flinched. Now he was uneasy. A moment ago he had forgotten Lucille. Now he must remember she was here, in this very house, a room dividing them.

She wished she had not said that, but she was tactless by nature, and she wanted to know him absolutely.

“I have made you sad.” She moved nearer to him.

“I am sorry. How can you know what you would have done?”

He said reproachfully: “Surely you know that if it had been possible to marry you, I would have asked you to before … before…”

“Before this happened!” she said, and she felt on safe ground now, knowing her man.

“Tell me the rest,” she said.

“When I was nearly eleven, I decided to get away. I felt grown up. My sister, who was nine, could look after the little ones. I hated the lodging-house; it was getting lower and lower. My stepmother was almost always drunk. My father wanted to teach me how to be a preacher; and I saw that if I followed in his footsteps there was nothing for me but poverty.”

“So you ran away, Gunnar?”

“Not until I knew where I would run to. I had a job offered me in an inn in Holborn, and there I was a pot-boy. I was there for a year; then I took up with a travelling salesman. We went about the country with a packhorse; we sold all manner of things, and when I had learned how it was done, I thought how much better it would be if, instead of working for someone else, I worked for myself. So I saved money and I bought goods which I sold again. I was frugal. I never paid for a bed in summer;

I slept under hedges and haystacks and in alleys, and so I saved money.”

She compared him with Marcus. Marcus, choosing the reckless way, the way that led to trouble; Gunnar, choosing the safe and sure road that led to success. Marcus picked pockets and cheated; Gunnar made plans and went without food and bedding. Marcus was a convict, clever and cunning though he might be; Gunnar was a successful man. She had been right to hitch her wagon to this steady star. But she wanted Marcus. She wanted his merriment, his quick wit, his knowledge of life, his passionate eyes and his caressing hands. She half turned away from the man beside her, sick of the whole business, wishing she could go back to that moment when she had stood at his door with the candle in her hand.

She was not listening to him. He had made his little successes and had decided to come to Sydney. He had discovered the government were willing to help men possessed of some small capital who wished to emigrate to New South Wales. There was more hope for a rapid rise there than in the old country, where a man must have, in addition to determined ambition, a string of noble ancestry behind him. So he waited till a passage could be found for him, free of charge on a store ship, and out he came. And the rest was simple, for men such as he was were needed in New South Wales, and his flair for organization had stood him in good stead. He had risen rapidly; he had married Major Gregory’s daughter; he had a fine house in Sydney; he was accepted everywhere. He was Masterman of Sydney.

“It is interesting,” she said, ‘particularly to me. You see, you went gradually up, which is so much more satisfactory than going down as I did.” Briefly she told him the story of her life. He was shocked by the conduct of the squire more so than he was by the injustice of her and her mother’s being thrown into Newgate.

“My poor child!” he said.

“How cruelly life has treated you … and to send you here… to such a monster!”

But she would not have it.

“Please!” With a pretty gesture she laid her fingers on his lips “I believe you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“My poor child … My dear child!”

“Gunnar,” she said, ‘you have no children. Did you want children?”

He did not answer, but held her tightly against him.

“I too,” she said, and she thought, If I had a child, I should cease to think of Marcus, cease to think of Everard. A child… a child of my own! And a child should have a father to whom it could look up. Not a lecher like the squire; not a weak man like Darrell; not an attractive philanderer like Marcus. It was not men like that who made the best fathers. It was the calm men, the practical men, the puritans who would perhaps be a little stern, but firm and wise and kindly.

She wanted to show him how happy he might have been had he, ten years ago, met Carolan Haredon in Sydney instead of Lucille Gregory. How wicked I have grown, thought Carolan. Did Newgate do this to me? Or was the evil there, waiting to grow, and was the Newgate climate such as to nourish it?

He was saying: There is something else I want to tell you, Carolan. You will despise me for this, you who are so truthful and honest.”

“What! You have been dishonest then?”

“My name is really Morton. I changed it when I came out here.”

She said soberly: “Masterman is a good name. I like it, and it suits you. Why should we not choose our own names! It will be a good name to pass on to your children.”

“I shall never have any,” he said. He added desperately: “You must go now, Carolan. You see, it is so difficult, and it was so wrong…”

She said: “Oh, my darling, it is not so easy for me.” And she saw how the endearment delighted him and charmed him. who seemed unable to speak them himself.

“You must go,” he said, ‘you must!”

She moved nearer to him; she put her arms round his neck and pressed her body against his.

“Carolan!” he said.

“My dear…”

He must know that it was not for him to say she should go;

from now on, she would command. She liked him, this master of men. He appealed to her senses, if not to her heart, and her senses were important to her; she had gone too long unloved. She could accept his caresses, even if, as she did so, she might dream of Marcus. To see him, the good man, falling deeper and deeper into what must seem to him unbridled sin, stirred in her that bitter contempt of law and order which Newgate had nurtured in her.

Now he was throwing away every one of those good resolutions he had made but a second ago.

“Gunnar. Please, my dear, do not go away tomorrow. I could not bear that.”

“No,” he said fervently.

“I cannot go. Of course I cannot go tomorrow… Just another day

…”