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

“She did not tell me she knew you.”

“Dear me! They do not appear to have done me justice in the Masterman household. How is your mother?”

“She is well, thank you.”

“And what brothers and sisters have you?”

“James and Martin. There is Edward too, but he is only a baby.”

“Hardly reached the status of brother yet then.”

“What?” said Katharine.

“Come here and let me look at you.”

He held out a hand and took hers; his merry eyes searched her face.

“You are doubtless hungry?” he asked.

“It seems a long time since I ate,” she told him.

“I’ll warrant it does. They are cooking some veal in there.”

“I can smell it.”

“And the smell pleases you?”

She lifted her eyes ecstatically, which made him laugh.

Henry appeared, and said: “It won’t be ready for half an hour.”

“Get a glass of something for our guest, Henry.” said his father.

“And bring me a drink too.”

Henry disappeared, and when he came back carrying a tray, he was not alone; there was a woman, a pale, thin woman with an unhappy face and beautiful hair that curled and rioted about her face as if in defiance of its unhappiness.

“Esther,” said the man and he talked as though it was a great joke ‘this is Miss Katharine Masterman, Carolan’s girl.”

Katharine wondered why the woman seemed to mind so much that she was Katharine Masterman, Carolan’s girl. Katharine stood up and curtsied. The woman said: “How… how did she get here?”

“Henry brought her. She was lost in the bush.” Katharine thought it was due to her to explain.

“I rode out and I didn’t realize how far I had come. And then I coo-eed and… Henry found me.”

“Your mother will be anxious.” The woman looked at the man.

“You could take her back now. If you did, you could get her there before dark.”

“Why, Esther,” said the man, “Miss Masterman is very hungry. It would be churlish to send her away without food.”

“Carolan will be frantic!”

“I wonder,” he said, and he looked quite cruel then.

Katharine had not thought of that. She stood up.

“I must go. Mamma will be worried.”

The man stood up. He seemed to have thrown off his laziness now, and his eyes smouldered.

He said to Katharine: “Do not worry. It is too late for you to go now. You must stay the night here. In the morning I or my son will take you back. It would be possible though to get a message to your parents that you were safe.”

She smiled. How clever of him. And how kind! For, much as she did not want Mamma worried, she did want to continue this adventure. There was more in it than being lost and found, than being hungry and smelling the good smell of roasting meat; there was more in it than meeting new people. There was something about these people that was exciting, mysterious; she sensed that as soon as the man began to talk, and more so when the woman came in. She was his wife, and Henry’s mother; he was her husband; they were like Mamma and Papa, but very different too. Papa looked at Mamma when she was in the room, as though he saw no one else; and Mamma smiled at Papa, and said that he was a very clever, busy man. But these two tried not to look at each other, and when they did look it was different somehow. Then of course there was Henry quite the most exciting of the three. The man and the woman went out and left her with Henry on the veranda.

“Have you any brothers and sisters?” she asked.

“Not real brothers and sisters.”

“How can you have not real ones?”

“You can. You can have half-brothers and sisters. They have your father, but not your mother.”

It sounded very complicated.

“I’ve got a half-sister here. She is two years old and her name is Elizabeth. She lives here; she is the daughter of the servant.”

Katharine was puzzled. The boy looked wise, and she thought he must be clever, and as she did not like to display her ignorance in front of him she asked no more questions.

The man came back, and stretched himself out in the hammock.

“She wants to go over the Blue Mountains.” said Henry.

“She believed that there are evil spirits there.” Katharine blushed, and hotly denied it. That’s just a native story,” said the man kindly.

“I know!” said Katharine.

“She didn’t… till I told her.”

“Do not be so unmannerly, Henry,” said the man.

“I am sure she knew.”

“Is it unmannerly to tell the truth?”

“Very often, my boy.”

“You’re a convict, aren’t you?” said Katharine.

“I was.”

“Were you very wicked?”

“Very!”

Katharine laughed, because it was very comical to hear a grown man say he was very wicked.

“What did you do?” she asked.

He was a wonderful talker better than Margery and his eyes danced with merriment as he talked. Never had the Old Country become so real for her. She began to see it as Marcus had seen it nearly twenty years ago. She saw clearly the cobbled streets of London, red brick buildings and old inns with their signs creaking in the wind and blistered by the sun; she saw nearby meadows and the clustering villages of Brentford and Chiswick, Chelsea and Kensington. Link boys, crossing sweepers, barefooted and hungry, and the great, riding by in their carriages; cock-fighting and the baiting of bulls and bears out at Tothill Fields; drunken people clustered round the gin shops; the bucks so gorgeously attired, the beggars with their sores and rags; pickpockets and fools; street criers; here and there a sedan chair. The London of which he talked was an exciting one, filled with exciting people. There was Mr. Sheridan and Charles James Fox in league with the profligate Prince against the half-crazy king. There was the wild Princess of Wales. It was like something out of a story book, and yet wonderfully real. He made Katharine wonder whether even Papa was such an important man compared with these gorgeously apparelled and most amazing people of London Town.

Even when they were seated round the table he went on talking. He set out to charm Carolan’s daughter, and he did so as successfully as he had charmed Carolan herself.

The meat was good and fresh, and Katharine was hungry, but it was not the food she remembered from that meal, but the talk and the lazy merry eyes of the man and the softness of his voice and the flow of his words. He could, in one sentence, make a picture full of detail. He did not hint by a word, a look or a gesture, that he was talking to a child; he made her feel important, convinced her that he enjoyed talking as much as she enjoyed listening, and he gave pleasure as naturally as he took it. His conversation was peppered with wonderful names that she was to repeat over and over to herself and remember for years to come. Seven Dials. Cripplegate. The Temple. Brooks’s and Almack’s. The Fleet. Coffee Houses. Chocolate Houses. The Blue Lion in Newgate Street. Islington. Chancery Lane. Covent Garden. The King’s Theatre. Haymarket. St. Martin’s. Turnbull Street. Chick Lane. Jack Ketch’s Warren. The Charlies. Drury Lane. Bawdy Houses. Gambling Houses. London, London, London! The Old Country.

Besides this man, his wife, Esther, and Henry, there came to the table a man named Blake, his wife May and their two children a boy and a girl; there was also Elizabeth, the little girl of two, who, Henry had said, was his half-sister, and who, when they had finished eating, sat on Marcus’s knee and watched his mouth while he talked and talked.

Esther, Katharine did not greatly care for, because she tried to stop him all the time, tried to remind him that he was talking to children, which she did not seem to realize was just what they loved to forget. She kept saying “Marcus!” in a shocked voice which seemed to irritate Henry and certainly irritated Katharine almost beyond endurance.

But he took no notice of her and went on to describe the wicked things he had done in London, how he was one of the rogues who preyed upon those ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes and carriages; and he told it so that you were on his side against the fine ladies and gentlemen, and somehow would always be on his side, whatever he did.