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

She was sobbing wildly in his arms. She was laughing; she was crying.

“You see me, Marcus. I am wicked. There is no goodness in me. And I so wanted to be good, Marcus. Audrey baa told me of a woman, a wonderful woman. Marcus, she is changing Newgate. Were we to go there now perhaps we should not recognize the place. That is what I like to think … We should not recognize it. She is a saint, this woman. How I envy her. I say to myself “That is what I might have been. And what am I… a murderess!”

He said: “Carolan, Carolan! How wild you are! What absurd things you say. You are not changed at all. You are still the same Carolan, the same sweet Carolan.”

“Please do not say my name like that. I cannot bear it. Do you not see that I will never leave him? You see what I have done. You have haunted my life; you will continue to do so. Oh, yes. I have thought of you constantly, longed for you … No, no, please do not! It is useless. I cannot be happy with him because of you. I couldn’t be happy with you, for always I would remember what he had done … or perhaps he did not do… but he is good and has a strong conscience, and he suffers just as though he had done it, because he knows why she died. She died because of what we had done, and he knows and I know it.”

He said: “Carolan, I could make you forget.”

She answered: “Oh, Marcus, I am afraid for my sweet daughter. She is headstrong, as I was. Sometimes I think that the women of my family are doomed to sorrow. There is some story about my grandmother; my great grandmother too. And then my own poor Mamma; she has told me the story of how she lost her lover to the press gang. How different her life might have been had my father not been taken by the press gang!”

Marcus held her against him, stroking her hair.

“The press gang is done with. Carolan. It ended with the wars.”

“My Katharine will never lose her lover to the press gang then!”

“Oh, Carolan, Carolan. do you not see a new world opening before us? We are going on … on to better things. You tell me even our old evil Mother Newgate is changing her manners. Slowly but surely, my Carolan. There is something here. Let us not think of our own little tragedies, darling. Look on… to our children and their children and their children … generations of them… going on and on! The press gang gone, Newgate changing! And what changes will our Katharine and Henry know in their lifetimes!”

“Marcus, you see what I mean … I want to make sure of safety for my daughter…”

“You cannot make sure of safety for anyone, my sweet Carolan.”

“But you can! You can!”

“No, darling. They will work out their own lives. We cannot interfere. People should never interfere; it is only the time in which we live that should influence us, and times are changing. Carolan. What if your mother and father were young in these days? No press gang to rum their lives. Mother Newgate is changing her face! Who knows, some time there may be no Newgate at all, no possibility of the innocent, such as you were, being caught up with the law; no need for the weak, such as I was, to break the law. Carolan, Carolan, do you not see a wonderful world lying ahead of us?”

“You talk wildly. Marcus. You always did. There is much cruelty in the world still. There always will be. How can we overcome all the poverty and cruelty and injustice?”

“Look there, Carolan! Look to our own Blue Mountains. How long ago is it that we thought there was no way across that mighty barrier? Impassable! people said. The natives told absurd stories of demons who had sworn we should never pass over their mountain. But we did, Carolan. We are across; and on the other side is a fertile country, undeveloped yet, undeveloped as the future. But it is there, and it is wonderful, and it is worth the heartbreak and the struggle to get across. That’s how I see it, Carolan, the way across the Blue Mountains to a beautiful future. Our grandchildren, Carolan … Our great great grandchildren … they will have their difficulties, as far removed from us as it is possible to be. There will always be a range of mountains to be crossed perhaps, but the struggle is worth while, Carolan, when you get to the other side.”

“They want to live beyond the Blue Mountains,” she whispered.

“Let them, Carolan! Oh, let them! Perhaps you are right: perhaps she would be wiser to marry her knight and go to London Town. But it is not for us to say. The future does not belong to us, Carolan, but to them. They must have freedom; we must give them that. You understand, Carolan. You do understand?”

“I am glad I came, Marcus.”

Do not go back, Carolan. Why should you? To a haunted house! I will make you forget there was ever such a woman as Lucille Masterman. You did not kill her! My child, you are not to blame. If she killed herself, who is to blame but herself! If he did it, let him take the blame. Come to me, Carolan. I will show you happiness.”

“You have shown me that our children must choose their own happiness, Marcus,” she said, ‘and that is a good deal. I shall think of what you said. I shall always think of it.”

“You will go back, Carolan?”

“Yes.”

“You broke my heart once. I mended it very roughly. Will you break it again?”

“No, Marcus, it was never broken. You will go back, and you will enjoy many moments in your life; sometimes you may think of me, and perhaps you will believe then that I alone could make you happy. You have not changed at all, Marcus. Your heart is strong it will not easily break. I shall go back and be the same haughty, arrogant, though sometimes gracious, Mrs. Masterman. This afternoon I have cried like a foolish girl, but that is only a part of me. I am part foolish girl, part arrogant woman. I am soft, I am a schemer. Do not ask which is really me; I do not know. I yearn to be a saint like Mrs. Fry, and I am only a murderess. I could have been the saint perhaps; I was the murderess. I was not strong enough. Events have made me what I am; they have made you what you are, Gunnar what he is. We are weak people, all of us. But now there is no press gang; Newgate is changing. There will be other changes. Marcus. And it will go on like that … always … for a hundred years, for two hundred years. However difficult the mountain range is to cross, it can always be crossed. I’ll remember. Goodbye, Marcus. Goodbye!”

She did not look back at him as she mounted her horse. She held her head high and rode away, back to the house in Sydney, back to Gunnar and her family and the memory of Lucille Masterman.

She turned after a while though and saw him. a lonely figure against the background of the Blue Mountains.