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

“My dear Carolan… my dear… how fierce you are!” He had liked it and tried not to like it. Marcus would never try not to like any affection she had to give him; he would offer passion for passion.

I am really very wicked I thought Carolan, and remembered her mother’s procession of lovers. But she was different from her mother; her mother would have so willingly made the sacrifice for the sake of others just now … and would have been able to believe it was a sacrifice. Carolan must see the truth. She tried not to. She thought-How can I let them suffer here in this hell when there is escape for them! How can II And she fell to shivering.

Esther leaned over her.

“Are you well? Have you the ague… or fever? Why, you are hot and yet you are shivering!”

“I am all right!” snapped Carolan.

One of the turnkeys came in; he was jangling a bunch of keys, and grinning.

He said: “This way… the four of you. This way Carolan leaped to her feet.

“What do you mean? Where are you taking us?”

“Orders is orders,” said the turnkey, and there was a hint of respect in his voice, which was not lost on the listeners. Carolan saw looks of envy leap up in several faces. It was true, they were thinking; all that Kitty had told them was true; they were of the quality, these people! But most of all their envy was of Esther who had been chosen as their friend and was now sharing their good fortune. One woman sat down in a corner and wailed in her anguished jealousy like an animal in distress.

“Come on,” said the turnkey, still respectful.

“This way!”

They went along corridors and up staircases. They were shown into a room like the one where they had dined with Marcus. There was a bed in it … and rushes on the floor. It looked luxurious after the Common Side.

“Here you stay,” said the turnkey.

“Gentleman’s orders!”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket.

“Gentleman says I was to give you this,” he said, and handed it to Carolan.

She took it and read:

Of course I hoped you would submit to temptation. But you did not imagine that I would let you all stay in that place, did you? Come and dine with me tomorrow. Now you shall see what a good heart beats under my villainous exterior. Ask the turnkey for writing materials and write a note to your parson. He will see that it is dispatched.

William Henry.

Kitty said: “That is from Marcus?”

“William Henry, he calls himself now,” said Carolan. She added petulantly: “How can we be expected to get used to this continual change of names!”

“My dear, you sound quite cross; what has come over you? This is luxury. A bed! I declare I long to lie on it and rest my poor leg.”

“He says if I write a note it will be delivered … I am going to write to Everard.” She said to the turnkey: “Will you please bring me pen and paper?” The turnkey nodded and disappeared immediately.

“What a wonderful man he is!” said Kitty. She lay back on the bed.

“This is heaven! This is comfort! My poor leg… it is throbbing dreadfully.”

“I will ask for water to bathe it. and a bandage, Mamma. It seems that nothing is too much for these people to do for Marcus’s money!”

Esther looked at her strangely.

“You talk as though you hate him.”

“What! Hate our benefactor. Lie down on the bed, Esther. Enjoy the luxury; I shall when I have written my letter. Look Millie, if you lie along the foot, the rest of us can lie the other way. A bit of a tight squeeze, but what luck … a real bed. Esther, why do you not lie down? Why do you not try our new bed?”

“You look strange. Did you drink too much of your friend’s wine? There is a flush about your face. Carolan, are you all right?”

“I am quite all right. I am not tipsy either! Ah! Here come my pen and paper. Now hear me ask for water and a bandage. I can give orders now because I have a friend named William Henry … and he has money…”

It was some time before Carolan joined them on the bed. She had written to Everard; she and Esther had bathed and bandaged Kitty’s leg; Esther had knelt down by the bed and thanked her God for this newly acquired luxury. Carolan lay very still; she was cramped, and it was impossible to move without disturbing the others. Millie was snoring; Kitty was breathing deeply; Esther, Carolan believed, was awake.

“Esther!” she breathed.

“You do not sleep.”

Esther’s voice came to her in the darkness.

“It is the unaccustomed comfort. The bed is so soft… I am so used to hard planks.”

“Why do you cry, Esther?”

“Because it is so wonderful. Because I have prayed for something like this to happen.”

There was a silence, then Esther said: “He is very kind, your friend. He is a good man, though he tries so hard to pretend he is not.”

“He is a thief!” said Carolan.

“He is a rogue… Do not forget that. He was not brought to this place wrongfully.”

“But Carolan, you have said that no one should be brought to a place like this whatever their crime. You said it. Then he has been brought here wrongfully.”

“Hush!” said Carolan.

“You will wake the others.” She tried to sleep, but she could not. She lay there, cramped.

uneasy, thinking of Marcus.

It was stiflingly hot in the women’s quarters. When Carolan had stood at the top of the ladder and peered down into the darkness below, she had felt sick with hopelessness and terror. The women’s quarters consisted of double tiers of bunks roughly divided into berths; and sharing Carolan’s was her mother, Esther, a crippled girl of twelve and a middle-aged woman. The little girl had cried intermittently ever since they had come aboard; she refused to talk to anyone, and would hide her face in her hands, peering through her fingers, if spoken to, suspicious and defiant. The woman had been drunk all the time the ship lay at anchor; gin had been smuggled in for her; now the ship had set sail and she no longer had her gin, she was either quarrelsome or over-friendly. She sang lewd songs for hours at a stretch; and in close confinement with this woman, Carolan knew that she, her mother and Esther must spend the next months. Millie they had not seen since leaving Newgate. Her sentence had been the same as Carolan’s seven years transportation but she had been sent to another ship. Poor Millie! It was to be hoped she would not suffer too deeply. Carolan thought of her often, hating herself, for it seemed to her that never would she be able to forget that she had been the chief instrument in bringing trouble to these people.

But even in the depth of misery there is some comfort to be had. They were all together she, her mother and Esther and it might so easily have happened that they would be parted. She believed, though she was not altogether sure, that Marcus was aboard this ship. Marcus she had told him that never, never could she think of him as anyone but Marcus, to which he had replied characteristically: “What’s in a name? As long as you continue to think of me, what matters the label?” Marcus had been sentenced to transportation for life, Kitty for fourteen years, and Esther, like herself, to seven.

She would clench her hands and think of the mockery of the trial, the weariness of the court, its automatic and careless sentences. It is so much easier to say “Guilty!” than “Not Guilty!” And who is to care, save a poor prisoner of no significance whatever?

Always there would stand out in her memory the ride to Portsmouth. Chained, dirty not Carolan Haredon surely, this creature, whose red hair, once so sleek and shining, was matted and filthy! Carolan, who had danced in a green dress at her first ball, now a grotesque scarecrow, her thin body hung about with rags. The van had been open and crowds in the street had watched its progress. They laughed; they pointed; they jeered at the van’s most miserable cargo.

She had prayed then she who had vowed never to pray again.