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

Jin did not answer, and Margery pulled at her skirt and chuckled throatily.

“Where do you keep it today, Jin? In your pocket, eh? There it is; take a look at it. She carries that knife around with her. and she’d as like bring it out as look at you. That’s what gipsy blood does for you. I know. I knew a gipsy once; he come to out door, a fine-looking man, flash as they made “em. Baskets he had for sale, and he asked me to cross his hand with silver.

“Lady,” he says, “there’s a dark man coming into your life. You are going to be glad of this dark man, lady!” And believe me, I was … curate’s being a bit tame now and then. Talk about temper, he’d got one. They was encamped near the cottage for days. I saw a lot of him. And his wife carried a knife around, just like Jin. You’ve got to keep clear of people what carries knives. I’m not so sure of what Mr. Masterman mightn’t say if he was to know you carried that knife around.”

“I ain’t hurting no one,” muttered Jin.

“It’s my knife, ain’t it?”

“No!” said Margery.

“It ain’t. It’s Mr. Masterman’s. Everything here is Mr. Masterman’s. You and Poll and these two here. Why, if he liked…”

“I did not know,” said Carolan, ‘that he had bought us body and soul.”

Margery rocked backwards and forwards, laughing.

“Don’t it make you laugh, Jin? The way she talks, eh? Body and soul! Tell you who she reminds me of? The mistress. Talks just like that, the mistress does. And every time I looks at the -poor lady I says to myself: “Poor Mr. Masterman!” You would think … but there you are, men is funny creatures, no mistake. Well Miss, do you think we’re going to suit your ladyship here? Speak up, lady. We’ve got to suit you, haven’t we; now whether you was to suit us, that ain’t no importance at all, it ain’t!”

“Well,” said Carolan, ‘you asked for my opinion; I have given it.”

“I say, Jin, I do like to hear her talk. You’d think she was out for politics, not thieving. Here, you! Why don’t you say something?”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Esther.

“How do you like us?”

“I… I think I am going to like it here.”

“This is good, this is! A pair of “em! Now my curate, he spoke soft and gentle just like her… but soft and gentle, rough as you like, they’re all the same between the sheets. That’s men for you! Women’s the same, I bet! Where’s Poll? Poll! Polly! Come here and meet your new friends.”

Poll came from the sink, wiping her hands. She was very thin and pale and ugly; her nose was large, her eyes small, and her mouth was crooked; her teeth were uneven and brown.

“Poor Poll,” said Margery.

“She come from the workhouse and was took advantage of. She murdered her baby; that’s why she’s here.”

Poll started to cry.

“Now, don’t snivel, Poll,” said Margery sharply.

“And it was your own fault for getting took advantage of. Come here and meet her ladyship. What do we call your ladyship, eh?”

“My name is Carolan Haredon.”

“Really now! Are you sure it ain’t Lady Carolan Haredon?”

“Quite sure.”

“A pity. I’d have liked to have a ladyship in my kitchen.”

When Margery heard Esther’s story, she was a little more pleased with her.

“But you shouldn’t have been cruel to the young gent, my love! That’s why you got to Newgate … being cruel. Why, if you’d done what the young man wanted, you might have been ladying it in London Town instead of working in a Sydney basement.”

So much for life in the basement. It was not so easy to know what went on in the upper part of the house. Mr. Masterman was engaged in much business. He owned several stations, but that strip of country shut in on one side by the Blue Mountains and on the other by a great ocean had not proved such rich and fertile land as the first settlers had hoped it would. While the mountains remained an impenetrable barrier, the activities of pioneers on land must necessarily be restricted, and Mr. Masterman was not the sort to endure restrictions. At one time he had taken a schooner to the Bass Strait Islands and done very well out of the venture, returning with many sealskins and tons of oil; but these did not attract him as the land did. He kept an interest in the sealing business, but did not himself go again to sea. He arranged for the putting up of houses and other buildings; he dabbled in the politics of the town, and was a friend and supporter of the influential John MacArthur. though he managed to keep clear of the man’s quarrels with Governor King. He was clever and alert, a pioneer who had come to this country, not in the grip of the law, but in that of his own relentless and dynamic ambition. A new country had been discovered; he wanted to write his name boldly at the head of its history, side by side with that of Phillip, that man of genius and such patience who was the real founder of the colony and had brought out the first fleet; he wanted to write it beside that of MacArthur, him whom they called Kingmaker. There was little cruelty in his house; the lash was hardly ever used. But to him, Carolan was sure, the convicts were not people; they were merely a cheap and convenient form of getting labour. He had convicts on his sheep farms, convicts building roads and houses. Cheap convict labour was one of those stepping stones which were helping Gunnar Masterman to glory. But much of this was conjecture on Carolan’s part, built up from scraps of conversation chiefly with Margery, the talkative, who saw all men through amorous eyes.

“Poor man,” said Margery, ‘with that sickly wife of his! And not a son, nor yet a daughter to call his own. And him not the man to go around whoring. And her. with her room all to herself … Poor Mr. Masterman!”

“I do not believe he minds that she has a room to herself,” said Carolan.

“He does not mind that he has no son or daughter. He is cold as ice. You feel it.”

“So your ladyship feels it, does she! So your ladyship has been looking at Mr. Masterman, eh? Now Tom and Harry, riding in from the stations with the smell of cattle in their clothes, now they wouldn’t be the ones to attract your lovely ladyship! Of course not! Why, your ladyship’s eyes are all for Mr. Masterman!”

“How dare you!” cried Carolan. I… hate the man!”

“Hate your master, eh? Don’t forget the whip over the mantel.

“Margery,” he says to me.

“I trust you to use it judicial.”

“You can trust me, Mr. Masterman,” I says. And so he can. And listen, my lady, if I hear another word against your master, I uses it. It’s mutiny, nothing less!”

Margery would never use the whip, though she talked so often of doing so. Carolan laughed at her.

“Suppose I tell you about my lover how would that be?”

There now. me love, I knew you’d got one. You tell Margery. I understand. You don’t want this other scum to hear.”

It was so easy to please Margery; she loved the story of the squire.

“His rage, me love, when he found the bird flown! You was a sly one!” Carolan told of Everard.

“Parsons, me lovely, they’re men too. I can tell that. I said to him: “Now there ain’t no sense in staying out there shivering. There’s room in here for the both.” And what if he does mutter a prayer afore he gets in! Why, bless us all, it makes a change, now don’t it?”

But Carolan never said a word about Marcus; yet she thought of him often.

Esther was almost happy. Each night she knelt by her bed to say her prayers. Margery chuckled at the proceedings; Jin looked on with cold distaste, and Poll watched with vacant eyes; but none molested her.

“If only,” said Esther, ‘we could hear news of Marcus, how happy we could be!”

“You might be,” said Carolan.

“I could never be happy again.. You forget I have lost Everard, and my mother is dead.”

Esther was full of contrition.

“I am selfish! I think only of myself. Poor, poor Carolan!”

Carolan spent a lot of time talking to Margery, who loved to hear her talk. She told of the passion of the squire, who was not really her father; she told of Charles who had been cruel and had tried to kiss her; she told the story of how she had been locked in the tomb. “Ah!” sighed Margery, rocking with glee.