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

Lucille opened her eyes; her pupils looked strange, so that she was unlike herself.

She said drowsily: “Gunnar … Oh, Carolan …”

Carolan answered: “You were sleeping deeply.”

The eyelids flickered.

“Carolan, if… anyone … should call, tell them I am not very well today. I shall sleep a bit.”

Carolan took up the bottle and put it away in the medicine chest. She took the glass and tiptoed to the door.

“Carolan, where are you going?”

To leave you to sleep.”

“Do not go. I was very tired. I did not sleep a wink all night. Sit down … and pull the curtains together, Carolan; the sun hurts my eyes.”

Carolan obeyed.

“I am an unhappy woman, Carolan.” Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes. Carolan took a lace-edged handkerchief from under her pillow and wiped them.

“Life is cruel, Carolan.”

Carolan wanted to laugh. Cruel? What do you know of cruelty? Have you lain in the stench of Newgate? Have you tried to sleep in the fetid atmosphere of the women’s quarters on a prison-ship? Have you felt the lice crawling in your hair? Have you seen rats so bold that they sit on their hind quarters insolently eating the food they have stolen from you, because they know you’re not strong enough to stop them?

She veiled her eyes.

“Yes. M’am!” she said softly.

“My husband … he does not really care for me.”

“M’am, shall I lay a perfumed cloth across your head? I sweat you have a headache.”

“Thank you, Carolan. My head is whirling. Your hands are so gentle. It is good to have someone to look after me. I have come to rely on you. He does not care; it is obvious, is it not, even to you?”

“Come,” said Carolan, “I would not say that. You have a comfortable house, M’am, servants to wait on you. You have beautiful clothes to wear.”

“What are these things, Carolan!”

What were they indeed! Were you put in a shapeless yellow garment to brand you as a slave, you would know what it meant to feel silk against your skin! Had you lived in Newgate you would love your feather bed! Had you scrubbed floors and peeled potatoes and done a hundred menial tasks, you would know what it meant to have servants to wait on you!

“They are something, M’am,” she said mildly.

“He is very angry that there are no children, Carolan. He is a very ambitious man. He was nothing … nothing in the beginning: he has risen up from nothing. He was not the man for me; not quite … a gentleman, you know. Papa did not want me to marry him at first, but when he saw what he was doing -climbing steadily, Carolan he was not averse to the match. In fact he encouraged it.”

How dilated her eyes! Although she spoke Carolan’s name, and although her eyes never left her face, she was like a woman talking to herself.

“When I married him I was twenty-four, and yet I knew nothing of what marriage would mean.”

At Haredon one seemed to have been born with such knowledge. Conversations with servants, sly hints from Jennifer, the coarseness of the squire, the coquetry of Mamma, the intrigues fostered by Therese, even the primness of Aunt Harriet, had all seemed to teach one.

“He is not an easy man to live with.”

Inwardly she laughed. You do not know how to treat him, Madam! Were I in your shoes … She could scarcely suppress her laughter at the thought of herself in Madam’s shoes.

“Carolan, can you keep a secret?”

“You can trust me with anything, M’am.”

“Five years ago I was very ill. No one knew how ill. No one knew what I suffered.” Was that all! Another illness!

“I am so sorry. Your life seems to have been made up of illnesses.” Sarcasm was lost on the poor drugged creature.

This was different, Carolan. There is no one listening, is there? I was going to have a child. I was terrified. In my state of health, you see… Imagine it!”

“You could not face it,” said Carolan.

“How well you understand. No, I could not face it. There was a man here… a servant to one of my friends… a superior sort of convict who had been a doctor. He… he did this for me. It cost a good deal of money___even a convict wants money for that sort of thing. And… he helped me out of my trouble. You see, I could not face it… the thought of having a child … out here in this primitive country. I was never meant to live here. At home in London I should have been terrified too, but here I could not face it; it was certain death. And the pain I suffered even then was frightful, Carolan. And I had to suffer it in silence, for I was terrified that he should know.”

Poor little coward, thought Carolan contemptuously, but she was glad he had been cheated of his child.

“I… I could not go through that again.” She sat up, her eyes staring wide.

“Carolan, the bottle, where is it?”

“I have put it away,” said Carolan.

“Oh …” She sank down on her pillows, “it is so soothing … and I could not sleep. I do not want him to find it.”

Carolan stooped over and stroked the hair back from her forehead.

“He would be angry if he found it?”

“He never needs a sedative. He has no sympathy; he said once that if only I would stop thinking I was ill, I would cease to be ill. Oh… he can be coarse. Carolan… But what am I saying? He is your master, Carolan, and a very clever man.”

“Yes,” soothed Carolan, ‘he is very clever. He has come very far, has he not?”

“He will not talk of what his childhood was like. He shuts up tightly if I ask. He has a cold way of suggesting one has no right to ask questions. He does not want to think of the past. But he is so clever; he may well be governor one day.”

“Yes,” agreed Carolan, ‘he will be a great man here in this country.”

And she laughed to think of that appealing look, that helpless look in his eyes when they rested on her youthful beauty, her vitality. Was he comparing her with this faded, worn-out wife? She wanted to go on talking of him.

“He does not want you to take… that which is in the bottle?”

“He would be furious. He wants me to get well, to be strong … and why, do you think? So that I can give him a soul He lives for his ambition, Carolan. He wants to be one of the fathers of this new land, populating it with his children. That is one of his ambitions. He would say that … stuff was weakening. But I must sleep, Carolan. I cannot bear this perpetual wakefulness. It is so dreary here, and the heat and the mosquitoes and the brilliant sun … they are here all the time. How lovely it would be to wake up in England!

“Is it raining?” you would say. You would never know whether it would rain or not. Rain is beautiful, soft and gentle. And the greenness of it all! It will soon be April… April in England … Springtime! I have been ten years in this country, Carolan … Ten years since I have seen an English spring.”

“Do you wish me to hide the bottle, M’am?”

“Oh, Carolan… yes. You must not let him see it; he would be angry, and his anger is so cold it frightens me. He would take it away and forbid me to get more.”

“Where do you get it?” asked Carolan.

“From the doctor I told you of. He is a free man now. He deals in medicine and so on; it is possible to get practically anything you want from him. I hear he is doing very well in Sydney. I think he must be, for his charges are exorbitant.”

“You must try to sleep,” said Carolan.

“Try to sleep off the effects of the drug. If Mr. Masterman came in he might guess. I will hide the bottle in the top drawer of your chest of drawers. We will lock it.”

She took the bottle from the medicine chest and locked it in the drawer. When she returned and gently put the key under Lucille’s pillow, the metamorphosis had begun. Carolan was in command.

In the kitchen her manner had changed. While she remained in this house, she need not fear the lash; she need fear nothing. That knowledge was a balm laid on her wounds. She softened a little, Marcus had taken an easy way to solve his difficulties; she and Marcus were very much alike. Should she blame him? The thought of reconciliation was sweet. She pondered on it often as she lay in her basement room. Marcus’s arms about her, Marcus loving her! She was going to him eventually.