Страница 103 из 134
She moved nearer to him; he put his arms round her suddenly and kissed her. She kissed him triumphantly and angrily. Oh, you good man! she thought. Oh, you good, good man! How amusing to think of you here, kissing your wife’s convict maid while she sleeps in the next room!
She struggled free. She saw that his face was pale pink; he looked comical kneeling there, with those arms, from which she had just escaped, hanging at his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You must forgive me.”
She regarded his downcast head. Mt. Masterman, the master! And she thought then of how he had come aboard, and how she had tried to will him to look at her, and how she had appealed to him with her eyes. The master! He was no longer that.
“It does not matter,” she said.
“It is of no importance.”
“It is of the greatest importance,” he insisted.
“I am afraid that you will think I wished to insult you.”
Inwardly she laughed. He was not grownup at all. He might be Mr. Masterman, a power in the colony, but he was also a young man embarking on his first passionate love affair.
She shrugged her shoulders and stood up.
“One gets used to that… insults, I mean. You are sorry. I know.”
He was standing beside her. and Madam’s blue velvet di
“I must explain.” he said.
“You have disturbed me for a long time.”
She opened her eyes very wide.
“I… disturbed you?”
“You do not understand. The fault is entirely mine. It is nothing you have done, except to be so beautiful and so young and so different from other people.”
In spite of herself she felt a tenderness for him.
He went on: “Many times I have wanted to do that… many times before.”
“Oh, but…”
“It is wrong of course, very wrong. But I have told you now. and in future…” She watched him closely now; he was uneasy. There is so much unpleasantness here in this place. I would not wish anyone who comes under my authority to suffer from that.”
He walked over to the mirror; he stood there, facing it, looking into it but not seeing himself. Seeing her perhaps, with his wife’s dress half over her head.
Therefore,” he said, in the judicial voice with which he must surely address his committee meetings, “I want you to accept my apology. I must make you believe it will not happen again.”
He walked slowly to the door.
She folded the dresses and put them back. The pain of her discovery about Esther and Marcus was less acute. She went back to the kitchen, and she tried to think of Mr. Masterman, that cold, stern man, who, kneeling on his wife’s blue di
Esther tried to catch her hand once, but she made her own go limp, and she saw the look of pain and fear cross Esther’s face.
James came in. Carolan was wanted in the mistress’s room.
“Oh, Carolan. I have such a headache! Give me one of my powders. The master has been in; he is going away for some days, he says. To one of the stations. He says it is time he looked in on the men.”
Carolan thought. Days of it, days of monotony; and it will go on like this for years … seven perhaps. Men grew out of desire. Marcus had. Everard had. I am so tired of being a servant and listening to her wearying talk.
“When does he go, M’am?”
“Early tomorrow morning. He will be up by sunrise; it’s a good day’s ride out to the station. He is so energetic!”
“You look very fatigued, M’am.”
“Fatigued!” She closed her eyes.
“I am worn out.”
“It will be dark at any moment now, M’am,” said Carolan. It was still light, and she had never got over the wonder of the sudden descent of darkness, the absence of the English twilight hour.
“Shall I light the candles?”
“My powder first.”
“Oh, yes… I should rest all day tomorrow, M’am… with the master away. I have rarely seen you look so fatigued.”
“Give me my mirror.”
Carolan sat on the bed and held out the mirror. Oh, to recline on such a soft bed. How she hated the dampness of the basement! How she hated this life of a convict servant! So monotonous, and she should be grateful for its monotony when others, less fortunate, must endure horrors. Nothing to look forward to. She could still feel the imprint of that kiss on her lips. The master! The desire in his eyes had made them like Marcus’s eyes. I am so tired of being a servant; so tired of being unloved. My mother had had lovers when she was my age. My grandmother … It is not natural for the women of our family to go unloved.
Her heart began to hammer inside her; she thought it would burst. She was hardly thinking of Marcus at all now.
“I must get you your medicine,” she said. And she went to the drawer and unlocked it. She took out the bottle and shook it.
Lucille watched her with startled eyes.
“I said the powder.”
“Oh, yes, the powder. I thought, as you looked so tired… But as you say, it is just a headache. The powder.”
“No, no, Carolan. Give me that… I will have that. I never felt so tired in all my life, and what Doctor Martin said was that I needed to sleep more than anything.”
Lucille drained the glass.
“I will wash it; then I will draw the curtains, shall I? And I will leave you to sleep.”
“I do not know what I should do without you, Carolan!”
Carolan locked the bottle in the drawer, washed the glass, smoothed her mistress’s bed, drew the curtains.
“Sleep well, M’am.”
Lucille nodded drowsily.
In the toilet-room Carolan lit a candle. She held it high and looked at her face in the mirror. Her lips were parted, her eyes brilliant, recklessness was in her face.
I am so tired of being a servant!
Deliberately she went across the room and knocked at the door.
“Come in,” he said. She went in. Two candles burned on the mantel shelf. She blew hers out.
“I hear you are going away early tomorrow morning. I thought there might be something I could pack for you.”
She leaned against the door.
He said: “Pack? No. I do not think so. Pack? There is nothing to pack…”
“I see. Goodnight.”
Her voice was a breathless whisper.
He said: “Goodnight!” very steadily, and then: “Carolan!”
He was standing before her, looking down at her.
“You should not have come,” he said breathlessly.
“No,” she answered, “I should not. But tomorrow you are going away… I will leave you now. I thought…”
But he would not let her leave him now. He lifted her up; she put her arms round his neck. She was not sure whether this was her revenge on Marcus, or whether she had been unloved too long.
“Carolan,” he said, as they lay on his bed, ‘what are you thinking?”
“Of you… and of myself.”
“What of us?”
“It was wonderful, was it not?”
“It was wonderful.”
“You look exalted … and damned. Such a queer mixture!”
“You say such things! Adultery is one of the mortal sins.”
“It is a great tragedy, my coming here.” She put her arms round his neck.
“If you could go back, back to where I came in with the candle, would you tell me to go?”
“I believe I would commit any sin rather than not have had that.” She smiled, but he could not see the smile, for her face was pressed against his. She was thinking of Esther in her passion for Marcus, as reckless as this man, denying her God with the ease that he denied his. Esther and Masterman. Herself and Marcus. That was how it should have been. Yet it was as though life had carelessly shuffled them like cards in a pack, and then had turned up herself with this man. Esther and Marcus, in the wrong places.
She stroked the fine hair on his hands. There was the glimmer of a scheme in her mind. She was not sure what it was; she was not even sure that it was a scheme.
It was amusing to see anxiety breaking through his ecstasy.