Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean - Страница 29

He broke into a canter, and then into a gallop. Carolan kept beside him, her red hair flying out behind; fine she looked, sitting her strawberry roan with distinction. Dammed, thought the squire, if I don’t take her along to the hunt with me! Why not? She can sit a horse with the best.

“Come on, Carrie girl,” he shouted.

“Why are you lagging behind?” And he laughed inwardly to see her spurt forward, her little chin set and determined.

Proud of her, he was. He wanted to show her off. A pity there was no meet today. Like to see her there among the pink coats. But not those disreputable cast-offs of Margaret’s. She should have a new riding habit; she should be grateful to him. He would say: “Come on, Carrie girl, what about a kiss for your old father?” When she was little more than a baby she had called him The Squire; now she called him nothing. She had to begin calling him Father; she had to think of him as her father. If anybody let her know he was not her father, there was going to be the devil to pay. After all, suppose he was her father; there was such a thing as a seven months child! She had been a little thing when she was born; suppose she had been born prematurely. Not impossible. How he wanted to believe that. The squire… and his daughter… The parsonage was down this road along which they were trotting. Why not call on the parson and “Mrs. Parson”? Be a good start. Let people know that he looked on Carolan as his daughter. He went riding with her on her birthday; he had given her a horse. Charles had had a horse on his ninth birthday, and Margaret a pony.

“Oh!” said Carolan, when he drew up.

“Are we going to see Everard?”

He had not thought of the boy of course. He was thinking chiefly of the parson’s wife; old Orland did not count for much.

The important thing was that Mrs. Orland should receive them and talk about the visit.

He signed curtly to her to dismount, and she did so neatly, he noticed with pleasure. They made fast their horses to the gate posts.

Mrs. Orland suppressed her surprise at the call.

“Good morning. Squire. This is an unexpected pleasure!”

He was bubbling over with good spirits.

“As long as it is a pleasure, does it matter that it is unexpected?” he asked archly.

Mrs. Orland tittered sharply.

“We were out riding,” said the squire, ‘and as we were passing … well, Carrie and I did not feel we could pass old friends without calling in to say how do you do.”

“Of course not. Of course not. You will drink a glass of my cowslip wine, Squire?”

Cowslip wine! Elderberry wine! These old ladies! Champagne he would have preferred in his present mood.

“Nothing would delight me more!” he said, and he let his rather bloodshot eyes roam over her. Skinny, was his verdict. A proper parson’s wife. Poor Orland! He reckoned he did not have much of a time with her. She flushed now at the boldness of his stare. Inwardly he chortled. These old women! Full of pretence. They thought they hated the way he looked at them because it was lechery; what they really hated was the fact that they had such skinny unattractive bodies. If they had something worth offering, they would be all a-simpering like any pot-house trollop.

But he had forgotten his new role; he was a father today, not a hunter of women.

“It is the little girl’s birthday,” he said, as they all sat drinking the cowslip wine.

“I know that,” said Mrs. Orland, smiling.

“Carolan, my dear, if you will go into the library you will find a parcel with your name on it. You may open it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Orland.”

“Now run and get it.”

Everard came into the library just as she found the parcel.

“I heard your voice,” he said.

Her eyes were dancing, her cheeks red as berries, her hair glinting like the bronze ornaments on the mantelpiece.

“What has happened?” asked Everard.

“It is my birthday. The squire has given me a horse … all for myself. And now … Mrs. Orland has said there is a parcel here for me… I have it.” On the brown paper was written “For Caro-Ian on her birthday from Sophia, Edward and Everard Orland’.

Everard came over to look. He had not known it was Carolan’s birthday; he did not know what was in the parcel. Until this moment he had not been very interested in Carolan. She was just a little girl who was shamefully bullied by her half-brother whom Everard disliked intensely.

Inside the parcel was a cedarwood box.

“Oh …” cried Carolan.

“What a lovely box! Oh, Everard, isn’t it lovely to have a birthday!” She leaped up suddenly and, putting her arms round his neck, kissed him.

Everard said: “Here… I say … I soy!” But he was blushing, perhaps because she had kissed him, perhaps because he had known nothing of the cedarwood box.

“It is lovely … lovely of you, Everard, to remember my birthday.”

He was filled with shame; heartily he wished that he had remembered. He was going to explain, but that would be tantamount to saying his mother had told a lie. He was full of chivalry; he could not expose his mother’s deceit, any more than he could allow that beast Charles to bully his little half-sister.

“I must go to thank your mother,” she said, and together they went back to the drawing-room. The squire was sprawling on the sofa, his great legs apart.

“Ha, ha! Here is the heroine of the day!” Carolan was hugging the cedarwood box.

“Thank you, Mrs. Orland. It is a beautiful box! May I go and thank Mr. Orland?”

“He is writing his sermon, dear; I should not disturb him. I will convey your thanks to him.”

“Let me see the box,” said the squire, and Carolan went over to him. She listened to his breath coming noisily through his great nostrils. The hairs in his nostrils fascinated her; they had frightened her when she was younger.

“Ha! A nice little box, eh, daughter?” He thought with satisfaction cheap though! Picked up from some plaguey pedlar! And he laughed to think of the strawberry roan, impatiently stamping her foot outside.

Some new intuition told Carolan that he wanted to be thanked again for his gift, and because she was truly grateful and wanted to show her delight, and because, in some way she did not understand she was sorry for him, she said “May I show Everard my lovely, lovely horse?”

The squire gave her a contented push.

“Go on!” he said.

“Go on!”

And she and Everard went out. It was good to be with Everard. Everard was old, nearly seventeen; a man, of course; she had to remember that and not be too silly, too childish.

Everard patted the mare and said she was a beauty.

Suddenly he said: “Carolan, we’ll ride together one day.”

“Oh, Everard, shall we?”

He wondered why he had suggested it. He, almost seventeen and destined for the church, to want to go riding with a little nine-year-old girl! It seemed silly; but he had spoken on impulse and now he would have to go, for he was much too kind to go back on his word.

“And Carolan,” he said.

“Wait here a moment, will you? Do not go indoors. Just wait here. I will be back.”

She caught the excitement in him, birthday excitement.

“Yes, Everard, I will wait.”

She patted the mare, and stroked her soft, velvety muzzle.

“You are mine,” she whispered.

“You are mine! Carolan’s strawberry roan mare, you are! Nobody else’s.”

The mare showed her pleasure in being made much of, and Carolan thought, She knows she’s mine and I love her.

Then Everard was beside her. He held out to her a paperknife of wood which he had made himself.

The box was from all of us.” he said shyly, ‘but I wanted to give you something special.”

“Oh, Everard! Another birthday present. But you gave the box…”

“Ah, but this is different. From me alone.”

“From you alone,” said Carolan solemnly, and she knew that it was a very special present because Everard had given it to her. She was too young to keep that knowledge to herself.