Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean - Страница 33

She saw Therese then, and Therese turned oft the path and came across the grass towards her.

“Ah!” said Therese conspiratorially, but then Therese was often conspiratorial. She managed to breathe a certain amount of intrigue into going into town to buy ribbons.

“I saw you from the window, Mademoiselle, so I knew where I could find you. Your Mamma wishes you to go up to her this minute.”

“Why?” said Carolan, getting to her feet.

Therese shrugged her shoulders.

“That you will find out, will you not? Now, please, quick. She waits.” Hastily, Carolan followed Therese across the park and into the house.

Kitty was lying on a couch. She looked very beautiful, Carolan thought, for she was carefully dressed in a gown of blue silk which matched her eyes. She stretched out a hand.

“Ah! There you are, Carolan! Come here, darling.”

Carolan went, and Kitty stretched out languid arms and took the girl’s face in her hands.

“Mamma,” said Carolan, ‘is anything wrong?”

“No, no Therese is going into the town to do some little errands for me, and I thought it would be charming if you and I had some tea together. What do you say? I saw you being very lazy down there, so I thought let her come up and we will be lazy together.”

Carolan was completely under the spell of the charming and fascinating Mamma; she was delighted that she should have some time to spare for her; there had been very little recently Charles and Jennifer goaded her with stories of her mother’s intrigues; she always declared she did not believe them; but there were things one could not help knowing, however loyally one tried not to see.

“Well, Therese, my dear, ring for tea, and Carolan and I will have it while you go to shop.”

Therese rang and the tea was brought, and after a while Therese put on her cloak and went out.

Kitty’s hands were shaking as she held her cup. She lay on her couch like a lazy goddess with secrets in her eyes, and when they had finished the tea she said: “Carolan, I can trust you, darling. You are the only person in this house whom I can trust.”

Carolan’s green eyes were wide with wonder.

“Yes, Mamma.”

“Will you swear to say nothing, nothing whatever, to anyone of what I am going to tell you … not until it would be safe to tell, that is?”

“I swear, Mamma.”

Kitty took Carolan in her arms, and held her against her soft voluptuous bosom.

“Go to your room now and get your cloak,” she said.

“We are going out just the two of us. If you see anyone and you are questioned, do not say that you are going out with me. Say anything but that. Do not put on your cloak, but go down to the shrubbery by the main gate and see that you are well hidden. Wait there till I come.”

“Yes, Mamma,” said Carolan.

“Do not forget. Not a word that you are waiting for me. Go now, my darling. Go carefully and quickly. I do not want to wait. And I want no one to know no one at all.”

Carolan sped to her room, took her cloak, and hurrying down by a back staircase went swiftly to the shrubbery by the gate. In a very short time Kitty joined her.

“From here,” said Kitty, “we can see the road, and we can hide ourselves from view very quickly. We are going to the woods, darling. Put on your cloak. There! Put the hood right over your head. Now you might be anybody; so might I. See? It is only a little way to go along the road; then we shall cut across the field to the woods. That will be safer.”

“Mamma! What will happen if we are caught?”

“Terrible things!” said Kitty.

“We must not be caught.” She added, with a fierceness which was alien to her nature: “Terrible things happened once to me; they shall not happen again. One day, my darling, I shall tell you in detail of the terrible thing that happened to me.”

“But, Mamma, today you are happy, are you not?”

“Happiness has come back, darling, as I never dreamed it could come back-to me.”

Kitty was breathless with the walk: she had put on a good deal of weight in recent years, and she was not given to exercise. She could not talk and hurry too, so she gripped Carolan’s hot little hand and silently they went across the grass in the direction of the wood.

“Mamma,” said Carolan, distressed by her mother’s breathlessness, ‘why did you not come in the carriage?”

“My dear,” said Kitty almost sharply, ‘how could I? Do you not understand that this is a secret? Did I not make that clear?”

“Oh, yes,” said Carolan, and blushed at her own stupidity. They went on over the grass until they reached the wood. The first thing Carolan noticed was a saddled horse tied to a tree. It was very quiet in the wood; their footsteps crackled on the bracken; there was a tenseness everywhere; Carolan felt that % something very exciting was going to happen.

A man stepped out from behind the tree. Carolan had a blurred vision of a pair of grey eyes, of dark hair, of bronzed skin. He said: “Kitty!” and Mamma dropped Carolan’s hand and ran to him, and he put his arms round Mamma, and she was crying and laughing on his chest. Carolan stood uncertainly, waiting for them to notice her.

Kitty took the man’s face in her hands and looked into it searchingly. She said: “My darling, if only I had known that you would come back!” He answered: “While there was breath in my body I would come back to you.”

“The years …” said Kitty.

“The long years. Thirteen years, Darrell, and what could I have done! I would have waited; I would have waited twenty years. But there was the child …”

She remembered Carolan then, and stretched a hand to her.

The man said: “We could not help what happened to us, Kitty. The past was not in our hands, but the present is, and the future shall be!”

And Kitty was crying as she knelt down by Carolan.

“This is the child, Darrell. See, she has a look of you!”

He knelt down, so that they were both kneeling by Carolan.

“Darling,” said Kitty, ‘this is your father, my Carolan.”

Carolan studied him eagerly. She was too young to realize that suffering and hardship had put those marks on his face.

“Now,” said Kitty, between laughter and tears, ‘we are here together… the whole family… my family!”

The man touched Carolan’s cheek gently with a rough finger.

“I like our daughter, Kitty,” he said.

“Tonight then …” said Kitty.

He shook his head.

“Not yet, my darling.” He took the stuff of Carolan’s cloak between his fingers and felt it, as though appraising its value.

“It will be hard at first, Kitty mine.”

“What do we care?” said Kitty.

“But for the child?”

Kitty said earnestly: “She is our child, Darrell.”

He stroked her cheek.

“We will send for her when we are ready.”

Carolan cried shrilly: “Mamma! Mamma, you are going away with__with my father.”

“Hush, darling,” said Kitty, ‘you said you would keep a secret.”

Darrell Grey took Carolan’s hand, and smiled down at the small fingers.

“Did you tell her,” he asked, ‘did you tell her how we met here in this very wood and how we made our plans? Did you tell her how I went to Exeter and never came back till now?”

His face hardened into lines that were almost cruel, when he said that, and Carolan knew now that terrible things had happened to him as well as to her mother.

“I have told her something of this.” said Kitty.

“Carolan,” he said, “I will tell you something. It is a cruel thing to be poor in this world, for if you are poor you are helpless … and it is a cruel world’Carolan… a cruel world to be helpless in. Carolan… my daughter… have you ever seen the lame duck in a farmyard? Have you ever seen how its strong companions savage it to death because of its weakness? A poor man is a lame duck, daughter. That is why I would not take you to poverty.”

He frightened her; he spoke with such feeling; but his dark face and the adventure in his eyes fascinated her. Besides, he was her father.