Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean - Страница 37

“Why the hell did you not tell me?” he demanded.

“How could I … of the mistress? There was not one lover, George. There have been scores!” She tittered. He hated tittering women.

“There are things I might tell you, George, if you were to ask me.”

Vivid pictures crowded into his mind, and Kitty figured largely in them all. Red mist swam before his eyes. He was so wretched and miserable and lonely, but Jennifer was too foolish to help him; a drunken sot of a woman she was nowadays. He stood up suddenly and sent her sprawling. He laughed at her and touched her with his foot, not violently, but contemptuously.

“Get out, you drunken slut,” he said. Jennifer got up; she stood before him pleadingly.

“Get out!” He put his face close to hers.

“And do not let me see you in this state again. It is bad enough to have a harlot in my nursery. I will not have a drunken harlot, do you hear!”

She crept out of the room.

The candle guttered. The clock ticked on. And as he sat there he knew that Kitty was not coming home.

The dawn was beginning to creep into the sky when he remembered seeing her that afternoon with her daughter. He went suddenly cold. Had she taken Carolan with her? Hastily he went to the child’s room. With great relief he saw that she was still there.

He sat heavily on the bed. He could just see her face in the early dawn light a child’s face with a smudge of lashes against her pale skin, very sweet, very innocent.

He shook her.

“Wake up, girl! Wake up!” She awoke startled.

“Oh …” she said, ‘the squire!”

He frowned. He had told her she must call him Father, had threatened to whip her for not calling him Father; and it was only in unguarded moments that she slipped back into the childhood habit of calling him the squire.

“Carrie,” he said sternly, ‘where is your mother?”

“Mother!” she said, and the events of the day came crowding back to her.

“You heard! Where is your mother? You know, do you not?”

She was too bewildered to deny her knowledge.

He said: “You know then, you know!”

She did not answer.

“By God,” he said, ‘so you are in this conspiracy against me, eh? Where has your mother gone?”

“I… I cannot say,” stammered Carolan.

“You cannot say! And why can you not say? Tell me that.”

She was silent.

“You have been sworn to secrecy, is that it?”

She nodded.

“It would be better if you told me now, you know.”

“I cannot tell.”

He looked down at her, livid with fury; not because Kitty had left him now, but because Carolan was in league with Kitty against him.

He gripped her by the shoulder and tore her nightgown. She was very small, he noticed, such a child.

“Look you here, Carrie, I will have no more disobedience in this house. You will tell me where your mother has gone, or I will whip you myself. Will you tell me ?”

But she knew she must not tell … not yet. They would not have gone far enough yet. She must wait a while, a whole day at least. Then he could never find them and bring them back. Mamma had married the squire because of her, Carolan; she had gathered that much; now it was her painful duty to save Mamma from the squire. So she pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.

“You admit you know then?” he said, and she had known it, there was a pleading note in his voice: he wanted her to say she did not know; he wanted to put his great face close to hers and kiss her and say: “You are completely my daughter now, little Carrie.” But she knelt on her bed, her hands clasped behind her back, her face white and frightened, but her lips pressed firmly together. She was going to be silent for Kitty, and she would not speak to him.

“Very well,” he said cruelly, ‘we shall see whether you will speak or not. Margaret!” he roared, and Margaret, who had heard the commotion and had been awake for a long time, came in.

“Go to my bedroom, Margaret, and bring my riding crop. I will not have disobedience from my children.”

Margaret hesitated and wished she had pretended to be asleep. But he roared at her again: “Go! Or you will be the next. God Dammed, am I to be thwarted in my own house?” Margaret went, and he pushed Carolan on to the bed.

“Now, Carrie,” he said almost wheedlingly, ‘you tell your father what happened this afternoon. Where did she take you, eh? Eh, Carrie?”

Carolan said nothing. He bent down and gave her a stinging blow about her ear. He lifted her by her hair and pulled her up.

Her lips quivered.

“Are you coming to your senses, Carrie? Are you going to tell me?”

Carolan could only shake her head.

He threw her face downwards on to the bed and began to slap her body with his great hands. Carolan cried out, and he laughed.

“I will teach you, my girl!” he said.

“I will teach you!” Margaret came back and stood trembling on the threshold, the crop in her hand. He snatched it from her, and with it poised in his hand, stood staring down at the quivering body of the child.

“Dammit!” he cried.

“What do I want with this? I have strength enough in my hands to deal with the brat.” And he picked her up and shook her, and he saw that her eyes were tightly shut and that tears were squeezing themselves through her closed lids. Emotions mingled in his mind.

Then he saw Jennifer. She was looking in at the door, and her mouth was working. She had been at the gin bottle again, and she was laughing because he had beaten the child.

He picked up the crop and went towards her; she ran, her arms stretched out before her, into her room. He stood in the doorway, laughing at her. Then he looked over his shoulder at Carolan who lay still on the bed, her nightdress in ribbons about her bruised body, a sob shaking her now and then.

How loyal the child was! Loyal to that slut of a mother. And nothing for him but defiance.

“Carrie!” he said.

“I’ll see you in the morning. Then we will hear whether you persist in your folly or not.”

But he would not beat her again. He was the beaten one, not she. He had to get out or he would be petting her, telling her he did not mean that after all, and that whatever she had done mattered not, because he loved her.

He went to his bedroom, but not to sleep. And in the morning he sent for Mrs. West.

The child had to be whipped last night,” he said, and though he felt her disapproving eyes upon him; he did not resent that. He warmed to Mrs. West. He said, almost apologetically: “I was upset myself. Perhaps I laid it on a bit too strongly… But I will have no more disobedience in this house. Go to her. And take her something tasty to eat… And see that she is all right.”

In the evening of that day he sent for Carolan. She came to him, her head high, defiant.

By God, he thought, is she asking for another whipping? But how he admired her! She had something in her that Kitty had not had, nor perhaps Bess either.

“Well, Madam Carolan!” he said, with an attempt at lightness.

“Well?”

“Well what? Have I not told you to use some respect when addressing me? Did I not tell you to call me Father? You had better do so, unless you so like the feel of my hands about you that you are asking for more of what you had last night.”

She was frightened, he saw with satisfaction.

“You are not my father,” she told him boldly enough.

“So why should I call you such?”

“Look here, Carrie,” he said.

“I am your father. You had better tell me immediately who has said I am not.”

“My mother has said it. And I will tell you now what I would not tell you last night… She has gone away with my father.”

His face went white, then hideously purple.

“Ah!” he said at length.

“And Madam Carolan knew, and would not tell, eh?”

“No,” she said, “I would not tell.”

“For fear I should have gone after them?”