by Jean Plaidy
There was one summer’s day in Carolan’s thirteenth year which she was to remember all her life. It was a hot day with a haze in the sky and scarcely a breath of air; she was old enough now to feel an uneasiness in the atmosphere about her. She knew that Napoleon was scoring success after success on the Continent and the squire grumbled a good deal and watched his villagers closely for the least sign of insolence. One awoke each morning wondering if something fearful would happen that day, but life went on much as usual until that summer’s afternoon.
Charles was away in another part of the country staying with a school-fellow; Margaret and Carolan breakfasted together as usual, and after breakfast did their lessons with the governess who had been engaged for them last year. Miss Scanlane was drowsy on that day, as indeed were Margaret and Carolan. Outside the schoolroom the wasps were buzzing noisily, and Carolan longed to be out with them; but when the afternoon came and she was free, she found it too hot to ride, too hot to walk over to the parsonage to see if Everard was at home, too hot to do anything but lie under the oak tree in the park and drowsily peer up through its leaves at the heavy sky. Margaret had gone off in the direction of the parsonage. Poor Margaret, at sixteen she was very intense and very tragic! She read poetry in her room every night; Carolan could hear the rumbling of her voice, and she knew it was all about love tragic love. She even wrote poetry; she had shown Carolan some of it and it was all about the sadness of love, and very melancholy; about people who died for love because they were brokenhearted. And Everard was somehow at the bottom of it. Poor Margaret! She would hang about outside the parsonage in the hope of seeing him, instead of going straight in and asking if he were home, as Carolan would. Carolan adored Everard too, but completely without melancholy.
And from Margaret. Carolan’s thoughts slipped to her mother. How strange she had looked yesterday, her eyes bigger than ever, looking right beyond Carolan, far away, as though she were seeing something Carolan could not! When Therese had spoken to her, she had said “Yes!” idly, and the answer should have been “No!” Therese had shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and grumbled in French. Mamma lay on her couch as though she were not really there, but somewhere else.
How complicated were the affairs of grownup people!
Footsteps were coming along the path which ran close by. Carolan lay still in the long grass and hoped that whoever it was would pass by without seeing her. She had no wish to be disturbed, and it might be someone to tell her that the squire wanted to see her; least of all grownups did she understand the squire. He was either very affectionate or very angry and one could never be sure whether he was going to scold or attempt to caress.
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 ba
ck!” 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.
“You will be brave, Carolan, I know,” he said.
“You have bravery written on your brow. Listen, I am going to take your mother away…”
“But, darling,” put in Kitty, “you shall join us. Shall she not, Darrell? As soon as possible she shall join us.”
“As soon as possible she shall join us. You understand, Carolan? I am a broken man. Once I had dreams of a future that would be good. Now I start again. I am not so young, but then I am not so old. I have much to work for though. It will be good to have my family around me.”
“Tonight,” said Kitty, “your father and I will leave for London. Until we are well on our way, no one must know. You understand that, Carolan?” Carolan nodded.
“So you tell no one, eh?”
“I will tell no one.”
“It will be all right,” said Kitty, “because no one shall know I have gone, till morning; then I shall be far away. Carolan, I am going to ride away on that horse with your father; not by coach, darling.” She shivered.
“Was it not because your father went to Exeter to book for the coach that our lives lay in ruins about us! Now we are going to build a fresh life for ourselves on those ruins, Carolan, and you are ours, and you shall be with us. You will come to us, darling, as soon as we are ready?” Carolan nodded.
“I shall send a letter to the housekeeper who is a good friend of mine, and in it will be a letter for you, Carolan. It will tell you what you must do. On no account let the squire know; he is vindictive, that man. Ah, what I have suffered these last years ,.. while I waited, waited for the return of my love!”
Carolan thought fleetingly of her mother’s lying back on her couch, with the black boy, Sambo, feeding her with sweetmeats, and Therese discussing what dress she would wear, she thought of the tales of the lovers she had had. But this picture did not stay long in Carolan’s mind; she was now believing with her mother that there had been thirteen years of waiting and suffering.
Kitty looked about her.
“It would never do for us to be seen, Darrell,” she said.
“Oh, my darling, I could not bear that anything should go wrong for us again.”
“No,” said Darrell, ‘it must not! Go now, Kitty. And tonight, an hour before midnight, you will be here at this spot?”
“An hour before midnight,” she repeated. They kissed. Carolan stood bewildered, watching. Then it was her turn to be kissed. Darrell lifted her and looked into her face.
“It is not goodbye, little daughter. I shall see you soon. Soon we shall send for you, and then we shall be together, one happy ‘family, eh?”
Carolan nodded, received his kiss, and was put down. Kitty took her hand and led her away; they kept glancing over their shoulders, and Carolan’s father stood there watching them.
“Now, Carolan, you know!” said Kitty.
“And you see how I trust you?”
Carolan said with dignity: “Of course you can trust me. Mamma! Did he not say that we were one family?”
Kitty pressed her daughter’s hand.
“Dearest Carolan, all through the long years you have been my comfort, my only comfort.”
Tears filled Carolan’s eyes: it was rather wonderful to have been Mamma’s comfort through all the years.
“And very soon we shall be together in our lovely London home, darling. That will be wonderful, eh, Carolan?”
“Yes, Mamma.”
“Oh, darling, how glad I am that I decided to trust you and let you meet your father!”
“I am glad too,” said Carolan.
When they reached the shrubbery, Kitty said: “Let us take off our cloaks now, darling; it would look odd for us to be walking in the grounds, clad in them in such heat, would it not?”
They took them off; while they were doing so. the squire came upon them. Kitty pressed Carolan’s hand to warn her of his approach, and Carolan looked over her shoulder guiltily.
“Ah!” said the squire.
“So my lady wife is taking a walk with her daughter, eh?”
Kitty’s heart was fluttering uneasily under her blue silk dress; Carolan looked at the ground.
“Is there any reason why I should not?” asked Kitty.
“No reason at all,” said the squire.
“I merely remark on the fact because it is so unusual. I believe it is not often with your daughter that you amuse yourself?”
There was an insinuation in his voice which brought a flush to Kitty’s face. She lived fully in the moment as it came along; she had just been with Darrell, and she was believing that for thirteen years she had waited for him, submitting only to the necessary embraces of the squire. It was unpleasant therefore to have that picture of herself wiped out so crudely, and another picture held up for her to see. The others? They had not really counted. She was just affectionate, eager to please, unable to deny; and the poor boys had needed her so badly. There was nothing in that. With Darrell it was different. If she had married Darrell she would have remained a virtuous matron to the end of her days. She was sure of that. The squire pulled Carolan’s cloak out of her hands.
/> “How well wrapped up you are for such a hot day! Your mother too? Did she think it well to conceal her charms? Of course, of course, her virtue would demand that!”
Carolan very boldly took her cloak from the squire’s hands, but he did not seem to notice he was looking at Kitty. She was dishevelled, but none the less attractive for that; she was shapely still; as for the weight she had put on, he liked it; he never could stand a skinny woman.
Carolan knew that her mother wished her to go, and quietly she slipped from the shrubbery and ran across the lawns to the house and up to her own room, there to stretch herself on her bed and think of the strange things which had happened to her that afternoon.
Meanwhile Kitty faced her husband. How loathsome he was, she thought! He breathed with his mouth open, and the hairs protruding from his nostrils were coarse and black. She hated him and he hated her but differently, for his hate must always be tinged with desire and with the dreams he had had of a life with Bess and then with her.
He came towards her and put heavy hands on her shoulders. He saw a new flush under her skin, and anger only added to the sparkle in her eyes. She was like a girl in love.
He said: “But for the child. I’d say you had just returned from a tumble on the grass with your latest!”
It was his sardonic amusement that made her flush hotly.
“Oh, Kitty, have you?” he said.
“Have you?”
She stepped back from him, but as she did so he stepped forward; her eyes were dilated with fear, the fear that he might have followed Carolan and her, have watched her meeting with Darrell. She wondered what he would do… the brute who, she told herself, had ruined her life; for she had forgotten that she had chosen to marry him as a way out of her difficulties. There was so much he could do; his power was real; he was king in his little neighbourhood. He thought the fear he saw in her eyes was that he might make love to her; it was many months since he had done that. And Dammed, he thought. Why the plaguey hell should I keep off! I married her!
