by Jean Plaidy
“Of course. But is it necessary to explain this to me?”
“It is very necessary. Carolan, from the moment I first saw you I knew there was something different about you.”
“So you stole my handkerchief! There was not much else since I had already lost my purse. You must have been very disappointed.”
“How you fly into a passion, my dear! Look!” He put his hand inside his jacket and produced the handkerchief.
“I carry it always.”
“Why?”
“Surely you know.”
“Sentiment? You should never let sentiment stand in the way of common sense, and does it not show a lack of common sense to carry a worthless handkerchief about with you?”
“You are quick! Do you hate me, Carolan?”
“How absurd! Of course not.”
“Then since you cannot hate me, perhaps you could love me.”
“I think this is an absurd conversation which does not lead us anywhere. Look at that poor child Esther!”
“Poor child Esther! She is not strong, and yet doubtless before she came to this place she was well enough. Newgate gnaws the strength out of a man or woman.”
“Unless he knows how to live there!”
“Wise Carolan. Do you know?”
“I do not understand you.”
His grip on her wrist tightened.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“Stay with me here. No! Do not fly into another passion. Listen! Be wise. I will strike a bargain with you. Stay here with me, live in as much comfort as money will buy in Newgate. Your mother, your friend Esther and poor Millie shall have a room like this one; food shall be sent in to them. And you… share this with me.”
She leaped to her feet, her cheeks flaming red.
“Do you think I am one of your Lucys?.”
“No! Assuredly I do not.”
“Have you forgotten that I am to be married in a short while?”
“You will not marry your parson, Carolan.”
“I think it is time we left you. I .think it is a pity we ever accepted your hospitality.”
“Listen! How will he know what is happening to you? If it were possible to get a message to him, then he might know, but whether he came for you would be another matter. Money would send that message, Carolan. Suppose I held that out as a further inducement?”
“You are vile!”
“I am, alas. And you are very desirable, which makes me my vile self.”
“Mamma!” cried Carolan.
“Esther! It is time we went.” She nodded towards Millie, who had been watching them with bright, unintelligent eyes.
“Wake them,” said Carolan.
“We must go now.”
“Remember the misery of the felons’ side. Carolan,” whispered Marcus.
“Remember it! I shall never forget it as long as I live.”
“And you will go back to it!”
“Assuredly I will go back to it.”
“And allow them to go back to it?”
“They would not wish it otherwise that I know.”
“And do you hate me very much, Carolan?”
“Hate! That is too strong an emotion to waste upon such as you. Let us say that I despise you… that I never wish to see you again … And I heartily wish that I had never eaten your food!”
“It is easy to say that after the feast, Carolan. Would you have said it when you stood at my side and I fed you over my shoulder?”
“Oh, let me go!”
“You disappoint me. Carolan. You prefer that foul place and that foul company to this room and mine.”
“Yes,” she replied, “I do prefer it! Mammal Esther!” She shook them.
“It is time we went. Come along!”
Kitty opened her eyes.
“I dreamed,” she said, ‘that we were in a beautiful house in the country… Darrell and I, and you, Carolan …”
“Wake up now,” said Carolan.
“It is time we were back.”
“Carolan, must we go back to that frightful place? They won’t put those dreadful irons back, will they? This one pair is bad enough. They cut my skin. It frightens me, Carolan. You know how white my skin used to be …”
“Esther,” said Carolan, ‘help me with Mamma.”
Kitty got slowly to her feet; on either side of her stood Carolan and Esther. Millie kept to the background.
Kitty said, with sudden graciousness: Thank you, dear boy! It was a wonderful feast. I hope that some day we shall be in a position to invite you to dine with us.”
“You must come again,” said Marcus.
He was looking at Carolan, but she would not meet his eyes. He strode to the door; a turnkey came and conducted them back.
How dingy, how gloomy, how foul the place seemed after that brief respite! Bright eyes peered at them as they returned. What had happened to them? There was no sign of lashes received. Here they were, back again.
Kitty, refreshed and with new hope springing up, became a pale shadow of her talkative self. A group gathered round her;
she talked to them.
“We dined with a friend … a wealthy man. It was a wonderful meal… We shall go again, of course. It will not be long, I assure you, before we are out of here. We have friends, you know … it was all a mistake, our coming here …”
Carolan listened to her mother, and she was filled with fury against Marcus.
Esther said: “He was a charming man, a good man although he spoke so wildly. It is hard to be in such a place and refrain from bitter feelings. But he is a kind man. Do you know, I think it grieved him that he could not afford to take us all out of here and give us a room to ourselves.”
“You think that he wanted to do that?” said Carolan.
“Indeed I do!”
“Then if he wanted to, why did he not do so, do you think?”
“It was doubtless because he had not enough money to buy luxuries for us all.”
Millie was fast asleep. Kitty was still talking excitedly.
Esther’s voice was dreamy.
“I think I have never experienced such joy as when I took my first mouthful,” she said.
“I feel I would have given my life, if it had been asked, for one mouthful of roast chicken. And there was never such a roast chicken as that one! Did you note how brown and crisp was the outside, and the flesh melted in your mouth like rich butter!”
“You talk of your God,” said Carolan.
“It seems to me your belly is your God!”
Tears filled Esther’s eyes; Carolan turned away. Ought I, she was thinking, to have given them that room, food … real food … to eat every day? Do I set too high a value on myself? It is not too late perhaps … Her heart began to beat more rapidly, she put her hand over it; it seemed to be leaping up into her throat. He touched something in her, that man, rogue though she knew him to be. She loved Everard; she would wait all her life for Everard. But there was something in the man, Marcus, that moved her, that fascinated her, that tempted her now to say: “I will do it for their sakes.” and made her wonder whether, after all, she might not be doing it for her own.
It was a wicked passion, this racing of the pulses; something purely of the senses. When he had laid his hands on her she had liked that; she had been angry at the sight of Lucy and the knowledge of what her relationship was to Marcus. When he said her name over and over again “Carolan! Carolan!” with the vibrating note in his voice, she felt weak and wanton and very wicked, yet revelling in her wickedness. Everard had been shocked a little by her displays of affection.
“My dear Carolan… my dear… how fierce you are!” He had liked it and tried not to like it. Marcus would never try not to like any affection she had to give him; he would offer passion for passion.
I am really very wicked I thought Carolan, and remembered her mother’s procession of lovers. But she was different from her mother; her mother would have so willingly made the sacrifice for th
e sake of others just now … and would have been able to believe it was a sacrifice. Carolan must see the truth. She tried not to. She thought-How can I let them suffer here in this hell when there is escape for them! How can II And she fell to shivering.
Esther leaned over her.
“Are you well? Have you the ague… or fever? Why, you are hot and yet you are shivering!”
“I am all right!” snapped Carolan.
One of the turnkeys came in; he was jangling a bunch of keys, and grinning.
He said: “This way… the four of you. This way Carolan leaped to her feet.
“What do you mean? Where are you taking us?”
“Orders is orders,” said the turnkey, and there was a hint of respect in his voice, which was not lost on the listeners. Carolan saw looks of envy leap up in several faces. It was true, they were thinking; all that Kitty had told them was true; they were of the quality, these people! But most of all their envy was of Esther who had been chosen as their friend and was now sharing their good fortune. One woman sat down in a corner and wailed in her anguished jealousy like an animal in distress.
“Come on,” said the turnkey, still respectful.
“This way!”
They went along corridors and up staircases. They were shown into a room like the one where they had dined with Marcus. There was a bed in it … and rushes on the floor. It looked luxurious after the Common Side.
“Here you stay,” said the turnkey.
“Gentleman’s orders!”
He took a piece of paper from his pocket.
“Gentleman says I was to give you this,” he said, and handed it to Carolan.
She took it and read:
Of course I hoped you would submit to temptation. But you did not imagine that I would let you all stay in that place, did you? Come and dine with me tomorrow. Now you shall see what a good heart beats under my villainous exterior. Ask the turnkey for writing materials and write a note to your parson. He will see that it is dispatched.
William Henry.
Kitty said: “That is from Marcus?”
“William Henry, he calls himself now,” said Carolan. She added petulantly: “How can we be expected to get used to this continual change of names!”
“My dear, you sound quite cross; what has come over you? This is luxury. A bed! I declare I long to lie on it and rest my poor leg.”
“He says if I write a note it will be delivered … I am going to write to Everard.” She said to the turnkey: “Will you please bring me pen and paper?” The turnkey nodded and disappeared immediately.
“What a wonderful man he is!” said Kitty. She lay back on the bed.
“This is heaven! This is comfort! My poor leg… it is throbbing dreadfully.”
“I will ask for water to bathe it. and a bandage, Mamma. It seems that nothing is too much for these people to do for Marcus’s money!”
Esther looked at her strangely.
“You talk as though you hate him.”
“What! Hate our benefactor. Lie down on the bed, Esther. Enjoy the luxury; I shall when I have written my letter. Look Millie, if you lie along the foot, the rest of us can lie the other way. A bit of a tight squeeze, but what luck … a real bed. Esther, why do you not lie down? Why do you not try our new bed?”
“You look strange. Did you drink too much of your friend’s wine? There is a flush about your face. Carolan, are you all right?”
“I am quite all right. I am not tipsy either! Ah! Here come my pen and paper. Now hear me ask for water and a bandage. I can give orders now because I have a friend named William Henry … and he has money…”
It was some time before Carolan joined them on the bed. She had written to Everard; she and Esther had bathed and bandaged Kitty’s leg; Esther had knelt down by the bed and thanked her God for this newly acquired luxury. Carolan lay very still; she was cramped, and it was impossible to move without disturbing the others. Millie was snoring; Kitty was breathing deeply; Esther, Carolan believed, was awake.
“Esther!” she breathed.
“You do not sleep.”
Esther’s voice came to her in the darkness.
“It is the unaccustomed comfort. The bed is so soft… I am so used to hard planks.”
“Why do you cry, Esther?”
“Because it is so wonderful. Because I have prayed for something like this to happen.”
There was a silence, then Esther said: “He is very kind, your friend. He is a good man, though he tries so hard to pretend he is not.”
“He is a thief!” said Carolan.
“He is a rogue… Do not forget that. He was not brought to this place wrongfully.”
“But Carolan, you have said that no one should be brought to a place like this whatever their crime. You said it. Then he has been brought here wrongfully.”
“Hush!” said Carolan.
“You will wake the others.” She tried to sleep, but she could not. She lay there, cramped.
uneasy, thinking of Marcus.
It was stiflingly hot in the women’s quarters. When Carolan had stood at the top of the ladder and peered down into the darkness below, she had felt sick with hopelessness and terror. The women’s quarters consisted of double tiers of bunks roughly divided into berths; and sharing Carolan’s was her mother, Esther, a crippled girl of twelve and a middle-aged woman. The little girl had cried intermittently ever since they had come aboard; she refused to talk to anyone, and would hide her face in her hands, peering through her fingers, if spoken to, suspicious and defiant. The woman had been drunk all the time the ship lay at anchor; gin had been smuggled in for her; now the ship had set sail and she no longer had her gin, she was either quarrelsome or over-friendly. She sang lewd songs for hours at a stretch; and in close confinement with this woman, Carolan knew that she, her mother and Esther must spend the next months. Millie they had not seen since leaving Newgate. Her sentence had been the same as Carolan’s seven years transportation but she had been sent to another ship. Poor Millie! It was to be hoped she would not suffer too deeply. Carolan thought of her often, hating herself, for it seemed to her that never would she be able to forget that she had been the chief instrument in bringing trouble to these people.
But even in the depth of misery there is some comfort to be had. They were all together she, her mother and Esther and it might so easily have happened that they would be parted. She believed, though she was not altogether sure, that Marcus was aboard this ship. Marcus she had told him that never, never could she think of him as anyone but Marcus, to which he had replied characteristically: “What’s in a name? As long as you continue to think of me, what matters the label?” Marcus had been sentenced to transportation for life, Kitty for fourteen years, and Esther, like herself, to seven.
She would clench her hands and think of the mockery of the trial, the weariness of the court, its automatic and careless sentences. It is so much easier to say “Guilty!” than “Not Guilty!” And who is to care, save a poor prisoner of no significance whatever?
Always there would stand out in her memory the ride to Portsmouth. Chained, dirty not Carolan Haredon surely, this creature, whose red hair, once so sleek and shining, was matted and filthy! Carolan, who had danced in a green dress at her first ball, now a grotesque scarecrow, her thin body hung about with rags. The van had been open and crowds in the street had watched its progress. They laughed; they pointed; they jeered at the van’s most miserable cargo.
She had prayed then she who had vowed never to pray again.
“Let me die. This I cannot endure.” Then someone had thrown a rotten apple at her and she had stopped praying, for furious anger had surged up within her. She had seized the apple and flung it back into the crowd, which action had been greeted with roars of ribald laughter; and then rotten fruit, mud, dung came thick and fast.
“I’ll never forget it, she thought; and indeed the very memory of it set her heart pounding with fury.
In Portsmouth jail with its Ge
ntlemen’s Side and its Common Side in fair imitation of its big sister, Newgate they had dined with Marcus. His eyes had glittered with excitement because the last days of prison life had been lived through. There was the weary waiting before they set sail, there was the dreaded journey across the sea to the other side of the world, but the filthy Newgate days were over, and that in itself was a matter for rejoicing.
Marcus had said: “My darling, how it grieved me that you should travel down as you did! Believe me, I tried to move heaven and earth to get you with me in a closed carriage. There are some things that money cannot achieve please understand that that was one of them.”
She tried to tell him of that journey, but the words choked her, and she spoke only one sentence to sum the whole thing up: “I wished I was dead.”
“Carolan, my sweet,” he said, ‘never wish that. That is an admission that life has defeated you. Why long for death when you know not what it brings! Eternal sleep? Do you want it, Carolan? That sort of death is not for us, Carolan, and the only sort of life we know is the hard life and would such as we are want it soft? Would it not lose its zest?”
“Esther has beautiful ideas of death,” she said. And they had both looked at her. There was an unearthly beauty about the girl; her spiritual strength shone in her eyes for her belief was invulnerable.
“But Esther, how can you be sure?” demanded Carolan, irritated.
“How can you be not sure,” asked Esther, ‘when you know?”
“You do not know!” said Carolan, impatient.
“Who has ever told you? Your father? Your mother? But what did they know?”
“They knew.” said Esther.
“I could not bear not to believe.”
“It is comforting, doubtless,” said Carolan. Marcus put his hands on her shoulders.
“But Carolan, do we want comfort? I do not think so: not unless we know it to be truth. We cannot accept things because they are comfortable. Why, Dammed, our forefathers doubtless thought it was comfortable enough living in their uncivilized way. It is the uncomfortable things which make the world progress.”
