by Jean Plaidy
He came to her and slipped his arm about her. He had seen the tears in her eyes.
“Carolan,” he said, ‘we are still young.” She spun round to look at him, and he threw back his head and laughed.
“Carolan. Carolan! I am just past forty. Is that so very old? You are thirty-six surely in your prime. Carolan, look at those mountains! Are they not beautiful? Do you feel them beckoning you? They are wild, they promise adventure; there is a new country beyond them. Carolan, Carolan, why should you go back to Sydney? Why should you, why should you, my darling? This is linking up, my dear, linking up with eighteen years ago. You are mine, and I am yours… that was how it was then; that is how it is now. That cannot change.”
“Marcus!” she said.
“Marcus!”
He caught her to him and kissed her; she kissed him wonderingly.
“It is strange,” she said, ‘to feel young again. It is years since I felt young.” She had lost control for a moment, but she was resolved it should be for no more than a moment. She wanted to capture that feeling of recklessness, she wanted to know again what it meant to love without thinking … just to love. She had jail that moment; she would remember now.
That is all,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Carolan, come away with me. Why should we not? You would have come with me… once.”
“Once!” she said.
“But so much has happened since then.”
“A moment ago,” he said, “I thought you were still my sweet and beautiful Carolan whom I loved in your father’s shop, and in Newgate, and on the ship and in Margery’s kitchen. You broke my heart when you went to him.”
“And you mine when you went to her!”
“It was nothing, Carolan. Did you love him?”
“I am fond of him,” she said.
He kissed her angrily.
“Why did you spoil our lives?”
“It was you who spoiled our lives, Marcus.”
“No, it was you… you with your conventional ideas.”
“It was you with your philandering, your lies, your cheating … How do I know that even now you are not cheating! You may be laughing “Oh, this is funny! I am amusing myself with Mrs. Masterman of Sydney!”
“Do not speak his name.”
“It is my name I speak.”
“You are Carolan, nothing but Carolan! Why do I love your daughter? Because she is so like you! Why was my life brighter when she came and sat on the veranda and talked to my boy, Henry? Because she is so like her mother.”
“Why do you always say the things I most want to hear?”
“Because I love you.”
“Oh, Marcus, it is too late to talk of love.”
“It is never too late to talk of love. Carolan, never go back to Sydney! We will go to England … to London. It will be a different London from that wicked city in which we met. We will conquer it this time, Carolan.”
“It is too late. Do you think I would leave my children and my husband?”
“If I had twenty children I would leave them for you!”
“Please, Marcus, do not talk of it any more.”
“If I talk enough you will understand how it is we cannot throw away this chance of happiness.”
“There is no chance, Marcus. We lost our chance eighteen years ago.”
“My darling, while there are boats to carry us away from this place, there is still a chance.”
“I would never leave my family.”
“I am your family. I am your home. You are mine and I am yours. You must understand that.”
“But Marcus, people change in eighteen years. I have changed.”
He kissed her; he held her against him and he laughed with joy.
“You have not changed; you are my own sweet Carolan. You will never go back. Always I have vowed that if I could talk to you, if I could but hold you like this, I would never, never let you go again. I am no longer young, Carolan, I am old in wisdom. Never shall I let you go again, my darling. I will keep you by my side always. You are my comfort, my love, my darling!”
“I should not have come,” she said sadly.
“I am only making you unhappy, and myself unhappy. I was resigned. I will never, never leave my husband. I have sworn that, Marcus.”
“What oaths you have sworn go for nothing, darling. You are mine you cannot deny that.”
“These oaths I have sworn in the dead of night, when I wake up trembling, or when I have been unable to sleep. I have sworn, Marcus. He lies there beside me; sometimes he is sleepless too, and I wonder what he is thinking. I have said “I will never leave you, Gunnar. I will do all I can to make you happy.” It is because of that… because of what happened, Marcus, I have never told anyone, but I will tell you now because I owe it to you, Marcus. I must tell you why I cannot go away with you. How I long to. I cannot pretend any more; I have always loved you. I could have killed you and Esther … but there is no one but myself to blame; how well I know that now! Listen. Marcus. I am a murderess. That is why I cannot go. Did you ever hear talk in Sydney? Did you hear how Lucille Masterman died? I was to have Ms child, Marcus, and I was alone and afraid, and I was brutalized; Newgate did that to me or so I tell myself! Perhaps it is just an excuse; perhaps if you are strong, nothing can maim you.
“She used to take a drug, Marcus. I knew about it; so did Gunnar. I used to think it would be so easy for her to take an overdose. She did not want to live; I did … desperately. I wanted a good life for my child. How do we know what motives prompt our actions— I tell myself I did it for my child; but did I? Did I do it for myself? He was so kind to me; he said I should go away to discreet and sympathetic people, but I laughed at that; I laughed it to scorn. No! I said, you must marry me; we must have a real home for my child, or I shall marry someone else. You remember Tom Blake would have married me then. Gunnar loved me; he loved me as you would not believe he could love anybody; he wanted children, and she had cheated him. Marcus, do not look at me like that! Put your arms around me, hold me tight. She has haunted me since; she will go on haunting me. Sometimes I feel she will drive me mad. She was so weak, Marcus, and she did not greatly want to live. You see, the bottle was there; it should have been so easy. She had bought the stuff from an ex-convict who dealt in illicit medicines. She used to drug herself to get some sleep. She always imagined herself ill. And I think she knew how it was with me; I did my best to tell her … without doing it in so many words. I put the idea in her head that it would be so easy… just an extra dose, and then she would sink into that deep peaceful sleep of which she had talked to me.”
Marcus took her by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“Carolan, you… you killed her!”
She threw back her head.
“Yes,” she cried, “I killed her! I killed her! No, no! I did not pour it out into the glass and give it to her; I did not kill her like that. I do not know who did that. Perhaps she took that overdose herself perhaps he gave it to her. Sometimes I picture his going into her room.
“You look tired, Lucille!” I can hear him saying it.
“Have you not some medicine that will make you sleep? Sleep a little; it will do you good. I will get it for you…”
You see. if he did that, I drove him to it. I taunted him with pictures of myself married to Tom Blake. I carried his child, and I threatened to cut him off from it. He is a strange strong man; I do not know whether he would do that; I have never known. Often I have thought it possible. It has been between us all our life together. Did he? I ask myself, but I have never dared ask him; I am afraid of the answer. But Marcus, listen. Whichever it was, whether she took that overdose herself, or whether he gave it to her, I am the murderess, for I created that situation which made it the only way out. For my daughter, I said! But it was not for my daughter it was for myself.”
She was sobbing wildly in his arms. She was laughing; she was crying.
“You see me, Marcus.
I am wicked. There is no goodness in me. And I so wanted to be good, Marcus. Audrey baa told me of a woman, a wonderful woman. Marcus, she is changing Newgate. Were we to go there now perhaps we should not recognize the place. That is what I like to think … We should not recognize it. She is a saint, this woman. How I envy her. I say to myself “That is what I might have been. And what am I… a murderess!”
He said: “Carolan, Carolan! How wild you are! What absurd things you say. You are not changed at all. You are still the same Carolan, the same sweet Carolan.”
“Please do not say my name like that. I cannot bear it. Do you not see that I will never leave him? You see what I have done. You have haunted my life; you will continue to do so. Oh, yes. I have thought of you constantly, longed for you … No, no, please do not! It is useless. I cannot be happy with him because of you. I couldn’t be happy with you, for always I would remember what he had done … or perhaps he did not do… but he is good and has a strong conscience, and he suffers just as though he had done it, because he knows why she died. She died because of what we had done, and he knows and I know it.”
He said: “Carolan, I could make you forget.”
She answered: “Oh, Marcus, I am afraid for my sweet daughter. She is headstrong, as I was. Sometimes I think that the women of my family are doomed to sorrow. There is some story about my grandmother; my great grandmother too. And then my own poor Mamma; she has told me the story of how she lost her lover to the press gang. How different her life might have been had my father not been taken by the press gang!”
Marcus held her against him, stroking her hair.
“The press gang is done with. Carolan. It ended with the wars.”
“My Katharine will never lose her lover to the press gang then!”
“Oh, Carolan, Carolan. do you not see a new world opening before us? We are going on … on to better things. You tell me even our old evil Mother Newgate is changing her manners. Slowly but surely, my Carolan. There is something here. Let us not think of our own little tragedies, darling. Look on… to our children and their children and their children … generations of them… going on and on! The press gang gone, Newgate changing! And what changes will our Katharine and Henry know in their lifetimes!”
“Marcus, you see what I mean … I want to make sure of safety for my daughter…”
“You cannot make sure of safety for anyone, my sweet Carolan.”
“But you can! You can!”
“No, darling. They will work out their own lives. We cannot interfere. People should never interfere; it is only the time in which we live that should influence us, and times are changing. Carolan. What if your mother and father were young in these days? No press gang to rum their lives. Mother Newgate is changing her face! Who knows, some time there may be no Newgate at all, no possibility of the innocent, such as you were, being caught up with the law; no need for the weak, such as I was, to break the law. Carolan, Carolan, do you not see a wonderful world lying ahead of us?”
“You talk wildly. Marcus. You always did. There is much cruelty in the world still. There always will be. How can we overcome all the poverty and cruelty and injustice?”
“Look there, Carolan! Look to our own Blue Mountains. How long ago is it that we thought there was no way across that mighty barrier? Impassable! people said. The natives told absurd stories of demons who had sworn we should never pass over their mountain. But we did, Carolan. We are across; and on the other side is a fertile country, undeveloped yet, undeveloped as the future. But it is there, and it is wonderful, and it is worth the heartbreak and the struggle to get across. That’s how I see it, Carolan, the way across the Blue Mountains to a beautiful future. Our grandchildren, Carolan … Our great great grandchildren … they will have their difficulties, as far removed from us as it is possible to be. There will always be a range of mountains to be crossed perhaps, but the struggle is worth while, Carolan, when you get to the other side.”
“They want to live beyond the Blue Mountains,” she whispered.
“Let them, Carolan! Oh, let them! Perhaps you are right: perhaps she would be wiser to marry her knight and go to London Town. But it is not for us to say. The future does not belong to us, Carolan, but to them. They must have freedom; we must give them that. You understand, Carolan. You do understand?”
“I am glad I came, Marcus.”
Do not go back, Carolan. Why should you? To a haunted house! I will make you forget there was ever such a woman as Lucille Masterman. You did not kill her! My child, you are not to blame. If she killed herself, who is to blame but herself! If he did it, let him take the blame. Come to me, Carolan. I will show you happiness.”
“You have shown me that our children must choose their own happiness, Marcus,” she said, ‘and that is a good deal. I shall think of what you said. I shall always think of it.”
“You will go back, Carolan?”
“Yes.”
“You broke my heart once. I mended it very roughly. Will you break it again?”
“No, Marcus, it was never broken. You will go back, and you will enjoy many moments in your life; sometimes you may think of me, and perhaps you will believe then that I alone could make you happy. You have not changed at all, Marcus. Your heart is strong it will not easily break. I shall go back and be the same haughty, arrogant, though sometimes gracious, Mrs. Masterman. This afternoon I have cried like a foolish girl, but that is only a part of me. I am part foolish girl, part arrogant woman. I am soft, I am a schemer. Do not ask which is really me; I do not know. I yearn to be a saint like Mrs. Fry, and I am only a murderess. I could have been the saint perhaps; I was the murderess. I was not strong enough. Events have made me what I am; they have made you what you are, Gunnar what he is. We are weak people, all of us. But now there is no press gang; Newgate is changing. There will be other changes. Marcus. And it will go on like that … always … for a hundred years, for two hundred years. However difficult the mountain range is to cross, it can always be crossed. I’ll remember. Goodbye, Marcus. Goodbye!”
She did not look back at him as she mounted her horse. She held her head high and rode away, back to the house in Sydney, back to Gunnar and her family and the memory of Lucille Masterman.
She turned after a while though and saw him. a lonely figure against the background of the Blue Mountains.
