“Yes, Margery, but they’ve got this Sir Anthony in mind.”
“Ah! Marry him, me pretty dear, and you’ll be a real live ladyship. There’s some who.wouldn’t say no to that, I’ll be bound!”
“I thought you’d talk sense, Margery!” Sweet balm, that was. Madam and the master, they didn’t talk sense, but old Margery did, according to this lovely bit of flesh and blood. Margery put her hand on the bare shoulder, though it was risking her ladyship’s displeasure, for she was never one for being touched … except by some most likely … I never saw a child take after her mother more. And why not, and who are they to say her nay? What of them, eh? With the mistress lying in her bed, poor sickly lady. No, no, don’t think of that, Margery; it ain’t nice to think of. I wish we’d leave this house, but would that be any good? Ghosts don’t need the stage.
“Look here, my dearie, love’s a game for them that plays it. It’s not for them outside to give a hand. That’s Margery’s motto.”
“I agree, Margery!”
How her eyes flashed! Trouble coming, dear as daylight. Mrs. Carolan born again. Imagine telling her all those years ago who she was to love! Funny how people forget what they were lite when they were young! Now Margery Green, she remembered all too well!
Katharine had dreams in her eyes; she was thinking of long days in the sunshine, riding out to the station; he came to meet her. At first he had pretended to think her just a foolish girl when together they had listened to Marcus. But when the Blue Mountains had been crossed, they both seemed to grow up suddenly. Marcus, deeply regretting that he had not been one of the gallant band that first crossed the mountains, told them the story in his inimitable way, and it was as exciting as though they themselves had found the road.
“No matter how difficult a project may seem,” said Marcus, ‘stick to it, and you’ll get across as sure as men got across the Blue Mountains!”
She had ridden out to them, and kept her secret; she had planned and contrived, and it had been worth it. How she loved the sunny veranda and the talk of the two of them! Marcus smoking his Negrohead, drinking his grog, watching them, loving them, talking to them, welcoming her into his home. Sometimes he called her Carolan.
“That’s my mother, you know. I’m Katharine.”
“Of course! Of course! I forgot. I used to know your mother once.” And she had felt resentful towards Mamma, who, for no reason at all, had taken such a dislike to him, doubtless thinking him lacking in culture because he was not dabbling in politics, and did not attend the local functions, and was as different from Papa as it was possible for any man to be. Was Mamma perhaps a little snobbish? Her values were wrong surely since she tried to prevent her daughter’s friendship with a man like Marcus. She knew that Mamma had come out on the transport ship; she could not help knowing. One of the girls at school told her; it was a great shock. It made her look upon convicts in a different way; at one time, she feared, she had thought them sub-human.
“Are convicts real men and women?” Martin had once asked. She had been rather like Martin. But Mamma had been a convict, and Marcus and Esther. Convicts were ordinary people, and two of them Marcus and Mamma were among those she loved the best in the world. So Mamma should not have been snobbish about Marcus. She felt a slight estrangement between herself and Mamma then, but afterwards when she drew from Margery the story of the First Wife, she warmed to Mamma again. Poor Mamma, a servant in this house where now she was mistress, and Papa unhappy with his first wife! What a different picture from the house as it was today, and how proud Mamma must have suffered! It was really a good thing when the First Wife died, and Papa discovered that he loved Mamma. Vaguely from a long way back she remembered a certain fear about the First Wife. What an inquisitive and imaginative little creature she must have been in those days! Probing; scenting mystery; drawing out Margery and Mamma and anyone who would respond in the smallest way! Then she had discovered Henry and Marcus, and the house with the veranda and they filled her thoughts. She did not remember thinking very much about the first floor after that.
What would Mamma say if she knew she had been present at their musters! Papa too! But what a thrill to ride beside Henry!
“You’d better keep close, young Katharine.” That was Henry before he knew he loved her.
“A bullock on the run can be pretty savage. Keep near me!” That moment when the bull dashed into the plain with the cattle at his heels hundreds of them; she longed to join with them, with Marcus and Henry and Mr. Blake. She would one day. They would not let her at first; they said it was dangerous. She loved to hear the crack of the stock-whip, to see the skill with which they guided the cattle in the direction they must go. She was enormously proud of Henry. And then one day they let her join in, and it was after that that Henry gave her his first present, a stock-whip with a myall handle that smelt like violets.
She longed to stay at the station with them, to sit on the veranda with them till darkness came; to listen to the singing of the sheep-washers when their day’s work was done, and to heat the talk of the knockabout men who came for the shearings of to do odd fencing jobs. She would have loved to come in after dark with Henry, just the two of them alone, and cook their own meals … beef steak or bacon, or perhaps, after a muster, a fat calf.
Marcus had promised them their own station when they were married. They could go to it now … if they were married. Marcus would put no objection in the way. It was possible to discuss all one’s plans before Marcus. He never attempted to foil you; his suggestions were helpful, not destructive.
He said: “You’ll be my daughter, Katharine. Fancy that. I wished you were my daughter right from the very first moment I saw you!”
He was a darling. If it would not have been so utterly disloyal to Papa who really was the best father in the world she would have told him she would have loved to have him for a father. A father-in-law was almost a father anyway. She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him when he told them about the station. He liked that … and yet, oddly enough it embarrassed him. He said: “Katharine, Katharine! My sweet little Katharine, I’d have given twenty stations for that.” One didn’t always believe all he said. That about giving twenty stations for a hug was just his way of telling you how pleased he was. Perhaps all of his stories weren’t exactly true, but that didn’t matter; he made them more exciting because he knew you liked them that way. He spoke her name oddly, slurring it, making it a mixture of Carolan and Katharine; there was a similarity between the two, and he had a curious way of rolling them into one. She loved him next to Henry and Mamma and Papa, and there really was no one like Marcus in the whole world.
Henry’s mother she could never like, and she believed Henry’s mother did not like her and did not really want Henry to marry her; Katharine believed she protested to both Henry and Marcus.
Not that anything would stop them. She and Henry were meant for each other; Henry was as sure of that as she was. When she had lain with her ear to the ground; when she had coo-eed over the bush, she had been on the threshold of a new LIFE. Well, she knew that now I His eyes burned when he looked at her. He was eighteen. Papa would say: “Good gracious! How very young!” But Papa just did not understand.
She could recall indeed she could never forget the wonder of that day when Henry ceased to think of her as a little girl, and thought of her as Katharine. It was the day he had given her the stock-whip, and that gift represented more than the mere adventure of a muster shared; it was the adventure of finding each other. She was fourteen then. He was fifteen, but he seemed a good deal older; he had seemed a man when she first met him, and he had been little more than eleven then. They were shy at first, and Marcus knew why! He watched them with amused tenderness, and encouraged them to love each other.
She was sixteen when Henry said he loved her. It was there in that spot where he had first found her, and how deeply she had been touched by that sentiment which had led him to tell her there! They had lain on the harsh grass, and she had heard his heart beating, where once she had listened to the thud of his horse’s hooves.