Carolan looked up: her eyes smouldered as she was remembering last night’s scene with Margery.
“Yes?” she said coldly.
Margery sidled over and turned her back to Audrey. She said in a soft voice: “It is a letter that was brought for you.”
She held out an envelope across which was scrawled “Mrs. Masterman. Carolan took it.
“It was brought to me kitchen this morning.”
How long ago? wondered Carolan. Had Margery found some means of opening it and read it?
The kitchen?” said Carolan casually. That’s an odd place to deliver a letter. All right. Margery. Thank you.”
As soon as Margery had gone. Carolan tore open the letter.
Dear Mrs. Masterman, she read. Would you be so good as to grant me an interview? I think there is much to be discussed concerning out children. Perhaps Katharine would tell you where she was once lost and where Henry found her. These two young people have made that spot their meeting place; could we make it ours? I shall be there this afternoon at four o’clock. If you are not there this afternoon, I will be there tomorrow, because I hope so much that I shall see you. William Henry Jedborough.
She crumpled the letter. How like him. What insolence! She had determined that Katharine should not marry Henry Jedborough; what good did Marcus think he could do by this meeting? Did he think he could be so persuasive? He was ever one to over-rate his powers.
She had not seen him since that day he had ridden in with Katharine. She had said she hoped she would never see him again. This marriage was impossible. How could the two families unite! Esther and Marcus! What memories! At all costs Katharine must not be allowed to marry Henry.
She shivered, thinking of last night’s scene in the kitchen, with that insolent Margery almost blackmailing her, and Katharine going back to the guests and acting as though she were a being from another world, until one wanted to slap her. But Anthony Greymore seemed to have found that will-o’-the-wisp mood attractive. Oh, Katharine, you little fool with your romantic ideas of love and life! Here is position, wealth, security… and you would throw all that away for a station in a wild country where bushrangers might deal death to you and your family one dark night. You want love, you say; Sir Anthony loves you, and you, foolish child, ought to know that it is wiser to accept love than to give it. And your Henry, what of him? He is his father all over again. How long will his love stay warm for you, my dear?
Oh no, this folly must be stopped; because I love you, Katharine, better than I love anyone else in the world. It is not because I cannot bear to meet Marcus that I want to stop this marriage; it is not because I hate Henry’s mother for taking Marcus from me; it is for your sake, my dear… for your sake only.
She tore the note into many pieces. I wonder what he is like now. He will be over forty, past his prime. I am thirty-six. What years and years ago since I first saw him, and he stole my handkerchief! Thief I Rogue! Philanderer!
She thought of him in his room at Newgate, she standing at his shoulder while he fed her with pieces of chicken. She remembered the proposal he had made then. She thought of Lucy’s looking in at the door, and Clementine Smith on the boat, and she was as angry with these two as she had been when she had discovered his relationship to them.
In the glass Mrs. Masterman looked back at her, smooth-faced, well-preserved, a lady of dignity; behind the mask of Mrs. Masterman, Carolan Haredon peeped out. Carolan Haredon was still there in spite of Mrs. Masterman.
She saw Audrey’s reflection in the glass.
The girl’s face was placid, a mask as concealing as the mask she herself wore.
“Audrey,” she said on impulse, and the girl came swiftly to her.
“Audrey, I have often wondered what brought you here. Forgive me, Audrey, and do not answer if you prefer not to. It may be that you do not wish to speak of terrible things.”
Audrey’s grey eyes filled with tears.
“You are so kind. Madam.”
“Kind!” Carolan laughed at herself in the glass. Not kind, not Selfish, and sometimes cruel and scheming and… “I wouldn’t have believed anyone could be kind like you are,” said Audrey.
“Not if it hadn’t been for her. She talked to me … she talked to me special, she did. She said, “Never despair, Audrey … Life can’t be all cruel,” she said.
“That wouldn’t be human nature. There’s good and bad, bad and good. Look for the good, Audrey!” She spoke to me special.”
“Audrey, you were at Newgate?”
Audrey nodded. She began to shiver. Carolan shivered too. The memory was such as to make one shiver after nearly twenty years.
“Tell me, Audrey… Tell me…”
The story came out by degrees. It was an ordinary enough story; Carolan had heard many like it in Newgate, and on the convict ship. The daughter of unknown parents, left on the doorstep of a lodging-house, where she was taken in because she might be useful; five years old. scrubbing floors, seven years old a fully fledged drudge; blows and curses; learning to steal, food first, then other things; then running away and eventually ending up in Mother Somebody-or-other’s kitchen. The usual story of crime and violence. An innocent child turned into a criminal by a brutal system. She had been in the bridewell; she met people in the bridewell who said they would help her when she came out. They did help her to go lower.
Carolan was fascinated by the expressions which crept over the girl’s face as she talked. Depravity, cunning, lewdness… another Audrey posed before her. Her placidity was a veil which she lifted, and something horrible peeped out.
“And finally Newgate?” said Carolan, for she wished she had not started this.
Carolan had a picture of the girl’s facing that crowd of wild beasts. She thought of Esther, naked before them, of Kitty’s going down, of herself and poor Millie bloody with battle. But this girl would have been prepared; she would have been one of them. She would be no innocent when she went to Newgate.
Audrey covered her face with her hands.
Carolan said: “And you drove from Newgate to the ship. It was horrible. My poor Audrey! Perhaps the most horrible … because free people laughed at you and did not care. But do not think of it any more; it is too depressing.”
Audrey uncovered her face, and the veil of placidity was drawn over it again.
“We drove in a closed carriage. She said we must…” Audrey was herself now, the quiet, discreet maid.
“Who said it?” asked Carolan.
“She did.”
And Audrey told the incredible story about a lady who must surely be an angel. Carolan had not suspected Audrey of lying before.
“She walked in one day,” said Audrey. The turnkey opened the door and he said: “Lady, you go in at your own risk. There’s wild beasts in there!” And she walked in … like an angel with the most beautiful smile you ever saw in your life, M’am. And she picked up one of the children, and he hadn’t got no clothes on at all, M’am, and his face was half eaten away with sores, and she picked him up like she was his mother. And she was beautiful, M’am, though not as you’re beautiful. But beautiful different, M’am… beautiful like an angel would be…”
Audrey was romancing. If you had spent horrible weeks in Newgate, you knew it was no place to harbour angels. The poor child had had an hallucination.
“Audrey, finish your work and leave me. I wish to be alone.” She picked up the fragments of Marcus’s letter. What impudence! Of course I shall not meet you. And what would you do if I did? You would flatter; you would tell me you had never forgotten me, doubtless. You would … She tried to still the absurd fluttering of her heart. It was not Marcus of whom she was thinking, she assured herself, but of that absurd flight of fancy of her maid. Newgate did something to you, turned the brain. If you stayed there too long, doubtless you would suffer from hallucinations.