Читать книгу Her Assigned Husband - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 5

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October 17.—It is well, Indeed, that I contrived to overhear their first unguarded colloquy. Mrs. Blessington is a Sphinx, and my cousin has the wisdom of a fallen angel. Oh, heavens, to know that his unfailing kindness, his exquisite consideration, his chivalrous solicitude, and his unflagging readiness to sacrifice his predilections to my whims are so many sweet, smiling masks assumed to trap my confidence and undermine my independence. Is there any meanness, any baseness, from which a gentleman will shrink in his pursuit of fortune? With pickpockets and snatch-purses, such practices may be accounted natural, but I do now begin to realise that the hearts of all men are infamous and black with guile. Yet there is one shall pay me to the full; aye, and more than one, perhaps. Why not acquit Sir Harry in his own coin—with the other? Might I not constrain him to attend me to the Antipodes—there to be an instrument of my revenge? How could he resist the pressure I may put upon him? He is fathoms deep in debt, and I have learned the trick of stirring up his passions. Shall I teach him that his "soiled dove" is a spider—spinning out the lesson over many thousand leagues of ocean and across the verges of an undeveloped continent? The plan has pleasing features, and a man is always useful to a woman who can manage him and keep him loyal with a dangled purse. Do you not hear the knelling of your doom, accursed sneak who call yourself Sir Harry Blessington?

November 9.—All London is going to her Ladyship of Tinemouth's rout—save only me. Her Ladyship has overlooked my invitation. Everybody knows, of course, and pities me. To Hades with their sympathy! There's not a tender glance or smile addressed to the misfortunate but is the prelude to a sleeve-laugh and a mordant sneer. Every house that closes strengthens my determination. England grows steadily more insupportable. My position becomes almost daily more impossible. Yet there are kind souls who believe that I am deaf and blind, and wholly reckless. I visit the Colonial Secretary to-morrow.

November 27.—The die is cast. The Rubicon is crossed. The Minister was more than kind to me. For a mere £6000 I am to be vested with a grant of 20,000 acres of excellent grazing and agricultural land situated within a few miles of the convict city, with the right to the assigned service of 40 convict laborers. He advises me to procure a flock of Saxon sheep, which are noted for growing an especially fine wool, and to provide for the building of a house in advance of my arrival. I shall follow his counsel to the letter. He has promised to equip me with letters to the Governor of New South Wales, and he assures me I shall be received as a very welcome addition to the society of the new colony. Better a year in Europe than a cycle in Cathay, sings the poet. He was not a woman lured into marriage with an English felon. Better, say I, to queen it among the derelicts of Sydney than to suffer the contemptuous patronage of London Pharisees. Not a woman came to my last party but has a slack purse or a slacker reputation, and not a man but is, or was, a rake-hell.

December 1.—I owe Harry Blessington even more than I had thought. Lord Strathnaver was very drunk to-night, very maudlin, and very confiding. Harry's ears should have burned. In vino veritas. It would appear that Harry has been covertly informing the world that I could forthwith break my marriage in the courts if I desired, but that I am disinclined to have recourse to the law immediately, while I possess a plausible excuse and sanction to enjoy the privileges and employ the license of a matron. I may no longer feel surprised at the rapidity of my exclusion from the houses of personages who were formerly accustomed to treat me with distinction. Ah! well. What matters? The play here is almost ready for the curtain. In a few days Harry will learn that he is faring out to Botany Bay. I can picture his astonishment, his indignation. He will struggle like a lion in the toils, and ah! his mortification to discover he is no such noble animal—merely a buzz-fly tangled in a spider's web!

December 23.—The good ship Vansittart sailed to-day, her fore-hold filled with material for my Australian house, her decks littered with sheep of Saxony and a herd of our best English cattle. Nobody knows my plans yet except the Minister and my lawyers. But the Blessingtons have learned that I propose to sell Heatherdean, and they are aflame with curiosity. We set out, all three of us, to-morrow for Italy, where I shall dwell until the news arrives that my Antipodean home is fit for occupation. That may be a year, perhaps.

March 9.—Despatches. Despatches! Never was there a more considerate Minister. The copy of a gubernatorial report, sixty folios in length, eloquently describing the social and fiscal conditions of the colony; also an elaborate brochure on the convict system; finally, a gracious epistle signed by my Lord himself, charged with much patient and sincere advice, and many wise suggestions. I am, indeed, flattered to discover that his Lordship believes me worthy of such grave and serious attention. I must take care to reinforce the impression I have been fortunate enough to carve upon his memory. He tells me, very candidly, he attaches much importance to my "brave adventure," and that he is prepared to devote all the resources at his command to assist it towards a prosperous career, for the colony's sorest need is of free immigrants with sufficient capital and enterprise to establish industries that may ultimately make the settlement "a self-supporting institution;" and he argues that if one English woman may succeed—which he considers highly probable—it will become less difficult to tempt Englishmen of the required type to embark their fortunes in the South.

April 27.—More despatches—all of moment, but one, to me, of a most urgent, cutting interest. The convict Mark Seldon has graduated through all classes of the probation gang system, and for good conduct has been promoted to the position of schoolmaster in a secondary road-gang station at Parramatta—wherever that may be.

June 3.—Better news. The convict Mark Seldon has been degraded and punished for supplying tobacco to men in the gangs.

September 14.—The convict Mark Seldon has been flogged for insubordination, and remitted to the lowest class of the "probation gangs." We set out for London to-morrow, and sail from Portsmouth in the Vansittart, on November 19. Sir Harry is becoming reconciled to his fate. He vows that he adores me. Mrs. Blessington is passively resigned. I have promised to discharge her debts—else-wise she could hardly now return to England—and to make her an allowance of £1200 per annum till her death. Harry has been assisted by his native modesty to solve the riddle of my original behaviour. I am consumed with a secret longing to become his wife, and to endow him with my rich inheritance, but I suffer from this strange perversity—despite my flighty ways, I am at heart a thoroughly religious woman, and were I a dozen times enfranchised by the law, my conscience would forbid me to re-marry while my convict spouse still lived. I am going to New South Wales, it seems, for two main reasons. Number, one—because I smart intensely from the ban of London's social disapproval; and number two—because I am sufficiently human, notwithstanding my religion, to indulge my vengeful instincts with the spectacle at narrow range of a certain felon working out his punishment in chains. Sir Harry, who has independently studied the convict system, is so confident that Luke Sherwin will not long survive its dreadful discipline that he has made me doubly anxious to be gone. The thought faces me constantly that I have been too patient, that he will perish ere I have an opportunity to—but no! I will not entertain this cruel doubt. Never was there born a stouter villain, one better qualified to wear the yoke, to bear the lash and live, and live. Moreover, I have rights which I might challenge Providence to repudiate—with blasphemies—and yet retain. And I am far from willing to be blasphemous. I am infinitely prayerful, infinitely meek. My life is one prolonged entreaty that he should be spared to feel the gentle ministrations of a woman's hand—a loving woman's hand.