Читать книгу Mistress Betty Carew - Mary Gaunt - Страница 4

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On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave,

The appointed, and the unappointed day;

On the first neither balm nor physician can save,

Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.

THOMAS ROSEN'S farm lay further out from the township of Rose Hill, or Parramatta as it was beginning to be called, and the soft rounded hills covered with dense bush cut it off from the harbour. It was not even on the river itself but on a little reedy back-water that in summer was dry mud holes and in winter was long sullen reaches where the wild duck and the pelican and even the great grey cranes abounded.

The main building, built of logs, was mud floored and thatched with rushes, there was a mud chimney, and in the walls were loop-holes where a man might thrust a musket and so defend himself, should the natives, Indians, Thomas Rosen and his wife called them, prove troublesome.

The house had only three rooms, and round it, just within hail, were the shacks of the assigned servants, built chiefly of cabbage trees and grass and mud, for where there was so much to do laying out and fencing the farm itself there was no time to consider those who were merely goods and chattels. It was wild and lonely, on the very outskirts of the British Empire, but Thomas Rosen was well content. He had a grant of 120 acres, and if this settlement at Sydney Cove throve, as he had no doubt it would thrive, then if not he, assuredly these sturdy young colonists that called him father would be well-to-do one day. His day's work was done and he sat on a rude bench with his back to the house wall and watched the rings of smoke from his pipe curl up in the moonlight. A man in the uniform of the New South Wales Corps sat on the other side of the bench, and between them was a jug of rum and water and a couple of tin pannikins which each filled as occasion required. It was a hot evening, and the voices of children came up softened by distance from the creek, and just out of earshot a slim, girlish figure leaned idly against the feathery wattle tree, while from inside the house came the clatter of women's tongues and washing dishes.

"Well, Lieutenant," said Rosen, slowly, giving another suck at his pipe, "I didn't have nothen to do with bringin' her here, and I don't know what to do with the wench now she is here, and that's a fact."

The soldier leaned back, dropped his pipe, and laughed heartily.

"Why, bless me, Rosen, if I don't take her off your hands myself."

"Now, none of that, Lieutenant. The wench is a good wench, and shall be fairly done by. She's kin to me, too, through her mother and my mother, though her mother was up in the world and mine was down."

"But where are her father, and mother?" asked the puzzled soldier, for at the end of the eighteenth century girls of his own class did not usually come out to the new colony of New South Wales without any belongings.

"Her father's there in Dorsetshire, and her mother—God knows where her poor mother is. She was but a child when they wed her to Sir Geoffrey Carew. They told her her lover was dead, the press gang had taken him, and so when he came back five years later he had but to hold up his finger and she followed him. And by and by came word she was dead, and Sir Geoffrey took another wife, and as she grew up he couldn't bear the sight of the wench, she minded him that of her mother."

"The devil! Does she take after her mother in other ways?"

"She's a good wench," asserted Rosen again, "though she's not of our sort. He shipped her off to me by the Lady Hope in charge of one of the officer's ladies, and the poor thing's like a homing pigeon that's lost its way. She can't stomach our rough ways and our rough fare."

"A nice dainty lady," said the soldier. "You needn't have her on your hands a minute longer than you like, Rosen, I tell you."

"No, no, I didn't mean that. She's welcome if she does think we're rough. Her father pays twenty good golden guineas a year for her maintenance and thirty guineas a year has she for herself."

"And the last ship brought two hundred more mouths and no provisions, and the salt meat is near out, and we may not kill fresh, and the meal is low and we can't all live on vegetables and garden stuff. 'Tis a cooling diet certainly, but not to my taste," and he tossed off a lot of rum. "I think, Friend Rosen, your cousin had the best of you."

"She's a powerful pretty maid," said that settler, cautiously.

"Faith! What's the good of her prettiness if it's not marketable?"

"I did not say that. There's plenty will come to woo once they know she's here. Already there's Mr. Bass from the Reliance has been here more than once."

"Has he indeed? But Bass is poor as a rat, a beggarly sawbones, restless as a terrier, and for ever at the Governor for leave to explore and open up the country. If you give her to him he'll be lost some day in that blessed leaky little boat of his and you'll have the widow on your hands again."

"To sell again," said the settler slily.

"Sell, bless us, Bass won't bid. He ain't got a handful of coppers. Besides, he won't buy. He ain't that sort. He'll take the lady if she'll go with him and then you may whistle for your twenty guineas a year."

"And the farm a wantin' a many things," sighed the farm's owner.

The soldier took another deep draught and so did his companion. There was silence for a minute or two, then Lieutenant Williams wiped his moist lips on the back of his hand and leaned over confidentially towards his companion.

"Tell you what, I'm sick to death of a lonely life. The servant wenches care for nothing, and the farm is a hole not fit to put my nose in. I want——"

"No, no, t'would never do. The wench is a good wench."

"Not if I give you a hundred pounds down for that little sow I saw in the sty yonder?"

"No, no, Mistress MacArthur and Mistress Laycock would wonder——"

"At so big a price for a pig?"

"It would come to his Honour's ears and he would be confiscating the farm."

"What will you take for the pig? I have set my heart on it," and Williams poured himself out another pannikin of rum.

"The wench must be wed with ring and priest like her mother before her."

"To hold it as lightly as her mother before her?"

"No, she's not that sort, I tell you. She'll stick to her bargain."

"I'll tell you what, Rosen. I'll give you two hundred guineas for that little black sow the day she weds me," and he rose to his feet.

"You mean it honest?" said the settler.

"I swear I do. And the sooner I have to pay it the better I'll be pleased. Hard cash, mind. Luck's been with me of late. And now I shall go and do some wooing, and then, friend Rosen, you must give me a shake-down for the night, for the Indians might have something to say to it if I walk down through the woods to the barracks to-night."

"They don't go about much at night," suggested Rosen.

"There isn't another man in the settlement could pay two hundred guineas down," suggested the soldier significantly, and he strolled off in the moonlight in the direction of the girl.

She saw him coming and was on her feet in a moment.

"Cousin, cousin," she cried, coming towards the house, her skirts trailing over the dewy grass, "it is quite dark but for the moon and the children are by the creek still. Is it quite safe think you?"

"Well, I'm thinking it is," but he whistled shrilly nevertheless, and four little sturdy, bare-legged children came racing toward them.

"Mistress Betty Carew," said Williams, lugubriously, "will you never speak to your humble servant?"

She made him a mocking little curtsy.

"You will surely show some hospitality to your cousin's friend."

"Oh, surely, to my cousin's friend," and she captured a small boy as he ran past her and held him in her arms.

"To-morrow, perhaps, you will speak with me? You will allow me to escort you through the woods. There is a beautiful flowering——"

"To-morrow, sir," said she, "my cousin's wife and I wash the linen. The wenches here have small skill and I am good at laundering."

"Tuesday, then?"

"We bake, and I can make bannocks better than the best of them."

"Wednesday, then?"

"You are most kind. But Wednesday, Cousin Rosen is going down to Sydney Cove, and he has promised I shall go, too. I have not been to the settlement since I arrived, and I want some fallals."

Williams muttered something under his breath.

"Good-night to you, then," and he turned on his heel and Betty, lightly laughing, carried the tired little boy into the house.