The London of which he talked was an exciting one, filled with exciting people. There was Mr. Sheridan and Charles James Fox in league with the profligate Prince against the half-crazy king. There was the wild Princess of Wales. It was like something out of a story book, and yet wonderfully real. He made Katharine wonder whether even Papa was such an important man compared with these gorgeously apparelled and most amazing people of London Town.
Even when they were seated round the table he went on talking. He set out to charm Carolan's daughter, and he did so as successfully as he had charmed Carolan herself.
The meat was good and fresh, and Katharine was hungry, but it was not the food she remembered from that meal, but the talk and the lazy merry eyes of the man and the softness of his voice and the flow of his words. He could, in one sentence, make a picture full of detail. He did not hint by a word, a look or a gesture, that he was talking to a child; he made her feel important, convinced her that he enjoyed talking as much as she enjoyed listening, and he gave pleasure as naturally as he took it. His conversation was peppered with wonderful names that she was to repeat over and over to herself and remember for years to come. Seven Dials. Cripplegate. The Temple. Brooks's and Almack's. The Fleet. Coffee Houses. Chocolate Houses. The Blue Lion in Newgate Street. Islington. Chancery Lane. Covent Garden. The King's Theatre. Haymarket. St. Martin's. Turnbull Street. Chick Lane. Jack Ketch's Warren. The Charlies. Drury Lane. Bawdy Houses.
Gambling Houses. London, London, London! The Old Country.
Besides this man, his wife, Esther, and Henry, there came to the table a man named Blake, his wife May and their two children a boy and a girl; there was also Elizabeth, the little girl of two, who, Henry had said, was his half-sister, and who, when they had finished eating, sat on Marcus's knee and watched his mouth while he talked and talked.
Esther, Katharine did not greatly care for, because she tried to stop him all the time, tried to remind him that he was talking to children, which she did not seem to realize was just what they loved to forget.
She kept saying "Marcus!" in a shocked voice which seemed to irritate Henry and certainly irritated Katharine almost beyond endurance.
But he took no notice of her and went on to describe the wicked things he had done in London, how he was one of the rogues who preyed upon those ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes and carriages; and he told it so that you were on his side against the fine ladies and gentlemen, and somehow would always be on his side, whatever he did.
"You, my dear Miss Masterman, can have no conception of the extravagances of our pleasure gardens." Then he talked of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and she saw the pleasure gardens and she walked in the avenues with him, she watched the fireworks and she was at the concert, and it was the most exciting time she had ever known. She drank hot punch and syllabub and shared oysters with this man, and Mr. Handel's music and Mr. Mozart's music was the background of the scene, for now and then he would burst into song.
He drank a good deal, and he told her then of how on out occasion at Vauxhall he had stolen the purse of a fine lady who had gone there to meet her lover. She dared not raise a hue and cry because it must not be known that she had gone there to meet her lover.
When he told that story, which was no more shocking than others he had told, Esther got up from the table.
"You are devilish I' she said, and burst into tears. And he just looked at her, cruelly, without saying anything, but Katharine could see he hated her and she hated him. She ran out of tie room, crying, which made Katharine very uncomfortable at first, but the other children hardly seemed to notice, and guessing that the reason they did not was because they had seen it happen many times before, she did not care either; for after all, she would care only on their account, and if they did not, where was the sense in her doing so? She was rather glad Esther had gone; she had tried to spoil the fun anyway. They could be more rollickingly gay without her.
When the meal was over, they sat on, talking. Darkness had come and lamps were lighted. Then Elizabeth's mother came in and took the child away; she was a comely girl with a fat, stupid face, and the man Marcus kissed the little girl tenderly and the servant girl lightly, which seemed a very extraordinary thing to do, but none of the others appeared to think so. She tried to imagine Papa's kissing Poll or Amy.
It was quite impossible!
They gathered round the table when it had been cleared of the food; two tame dingoes stretched themselves out on the floor.
Then Marcus took a map and spread it on the table, and she and Henry pored over it with him. There was Sydney, a big black dot, and there was the coast and the sea, and Port Jackson and Botany Bay ... and then, all furry looking, like a great caterpillar, wound the Blue Mountains. And beyond the Blue Mountains was a blank space.
Oh, it was wonderful to lean over that table and to see his face with its wrinkled skin and merry blue eyes in the lamplight, to be there ... one of them ... to listen to him as he talked and pointed with his finger at the places, now and then throwing out a word for her alone.
"What do you think, Miss Masterman?”
"Do you not think so?" As though she were not only a grown-up but an explorer. She knew now why Henry adored him; she was not disappointed in him now. Once she cut into the most exciting conversation to say: "May I come here again? May I come often?" And he did not reprove her for interrupting; he seemed glad that she had interrupted, for he stretched out a hand quickly and gripped hers so that it hurt. He said: "Come as often as you like, Miss Masterman. Or perhaps I may call you Katharine...”
He talked of how he and others had tried to cross the mountains; how they had hacked away at the brushwood, how they had camped in deep gullies, how they had followed what they had thought might prove to be a way over the mountains, only to be disappointed. He told of dwindling stores, of the necessity for return, of weariness, and cold and heat, and sleeplessness.
They adored him because at one moment he was a child with them, delighting in the things that delight children, and the next he was a man, and they man and woman with him.
The woman spoilt it all by putting her curly head round the door and saying: "It is time Henry went to bed; it is time she did too.”
And strangely enough he did not protest, but folded up the map, and the lovely evening was over.
Katharine had a little room with a narrow bed in it, a basin and jug and a washstand and chest of drawers. The woman lent her a nightgown, and when she brought it in, Katharine could see that she had been crying. But Katharine was too tired to think much of her, and was soon asleep; and when she awakened in the morning, remembered where she was with a delicious sense of excitement. She washed hastily and went downstairs to find Marcus on the veranda, where the fat servant brought her bread and milk.
Marcus said: "We will ride back to Sydney as soon as you are ready." He seemed less happy than he had been last night, wistful and very sorry that she was going. When she had finished her bread and milk, and Had eaten newly baked cakes, and drunk coffee, he said very earnestly: "I hope you will come again. It is not such a long ride out from Sydney, if you know the direct way to come. You must watch as we ride back, and take note of best way to come.”
"Thank you very much!”
"You are not sorry you were lost?”
"No, I am glad. I have loved it. I shall certainly come again.. often. May I come often ?”
"It could not be too often for me.”