She began to shiver.
"You should have been a pioneer. You could have been, Carolan!" No, Esther, no! I should have passed by on the other side of the road.
But I wasn't all bad. I should have been a good wife to Everard. I should have cared for the poor and I should have understood their troubles and helped them. Perhaps if I had married Everard I should have been different. I might have been good -not wicked. I might even have been like you, Mrs. Fry.
"Marcus!" she cried.
He leaped from his saddle and tied his horse to the tree. She noticed his hands; they were brown with the weather.
He said: "I knew you would come!" with all the old confidence, and as though years had not passed since their last meeting.
"Carolan! Carolan! Why, you have scarcely changed at all!”
"Rubbish!" she said.
"I am years older. I am the mother of six children.”
"Well, Carolan, Carolan!”
She remembered his old habit of repeating her name; it still had power to move her.
This is a great day in my life!”
The old flattery that meant nothing. He would flatter old Margery just because he could not help flattering women.
"Are you glad to see me, Carolan? Do you find me changed?" He had come forward; he had taken her hands; his eyes were older, with experience, with weather; but the charm persisted.
"Naturally! Since I have come a fair ride to see you. But we did not come to talk of ourselves.”
"Did we not?" He was still holding her hands.
"Not such an uninteresting subject! Carolan, how has life been treating you, Carolan?”
"Very well, thanks. You too, I think.”
Very badly, Carolan, since I lost you.”
"Oh, Marcus, you are too old for that sort of talk, and I am too wise to listen to it. It is of our children that we must talk.”
"My Henry," he said, 'and your Katharine. What a sly old joker life is, Carolan! Would you have believed eighteen years ago, when we looked forward to our happiness, that one day we should meet in this wild spot to discuss the marriage of my son to your daughter?”
She was determined not to fall into that reckless mood which he was trying to draw round her like a web. She felt strong in her pride and her dignity and her knowledge that she was Mrs. Masterman of Sydney.
"It certainly does seem ironical, but as it happens to be a fact, shall we say what we came to say? Why did you want to see me?”
To beg you to put no obstacles in our children's way, Carolan. They are so young, and the young are so lovely, so helpless. It would be unbearable if they too were to lose their happiness. Could history repeat itself so cruelly? We must prevent that happening.”
"You are still the same," she said, angry without quite knowing why.
"You talk, and your words must not be taken seriously. You are suggesting, of course, that we lost our happiness; we did not. We are both well pleased with ourselves.”
"You found perfect happiness, Carolan?”
"Oh, let us stop this absurd, sentimental talk! Who ever found perfect happiness yet?”
"But if you cannot find it, Carolan, it is something to think you see it in your future. I thought that, Carolan, eighteen years ago in old Margery's kitchen.”
"When you decided to marry Esther? How is Esther?”
Real pain seemed to come into his eyes, but of course he was an adept at endowing each mood with a semblance of truth.
"No," he said, 'not then! It was when I thought I should marry you.
Oh, Carolan, Carolan, what a witch you were. You bewitched me. I had to obey you. I dreamed of you all day and all night. I believe I never stopped dreaming of you.”
She looked beyond him to the mountains. She thought of them as Katharine's mountains, because Katharine had loved to talk of them when she was a little girl.
"Listen, Marcus," she said.
"I love my daughter, more than anyone in the world, I love her, and I am very unhappy because she is angry with me. She is going away from me. If she were your daughter, would you not want the best possible for her?”
"Indeed I would, Carolan.”
"Well, understand this. There is a man who would marry her. He has everything money, position. He is kind and tolerant, and, I think, very much in love with her. He can take her to England; he can make her happy. But she is obsessed, and it is your son who has obsessed her. She sees no happiness but with him, and I will not have my daughter spoil her life!”
"Spoil her life, Carolan!" he said earnestly.
"Why should she spoil her life?”
"You know the life as well as I do. What is it, for a woman? She would have to live in the wilds; she would meet scarcely anyone. I can see her in London, sparkling for she is only budding and will bloom gloriously. London is her proper setting. Money... Position... that is what I want for my daughter. How do we know what will happen here?
This is a new country, heard stories of the terrible things that can happen on lonely stations. Men are more desperate here; laws are less rigid. No no! She would very soon forget your son. Oh, I imagine he is very like you were once; I imagine he knows how to charm a young girl. He will hurt her, I know he will... as you hurt me, as you must have hurt Esther and your Lucy and Clementine Smith and God knows who else. I want her to have security. Who knows better than I what can happen to a woman who is unprotected and ...”
"Carolan, Carolan, where is your good sense? She will be secure enough with Henry. He will love her, I promise you. He will look after her.”
She was emotionaclass="underline" it was not so much of Katharine that she was thinking, but of herself and Marcus, and tears of self-pity welled into her eyes, for his charm was potent as ever. And she thought of the years immediately behind her, and the ghost that had haunted her for eighteen years and of what wild, free happiness might have been hers for the taking.
He came to her and slipped his arm about her. He had seen the tears in her eyes.
"Carolan," he said, 'we are still young." She spun round to look at him, and he threw back his head and laughed.
"Carolan. Carolan! I am just past forty. Is that so very old? You are thirty-six surely in your prime. Carolan, look at those mountains!
Are they not beautiful? Do you feel them beckoning you? They are wild, they promise adventure; there is a new country beyond them.
Carolan, Carolan, why should you go back to Sydney? Why should you, why should you, my darling? This is linking up, my dear, linking up with eighteen years ago. You are mine, and I am yours... that was how it was then; that is how it is now. That cannot change.”
"Marcus!" she said.
"Marcus!”
He caught her to him and kissed her; she kissed him wonderingly.
"It is strange," she said, 'to feel young again. It is years since I felt young." She had lost control for a moment, but she was resolved it should be for no more than a moment. She wanted to capture that feeling of recklessness, she wanted to know again what it meant to love without thinking ... just to love. She had jail that moment; she would remember now.
That is all," she said.
He shook his head.
"Carolan, come away with me. Why should we not? You would have come with me... once.”
"Once!" she said.