Dorothy Eden Read Online Free Page A

learns to accept. The present system is deplorable, but until it is altered we must make it as workable as possible. I promise you I am a fair employer. I keep on every man who wants to stay when he becomes free. Except for the utterly depraved, of course. And that reminds me, you will want a good maid. Was there anyone on the ship who took your fancy?’
    ‘I shared Mrs Ashburton’s maid, Jane King. She wasn’t getting on very well with Mrs Ashburton, she could never seem to please her. I think she would like to come to me. Of course, this would have to be with Mrs Ashburton’s consent. Jane is a rather forlorn creature. She’s an orphan and needs someone to be kind to her.’
    ‘And that person is you? So it seems as if both Jane and I need you. I am an orphan, too.’
    ‘I know,’ Eugenia murmured, but looking at him sideways, she thought that he was an altogether different case from Jane with her timid eyes and skimmed milk complexion. She, poor thing, was ready to fly to anyone who would give her affection. But not this man with the sure lift of his chin, with his keen blue eyes and crest of flaming hair. He had learned to hide or disclaim his hurts. Privately she believed that he was a man to whom ambition came first and a woman second. But even believing this, she had decided to marry him. She was so certain that beneath his strength there would be great tenderness. To tell the truth, she found the situation challenging and exciting. But also a little alarming, for now she kept seeing a tiny figure in her mind, a black shape no bigger than a fly, with its arm rising and falling as the lash was administered on tortured skin.

Chapter III
    ‘A ND WHAT DID YOUR mother say, love, when you told her you were coming all this way to be married?’
    Bess Kelly was a homely woman with a big bosom and light fluffy hair that escaped its pins and hung in damp tendrils on her brow and about her plump neck. Eugenia had perceived at once that she would not have been society in England. But standards out here were different. Obviously, if a woman were honest and respectable, she would be accepted in most houses in this country.
    Eugenia found the attic bedroom to which Bess had shown her very small and dreadfully hot. The sun struck through the iron roof so that one seemed to have been put inside a stove, preparatory to being cooked.
    All the same the room was to be hers alone, for there was only one bed. This was bliss, after enduring three months of Mrs Ashburton’s talkative company in a none too comfortable ship’s cabin. There were sprigged muslin curtains at the slanting windows, the bed and dressing-table had pretty chintz covers. Mrs Kelly pointed to a bowl of cream-coloured flowers floating in water, and said the children had put them there. They were called frangipani and smelled nice. You needed sweet smells because the drains in the summer, and the slops thrown out by the public houses and sluttish housewives, brought less pleasant odours, not to mention flies.
    ‘Didn’t it break your mother’s heart, my dear, you coming so far? Of course she’d be wheedled by Gilbert Massingham. If ever there was a man who knew how to get his own way, it’s Gilbert. You’re going to have all the unmarried young ladies envying you, I can tell you that. Ever since Gilbert came back three years ago and announced he was bringing a bride out, there have been tears and pouts. But we all knew there was no one good enough for Gilbert in this ragbag of a colony. He intended to have the best. The same as his wines. He’s going to make the best wine in Australia, and what’s more, make people drink it. Well, I’ve been here ten years, and I say it will be something near a miracle if the rum and beer drinkers can be turned to wine. But if there’s a man who can use his persuasions, it’s Gilbert Massingham.’
    Eugenia found there was no need to say anything at all. She thought that Mrs Kelly could have few people to talk to, for