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“Wait!” says my Uncle Gregory. How can we wait! Kitty, how can we?”
It was difficult. There she was before him. very young, desirable and desirous, Bess’s daughter. Very soft and so ready to yield; he dreamed of the way she quivered when he put his hands on her shoulders. He loved her tenderly as well as passionately. He had written to his Uncle Simon in London, and Uncle Simon was more human, more understanding than Uncle Gregory. A large, red-faced man, Uncle Simon, whereas Uncle Gregory was tall and thin. Uncle Simon was a free thinker; he Meed to foregather with his cronies in coffee and chocolate I houses, and listen to the talk; he liked a carousal in a tavern; he liked women. Besides, he was ready to approve of anything of which Uncle Gregory did not. So Darrell had written a letter to Uncle Simon.
“She is beautiful,” he had written, ‘and we want to marry. Uncle Simon, we must marry At the moment we meet in a wood. She has a strict old aunt, and I have Uncle Gregory …” He had tried to word it so as to make Uncle Simon laugh as well as to arouse his sympathy. He had great hopes of Uncle Simon.” Still, he did not let his hands rest too long upon her shoulders, nor look too much at her red, soft lips; he tried not to notice how green was the grass and how soft and beautiful the bank, with the violets growing there. It seemed to him too that the birds were urging him to love, mocking him a little. There was a song of Shakespeare’s that kept ru
And therefore take the present time.
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino… For himself he would take all the present had to offer, but he! loved her very tenderly, and outside the wood with its soft; carpet of grass, its sheltering trees and mocking birds, the world! was a cruel place. ;
The two girls, Peg and Dolly, knew of the meetings with Darrell, but there was nothing to fear from this. Kitty had given Peg a girdle of silk and Dolly a lace handkerchief, and no one had ever given them anything but advice and blows before. The clothes they had worn in the workhouse were payment for hard work; their board and lodging with Harriet were payment foil more hard work. But the girdle and the handkerchief were simply gifts, for she had given them, asking nothing in return. But even without the gifts they would have been on her side. She was beautiful and she was kind; they had no learning, but they did know it was natural to love. So they would carry messages for her. and whisper together about her, and try to be a little like her. They had made constant use of the pump in the yard since the arrival of Kitty; they washed their garments. Peg wore the girdle on her quilted petticoat of fla
Two weeks passed in this way. The squire was a frequent caller. He sat in the garden and complimented Harriet on her flowers, and he studied her vegetables with what seemed like real interest. It could mean only one thing, thought Harriet, and she lay awake at night thinking of it.
She thought it was a pity that Bess had had to die just at this time and force on her the duty of looking after her daughter. For she did not understand Bess’s daughter; she was almost rude to the squire, and he never seemed resentful, never even seemed to notice it. Sometimes he would look at her from under his bushy brows as though he were puzzled and interested but then, if you pla
“You will never find a husband if you persist in those ma
It went on like that for three weeks, with the squire a constant visitor, until one hot afternoon, a lovely afternoon when the roses were at their best and the lavender was full of fragrance with the bees dancing a wild delight about it.
Harriet, from her sewing-room on the first floor, thought she heard the sound of carriage wheels on the road; she looked from her window, but the trees were too thick with leaves for her to see the road clearly now. She returned to her sewing. At any moment now Peg or Dolly would come to a
But the expected tap on her door did not come, so, she told!
herself, it must have been someone else’s carriage she had heard on the road. Feeling restive, she remembered how dry the dahlias had looked that morning. Poor things, they got little sun, tucked away near the summerhouse. If she wanted a good crop, when the more spectacular flowers had faded she must give them a little care. She went downstairs and took her watering!
can. ;
She heard voices as she approached the summerhouse.
Kitty’s voice! The squire’s voice! Then it had been the squire’!
carriage she had heard. She hastened forward, for she knew how unma
Kitty’s shrill. ‘ “Look here,” said the squire, ‘be reasonable, Kitty. God knows I’ve been patient. Why do you think I’ve been coming here life this … nigh on every day? To see you! And you know it, your little she-devil! Think I haven’t seen that look in your eyes? No.
listen, Kitty, I’ll marry you…”
Kitty cried: “Don’t dare touch me! I tell you I hate you!”
Nothing would make me marry you. I think … I think…”
Harriet realized that the rough bark of the tree trunk, pressed against her forehead, was hurting her. She stooped to pick up the watering-can which had fallen from her limp fingers.
“I hated you,” Kitty was saying, That first evening at the i
He laughed, coarsely, horribly; Harriet could bear to hear no more. She sped past the dahlia bed, across the lawn; she shut herself in her bedroom, feeling numb, and as the pictures crowded into her mind she made no attempt to shut them out. He was a beast! Why had she ever thought…? And all the time he had been laughing at her! Letting her believe that he contemplated marriage with her. Thank God she had never betrayed her own thoughts! Thank God her father’s training had taught her restraint!
“Little she-devil…” The slur in his voice when he said that… you could hear frightful things in his voice, lascivious things. Oh, this was relief. She would never sit at his table now; she would never be the squire’s lady; but now she could look straight at the ordeal of sharing his bed and not be afraid, because it would never happen to her. She must suppress anger; she must nourish relief. That evening in Dorchester! Now she knew why he had sent the carriage. And Kitty, the sly creature, was her mother all over again, with wanto