Kitty watched a harassed bee buzzing and banging himself ineffectually against the window-pane. Her thoughts were on the bee, not on what Aunt Harriet was saying. And from the bee they went to Darrell... A whole day to be lived through before she saw him. She wondered how she would slip out of the house; she had an idea that Aunt Harriet would be a watchful person, not easy to deceive. The thought stimulated her rather than anything else. Perhaps she would run away with Darrell.
She was sure Aunt Harriet was the sort of person who would never approve of their marriage.
"If you would care to see your room," Aunt Harriet was saying, "I will show it to you. You could unpack your things and then come down and take a walk in the garden. I could show you what I hope you will make your duties there. What a lovely thing is a garden! Do you not think so? I always consider it a privilege to be allowed to work in my garden...”
They went up the stairs: everything smelt of soap.
"Your room!" said Aunt Harriet. It was a pleasant enough room, rather bare it seemed after her room in her mother's apartment, but good since it was to be hers, and she would enjoy privacy in it.
"I shall expect you to keep it clean yourself. I cannot lay extra burdens on the shoulders of those two stupid girls. Heaven knows they drive me to distraction now with their follies.”
Kitty unlocked her trunk. Aunt Harriet was kneeling beside it, thrusting her hands into the folds of gowns and mantles.
"What elegance!" She was both grim and prim.
"You will not have need of it here in the country. We can alter these things though; are you handy with your needle?" She made a little clicking noise with her tongue.
"Your mother was most unsuited for motherhood; it seems she neglected you badly.”
"She never did!" cried Kitty in revolt.
"I loved being with her. She was a lovely person. She was the best mother in the world!" Her hands were buried beneath silk and fine merino. She took out the miniature and looked into the lovely, laughing face portrayed there. Harriet, full of curiosity she could not understand, peered over her shoulder and gazed at the magnificent bosom and the bare white shoulders.
"It was done," said Kitty, 'by an artist who loved her." Harriet drew a sharp breath, and the jealousy she had felt for Bess was there in that room as strong as it had been twenty years before.
"It is ... immodest! A man who ... loved her! Oh! I can well imagine the life she led, I can imagine it. She was born wicked. A wanton creature!" Pictures crowded into Harriet's mind. The squire and the hard-faced woman who looked after his children, Bess and men ... vague men. She put her hands to her face, covered her eyes, but the pictures remained. And when she uncovered them, a girl with blazing eyes faced her.
"How dare you!" cried Kitty, and tears spilled from her wonderful eyes and ran down her cheeks.
"How dare you say those things about my mother! She was good ... good ... better than anyone else in the world, and I loved her...”
Kitty threw herself on to the bed and began to sob now as she I had been unable to sob since her mother's death. Harriet stared in dismay, first at the girl's shaking shoulders, then at her feet on the clean counterpane. She wanted to protest; she wanted to whip the girl; but she did neither; she just turned on her heel and hurried out of the room. In the corridor she paused. What a handful! Bess all over again! She would subdue the girl, though. She would force the wickedness out of her. just as she would have forced it out of Bess had she been old enough.
Kitty was stifled in that house. It seemed that everything she did was contrary to her aunt's wishes. At first she tried hard to please; she sat stitching with Harriet in the drawing-room until her head ached; she bent over the garden beds until her back ached; she worked in the still-room but hated the stains of fruit juice on her fingers, and she had no aptitude for the work.
How can she be so stupid! thought Harriet.
How can she care so much for all these things that do not matter, wondered Kitty. And she dreamed of Darrell, and thought of meetings in the wood, and of the day they would go to London together, for his Uncle Gregory had said he was too young to marry, and Darrell was hoping for support from his Uncle Simon in London.
"Wool gathering!" Harriet would snap.
"Head in the clouds! I do declare I've got an idiot for a niece.”
Kitty would merely smile and hug her secret to herself.
Insolent! Harriet would tell herself. Not a bit contrite! I believe she's laughing at me! But Kitty was not laughing at Aunt Harriet; she was only sorry for her. because she had no lover to meet in the wood and must spend all her enthusiasm on preserves and her kitchen garden.
Every evening at dusk she slipped out of the house. Darrell would be waiting for her in the wood. He would kiss her and fondle her. and she would look up into his face and think how good to look upon he was and how much older he seemed than the very young man she had first seen in the coach.
"Why!" he cried impatiently, 'do they put obstacles before us?
"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 running through his head: 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 flannel; Dolly carried the handkerchief tucked inside her bodice.