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 planned to marry a lady, you would be interested in her relations I Now and then, when Kitty was offhand with the squire and made Harriet cold with indignation and humiliation, he would turn to her, Harriet, and be so charming, almost like an accepted lover, as though he would teach the girl a lesson in good manners. It was gratifying, intensely so. Once she said to Kitty: "I do not understand you; you are positively unmannerly towards Squire Haredon!" And Kitty turned on her with flashing eyes, and cried out: "I hate that man!" Hate! What a word for a lady to use! And what had the squire ever been towards Kitty but indulgent, ready to overlook her rudeness?
"You will never find a husband if you persist in those manners, my girl!" she had said severely, for the girl was as vain as a peacock, and she thought that the best way of piercing her armour. And Kitty angrily turned on her with: "Your excellent manners did little to help you in that respect!" And then, just like Bess, all fury one moment and full of ridiculous demonstrations the next: "I'm sorry. Aunt Harriet. I didn't mean that, of course. I know ... there must have been people who would have liked to marry you ... if you had wanted them... but... I do hate Squire Haredon. I can't explain, but I do.”
And Harriet had said: "Indeed, you foolish girl, you cannot explain; but I will thank you to be more civil to my guests.”
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 announce the arrivals of the squire, and perhaps this very afternoon he would ask the question which must have been on his lips for weeks now] perhaps for years.
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 summer-house. 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 unmannerly Kitty could be. She hoped ... She stopped suddenly and leaned against the laburnum tree, which in spring time showered its yellow blossoms over the roof of the summerhouse. Their voices floated out to her; the squire's was thick!
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 inn at Dorchester. I tell you, I hate the way you talk, and I hate the way you eat, and most of all I hate the way you look at me. Don't dare to touch me! I'll scream ... I'll call my aunt...”
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 wantonness in her eyes. It was a duty now to prevent the girl from following in her mother's footsteps. She should be guarded with vigilance.
Up and down her room paced Harriet. She took her keys and went to the still-room; here was comfort. So clean, so neat -what joy in regarding those labelled bottles! Here was her life. All thoughts of George Haredon were to be thrust out of it for ever. Never again should she be so deceived!
Someone was knocking on the door.
"Come in!" she said calmly, and Peg came in and told her that the squire had arrived and was downstairs in the garden.
She went out to greet him. How grateful she was to her father! She had inherited no luscious charm from her mother, but she must be grateful for her father's serene spirit.
"How do you do?”
His face was red and angry; he looked bewildered and younger than he had for a long time, almost as though he could not understand why the world was so unkind to him.
"How good of you to call, George.”
He sprawled on the wooden seat under the chestnut tree, sullen, trying to pretend nothing unusual had happened.
"You will drink a dish of tea, George? Peg will be bringing it -I told her to, when I knew you were here.”
"You're too good to me, Harriet!”
"Stuff and nonsense! Because I offer you a dish of tea?" She noticed how thick his legs were; she shivered. He had coarsened since the days of her youth when she had built an ideal and called it George Haredon.
She believed the stories about him now; yes, she did, and she would admit it. She was angry;! she was hurt; but the feeling of relief was there all the same. I will send for my niece. Where does the girl get to? A lazier, more good-for-nothing creature I never set eyes on, unless it's Peg or Dolly. Curling her hair, no doubt Of all the empty-headed girls...”
In a way she was trying to comfort him. She was quite sorry for him almost as sorry for him as she was for herself. It was Kitty she blamed; just as she had blamed Bess. You didn't blame men for being what they were; you blamed women for helping to make them so.
She left him sitting, and went indoors.
"Tell my niece to come down to the garden," she instructed Peg.
"Tell her I particularly wish her to come.”
Kitty came. On her lovely hair she wore a hat which shaded her eyes and shielded her face. She greeted the squire coldly. Harriet was amazed to see that there was a certain humility if the manner of his greeting to her; she had never seen George Haredon humble before, except perhaps when he was very young and so much in love with Bess.