“Ha! No use pretending to be asleep, girl.” He sat down on the chair by her dressing-table.
“Curse this plaguey darkness!” he said.
“Where do you keep your candles, girl? Get out of that bed and light one. I have had enough of your lady ways__Tonight I am going to show you that I have had enough. From now on things are going to change in this house…”
His voice was a little shaky. The mood of sentimentality was creeping in on him. In a moment he would be saying: “Kitty, let us start again … Could we, girl? I will forget what you have been, and you forget what I have been …”
He wanted Kitty. Damn it, he was getting on in years. He had done with the chasing; he wanted to settle. A man felt like that -settle and look after the children. And perhaps have more children. Three was no family for a man. More children like little Carolan. Kitty’s children that was what he wanted Kitty’s and his this time.
“Kitty!” he said, his voice soft and pleading.
“Kitty, girl.”
He groped his way to the bed and felt for her. It took him some seconds to realize that the bed was empty.
He was shouting, rousing the household.
“Here! Everybody! Where the hell is everybody! Come here at once, I say!”
And while he stood there, listening to his own voice he thought: By God, she is paying a midnight visit to a lover! What a fool I am going to look! By God! By God, I’ll make her pay for this!
A fool he was, a fool, to act without thinking. He imagined the tittering of the servants after this. If he heard any tittering, saw any sly glances, he would have them whipped, that he would.
Mrs. West, the housekeeper, came first, her dressing-gown pulled around her, her teeth chattering, her candlestick shaking in her hand.
“Where is your mistress?” he barked at her.
Mrs. West peered at the bed.
“Tis not been slept in, master!”
“I see that. Do you think I am blind!” He looked at her narrowly; she had always been Kitty’s friend, he knew. Was she hiding something?
“Look you, woman, if you have any idea, any idea whatsoever, of where your mistress is, you had better tell me at once or it will be the worse for you. Do you hear me?”
“I have not the faintest idea, master.” He knew that the woman was speaking the truth. Other faces appeared in the doorway, among them Jennifer’s. Jennifer was smiling secretly. She was thinking, as he was thinking, that Kitty had gone out to meet a lover. In a moment he would be slapping that secret smile from Jennifer’s face.
He said: “Call her maid!” and Jennifer went away and brought in Therese. Therese’s black hair hung in two plaits and her black eyes glittered.
“Where is your mistress?” demanded the squire. Therese looked towards the bed and lifted her shoulders in surprise.
“That I do not know. Monsieur.”
“Come,” said the squire, I think you do know.”
“But no. Monsieur!”
“Did you not dress her for an outing?”
“But no, Monsieur! She retired early this night. It was ‘cad-ache!” Therese held her own head and closed her eyes, then opened them and lifted them to the ceiling. Jennifer laughed. The squire said: “Get outside, all of you … Except you!” he added to Therese.
He did not watch them go, but he heard them, shuffling out, and he cursed himself for a fool to have aroused the household like this.
“Now,” he said to Therese, ‘no secrets! It is no use telling me that you did not share your mistress’s secrets and take part in her intrigues.”
“Oh, but no, no, no, Monsieur! Intrigue? What is he?” Plaguey foreigner! She did not understand when she did not wish to. Neat she was too, and cheeky with her flashing black eyes; and not too old. Her gesticulating hands were beautifully shaped.
“Damn it!” he said.
“Get out. I will speak to you in the morning.”
She went out daintily, and he sat alone in the bedroom. He would wait here for Kitty’s return, and when she came in he would take his riding crop to her. He had been soft. It was no way to treat a woman, to be soft with her. He would punish her now, in the way that would hurt her most. He would beat her white skin until the blood ran; then she could show that to her lover, and they would say he was a brute, but they would know he was master. He would beat her for what she had done to him, and what Bess had done to him; he would beat her for a hundred insults, even the one he had received tonight from a workhouse brat.
Jennifer came silently into the room. She stood close to him, thin and tall; the candlelight on her slanting eyes and pointed face made her look like a witch.
“George…” she said humbly.
“Get out!” said the squire.
She knelt beside him and lifted her face.
She said: “I have always been faithful to you … We used to be happy.”
By God, he thought, she has. And I believe we were happy in a way.
“All right, Jenny,” he said.
“All right.”
“George,” she said again, a high note of excitement in her voice, ‘why cannot we try to be happy once more?”
He was so tired; he let his hand touch her hair. She nestled close to him. He thought of past scenes; she was a passionate, strange creature, this Jennifer; he had liked her well enough once; she had been a great contrast to cold Amelia. There had been a time with Jennifer when he had almost ceased to think of Bess.
“All right, Jenny,” he said again.
Closer she came, and he smelt gin on her breath.
He said: “You have been drinking, Jenny!”
“No,” she lied. And he thought: Damn her. I cannot trust even Jennifer!
She nestled close to him. She was fuddled, too fuddled to think clearly. She tried too quickly to press home her advantage.
She said: “Oh, George, if you could know everything that has gone on in this room! If I could tell you!”
“Why the hell did you not tell me?” he demanded.
“How could I … of the mistress? There was not one lover, George. There have been scores!” She tittered. He hated tittering women.
“There are things I might tell you, George, if you were to ask me.”
Vivid pictures crowded into his mind, and Kitty figured largely in them all. Red mist swam before his eyes. He was so wretched and miserable and lonely, but Jennifer was too foolish to help him; a drunken sot of a woman she was nowadays. He stood up suddenly and sent her sprawling. He laughed at her and touched her with his foot, not violently, but contemptuously.
“Get out, you drunken slut,” he said. Jennifer got up; she stood before him pleadingly.
“Get out!” He put his face close to hers.
“And do not let me see you in this state again. It is bad enough to have a harlot in my nursery. I will not have a drunken harlot, do you hear!”
She crept out of the room.
The candle guttered. The clock ticked on. And as he sat there he knew that Kitty was not coming home.
The dawn was beginning to creep into the sky when he remembered seeing her that afternoon with her daughter. He went suddenly cold. Had she taken Carolan with her? Hastily he went to the child’s room. With great relief he saw that she was still there.
He sat heavily on the bed. He could just see her face in the early dawn light a child’s face with a smudge of lashes against her pale skin, very sweet, very innocent.
He shook her.
“Wake up, girl! Wake up!” She awoke startled.
“Oh …” she said, ‘the squire!”
He frowned. He had told her she must call him Father, had threatened to whip her for not calling him Father; and it was only in unguarded moments that she slipped back into the childhood habit of calling him the squire.
“Carrie,” he said sternly, ‘where is your mother?”
“Mother!” she said, and the events of the day came crowding back to her.
“You heard! Where is your mother? You know, do you not?”
She was too bewildered to deny her knowledge.
He said: “You know then, you know!”
She did not answer.
“By God,” he said, ‘so you are in this conspiracy against me, eh? Where has your mother gone?”