She covered her face with the sheets; it came again. She uncovered herself and looked round the room; then she got out of bed and went to the window. She knelt on the seat and looked out.
Standing below her window was George Haredon. He had just picked up another handful of gravel to throw at her window.
For a second or two they stared at each other; then she stepped backwards. Hastily throwing a cloak about her shoulders, she went to the window and secured the bolt.
She did not look at him again, but she heard him laugh softly. She got into bed with her cloak still round her; she was trembling, not with cold but with rage.
Harriet Ramsdale was in bee still-room when she heard the carriage stop outside her gate. She hastily locked a cupboard door, untied the apron about her waist and smoothed the folds of her muslin dress. She was a large woman with fine dark hair which she wore simply; her eyes were grey under bushy eyebrows; her mouth was thin and straight. At the sound of the carriage on the road her mouth softened a little, for she guessed it was the squire’s carriage, and peering out of the window she confirmed this. She saw him alight: she saw him push open her gate in that forthright way which she admired so much; she saw him coming up the path to the front door.
She was as excited as Harriet Ramsdale could be excited, but with a return of her primness of manner she went back to the jars of blackberry jelly on the table, and began writing on their lids in a very precise, neat handwriting, “June, 1783’.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harriet Ramsdale,” she said under her breath, for when she was quite a small girl and Jeffry and Bess had not included her in their games she had formed the habit of talking to herself and had never lost it.
“You’re turned forty, and don’t forget it!”
She was essentially practicaclass="underline" she was dogmatic; she was just. She set a strict pattern for herself to follow Harriet, the daughter of a dearly beloved father, the only one in the entire family who had not disappointed him. Her house with its tasteful furniture, its polished floors where never a speck of dust was allowed to remain for long at a time, was a credit to her. For what would Peg and Dolly be doing, without Their mistress at their heels? A pair of sluts, if ever there was a pair of sluts! Workhouse girls, wasteful, indolent and Harriet suspected, immoral. But then, having lived in a family which contained her mother, her brother Jeffry and her sister Bess, she was apt to suspect everyone of immorality. She had borne the great shock of her father’s death some ten years back with fortitude, for she was strong of mind and body, and her one great weakness was her unswerving affection for George Haredon; it was a romantic affection, and quite lacking in that common sense which she, no less than others, expected of herself. It had begun when she had just passed sixteen and Bess was nearly fourteen; George must have been about eighteen at the time, and so handsome, so dashing, such a man of the world, that Harriet had admired him fervently, even though he did occasionally join in with Jeffry and Bess to tease her cruelly. Bess, even at fourteen, had been a lovely creature, and George’s interest had been all for her, for in spite of Harriet’s boundless good sense, in spite of the fact that she had been endowed with all the qualities which go to the making of a sensible wife, George, in common with the rest of his sex, was foolish enough not to recognize these virtues. When men grow older they learn wisdom; that fact was in Harriet’s mind hourly.
Poor George had been heartbroken when Bess ran away with her actor, and Harriet was sure that it was purely out of pique that he married his foolish little wife. She proved to be a very ; unsuitable mistress of Haredon, and had borne him four children, two of whom had survived. She had died soon after the birth of the last child, for she had caught a chill when she went to be churched.
George, so wayward, so in need of a guiding hand! If only he would ask her now! It was two years since his wife had died -quite long enough for his period of celibacy. She blushed a little. One heard such stories of the squire, but did not one always hear stories of persons in exalted positions? One heard rumours concerning the wild life of the young Prince of Wales, simply because he was the Prince of Wales. Servants chatter; you can whip them, you can threaten them with dismissal, but they chatter. It was whispered that even before that silly woman had gone to be churched and caught her death … but no matter she, Harriet, was not one to believe the worst of an old friend. There was the sound of running footsteps, a timid knock.
“Come in!” said Harriet, and Peg entered; her hair was tousled, her face flushed.
“Ma’am, the squire is here.”
“Peg! Your hair! Your gown! Is that a fresh rent?” Peg’s fingers pulled at the new rent in her gown.
“Whatever will the squire think to see such a slut in my house! You disgrace me. Go now. I shall be with the squire in a moment.” She was disturbed. Even the sight of Peg disturbed her, with;
her old dress, one of Harriet’s throw-outs, pulled tightly over a bosom that seemed to long to show itself, so that one had a feeling that at any moment it would tear the stuff and peep out, inviting admiration. Harriet smoothed her dress over her own flattish chest and went to the drawing-room. George was standing with his back to the door, facing the window. He swung round when he heard her.
“Harriet.” he said, and came swiftly towards her. He took both her hands, and his large brown eyes twinkled; they always twinkled when they rested on Harriet. Her heart began to beat quickly, but her face remained unchanged; rarely did a vestige of colour appear beneath her thick white skin.
“George! How charming of you to call. A glass of wine? Shall it be my sloe wine which you used to like particularly? There’s any cowslip too.”
He said: “Make it the sloe, Harry!”
She nodded her head, a little primly, but the corners of her mouth turned up. His tow, rather hoarse voice excited her. Bess had said, years ago when they had lain in bed together: “George is coarse; sometimes it’s exciting, but at others it’s horrible. I don’t know whether I’ll like being married to George or not.” Harriet had been indignant then, and she could still feel indignant. Who was Bess, she would like to know, to talk of coarseness? Bess who had run away with an actor and heaven knew whether he had married her or not! Bess who, from all accounts, had not stayed with her actor, but had had many men friends and a carriage to ride in, and silks and satins and laces and ribbons to deck her wanton person. For Bess had written to Harriet regularly maliciously of course and those letters had been peppered with the names of men. Harriet had never replied; she remained aloof, the virtuous daughter of a good man, whose enthusiasms went into jars of preserves and whose great moments were when last year’s sloe wine excelled that of the previous year. Who was Bess to talk of George’s coarseness. And yet… well, when she was with him it was impossible to deny that coarseness; she began to believe, when she was with him, the stories she heard about him. There were two Georges in her mind, the one she thought of in his absence and the one he was when he stood before her. The good squire and the man. The good squire needed her help, for he was impetuous and his bouts of rage were a byword, and every intelligent, practical woman knows that bouts of rage are a drag on the energy and get one nowhere; there was the man who set wild thoughts running through her mind, thoughts which she was afraid of, yet, incomprehensible as it might seem, thoughts which she was not sure whether she liked having or not.
With dignity she crossed to the door and opened it. Peg had obviously been listening at the keyhole. The manners of these girls. It was not often that she used the whip on them, not because they did not deserve it, but because they were such lusty creatures and a whipping had scarcely any effect upon them at all. She could have whipped Peg gladly then because, she assured herself, it was atrociously bad manners to listen at keyholes -and if she had told them once, she had told them fifty times.