Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean. Страница 10

“Come and eat,” she said.

Everything was spotlessly clean. There was cold mutton on the table and fruit pie. Kitty put her hat on her head, since there seemed nowhere else to put it, and sat down at the table.

“Peg.” called Harriet.

“Bring a glass of ale.”

“Peg?” said Kitty.

“Who is Peg?”

“My maid. A lazy, good-for-nothing piece if ever there was one. And the same applies to Dolly, my other maid. I hope you have brought some recipes from London.”

“Recipes?” Kitty found that so funny that she began to laugh, and because tears had been so neat it wasn’t possible to stop laughing. Peg came in and stared at the newcomer, then she began to laugh.

“Please, please!” cried Harriet.

“I do not… I will not…” But they went on laughing, and Dolly came and peeped round the door.

Harriet’s face was full of anger. Kitty saw this, and stopped.

“I am sorry. It was just the thought of my mother jam-making. She never did, you know; she never thought of things like that. If she wanted jam she just got it out of a pot; she would never think of how it got there.”

Peg and Dolly were staring in frank amazement at this young lady from another world. Dolly was even so bold as to come close and touch the stuff of her dress.

“Dolly. Peg! Leave this room at once,” ordered Harriet, ‘and don’t dare enter it until I send for you, unless you wish to feel the whip about your shoulders.”

When they had gone, Kitty said: “I am sorry. I expect that was my fault only the thought of my mother making jam was so runny.”

“You are evidently amused very easily!”

Kitty began to eat. Poor old Aunt Harriet, she thought; she didn’t look as if she had a very happy time. It must be wearying living in this place, with only recipes and clean floors to think of. How gloomy the prospect, if she had not met Darrell. But, of course, meeting Darrell had changed everything. Perhaps, if she hadn’t met him, she wouldn’t be saying poor Aunt Harriet, but would just be disliking her. You couldn’t dislike anyone when you were in love; you were only sorry for people like Aunt Harriet.

She ate the fruit pie and drank the ale. and all the time Aunt Harriet talked. She talked of what she would expect Kitty to do; there was the garden; there was the house, so many tasks to be performed, as Kitty could imagine, and it was Aunt Harriet’s pride and joy to keep her house clean and shining, and her garden beautiful. Was Kitty fond of fine needlework? No? That could be improved. Did she play the spinet? Dear! Dear! Her education had been neglected. Aunt Harriet confessed that she had been prepared for that, and she added, almost indulgently, she was not sure that she would not rather work on virgin soil.

Kitty watched a harassed bee buzzing and banging himself ineffectually against the windowpane. 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?