Life and Death of Harriett Frean | Page 4

the flowers. And somehow you knew it wasn't your naughtiness that made her cry. There was something more.
She was saying in a thick, soft voice, "It was wrong of you, my darling."
Suddenly she bent her tall straightness. "Rose campion," she said, parting the stems with her long, thin fingers. "Look, Hatty, how beautiful they are. Run away and put the poor things in water."
She was so quiet, so quiet, and her quietness hurt far more than if she had been angry.
She must have gone straight back into the house to Papa. Harriett knew, because he sent for her. He was quiet, too.... That was the little, hiding voice he told you secrets in.... She stood close up to him, between his knees, and his arm went loosely round her to keep her there while he looked into her eyes. You could smell tobacco, and the queer, clean man's smell that came up out of him from his collar. He wasn't smiling; but somehow his eyes looked kinder than if they had smiled.
"Why did you do it, Hatty?"
"Because--I wanted to see what it would feel like."
"You mustn't do it again. Do you hear?--you mustn't do it."
"Why?"
"Why? Because it makes your mother unhappy. That's enough why."
But there was something more. Mamma had been frightened. Something to do with the frightening man in the lane.
"Why does it make her?"
She knew; she knew; but she wanted to see what he would say.
"I said that was enough.... Do you know what you've been guilty of?"
"Disobedience."
"More than that. Breaking trust. Meanness. It was mean and dishonorable of you when you knew you wouldn't be punished."
"Isn't there to be a punishment?"
"No. People are punished to make them remember. We want you to forget." His arm tightened, drawing her closer. And the kind, secret voice went on. "Forget ugly things. Understand, Hatty, nothing is forbidden. We don't forbid, because we trust you to do what we wish. To behave beautifully.... There, there."
She hid her face on his breast against his tickly coat, and cried.
She would always have to do what they wanted; the unhappiness of not doing it was more than she could bear. All very well to say there would be no punishment; their unhappiness was the punishment.
It hurt more than anything. It kept on hurting when she thought about it.
The first minute of to-morrow she would begin behaving beautifully; as beautifully as she could. They wanted you to; they wanted it more than anything because they were so beautiful. So good. So wise.
But three years went before Harriett understood how wise they had been, and why her mother took her again and again into Black's Lane to pick red campion, so that it was always the red campion she remembered. They must have known all the time about Black's Lane; Annie, the housemaid, used to say it was a bad place; something had happened to a little girl there. Annie hushed and reddened and wouldn't tell you what it was. Then one day, when she was thirteen, standing by the apple tree, Connie Hancock told her. A secret... Behind the dirty blue palings... She shut her eyes, squeezing the lids down, frightened. But when she thought of the lane she could see nothing but the green banks, the three tall elms, and the red campion pricking through the white froth of the cow's parsley; her mother stood on the garden walk in her wide, swinging gown; she was holding the red and white flowers up to her face and saying, "Look, how beautiful they are."
She saw her all the time while Connie was telling her the secret. She wanted to get up and go to her. Connie knew what it meant when you stiffened suddenly and made yourself tall and cold and silent. The cold silence would frighten her and she would go away. Then, Harriett thought, she could get back to her mother and Longfellow.
Every afternoon, through the hours before her father came home, she sat in the cool, green-lighted drawing-room reading Evangeline aloud to her mother. When they came to the beautiful places they looked at each other and smiled.
She passed through her fourteenth year sedately, to the sound of Evangeline. Her upright body, her lifted, delicately obstinate, rather wistful face expressed her small, conscious determination to be good. She was silent with emotion when Mrs. Hancock told her she was growing like her mother.

III
Connie Hancock was her friend.
She had once been a slender, wide-mouthed child, top-heavy with her damp clumps of hair. Now she was squaring and thickening and looking horrid, like Mr. Hancock. Beside her Harriett felt tall and elegant and slender.
Mamma didn't know what Connie was really like; it was one of those things you couldn't tell her. She said Connie would grow out of it. Meanwhile you could see he