Life and Death of Harriett Frean Part 13

"I'm sure," Maggie said, "I'm doing no worse than I did, ma'am, and you usedn't to complain."

"No worse isn't good enough, Maggie. I think you might have tried to please me. It isn't every one who would have taken you in the circ.u.mstances."

"If you think that, ma'am, it's very cruel and unkind of you to send me away."

"You've only yourself to thank. There's no more to be said."

"No, ma'am. I understand why I'm leaving. It's because of Baby. You don't want to 'ave 'im, and I think you might have said so before."

That day month Maggie packed her brown-painted wooden box and the cradle and the perambulator. The greengrocer took them away on a handcart.

Through the drawing-room window Harriett saw Maggie going away, carrying the baby, pink and round in his white-knitted cap, his fat hips bulging over her arm under his white shawl. The gate fell to behind them. The click struck at Harriett's heart.

Three months later Maggie turned up again in a black hat and gown for best, red-eyed and humble.

"I came to see, ma'am, whether you'd take me back, as I 'aven't got Baby now."

"You haven't got him?"

"'E died, ma'am, last month. I'd put him with a woman in the country.

She was highly recommended to me. Very highly recommended she was, and I paid her six s.h.i.+llings a week. But I think she must 'ave done something she shouldn't."

"Oh, Maggie, you don't mean she was cruel to him?"

"No, ma'am. She was very fond of him. Everybody was fond of Baby. But whether it was the food she gave him or what, 'e was that wasted you wouldn't have known him. You remember what he was like when he was here."

"I remember."

She remembered. She remembered. Fat and round in his white shawl and knitted cap when Maggie carried him down the garden path.

"I should think she'd a done something, shouldn't you, ma'am?"

She thought: No. No. It was I who did it when I sent him away.

"I don't know, Maggie. I'm afraid it's been very terrible for you."

"Yes, ma'am.... I wondered whether you'd give me another trial, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure you want to come to me, Maggie?"

"Yes'm.... I'm sure you'd a kept him if you could have borne to see him about."

"You know, Maggie, that was _not_ the reason why you left. If I take you back you must try not to be careless and forgetful."

"I shan't 'ave nothing to make me. Before, it was first Baby's father and then 'im."

She could see that Maggie didn't hold her responsible. After all, why should she? If Maggie had made bad arrangements for her baby, Maggie was responsible.

She went round to Lizzie and Sarah to see what they thought. Sarah thought: Well--it was rather a difficult question, and Harriett resented her hesitation.

"Not at all. It rested with Maggie to go or stay. If she was incompetent I wasn't bound to keep her just because she'd had a baby. At that rate I should have been completely in her power."

Lizzie said she thought Maggie's baby would have died in any case, and they both hoped that Harriett wasn't going to be morbid about it.

Harriett felt sustained. She wasn't going to be morbid. All the same, the episode left her with a feeling of insecurity.

XII

The young girl, Robin's niece, had come again, bright-eyed, eager, and hungry, grateful for Sunday supper.

Harriett was getting used to these appearances, spread over three years, since Robin's wife had asked her to be kind to Mona Floyd. Mona had come this time to tell her of her engagement to Geoffrey Carter. The news shocked Harriett intensely.

"But, my dear, you told me he was going to marry your little friend, Amy--Amy Lambert. What does Amy say to it?"

"What _can_ she say? I know it's a bit rough on her----"

"You know, and yet you'll take your happiness at the poor child's expense."

"We've got to. We can't do anything else."

"Oh, my dear----" If she could stop it.... An inspiration came. "I knew a girl once who might have done what you're doing, only she wouldn't.

She gave the man up rather than hurt her friend. She _couldn't do anything else_."

"How much was he in love with her?"

"I don't know _how much_. He was never in love with any other woman."

"Then she was a fool. A silly fool. Didn't she think of _him?_"

"Didn't she think!"

"No. She didn't. She thought of herself. Of her own moral beauty. She was a selfish fool."

"She asked the best and wisest man she knew, and he told her she couldn't do anything else."

"The best and wisest man--oh, Lord!"

"That was my own father, Mona, Hilton Frean."

"Then it was you. You and Uncle Robin and Aunt Prissie."

Harriett's face smiled its straight, thin-lipped smile, the worn, grooved chin arrogantly lifted.

"How could you?"

"I could because I was brought up not to think of myself before other people."