At the bottom of the orchard a door in the wall opened into Black’s
Lane, below the three tall elms.
She couldn’t believe she was really walking there by herself. It had
come all of a sudden, the thought that she _must_ do it, that she _must_
go out into the lane; and when she found the door unlatched, something
seemed to take hold of her and push her out. She was forbidden to go
into Black’s Lane; she was not even allowed to walk there with Annie.
She kept on saying to herself: “I’m in the lane. I’m in the lane. I’m
disobeying Mamma.”
Nothing could undo that. She had disobeyed by just standing outside the
orchard door. Disobedience was such a big and awful thing that it was
waste not to do something big and awful with it. So she went on, up and
up, past the three tall elms. She was a big girl, wearing black silk
aprons and learning French. Walking by herself. When she arched her back
and stuck her stomach out she felt like a tall lady in a crinoline and
shawl. She swung her hips and made her skirts fly out. That was her
grown-up crinoline, swing-swinging as she went.
At the turn the cow’s parsley and rose campion began; on each side a
long trail of white froth with the red tops of the campion pricking
through. She made herself a nosegay.
Past the second turn you came to the waste ground covered with old boots
and rusted, crumpled tins. The little dirty brown house stood there
behind the rickety blue palings; narrow, like the piece of a house that
has been cut in two. It hid, stooping under the ivy bush on its roof. It
was not like the houses people live in; there was something queer, some
secret, frightening thing about it.
The man came out and went to the gate and stood there. _He_ was the
frightening thing. When he saw her he stepped back and crouched behind
the palings, ready to jump out.
She turned slowly, as if she had thought of something. She mustn’t run.
She must _not_ run. If she ran he would come after her.
Her mother was coming down the garden walk, tall and beautiful in her
silver-gray gown with the bands of black velvet on the flounces and the
sleeves; her wide, hooped skirts swung, brushing the flower borders.
She ran up to her, crying, “Mamma, I went up the lane where you told me
not to.”
“No, Hatty, no; you didn’t.”
You could see she wasn’t angry. She was frightened.
“I did. I did.”
Her mother took the bunch of flowers out of her hand and looked at it.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s where the dark-red campion grows.”
She was holding the flowers up to her face. It was awful, for you could
see her mouth thicken and redden over its edges and shake. She hid it
behind 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.