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Life and Death of Harriett Frean

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<h2> XI </h2> Her old servant, Hannah, had gone, and her new servant, Maggie, had had a baby. After the first shock and three months’ loss of Maggie, it occurred to Harriett that the beautiful thing would be to take Maggie back and let her have the baby with her, since she couldn’t leave it. The baby lay in his cradle in the kitchen, black-eyed and rosy, doubling up his fat, naked knees, smiling his crooked smile, and saying things to himself. Harriett had to see him every time she came into the kitchen. Sometimes she heard him cry, an intolerable cry, tearing the nerves and heart. And sometimes she saw Maggie unbutton her black gown in a hurry and put out her white, rose-pointed breast to still his cry. Harriett couldn’t bear it. She could not bear it. She decided that Maggie must go. Maggie was not doing her work properly. Harriett found flue under the bed. “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 circumstances.” “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 shillings 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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