Harriett sat up, straight and stiff. “Well, your father’s alive, and he’s dead.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“Don’t you? If it had happened the other way about, your father wouldn’t have died.”
Connie stared stupidly at Harriett, not taking it in. Presently she got up and left her. She moved clumsily, her broad hips shaking.
Harriett put on her hat and went round to Lizzie and Sarah in turn. They would know whether it were true or not. They would know whether Mr. Hancock had been ruined by his own fault or Papa’s.
Sarah was sorry. She picked up a fold of her skirt and crumpled it in her fingers, and said over and over again, “She oughtn’t to have told you.” But she didn’t say it wasn’t true. Neither did Lizzie, though her tongue was a whip for Connie.
“Because you can’t stand her dirty stories she goes and tells you this. It shows what Connie is.”
It showed her father as he was, too. Not wise. Not wise all the time. Courageous, always, loving danger, intolerant of security, wild under all his quietness and gentleness, taking madder and madder risks, playing his game with an awful, cool recklessness. Then letting other people in; ruining Mr. Hancock, the little man he used to laugh at. And it had killed him. He hadn’t been sorry for Mamma, because he knew she was glad the mad game was over; but he had thought and thought about him, the little dirty man, until he had died of thinking.
XIII
New people had come to the house next door. Harriett saw a pretty girl going in and out. She had not called; she was not going to call. Their cat came over the garden wall and bit off the blades of the irises. When he sat down on the mignonette Harriett sent a note round by Maggie: “Miss Frean presents her compliments to the lady next door and would be glad if she would restrain her cat.”