Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair (reading women TXT) 📕

“It’s mean of me to say that when I’ve eaten four of their ices. They were

strawberry, and chocolate and vanilla, all in one.”

“Well, they won’t last much longer.”

“Not at that rate,” her father said.

“I meant the dances,” said her mother.

And sure enough, soon after Connie’s engagement to young Mr. Pennefather,

they ceased.

And the three friends, Connie and Sarah and Lizzie, came and went. She

loved them; and yet when they were there they broke something, something

secret and precious between her and her father and mother, and when they

were gone she felt the stir, the happy movement of coming together again,

drawing in close, close, after the break.

“We only want each other.” Nobody else really mattered, not even Priscilla

Heaven.

Year after year the same. Her mother parted her hair into two sleek wings;

she wore a rosette and lappets of black velvet and lace on a glistening

beetle-backed chignon. And Harriett felt again her shock of resentment.

She hated to think of her mother subject to change and time.

And Priscilla came year after year, still loving, still protesting that

she would never marry. Yet they were glad when even Priscilla had gone and

left them to each other. Only each other, year after year the same.

Priscilla’s last visit was followed by another passionate vow that she

would never marry. Then within three weeks she wrote again, telling of her

engagement to Robin Lethbridge.

“… I haven’t known him very long, and Mamma says it’s too soon; but he

makes me feel as if I had known him all my life. I know I said I wouldn’t,

but I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know it would be so different. I couldn’t

have believed that anybody could be so happy. You won’t mind, Hatty. We

can love each other just the same….”

Incredible that Priscilla, who could be so beaten down and crushed by

suffering, should have risen to such an ecstasy. Her letters had a

swinging lilt, a hurried beat, like a song bursting, a heart beating for

joy too fast.

It would have to be a long engagement. Robin was in a provincial bank, he

had his way to make. Then, a year later, Prissy wrote and told them that

Robin had got a post in Parson’s Bank in the City. He didn’t know a soul

in London. Would they be kind to him and let him come to them sometimes,

on Saturdays and Sundays?

He came one Sunday. Harriett had wondered what he would be like, and he

was tall, slender-waisted, wide-shouldered; he had a square, very white

forehead; his brown hair was parted on one side, half curling at the tips

above his ears. His eyes—thin, black crystal, shining, turning, showing

speckles of brown and gray; perfectly set under straight eyebrows laid

very black on the white skin. His round, pouting chin had a dent in it.

The face in between was thin and irregular; the nose straight and serious

and rather long in profile, with a dip and a rise at three-quarters; in

full face straight again but shortened. His eyes had another meaning,

deeper and steadier than his fine slender mouth; but it was the mouth that

made you look at him. One arch of the bow was higher than the other; now

and then it quivered with an uneven, sensitive movement of its own.

She noticed his mouth’s little dragging droop at the corners and thought:

“Oh, you’re cross. If you’re cross with Prissie—if you make her unhappy”

—but when he caught her looking at him the cross lips drew back in a

sudden, white, confiding smile. And when he spoke she understood why he

had been irresistible to Priscilla.

He had come three Sundays now, four perhaps; she had lost count. They were

all sitting out on the lawn under the cedar. Suddenly, as if he had only

just thought of it, he said:

“It’s extraordinarily good of you to have me.”

“Oh, well,” her mother said, “Prissie is Hatty’s greatest friend.”

“I supposed that was why you do it.”

He didn’t want it to be that. He wanted it to be himself. Himself. He was

proud. He didn’t like to owe anything to other people, not even to

Prissie.

Her father smiled at him. “You must give us time.”

He would never give it or take it. You could see him tearing at things in

his impatience, to know them, to make them give themselves up to him at

once. He came rushing to give himself up, all in a minute, to make himself

known.

“It isn’t fair,” he said. “I know you so much better than you know me.

Priscilla’s always talking about you. But you don’t know anything about

me.”

“No. We’ve got all the excitement.”

“And the risk, sir.”

“And, of course, the risk.” He liked him.

She could talk to Robin Lethbridge as she couldn’t talk to Connie

Hancock’s young men. She wasn’t afraid of what he was thinking. She was

safe with him, he belonged to Priscilla Heaven. He liked her because he

loved Priscilla; but he wanted her to like him, not because of Priscilla,

but for himself.

She talked about Priscilla: “I never saw anybody so loving. It used to

frighten me; because you can hurt her so easily.”

“Yes. Poor little Prissie, she’s very vulnerable,” he said.

When Priscilla came to stay it was almost painful. Her eyes clung to him,

and wouldn’t let him go. If he left the room she was restless, unhappy

till he came back. She went out for long walks with him and returned

silent, with a tired, beaten look. She would lie on the sofa, and he would

hang over her, gazing at her with strained, unhappy eyes.

After she had gone he kept on coming more than ever, and he stayed

overnight. Harriett had to walk with him now. He wanted to talk, to talk

about himself, endlessly.

When she looked in the glass she saw a face she didn’t know: bright-eyed,

flushed, pretty. The little arrogant lift had gone. As if it had been

somebody else’s face she asked herself, in wonder, without rancor, why

nobody had ever cared for it. Why? Why? She could see her father looking

at her, intent, as if he wondered. And one day her mother said, “Do you

think you ought to see so much of Robin? Do you think it’s quite fair to

Prissie?”

“Oh—_Mamma!_ … I wouldn’t. I haven’t–-”

“I know. You couldn’t if you would, Hatty. You would always behave

beautifully. But are you so sure about Robin?”

“Oh, he couldn’t care for anybody but Prissie. It’s only

because he’s so safe with me, because he knows I don’t and he

doesn’t–-.”

The wedding day was fixed for July. After all, they were going to risk it.

By the middle of June the wedding presents began to come in.

Harriett and Robin Lethbridge were walking up Black’s Lane. The hedges

were a white bridal froth of cow’s parsley. Every now and then she swerved

aside to pick the red campion.

He spoke suddenly. “Do you know what a dear little face you have, Hatty?

It’s so clear and still and it behaves so beautifully.”

“Does it?”

She thought of Prissie’s face, dark and restless, never clear, never

still.

“You’re not a bit like what I expected. Prissie doesn’t know what you are.

You don’t know yourself.”

“I know what she is.”

His mouth’s uneven quiver beat in and out like a pulse.

“Don’t talk to me about Prissie!”

Then he got it out. He tore it out of himself. He loved her.

“Oh, Robin–-” Her fingers loosened in her dismay; she went dropping red

campion.

It was no use, he said, to think about Prissie. He couldn’t marry her. He

couldn’t marry anybody but Hatty; Hatty must marry him.

“You can’t say you don’t love me, Hatty.”

No. She couldn’t say it; for it wouldn’t be true.

“Well, then–-”

“I can’t. I’d be doing wrong, Robin. I feel all the time as if she

belonged to you; as if she were married to you.”

“But she isn’t. It isn’t the same thing.”

“To me it is. You can’t undo it. It would be too dishonorable.”

“Not half so dishonorable as marrying her when I don’t love her.”

“Yes. As long as she loves you. She hasn’t anybody but you. She was so

happy. So happy. Think of the cruelty of it. Think what we should send her

back to.”

“You think of Prissie. You don’t think of me.”

“Because it would kill her.”

“How about you?”

“It can’t kill us, because we know we love each other. Nothing can take

that from us.”

“But I couldn’t be happy with her, Hatty. She wears me out. She’s so

restless.”

“We couldn’t be happy, Robin. We should always be thinking of what

we did to her. How could we be happy?”

“You know how.”

“Well, even if we were, we’ve no right to get our happiness out of her

suffering.”

“Oh, Hatty, why are you so good, so good?”

“I’m not good. It’s only—there are some things you can’t do. We couldn’t.

We couldn’t.”

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t suppose we could. Whatever it’s like I’ve

got to go through with it.”

He didn’t stay that night.

She was crouching on the floor beside her father, her arm thrown across

his knees. Her mother had left them there.

“Papa—do you know?”

“Your mother told me…. You’ve done the right thing.”

“You don’t think I’ve been cruel? He said I didn’t think of him.”

“Oh, no, you couldn’t do anything else.”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t. It was no use thinking about him. Yet night

after night, for weeks and months, she thought, and cried herself to

sleep.

By day she suffered from Lizzie’s sharp eyes and Sarah’s brooding pity and

Connie Pennefather’s callous, married stare. Only with her father and

mother she had peace.

Towards spring Harriett showed signs of depression, and they took her to

the south of France and to Bordighera and Rome. In Rome she recovered.

Rome was one of those places you ought to see; she had always been anxious

to do the right thing. In the little Pension in the Via Babuino she had a

sense of her own importance and the importance of her father and mother.

They were Mr. and Mrs. Hilton Frean, and Miss Harriett Frean, seeing Rome.

After their return in the summer he began to write his book, _The Social

Order_. There were things that had to be said; it did not much matter

who said them provided they were said plainly. He dreamed of a new Social

State, society governing itself without representatives. For a long time

they lived on the interest and excitement of the book, and when it came

out Harriett pasted all his reviews very neatly into an album. He had the

air of not taking them quite seriously; but he subscribed to _The

Spectator_, and sometimes an article appeared there understood to have

been written by Hilton Frean.

And they went abroad again every year. They went to Florence and came home

and read Romola and Mrs. Browning and Dante and The Spectator; they

went to Assisi and read the Little Flowers of Saint Francis; they went

to Venice and read Ruskin and