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

She spoke of George Eliot and Dickens and Mr. Thackeray.

Lizzie Pierce had a provoking way of smiling at Harriett, as if she found

her ridiculous. And Harriett had no patience with Lizzie’s affectation in

wanting to be modern, her vanity in trying to be young, her middle-aged

raptures over the work—often unpleasant—of writers too young to be worth

serious consideration. They had long arguments in which Harriett, beaten,

retired behind The Social Order and the Remains.

“It’s silly,” Lizzie said, “not to be able to look at a new thing because

it’s new. That’s the way you grow old.”

“It’s sillier,” Harriett said, “to be always running after new things

because you think that’s the way to look young. I’ve no wish to appear

younger than I am.”

“I’ve no wish to appear suffering from senile decay.”

“There is a standard.” Harriett lifted her obstinate and arrogant

chin. “You forget that I’m Hilton Frean’s daughter.”

“I’m William Pierce’s, but that hasn’t prevented my being myself.”

Lizzie’s mind had grown keener in her sharp middle age. As it played about

her, Harriett cowered; it was like being exposed, naked, to a cutting

wind. Her mind ran back to her father and mother, longing, like a child,

for their shelter and support, for the blessed assurance of herself.

At her worst she could still think with pleasure of the beauty of the act

which had given Robin to Priscilla.

“My dear Harriett: Thank you for your kind letter of sympathy. Although we

had expected the end for many weeks poor Prissie’s death came to us as a

great shock. But for her it was a blessed release, and we can only be

thankful. You who knew her will realize the depth and extent of my

bereavement. I have lost the dearest and most loving wife man ever

had….”

Poor little Prissie. She couldn’t bear to think she would never see her

again.

Six months later Robin wrote again, from Sidmouth.

“Dear Harriett: Priscilla left you this locket in her will as a

remembrance. I would have sent it before but that I couldn’t bear to part

with her things all at once.

“I take this opportunity of telling you that I am going to be married

again–-”

Her heart heaved and closed. She could never have believed she could have

felt such a pang.

“The lady is Miss Beatrice Walker, the devoted nurse who was with my dear

wife all through her last illness. This step may seem strange and

precipitate, coming so soon after her death; but I am urged to do it by

the precarious state of my own health and by the knowledge that we are

fulfilling poor Prissie’s dying wish….”

Poor Prissie’s dying wish. After what she had done for Prissie, if she

had a dying wish—But neither of them had thought of her. Robin had

forgotten her…. Forgotten…. Forgotten.

But no. Priscilla had remembered. She had left her the locket with his

hair in it. She had remembered and she had been afraid; jealous of her.

She couldn’t bear to think that Robin might marry her, even after she was

dead. She had made him marry this Walker woman so that he shouldn’t–-

Oh, but he wouldn’t. Not after twenty years.

“I didn’t really think he would.”

She was forty-five, her face was lined and pitted and her hair was dust

color, streaked with gray: and she could only think of Robin as she had

last seen him, young: a young face; a young body; young, shining eyes. He

would want to marry a young woman. He had been in love with this Walker

woman, and Prissie had known it. She could see Prissie lying in her bed,

helpless, looking at them over the edge of the white sheet. She had known

that as soon as she was dead, before the sods closed over her grave, they

would marry. Nothing could stop them. And she had tried to make herself

believe it was her wish, her doing, not theirs. Poor little Prissie.

She understood that Robin had been staying in Sidmouth for his health.

A year later, Harriett, run down, was ordered to the seaside. She went to

Sidmouth. She told herself that she wanted to see the place where she had

been so happy with her mother, where poor Aunt Harriett had died.

Looking through the local paper she found in the list of residents:

Sidcote—Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lethbridge and Miss Walker. She wrote to

Robin and asked if she might call on his wife.

A mile of hot road through the town and inland brought her to a door in a

lane and a thatched cottage with a little lawn behind it. From the

doorstep she could see two figures, a man and a woman, lying back in

garden chairs. Inside the house she heard the persistent, energetic sound

of hammering. The woman got up and came to her. She was young, pink-faced

and golden-haired, and she said she was Miss Walker, Mrs. Lethbridge’s

sister.

A tall, lean, gray man rose from the garden chair, slowly, dragging

himself with an invalid air. His eyes stared, groping, blurred films that

trembled between the pouch and droop of the lids; long cheeks, deep

grooved, dropped to the infirm mouth that sagged under the limp mustache.

That was Robin.

He became agitated when he saw her. “Poor Robin,” she thought. “All these

years, and it’s too much for him, seeing me.” Presently he dragged himself

from the lawn to the house and disappeared through the French window where

the hammering came from.

“Have I frightened him away?” she said.

“Oh, no, he’s always like that when he sees strange faces.”

“My face isn’t exactly strange.”

“Well, he must have thought it was.”

A sudden chill crept through her.

“He’ll be all right when he gets used to you,” Miss Walker said.

The strange face of Miss Walker chilled her. A strange young woman, living

close to Robin, protecting him, explaining Robin’s ways.

The sound of hammering ceased. Through the long, open window she saw a

woman rise up from the floor and shed a white apron. She came down the

lawn to them, with raised arms, patting disordered hair; large, a full,

firm figure clipped in blue linen. A full-blown face, bluish pink; thick

gray eyes slightly protruding; a thick mouth, solid and firm and kind.

That was Robin’s wife. Her sister was slighter, fresher, a good ten years

younger, Harriett thought.

“Excuse me, we’re only just settling in. I was nailing down the carpet in

Robin’s study.”

Her lips were so thick that they moved stiffly when she spoke or smiled.

She panted a little as if from extreme exertion.

When they were all seated Mrs. Lethbridge addressed her sister. “Robin was

quite right. It looks much better turned the other way.”

“Do you mean to say he made you take it all up and put it down again?

Well–-”

“What’s the use?… Miss Frean, you don’t know what it is to have a

husband who will have things just so.”

“She had to mow the lawn this morning because Robin can’t bear to see one

blade of grass higher than another.”

“Is he as particular as all that?”

“I assure you, Miss Frean, he is,” Miss Walker informed her.

“He wasn’t when I knew him,” Harriett said.

“Ah—my sister spoils him.”

Mrs. Lethbridge wondered why he hadn’t come out again.

“I think,” Harriett said, “perhaps he’ll come if I go.”

“Oh, you mustn’t go. It’s good for him to see people. Takes him out of

himself.”

“He’ll turn up all right,” Miss Walker said, “when he hears the teacups.”

And at four o’clock when the teacups came, Robin turned up, dragging

himself slowly from the house to the lawn. He blinked and quivered with

agitation; Harriett saw he was annoyed, not with her, and not with Miss

Walker, but with his wife.

“Beatrice, what have you done with my new bottle of medicine?”

“Nothing, dear.”

“You’ve done nothing, when you know you poured out my last dose at

twelve?”

“Why, hasn’t it come?”

“No. It hasn’t.”

“But Cissy ordered it this morning.”

“I didn’t,” Cissy said. “I forgot.”

“Oh, Cissy–-”

“You needn’t blame Cissy. You ought to have seen to it yourself…. She

was a good nurse, Harriett, before she was my wife.”

“My dear, your nurse had nothing else to do. Your wife has to clean and

mend for you, and cook your dinner and mow the lawn and nail the carpets

down.” While she said it she looked at Robin as if she adored him.

All through tea time he talked about his health and about the sanitary

dustbin they hadn’t got. Something had happened to him. It wasn’t like him

to be wrapped up in himself and to talk about dustbins. He spoke to his

wife as if she had been his valet. He didn’t see that she was perspiring,

worn out by her struggle with the carpet.

“Just go and fetch me another cushion, Beatrice.”

She rose with tired patience.

“You might let her have her tea in peace,” Miss Walker said, but she was

gone before they could stop her.

When Harriett left she went with her to the garden gate, panting as she

walked. Harriett noticed pale, blurred lines on the edges of her lips. She

thought: She isn’t a bit strong. She praised the garden.

Mrs. Lethbridge smiled. “Robin loves it…. But you should have seen it at

five o’clock this morning.”

“Five o’clock?”

“Yes. I always get up at five to make Robin a cup of tea.”

Harriett’s last evening. She was dining at Sidcote. On her way there she

had overtaken Robin’s wife wheeling Robin in a bath chair. Beatrice had

panted and perspired and had made mute signs to Harriett not to take any

notice. She had had to go and lie down till Robin sent for her to find his

cigarette case. Now she was in the kitchen cooking Robin’s part of the

dinner while he lay down in his study. Harriett talked to Miss Walker in

the garden.

“It’s been very kind of you to have us so much.”

“Oh, but we’ve loved having you. It’s so good for Beatie. Gives her a rest

from Robin…. I don’t mean that she wants a rest. But, you see, she’s not

well. She looks a big, strong, bouncing thing, but she isn’t. Her heart’s

weak. She oughtn’t to be doing what she does.”

“Doesn’t Robin see it?”

“He doesn’t see anything. He never knows when she’s tired or got a

headache. She’ll drop dead before he’ll see it. He’s utterly selfish, Miss

Frean. Wrapt up in himself and his horrid little ailments. Whatever

happens to Beatie he must have his sweetbread, and his soup at eleven and

his tea at five in the morning..

“… I suppose you think I might help more?”

“Well–-” Harriett did think it.

“Well, I just won’t. I won’t encourage Robin. He ought to get her a proper

servant and a man for the garden and the bath chair. I wish you’d give him

a hint. Tell him she isn’t strong. I can’t. She’d snap my head off. Would

you mind?”

Harriett didn’t mind. She didn’t mind what she said. She wouldn’t be

saying it to Robin, but to the contemptible thing that had taken