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

place. She still saw Robin as a young man, with young, shining eyes, who

came rushing to give himself up at once, to make himself known. She had no

affection for this selfish invalid, this weak, peevish bully.

Poor Beatrice. She was sorry for Beatrice. She resented his behavior to

Beatrice. She told herself she wouldn’t be Beatrice, she wouldn’t be

Robin’s wife for the world. Her pity for Beatrice gave her a secret

pleasure and satisfaction.

After dinner she sat out in the garden talking to Robin’s wife, while

Cissy Walker played draughts with Robin in his study, giving Beatrice a

rest from him. They talked about Robin.

“You knew him when he was young, didn’t you? What was he like?”

She didn’t want to tell her. She wanted to keep the young, shining Robin

to herself. She also wanted to show that she had known him, that she had

known a Robin that Beatrice would never know. Therefore she told her.

“My poor Robin.” Beatrice gazed wistfully, trying to see this Robin that

Priscilla had taken from her, that Harriett had known. Then she turned her

back.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve married the man I wanted.” She let herself go.

“Cissy says I’ve spoiled him. That isn’t true. It was his first wife who

spoiled him. She made a nervous wreck of him.”

“He was devoted to her.”

“Yes. And he’s paying for his devotion now. She wore him out…. Cissy

says he’s selfish. If he is, it’s because he’s used up all his

unselfishness. He was living on his moral capital…. I feel as if I

couldn’t do too much for him after what he did. Cissy doesn’t know how

awful his life was with Priscilla. She was the most exacting–-”

“She was my friend.”

“Wasn’t Robin your friend, too?”

“Yes. But poor Prissie, she was paralyzed.”

“It wasn’t paralysis.”

“What was it then?”

“Pure hysteria. Robin wasn’t in love with her, and she knew it. She

developed that illness so that she might have a hold on him, get his

attention fastened on her somehow. I don’t say she could help it. She

couldn’t. But that’s what it was.”

“Well, she died of it.”

“No. She died of pneumonia after influenza. I’m not blaming Prissie. She

was pitiable. But he ought never to have married her.”

“I don’t think you ought to say that.”

“You know what he was,” said Robin’s wife. “And look at him now.”

But Harriett’s mind refused, obstinately, to connect the two Robins and

Priscilla.

She remembered that she had to speak to Robin. They went together into his

study. Cissy sent her a look, a signal, and rose; she stood by the

doorway.

“Beatie, you might come here a minute.”

Harriett was alone with Robin.

“Well, Harriett, we haven’t been able to do much for you. In my beastly

state–-”

“You’ll get better.”

“Never. I’m done for, Harriett. I don’t complain.”

“You’ve got a devoted wife, Robin.”

“Yes. Poor girl, she does what she can.”

“She does too much.”

“My dear woman, she wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t.”

“It isn’t good for her. Does it never strike you that she’s not strong?”

“Not strong? She’s—she’s almost indecently robust. What wouldn’t I give

to have her strength!”

She looked at him, at the lean figure sunk in the armchair, at the

dragged, infirm face, the blurred, owlish eyes, the expression of abject

self-pity, of self-absorption. That was Robin.

The awful thing was that she couldn’t love him, couldn’t go on being

faithful. This injured her self-esteem.

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.

The young girl, Robin’s niece, had come again, bright-eyed, eager, and

hungry, grateful for Sunday supper.

Harriett was getting used to these appearances, spread over three years,

since Robin’s wife had asked her to be kind to Mona Floyd. Mona had come

this time to tell her of her engagement to Geoffrey Carter. The news

shocked Harriett intensely.

“But, my dear, you told me he was going to marry your little friend, Amy—

Amy Lambert. What does Amy say to it?”

“What can she say? I know it’s a bit rough on her–-”

“You know, and yet you’ll take your happiness at the poor child’s

expense.”

“We’ve got to. We can’t do anything else.”

“Oh, my dear–-” If she could stop it…. An inspiration came. “I knew a

girl once who might have done what you’re doing, only she wouldn’t. She

gave the man up rather than hurt her friend. She _couldn’t do anything

else_.”

“How much was he in love with her?”

“I don’t know how much. He was never in love with any other woman.”

“Then she was a fool. A silly fool. Didn’t she think of him?”

“Didn’t she think!”

“No. She didn’t. She thought of herself. Of her own moral beauty. She was

a selfish fool.”

“She asked the best and wisest man she knew, and he told her she couldn’t

do anything else.”

“The best and wisest man—oh, Lord!”

“That was my own father, Mona, Hilton Frean.”

“Then it was you. You and Uncle Robin and Aunt Prissie.”

Harriett’s face smiled its straight, thin-lipped smile, the worn, grooved

chin arrogantly lifted.

“How could you?”

“I could because I was brought up not to think of myself before other

people.”

“Then it wasn’t even your own idea. You sacrificed him to somebody else’s.

You made three people miserable just for that. Four, if you count Aunt

Beatie.”

“There was Prissie. I did it for her.”

“What did you do for her? You insulted Aunt Prissie.”

“Insulted her? My dear Mona!”

“It was an insult, handing her over to a man who couldn’t love her even

with his body. Aunt Prissie was the miserablest of the lot. Do you suppose

he didn’t take it out of her?”

“He never let her know.”

“Oh, didn’t he! She knew all right. That’s how she got her illness. And

it’s how he got his. And he’ll kill Aunt Beatie. He’s taking it out of

her now. Look at the awful suffering. And you can go on

sentimentalizing about it.”

The young girl rose, flinging her scarf over her shoulders with a violent

gesture.

“There’s no common sense in it.”

“No common sense, perhaps.”

“It’s a jolly sight better than sentiment when it comes to marrying.”

They kissed. Mona turned at the doorway.

“I say—did he go on caring for you?”

“Sometimes I think he did. Sometimes I think he hated me.”

“Of course he hated you, after what you’d let him in for.” She paused.

“You don’t mind my telling you the truth, do you?”

… Harriett sat a long time, her hands folded on her lap, her eyes

staring into the room, trying to see the truth. She saw the girl, Robin’s

niece, in her young indignation, her tender brilliance suddenly hard,

suddenly cruel, flashing out the truth. Was it true that she had

sacrificed Robin and Priscilla and Beatrice to her parents’ idea of moral

beauty? Was