Life and Death of Harriett Frean
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May Sinclair >> Life and Death of Harriett Frean
One day her mother smoothed out her long, hanging curls and tucked them
away under a net. Harriett had a little shock of dismay and resentment,
hating change.
And the long, long Sundays spaced the weeks and the months, hushed and
sweet and rather enervating, yet with a sort of thrill in them as if
somewhere the music of the church organ went on vibrating. Her mother had
some secret: some happy sense of God that she gave to you and you took
from her as you took food and clothing, but not quite knowing what it was,
feeling that there was something more in it, some hidden gladness, some
perfection that you missed.
Her father had his secret too. She felt that it was harder, somehow,
darker and dangerous. He read dangerous books: Darwin and Huxley and
Herbert Spencer. Sometimes he talked about them.
"There's a sort of fascination in seeing how far you can go.... The
fascination of truth might be just that--the risk that, after all, it
mayn't be true, that you may have to go farther and farther, perhaps never
come back."
Her mother looked up with her bright, still eyes.
"I trust the truth. I know that, however far you go, you'll come back some
day."
"I believe you see all of them--Darwin and Huxley and Herbert Spencer--
coming back," he said.
"Yes, I do."
His eyes smiled, loving her. But you could see it amused him, too, to
think of them, all those reckless, courageous thinkers, coming back, to
share her secret. His thinking was just a dangerous game he played.
She looked at her father with a kind of awe as he sat there, reading his
book, in danger and yet safe.
She wanted to know what that fascination was. She took down Herbert
Spencer and tried to read him. She made a point of finishing every book
she had begun, for her pride couldn't bear being beaten. Her head grew hot
and heavy: she read the same sentences over and over again; they had no
meaning; she couldn't understand a single word of Herbert Spencer. He had
beaten her. As she put the book back in its place she said to herself: "I
mustn't. If I go on, if I get to the interesting part I may lose my
faith." And soon she made herself believe that this was really the reason
why she had given it up.
Besides Connie Hancock there were Lizzie Pierce and Sarah Barmby.
Exquisite pleasure to walk with Lizzie Pierce. Lizzie's walk was a
sliding, swooping dance of little pointed feet, always as if she were
going out to meet somebody, her sharp, black-eyed face darting and
turning.
"My _dear_, he kept on doing _this_" (Lizzie did it) "as if he
was trying to sit on himself to keep him from flying off into space like a
cork. Fancy proposing on three tumblers of soda water! I might have been
Mrs. Pennefather but for that."
Lizzie went about laughing, laughing at everybody, looking for something
to laugh at everywhere. Now and then she would stop suddenly to
contemplate the vision she had created.
"If Connie didn't wear a bustle--or, oh my dear, if Mr. Hancock did----"
"Mr. _Hancock!_" Clear, firm laughter, chiming and tinkling.
"Goodness! To think how many ridiculous people there are in the world!"
"I believe you see something ridiculous in me."
"Only when--only when----"
She swung her parasol in time to her sing-song. She wouldn't say when.
"Lizzie--not--_not_ when I'm in my black lace fichu and the little
round hat?"
"Oh, dear me--no. Not _then_."
The little round hat, Lizzie wore one like it herself, tilted forward,
perched on her chignon.
"Well, then----" she pleaded.
Lizzie's face darted its teasing, mysterious smile.
She loved Lizzie best of her friends after Priscilla. She loved her
mockery and her teasing wit.
And there was Lizzie's friend, Sarah Barmby, who lived in one of those
little shabby villas on the London road and looked after her father. She
moved about the villa in an unseeing, shambling way, hitting herself
against the furniture. Her face was heavy with a gentle, brooding
goodness, and she had little eyes that blinked and twinkled in the
heaviness, as if something amused her. At first you kept on wondering what
the joke was, till you saw it was only a habit Sarah had. She came when
she could spare time from her father.
Next to Lizzie, Harriett loved Sarah. She loved her goodness.
And Connie Hancock, bouncing about hospitably in the large, rich house.
Tea-parties and dances at the Hancocks'.
She wasn't sure that she liked dancing. There was something obscurely
dangerous about it. She was afraid of being lifted off her feet and swung
on and on, away from her safe, happy life. She was stiff and abrupt with
her partners, convinced that none of those men who liked Connie Hancock
could like her, and anxious to show them that she didn't expect them to.
She was afraid of what they were thinking. And she would slip away early,
running down the garden to the gate at the bottom of the lane where her
father waited for her. She loved the still coldness of the night under the
elms, and the strong, tight feel of her father's arm when she hung on it
leaning towards him, and his "There we are" as he drew her closer. Her
mother would look up from the sofa and ask always the same question,
"Well, did anything nice happen?"
Till at last she answered, "No. Did you think it would, Mamma?"
"You never know," said her mother.
"_I_ know everything."
"_Every_thing?"
"Everything that could happen at the Hancocks' dances."
Her mother shook her head at her. She knew that in secret Mamma was glad;
but she answered the reproof.
"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.
V
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.
VI
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 _The Spectator;_ they went to Rome again and
read Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Harriett said, "We
should have enjoyed Rome more if we had read Gibbon," and her mother
replied that they would not have enjoyed Gibbon so much if they had not
seen Rome. Harriett did not really enjoy him; but she enjoyed the sound of
her own voice reading out the great sentences and the rolling Latin names.
She had brought back photographs of the Colosseum and the Forum and of
Botticelli's _Spring_, and a della Robbia Madonna in a shrine of
fruit and flowers, and hung them in the drawing-room. And when she saw the
blue egg in its gilt frame standing on the marble-topped table, she
wondered how she had ever loved it, and wished it were not there. It had
been one of Mamma's wedding presents. Mrs. Hancock had given it her; but
Mr. Hancock must have bought it.
Harriett's face had taken on again its arrogant lift. She esteemed herself
justly. She knew she was superior to the Hancocks and the Penne fathers
and to Lizzie Pierce and Sarah Barmby; even to Priscilla. When she thought
of Robin and how she had given him up she felt a thrill of pleasure in her
beautiful behavior, and a thrill of pride in remembering that he had loved
her more than Priscilla. Her mind refused to think of Robin married.
Two, three, five years passed, with a perceptible acceleration, and
Harriett was now thirty.
She had not seen them since the wedding day. Robin had gone back to his
own town; he was cashier in a big bank there. For four years Prissie's
letters came regularly every month or so, then ceased abruptly.
Then Robin wrote and told her of Prissie's illness. A mysterious
paralysis. It had begun with fits of giddiness in the street; Prissie
would turn round and round on the pavement; then falling fits; and now
both legs were paralyzed, but Robin thought she was gradually recovering
the use of her hands.
Harriett did not cry. The shock of it stopped her tears. She tried to see
it and couldn't. Poor little Prissie. How terrible. She kept on saying to
herself she couldn't bear to think of Prissie paralyzed. Poor little
Prissie.
And poor Robin----
Paralysis. She saw the paralysis coming between them, separating them, and
inside her the secret pain was soothed. She need not think of Robin
married any more.
She was going to stay with them. Robin had written the letter. He said
Prissie wanted her. When she met him on the platform she had a little
shock at seeing him changed. Changed. His face was fuller, and a dark
mustache hid the sensitive, uneven, pulsing lip. His mouth was dragged
down further at the corners. But he was the same Robin. In the cab, going
to the house, he sat silent, breathing hard; she felt the tremor of his
consciousness and knew that he still loved her; more than he loved
Priscilla. Poor little Prissie. How terrible!
Priscilla sat by the fireplace in a wheel chair. She became agitated when
she saw Harriett; her arms shook as she lifted them for the embrace.
"Hatty--you've hardly changed a bit." Her voice shook.
Poor little Prissie. She was thin, thinner than ever, and stiff as if she
had withered. Her face was sallow and dry, and the luster had gone from
her black hair. Her wide mouth twitched and wavered, wavered and twitched.
Though it was warm summer she sat by a blazing fire with the windows
behind her shut.
Through dinner Harriett and Robin were silent and constrained. She tried
not to see Prissie shaking and jerking and spilling soup down the front of
her gown. Robin's face was smooth and blank; he pretended to be absorbed
in his food, so as not to look at Prissie. It was as if Prissie's old
restlessness had grown into that ceaseless jerking and twitching. And her
eyes fastened on Robin; they clung to him and wouldn't let him go. She
kept on asking him to do things for her. "Robin, you might get me my
shawl;" and Robin would go and get the shawl and put it round her.
Whenever he did anything for her Prissie's face would settle down into a
quivering, deep content.
At nine o'clock he lifted her out of her wheel chair. Harriett saw his
stoop, and the taut, braced power of his back as he lifted. Prissie lay in
his arms with rigid limbs hanging from loose attachments, inert, like a
doll. As he carried her upstairs to bed her face had a queer, exalted look
of pleasure and of triumph.
Harriett and Robin sat alone together in his study.
"How long is it since we've seen each other?"
"Five years, Robin."
"It isn't. It can't be."
"It is."
"I suppose it is. But I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm married. I
can't believe Prissie's ill. It doesn't seem real with you sitting there."
"Nothing's changed, Robin, except that you're more serious."
"Nothing's changed, except that I'm more serious than ever.... Do you
still do the same things? Do you still sit in the curly chair, holding
your work up to your chin with your little pointed hands like a squirrel?
Do you still see the same people?"
"I don't make new friends, Robin."
He seemed to settle down after that, smiling at his own thoughts,
appeased....
Lying in her bed in the spare room, Harriett heard the opening and
shutting of Robin's door. She still thought of Prissie's paralysis as
separating them, still felt inside her a secret, unacknowledged
satisfaction. Poor little Prissie. How terrible. Her pity for Priscilla
went through and through her in wave after wave. Her pity was sad and
beautiful and at the same time it appeased her pain.
In the morning Priscilla told her about her illness. The doctors didn't
understand it. She ought to have had a stroke and she hadn't had one.
There was no reason why she shouldn't walk except that she couldn't. It
seemed to give her pleasure to go over it, from her first turning round
and round in the street (with helpless, shaking laughter at the queerness
of it), to the moment when Robin bought her the wheel chair.... Robin ...
Robin ...
"I minded most because of Robin. It's such an _awful_ illness, Hatty.
I can't move when I'm in bed. Robin has to get up and turn me a dozen
times in one night.... Robin's a perfect saint. He does everything for
me." Prissie's voice and her face softened and thickened with voluptuous
content.
"... Do you know, Hatty, I had a little baby. It died the day it was
born.... Perhaps some day I shall have another."
Harriett was aware of a sudden tightening of her heart, of a creeping
depression that weighed on her brain and worried it. She thought this was
her pity for Priscilla.
Her third night. All evening Robin had been moody and morose. He would
hardly speak to either Harriett or Priscilla. When Priscilla asked him to
do anything for her he got up heavily, pulling himself together with a
sigh, with a look of weary, irritated patience.
Prissie wheeled herself out of the study into the drawing-room, beckoning
Harriett to follow. She had the air of saving Robin from Harriett, of
intimating that his grumpiness was Harriett's fault. "He doesn't want to
be bothered," she said.
She sat up till eleven, so that Robin shouldn't be thrown with Harriett in
the last hours.
Half the night Harriett's thoughts ran on, now in a darkness, now in thin
flashes of light. "Supposing, after all, Robin wasn't happy? Supposing he
can't stand it? Supposing.... But why is he angry with _me?_" Then a
clear thought: "He's angry with me because he can't be angry with
Priscilla." And clearer. "He's angry with me because I made him marry
her."
She stopped the running and meditated with a steady, hard deliberation.
She thought of her deep, spiritual love for Robin; of Robin's deep
spiritual love for her; of his strength in shouldering his burden. It was
through her renunciation that he had grown so strong, so pure, so good.
Something had gone wrong with Prissie. Robin, coming home early on
Saturday afternoon, had taken Harriett for a walk. All evening and all
through Sunday it was Priscilla who sulked and snapped when Harriett spoke
to her.
On Monday morning she was ill, and Robin ordered her to stay in bed.
Monday was Harriett's last night. Priscilla stayed in bed till six
o'clock, when she heard Robin come in; then she insisted on being dressed
and carried downstairs. Harriett heard her calling to Robin, and Robin
saying, "I _told_ you you weren't to get up till to-morrow," and a
sound like Prissie crying.
At dinner she shook and jerked and spilt things worse than ever. Robin
gloomed at her. "You know you ought to be in bed. You'll go at nine."
"If I go, you'll go. You've got a headache."
"I should think I had, sitting in this furnace."
The heat of the dining room oppressed him, but they sat on there after
dinner because Prissie loved the heat. Robin's pale, blank face had a sick
look, a deadly smoothness. He had to lie down on the sofa in the window.
When the clock struck nine he sighed and got up, dragging himself as if
the weight of his body was more than he could bear. He stooped over
Prissie, and lifted her.