Life and Death of Harriett Frean (3 page)

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.

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."