Life and Death of Harriett Frean Part 15

"He wasn't the only one who was ruined by his trust."

Harriett blinked. Her mind swerved from the blow. "I think you must be mistaken," she said.

"I'm less likely to be mistaken than you, my dear, though he _was_ your father."

Harriett sat up, straight and stiff. "Well, _your_ father's alive, and _he's_ dead."

"I don't see what that has to do with it."

"Don't you? If it had happened the other way about, your father wouldn't have died."

Connie stared stupidly at Harriett, not taking it in. Presently she got up and left her. She moved clumsily, her broad hips shaking.

Harriett put on her hat and went round to Lizzie and Sarah in turn.

They would know whether it were true or not. They would know whether Mr.

Hanc.o.c.k had been ruined by his own fault or Papa's.

Sarah was sorry. She picked up a fold of her skirt and crumpled it in her fingers, and said over and over again, "She oughtn't to have told you." But she didn't say it wasn't true. Neither did Lizzie, though her tongue was a whip for Connie.

"Because you can't stand her dirty stories she goes and tells you this.

It shows what Connie is."

It showed her father as he was, too. Not wise. Not wise all the time.

Courageous, always, loving danger, intolerant of security, wild under all his quietness and gentleness, taking madder and madder risks, playing his game with an awful, cool recklessness. Then letting other people in; ruining Mr. Hanc.o.c.k, the little man he used to laugh at. And it had killed him. He hadn't been sorry for Mamma, because he knew she was glad the mad game was over; but he had thought and thought about him, the little dirty man, until he had died of thinking.

XIII

New people had come to the house next door. Harriett saw a pretty girl going in and out. She had not called; she was not going to call. Their cat came over the garden wall and bit off the blades of the irises.

When he sat down on the mignonette Harriett sent a note round by Maggie: "Miss Frean presents her compliments to the lady next door and would be glad if she would restrain her cat."

Five minutes later the pretty girl appeared with the cat in her arms.

"I've brought Mimi," she said. "I want you to see what a darling he is."

Mimi, a Persian, all orange on the top and snow white underneath, climbed her breast to hang flattened out against her shoulder, long, the great plume of his tail fanning her. She swung round to show the innocence of his amber eyes and the pink arch of his mouth supporting his pink nose.

"I want you to see my mignonette," said Harriett. They stood together by the crushed ring where Mimi had made his bed.

The pretty girl said she was sorry. "But, you see, we _can't_ restrain him. I don't know what's to be done.... Unless you kept a cat yourself; then you won't mind."

"But," Harriett said, "I don't like cats."

"Oh, why not?"

Harriett knew why. A cat was a compromise, a subst.i.tute, a subterfuge.

Her pride couldn't stoop. She was afraid of Mimi, of his enchanting play, and the soft white fur of his stomach. Maggie's baby. So she said, "Because they destroy the beds. And they kill birds."

The pretty girl's chin burrowed in Mimi's neck. "You _won't_ throw stones at him?" she said.

"No, I wouldn't _hurt_ him.... What did you say his name was?"

"Mimi."

Harriett softened. She remembered. "When I was a little girl I had a cat called Mimi. White Angora. Very handsome. And your name is----"

"Brailsford. I'm Dorothy."

Next time, when Mimi jumped on the lupins and broke them down, Dorothy came again and said she was sorry. And she stayed to tea. Harriett revealed herself.

"My father was Hilton Frean." She had noticed for the last fifteen years that people showed no interest when she told them that. They even stared as though she had said something that had no sense in it. Dorothy said, "How nice."

_"Nice?"_

"I mean it must have been nice to have him for your father.... You don't mind my coming into your garden last thing to catch Mimi?"

Harriett felt a sudden yearning for Dorothy. She saw a pleasure, a happiness, in her coming. She wasn't going to call, but she sent little notes in to Dorothy asking her to come to tea.

Dorothy declined.

But every evening, towards bedtime, she came into the garden to catch Mimi. Through the window Harriett could hear her calling: "Mimi! Mimi!"

She could see her in her white frock, moving about, hovering, ready to pounce as Mimi dashed from the bushes. She thought: "She walks into my garden as if it was her own. But she won't make a friend of me. She's young, and I'm old."

She had a piece of wire netting put up along the wall to keep Mimi out.

"That's the end of it," she said. She could never think of the young girl without a pang of sadness and resentment.

Fifty-five. Sixty.

In her sixty-second year Harriett had her first bad illness.

It was so like Sarah Barmby. Sarah got influenza and regarded it as a common cold and gave it to Harriett who regarded it as a common cold and got pleurisy.

When the pain was over she enjoyed her illness, the peace and rest of lying there, supported by the bed, holding out her lean arms to be washed by Maggie; closing her eyes in bliss while Maggie combed and brushed and plaited her fine gray hair. She liked having the same food at the same hours. She would look up, smiling weakly, when Maggie came at bedtime with the little tray. "What have you brought me _now_, Maggie?"

"Benger's Food, ma'am."

She wanted it to be always Benger's Food at bedtime. She lived by habit, by the punctual fulfillment of her expectation. She loved the doctor's visits at twelve o'clock, his air of brooding absorption in her case, his consultations with Maggie, the seriousness and sanct.i.ty he attached to the humblest details of her existence.

Above all she loved the comfort and protection of Maggie, the sight of Maggie's broad, tender face as it bent over her, the feeling of Maggie's strong arms as they supported her, the hovering pressure of the firm, broad body in the clean white ap.r.o.n and the cap. Her eyes rested on it with affection; she found shelter in Maggie as she had found it in her mother.

One day she said, "Why did you come to me, Maggie? Couldn't you have found a better place?"

"There was many wanted me. But I came to you, ma'am, because you seemed to sort of need me most. I dearly love looking after people. Old ladies and children. And gentlemen, if they're ill enough," Maggie said.