Life and Death of Harriett Frean Part 8

"Well, then, it serves him right."

"Don't say that. It _is_ what he cares for and he's lost it."

"He's no business to behave as if it was Papa's fault," said Harriett.

She had no patience with the odious little man. She thought of her father's face, her father's body, straight and calm, and his soul so far above that mean trouble of Mr. Hanc.o.c.k's, that vulgar shame.

Yet inside him he fretted. And, suddenly, he began to sink. He turned faint after the least exertion and had to leave off going to Mr.

Hichens. And by the spring of eighteen eighty he was upstairs in his room, too ill to be moved. That was just after Mr. Hichens had bought the house and wanted to come into it. He lay, patient, in the big white bed, smiling his faint, amused smile when he thought of Mr. Hichens.

It was awful to Harriett that her father should be ill, lying there at their mercy. She couldn't get over her sense of his parenthood, his authority. When he was obstinate, and insisted on exerting himself, she gave in. She was a bad nurse, because she couldn't set herself against his will. And when she had him under her hands to strip and wash him, she felt that she was doing something outrageous and impious; she set about it with a flaming face and fumbling hands. "Your mother does it better," he said gently. But she could not get her mother's feeling of him as a helpless, dependent thing.

Mr. Hichens called every week to inquire. "Poor man, he wants to know when he can have his house. Why _will_ he always come on my good days?

He isn't giving himself a chance."

He still had good days, days when he could be helped out of bed to sit in his chair. "This sort of game may go on for ever," he said. He began to worry seriously about keeping Mr. Hichens out of his house. "It isn't decent of me. It isn't decent."

Harriett was ill with the strain of it. She had to go away for a fortnight with Lizzie Pierce, and Sarah Barmby stayed with her mother.

Mrs. Barmby had died the year before. When Harriett got back her father was making plans for his removal.

"Why have you all made up your minds that it'll kill me to remove me? It won't. The men can take everything out but me and my bed and that chair.

And when they've got all the things into the other house they can come back for the chair and me. And I can sit in the chair while they're bringing the bed. It's quite simple. It only wants a little system."

Then, while they wondered whether they might risk it, he got worse. He lay propped up, rigid, his arms stretched out by his side, afraid to lift a hand because of the violent movements of his heart. His face had a patient, expectant look, as if he waited for them to do something.

They couldn't do anything. There would be no more rallies. He might die any day now, the doctor said.

"He may die any minute. I certainly don't expect him to live through the night."

Harriett followed her mother back into the room. He was sitting up in his att.i.tude of rigid expectancy; no movement but the quivering of his night-shirt above his heart.

"The doctor's been gone a long time, hasn't he?" he said.

Harriett was silent. She didn't understand. Her mother was looking at her with a serene comprehension and compa.s.sion.

"Poor Hatty," he said, "she can't tell a lie to save my life."

"Oh--Papa----"

He smiled as if he was thinking of something that amused him.

"You should consider other people, my dear. Not just your own selfish feelings.... You ought to write and tell Mr. Hichens."

Her mother gave a short sobbing laugh. "Oh, you darling," she said.

He lay still. Then suddenly he began pressing hard on the mattress with both hands, bracing himself up in the bed. Her mother leaned closer towards him. He threw himself over slantways, and with his head bent as if it was broken, dropped into her arms.

Harriett wondered why he was making that queer grating and coughing noise. Three times.

Her mother called softly to her--"Harriett."

She began to tremble.

VIII

Her mother had some secret that she couldn't share. She was wonderful in her pure, high serenity. Surely she had some secret. She said he was closer to her now than he had ever been. And in her correct, precise answers to the letters of condolence Harriett wrote: "I feel that he is closer to us now than he ever was." But she didn't really feel it. She only felt that to feel it was the beautiful and proper thing. She looked for her mother's secret and couldn't find it.

Meanwhile Mr. Hichens had given them six weeks. They had to decide where they would go: into Devonshire or into a cottage at Hampstead where Sarah Barmby lived now.

Her mother said, "Do you think you'd like to live in Sidmouth, near Aunt Harriett?"

They had stayed one summer at Sidmouth with Aunt Harriett. She remembered the red cliffs, the sea, and Aunt Harriett's garden stuffed with flowers. They had been happy there. She thought she would love that: the sea and the red cliffs and a garden like Aunt Harriett's.

But she was not sure whether it was what her mother really wanted. Mamma would never say. She would have to find out somehow.

"Well--what do you think?"

"It would be leaving all your friends, Hatty."

"My friends--yes. But----"

Lizzie and Sarah and Connie Pennefather. She could live without them.

"Oh, there's Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k."

"Well----" Her mother's voice suggested that if she were put to it she could live without Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k.

And Harriett thought: She does want to go to Sidmouth then.

"It would be very nice to be near Aunt Harriett."

She was afraid to say more than that lest she should show her own wish before she knew her mother's.

"Aunt Harriett. Yes.... But it's very far away, Hatty. We should be cut off from everything. Lectures and concerts. We couldn't afford to come up and down."

"No. We couldn't."

She could see that Mamma did not really want to live in Sidmouth; she didn't want to be near Aunt Harriett; she wanted the cottage at Hampstead and all the things of their familiar, intellectual life going on and on. After all, that was the way to keep near to Papa, to go on doing the things they had done together.

Her mother agreed that it was the way.

"I can't help feeling," Harriett said, "it's what he would have wished."

Her mother's face was quiet and content. She hadn't guessed.