Life and Death of Harriett Frean | Page 7

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