Free Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair Page A

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 sanctity 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 apron 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.
    "You're a good girl, Maggie."
    She had forgotten. The image of Maggie's baby was dead, hidden, buried deep down in her mind. She closed her eyes. Her head was thrown back, motionless, ecstatic under Maggie's flickering fingers as they plaited her thin wisps of hair.
    Out of the peace of illness she entered on the misery and long labor of convalescence. The first time Maggie left her to dress herself she wept. She didn't want to get well. She could see nothing in recovery but the end of privilege and prestige, the obligation to return to a task she was tired of, a difficult and terrifying task.
    By summer she was up and (tremulously) about again.
XIV
    She was aware of her drowsy, supine dependence on Maggie. At first her perishing self asserted itself in an increased reserve and arrogance. Thus she protected herself from her own censure. She had still a feeling of satisfaction in her exclusiveness, her power not to call on new people.
    "I think," Lizzie Pierce said, "you might have called on the Brailsfords."
    "Why should I? I should have nothing in common with such people."
    "Well, considering that Mr. Brailsford writes in The Spectator ----"
    Harriett called. She put on her gray silk and her soft white mohair shawl, and her wide black hat tied under her chin, and called. It was on a Saturday. The Brailsfords' room was full of visitors, men and women, talking excitedly. Dorothy was not there--Dorothy was married. Mimi was not there--Mimi was dead.
    Harriett made her way between the chairs, dim-eyed,