Free Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy by Rebecca West

it was not empty, any more than it had been when he frequented it. In the shade of the Ladies Frances, Georgiana, and Arabella Dudley was a deck-chair of yellow and white striped canvas, on which he was sure, though its back was turned to him, there reposed a young man enjoying the liberty of shirt-sleeves; for there dangled beside it an almost bare arm obviously belonging to a male. The down on it, he thought sombrely, were one to approach near enough to see it, would be fair. A book and some weekly journals lay on the grass by the chair. He made himself at home, this young man, whoever he might be. Indeed the afternoon seemed to be passing here so pleasantly that the mouth could not help but water. For nearer the centre of the lawn was a light iron table pierced by a giant dust-and-orange umbrella, the same as may be seen on the terrace of any French hotel, and by this stood Harriet, looking infinitely ductile with contentment.
    She had not lost an atom of her innocent loveliness. She was very much the same in her appurtenances also. For she was wearing, as she had always done, a parchment-coloured gown that showed her shape to the waist and then became a thousand pleats of fine muslin; and it still seemed incredible that there should be a grown woman’s feet in those tiny sandals; and at her bosom she had pinned, as he had seen her do a dozen times when she was in a good mood, her favourite rose, an open-eyed and golden flower with a grainy brownness at its centre, exhalent of honey. The only novelty about her aspect was her peasantish broad straw hat which she had pushed back until its elastic was strained low across her throat, and it hung like a great O behind her shoulders; yet that was not so novel either, for it had seemed to him that he had always been aware that she would look just such a melting dove of deliciousness if one hung a peasantish hat like a great O behind her shoulders. Of the same dubious truth it was that he had never seen her do exactly what she was doing at the moment; which was to look down into a tumbler and swirl it round and round, because there was sugar to be melted and she, the lazy slut, would not run back to her house for the spoon she had forgotten. Yet, if he had never seen her do that, how did he know so well that, though she would not run back to the house in her own interest, her little ankles would twinkle up the steps to her French window in no time had it been he who held a glass of her lemonade in his hand and had need of a spoon?
    In fact, she was unaltered, and she was exquisite. But can the semi-sacred charm of familiarity, can true delight, attach to that which has been apprehended by a process other than natural? He retreated a pace from the door, regarding it with loathing. Surely it is established as firmly as any article of our faith that the only occasion on which a door is not a door is when it is ajar. It has no license to be a lens through which the unseen can be seen, it has no permit to tamper with time and exhibit that which has not yet been encountered. Addressing it in firm tones, he said, “I will not trouble to go in, on such a fine day she will not be in town,” and passed on, bending his brows again over the business of making Pondh into Mondh; a transaction which he never admitted to a soul, neither with laughter, as he had meant to admit it to his Harriet, or in solemnity.
    So he passed on, and did not see his Harriet until a December afternoon, criss-crossed with the residue of its yesterday’s light snowfall, more than four years later. Heavens! how well he felt that day! He tingled with good health and energy and prosperity. That was why after he had had luncheon with old Lord Ketchup in Hyde Park Gate he left by foot and crossed the Kensington Road that he might walk part of his way back to Albany through the Park. Lord, he felt well! All turned to satisfaction in him. This very walk afforded proof of how neatly his days were dovetailed in these