Towards spring Harriett showed signs of depression, and they took her to
the south of France and to Bordighera and Rome. In Rome she recovered.
Rome was one of those places you ought to see; she had always been
anxious to do the right thing. In the little Pension in the Via Babuino
she had a sense of her own importance and the importance of her father
and mother. They were Mr. and Mrs. Hilton Frean, and Miss Harriett
Frean, seeing Rome.
After their return in the summer he began to write his book, _The Social
Order_. There were things that had to be said; it did not much matter
who said them provided they were said plainly. He dreamed of a new
Social State, society governing itself without representatives. For a
long time they lived on the interest and excitement of the book, and
when it came out Harriett pasted all his reviews very neatly into
an album. He had the air of not taking them quite seriously; but he
subscribed to _The Spectator_, and sometimes an article appeared there
understood to have been written by Hilton Frean.
And they went abroad again every year. They went to Florence and came
home and read _Romola_ and Mrs. Browning and Dante and _The Spectator_;
they went to Assisi and read the _Little Flowers of Saint Francis;_ they
went to Venice and read Ruskin and _The Spectator;_ they went to Rome
again and read Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Harriett
said, “We should have enjoyed Rome more if we had read Gibbon,” and her
mother replied that they would not have enjoyed Gibbon so much if they
had not seen Rome. Harriett did not really enjoy him; but she enjoyed
the sound of her own voice reading out the great sentences and the
rolling Latin names.
She had brought back photographs of the Colosseum and the Forum and of
Botticelli’s _Spring_, and a della Robbia Madonna in a shrine of fruit
and flowers, and hung them in the drawing-room. And when she saw the
blue egg in its gilt frame standing on the marble-topped table, she
wondered how she had ever loved it, and wished it were not there. It had
been one of Mamma’s wedding presents. Mrs. Hancock had given it her; but
Mr. Hancock must have bought it.
Harriett’s face had taken on again its arrogant lift. She esteemed
herself justly. She knew she was superior to the Hancocks and the
Pennefathers and to Lizzie Pierce and Sarah Barmby; even to Priscilla.
When she thought of Robin and how she had given him up she felt a
thrill of pleasure in her beautiful behavior, and a thrill of pride in
remembering that he had loved her more than Priscilla. Her mind refused
to think of Robin married.
Two, three, five years passed, with a perceptible acceleration, and
Harriett was now thirty.
She had not seen them since the wedding day. Robin had gone back to his
own town; he was cashier in a big bank there. For four years Prissie’s
letters came regularly every month or so, then ceased abruptly.
Then Robin wrote and told her of Prissie’s illness. A mysterious
paralysis. It had begun with fits of giddiness in the street; Prissie
would turn round and round on the pavement; then falling fits; and now
both legs were paralyzed, but Robin thought she was gradually recovering
the use of her hands.
Harriett did not cry. The shock of it stopped her tears. She tried to
see it and couldn’t. Poor little Prissie. How terrible. She kept on
saying to herself she couldn’t bear to think of Prissie paralyzed. Poor
little Prissie.