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, upright, and stiff in her white shawl. She apologized for having waited seven years before calling.... “Never go anywhere.... Quite a recluse since my father’s death. He was Hilton Frean.”
“Yes?” Mrs. Brailsford’s eyes were sweetly interrogative.
“But as we are such near neighbors I felt that I must break my rule.”
Mrs. Brailsford smiled in vague benevolence; yet as if she thought that Miss Frean’s feeling and her action were unnecessary. After seven years. And presently Harriett found herself alone in her corner.
She tried to talk to Mr. Brailsford when he handed her the tea and bread and butter. “My father,” she said, “was connected with The Spectator for many years. He was Hilton Frean.”
“Indeed? I’m afraid I—don’t remember.”
She could get nothing out of him, out of his lean, ironical face, his eyes screwed up behind his glasses, benevolent, amused at her. She was nobody in that roomful of keen, intellectual people; nobody; nothing but an unnecessary little old lady who had come there uninvited.
Her second call was not returned. She heard that the Brailsfords were exclusive; they wouldn’t know anybody out of their own set. Harriett explained her position thus: “No. I didn’t keep it up. We have nothing in common.”
She was old—old. She had nothing in common with youth, nothing in common with middle age, with intellectual, exclusive people connected with The Spectator. She said, “The Spectator is not what it used to be in my father’s time.”