Part 9 (1/2)
From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, ”Len?”
”You in bed?” he asked, his forehead twitching.
”All right.”
Presently she called him again.
”I must clean my boots ready for the morning,” he answered.
Presently she called him again.
”I rather want to get this chapter done.”
”What?”
He closed his ears against her.
”What's that?”
”All right, Jacky, nothing; I'm reading a book.”
”What?”
”What?” he answered, catching her degraded deafness.
Presently she called him again.
Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was ordering his gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred to him, as he glided over the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature could not be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery of such as Leonard.
CHAPTER VII
”Oh, Margaret,” cried her aunt next morning, ”such a most unfortunate thing has happened. I could not get you alone.”
The most unfortunate thing was not very serious. One of the flats in the ornate block opposite had been taken furnished by the Wilc.o.x family, ”coming up, no doubt, in the hope of getting into London society.”
That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised them--they took away that old-world look--they cut off the sun--flats house a flashy type of person. But if the truth had been known, she found her visits to Wickham Place twice as amusing since Wickham Mansions had arisen, and would in a couple of days learn more about them than her nieces in a couple of months, or her nephew in a couple of years. She would stroll across and make friends with the porters, and inquire what the rents were, exclaiming for example: ”What! a hundred and twenty for a bas.e.m.e.nt? You'll never get it!” And they would answer: ”One can but try, madam.” The pa.s.senger lifts, the arrangement for coals (a great temptation for a dishonest porter), were all familiar matters to her, and perhaps a relief from the politico-economical-esthetic atmosphere that reigned at the Schlegels.
Margaret received the information calmly, and did not agree that it would throw a cloud over poor Helen's life.
”Oh, but Helen isn't a girl with no interests,” she explained. ”She has plenty of other things and other people to think about. She made a false start with the Wilc.o.xes, and she'll be as willing as we are to have nothing more to do with them.”
”For a clever girl, dear, how very oddly you do talk. Helen'll HAVE to have something more to do with them, now that they 're all opposite. She may meet that Paul in the street. She cannot very well not bow.”
”Of course she must bow. But look here; let's do the flowers. I was going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It's dead, and she'll never be troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a dinner-party--we can do all those things to the Wilc.o.xes, if they find it agreeable; but the other thing, the one important thing--never again.
Don't you see?”
Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most questionable statement--that any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.
”I also have the honour to inform you that the Wilc.o.xes are bored with us. I didn't tell you at the time--it might have made you angry, and you had enough to worry you--but I wrote a letter to Mrs. W, and apologised for the trouble that Helen had given them. She didn't answer it.”