Part 12 (1/2)

”Tunbridge Wells ”September.

”Dearest Lucia,”I have news of you at last! Miss Lavish has been bicycling in your parts, but was not sure whether a call would be welcome. Puncturing her tire near Summer Street, and it being mended while she sat very woebegone in that pretty churchyard, she saw to her astonishment, a door open opposite and the younger Emerson man come out. He said his father had just taken the house. He said said he did not know that you lived in the neighbourhood(?). He never suggested giving Eleanor a cup of tea. Dear Lucy, I am much worried, and I advise you to make a clean breast of his past behaviour to your mother, Freddy, and Mr. Vyse, who will forbid him to enter the house, etc. That was a great misfortune, and I dare say you have told them already. Mr. Vyse is so sensitive. I remember how I used to get on his nerves at Rome. I am very sorry about it all, and should not feel easy unless I warned you. he did not know that you lived in the neighbourhood(?). He never suggested giving Eleanor a cup of tea. Dear Lucy, I am much worried, and I advise you to make a clean breast of his past behaviour to your mother, Freddy, and Mr. Vyse, who will forbid him to enter the house, etc. That was a great misfortune, and I dare say you have told them already. Mr. Vyse is so sensitive. I remember how I used to get on his nerves at Rome. I am very sorry about it all, and should not feel easy unless I warned you.”Believe me,”Your anxious and loving cousin,”CHARLOTTE.”

Lucy was much annoyed, and replied as follows: ”Beauchamp Mansions, S. W.

”Dear Charlotte,”Many thanks for your warning. When Mr. Emerson forgot himself on the mountain, you made me promise not to tell mother, because you said she would blame you for not being always with me. I have kept that promise, and cannot possibly tell her now. I have said both to her and Cecil that I met the Emersons at Florence, and that they are respectable people-which I do think-and the reason that he offered Miss Lavish no tea was probably that he had none himself. She should have tried at the Rectory. I cannot begin making a fuss at this stage. You must see that it would be too absurd. If the Emersons heard I had complained of them, they would think themselves of importance, which is exactly what they are not. I like the old father, and look forward to seeing him again. As for the son, I am sorry for him when we meet, rather than for myself. They are known to Cecil, who is very well and spoke of you the other day. We expect to be married in January.”Miss Lavish cannot have told you much about me, for I am not at Windy Corner at all, but here. Please do not put 'Private' outside your envelope again. No one opens my letters.”Yours affectionately, ”L. M. HONEYCHURCH.”

Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not. Were Lucy and her cousin closeted with a great thing which would destroy Cecil's life if he discovered it, or with a little thing which he would laugh at? Miss Bartlett suggested the former. Perhaps she was right. It had become a great thing now. Left to herself, Lucy would have told her mother and her lover ingenuously, and it would have remained a little thing. ”Emerson, not Harris”; it was only that a few weeks ago. She tried to tell Cecil even now when they were laughing about some beautiful lady who had smitten his heart at school. But her body behaved so ridiculously that she stopped.

She and her secret stayed ten days longer in the deserted Metropolis visiting the scenes they were to know so well later on. It did her no harm, Cecil thought, to learn the framework of society, while society itself was absent on the golf-links or the moors. The weather was cool, and it did her no harm. In spite of the season, Mrs. Vyse managed to sc.r.a.pe together a dinner-party consisting entirely of the grandchildren of famous people. The food was poor, but the talk had a witty weariness that impressed the girl. One was tired of everything, it seemed. One launched into enthusiasms only to collapse gracefully, and pick oneself up amid sympathetic laughter. In this atmosphere the Pension Bertolini and Windy Corner appeared equally crude, and Lucy saw that her London career would estrange her a little from all that she had loved in the past.

The grandchildren asked her to play the piano. She played Schumann. ”Now some Beethoven,” called Cecil, when the querulous beauty of the music had died. She shook her head and played Schumann again. The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It broke; it was resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle to the grave. The sadness of the incomplete-the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art-throbbed in its disjected phrases, and made the nerves of the audience throb. Not thus had she played on the little draped piano at the Bertolini, and ”Too much Schumann” was not the remark that Mr. Beebe had pa.s.sed to himself when she returned.

When the guests were gone, and Lucy had gone to bed, Mrs. Vyse paced up and down the drawing-room, discussing her little party with her son. Mrs. Vyse was a nice woman, but her personality, like many another's, had been swamped by London, for it needs a strong head to live among many people. The too vast orb of her fate had crushed her; and she had seen too many seasons, too many cities, too many men, for her abilities, and even with Cecil she was mechanical, and behaved as if he was not one son, but, so to speak, a filial crowd.

”Make Lucy one of us,” she said, looking round intelligently at the end of each sentence, and straining her lips apart until she spoke again. ”Lucy is becoming wonderful-wonderful.”

”Her music always was wonderful.”

”Yes, but she is purging off the Honeychurch taint-most excellent Honeychurches, but you know what I mean. She is not always quoting servants, or asking one how the pudding is made.”

”Italy has done it.”

”Perhaps,” she murmured, thinking of the museum that represented Italy to her. ”It is just possible. Cecil, mind you marry her next January. She is one of us already.”

”But her music!” he exclaimed. ”The style of her! How she kept to Schumann when, like an idiot, I wanted Beethoven. Schumann was right for this evening. Schumann was the thing. Do you know, mother, I shall have our children educated just like Lucy. Bring them up among honest country folks for freshness, send them to Italy for subtlety, and then-not till then-let them come to London. I don't believe in these London educations-” He broke off, remembering that he had had one himself, and concluded, ”At all events, not for women.”

”Make her one of us,” repeated Mrs. Vyse, and processed to bed.

As she was dozing off, a cry-the cry of nightmare-rang from Lucy's room. Lucy could ring for the maid if she liked but Mrs. Vyse thought it kind to go herself. She found the girl sitting upright with her hand on her cheek.

”I am so sorry, Mrs. Vyse-it is these dreams.”

”Bad dreams?”

”Just dreams.”

The elderly lady smiled and kissed her, saying very distinctly: ”You should have heard us talking about you, dear. He admires you more than ever. Dream of that.”

Lucy returned the kiss, still covering one cheek with her hand. Mrs. Vyse recessed to bed. Cecil, whom the cry had not awoke, snored. Darkness enveloped the flat.

12.

TWELFTH CHAPTER.

IT WAS A SAt.u.r.dAY afternoon, gay and brilliant after abundant rains, and the spirit of youth dwelt in it, though the season was now autumn. All that was gracious triumphed. As the motor cars pa.s.sed through Summer Street they raised only a little dust, and their stench was soon dispersed by the wind and replaced by the scent of the wet birches or of the pines. Mr. Beebe, at leisure for life's amenities, leant over his Rectory gate. Freddy leant by him, smoking a pendant pipe.

”Suppose we go and hinder those new people opposite for a little.”

”Mm.”

”They might amuse you.”

Freddy, whom his fellow-creatures never amused, suggested that the new people might be feeling a bit busy, and so on, since they had only just moved in.

”I suggested we should hinder them,” said Mr. Beebe. ”They are worth it.” Unlatching the gate, he sauntered over the triangular green to Cissie Villa. ”Hullo!” he cried, shouting in at the open door, through which much squalor was visible.

A grave voice replied, ”Hullo!”

”I've brought some one to see you.”

”I'll be down in a minute.”

The pa.s.sage was blocked by a wardrobe, which the removal men had failed to carry up the stairs. Mr. Beebe edged round it with difficulty. The sitting-room itself was blocked with books.

”Are these people great readers?” Freddy whispered. ”Are they that sort?”

”I fancy they know how to read-a rare accomplishment. What have they got? Byron. Exactly. A Shrops.h.i.+re Shrops.h.i.+re Lad. Never heard of it. Lad. Never heard of it. The Way of All Flesh. The Way of All Flesh. Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! dear George reads German. Um-um-Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on. Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! dear George reads German. Um-um-Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on.15 Well, I suppose your generation knows its own business, Honeychurch.” Well, I suppose your generation knows its own business, Honeychurch.”

”Mr. Beebe, look at that,” said Freddy in awe-struck tones.

On the cornice of the wardrobe, the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: ”Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.”16 ”I know. Isn't it jolly? I like that. I'm certain that's the old man's doing.”

”How very odd of him!”

”Surely you agree?”

But Freddy was his mother's son and felt that one ought not to go on spoiling the furniture.

”Pictures!” the clergyman continued, scrambling about the room. ”Giotto-they got that at Florence, I'll be bound.”

”The same as Lucy's got.”

”Oh, by-the-by, did Miss Honeychurch enjoy London?”

”She came back yesterday.”

”I suppose she had a good time?”

”Yes, very,” said Freddy, taking up a book. ”She and Cecil are thicker than ever.”

”That's good hearing.”

”I wish I wasn't such a fool, Mr. Beebe.”