Part 14 (1/2)
”What's wrong with the court? They won't mind a b.u.mp or two, and I've ordered new b.a.l.l.s.”
”I mean it's it's better not. I really mean it.” better not. I really mean it.”
He seized her by the elbows and humorously danced her up and down the pa.s.sage. She pretended not to mind, but she could have screamed with temper. Cecil glanced at them as he proceeded to his toilet and they impeded Mary with her brood of hot-water cans. Then Mrs. Honeychurch opened her door and said: ”Lucy, what a noise you're making! I have something to say to you. Did you say you had had a letter from Charlotte?” and Freddy ran away.
”Yes. I really can't stop. I must dress too.”
”How's Charlotte?”
”All right.”
”Lucy!”
The unfortunate girl returned.
”You've a bad habit of hurrying away in the middle of one's sentences. Did Charlotte mention her boiler?”
”Her what?” what?”
”Don't you remember that her boiler was to be had out in October, and her bath cistern cleaned out, and all kinds of terrible todoings?”
”I can't remember all Charlotte's worries,” said Lucy bitterly. ”I shall have enough of my own, now that you are not pleased with Cecil.”
Mrs. Honeychurch might have flamed out. She did not. She said: ”Come here, old lady-thank you for putting away my bonnet-kiss me.” And, though nothing is perfect, Lucy felt for the moment that her mother and Windy Corner and the Weald in the declining sun were perfect.
So the grittiness went out of life. It generally did at Windy Corner. At the last minute, when the social machine was clogged hopelessly, one member or other of the family poured in a drop of oil. Cecil despised their methods-perhaps rightly. At all events, they were not his own.
Dinner was at half-past seven. Freddy gabbled a grace, and they drew up their heavy chairs and fell to. Fortunately, the men were hungry. Nothing untoward occurred until the pudding. Then Freddy said: ”Lucy, what's Emerson like?”
”I saw him in Florence,” said Lucy, hoping that this would pa.s.s for a reply.
”Is he the clever sort, or is he a decent chap?”
”Ask Cecil; it is Cecil who brought him here.”
”He is the clever sort, like myself,” said Cecil.
Freddy looked at him doubtfully.
”How well did you know them at the Bertolini?” asked Mrs. Honeychurch.
”Oh, very slightly. I mean, Charlotte knew them even less than I did.”
”Oh, that reminds me-you never told me what Charlotte said in her letter.”
”One thing and another,” said Lucy, wondering whether she would get through the meal without a lie. ”Among other things, that an awful friend of hers had been bicycling through Summer Street, wondered if she'd come up and see us, and mercifully didn't.”
”Lucy, I do call the way you talk unkind.”
”She was a novelist,” said Lucy craftily. The remark was a happy one, for nothing roused Mrs. Honeychurch so much as literature in the hands of females. She would abandon every topic to inveigh against those women who (instead of minding their houses and their children) seek notoriety by print. Her att.i.tude was: ”If books must be written, let them be written by men”; and she developed it at great length, while Cecil yawned and Freddy played at ”This year; next year, now, never,” with his plum-stones, and Lucy artfully fed the flames of her mother's wrath. But soon the conflagration died down, and the ghosts began to gather in the darkness. There were too many ghosts about. The original ghost-that touch of lips on her cheek-had surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed her on a mountain once. But it had begotten a spectral family-Mr. Harris, Miss Bartlett's letter, Mr. Beebe's memories of violets-and one or other of these was bound to haunt her before Cecil's very eyes. It was Miss Bartlett who returned now, and with appalling vividness.
”I have been thinking, Lucy, of that letter of Charlotte's. How is she?”
”I tore the thing up.”
”Didn't she say how she was? How does she sound? Cheerful?”
”Oh, yes, I suppose so-no-not very cheerful, I suppose.”
”Then, depend upon it, it is the boiler. I know myself how water preys upon one's mind. I would rather anything else-even a misfortune with the meat.”
Cecil laid his hand over his eyes.
”So would I,” a.s.serted Freddy, backing his mother up-backing up the spirit of her remark rather than the substance.
”And I have been thinking,” she added rather nervously, ”surely we could squeeze Charlotte in here next week, and give her a nice holiday while the plumbers at Tunbridge Wells finish. I have not seen poor Charlotte for so long.”
It was more than her nerves could stand. And yet she could not protest violently after her mother's goodness to her upstairs.
”Mother, no!” she pleaded. ”It's impossible. We can't have Charlotte on the top of the other things; we're squeezed to death as it is. Freddy's got a friend coming Tuesday, there's Cecil, and you've promised to take in Minnie Beebe because of the diphtheria scare. It simply can't be done.”
”Nonsense! It can.”
”If Minnie sleeps in the bath. Not otherwise.”
”Minnie can sleep with you.”
”I won't have her.”
”Then, if you're so selfish, Mr. Floyd must share a room with Freddy.”
”Miss Bartlett, Miss Bartlett, Miss Bartlett,” moaned Cecil, again laying his hand over his eyes.
”It's impossible,” repeated Lucy. ”I don't want to make difficulties, but it really isn't fair on the maids to fill up the house so.”
Alas!
”The truth is, dear, you don't like Charlotte.”
”No, I don't. And no more does Cecil. She gets on our nerves. You haven't seen her lately, and don't realize how tiresome she can be, though so good. So please, mother, don't worry us this last summer ; but spoil us by not asking her to come.”
”Hear, hear!” said Cecil.
Mrs. Honeychurch, with more gravity than usual, and with more feeling than she usually permitted herself, replied: ”This isn't very kind of you two. You have each other and all these woods to walk in, so full of beautiful things; and poor Charlotte has only the water turned off and plumbers. You are young, dears, and however clever young people are, and however many books they read, they will never guess what it feels like to grow old.”
Cecil crumbled his bread.