Chapter IX: Lucy As a Work of Art
A few days after the engagement was announced Mrs. Honeychurch made Lucyand her Fiasco come to a little garden-party in the neighbourhood, fornaturally she wanted to show people that her daughter was marrying apresentable man.
Cecil was more than presentable; he looked distinguished, and it wasvery pleasant to see his slim figure keeping step with Lucy, and hislong, fair face responding when Lucy spoke to him. People congratulatedMrs. Honeychurch, which is, I believe, a social blunder, but it pleasedher, and she introduced Cecil rather indiscriminately to some stuffydowagers.
At tea a misfortune took place: a cup of coffee was upset over Lucy'sfigured silk, and though Lucy feigned indifference, her mother feignednothing of the sort but dragged her indoors to have the frock treatedby a sympathetic maid. They were gone some time, and Cecil was left withthe dowagers. When they returned he was not as pleasant as he had been.
"Do you go to much of this sort of thing?" he asked when they weredriving home.
"Oh, now and then," said Lucy, who had rather enjoyed herself.
"Is it typical of country society?"
"I suppose so. Mother, would it be?"
"Plenty of society," said Mrs. Honeychurch, who was trying to rememberthe hang of one of the dresses.
Seeing that her thoughts were elsewhere, Cecil bent towards Lucy andsaid:
"To me it seemed perfectly appalling, disastrous, portentous."
"I am so sorry that you were stranded."
"Not that, but the congratulations. It is so disgusting, the way anengagement is regarded as public property--a kind of waste place whereevery outsider may shoot his vulgar sentiment. All those old womensmirking!"
"One has to go through it, I suppose. They won't notice us so much nexttime."
"But my point is that their whole attitude is wrong. Anengagement--horrid word in the first place--is a private matter, andshould be treated as such."
Yet the smirking old women, however wrong individually, were raciallycorrect. The spirit of the generations had smiled through them,rejoicing in the engagement of Cecil and Lucy because it promised thecontinuance of life on earth. To Cecil and Lucy it promised somethingquite different--personal love. Hence Cecil's irritation and Lucy'sbelief that his irritation was just.
"How tiresome!" she said. "Couldn't you have escaped to tennis?"
"I don't play tennis--at least, not in public. The neighbourhood isdeprived of the romance of me being athletic. Such romance as I have isthat of the Inglese Italianato."
"Inglese Italianato?"
"E un diavolo incarnato! You know the proverb?"
She did not. Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent aquiet winter in Rome with his mother. But Cecil, since his engagement,had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far frompossessing.
"Well," said he, "I cannot help it if they do disapprove of me. Thereare certain irremovable barriers between myself and them, and I mustaccept them."
"We all have our limitations, I suppose," said wise Lucy.
"Sometimes they are forced on us, though," said Cecil, who saw from herremark that she did not quite understand his position.
"How?"
"It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in,or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?"
She thought a moment, and agreed that it did make a difference.
"Difference?" cried Mrs. Honeychurch, suddenly alert. "I don't see anydifference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in the sameplace."
"We were speaking of motives," said Cecil, on whom the interruptionjarred.
"My dear Cecil, look here." She spread out her knees and perched hercard-case on her lap. "This is me. That's Windy Corner. The rest of thepattern is the other people. Motives are all very well, but the fencecomes here."
"We weren't talking of real fences," said Lucy, laughing.
"Oh, I see, dear--poetry."
She leant placidly back. Cecil wondered why Lucy had been amused.
"I tell you who has no 'fences,' as you call them," she said, "andthat's Mr. Beebe."
"A parson fenceless would mean a parson defenceless."
Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detectwhat they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feelingthat prompted it.
"Don't you like Mr. Beebe?" she asked thoughtfully.
"I never said so!" he cried. "I consider him far above the average. Ionly denied--" And he swept off on the subject of fences again, and wasbrilliant.
"Now, a clergyman that I do hate," said she wanting to say somethingsympathetic, "a clergyman that does have fences, and the most dreadfulones, is Mr. Eager, the English chaplain at Florence. He was trulyinsincere--not merely the manner unfortunate. He was a snob, and soconceited, and he did say such unkind things."
"What sort of things?"
"There was an old man at the Bertolini whom he said had murdered hiswife."
"Perhaps he had."
"No!"
"Why 'no'?"
"He was such a nice old man, I'm sure."
Cecil laughed at her feminine inconsequence.
"Well, I did try to sift the thing. Mr. Eager would never come to thepoint. He prefers it vague--said the old man had 'practically' murderedhis wife--had murdered her in the sight of God."
"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Honeychurch absently.
"But isn't it intolerable that a person whom we're told to imitateshould go round spreading slander? It was, I believe, chiefly owing tohim that the old man was dropped. People pretended he was vulgar, but hecertainly wasn't that."
"Poor old man! What was his name?"
"Harris," said Lucy glibly.
"Let's hope that Mrs. Harris there warn't no sich person," said hermother.
Cecil nodded intelligently.
"Isn't Mr. Eager a parson of the cultured type?" he asked.
"I don't know. I hate him. I've heard him lecture on Giotto. I hate him.Nothing can hide a petty nature. I HATE him."
"My goodness gracious me, child!" said Mrs. Honeychurch. "You'll blowmy head off! Whatever is there to shout over? I forbid you and Cecil tohate any more clergymen."
He smiled. There was indeed something rather incongruous in Lucy's moraloutburst over Mr. Eager. It was as if one should see the Leonardo on theceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here layher vocation; that a woman's power and charm reside in mystery, notin muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars thebeautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, hecontemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certainapproval. He forebore to repress the sources of youth.
Nature--simplest of topics, he thought--lay around them. He praised thepine-woods, the deep lasts of bracken, the crimson leaves that spottedthe hurt-bushes, the serviceable beauty of the turnpike road. Theoutdoor world was not very familiar to him, and occasionally he wentwrong in a question of fact. Mrs. Honeychurch's mouth twitched when hespoke of the perpetual green of the larch.
"I count myself a lucky person," he concluded, "When I'm in London Ifeel I could never live out of it. When I'm in the country I feel thesame about the country. After all, I do believe that birds and trees andthe sky are the most wonderful things in life, and that the people wholive amongst them must be the best. It's true that in nine cases out often they don't seem to notice anything. The country gentleman andthe country labourer are each in their way the most depressing ofcompanions. Yet they may have a tacit sympathy with the workingsof Nature which is denied to us of the town. Do you feel that, Mrs.Honeychurch?"
Mrs. Honeychurch started and smiled. She had not been attending.Cecil, who was rather crushed on the front seat of the victoria, feltirritable, and determined not to say anything interesting again.
Lucy had not attended either. Her brow was wrinkled, and she stilllooked furiously cross--the result, he concluded, of too much moralgymnastics. It was sa
d to see her thus blind to the beauties of anAugust wood.
"'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height,'" he quoted, andtouched her knee with his own.
She flushed again and said: "What height?"
"'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height, What pleasure livesin height (the shepherd sang). In height and in the splendour of thehills?' Let us take Mrs. Honeychurch's advice and hate clergymen nomore. What's this place?"
"Summer Street, of course," said Lucy, and roused herself.
The woods had opened to leave space for a sloping triangular meadow.Pretty cottages lined it on two sides, and the upper and third side wasoccupied by a new stone church, expensively simple, a charming shingledspire. Mr. Beebe's house was near the church. In height it scarcelyexceeded the cottages. Some great mansions were at hand, but they werehidden in the trees. The scene suggested a Swiss Alp rather than theshrine and centre of a leisured world, and was marred only by two uglylittle villas--the villas that had competed with Cecil's engagement,having been acquired by Sir Harry Otway the very afternoon that Lucy hadbeen acquired by Cecil.
"Cissie" was the name of one of these villas, "Albert" of the other.These titles were not only picked out in shaded Gothic on the gardengates, but appeared a second time on the porches, where they followedthe semicircular curve of the entrance arch in block capitals. "Albert"was inhabited. His tortured garden was bright with geraniums andlobelias and polished shells. His little windows were chastely swathedin Nottingham lace. "Cissie" was to let. Three notice-boards, belongingto Dorking agents, lolled on her fence and announced the not surprisingfact. Her paths were already weedy; her pocket-handkerchief of a lawnwas yellow with dandelions.
"The place is ruined!" said the ladies mechanically. "Summer Street willnever be the same again."
As the carriage passed, "Cissie's" door opened, and a gentleman came outof her.
"Stop!" cried Mrs. Honeychurch, touching the coachman with her parasol."Here's Sir Harry. Now we shall know. Sir Harry, pull those things downat once!"
Sir Harry Otway--who need not be described--came to the carriage andsaid "Mrs. Honeychurch, I meant to. I can't, I really can't turn outMiss Flack."
"Am I not always right? She ought to have gone before the contract wassigned. Does she still live rent free, as she did in her nephew's time?"
"But what can I do?" He lowered his voice. "An old lady, so very vulgar,and almost bedridden."
"Turn her out," said Cecil bravely.
Sir Harry sighed, and looked at the villas mournfully. He had had fullwarning of Mr. Flack's intentions, and might have bought the plot beforebuilding commenced: but he was apathetic and dilatory. He had knownSummer Street for so many years that he could not imagine it beingspoilt. Not till Mrs. Flack had laid the foundation stone, and theapparition of red and cream brick began to rise did he take alarm.He called on Mr. Flack, the local builder,--a most reasonable andrespectful man--who agreed that tiles would have made more artisticroof, but pointed out that slates were cheaper. He ventured to differ,however, about the Corinthian columns which were to cling like leechesto the frames of the bow windows, saying that, for his part, he likedto relieve the facade by a bit of decoration. Sir Harry hinted that acolumn, if possible, should be structural as well as decorative.
Mr. Flack replied that all the columns had been ordered, adding, "andall the capitals different--one with dragons in the foliage, anotherapproaching to the Ionian style, another introducing Mrs. Flack'sinitials--everyone different." For he had read his Ruskin. He builthis villas according to his desire; and not until he had inserted animmovable aunt into one of them did Sir Harry buy.
This futile and unprofitable transaction filled the knight with sadnessas he leant on Mrs. Honeychurch's carriage. He had failed in his dutiesto the country-side, and the country-side was laughing at him as well.He had spent money, and yet Summer Street was spoilt as much as ever.All he could do now was to find a desirable tenant for "Cissie"--someone really desirable.
"The rent is absurdly low," he told them, "and perhaps I am an easylandlord. But it is such an awkward size. It is too large for thepeasant class and too small for any one the least like ourselves."
Cecil had been hesitating whether he should despise the villas ordespise Sir Harry for despising them. The latter impulse seemed the morefruitful.
"You ought to find a tenant at once," he said maliciously. "It would bea perfect paradise for a bank clerk."
"Exactly!" said Sir Harry excitedly. "That is exactly what I fear, Mr.Vyse. It will attract the wrong type of people. The train service hasimproved--a fatal improvement, to my mind. And what are five miles froma station in these days of bicycles?"
"Rather a strenuous clerk it would be," said Lucy.
Cecil, who had his full share of mediaeval mischievousness, repliedthat the physique of the lower middle classes was improving at amost appalling rate. She saw that he was laughing at their harmlessneighbour, and roused herself to stop him.
"Sir Harry!" she exclaimed, "I have an idea. How would you likespinsters?"
"My dear Lucy, it would be splendid. Do you know any such?"
"Yes; I met them abroad."
"Gentlewomen?" he asked tentatively.
"Yes, indeed, and at the present moment homeless. I heard from them lastweek--Miss Teresa and Miss Catharine Alan. I'm really not joking. Theyare quite the right people. Mr. Beebe knows them, too. May I tell themto write to you?"
"Indeed you may!" he cried. "Here we are with the difficulty solvedalready. How delightful it is! Extra facilities--please tell them theyshall have extra facilities, for I shall have no agents' fees. Oh,the agents! The appalling people they have sent me! One woman, whenI wrote--a tactful letter, you know--asking her to explain her socialposition to me, replied that she would pay the rent in advance. Asif one cares about that! And several references I took up were mostunsatisfactory--people swindlers, or not respectable. And oh, thedeceit! I have seen a good deal of the seamy side this last week. Thedeceit of the most promising people. My dear Lucy, the deceit!"
She nodded.
"My advice," put in Mrs. Honeychurch, "is to have nothing to do withLucy and her decayed gentlewomen at all. I know the type. Preserve mefrom people who have seen better days, and bring heirlooms with themthat make the house smell stuffy. It's a sad thing, but I'd far ratherlet to someone who is going up in the world than to someone who hascome down."
"I think I follow you," said Sir Harry; "but it is, as you say, a verysad thing."
"The Misses Alan aren't that!" cried Lucy.
"Yes, they are," said Cecil. "I haven't met them but I should say theywere a highly unsuitable addition to the neighbourhood."
"Don't listen to him, Sir Harry--he's tiresome."
"It's I who am tiresome," he replied. "I oughtn't to come with mytroubles to young people. But really I am so worried, and Lady Otwaywill only say that I cannot be too careful, which is quite true, but noreal help."
"Then may I write to my Misses Alan?"
"Please!"
But his eye wavered when Mrs. Honeychurch exclaimed:
"Beware! They are certain to have canaries. Sir Harry, beware ofcanaries: they spit the seed out through the bars of the cages and thenthe mice come. Beware of women altogether. Only let to a man."
"Really--" he murmured gallantly, though he saw the wisdom of herremark.
"Men don't gossip over tea-cups. If they get drunk, there's an end ofthem--they lie down comfortably and sleep it off. If they're vulgar,they somehow keep it to themselves. It doesn't spread so. Give me aman--of course, provided he's clean."
Sir Harry blushed. Neither he nor Cecil enjoyed these open complimentsto their sex. Even the exclusion of the dirty did not leave them muchdistinction. He suggested that Mrs. Honeychurch, if she had time, shoulddescend from the carriage and inspect "Cissie" for herself. She wasdelighted. Nature had intended her to be poor and to live in such ahouse. Domestic arrangements always attracted her, especially when theywere on a small
scale.
Cecil pulled Lucy back as she followed her mother.
"Mrs. Honeychurch," he said, "what if we two walk home and leave you?"
"Certainly!" was her cordial reply.
Sir Harry likewise seemed almost too glad to get rid of them. He beamedat them knowingly, said, "Aha! young people, young people!" and thenhastened to unlock the house.
"Hopeless vulgarian!" exclaimed Cecil, almost before they were out ofearshot.
"Oh, Cecil!"
"I can't help it. It would be wrong not to loathe that man."
"He isn't clever, but really he is nice."
"No, Lucy, he stands for all that is bad in country life. In London hewould keep his place. He would belong to a brainless club, and his wifewould give brainless dinner parties. But down here he acts the littlegod with his gentility, and his patronage, and his sham aesthetics, andeveryone--even your mother--is taken in."
"All that you say is quite true," said Lucy, though she feltdiscouraged. "I wonder whether--whether it matters so very much."
"It matters supremely. Sir Harry is the essence of that garden-party.Oh, goodness, how cross I feel! How I do hope he'll get some vulgartenant in that villa--some woman so really vulgar that he'll noticeit. GENTLEFOLKS! Ugh! with his bald head and retreating chin! But let'sforget him."
This Lucy was glad enough to do. If Cecil disliked Sir Harry Otway andMr. Beebe, what guarantee was there that the people who really matteredto her would escape? For instance, Freddy. Freddy was neither clever,nor subtle, nor beautiful, and what prevented Cecil from saying, anyminute, "It would be wrong not to loathe Freddy"? And what would shereply? Further than Freddy she did not go, but he gave her anxietyenough. She could only assure herself that Cecil had known Freddy sometime, and that they had always got on pleasantly, except, perhaps,during the last few days, which was an accident, perhaps.
"Which way shall we go?" she asked him.
Nature--simplest of topics, she thought--was around them. Summer Streetlay deep in the woods, and she had stopped where a footpath divergedfrom the highroad.
"Are there two ways?"
"Perhaps the road is more sensible, as we're got up smart."
"I'd rather go through the wood," said Cecil, With that subduedirritation that she had noticed in him all the afternoon. "Why is it,Lucy, that you always say the road? Do you know that you have never oncebeen with me in the fields or the wood since we were engaged?"
"Haven't I? The wood, then," said Lucy, startled at his queerness, butpretty sure that he would explain later; it was not his habit to leaveher in doubt as to his meaning.
She led the way into the whispering pines, and sure enough he didexplain before they had gone a dozen yards.
"I had got an idea--I dare say wrongly--that you feel more at home withme in a room."
"A room?" she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.
"Yes. Or, at the most, in a garden, or on a road. Never in the realcountry like this."
"Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean? I have never felt anything of thesort. You talk as if I was a kind of poetess sort of person."
"I don't know that you aren't. I connect you with a view--a certain typeof view. Why shouldn't you connect me with a room?"
She reflected a moment, and then said, laughing:
"Do you know that you're right? I do. I must be a poetess after all.When I think of you it's always as in a room. How funny!"
To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.
"A drawing-room, pray? With no view?"
"Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?"
"I'd rather," he said reproachfully, "that you connected me with the openair."
She said again, "Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean?"
As no explanation was forthcoming, she shook off the subject as toodifficult for a girl, and led him further into the wood, pausing everynow and then at some particularly beautiful or familiar combination ofthe trees. She had known the wood between Summer Street and Windy Cornerever since she could walk alone; she had played at losing Freddy in it,when Freddy was a purple-faced baby; and though she had been to Italy,it had lost none of its charm.
Presently they came to a little clearing among the pines--another tinygreen alp, solitary this time, and holding in its bosom a shallow pool.
She exclaimed, "The Sacred Lake!"
"Why do you call it that?"
"I can't remember why. I suppose it comes out of some book. It's only apuddle now, but you see that stream going through it? Well, a good dealof water comes down after heavy rains, and can't get away at once, andthe pool becomes quite large and beautiful. Then Freddy used to bathethere. He is very fond of it."
"And you?"
He meant, "Are you fond of it?" But she answered dreamily, "I bathedhere, too, till I was found out. Then there was a row."
At another time he might have been shocked, for he had depths ofprudishness within him. But now? with his momentary cult of the freshair, he was delighted at her admirable simplicity. He looked at her asshe stood by the pool's edge. She was got up smart, as she phrased it,and she reminded him of some brilliant flower that has no leaves of itsown, but blooms abruptly out of a world of green.
"Who found you out?"
"Charlotte," she murmured. "She was stopping with us.Charlotte--Charlotte."
"Poor girl!"
She smiled gravely. A certain scheme, from which hitherto he had shrunk,now appeared practical.
"Lucy!"
"Yes, I suppose we ought to be going," was her reply.
"Lucy, I want to ask something of you that I have never asked before."
At the serious note in his voice she stepped frankly and kindly towardshim.
"What, Cecil?"
"Hitherto never--not even that day on the lawn when you agreed to marryme--"
He became self-conscious and kept glancing round to see if they wereobserved. His courage had gone.
"Yes?"
"Up to now I have never kissed you."
She was as scarlet as if he had put the thing most indelicately.
"No--more you have," she stammered.
"Then I ask you--may I now?"
"Of course, you may, Cecil. You might before. I can't run at you, youknow."
At that supreme moment he was conscious of nothing but absurdities. Herreply was inadequate. She gave such a business-like lift to her veil.As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. Ashe touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattenedbetween them.
Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been afailure. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forgetcivility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature.Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.Why could he not do as any labourer or navvy--nay, as any young manbehind the counter would have done? He recast the scene. Lucy wasstanding flowerlike by the water, he rushed up and took her in hisarms; she rebuked him, permitted him and revered him ever after for hismanliness. For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.
They left the pool in silence, after this one salutation. He waited forher to make some remark which should show him her inmost thoughts. Atlast she spoke, and with fitting gravity.
"Emerson was the name, not Harris."
"What name?"
"The old man's."
"What old man?"
"That old man I told you about. The one Mr. Eager was so unkind to."
He could not know that this was the most intimate conversation they hadever had.