Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  “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 scrape 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 passed 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 elder 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.

  Dear George! Lucy thought. Dear George.

  Cecil had not even attempted a kiss before she retired for the night. Nor had he the courage to come to her in the dark of night as George had done in Italy. Had Cecil at least tried, her mind may have decidedly come to rest upon him as her favorite. What a muddle.

  Dear George.

  Chapter XII: Twelfth Chapter

  It was a Saturday 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 motorcars passed 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.”

  “M’m.”

  “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 passage 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 Shropshire Lad. Never heard of it. The Way of All Flesh. Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! Dear George reads German. Um — um — Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on. Well, I suppose your generation knows its own business, Honeychurch.”

  “Mr. Beebe, look at that,” sai
d Freddy in awestruck tones.

  On the cornice of the wardrobe, the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.”

  “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.”

  Mr. Beebe ignored the remark.

  “Lucy used to be nearly as stupid as I am, but it’ll be very different now, mother thinks. She will read all kinds of books.”

  “So will you.”

  “Only medical books. Not books that you can talk about afterwards. Cecil is teaching Lucy Italian, and he says her playing is wonderful. There are all kinds of things in it that we have never noticed. Cecil says — ”

  “What on earth are those people doing upstairs? Emerson — we think we’ll come another time.”

  George ran downstairs and pushed them into the room without speaking.

  “Let me introduce Mr. Honeychurch, a neighbour.”

  Then Freddy hurled one of the thunderbolts of youth. Perhaps he was shy, perhaps he was friendly, or perhaps he thought that George’s face wanted washing. At all events he greeted him with, “How d’ye do? Come and have a bathe.”

  “Oh, all right,” said George, impassive.

  Mr. Beebe was highly entertained.

  “‘How d’ye do? how d’ye do? Come and have a bathe,’” he chuckled. “That’s the best conversational opening I’ve ever heard. But I’m afraid it will only act between men. Can you picture a lady who has been introduced to another lady by a third lady opening civilities with ‘How do you do? Come and have a bathe’? And yet you will tell me that the sexes are equal.”

  “I tell you that they shall be,” said Mr. Emerson, who had been slowly descending the stairs. “Good afternoon, Mr. Beebe. I tell you they shall be comrades, and George thinks the same.”

  “We are to raise ladies to our level?” the clergyman inquired.

  “The Garden of Eden,” pursued Mr. Emerson, still descending, “which you place in the past, is really yet to come. We shall enter it when we no longer despise our bodies.”

  Mr. Beebe disclaimed placing the Garden of Eden anywhere.

  “In this — not in other things — we men are ahead. We despise the body less than women do. But not until we are comrades shall we enter the garden.”

  “I say, what about this bathe?” murmured Freddy, appalled at the mass of philosophy that was approaching him.

  “I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? To-day, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplicity. It is our heritage.”

  “Let me introduce Mr. Honeychurch, whose sister you will remember at Florence.”

  “How do you do? Very glad to see you, and that you are taking George for a bathe. Very glad to hear that your sister is going to marry. Marriage is a duty. I am sure that she will be happy, for we know Mr. Vyse, too. He has been most kind. He met us by chance in the National Gallery, and arranged everything about this delightful house. Though I hope I have not vexed Sir Harry Otway. I have met so few Liberal landowners, and I was anxious to compare his attitude towards the game laws with the Conservative attitude. Ah, this wind! You do well to bathe. Yours is a glorious country, Honeychurch!”

  “Not a bit!” mumbled Freddy. “I must — that is to say, I have to — have the pleasure of calling on you later on, my mother says, I hope.”

  “CALL, my lad? Who taught us that drawing-room twaddle? Call on your grandmother! Listen to the wind among the pines! Yours is a glorious country.”

  Mr. Beebe came to the rescue.

  “Mr. Emerson, he will call, I shall call; you or your son will return our calls before ten days have elapsed. I trust that you have realized about the ten days’ interval. It does not count that I helped you with the stair-eyes yesterday. It does not count that they are going to bathe this afternoon.”

  “Yes, go and bathe, George. Why do you dawdle talking? Bring them back to tea. Bring back some milk, cakes, honey. The change will do you good. George has been working very hard at his office. I can’t believe he’s well.”

  George bowed his head, dusty and sombre, exhaling the peculiar smell of one who has handled furniture.

  “Do you really want this bathe?” Freddy asked him. “It is only a pond, don’t you know. I dare say you are used to something better.”

  “Yes — I have said ‘Yes’ already.”

  Mr. Beebe felt bound to assist his young friend, and led the way out of the house and into the pine-woods. How glorious it was! For a little time the voice of old Mr. Emerson pursued them dispensing good wishes and philosophy. It ceased, and they only heard the fair wind blowing the bracken and the trees. Mr. Beebe, who could be silent, but who could not bear silence, was compelled to chatter, since the expedition looked like a failure, and neither of his companions would utter a word. He spoke of Florence. George attended gravely, assenting or dissenting with slight but determined gestures that were as inexplicable as the motions of the tree-tops above their heads.

  “And what a coincidence that you should meet Mr. Vyse! Did you realize that you would find all the Pension Bertolini down here?”

  “I did not. Miss Lavish told me.”

  “When I was a young man, I always meant to write a ‘History of Coincidence.’”

  No enthusiasm.

  “Though, as a matter of fact, coincidences are much rarer than we suppose. For example, it isn’t purely coincidentally that you are here now, when one comes to reflect.”

  To his relief, George began to talk.

  “It is. I have reflected. It is Fate. Everything is Fate. We are flung together by Fate, drawn apart by Fate — flung together, drawn apart. The twelve winds blow us — we settle nothing — ” George thought of his Fate — his darling Lucy. Yes, she defined his mortal Fate.

  “You have not reflected at all,” rapped the clergyman. “Let me give you a useful tip, Emerson: attribute nothing to Fate. Don’t say, ‘I didn’t do this,’ for you did it, ten to one. Now I’ll cross-question you. Where did you first meet Miss Honeychurch and myself?”

  “Italy.”

  “And where did you meet Mr. Vyse, who is going to marry Miss Honeychurch?”

  “National Gallery.”

  “Looking at Italian art. There you are, and yet you talk of coincidence and Fate. You naturally seek out things Italian, and so do we and our friends. This narrows the field immeasurably we meet again in it.”

  “It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

  Mr. Beebe slid away from such heavy treatment of the subject. But he was infinitely tolerant of the young, and had no desire to snub George.

  “And so for this and for other reasons my ‘History of Coincidence’ is still to write.”

  Silence.

  Wishing to round off the episode, he added; “We are all so glad that you have come.”

  Silence.

  “Here we are!” called Freddy.

  “Oh, good!” exclaimed Mr. Beebe, mopping his brow.

  “In there’s the pond. I wish it was bigger,” he added apologetically.

  They climbed down a slippery bank of pine-needles. There lay the pond, s
et in its little alp of green — only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky. On account of the rains, the waters had flooded the surrounding grass, which showed like a beautiful emerald path, tempting these feet towards the central pool.

  “It’s distinctly successful, as ponds go,” said Mr. Beebe. “No apologies are necessary for the pond.”

  George sat down where the ground was dry, and drearily unlaced his boots.

  “Aren’t those masses of willow-herb splendid? I love willow-herb in seed. What’s the name of this aromatic plant?”

  No one knew, or seemed to care.

  “These abrupt changes of vegetation — this little spongeous tract of water plants, and on either side of it all the growths are tough or brittle — heather, bracken, hurts, pines. Very charming, very charming.

  “Mr. Beebe, aren’t you bathing?” called Freddy, as he stripped himself.

  Mr. Beebe thought he was not.

  “Water’s wonderful!” cried Freddy, prancing in.

  “Water’s water,” murmured George. Wetting his hair first — a sure sign of apathy — he followed Freddy into the divine, as indifferent as if he were a statue and the pond a pail of soapsuds. It was necessary to use his muscles. It was necessary to keep clean. Mr. Beebe watched them, and watched the seeds of the willow-herb dance chorically above their heads.

  “Apooshoo, apooshoo, apooshoo,” went Freddy, swimming for two strokes in either direction, and then becoming involved in reeds or mud.

  “Is it worth it?” asked the other, Michelangelesque on the flooded margin.