Chapter XVI: Lying to George
But Lucy had developed since the spring. That is to say, she was nowbetter able to stifle the emotions of which the conventions and theworld disapprove. Though the danger was greater, she was not shaken bydeep sobs. She said to Cecil, "I am not coming in to tea--tell mother--Imust write some letters," and went up to her room. Then she preparedfor action. Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact andour hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing thatwe shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she muststifle it.
She sent for Miss Bartlett.
The contest lay not between love and duty. Perhaps there never is such acontest. It lay between the real and the pretended, and Lucy's first aimwas to defeat herself. As her brain clouded over, as the memory of theviews grew dim and the words of the book died away, she returned to herold shibboleth of nerves. She "conquered her breakdown." Tampering withthe truth, she forgot that the truth had ever been. Remembering that shewas engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confused remembrancesof George; he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; hehad behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him. The armour offalsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not onlyfrom others, but from his own soul. In a few moments Lucy was equippedfor battle.
"Something too awful has happened," she began, as soon as her cousinarrived. "Do you know anything about Miss Lavish's novel?"
Miss Bartlett looked surprised, and said that she had not read the book,nor known that it was published; Eleanor was a reticent woman at heart.
"There is a scene in it. The hero and heroine make love. Do you knowabout that?"
"Dear--?"
"Do you know about it, please?" she repeated. "They are on a hillside,and Florence is in the distance."
"My good Lucia, I am all at sea. I know nothing about it whatever."
"There are violets. I cannot believe it is a coincidence. Charlotte,Charlotte, how could you have told her? I have thought before speaking;it must be you."
"Told her what?" she asked, with growing agitation.
"About that dreadful afternoon in February."
Miss Bartlett was genuinely moved. "Oh, Lucy, dearest girl--she hasn'tput that in her book?"
Lucy nodded.
"Not so that one could recognize it. Yes."
"Then never--never--never more shall Eleanor Lavish be a friend ofmine."
"So you did tell?"
"I did just happen--when I had tea with her at Rome--in the course ofconversation--"
"But Charlotte--what about the promise you gave me when we were packing?Why did you tell Miss Lavish, when you wouldn't even let me tellmother?"
"I will never forgive Eleanor. She has betrayed my confidence."
"Why did you tell her, though? This is a most serious thing."
Why does any one tell anything? The question is eternal, and it was notsurprising that Miss Bartlett should only sigh faintly in response. Shehad done wrong--she admitted it, she only hoped that she had not doneharm; she had told Eleanor in the strictest confidence.
Lucy stamped with irritation.
"Cecil happened to read out the passage aloud to me and to Mr. Emerson;it upset Mr. Emerson and he insulted me again. Behind Cecil's back. Ugh!Is it possible that men are such brutes? Behind Cecil's back as we werewalking up the garden."
Miss Bartlett burst into self-accusations and regrets.
"What is to be done now? Can you tell me?"
"Oh, Lucy--I shall never forgive myself, never to my dying day. Fancy ifyour prospects--"
"I know," said Lucy, wincing at the word. "I see now why you wanted meto tell Cecil, and what you meant by 'some other source.' You knew thatyou had told Miss Lavish, and that she was not reliable."
It was Miss Bartlett's turn to wince. "However," said the girl,despising her cousin's shiftiness, "What's done's done. You have put mein a most awkward position. How am I to get out of it?"
Miss Bartlett could not think. The days of her energy were over. She wasa visitor, not a chaperon, and a discredited visitor at that. She stoodwith clasped hands while the girl worked herself into the necessaryrage.
"He must--that man must have such a setting down that he won't forget.And who's to give it him? I can't tell mother now--owing to you. NorCecil, Charlotte, owing to you. I am caught up every way. I think Ishall go mad. I have no one to help me. That's why I've sent for you.What's wanted is a man with a whip."
Miss Bartlett agreed: one wanted a man with a whip.
"Yes--but it's no good agreeing. What's to be DONE. We women gomaundering on. What DOES a girl do when she comes across a cad?"
"I always said he was a cad, dear. Give me credit for that, at allevents. From the very first moment--when he said his father was having abath."
"Oh, bother the credit and who's been right or wrong! We've both made amuddle of it. George Emerson is still down the garden there, and is heto be left unpunished, or isn't he? I want to know."
Miss Bartlett was absolutely helpless. Her own exposure had unnervedher, and thoughts were colliding painfully in her brain. She movedfeebly to the window, and tried to detect the cad's white flannels amongthe laurels.
"You were ready enough at the Bertolini when you rushed me off to Rome.Can't you speak again to him now?"
"Willingly would I move heaven and earth--"
"I want something more definite," said Lucy contemptuously. "Will youspeak to him? It is the least you can do, surely, considering it allhappened because you broke your word."
"Never again shall Eleanor Lavish be a friend of mine."
Really, Charlotte was outdoing herself.
"Yes or no, please; yes or no."
"It is the kind of thing that only a gentleman can settle." GeorgeEmerson was coming up the garden with a tennis ball in his hand.
"Very well," said Lucy, with an angry gesture. "No one will help me. Iwill speak to him myself." And immediately she realized that this waswhat her cousin had intended all along.
"Hullo, Emerson!" called Freddy from below. "Found the lost ball? Goodman! Want any tea?" And there was an irruption from the house on to theterrace.
"Oh, Lucy, but that is brave of you! I admire you--"
They had gathered round George, who beckoned, she felt, over therubbish, the sloppy thoughts, the furtive yearnings that were beginningto cumber her soul. Her anger faded at the sight of him. Ah! TheEmersons were fine people in their way. She had to subdue a rush in herblood before saying:
"Freddy has taken him into the dining-room. The others are going downthe garden. Come. Let us get this over quickly. Come. I want you in theroom, of course."
"Lucy, do you mind doing it?"
"How can you ask such a ridiculous question?"
"Poor Lucy--" She stretched out her hand. "I seem to bring nothingbut misfortune wherever I go." Lucy nodded. She remembered theirlast evening at Florence--the packing, the candle, the shadow of MissBartlett's toque on the door. She was not to be trapped by pathos asecond time. Eluding her cousin's caress, she led the way downstairs.
"Try the jam," Freddy was saying. "The jam's jolly good."
George, looking big and dishevelled, was pacing up and down thedining-room. As she entered he stopped, and said:
"No--nothing to eat."
"You go down to the others," said Lucy; "Charlotte and I will give Mr.Emerson all he wants. Where's mother?"
"She's started on her Sunday writing. She's in the drawing-room."
"That's all right. You go away."
He went off singing.
Lucy sat down at the table. Miss Bartlett, who was thoroughlyfrightened, took up a book and pretended to read.
She would not be drawn into an elaborate speech. She just said: "I can'thave it, Mr. Emerson. I cannot even talk to you. Go out of this house,and never come into it again as long as I live here--" flushing as shespoke and pointing to the door. "I hate a row. Go please."
"What--"
"No d
iscussion."
"But I can't--"
She shook her head. "Go, please. I do not want to call in Mr. Vyse."
"You don't mean," he said, absolutely ignoring Miss Bartlett--"you don'tmean that you are going to marry that man?"
The line was unexpected.
She shrugged her shoulders, as if his vulgarity wearied her. "You aremerely ridiculous," she said quietly.
Then his words rose gravely over hers: "You cannot live with Vyse. He'sonly for an acquaintance. He is for society and cultivated talk. Heshould know no one intimately, least of all a woman."
It was a new light on Cecil's character.
"Have you ever talked to Vyse without feeling tired?"
"I can scarcely discuss--"
"No, but have you ever? He is the sort who are all right so long asthey keep to things--books, pictures--but kill when they come topeople. That's why I'll speak out through all this muddle even now. It'sshocking enough to lose you in any case, but generally a man mustdeny himself joy, and I would have held back if your Cecil had been adifferent person. I would never have let myself go. But I saw him firstin the National Gallery, when he winced because my father mispronouncedthe names of great painters. Then he brings us here, and we find itis to play some silly trick on a kind neighbour. That is the man allover--playing tricks on people, on the most sacred form of life thathe can find. Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting andteaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for YOU tosettle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren'tlet a woman decide. He's the type who's kept Europe back for a thousandyears. Every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what'scharming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly;and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own.So it was at the Rectory, when I met you both again; so it has beenthe whole of this afternoon. Therefore--not 'therefore I kissed you,'because the book made me do that, and I wish to goodness I had moreself-control. I'm not ashamed. I don't apologize. But it has frightenedyou, and you may not have noticed that I love you. Or would you havetold me to go, and dealt with a tremendous thing so lightly? Buttherefore--therefore I settled to fight him."
Lucy thought of a very good remark.
"You say Mr. Vyse wants me to listen to him, Mr. Emerson. Pardon me forsuggesting that you have caught the habit."
And he took the shoddy reproof and touched it into immortality. He said:
"Yes, I have," and sank down as if suddenly weary. "I'm the same kind ofbrute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, andmen and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden.But I do love you surely in a better way than he does." He thought."Yes--really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts evenwhen I hold you in my arms." He stretched them towards her. "Lucy, bequick--there's no time for us to talk now--come to me as you came in thespring, and afterwards I will be gentle and explain. I have caredfor you since that man died. I cannot live without you, 'No good,' Ithought; 'she is marrying someone else'; but I meet you again when allthe world is glorious water and sun. As you came through the wood Isaw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wanted to live and have mychance of joy."
"And Mr. Vyse?" said Lucy, who kept commendably calm. "Does he notmatter? That I love Cecil and shall be his wife shortly? A detail of noimportance, I suppose?"
But he stretched his arms over the table towards her.
"May I ask what you intend to gain by this exhibition?"
He said: "It is our last chance. I shall do all that I can." And asif he had done all else, he turned to Miss Bartlett, who sat like someportent against the skies of the evening. "You wouldn't stop us thissecond time if you understood," he said. "I have been into the dark, andI am going back into it, unless you will try to understand."
Her long, narrow head drove backwards and forwards, as thoughdemolishing some invisible obstacle. She did not answer.
"It is being young," he said quietly, picking up his racquet from thefloor and preparing to go. "It is being certain that Lucy cares for mereally. It is that love and youth matter intellectually."
In silence the two women watched him. His last remark, they knew, wasnonsense, but was he going after it or not? Would not he, the cad,the charlatan, attempt a more dramatic finish? No. He was apparentlycontent. He left them, carefully closing the front door; and when theylooked through the hall window, they saw him go up the drive and beginto climb the slopes of withered fern behind the house. Their tongueswere loosed, and they burst into stealthy rejoicings.
"Oh, Lucia--come back here--oh, what an awful man!"
Lucy had no reaction--at least, not yet. "Well, he amuses me," shesaid. "Either I'm mad, or else he is, and I'm inclined to think it's thelatter. One more fuss through with you, Charlotte. Many thanks. I think,though, that this is the last. My admirer will hardly trouble me again."
And Miss Bartlett, too, essayed the roguish:
"Well, it isn't everyone who could boast such a conquest, dearest, isit? Oh, one oughtn't to laugh, really. It might have been very serious.But you were so sensible and brave--so unlike the girls of my day."
"Let's go down to them."
But, once in the open air, she paused. Some emotion--pity, terror, love,but the emotion was strong--seized her, and she was aware of autumn.Summer was ending, and the evening brought her odours of decay, themore pathetic because they were reminiscent of spring. That something orother mattered intellectually? A leaf, violently agitated, danced pasther, while other leaves lay motionless. That the earth was hastening tore-enter darkness, and the shadows of those trees over Windy Corner?
"Hullo, Lucy! There's still light enough for another set, if you two'llhurry."
"Mr. Emerson has had to go."
"What a nuisance! That spoils the four. I say, Cecil, do play, do,there's a good chap. It's Floyd's last day. Do play tennis with us, justthis once."
Cecil's voice came: "My dear Freddy, I am no athlete. As you wellremarked this very morning, 'There are some chaps who are no good foranything but books'; I plead guilty to being such a chap, and will notinflict myself on you."
The scales fell from Lucy's eyes. How had she stood Cecil for a moment?He was absolutely intolerable, and the same evening she broke off herengagement.