Chapter XIII: How Miss Bartlett's Boiler Was So Tiresome
How often had Lucy rehearsed this bow, this interview! But she
had always rehearsed them indoors, and with certain accessories,
which surely we have a right to assume. Who could foretell that
she and George would meet in the rout of a civilization, amidst
an army of coats and collars and boots that lay wounded over the
sunlit earth? She had imagined a young Mr. Emerson, who might be
shy or morbid or indifferent or furtively impudent. She was
prepared for all of these. But she had never imagined one who
would be happy and greet her with the shout of the morning star.
Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs. Butterworth, she
reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any
degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A
fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the
audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures
mean nothing, or mean too much. "I will bow," she had thought. "I
will not shake hands with him. That will be just the proper
thing." She had bowed--but to whom? To gods, to heroes, to the
nonsense of school-girls! She had bowed across the rubbish that
cumbers the world.
So ran her thoughts, while her faculties were busy with Cecil. It
was another of those dreadful engagement calls. Mrs. Butterworth
had wanted to see him, and he did not want to be seen. He did not
want to hear about hydrangeas, why they change their colour at
the seaside. He did not want to join the C. O. S. When cross he
was always elaborate, and made long, clever answers where "Yes"
or "No" would have done. Lucy soothed him and tinkered at the
conversation in a way that promised well for their married peace.
No one is perfect, and surely it is wiser to discover the
imperfections before wedlock. Miss Bartlett, indeed, though not
in word, had taught the girl that this our life contains nothing
satisfactory. Lucy, though she disliked the teacher, regarded the
teaching as profound, and applied it to her lover.
"Lucy," said her mother, when they got home, "is anything the
matter with Cecil?"
The question was ominous; up till now Mrs. Honeychurch had
behaved with charity and restraint.
"No, I don't think so, mother; Cecil's all right."
"Perhaps he's tired."
Lucy compromised: perhaps Cecil was a little tired.
"Because otherwise"--she pulled out her bonnet-pins with gathering
displeasure--"because otherwise I cannot account for him."
"I do think Mrs. Butterworth is rather tiresome, if you mean
that."
"Cecil has told you to think so. You were devoted to her as a
little girl, and nothing will describe her goodness to you
through the typhoid fever. No--it is just the same thing
everywhere."
"Let me just put your bonnet away, may I?"
"Surely he could answer her civilly for one half-hour?"
"Cecil has a very high standard for people," faltered Lucy,
seeing trouble ahead. "It's part of his ideals--it is really that
that makes him sometimes seem--"
"Oh, rubbish! If high ideals make a young man rude, the sooner he
gets rid of them the better," said Mrs. Honeychurch, handing her
the bonnet.
"Now, mother! I've seen you cross with Mrs. Butterworth yourself!"
"Not in that way. At times I could wring her neck. But not in
that way. No. It is the same with Cecil all over."
"By-the-by--I never told you. I had a letter from Charlotte while
I was away in London."
This attempt to divert the conversation was too puerile, and Mrs.
Honeychurch resented it.
"Since Cecil came back from London, nothing appears to please
him. Whenever I speak he winces;--I see him, Lucy; it is useless
to contradict me. No doubt I am neither artistic nor literary nor
intellectual nor musical, but I cannot help the drawing-room
furniture; your father bought it and we must put up with it, will
Cecil kindly remember."
"I--I see what you mean, and certainly Cecil oughtn't to. But he
does not mean to be uncivil--he once explained--it is the things
that upset him--he is easily upset by ugly things--he is not
uncivil to PEOPLE."
"Is it a thing or a person when Freddy sings?"
"You can't expect a really musical person to enjoy comic songs as
we do."
"Then why didn't he leave the room? Why sit wriggling and
sneering and spoiling everyone's pleasure?"
"We mustn't be unjust to people," faltered Lucy. Something had
enfeebled her, and the case for Cecil, which she had mastered so
perfectly in London, would not come forth in an effective form.
The two civilizations had clashed--Cecil hinted that they might--
and she was dazzled and bewildered, as though the radiance that
lies behind all civilization had blinded her eyes. Good taste and
bad taste were only catchwords, garments of diverse cut; and
music itself dissolved to a whisper through pine-trees, where the
song is not distinguishable from the comic song.
She remained in much embarrassment, while Mrs. Honeychurch
changed her frock for dinner; and every now and then she said a
word, and made things no better. There was no concealing the
fact, Cecil had meant to be supercilious, and he had succeeded.
And Lucy--she knew not why--wished that the trouble could have
come at any other time.
"Go and dress, dear; you'll be late."
"All right, mother--"
"Don't say 'All right' and stop. Go."
She obeyed, but loitered disconsolately at the landing window. It
faced north, so there was little view, and no view of the sky.
Now, as in the winter, the pine-trees hung close to her eyes. One
connected the landing window with depression. No definite problem
menaced her, but she sighed to herself, "Oh, dear, what shall I
do, what shall I do?" It seemed to her that every one else was
behaving very badly. And she ought not to have mentioned Miss
Bartlett's letter. She must be more careful; her mother was
rather inquisitive, and might have asked what it was about. Oh,
dear, should she do?--and then Freddy came bounding up-stairs,
and joined the ranks of the ill-behaved.
"I say, those are topping people."
"My dear baby, how tiresome you've been! You have no business to take
them bathing in the Sacred it's much too public. It was all right
for you but most awkward for every one else. Do be more careful. You
forget the place is growing half suburban."
"I say, is anything on to-morrow week?"
"Not that I know of."
"Then I want to ask the Emersons up to Sunday tennis."
"Oh, I wouldn't do that, Freddy, I wouldn't do that with all this
muddle."
"What's wrong with the court? They won't mind a bump or two, and
I've ordered new balls."
"I meant it's better not. I really mean it."
He seized her by the elbows and humorously danced her up and down
the passage. 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?"
"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
to-doings?"
"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 a11
events, they were not his own.
Dinner was at half-past seven. Freddy gabbled the 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 pass
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 attitude was: "If
books must be written, let them be written by men"; and she de-
veloped 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," asserted 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 plumbers at Tunbridge Wells finish. I have not
seen poor Charlotte for so long."
It was more than her nerves could stand. And 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.
"I must say Cousin Charlotte was very kind to me that year I
called on my bike," put in Freddy. "She thanked me for coming
till I felt like such a fool, and fussed round no end to get an
egg boiled for my tea just right."
"I know, dear. She is kind to every one, and yet Lucy makes this
difficulty when we try to give her some little return."
But Lucy hardened her heart. It was no good being kind to Miss
Bartlett. She had tried herself too often and too recently. One
might lay up treasure in heaven by the attempt, but one enriched
neither Miss Bartlett nor any one else upon earth. She was
reduced to saying: "I can't help it, mother. I don't like
Charlotte. I admit it's horrid of me."
"From your own account, you told her as much."
"Well, she would leave Florence so stupidly. She flurried--"
The ghosts were returning; they filled Italy, they were even
usurping the places she had known as a child. The Sacred Lake
would never be the same again, and, on Sunday week, something
would even happen to Windy Corner. How would she fight against
ghosts? For a moment the visible world faded away, and memories
and emotions alone seemed real.
"I suppose Miss Bartlett must come, since she boils eggs so
well," said Cecil, who was in rather a happier frame of mind,
thanks to the admirable cooking.
"I didn't mean the egg was WELL boiled," corrected Freddy,
"because in point of fact she forgot to take it off, and as a
matter of fact I don't care for eggs. I only meant how jolly kind
she seemed."
Cecil frowned again. Oh, these Honeychurches! Eggs, boilers,
hydrangeas, maids--of such were their lives compact. "May me and
Lucy get down from our chairs?" he asked, with scarcely veiled
insolence. "We don't want no dessert."