Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 11 in Mrs Vize's well appointed flat.
The comic muse,
Though able to look after her own interests,
Did not disdain the assistance of Mr.
Wise.
His idea of bringing the Emersons to Windy Corner struck her as decidedly good and she carried through the negotiations without a hitch.
Sir Harry Otway signed the agreement,
Met Mr Emerson who was duly disillusioned.
The Missallans were duly offended and wrote a dignified letter to Lucy,
Whom they held responsible for the failure.
Mr B planned pleasant moments for the newcomers and told Mrs Honeychurch that Freddy must call on them as soon as they arrived.
Indeed,
So ample was the Muse's ear.
She permitted Mr Harris,
Never a very robust criminal,
To droop his head,
Be forgotten and to die.
Lucy,
To descend from bright heaven to earth,
Whereon there are shadows because there are hills,
She was at first plunged into despair,
But settled after a little thought that it did not matter the very least.
Now that she was engaged,
The Emersons would scarcely insult her and were welcome into the neighbourhood.
And Cecil was welcome to bring whom he would into the neighbourhood.
Therefore Cecil was welcome to bring the Emersons into the neighbourhood.
But,
As I say,
This took a little thinking and so.
.
.
Illogical,
The girls.
The event remained rather greater and more dreadful than it should have done.
Cecil darling Lucy whispered the evening she arrived.
Cecil became demonstrative.
He saw the need for fire had been kindled in Lucy.
At last she longed for attention as a woman should and looked up to him because he was a man.
So you do love me,
Little thing,
" he murmured.
I do,
" said Lucy.
I don't know what I should do without you.
Several days passed.
Then Lucy had a letter from Miss Bartlett.
A coolness had sprung up between the two cousins and they had not corresponded since they parted in August.
The coolness dated from what Charlotte would call the flight to Rome.
And in Rome it had increased amazingly.
For the companion who is merely uncongenial in the medieval world becomes exasperating in the classical.
Charlotte,
Unselfish in the forum,
Would have tried a sweeter temper than Lucy's,
And once in the bars of Caracalla,
They had doubted whether they could continue their tour.
Lucy said she would join the visors.
Mrs Vize was an acquaintance of her mother,
So there was no impropriety in the plan.
And Miss Bartlett had replied she was quite used to being abandoned suddenly.
Finally nothing happened,
But the coolness remained and for Lucy was ever increased when she opened the letter and read as follows It had been forwarded from Windy Corner.
Tom Ridgewell,
September.
Dearest Lucia.
I have news of you at last.
Miss Lavish had been bicycling in your parts but was not sure whether a call would be welcome.
Puncturing her tiny summer street and it being mended while she sat a very woe-be-gone in that pretty churchyard she saw to her astonishment a door open opposite and the younger Emerson man come out He said his father had just taken the house.
He said he did not know you lived in the neighbourhood.
He never suggested giving Eleanor a cup of tea.
Dear Lucy,
I am much worried and I advise you to make a clean breast of his past behavior to your mother,
Freddy and Mr.
Vice,
Who will forbid him to enter the house.
That was a great misfortune,
And I dare say you have told them already.
Mr.
Vice is so sensitive.
I remember how I used to get on his nerves at Rome.
I'm very sorry about it all and I should not feel easy unless I warn you.
Believe me.
Your anxious and loving cousin,
Charlotte.
Lucy was much annoyed.
And replied as follows.
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 always being with me.
I have kept that promise and cannot possibly tell her now.
I have said both to her and Cecil,
I met the Emersons at Florence and they are respectable people,
Which I do think.
And the reason he offered Miss Lavish no tea was probably he had none himself.
She should have tried at the rectory.
I cannot begin making a fuss at this stage.
You must see it would be too absurd.
If the Emersons heard I complained of them,
They would think of themselves as important,
Which exactly are what they are not.
I like the old father and I look forward to seeing him again.
As for the son,
I'm sorry for him when we meet rather than for myself.
They are known to Cecil who's 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.
Beauchamp Mansions SW 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 has become a great thing now.
Left to herself,
Lucy would have told her mother and her lover ingeniously,
And it would have remained a little thing.
She tried to sell Cecil even now when they were laughing about some beautiful lady who'd smitten his heart at school.
But her body behaved so ridiculously that she stopped.
She and her secret stayed 10 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 gulf links all the moors.
The weather was cool and it did her no harm.
In spite of the season,
Mrs Vies 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.
Lucy saw her London career would estrange her a little from all she had loved in the past.
The grandchildren asked her to play the piano.
She played Schumann.
Now some Beethoven,
Called Cecil,
When the crevice beauty of the music had died.
She shook her head and played Shuman 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 too.
Not thus had she played on the little draped piano at the Bertolini,
And too much Schumann was not the remark Mr.
Beeb had passed to himself when she returned.
When the guests were gone and Lucy had gone to bed,
Mrs Vize paced up and down the drawing room.
She 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's son.
But,
So to speak,
A filial crowd.
Make Lucy one of us,
" she said,
Looking round intelligently at the end of each sentence.
She is becoming wonderful.
Her music always was wonderful.
Yes,
But she's purging off the Honeychurch taint!
Do you know what I mean?
She's not always quoting servants or asking one.
.
.
How the pudding is made.
Italy has done it.
Perhaps.
Cecil,
Mind you marry her next January.
She is one of us already.
But her music.
The style of her.
How she kept a-shoomin' 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 amongst 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 he had had one himself.
At all events,
Not for women.
Make her one of us,
" repeated Mrs Vies.
Then she processed to bed.
As she was dozing off,
A cry,
The cry of a nightmare,
Rang from Lucy's room.
Lucy could ring for the maid if she liked,
But Mrs Vise thought it kind to go herself.
She found the girl sitting upright with her hand on her cheek.
I'm so sorry,
Mrs.
Vise.
It is these dreams,
" said Lucy.
Bad dreams?
Just dreams.
The elder lady smiled and kissed her,
Saying very distinctly,
You should have heard us talking about you,
Dear.
Cecil admires you more than ever.
Dream of that.
Lucy returned the kiss,
Still covering one cheek with her hand.
And Mrs Vies recessed to bed.
Cecil,
Whom the cry had not awoken,
Snored on.
