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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 16 Lying to George.
Lucy had developed since the spring.
That is to say she was now better able to stifle the emotions of which the conventions and the world disapprove.
Though the danger was greater,
She was not shaken by deep sobs.
She said to Cecil.
I'm not coming in to tea.
Tell mother I must write some letters.
Then she went up to her room.
She prepared for action.
Love felt and returned.
Love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured.
Love which is the most real thing we shall ever meet.
Reappeared now as the world's enemy.
And Lucy must stifle it.
She sent for Miss Bartlett.
The contest lay not between love and duty,
Because there is never such a contest.
It lay between the real and the pretended,
And Lucy's first aim was to defeat herself.
As her brain clouded over,
As the memory of the views grew dim and the words of the book died away,
She returned to her old shibboleth of nerves.
She conquered her breakdown.
Tampering with the truth,
She forgot that the truth had ever been.
Remembering she was engaged to Cecil,
She compelled herself to confused remembrances of George.
He was nothing to her.
He had never been anything to her.
He had behaved abominably.
She had never encouraged him.
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness and hides a man not only from others,
But from his own soul.
In a few moments Lucy was equipped for battle.
Something too awful has happened.
She began as soon as her cousin arrived.
Do you know anything about Miss Lavish's novel?
Miss Bartlett looked surprised and said she had not read the book,
Nor known it was published.
Eleanor was a reticent woman at heart.
There's a scene in it,
The heroine and the hero make love.
Do you know about that?
Dear.
.
.
Do you know about it,
Please?
" Lucy repeated.
They're on a hillside and Florence is in the distance.
My good Lucia,
I'm all at sea.
I know nothing about it whatsoever.
Terror of violence.
I cannot believe it's a coincidence.
Charlotte,
How could you have told her?
I would have thought before speaking.
It must be you!
Told her what?
Asked Miss Bartlett with growing agitation.
About that dreadful afternoon in February.
Miss Bartlett was genuinely moved.
Oh Lucy,
Dearest girl,
She hasn't put that in her book.
Lucy nodded.
Not so that one could recognize it.
Then never,
Never more shall Eleanor Lavish be a friend of mine.
So you did tell.
I did just happen,
When I had tea with her in Rome in the course of conversation.
.
.
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 tell Mother?
I will never forgive Eleanor.
She has betrayed my confidence.
Why did you tell her though?
This is a most serious thing!
Why does anyone tell anything?
The question is eternal and it was not surprising that Miss Bartlett should only sigh faintly in response.
She had done wrong.
She admitted it.
She only hoped she had not done any harm.
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.
Is it possible that men are such brutes?
Behind Cecil's back as we were walking up the garden.
Miss Barklett 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.
Let's see if your prospects.
.
.
I know.
Said Lucy,
Wincing at the word.
I see now why you wanted me to tell Cecil and what you meant by some other source.
You knew you told me slavish and that she was not reliable.
It was Miss Barclay's turn to wince.
However,
Said the girl,
Despising her cousin's shiftiness.
What's done is done.
You've put me in a most awkward position.
How am I to get out of it?
Miss Barclay could not think.
The days of her energy were over.
She was a visitor,
Not a chaperone,
And a discredited visitor at that.
She stood with clasped hands whilst Lucy worked herself into a necessary rage.
The man must have such a setting down that he won't forget,
And who's to give it to him?
I can't tell mother now,
Owing to you.
Nor Cecil,
Owing to you.
I'm caught in every way.
I think I shall 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 wit.
Miss Bartlett agreed.
One wanted a man with a whip.
Yes,
But it's no good agreeing what's to be done.
We women go maundering on.
What does a girl do when she comes across a cad?
I always said he was a cat deer,
Give me credit for that at all events.
From the very first moment when he said his father was having a bath.
Said Miss Bartlett.
Bother the credit and who's been right or wrong?
We've both made a model out of it.
Lucy pressed.
George Emerson is still down the garden and he is to be left unpunished or isn't he?
I want to know.
Miss Bartlett was absolutely helpless.
Her own exposure had unnerved her and thoughts were colliding painfully in her brain.
She moved feebly to the window and tried to detect the cad's white flannels amongst the laurels.
You were ready enough at the Bertolini when you rushed me off to Rome.
Can't you speak to him again now?
Said Lucy.
Willingly,
I would move heaven and earth.
I want something more definite,
" said Lucy contemptuously.
Will you speak to him?
It's the least you can do,
Surely,
Considering it all happened because you broke your word.
Never again shall Elinor 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.
George Emerson 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.
I will speak to him myself.
And immediately she realized that this was what her cousin had intended all along.
Hello,
Emerson.
Call Freddy from down below.
Found the lost ball,
Good man.
Do you want any tea?
Freddy has taken him into the dining room,
Said Lucy.
The others are going down into the garden.
Let's get this over and done with quickly.
Come,
I want you in the room of course.
Lucy,
Do you mind doing it?
How can you ask such a ridiculous question?
Poor Lucy.
Miss Bartlett stretched out her hand.
I seem to bring nothing but misfortune wherever I go.
Lucy nodded.
She remembered their last evening at Florence.
The packing,
The candle,
The shadow of Miss Bartlett's toque on the door.
She was not to be trapped by pathos a second 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 the dining room.
As Lucy entered,
He stopped and said,
No,
No,
Nothing to eat.
You go down to the others,
" said Lucy.
Charlotte and I will give Mr Anderson all he wants.
Now where's Mother?
She started on her Sunday writing.
She's in the drawing room.
That's alright then,
Freddy.
You go away now.
Freddy went off singing.
Lucy sat down at the table.
Miss Bartlett,
Who was thoroughly frightened,
Took up a book and pretended to read.
She would not be drawn into an elaborate speech.
She just said.
I can't have 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.
Then flushing as she spoke and pointing to the door.
I hate a row.
Go,
Please.
No discussion.
But I can't.
Lucy shook her head.
Go,
Please.
I do not want to call him Mr.
Vise.
You don't mean.
.
.
George said,
Absolutely ignoring Miss Bartlett.
You don't mean you're going to marry that man?
The line was unexpected.
Lucy shrugged her shoulders as if his vulgarity wearied her.
You are merely ridiculous,
She said quietly.
But his words rose gravely over hers.
You cannot live with Vyse.
He's only for an acquaintance.
He's for society and cultivated talk.
He should know no one intimately,
Least of all a woman.
This was a new light on Cecil's character.
Have you ever talked to Vise without feeling tired?
George continued.
I can scarcely discuss No,
But have you ever?
He's the sort who are alright as long as they keep to things.
Books,
Pictures.
.
.
But kill when they come to people.
That's why I'll speak out through all this muddle even now.
It's shocking enough to lose you in any case,
But generally a man must deny himself joy.
And I would have held back if your Cecil had been a different person.
I would never have let myself go.
But when I saw him in the National Gallery,
When he winced because my father mispronounced the names of the great painters.
.
.
Then he brings us here and we find it's to play some silly trick on a kind neighbour.
That is the man all over,
Playing tricks on people.
On the most sacred form of life he can find.
Next I meet you together and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked when it was for you to settle whether you were shocked or not.
Cecil all over again.
You don't let a woman decide.
He's the type who kept Europe back for a thousand years.
Every moment of his life he's forming you,
Telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike,
Telling you what a man thinks womanly.
And you of all women listen to his voice instead of your own.
So it was at the rectory when I met you again.
So it has been the whole of this afternoon.
Therefore not therefore I kissed you because the book made me do that and I wish to goodness I had more self-control.
I'm not ashamed.
I don't apologize.
But it has frightened you.
And you may not have noticed that I love you or you would have told me to go and dealt with a tremendous thing.
Very likely.
But therefore.
.
.
Therefore I settled to fight him.
Lucy thought of a very good remark.
You say Mr.
Vise wants me to listen to him,
Miss Remerson?
Pardon me for suggesting that you have caught the habit.
George took the shoddy reproof and touched it into immortality.
He said.
Yes I have.
And he sank down as if suddenly weary.
I'm the same kind of brute at bottom.
This desire to govern a woman,
It lies very deep,
You know.
And men 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.
Yes,
Really in a better way.
I want you to have your own thoughts.
Even when I hold you in my arms.
George stretched his arms towards her.
Lucy,
Be quick.
There's no time for us to talk now.
Come to me as you came to me in the spring,
And afterwards I will be gentle and explain.
I've cared for you since that man died.
I cannot live without you.
No good,
I thought she's marrying someone else.
But here I meet you again when all the world is glorious,
Water and sun.
As you came through the wood,
I saw that nothing else mattered.
I called.
I wanted to live and have my chance of joy.
And Mr Vice,
" said Lucy,
Who kept commendably calm.
Does he not matter?
That I love Cecil and shall be his wife shortly,
A detail of no importance,
I suppose.
George stretched his arms over the table towards her.
May I ask what you intend to gain by this exhibition?
It is our last chance,
And I shall do all that I can,
" he said.
As if he had done all else,
He turned to Miss Bartlett,
Who sat like some portent against the skies of the evening.
You wouldn't stop us this second time if you understood.
He said,
I've been into the dark and I'm not going back into it.
Unless you will try to understand.
Her long narrow head drove backwards and forwards as though demolishing some invisible obstacle.
She did not answer.
It's being young.
He sat quietly picking up his racket from the floor and preparing to go.
It's being certain that Lucy cares for me,
Really.
It is that love and youth matter intellectually.
In silence,
The two women watched him.
His last remark they knew was nonsense.
But was he going after it or not?
Would not he,
The cad,
The charlatan,
Attempt a more dramatic finish?
No,
He was apparently content.
He left them,
Carefully closing the front door,
And when they looked through the hall window,
They saw him go up to the drive and begin to climb the slopes of withered fern behind the house.
Their tongues were loosed and they burst into stealthy rejoicings.
Oh look,
Shia,
Come back here!
What an awful man!
Lucy had no reaction.
At least not yet.
Well,
He amuses me.
She said.
Either I'm mad or else he is.
And I'm inclined to think it's the latter.
One more fuss through with you,
Charlotte.
Many thanks.
I think though that this is the last.
My admirer will hardly trouble me again.
Miss Bartlett,
Too,
Essayed the roguish.
Well,
It isn't everyone who could boast such a conquest,
Dearest,
Is it?
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 then.
But once in the open air Lucy paused.
Some emotion.
Pity,
Terror,
Love.
But the emotion was strong,
Seized her.
And suddenly she was aware of autumn.
Summer was ending.
And the evening brought her odours of decay.
They're more pathetic because they were reminiscent of spring.
That something or other mattered intellectually.
A leaf violently agitated danced past her,
Whilst other leaves lay motionless.
That the earth was hastening to re-enter darkness.
And the shadows of those trees over Windy Corner.
Hello,
Luce.
There's still enough light for another set if you two will hurry.
Lucy looked at Freddy.
Mr.
Emerson has had to go.
What a nuisance.
That spoils the four.
I say,
Cecil,
Do play.
There's a good chap.
It's Floyd's last day.
Played tennis with us just this once.
Cecil's voice came clear.
My dear Freddie,
I'm no athlete.
As you well remarked this very morning,
There are some chaps who are no good for anything but books.
I plead guilty to being such a chap and I will not inflict myself on you.
Suddenly the scales fell from Lucy's eyes.
How had she stood Cecil for even a moment?
He was absolutely intolerable.
And that very same evening.
.
.
She broke off.
Her engagement.
