Part Two
Chapter 18: Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and The Servants
(continued)
"Exactly." He was used to these nervous old maids and to the
exaggerated importance that they attach to words. A rector lives
in a web of petty secrets, and confidences and warnings, and the
wiser he is the less he will regard them. He will change the
subject, as did Mr. Beebe, saying cheerfully: "Have you heard
from any Bertolini people lately? I believe you keep up with Miss
Lavish. It is odd how we of that pension, who seemed such a
fortuitous collection, have been working into one another's
lives. Two, three, four, six of us--no, eight; I had forgotten
the Emersons--have kept more or less in touch. We must really
give the Signora a testimonial."
And, Miss Bartlett not favouring the scheme, they walked up the
hill in a silence which was only broken by the rector naming some
fern. On the summit they paused. The sky had grown wilder since
he stood there last hour, giving to the land a tragic greatness
that is rare in Surrey. Grey clouds were charging across tissues
of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until
through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the
disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the
trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast
operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking,
broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the
supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic
artillery. Mr. Beebe's eyes rested on Windy Corner, where Lucy
sat, practising Mozart. No smile came to his lips, and, changing
the subject again, he said: "We shan't have rain, but we shall
have darkness, so let us hurry on. The darkness last night was
appalling."
They reached the Beehive Tavern at about five o'clock. That
amiable hostelry possesses a verandah, in which the young and the
unwise do dearly love to sit, while guests of more mature years
seek a pleasant sanded room, and have tea at a table comfortably.
Mr. Beebe saw that Miss Bartlett would be cold if she sat out, and
that Minnie would be dull if she sat in, so he proposed a division
of forces. They would hand the child her food through the window.
Thus he was incidentally enabled to discuss the fortunes of Lucy.
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