Part Two
Chapter 18: Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and The Servants
(continued)
Mr. Beebe followed. Lucy still sat at the piano with her hands
over the keys. She was glad, but he had expected greater gladness.
Her mother bent over her. Freddy, to whom she had been singing,
reclined on the floor with his head against her, and an unlit pipe
between his lips. Oddly enough, the group was beautiful. Mr. Beebe,
who loved the art of the past, was reminded of a favourite theme,
the Santa Conversazione, in which people who care for one another
are painted chatting together about noble things--a theme neither
sensual nor sensational, and therefore ignored by the art of
to-day. Why should Lucy want either to marry or to travel when she
had such friends at home?
"Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
Speak not when the people listens,"
she continued.
"Here's Mr. Beebe."
"Mr. Beebe knows my rude ways."
"It's a beautiful song and a wise one," said he. "Go on."
"It isn't very good," she said listlessly. "I forget why--harmony
or something."
"I suspected it was unscholarly. It's so beautiful."
"The tune's right enough," said Freddy, "but the words are rotten.
Why throw up the sponge?"
"How stupidly you talk!" said his sister. The Santa Conversazione
was broken up. After all, there was no reason that Lucy should
talk about Greece or thank him for persuading her mother, so he
said good-bye.
Freddy lit his bicycle lamp for him in the porch, and with his
usual felicity of phrase, said: "This has been a day and a half."
"Stop thine ear against the singer--"
"Wait a minute; she is finishing."
"From the red gold keep thy finger;
Vacant heart and hand and eye
Easy live and quiet die."
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