Executioners: A Silent Murder

EXECUTION 24

“I shall hate those Miss Alans!” Mrs. Honeychurch cried. “Just because they’re old and silly one’s expected to say ‘How sweet!’ I hate their ‘if’-ing and ‘but’-ing and ‘and’-ing. And poor Lucy—serve her right—worn to a shadow.”

Mr. Beebe watched the shadow springing and shouting over the tennis-court. Cecil was absent—one did not play bumble-puppy when he was there.

“Well, if they are coming—No, Minnie, not Saturn.” Saturn was a tennis-ball whose skin was partially unsewn. When in motion his orb was encircled by a ring. “If they are coming, Sir Harry will let them move in before the twenty-ninth, and he will cross out the clause about whitewashing the ceilings, because it made them nervous, and put in the fair wear and tear one.—That doesn’t count. I told you not Saturn.”

“Saturn’s all right for bumble-puppy,” cried Freddy, joining them. “Minnie, don’t you listen to her.”

“Saturn doesn’t bounce.”

“Saturn bounces enough.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Well; he bounces better than the Beautiful White Devil.”

“Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Honeychurch.

“But look at Lucy—complaining of Saturn, and all the time’s got the Beautiful White Devil in her hand, ready to plug it in. That’s right, Minnie, go for her—get her over the shins with the racquet—get her over the shins!”

Lucy fell, the Beautiful White Devil rolled from her hand.

Mr. Beebe picked it up, and said: “The name of this ball is Vittoria Corombona, please.” But his correction passed unheeded.

Freddy possessed to a high degree the power of lashing little girls to fury, and in half a minute he had transformed Minnie from a well-mannered child into a howling wilderness. Up in the house Cecil heard them, and, though he was full of entertaining news, he did not come down to impart it, in case he got hurt. He was not a coward and bore necessary pain as well as any man. But he hated the physical violence of the young. How right it was! Sure enough it ended in a cry.

“I wish the Miss Alans could see this,” observed Mr. Beebe, just as Lucy, who was nursing the injured Minnie, was in turn lifted off her feet by her brother.

“Who are the Miss Alans?” Freddy panted.

“They have taken Cissie Villa.”

“That wasn’t the name—”

Here his foot slipped, and they all fell most agreeably on to the grass. An interval elapses.

“Wasn’t what name?” asked Lucy, with her brother’s head in her lap.

“Alan wasn’t the name of the people Sir Harry’s let to.”

“Nonsense, Freddy! You know nothing about it.”

“Nonsense yourself! I’ve this minute seen him. He said to me: ‘Ahem! Honeychurch,’”—Freddy was an indifferent mimic—“‘ahem! ahem! I have at last procured really dee-sire-rebel tenants.’ I said, ‘ooray, old boy!’ and slapped him on the back.”

“Exactly. The Miss Alans?”

“Rather not. More like Anderson.”

“Oh, good gracious, there isn’t going to be another muddle!” Mrs. Honeychurch exclaimed. “Do you notice, Lucy, I’m always right? I said don’t interfere with Cissie Villa. I’m always right. I’m quite uneasy at being always right so often.”

“It’s only another muddle of Freddy’s. Freddy doesn’t even know the name of the people he pretends have taken it instead.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve got it. Emerson.”

“What name?”

“Emerson. I’ll bet you anything you like.”

“What a weathercock Sir Harry is,” said Lucy quietly. “I wish I had never bothered over it at all.”

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that THAT was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.

Meanwhile the name of the new tenants had diverted Mrs. Honeychurch from the contemplation of her own abilities.

“Emerson, Freddy? Do you know what Emersons they are?”

“I don’t know whether they’re any Emersons,” retorted Freddy, who was democratic. Like his sister and like most young people, he was naturally attracted by the idea of equality, and the undeniable fact that there are different kinds of Emersons annoyed him beyond measure.

“I trust they are the right sort of person. All right, Lucy”—she was sitting up again—“I see you looking down your nose and thinking your mother’s a snob. But there is a right sort and a wrong sort, and it’s affectation to pretend there isn’t.”

“Emerson’s a common enough name,” Lucy remarked.

She was gazing sideways. Seated on a promontory herself, she could see the pine-clad promontories descending one beyond another into the Weald. The further one descended the garden, the more glorious was this lateral view.

“I was merely going to remark, Freddy, that I trusted they were no relations of Emerson the philosopher, a most trying man. Pray, does that satisfy you?”

“Oh, yes,” he grumbled. “And you will be satisfied, too, for they’re friends of Cecil; so”—elaborate irony—“you and the other country families will be able to call in perfect safety.”

“CECIL?” exclaimed Lucy.

“Don’t be rude, dear,” said his mother placidly. “Lucy, don’t screech. It’s a new bad habit you’re getting into.”

“But has Cecil—”

“Friends of Cecil’s,” he repeated, “‘and so really dee-sire-rebel. Ahem! Honeychurch, I have just telegraphed to them.’”

She got up from the grass.

It was hard on Lucy. Mr. Beebe sympathized with her very much. While she believed that her snub about the Miss Alans came from Sir Harry Otway, she had borne it like a good girl. She might well “screech” when she heard that it came partly from her lover. Mr. Vyse was a tease—something worse than a tease: he took a malicious pleasure in thwarting people. The clergyman, knowing this, looked at Miss Honeychurch with more than his usual kindness.

When she exclaimed, “But Cecil’s Emersons—they can’t possibly be the same ones—there is that—” he did not consider that the exclamation was strange, but saw in it an opportunity of diverting the conversation while she recovered her composure. He diverted it as follows:

“The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don’t suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse’s. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn’t we?” He appealed to Lucy. “There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. ‘My dear sister loves flowers,’ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue—vases and jugs—and the story ends with ‘So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful.’ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.”