The two main facts were clear. She had behaved splendidly, and he had helped her. He could not expect to master the details of so big a change in a girl’s life. If here and there he was dissatisfied or puzzled, he must acquiesce; she was choosing the better part.
“Vacant heart and hand and eye—”
Perhaps the song stated “the better part” rather too strongly. He half fancied that the soaring accompaniment—which he did not lose in the shout of the gale—really agreed with Freddy, and was gently criticizing the words that it adorned:
“Vacant heart and hand and eye
Easy live and quiet die.”
However, for the fourth time Windy Corner lay poised below him—now as a beacon in the roaring tides of darkness.
Chapter XIX
Lying to Mr. Emerson
The Miss Alans were found in their beloved temperance hotel near Bloomsbury—a clean, airless establishment much patronized by provincial England. They always perched there before crossing the great seas, and for a week or two would fidget gently over clothes, guide-books, mackintosh squares, digestive bread, and other Continental necessaries. That there are shops abroad, even in Athens, never occurred to them, for they regarded travel as a species of warfare, only to be undertaken by those who have been fully armed at the Haymarket Stores. Miss Honeychurch, they trusted, would take care to equip herself duly. Quinine could now be obtained in tabloids; paper soap was a great help towards freshening up one’s face in the train. Lucy promised, a little depressed.
“But, of course, you know all about these things, and you have Mr. Vyse to help you. A gentleman is such a stand-by.”
Mrs. Honeychurch, who had come up to town with her daughter, began to drum nervously upon her card-case.
“We think it so good of Mr. Vyse to spare you,” Miss Catharine continued. “It is not every young man who would be so unselfish. But perhaps he will come out and join you later on.”