A Room with a View - E. M. Forster [86]
“You don’t love me, evidently. I dare say you are right not to. But it would hurt a little less if I knew why.”
“Because”—a phrase came to her, and she accepted it—“you’re the sort who can’t know any one intimately.”
A horrified look came into his eyes.
“I don’t mean exactly that. But you will question me, though I beg you not to, and I must say something. It is that, more or less. When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you’re always protecting me.” Her voice swelled. “I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can’t I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman’s place! You despise my mother—I know you do—because she’s conventional and bothers over puddings; but, oh goodness!”—she rose to her feet—“conventional, Cecil, you’re that, for you may understand beautiful things, but you don’t know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I won’t be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. That’s why I break off my engagement. You were all right as long as you kept to things, but when you came to people—” She stopped.
There was a pause. Then Cecil said with great emotion:
“It is true.”
“True on the whole,” she corrected, full of some vague shame.
“True, every word. It is a revelation. It is—I.”
“Anyhow, those are my reasons for not being your wife.”
He repeated: “‘The sort that can know no one intimately.’ It is true. I fell to pieces the very first day we were engaged. I behaved like a cad to Beebe and to your brother. You are even greater than I thought.” She withdrew a step. “I’m not going to worry you. You are far too good to me. I shall never forget your insight; and, dear, I only blame you for this: you might have warned me in the early stages, before you felt you wouldn’t marry me, and so have given me a chance to improve. I have never known you till this evening. I have just used you as a peg for my silly notions of what a woman should be. But this evening you are a different person: new thoughts—even a new voice—”
“What do you mean by a new voice?” she asked, seized with in-controllable anger.
“I mean that a new person seems speaking through you,” said he.
Then she lost her balance. She cried: “If you think I am in love with some one else, you are very much mistaken.”
“Of course I don’t think that. You are not that kind, Lucy.”
“Oh, yes, you do think it. It’s your old idea, the idea that has kept Europe back—1 mean the idea that women are always thinking of men. If a girl breaks off her engagement, every one says: ‘Oh, she had some one else in her mind; she hopes to get some one else.’ It’s disgusting, brutal! As if a girl can’t break it off for the sake of freedom.”
He answered reverently: “I may have said that in the past. I shall never say it again. You have taught me better.”
She began to redden, and pretended to examine the windows again.
“Of course, there is no question of ‘some one else’ in this, no ‘jilting’ or any such nauseous stupidity. I beg your pardon most humbly if my words suggested that there was. I only meant that there was a force in you that I hadn’t known of up till now.”
“All right, Cecil, that will do. Don’t apologize to me. It was my mistake.”
“It is a question between ideals, yours and mine—pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new.” His voice broke: “I must actually thank you for what you have done—for showing me what I really am. Solemnly, I thank you for showing me a true woman. Will you shake hands?”
“Of course I will,” said Lucy, twisting up her other hand in the curtains. “Good-night, Cecil. Good-bye. That’s all right. I’m sorry about it. Thank you very much for your gentleness.