A Room With A View
by
E. M. Forster
Part 2 out of 5
beginning." Lucy poked at the ground with her parasol.
"But perhaps you would rather not?"
"I'm sorry--if you could manage without it, I think I would
rather not."
The elder ladies exchanged glances, not of disapproval; it is
suitable that a girl should feel deeply.
"It is I who am sorry," said Miss Lavish. "literary hacks are
shameless creatures. I believe there's no secret of the human
heart into which we wouldn't pry."
She marched cheerfully to the fountain and back, and did a few
calculations in realism. Then she said that she had been in the
Piazza since eight o'clock collecting material. A good deal of it
was unsuitable, but of course one always had to adapt. The two
men had quarrelled over a five-franc note. For the five-franc
note she should substitute a young lady, which would raise the
tone of the tragedy, and at the same time furnish an excellent
plot.
"What is the heroine's name?" asked Miss Bartlett.
"Leonora," said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.
"I do hope she's nice."
That desideratum would not be omitted.
"And what is the plot?"
Love, murder, abduction, revenge, was the plot. But it all came
while the fountain plashed to the satyrs in the morning sun.
"I hope you will excuse me for boring on like this," Miss Lavish
concluded. "It is so tempting to talk to really sympathetic
people. Of course, this is the barest outline. There will be a
deal of local colouring, descriptions of Florence and the
neighbourhood, and I shall also introduce some humorous
characters. And let me give you all fair warning: I intend to be
unmerciful to the British tourist."
"Oh, you wicked woman," cried Miss Bartlett. "I am sure you are
thinking of the Emersons."
Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.
"I confess that in Italy my sympathies are not with my own
countrymen. It is the neglected Italians who attract me, and
whose lives I am going to paint so far as I can. For I repeat and
I insist, and I have always held most strongly, that a tragedy
such as yesterday's is not the less tragic because it happened in
humble life."
There was a fitting silence when Miss Lavish had concluded. Then
the cousins wished success to her labours, and walked slowly away
across the square.
"She is my idea of a really clever woman," said Miss Bartlett.
"That last remark struck me as so particularly true. It should be
a most pathetic novel."
Lucy assented. At present her great aim was not to get put into
it. Her perceptions this morning were curiously keen, and she
believed that Miss Lavish had her on trial for an ingenue.
"She is emancipated, but only in the very best sense of the
word," continued Miss Bartlett slowly. "None but the superficial
would be shocked at her. We had a long talk yesterday. She
believes in justice and truth and human interest. She told me
also that she has a high opinion of the destiny of woman--Mr.
Eager! Why, how nice! What a pleasant surprise!"
"Ah, not for me," said the chaplain blandly, "for I have been
watching you and Miss Honeychurch for quite a little time."
"We were chatting to Miss Lavish."
His brow contracted.
"So I saw. Were you indeed? Andate via! sono occupato!" The
last remark was made to a vender of panoramic photographs who was
approaching with a courteous smile. "I am about to venture a
suggestion. Would you and Miss Honeychurch be disposed to join me
in a drive some day this week--a drive in the hills? We might go
up by Fiesole and back by Settignano. There is a point on
that road where we could get down and have an hour's ramble on
the hillside. The view thence of Florence is most beautiful--far
better than the hackneyed view of Fiesole. It is the view that
Alessio Baldovinetti is fond of introducing into his pictures.
That man had a decided feeling for landscape. Decidedly. But who
looks at it to-day? Ah, the world is too much for us."
Miss Bartlett had not heard of Alessio Baldovinetti, but she knew
that Mr. Eager was no commonplace chaplain. He was a member of
the residential colony who had made Florence their home. He knew
the people who never walked about with Baedekers, who had learnt
to take a siesta after lunch, who took drives the pension
tourists had never heard of, and saw by private influence
galleries which were closed to them. Living in delicate
seclusion, some in furnished flats, others in Renaissance villas
on Fiesole's slope, they read, wrote, studied, and exchanged
ideas, thus attaining to that intimate knowledge, or rather
perception, of Florence which is denied to all who carry in their
pockets the coupons of Cook.
Therefore an invitation from the chaplain was something to be
proud of. Between the two sections of his flock he was often the
only link, and it was his avowed custom to select those of his
migratory sheep who seemed worthy, and give them a few hours in
the pastures of the permanent. Tea at a Renaissance villa?
Nothing had been said about it yet. But if it did come to that--
how Lucy would enjoy it!
A few days ago and Lucy would have felt the same. But the joys of
life were grouping themselves anew. A drive in the hills with Mr.
Eager and Miss Bartlett--even if culminating in a residential
tea-party--was no longer the greatest of them. She echoed the
raptures of Charlotte somewhat faintly. Only when she heard that
Mr. Beebe was also coming did her thanks become more sincere.
"So we shall be a partie carree," said the chaplain. "In these
days of toil and tumult one has great needs of the country and
its message of purity. Andate via! andate presto, presto! Ah,
the town! Beautiful as it is, it is the town."
They assented.
"This very square--so I am told--witnessed yesterday the most
sordid of tragedies. To one who loves the Florence of Dante and
Savonarola there is something portentous in such desecration--
portentous and humiliating."
"Humiliating indeed," said Miss Bartlett. "Miss Honeychurch
happened to be passing through as it happened. She can hardly
bear to speak of it." She glanced at Lucy proudly.
"And how came we to have you here?" asked the chaplain
paternally.
Miss Bartlett's recent liberalism oozed away at the question.
"Do not blame her, please, Mr. Eager. The fault is mine: I left
her unchaperoned."
"So you were here alone, Miss Honeychurch?" His voice suggested
sympathetic reproof but at the same time indicated that a few
harrowing details would not be unacceptable. His dark, handsome
face drooped mournfully towards her to catch her reply.
"Practically."
"One of our pension acquaintances kindly brought her home," said
Miss Bartlett, adroitly concealing the sex of the preserver.
"For her also it must have been a terrible experience. I trust
that neither of you was at all--that it was not in your immediate
proximity?"
Of the many things Lucy was noticing to-day, not the least
remarkable was this: the ghoulish fashion in which respectable
people will nibble after blood. George Emerson had kept the
subject strangely pure.
"He died by the fountain, I believe," was her reply.
"And you and your friend--"
"Were over at the Loggia."
"That must have saved you much. You have not, of course, seen the
disgraceful illustrations which the gutter Press-- This man is
a public nuisance; he knows that I am a resident perfectly well,
and yet he goes on worrying me to buy his vulgar views."
Surely the vendor of photographs was in league with Lucy--in the
eternal league of Italy with youth. He had suddenly extended his
book before Miss Bartlett and Mr. Eager, binding their hands
together by a long glossy ribbon of churches, pictures, and
views.
"This is too much!" cried the chaplain, striking petulantly at
one of Fra Angelico's angels. She tore. A shrill cry rose from
the vendor. The book it seemed, was more valuable than one would
have supposed.
"Willingly would I purchase--" began Miss Bartlett.
"Ignore him," said Mr. Eager sharply, and they all walked rapidly
away from the square.
But an Italian can never be ignored, least of all when he has a
grievance. His mysterious persecution of Mr. Eager became
relentless; the air rang with his threats and lamentations. He
appealed to Lucy; would not she intercede? He was poor--he
sheltered a family--the tax on bread. He waited, he gibbered, he
was recompensed, he was dissatisfied, he did not leave them until
he had swept their minds clean of all thoughts whether pleasant
or unpleasant.
Shopping was the topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain's
guidance they selected many hideous presents and mementoes--
florid little picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded
pastry; other little frames, more severe, that stood on little
easels, and were carven out of oak; a blotting book of vellum;
a Dante of the same material; cheap mosaic brooches, which the
maids, next Christmas, would never tell from real; pins, pots,
heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and Psyche in
alabaster; St. Peter to match--all of which would have cost less
in London.
This successful morning left no pleasant impressions on Lucy. She
had been a little frightened, both by Miss Lavish and by Mr.
Eager, she knew not why. And as they frightened her, she had,
strangely enough, ceased to respect them. She doubted that Miss
Lavish was a great artist. She doubted that Mr. Eager was as full
of spirituality and culture as she had been led to suppose. They
were tried by some new test, and they were found wanting. As for
Charlotte--as for Charlotte she was exactly the same. It might be
possible to be nice to her; it was impossible to love her.
"The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A
mechanic of some sort himself when he was young; then he took to
writing for the Socialistic Press. I came across him at Brixton."
They were talking about the Emersons.
"How wonderfully people rise in these days!" sighed Miss
Bartlett, fingering a model of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
"Generally," replied Mr. Eager, "one has only sympathy for their
success. The desire for education and for social advance--in
these things there is something not wholly vile. There are some
working men whom one would be very willing to see out here in
Florence--little as they would make of it."
"Is he a journalist now?" Miss Bartlett asked, "He is not; he
made an advantageous marriage."
He uttered this remark with a voice full of meaning, and ended
with a sigh.
"Oh, so he has a wife."
"Dead, Miss Bartlett, dead. I wonder--yes I wonder how he has the
effrontery to look me in the face, to dare to claim acquaintance
with me. He was in my London parish long ago. The other day in
Santa Croce, when he was with Miss Honeychurch, I snubbed him.
Let him beware that he does not get more than a snub."
"What?" cried Lucy, flushing.
"Exposure!" hissed Mr. Eager.
He tried to change the subject; but in scoring a dramatic point
he had interested his audience more than he had intended. Miss
Bartlett was full of very natural curiosity. Lucy, though she
wished never to see the Emersons again, was not disposed to
condemn them on a single word.
"Do you mean," she asked, "that he is an irreligious man? We know
that already."
"Lucy, dear--" said Miss Bartlett, gently reproving her cousin's
penetration.
"I should be astonished if you knew all. The boy--an innocent
child at the time--I will exclude. God knows what his education
and his inherited qualities may have made him."
"Perhaps," said Miss Bartlett, "it is something that we had
better not hear."
"To speak plainly," said Mr. Eager, "it is. I will say no more."
For the first time Lucy's rebellious thoughts swept out in
words--for the first time in her life.
"You have said very little."
"It was my intention to say very little," was his frigid reply.
He gazed indignantly at the girl, who met him with equal
indignation. She turned towards him from the shop counter; her
breast heaved quickly. He observed her brow, and the sudden
strength of her lips. It was intolerable that she should
disbelieve him.
"Murder, if you want to know," he cried angrily. "That man
murdered his wife!"
"How?" she retorted.
"To all intents and purposes he murdered her. That day in Santa
Croce--did they say anything against me?"
"Not a word, Mr. Eager--not a single word."
"Oh, I thought they had been libelling me to you. But I suppose
it is only their personal charms that makes you defend them."
"I'm not defending them," said Lucy, losing her courage, and
relapsing into the old chaotic methods. "They're nothing to me."
"How could you think she was defending them?" said Miss Bartlett,
much discomfited by the unpleasant scene. The shopman was
possibly listening.
"She will find it difficult. For that man has murdered his wife
in the sight of God."
The addition of God was striking. But the chaplain was really
trying to qualify a rash remark. A silence followed which might
have been impressive, but was merely awkward. Then Miss Bartlett
hastily purchased the Leaning Tower, and led the way into the
street.
"I must be going," said he, shutting his eyes and taking out his
watch.
Miss Bartlett thanked him for his kindness, and spoke with
enthusiasm of the approaching drive.
"Drive? Oh, is our drive to come off?"
Lucy was recalled to her manners, and after a little exertion the
complacency of Mr. Eager was restored.
"Bother the drive!" exclaimed the girl, as soon as he had
departed. "It is just the drive we had arranged with Mr. Beebe
without any fuss at all. Why should he invite us in that absurd
manner? We might as well invite him. We are each paying for
ourselves."
Miss Bartlett, who had intended to lament over the Emersons, was
launched by this remark into unexpected thoughts.
"If that is so, dear--if the drive we and Mr. Beebe are going
with Mr. Eager is really the same as the one we are going with
Mr. Beebe, then I foresee a sad kettle of fish."
"How?"
"Because Mr. Beebe has asked Eleanor Lavish to come, too."
"That will mean another carriage."
"Far worse. Mr. Eager does not like Eleanor. She knows it
herself. The truth must be told; she is too unconventional for
him."
They were now in the newspaper-room at the English bank. Lucy
stood by the central table, heedless of Punch and the Graphic,
trying to answer, or at all events to formulate the questions
rioting in her brain. The well-known world had broken up, and
there emerged Florence, a magic city where people thought and did
the most extraordinary things. Murder, accusations of murder,
A lady clinging to one man and being rude to another--were these
the daily incidents of her streets? Was there more in her frank
beauty than met the eye--the power, perhaps, to evoke passions,
good and bad, and to bring them speedily to a fulfillment?
Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that
did not matter, seemed oblivious to things that did; who could
conjecture with admirable delicacy "where things might lead to,"
but apparently lost sight of the goal as she approached it. Now
she was crouching in the corner trying to extract a circular note
from a kind of linen nose-bag which hung in chaste concealment
round her neck. She had been told that this was the only safe way
to carry money in Italy; it must only be broached within the
walls of the English bank. As she groped she murmured: "Whether
it is Mr. Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr. Eager who
forgot when he told us, or whether they have decided to leave
Eleanor out altogether--which they could scarcely do--but in any
case we must be prepared. It is you they really want; I am only
asked for appearances. You shall go with the two gentlemen, and I
and Eleanor will follow behind. A one-horse carriage would do for
us. Yet how difficult it is!"
"It is indeed," replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded
sympathetic.
"What do you think about it?" asked Miss Bartlett, flushed from
the struggle, and buttoning up her dress.
"I don't know what I think, nor what I want."
"Oh, dear, Lucy! I do hope Florence isn't boring you. Speak the
word, and, as you know, I would take you to the ends of the earth
to-morrow."
"Thank you, Charlotte," said Lucy, and pondered over the offer.
There were letters for her at the bureau--one from her brother,
full of athletics and biology; one from her mother, delightful as
only her mother's letters could be. She had read in it of the
crocuses which had been bought for yellow and were coming up
puce, of the new parlour-maid, who had watered the ferns with
essence of lemonade, of the semi-detached cottages which were
ruining Summer Street, and breaking the heart of Sir Harry Otway.
She recalled the free, pleasant life of her home, where she was
allowed to do everything, and where nothing ever happened to her.
The road up through the pine-woods, the clean drawing-room, the
view over the Sussex Weald--all hung before her bright and
distinct, but pathetic as the pictures in a gallery to which,
after much experience, a traveller returns.
"And the news?" asked Miss Bartlett.
"Mrs. Vyse and her son have gone to Rome," said Lucy, giving
the news that interested her least. "Do you know the Vyses?"
"Oh, not that way back. We can never have too much of the dear
Piazza Signoria."
"They're nice people, the Vyses. So clever--my idea of what's
really clever. Don't you long to be in Rome?"
"I die for it!"
The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no
grass, no flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or
comforting patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance--unless we
believe in a presiding genius of places--the statues that relieve
its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the
glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of
maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have
done or suffered something, and though they are immortal,
immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here,
not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess,
or a heroine a god.
"Charlotte!" cried the girl suddenly. "Here's an idea. What if we
popped off to Rome to-morrow--straight to the Vyses' hotel? For
I do know what I want. I'm sick of Florence. No, you said you'd
go to the ends of the earth! Do! Do!"
Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:
"Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in
the hills?"
They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square,
laughing over the unpractical suggestion.
Chapter VI: The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert
Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss
Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in
Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a
youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his
master's horses up the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at
once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had
touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was
Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying
that she was his sister--Persephone, tall and slender and pale,
returning with the Spring to her mother's cottage, and still
shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light. To her Mr. Eager
objected, saying that here was the thin edge of the wedge, and
one must guard against imposition. But the ladies interceded, and
when it had been made clear that it was a very great favour, the
goddess was allowed to mount beside the god.
Phaethon at once slipped the left rein over her head, thus
enabling himself to drive with his arm round her waist. She did
not mind. Mr. Eager, who sat with his back to the horses, saw
nothing of the indecorous proceeding, and continued his
conversation with Lucy. The other two occupants of the carriage
were old Mr. Emerson and Miss Lavish. For a dreadful thing had
happened: Mr. Beebe, without consulting Mr. Eager, had doubled
the size of the party. And though Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish
had planned all the morning how the people were to sit, at the
critical moment when the carriages came round they lost their
heads, and Miss Lavish got in with Lucy, while Miss Bartlett,
with George Emerson and Mr. Beebe, followed on behind.
It was hard on the poor chaplain to have his partie carree thus
transformed. Tea at a Renaissance villa, if he had ever meditated
it, was now impossible. Lucy and Miss Bartlett had a certain
style about them, and Mr. Beebe, though unreliable, was a man of
parts. But a shoddy lady writer and a journalist who had murdered
his wife in the sight of God--they should enter no villa at his
introduction.
Lucy, elegantly dressed in white, sat erect and nervous amid
these explosive ingredients, attentive to Mr. Eager, repressive
towards Miss Lavish, watchful of old Mr. Emerson, hitherto
fortunately asleep, thanks to a heavy lunch and the drowsy
atmosphere of Spring. She looked on the expedition as the work of
Fate. But for it she would have avoided George Emerson
successfully. In an open manner he had shown that he wished to
continue their intimacy. She had refused, not because she
disliked him, but because she did not know what had happened, and
suspected that he did know. And this frightened her.
For the real event--whatever it was--had taken place, not in the
Loggia, but by the river. To behave wildly at the sight of death
is pardonable. But to discuss it afterwards, to pass from
discussion into silence, and through silence into sympathy, that
is an error, not of a startled emotion, but of the whole fabric.
There was really something blameworthy (she thought) in their
joint contemplation of the shadowy stream, in the common impulse
which had turned them to the house without the passing of a look
or word. This sense of wickedness had been slight at first. She
had nearly joined the party to the Torre del Gallo. But each time
that she avoided George it became more imperative that she should
avoid him again. And now celestial irony, working through her
cousin and two clergymen, did not suffer her to leave Florence
till she had made this expedition with him through the hills.
Meanwhile Mr. Eager held her in civil converse; their little tiff
was over.
"So, Miss Honeychurch, you are travelling? As a student of art?"
"Oh, dear me, no--oh, no!"
"Perhaps as a student of human nature," interposed Miss Lavish,
"like myself?"
"Oh, no. I am here as a tourist."
"Oh, indeed," said Mr. Eager. "Are you indeed? If you will not
think me rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists
not a little--handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to
Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in
pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside
Baedeker, their one anxiety to get 'done' or 'through' and go on
somewhere else. The result is, they mix up towns, rivers, palaces
in one inextricable whirl. You know the American girl in Punch
who says: 'Say, poppa, what did we see at Rome?' And the father
replies: 'Why, guess Rome was the place where we saw the yaller
dog.' There's travelling for you. Ha! ha! ha!"
"I quite agree," said Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to
interrupt his mordant wit. "The narrowness and superficiality of
the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace."
"Quite so. Now, the English colony at Florence, Miss Honeychurch
--and it is of considerable size, though, of course, not all
equally--a few are here for trade, for example. But the greater
part are students. Lady Helen Laverstock is at present busy over
Fra Angelico. I mention her name because we are passing her villa
on the left. No, you can only see it if you stand--no, do not
stand; you will fall. She is very proud of that thick hedge.
Inside, perfect seclusion. One might have gone back six hundred
years. Some critics believe that her garden was the scene of The
Decameron, which lends it an additional interest, does it not?"
"It does indeed!" cried Miss Lavish. "Tell me, where do they
place the scene of that wonderful seventh day?"
But Mr. Eager proceeded to tell Miss Honeychurch that on the
right lived Mr. Someone Something, an American of the best type
--so rare!--and that the Somebody Elses were farther down the
hill. "Doubtless you know her monographs in the series of
'Mediaeval Byways'? He is working at Gemistus Pletho. Sometimes
as I take tea in their beautiful grounds I hear, over the wall,
the electric tram squealing up the new road with its loads of hot,
dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to 'do' Fiesole in an
hour in order that they may say they have been there, and I
think--think--I think how little they think what lies so near
them."
During this speech the two figures on the box were sporting with
each other disgracefully. Lucy had a spasm of envy. Granted that
they wished to misbehave, it was pleasant for them to be able to
do so. They were probably the only people enjoying the
expedition. The carriage swept with agonizing jolts up through
the Piazza of Fiesole and into the Settignano road.
"Piano! piano!" said Mr. Eager, elegantly waving his hand over
his head.
"Va bene, signore, va bene, va bene," crooned the driver, and
whipped his horses up again.
Now Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish began to talk against each other on
the subject of Alessio Baldovinetti. Was he a cause of the
Renaissance, or was he one of its manifestations? The other
carriage was left behind. As the pace increased to a gallop the
large, slumbering form of Mr. Emerson was thrown against the
chaplain with the regularity of a machine.
"Piano! piano!" said he, with a martyred look at Lucy.
An extra lurch made him turn angrily in his seat. Phaethon, who
for some time had been endeavouring to kiss Persephone, had just
succeeded.
A little scene ensued, which, as Miss Bartlett said afterwards,
was most unpleasant. The horses were stopped, the lovers were
ordered to disentangle themselves, the boy was to lose his
pourboire, the girl was immediately to get down.
"She is my sister," said he, turning round on them with piteous
eyes.
Mr. Eager took the trouble to tell him that he was a liar.
Phaethon hung down his head, not at the matter of the accusation,
but at its manner. At this point Mr. Emerson, whom the shock of
stopping had awoke, declared that the lovers must on no account
be separated, and patted them on the back to signify his
approval. And Miss Lavish, though unwilling to ally him, felt
bound to support the cause of Bohemianism.
"Most certainly I would let them be," she cried. "But I dare say
I shall receive scant support. I have always flown in the face of
the conventions all my life. This is what I call an adventure."
"We must not submit," said Mr. Eager. "I knew he was trying it
on. He is treating us as if we were a party of Cook's tourists."
"Surely no!" said Miss Lavish, her ardour visibly decreasing.
The other carriage had drawn up behind, and sensible Mr. Beebe
called out that after this warning the couple would be sure to
behave themselves properly.
"Leave them alone," Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he
stood in no awe. "Do we find happiness so often that we should
turn it off the box when it happens to sit there? To be driven by
lovers-- A king might envy us, and if we part them it's more
like sacrilege than anything I know."
Here the voice of Miss Bartlett was heard saying that a crowd
had begun to collect.
Mr. Eager, who suffered from an over-fluent tongue rather than a
resolute will, was determined to make himself heard. He addressed
the driver again. Italian in the mouth of Italians is a
deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to
preserve it from monotony. In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled
nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever
higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more
shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.
"Signorina!" said the man to Lucy, when the display had ceased.
Why should he appeal to Lucy?
"Signorina!" echoed Persephone in her glorious contralto. She
pointed at the other carriage. Why?
For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Persephone
got down from the box.
"Victory at last!" said Mr. Eager, smiting his hands together as
the carriages started again.
"It is not victory," said Mr. Emerson. "It is defeat. You have
parted two people who were happy."
Mr. Eager shut his eyes. He was obliged to sit next to Mr.
Emerson, but he would not speak to him. The old man was refreshed
by sleep, and took up the matter warmly. He commanded Lucy to
agree with him; he shouted for support to his son.
"We have tried to buy what cannot be bought with money. He has
bargained to drive us, and he is doing it. We have no rights over
his soul."
Miss Lavish frowned. It is hard when a person you have classed as
typically British speaks out of his character.
He was not driving us well," she said. "He jolted us."
"That I deny. It was as restful as sleeping. Aha! he is jolting
us now. Can you wonder? He would like to throw us out, and most
certainly he is justified. And if I were superstitious I'd be
frightened of the girl, too. It doesn't do to injure young
people. Have you ever heard of Lorenzo de Medici?"
Miss Lavish bristled.
"Most certainly I have. Do you refer to Lorenzo il Magnifico, or
to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, or to Lorenzo surnamed Lorenzino on
account of his diminutive stature?"
"The Lord knows. Possibly he does know, for I refer to Lorenzo
the poet. He wrote a line--so I heard yesterday--which runs like
this: 'Don't go fighting against the Spring.'"
Mr. Eager could not resist the opportunity for erudition.
"Non fate guerra al Maggio," he murmured. "'War not with the
May' would render a correct meaning."
"The point is, we have warred with it. Look." He pointed to the
Val d'Arno, which was visible far below them, through the
budding trees. "Fifty miles of Spring, and we've come up to
admire them. Do you suppose there's any difference between Spring
in nature and Spring in man? But there we go, praising the one
and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same
work eternally through both."
No one encouraged him to talk. Presently Mr. Eager gave a signal
for the carriages to stop and marshalled the party for their
ramble on the hill. A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of
terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the
heights of Fiesole, and the road, still following its curve, was
about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in the plain.
It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet, covered with bushes
and occasional trees, which had caught the fancy of Alessio
Baldovinetti nearly five hundred years before. He had ascended
it, that diligent and rather obscure master, possibly with an eye
to business, possibly for the joy of ascending. Standing there,
he had seen that view of the Val d'Arno and distant Florence,
which he afterwards had introduced not very effectively into his
work. But where exactly had he stood? That was the question which
Mr. Eager hoped to solve now. And Miss Lavish, whose nature was
attracted by anything problematical, had become equally
enthusiastic.
But it is not easy to carry the pictures of Alessio Baldovinetti
in your head, even if you have remembered to look at them before
starting. And the haze in the valley increased the difficulty of
the quest.
The party sprang about from tuft to tuft of grass, their anxiety
to keep together being only equalled by their desire to go
different directions. Finally they split into groups. Lucy clung
to Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish; the Emersons returned to hold
laborious converse with the drivers; while the two clergymen, who
were expected to have topics in common, were left to each other.
The two elder ladies soon threw off the mask. In the audible
whisper that was now so familiar to Lucy they began to discuss,
not Alessio Baldovinetti, but the drive. Miss Bartlett had asked
Mr. George Emerson what his profession was, and he had answered
"the railway." She was very sorry that she had asked him. She had
no idea that it would be such a dreadful answer, or she would not
have asked him. Mr. Beebe had turned the conversation so
cleverly, and she hoped that the young man was not very much hurt
at her asking him
"The railway!" gasped Miss Lavish. "Oh, but I shall die! Of
course it was the railway!" She could not control her mirth. "He
is the image of a porter--on, on the South-Eastern."
"Eleanor, be quiet," plucking at her vivacious companion. "Hush!
They'll hear--the Emersons--"
"I can't stop. Let me go my wicked way. A porter--"
"Eleanor!"
"I'm sure it's all right," put in Lucy. "The Emersons won't hear,
and they wouldn't mind if they did."
Miss Lavish did not seem pleased at this.
"Miss Honeychurch listening!" she said rather crossly. "Pouf!
Wouf! You naughty girl! Go away!"
"Oh, Lucy, you ought to be with Mr. Eager, I'm sure."
"I can't find them now, and I don't want to either."
"Mr. Eager will be offended. It is your party."
"Please, I'd rather stop here with you."
"No, I agree," said Miss Lavish. "It's like a school feast; the
boys have got separated from the girls. Miss Lucy, you are to go.
We wish to converse on high topics unsuited for your ear."
The girl was stubborn. As her time at Florence drew to its close
she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
Such a one was Miss Lavish, and such for the moment was
Charlotte. She wished she had not called attention to herself;
they were both annoyed at her remark and seemed determined to get
rid of her.
"How tired one gets," said Miss Bartlett. "Oh, I do wish Freddy
and your mother could be here."
Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the
functions of enthusiasm. Lucy did not look at the view either.
She would not enjoy anything till she was safe at Rome.
"Then sit you down," said Miss Lavish. "Observe my foresight."
With many a smile she produced two of those mackintosh squares
that protect the frame of the tourist from damp grass or cold
marble steps. She sat on one; who was to sit on the other?
"Lucy; without a moment's doubt, Lucy. The ground will do for me.
Really I have not had rheumatism for years. If I do feel it
coming on I shall stand. Imagine your mother's feelings if I let
you sit in the wet in your white linen." She sat down heavily
where the ground looked particularly moist. "Here we are, all
settled delightfully. Even if my dress is thinner it will not
show so much, being brown. Sit down, dear; you are too unselfish;
you don't assert yourself enough." She cleared her throat. "Now
don't be alarmed; this isn't a cold. It's the tiniest cough, and
I have had it three days. It's nothing to do with sitting here at
all."
There was only one way of treating the situation. At the end of
five minutes Lucy departed in search of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager,
vanquished by the mackintosh square.
She addressed herself to the drivers, who were sprawling in the
carriages, perfuming the cushions with cigars. The miscreant, a
bony young man scorched black by the sun, rose to greet her with
the courtesy of a host and the assurance of a relative.
"Dove?" said Lucy, after much anxious thought.
His face lit up. Of course he knew where, Not so far either. His
arm swept three-fourths of the horizon. He should just think he
did know where. He pressed his finger-tips to his forehead and
then pushed them towards her, as if oozing with visible extract
of knowledge.
More seemed necessary. What was the Italian for "clergyman"?
"Dove buoni uomini?" said she at last.
Good? Scarcely the adjective for those noble beings! He showed
her his cigar.
"Uno--piu--piccolo," was her next remark, implying "Has the
cigar been given to you by Mr. Beebe, the smaller of the two good
men?"
She was correct as usual. He tied the horse to a tree, kicked it
to make it stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair,
remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less
than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are
born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay
before them, not as a map, but as a chess-board, whereon they
continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares.
Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from
God.
He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She
thanked him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man
the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt
the influence of Spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully;
violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there;
would she like to see them?"
"Ma buoni uomini."
He bowed. Certainly. Good men first, violets afterwards. They
proceeded briskly through the undergrowth, which became thicker
and thicker. They were nearing the edge of the promontory, and
the view was stealing round them, but the brown network of the
bushes shattered it into countless pieces. He was occupied in his
cigar, and in holding back the pliant boughs. She was rejoicing
in her escape from dullness. Not a step, not a twig, was
unimportant to her.
"What is that?"
There was a voice in the wood, in the distance behind them. The
voice of Mr. Eager? He shrugged his shoulders. An Italian's
ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge. She
could not make him understand that perhaps they had missed the
clergymen. The view was forming at last; she could discern the
river, the golden plain, other hills.
"Eccolo!" he exclaimed.
At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell
out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen
on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets
from end to end.
"Courage!" cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.
"Courage and love."
She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into
view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts,
irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems
collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with
spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion;
this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty
gushed out to water the earth.
Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good
man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he
was alone.
George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he
contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw
radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her
dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped
quickly forward and kissed her.
Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice
called, "Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!" The silence of life had been broken
by Miss Bartlett who stood brown against the view.
Chapter VII: They Return
Some complicated game had been playing up and down the hillside
all the afternoon. What it was and exactly how the players
had sided, Lucy was slow to discover. Mr. Eager had met them with
a questioning eye. Charlotte had repulsed him with much small
talk. Mr. Emerson, seeking his son, was told whereabouts to find
him. Mr. Beebe, who wore the heated aspect of a neutral, was
bidden to collect the factions for the return home. There was a
general sense of groping and bewilderment. Pan had been amongst
them--not the great god Pan, who has been buried these two
thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social
contretemps and unsuccessful picnics. Mr. Beebe had lost every
one, and had consumed in solitude the tea-basket which he had
brought up as a pleasant surprise. Miss Lavish had lost Miss
Bartlett. Lucy had lost Mr. Eager. Mr. Emerson had lost George.
Miss Bartlett had lost a mackintosh square. Phaethon had lost the
game.
That last fact was undeniable. He climbed on to the box
shivering, with his collar up, prophesying the swift approach of
bad weather. "Let us go immediately," he told them. "The
signorino will walk."
"All the way? He will be hours," said Mr. Beebe.
"Apparently. I told him it was unwise." He would look no one in
the face; perhaps defeat was particularly mortifying for him. He
alone had played skilfully, using the whole of his instinct,
while the others had used scraps of their intelligence. He alone
had divined what things were, and what he wished them to be. He
alone had interpreted the message that Lucy had received five
days before from the lips of a dying man. Persephone, who spends
half her life in the grave--she could interpret it also. Not so
these English. They gain knowledge slowly, and perhaps too late.
The thoughts of a cab-driver, however just, seldom affect the
lives of his employers. He was the most competent of Miss
Bartlett's opponents, but infinitely the least dangerous. Once
back in the town, he and his insight and his knowledge would
trouble English ladies no more. Of course, it was most
unpleasant; she had seen his black head in the bushes; he might
make a tavern story out of it. But after all, what have we to do
with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room. It was of
drawing-room people that Miss Bartlett thought as she journeyed
downwards towards the fading sun. Lucy sat beside her; Mr. Eager
sat opposite, trying to catch her eye; he was vaguely suspicious.
They spoke of Alessio Baldovinetti.
Rain and darkness came on together. The two ladies huddled
together under an inadequate parasol. There was a lightning
flash, and Miss Lavish who was nervous, screamed from the
carriage in front. At the next flash, Lucy screamed also. Mr.
Eager addressed her professionally:
"Courage, Miss Honeychurch, courage and faith. If I might say so,
there is something almost blasphemous in this horror of the
elements. Are we seriously to suppose that all these clouds, all
this immense electrical display, is simply called into existence
to extinguish you or me?"
"No--of course--"
"Even from the scientific standpoint the chances against our
being struck are enormous. The steel knives, the only articles
which might attract the current, are in the other carriage. And,
in any case, we are infinitely safer than if we were walking.
Courage--courage and faith."
Under the rug, Lucy felt the kindly pressure of her cousin's
hand. At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great
that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may
have to pay for it afterwards. Miss Bartlett, by this timely
exercise of her muscles, gained more than she would have got in
hours of preaching or cross examination.
She renewed it when the two carriages stopped, half into
Florence.
"Mr. Eager!" called Mr. Beebe. "We want your assistance. Will you
interpret for us?"
"George!" cried Mr. Emerson. "Ask your driver which way George
went. The boy may lose his way. He may be killed."
"Go, Mr. Eager," said Miss Bartlett. don't ask our driver; our
driver is no help. Go and support poor Mr. Beebe--, he is nearly
demented."
"He may be killed!" cried the old man. "He may be killed!"
"Typical behaviour," said the chaplain, as he quitted the
carriage. "In the presence of reality that kind of person
invariably breaks down."
"What does he know?" whispered Lucy as soon as they were alone.
"Charlotte, how much does Mr. Eager know?"
"Nothing, dearest; he knows nothing. But--" she pointed at the
driver-"HE knows everything. Dearest, had we better? Shall I?"
She took out her purse. "It is dreadful to be entangled with
low-class people. He saw it all." Tapping Phaethon's back with her
guide-book, she said, "Silenzio!" and offered him a franc.
"Va bene," he replied, and accepted it. As well this ending to
his day as any. But Lucy, a mortal maid, was disappointed in him.
There was an explosion up the road. The storm had struck the
overhead wire of the tramline, and one of the great supports had
fallen. If they had not stopped perhaps they might have been
hurt. They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation, and
the floods of love and sincerity, which fructify every hour of
life, burst forth in tumult. They descended from the carriages;
they embraced each other. It was as joyful to be forgiven past
unworthinesses as to forgive them. For a moment they realized
vast possibilities of good.
The older people recovered quickly. In the very height of their
emotion they knew it to be unmanly or unladylike. Miss Lavish
calculated that, even if they had continued, they would not have
been caught in the accident. Mr. Eager mumbled a temperate
prayer. But the drivers, through miles of dark squalid road,
poured out their souls to the dryads and the saints, and Lucy
poured out hers to her cousin.
"Charlotte, dear Charlotte, kiss me. Kiss me again. Only you can
understand me. You warned me to be careful. And I--I thought I
was developing."
"Do not cry, dearest. Take your time."
"I have been obstinate and silly--worse than you know, far worse.
Once by the river--Oh, but he isn't killed--he wouldn't be
killed, would he?"
The thought disturbed her repentance. As a matter of fact, the
storm was worst along the road; but she had been near danger, and
so she thought it must be near to every one.
"I trust not. One would always pray against that."
"He is really--I think he was taken by surprise, just as I was
before. But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe
that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be
really truthful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts.
The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for
a moment he looked like some one in a book."
"In a book?"
"Heroes--gods--the nonsense of schoolgirls."
"And then?"
"But, Charlotte, you know what happened then."
Miss Bartlett was silent. Indeed, she had little more to learn.
With a certain amount of insight she drew her young cousin
affectionately to her. All the way back Lucy's body was shaken by
deep sighs, which nothing could repress.
"I want to be truthful," she whispered. "It is so hard to be
absolutely truthful."
"Don't be troubled, dearest. Wait till you are calmer. We will
talk it over before bed-time in my room."
So they re-entered the city with hands clasped. It was a shock to
the girl to find how far emotion had ebbed in others. The storm
had ceased, and Mr. Emerson was easier about his son. Mr. Beebe
had regained good humour, and Mr. Eager was already snubbing Miss
Lavish. Charlotte alone she was sure of--Charlotte, whose
exterior concealed so much insight and love.
The luxury of self-exposure kept her almost happy through the
long evening. She thought not so much of what had happened as of
how she should describe it. All her sensations, her spasms of
courage, her moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious
discontent, should be carefully laid before her cousin. And
together in divine confidence they would disentangle and
interpret them all.
"At last," thought she, "I shall understand myself. I shan't
again be troubled by things that come out of nothing, and mean I
don't know what."
Miss Alan asked her to play. She refused vehemently. Music seemed
to her the employment of a child. She sat close to her cousin,
who, with commendable patience, was listening to a long story
about lost luggage. When it was over she capped it by a story of
her own. Lucy became rather hysterical with the delay. In vain
she tried to check, or at all events to accelerate, the tale. It
was not till a late hour that Miss Bartlett had recovered her
luggage and could say in her usual tone of gentle reproach:
"Well, dear, I at all events am ready for Bedfordshire. Come into
my room, and I will give a good brush to your hair."
With some solemnity the door was shut, and a cane chair placed
for the girl. Then Miss Bartlett said "So what is to be done?"
She was unprepared for the question. It had not occurred to her
that she would have to do anything. A detailed exhibition of her
emotions was all that she had counted upon.
"What is to be done? A point, dearest, which you alone can
settle."
The rain was streaming down the black windows, and the great room
felt damp and chilly, One candle burnt trembling on the chest of
drawers close to Miss Bartlett's toque, which cast monstrous and
fantastic shadows on the bolted door. A tram roared by in the
dark, and Lucy felt unaccountably sad, though she had long since
dried her eyes. She lifted them to the ceiling, where the griffins
and bassoons were colourless and vague, the very ghosts of joy.
"It has been raining for nearly four hours," she said at last.
Miss Bartlett ignored the remark.
"How do you propose to silence him?"
"The driver?"
"My dear girl, no; Mr. George Emerson."
Lucy began to pace up and down the room.
"I don't understand," she said at last.
She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be
absolutely truthful.
"How are you going to stop him talking about it?"
"I have a feeling that talk is a thing he will never do."
"I, too, intend to judge him charitably. But unfortunately I have
met the type before. They seldom keep their exploits to
themselves."
"Exploits?" cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural.
"My poor dear, did you suppose that this was his first? Come here
and listen to me. I am only gathering it from his own remarks. Do
you remember that day at lunch when he argued with Miss Alan that
liking one person is an extra reason for liking another?"
"Yes," said Lucy, whom at the time the argument had pleased.
"Well, I am no prude. There is no need to call him a wicked young
man, but obviously he is thoroughly unrefined. Let us put it down
to his deplorable antecedents and education, if you wish. But
we are no farther on with our question. What do you propose to
do?"
An idea rushed across Lucy's brain, which, had she thought of it
sooner and made it part of her, might have proved victorious.
"I propose to speak to him," said she.
Miss Bartlett uttered a cry of genuine alarm.
"You see, Charlotte, your kindness--I shall never forget it.
But--as you said--it is my affair. Mine and his."
"And you are going to IMPLORE him, to BEG him to keep silence?"
"Certainly not. There would be no difficulty. Whatever you ask
him he answers, yes or no; then it is over. I have been
frightened of him. But now I am not one little bit."
"But we fear him for you, dear. You are so young and
inexperienced, you have lived among such nice people, that you
cannot realize what men can be--how they can take a brutal
pleasure in insulting a woman whom her sex does not protect and
rally round. This afternoon, for example, if I had not arrived,
what would have happened?"
"I can't think," said Lucy gravely.
Something in her voice made Miss Bartlett repeat her question,
intoning it more vigorously.
"What would have happened if I hadn't arrived?"
"I can't think," said Lucy again.
"When he insulted you, how would you have replied?"
"I hadn't time to think. You came."
"Yes, but won't you tell me now what you would have done?"
"I should have--" She checked herself, and broke the sentence
off. She went up to the dripping window and strained her eyes
into the darkness. She could not think what she would have done.
"Come away from the window, dear," said Miss Bartlett. "You will
be seen from the road."
Lucy obeyed. She was in her cousin's power. She could not
modulate out the key of self-abasement in which she had started.
Neither of them referred again to her suggestion that she should
speak to George and settle the matter, whatever it was, with him.
Miss Bartlett became plaintive.
"Oh, for a real man! We are only two women, you and I. Mr. Beebe
is hopeless. There is Mr. Eager, but you do not trust him. Oh,
for your brother! He is young, but I know that his sister's
insult would rouse in him a very lion. Thank God, chivalry is not
yet dead. There are still left some men who can reverence woman."
As she spoke, she pulled off her rings, of which she wore
several, and ranged them upon the pin cushion. Then she blew into
her gloves and said:
"It will be a push to catch the morning train, but we must try."
"What train?"
"The train to Rome." She looked at her gloves critically.
The girl received the announcement as easily as it had been
given.
"When does the train to Rome go?"
"At eight."
"Signora Bertolini would be upset."
"We must face that," said Miss Bartlett, not liking to say that
she had given notice already.
"She will make us pay for a whole week's pension."
"I expect she will. However, we shall be much more comfortable at
the Vyses' hotel. Isn't afternoon tea given there for nothing?"
"Yes, but they pay extra for wine." After this remark she
remained motionless and silent. To her tired eyes Charlotte
throbbed and swelled like a ghostly figure in a dream.
They began to sort their clothes for packing, for there was no
time to lose, if they were to catch the train to Rome. Lucy, when
admonished, began to move to and fro between the rooms, more
conscious of the discomforts of packing by candlelight than of a
subtler ill. Charlotte, who was practical without ability, knelt
by the side of an empty trunk, vainly endeavouring to pave it
with books of varying thickness and size. She gave two or three
sighs, for the stooping posture hurt her back, and, for all her
diplomacy, she felt that she was growing old. The girl heard her
as she entered the room, and was seized with one of those
emotional impulses to which she could never attribute a cause.
She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go
easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some
human love. The impulse had come before to-day, but never so
strongly. She knelt down by her cousin's side and took her in her
arms.
Miss Bartlett returned the embrace with tenderness and warmth.
But she was not a stupid woman, and she knew perfectly well that
Lucy did not love her, but needed her to love. For it was in
ominous tones that she said, after a long pause:
"Dearest Lucy, how will you ever forgive me?"
Lucy was on her guard at once, knowing by bitter experience what
forgiving Miss Bartlett meant. Her emotion relaxed, she modified
her embrace a little, and she said:
"Charlotte dear, what do you mean? As if I have anything to
forgive!"
"You have a great deal, and I have a very great deal to forgive
myself, too. I know well how much I vex you at every turn."
"But no--"
Miss Bartlett assumed her favourite role, that of the prematurely
aged martyr.
"Ah, but yes! I feel that our tour together is hardly the success
I had hoped. I might have known it would not do. You want some
one younger and stronger and more in sympathy with you. I am too
uninteresting and old-fashioned--only fit to pack and unpack your
things."
"Please--"
"My only consolation was that you found people more to your
taste, and were often able to leave me at home. I had my own poor
ideas of what a lady ought to do, but I hope I did not inflict
them on you more than was necessary. You had your own way about
these rooms, at all events."
"You mustn't say these things," said Lucy softly.
She still clung to the hope that she and Charlotte loved each
other, heart and soul. They continued to pack in silence.
"I have been a failure," said Miss Bartlett, as she struggled
with the straps of Lucy's trunk instead of strapping her own.
"Failed to make you happy; failed in my duty to your mother. She
has been so generous to me; I shall never face her again after
this disaster."
"But mother will understand. It is not your fault, this trouble,
and it isn't a disaster either."
"It is my fault, it is a disaster. She will never forgive me, and
rightly. Fur instance, what right had I to make friends with Miss
Lavish?"
"Every right."
"When I was here for your sake? If I have vexed you it is equally
true that I have neglected you. Your mother will see this as
clearly as I do, when you tell her."
Lucy, from a cowardly wish to improve the situation, said:
"Why need mother hear of it?"
"But you tell her everything?"
"I suppose I do generally."
"I dare not break your confidence. There is something sacred in
it. Unless you feel that it is a thing you could not tell her."
The girl would not be degraded to this.
"Naturally I should have told her. But in case she should blame
you in any way, I promise I will not, I am very willing not to. I
will never speak of it either to her or to any one."
Her promise brought the long-drawn interview to a sudden close.
Miss Bartlett pecked her smartly on both cheeks, wished her
good-night, and sent her to her own room.
For a moment the original trouble was in the background. George
would seem to have behaved like a cad throughout; perhaps that
was the view which one would take eventually. At present she
neither acquitted nor condemned him; she did not pass judgment.
At the moment when she was about to judge him her cousin's voice
had intervened, and, ever since, it was Miss Bartlett who had
dominated; Miss Bartlett who, even now, could be heard sighing
into a crack in the partition wall; Miss Bartlett, who had really
been neither pliable nor humble nor inconsistent. She had worked
like a great artist; for a time--indeed, for years--she had been
meaningless, but at the end there was presented to the girl the
complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which the
young rush to destruction until they learn better--a shamefaced
world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which
do not seem to bring good, if we may judge from those who have
used them most.
Lucy was suffering from the most grievous wrong which this world
has yet discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her
sincerity, of her craving for sympathy and love. Such a wrong is
not easily forgotten. Never again did she expose herself without
due consideration and precaution against rebuff. And such a wrong
may react disastrously upon the soul.
The door-bell rang, and she started to the shutters. Before she
reached them she hesitated, turned, and blew out the candle. Thus
it was that, though she saw some one standing in the wet below,
he, though he looked up, did not see her.
To reach his room he had to go by hers. She was still dressed. It
struck her that she might slip into the passage and just say that
she would be gone before he was up, and that their extraordinary
intercourse was over.
Whether she would have dared to do this was never proved. At the
critical moment Miss Bartlett opened her own door, and her voice
said:
"I wish one word with you in the drawing-room, Mr. Emerson,
please."
Soon their footsteps returned, and Miss Bartlett said:
"Good-night, Mr. Emerson."
His heavy, tired breathing was the only reply; the chaperon had
done her work.
Lucy cried aloud: "It isn't true. It can't all be true. I want
not to be muddled. I want to grow older quickly."
Miss Bartlett tapped on the wall.
"Go to bed at once, dear. You need all the rest you can get."
In the morning they left for Rome.
Part Two
Chapter VIII: Medieval
The drawing-room curtains at Windy Corner had been pulled to
meet, for the carpet was new and deserved protection
from the August sun. They were heavy curtains, reaching almost to
the ground, and the light that filtered through them was subdued
and varied. A poet--none was present--might have quoted, "Life
like a dome of many coloured glass," or might have compared the
curtains to sluice-gates, lowered against the intolerable tides
of heaven. Without was poured a sea of radiance; within, the
glory, though visible, was tempered to the capacities of man.
Two pleasant people sat in the room. One--a boy of nineteen--was
studying a small manual of anatomy, and peering occasionally at a
bone which lay upon the piano. From time to time he bounced in
his chair and puffed and groaned, for the day was hot and the
print small, and the human frame fearfully made; and his mother,
who was writing a letter, did continually read out to him what
she had written. And continually did she rise from her seat and
part the curtains so that a rivulet of light fell across the
carpet, and make the remark that they were still there.
"Where aren't they?" said the boy, who was Freddy, Lucy's
brother. "I tell you I'm getting fairly sick."
"For goodness' sake go out of my drawing-room, then?" cried Mrs.
Honeychurch, who hoped to cure her children of slang by taking it
literally.
Freddy did not move or reply.
"I think things are coming to a head," she observed, rather
wanting her son's opinion on the situation if she could obtain it
without undue supplication.
"Time they did."
"I am glad that Cecil is asking her this once more."
"It's his third go, isn't it?"
"Freddy I do call the way you talk unkind."
"I didn't mean to be unkind." Then he added: "But I do think Lucy
might have got this off her chest in Italy. I don't know how
girls manage things, but she can't have said 'No' properly
before, or she wouldn't have to say it again now. Over the whole
thing--I can't explain--I do feel so uncomfortable."
"Do you indeed, dear? How interesting!"
"I feel--never mind."
He returned to his work.
"Just listen to what I have written to Mrs. Vyse. I said: 'Dear
Mrs. Vyse.'"
"Yes, mother, you told me. A jolly good letter."
"I said: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse, Cecil has just asked my permission
about it, and I should be delighted, if Lucy wishes it. But--'"
She stopped reading, "I was rather amused at Cecil asking my
permission at all. He has always gone in for unconventionality,
and parents nowhere, and so forth. When it comes to the point, he
can't get on without me."
"Nor me."
"You?"
Freddy nodded.
"What do you mean?"
"He asked me for my permission also."
She exclaimed: "How very odd of him!"
"Why so?" asked the son and heir. "Why shouldn't my permission be
asked?"
"What do you know about Lucy or girls or anything? What ever did
you say?"
"I said to Cecil, 'Take her or leave her; it's no business of
mine!'"
"What a helpful answer!" But her own answer, though more normal
in its wording, had been to the same effect.
"The bother is this," began Freddy.
Then he took up his work again, too shy to say what the bother
was. Mrs. Honeychurch went back to the window.
"Freddy, you must come. There they still are!"
"I don't see you ought to go peeping like that."
"Peeping like that! Can't I look out of my own window?"
But she returned to the writing-table, observing, as she passed
her son, "Still page 322?" Freddy snorted, and turned over two
leaves. For a brief space they were silent. Close by, beyond the
curtains, the gentle murmur of a long conversation had never
ceased.
"The bother is this: I have put my foot in it with Cecil most
awfully." He gave a nervous gulp. "Not content with 'permission',
which I did give--that is to say, I said, 'I don't mind'--well,
not content with that, he wanted to know whether I wasn't off my
head with joy. He practically put it like this: Wasn't it a
splendid thing for Lucy and for Windy Corner generally if he
married her? And he would have an answer--he said it would
strengthen his hand."
"I hope you gave a careful answer, dear."
"I answered 'No'" said the boy, grinding his teeth. "There! Fly
into a stew! I can't help it--had to say it. I had to say no. He
ought never to have asked me."
"Ridiculous child!" cried his mother. "You think you're so holy
and truthful, but really it's only abominable conceit. Do you
suppose that a man like Cecil would take the slightest notice of
anything you say? I hope he boxed your ears. How dare you say
no?"
"Oh, do keep quiet, mother! I had to say no when I couldn't say
yes. I tried to laugh as if I didn't mean what I said, and, as
Cecil laughed too, and went away, it may be all right. But I feel
my foot's in it. Oh, do keep quiet, though, and let a man do some
work."
"No," said Mrs. Honeychurch, with the air of one who has
considered the subject, "I shall not keep quiet. You know all
that has passed between them in Rome; you know why he is down
here, and yet you deliberately insult him, and try to turn him
out of my house."
"Not a bit!" he pleaded. "I only let out I didn't like him. I
don't hate him, but I don't like him. What I mind is that he'll
tell Lucy."
He glanced at the curtains dismally.
"Well, I like him," said Mrs. Honeychurch. "I know his mother;
he's good, he's clever, he's rich, he's well connected--Oh, you
needn't kick the piano! He's well connected--I'll say it again if
you like: he's well connected." She paused, as if rehearsing her
eulogy, but her face remained dissatisfied. She added: "And he
has beautiful manners."
"I liked him till just now. I suppose it's having him spoiling
Lucy's first week at home; and it's also something that Mr. Beebe
said, not knowing."
"Mr. Beebe?" said his mother, trying to conceal her interest. "I
don't see how Mr. Beebe comes in."
"You know Mr. Beebe's funny way, when you never quite know what
he means. He said: 'Mr. Vyse is an ideal bachelor.' I was very
cute, I asked him what he meant. He said 'Oh, he's like me--
better detached.' I couldn't make him say any more, but it set me
thinking. Since Cecil has come after Lucy he hasn't been so
pleasant, at least--I can't explain."
"You never can, dear. But I can. You are jealous of Cecil because
he may stop Lucy knitting you silk ties."
The explanation seemed plausible, and Freddy tried to accept it.
But at the back of his brain there lurked a dim mistrust. Cecil
praised one too much for being athletic. Was that it? Cecil made
one talk in one's own way. This tired one. Was that it? And Cecil
was the kind of fellow who would never wear another fellow's cap.
Unaware of his own profundity, Freddy checked himself. He must be
jealous, or he would not dislike a man for such foolish reasons.
"Will this do?" called his mother. "'Dear Mrs. Vyse,--Cecil has
just asked my permission about it, and I should be delighted if
Lucy wishes it.' Then I put in at the top, 'and I have told Lucy
so.' I must write the letter out again--'and I have told Lucy so.
But Lucy seems very uncertain, and in these days young people
must decide for themselves.' I said that because I didn't want
Mrs. Vyse to think us old-fashioned. She goes in for lectures
and improving her mind, and all the time a thick layer of flue
under the beds, and the maid's dirty thumb-marks where you turn
on the electric light. She keeps that flat abominably--"
"Suppose Lucy marries Cecil, would she live in a flat, or in the
country?"
"Don't interrupt so foolishly. Where was I? Oh yes--'Young people
must decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son,
because she tells me everything, and she wrote to me from Rome
when he asked her first.' No, I'll cross that last bit out--it
looks patronizing. I'll stop at 'because she tells me
everything.' Or shall I cross that out, too?"
"Cross it out, too," said Freddy.
Mrs. Honeychurch left it in.
"Then the whole thing runs: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse.--Cecil has just
asked my permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy
wishes it, and I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very
uncertain, and in these days young people must decide for
themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son, because she tells me
everything. But I do not know--'"
"Look out!" cried Freddy.
The curtains parted.
Cecil's first movement was one of irritation. He couldn't bear
the Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the
furniture. Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent
them swinging down their poles. Light entered. There was revealed
a terrace, such as is owned by many villas with trees each side
of it, and on it a little rustic seat, and two flower-beds. But
it was transfigured by the view beyond, for Windy Corner was
built on the range that overlooks the Sussex Weald. Lucy, who was
in the little seat, seemed on the edge of a green magic carpet
which hovered in the air above the tremulous world.
Cecil entered.
Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once
described. He was medieval. Like a Gothic statue. Tall and
refined, with shoulders that seemed braced square by an effort of
the will, and a head that was tilted a little higher than the
usual level of vision, he resembled those fastidious saints who
guard the portals of a French cathedral. Well educated, well
endowed, and not deficient physically, he remained in the grip of
a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness,
and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision, worshipped as asceticism.
A Gothic statue implies celibacy, just as a Greek statue implies
fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr. Beebe meant. And Freddy,
who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same when he failed
to imagine Cecil wearing another fellow's cap.
Mrs. Honeychurch left her letter on the writing table and moved
towards her young acquaintance.
"Oh, Cecil!" she exclaimed--"oh, Cecil, do tell me!"
"I promessi sposi," said he.
They stared at him anxiously.
"She has accepted me," he said, and the sound of the thing in
English made him flush and smile with pleasure, and look more
human.
"I am so glad," said Mrs. Honeychurch, while Freddy proffered a
hand that was yellow with chemicals. They wished that they also
knew Italian, for our phrases of approval and of amazement are so
connected with little occasions that we fear to use them on great
ones. We are obliged to become vaguely poetic, or to take refuge
in Scriptural reminiscences.
"Welcome as one of the family!" said Mrs. Honeychurch, waving her
hand at the furniture. "This is indeed a joyous day! I feel sure
that you will make our dear Lucy happy."
"I hope so," replied the young man, shifting his eyes to the
ceiling.
"We mothers--" simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that
she was affected, sentimental, bombastic--all the things she
hated most. Why could she not be Freddy, who stood stiff in the
middle of the room; looking very cross and almost handsome?
"I say, Lucy!" called Cecil, for conversation seemed to flag.
Lucy rose from the seat. She moved across the lawn and smiled in
at them, just as if she was going to ask them to play tennis.
Then she saw her brother's face. Her lips parted, and she took
him in her arms. He said, "Steady on!"
"Not a kiss for me?" asked her mother.
Lucy kissed her also.
"Would you take them into the garden and tell Mrs. Honeychurch
all about it?" Cecil suggested. "And I'd stop here and tell my
mother."
"We go with Lucy?" said Freddy, as if taking orders.
"Yes, you go with Lucy."
They passed into the sunlight. Cecil watched them cross the
terrace, and descend out of sight by the steps. They would
descend--he knew their ways--past the shrubbery, and past the
tennis-lawn and the dahlia-bed, until they reached the kitchen
garden, and there, in the presence of the potatoes and the peas,
the great event would be discussed.
Smiling indulgently, he lit a cigarette, and rehearsed the events
that had led to such a happy conclusion.
He had known Lucy for several years, but only as a commonplace
girl who happened to be musical. He could still remember his
depression that afternoon at Rome, when she and her terrible
cousin fell on him out of the blue, and demanded to be taken to
St. Peter's. That day she had seemed a typical tourist--shrill,
crude, and gaunt with travel. But Italy worked some marvel in
her. It gave her light, and--which he held more precious--it gave
her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She
was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci's, whom we love not so much
for herself as for the things that she will not tell us, The
things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo's
could have anything so vulgar as a "story." She did develop most
wonderfully day by day.
So it happened that from patronizing civility he had slowly
passed if not to passion, at least to a profound uneasiness.
Already at Rome he had hinted to her that they might be suitable
for each other. It had touched him greatly that she had not
broken away at the suggestion. Her refusal had been clear and
gentle; after it--as the horrid phrase went--she had been exactly
the same to him as before. Three months later, on the margin of
Italy, among the flower-clad Alps, he had asked her again in
bald, traditional language. She reminded him of a Leonardo more
than ever; her sunburnt features were shadowed by fantastic rock;
at his words she had turned and stood between him and the light
with immeasurable plains behind her. He walked home with her
unashamed, feeling not at all like a rejected suitor. The things
that really mattered were unshaken.
So now he had asked her once more, and, clear and gentle as ever,
she had accepted him, giving no coy reasons for her delay, but
simply saying that she loved him and would do her best to make
him happy. His mother, too, would be pleased; she had counselled
the step; he must write her a long account.
Glancing at his hand, in case any of Freddy's chemicals had come
off on it, he moved to the writing table. There he saw "Dear Mrs.
Vyse," followed by many erasures. He recoiled without reading any
more, and after a little hesitation sat down elsewhere, and
pencilled a note on his knee.
Then he lit another cigarette, which did not seem quite as divine
as the first, and considered what might be done to make Windy
Corner drawing-room more distinctive. With that outlook it should
have been a successful room, but the trail of Tottenham Court
Road was upon it; he could almost visualize the motor-vans of
Messrs. Shoolbred and Messrs. Maple arriving at the door and
depositing this chair, those varnished book-cases, that
writing-table. The table recalled Mrs. Honeychurch's letter. He
did not want to read that letter--his temptations never lay in
that direction; but he worried about it none the less. It was his
own fault that she was discussing him with his mother; he had
wanted her support in his third attempt to win Lucy; he wanted to
feel that others, no matter who they were, agreed with him, and
so he had asked their permission. Mrs. Honeychurch had been
civil, but obtuse in essentials, while as for Freddy--"He is only
a boy," he reflected. "I represent all that he despises. Why
should he want me for a brother-in-law?"
The Honeychurches were a worthy family, but he began to realize
that Lucy was of another clay; and perhaps--he did not put it
very definitely--he ought to introduce her into more congenial
circles as soon as possible.
"Mr. Beebe!" said the maid, and the new rector of Summer Street
was shown in; he had at once started on friendly relations, owing
to Lucy's praise of him in her letters from Florence.
Cecil greeted him rather critically.
"I've come for tea, Mr. Vyse. Do you suppose that I shall get
it?"
"I should say so. Food is the thing one does get here--Don't sit
in that chair; young Honeychurch has left a bone in it."
"Pfui!"
"I know," said Cecil. "I know. I can't think why Mrs. Honeychurch
allows it."
For Cecil considered the bone and the Maples' furniture
separately; he did not realize that, taken together, they kindled
the room into the life that he desired.
"I've come for tea and for gossip. Isn't this news?"
"News? I don't understand you," said Cecil. "News?"
Mr. Beebe, whose news was of a very different nature, prattled
forward.
"I met Sir Harry Otway as I came up; I have every reason to hope
that I am first in the field. He has bought Cissie and Albert
from Mr. Flack!"
"Has he indeed?" said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what
a grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman
and a gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so
flippant? But his stiffness remained, and, though he asked who
Cissie and Albert might be, he still thought Mr. Beebe rather a
bounder.
"Unpardonable question! To have stopped a week at Windy Corner
and not to have met Cissie and Albert, the semi-detached villas
that have been run up opposite the church! I'll set Mrs.
Honeychurch after you."
"I'm shockingly stupid over local affairs," said the young man
languidly. "I can't even remember the difference between a Parish
Council and a Local Government Board. Perhaps there is no
difference, or perhaps those aren't the right names. I only go
into the country to see my friends and to enjoy the scenery. It
is very remiss of me. Italy and London are the only places where
I don't feel to exist on sufferance."
Mr. Beebe, distressed at this heavy reception of Cissie and
Albert, determined to shift the subject.
"Let me see, Mr. Vyse--I forget--what is your profession?"
"I have no profession," said Cecil. "It is another example of my
decadence. My attitude quite an indefensible one--is that so long
as I am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like.
I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting
myself to things I don't care a straw about, but somehow, I've
not been able to begin."
"You are very fortunate," said Mr. Beebe. "It is a wonderful
opportunity, the possession of leisure."
His voice was rather parochial, but he did not quite see his way
to answering naturally. He felt, as all who have regular
occupation must feel, that others should have it also.
"I am glad that you approve. I daren't face the healthy person--
for example, Freddy Honeychurch."
"Oh, Freddy's a good sort, isn't he?"
"Admirable. The sort who has made England what she is."
Cecil wondered at himself. Why, on this day of all others, was he
so hopelessly contrary? He tried to get right by inquiring
effusively after Mr. Beebe's mother, an old lady for whom he had
no particular regard. Then he flattered the clergyman, praised
his liberal-mindedness, his enlightened attitude towards
philosophy and science.
"Where are the others?" said Mr. Beebe at last, "I insist on
extracting tea before evening service."
"I suppose Anne never told them you were here. In this house one
is so coached in the servants the day one arrives. The fault of
Anne is that she begs your pardon when she hears you perfectly,
and kicks the chair-legs with her feet. The faults of Mary--
I forget the faults of Mary, but they are very grave. Shall we
look in the garden?"
"I know the faults of Mary. She leaves the dust-pans standing on
the stairs."
"The fault of Euphemia is that she will not, simply will not,
chop the suet sufficiently small."
They both laughed, and things began to go better.
"The faults of Freddy--" Cecil continued.
"Ah, he has too many. No one but his mother can remember the
faults of Freddy. Try the faults of Miss Honeychurch; they are
not innumerable."
"She has none," said the young man, with grave sincerity.
"I quite agree. At present she has none."
"At present?"
"I'm not cynical. I'm only thinking of my pet theory about Miss
Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so
wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will
be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will
break down, and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have
her heroically good, heroically bad--too heroic, perhaps, to be
good or bad."
Cecil found his companion interesting.
"And at present you think her not wonderful as far as life goes?"
"Well, I must say I've only seen her at Tunbridge Wells, where
she was not wonderful, and at Florence. Since I came to Summer
Street she has been away. You saw her, didn't you, at Rome and in
the Alps. Oh, I forgot; of course, you knew her before. No, she
wasn't wonderful in Florence either, but I kept on expecting that
she would be."
"In what way?"
Conversation had become agreeable to them, and they were pacing
up and down the terrace.
"I could as easily tell you what tune she'll play next. There was
simply the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them.
I can show you a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss
Honeychurch as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture
number two: the string breaks."
The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards,
when he viewed things artistically. At the time he had given
surreptitious tugs to the string himself.
"But the string never broke?"
"No. I mightn't have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should
certainly have heard Miss Bartlett fall."
"It has broken now," said the young man in low, vibrating tones.
Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous,
contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst.
He cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a
star and that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?
"Broken? What do you mean?"
"I meant," said Cecil stiffly, "that she is going to marry me."
The clergyman was conscious of some bitter disappointment which
he could not keep out of his voice.
"I am sorry; I must apologize. I had no idea you were intimate
with her, or I should never have talked in this flippant,
superficial way. Mr. Vyse, you ought to have stopped me." And
down the garden he saw Lucy herself; yes, he was disappointed.
Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew
down his mouth at the corners. Was this the reception his action
would get from the world? Of course, he despised the world as a
whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of
refinement. But he was sensitive to the successive particles of
it which he encountered.
Occasionally he could be quite crude.
"I am sorry I have given you a shock," he said dryly. "I fear
that Lucy's choice does not meet with your approval."
"Not that. But you ought to have stopped me. I know Miss
Honeychurch only a little as time goes. Perhaps I oughtn't to
have discussed her so freely with any one; certainly not with
you."
"You are conscious of having said something indiscreet?"
Mr. Beebe pulled himself together. Really, Mr. Vyse had the art
of placing one in the most tiresome positions. He was driven to
use the prerogatives of his profession.
"No, I have said nothing indiscreet. I foresaw at Florence that
her quiet, uneventful childhood must end, and it has ended. I
realized dimly enough that she might take some momentous step.
She has taken it. She has learnt--you will let me talk freely, as
I have begun freely--she has learnt what it is to love: the
greatest lesson, some people will tell you, that our earthly life
provides." It was now time for him to wave his hat at the
approaching trio. He did not omit to do so. "She has learnt
through you," and if his voice was still clerical, it was now
also sincere; "let it be your care that her knowledge is
profitable to her."
"Grazie tante!" said Cecil, who did not like parsons.
"Have you heard?" shouted Mrs. Honeychurch as she toiled up the
sloping garden. "Oh, Mr. Beebe, have you heard the news?"
Freddy, now full of geniality, whistled the wedding march. Youth
seldom criticizes the accomplished fact.
"Indeed I have!" he cried. He looked at Lucy. In her presence he
could not act the parson any longer--at all events not without
apology. "Mrs. Honeychurch, I'm going to do what I am always
supposed to do, but generally I'm too shy. I want to invoke every
kind of blessing on them, grave and gay, great and small.
I want them all their lives to be supremely good and supremely
happy as husband and wife, as father and mother. And now I want
my tea."
"You only asked for it just in time," the lady retorted. "How
dare you be serious at Windy Corner?"
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