A Room with a View
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 ‘Mediæval 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 laws 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—”