A Room with a View
my head off! Whatever is there to shout over? I forbid you and Cecil to
hate any more clergymen.”
He smiled. There was indeed something rather incongruous in Lucy’s
moral outburst over Mr. Eager. It was as if one should see the Leonardo
on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here
lay her vocation; that a woman’s power and charm reside in mystery, not
in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the
beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he
contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain
approval. He forebore to repress the sources of youth.
Nature—simplest of topics, he thought—lay around them. He praised the
pine-woods, the deep lasts of bracken, the crimson leaves that spotted
the hurt-bushes, the serviceable beauty of the turnpike road. The
outdoor world was not very familiar to him, and occasionally he went
wrong in a question of fact. Mrs. Honeychurch’s mouth twitched when he
spoke of the perpetual green of the larch.
“I count myself a lucky person,” he concluded, “When I’m in London I
feel I could never live out of it. When I’m in the country I feel the
same about the country. After all, I do believe that birds and trees
and the sky are the most wonderful things in life, and that the people
who live amongst them must be the best. It’s true that in nine cases
out of ten they don’t seem to notice anything. The country gentleman
and the country labourer are each in their way the most depressing of
companions. Yet they may have a tacit sympathy with the workings of
Nature which is denied to us of the town. Do you feel that, Mrs.
Honeychurch?”
Mrs. Honeychurch started and smiled. She had not been attending. Cecil,
who was rather crushed on the front seat of the victoria, felt
irritable, and determined not to say anything interesting again.
Lucy had not attended either. Her brow was wrinkled, and she still
looked furiously cross—the result, he concluded, of too much moral
gymnastics. It was sad to see her thus blind to the beauties of an
August wood.
“‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height,’” he quoted, and
touched her knee with his own.
She flushed again and said: “What height?”
“‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height,
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang).
In height and in the splendour of the hills?’
Let us take Mrs. Honeychurch’s advice and hate clergymen no more.
What’s this place?”
“Summer Street, of course,” said Lucy, and roused herself.
The woods had opened to leave space for a sloping triangular meadow.
Pretty cottages lined it on two sides, and the upper and third side was
occupied by a new stone church, expensively simple, a charming shingled
spire. Mr. Beebe’s house was near the church. In height it scarcely
exceeded the cottages. Some great mansions were at hand, but they were
hidden in the trees. The scene suggested a Swiss Alp rather than the
shrine and centre of a leisured world, and was marred only by two ugly
little villas—the villas that had competed with Cecil’s engagement,
having been acquired by Sir Harry Otway the very afternoon that Lucy
had been acquired by Cecil.
“Cissie” was the name of one of these villas, “Albert” of the other.
These titles were not only picked out in shaded Gothic on the garden
gates, but appeared a second time on the porches, where they followed
the semicircular curve of the entrance arch in block capitals. “Albert”
was inhabited. His tortured garden was bright with geraniums and
lobelias and polished shells. His little windows were chastely swathed
in Nottingham lace. “Cissie” was to let. Three notice-boards, belonging
to Dorking agents, lolled on her fence and announced the not surprising
fact. Her paths were already weedy; her pocket-handkerchief of a lawn
was yellow with dandelions.
“The place is ruined!” said the ladies mechanically. “Summer Street
will never be the same again.”
As the carriage passed, “Cissie’s” door opened, and a gentleman came
out of her.
“Stop!” cried Mrs. Honeychurch, touching the coachman with her parasol.
“Here’s Sir Harry. Now we shall know. Sir Harry, pull those things down
at once!”
Sir Harry Otway—who need not be described—came to the carriage and said
“Mrs. Honeychurch, I meant to. I can’t, I really can’t turn out Miss
Flack.”
“Am I not always right? She ought to have gone before the contract was
signed. Does she still live rent free, as she did in her nephew’s
time?”
“But what can I do?” He lowered his voice. “An old lady, so very
vulgar, and almost bedridden.”
“Turn her out,” said Cecil bravely.
Sir Harry sighed, and looked at the villas mournfully. He had had full
warning of Mr. Flack’s intentions, and might have bought the plot
before building commenced: but he was apathetic and dilatory. He had
known Summer Street for so many years that he could not imagine it
being spoilt. Not till Mrs. Flack had laid the foundation stone, and
the apparition of red and cream brick began to rise did he take alarm.
He called on Mr. Flack, the local builder,—a most reasonable and
respectful man—who agreed that tiles would have made more artistic
roof, but pointed out that slates were cheaper. He ventured to differ,
however, about the Corinthian columns which were to cling like leeches
to the frames of the bow windows, saying that, for his part, he liked
to relieve the façade by a bit of decoration. Sir Harry hinted that a
column, if possible, should be structural as well as decorative.
Mr. Flack replied that all the columns had been ordered, adding, “and
all the capitals different—one with dragons in the foliage, another
approaching to the Ionian style, another introducing Mrs. Flack’s
initials—every one different.” For he had read his Ruskin. He built his
villas according to his desire; and not until he had inserted an
immovable aunt into one of them did Sir Harry buy.
This futile and unprofitable transaction filled the knight with sadness
as he leant on Mrs. Honeychurch’s carriage. He had failed in his duties
to the country-side, and the country-side was laughing at him as well.
He had spent money, and yet Summer Street was spoilt as much as ever.
All he could do now was to find a desirable tenant for “Cissie”—someone
really desirable.
“The rent is absurdly low,” he told them, “and perhaps I am an easy
landlord. But it is such an awkward size. It is too large for the
peasant class and too small for any one the least like ourselves.”
Cecil had been hesitating whether he should despise the villas or
despise Sir Harry for despising them. The latter impulse seemed the
more fruitful.
“You ought to find a tenant at once,” he said maliciously. “It would be
a perfect paradise for a bank clerk.”
“Exactly!” said Sir Harry excitedly. “That is exactly what I fear, Mr.
Vyse. It will attract the wrong type of people. The train service has
improved—a fatal improvement, to my mind. And what are five miles from
a station in these days of bicycles?”
“Rather a strenuous clerk it would be,” said Lucy.
Cecil, who had his full share of mediaeval mischievousness, replied
that the physique of the lower middle classes was improving at a most
appalling rate. She saw that he was laughing at their harmless
neighbour, and roused herself to stop him.
“Sir Harry!” she exclaimed, “I have an idea. How would you like
spinsters?”
“My dear Lucy, it would be splendid. Do you know any such?”
“Yes; I met them abroad.”
“Gentlewomen?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes, indeed, and at the present moment homeless. I heard from them
last week—Miss Teresa and Miss Catharine Alan. I’m really not joking.
They are quite the right people. Mr. Beebe knows them, too. May I tell
them to write to you?”
“Indeed you may!” he cried. “Here we are with the difficulty solved
already. How delightful it is! Extra facilities—please tell them they
shall have extra facilities, for I shall have no agents’ fees. Oh, the
agents! The appalling people they have sent me! One woman, when I
wrote—a tactful letter, you know—asking her to explain her social
position to me, replied that she would pay the rent in advance. As if
one cares about that! And several references I took up were most
unsatisfactory—people swindlers, or not respectable. And oh, the
deceit! I have seen a good deal of the seamy side this last week. The
deceit of the most promising people. My dear Lucy, the deceit!”
She nodded.
“My advice,” put in Mrs. Honeychurch, “is to have nothing to do with
Lucy and her decayed gentlewomen at all. I know the type. Preserve me
from people who have seen better days, and bring heirlooms with them
that make the house smell stuffy. It’s a sad thing, but I’d far rather
let to some one who is going up in the world than to someone who has
come down.”
“I think I follow you,” said Sir Harry; “but it is, as you say, a very
sad thing.”
“The Misses Alan aren’t that!” cried Lucy.
“Yes, they are,” said Cecil. “I haven’t met them but I should say they
were a highly unsuitable addition to the neighbourhood.”
“Don’t listen to him, Sir Harry—he’s tiresome.”
“It’s I who am tiresome,” he replied. “I oughtn’t to come with my
troubles to young people. But really I am so worried, and Lady Otway
will only say that I cannot be too careful, which is quite true, but no
real help.”
“Then may I write to my Misses Alan?”
“Please!”
But his eye wavered when Mrs. Honeychurch exclaimed:
“Beware! They are certain to have canaries. Sir Harry, beware of
canaries: they spit the seed out through the bars of the cages and then
the mice come. Beware of women altogether. Only let to a man.”
“Really—” he murmured gallantly, though he saw the wisdom of her
remark.
“Men don’t gossip over tea-cups. If they get drunk, there’s an end of
them—they lie down comfortably and sleep it off. If they’re vulgar,
they somehow keep it to themselves. It doesn’t spread so. Give me a
man—of course, provided he’s clean.”
Sir Harry blushed. Neither he nor Cecil enjoyed these open compliments
to their sex. Even the exclusion of the dirty did not leave them much
distinction. He suggested that Mrs. Honeychurch, if she had time,
should descend from the carriage and inspect “Cissie” for herself. She
was delighted. Nature had intended her to be poor and to live in such a
house. Domestic arrangements always attracted her, especially when they
were on a small scale.
Cecil pulled Lucy back as she followed her mother.
“Mrs. Honeychurch,” he said, “what if we two walk home and leave you?”
“Certainly!” was her cordial reply.
Sir Harry likewise seemed almost too glad to get rid of them. He beamed
at them knowingly, said, “Aha! young people, young people!” and then
hastened to unlock the house.
“Hopeless vulgarian!” exclaimed Cecil, almost before they were out of
earshot.
“Oh, Cecil!”
“I can’t help it. It would be wrong not to loathe that man.”
“He isn’t clever, but really he is nice.”
“No, Lucy, he stands for all that is bad in country life. In London he
would keep his place. He would belong to a brainless club, and his wife
would give brainless dinner parties. But down here he acts the little
god with his gentility, and his patronage, and his sham aesthetics, and
every one—even your mother—is taken in.”
“All that you say is quite true,” said Lucy, though she felt
discouraged. “I wonder whether—whether it matters so very much.”
“It matters supremely. Sir Harry is the essence of that garden-party.
Oh, goodness, how cross I feel! How I do hope he’ll get some vulgar
tenant in that villa—some woman so really vulgar that he’ll notice it.
_Gentlefolks!_ Ugh! with his bald head and retreating chin! But let’s
forget him.”
This Lucy was glad enough to do. If Cecil disliked Sir Harry Otway and