A Room with a View
greater and rather more dreadful than it should have done. She was glad
that a visit to Mrs. Vyse now fell due; the tenants moved into Cissie
Villa while she was safe in the London flat.
“Cecil—Cecil darling,” she whispered the evening she arrived, and crept
into his arms.
Cecil, too, became demonstrative. He saw that the needful fire had been
kindled in Lucy. At last she longed for attention, as a woman should,
and looked up to him because he was a man.
“So you do love me, little thing?” he murmured.
“Oh, Cecil, I do, I do! I don’t know what I should do without you.”
Several days passed. Then she had a letter from Miss Bartlett. A
coolness had sprung up between the two cousins, and they had not
corresponded since they parted in August. The coolness dated from what
Charlotte would call “the flight to Rome,” and in Rome it had increased
amazingly. For the companion who is merely uncongenial in the mediaeval
world becomes exasperating in the classical. Charlotte, unselfish in
the Forum, would have tried a sweeter temper than Lucy’s, and once, in
the Baths of Caracalla, they had doubted whether they could continue
their tour. Lucy had said she would join the Vyses—Mrs. Vyse was an
acquaintance of her mother, so there was no impropriety in the plan and
Miss Bartlett had replied that she was quite used to being abandoned
suddenly. Finally nothing happened; but the coolness remained, and, for
Lucy, was even increased when she opened the letter and read as
follows. It had been forwarded from Windy Corner.
“TUNBRIDGE WELLS,
“_September_.
“DEAREST LUCIA,
“I have news of you at last! Miss Lavish has been bicycling in your
parts, but was not sure whether a call would be welcome. Puncturing her
tire near Summer Street, and it being mended while she sat very
woebegone in that pretty churchyard, she saw to her astonishment, a
door open opposite and the younger Emerson man come out. He said his
father had just taken the house. He _said_ he did not know that you
lived in the neighbourhood (?). He never suggested giving Eleanor a cup
of tea. Dear Lucy, I am much worried, and I advise you to make a clean
breast of his past behaviour to your mother, Freddy, and Mr. Vyse, who
will forbid him to enter the house, etc. That was a great misfortune,
and I dare say you have told them already. Mr. Vyse is so sensitive. I
remember how I used to get on his nerves at Rome. I am very sorry about
it all, and should not feel easy unless I warned you.
“Believe me,
“Your anxious and loving cousin,
“CHARLOTTE.”
Lucy was much annoyed, and replied as follows:
“BEAUCHAMP MANSIONS, S.W.
“DEAR CHARLOTTE,
“Many thanks for your warning. When Mr. Emerson forgot himself on the
mountain, you made me promise not to tell mother, because you said she
would blame you for not being always with me. I have kept that promise,
and cannot possibly tell her now. I have said both to her and Cecil
that I met the Emersons at Florence, and that they are respectable
people—which I _do_ think—and the reason that he offered Miss Lavish no
tea was probably that he had none himself. She should have tried at the
Rectory. I cannot begin making a fuss at this stage. You must see that
it would be too absurd. If the Emersons heard I had complained of them,
they would think themselves of importance, which is exactly what they
are not. I like the old father, and look forward to seeing him again.
As for the son, I am sorry for _him_ when we meet, rather than for
myself. They are known to Cecil, who is very well and spoke of you the
other day. We expect to be married in January.
“Miss Lavish cannot have told you much about me, for I am not at Windy
Corner at all, but here. Please do not put ‘Private’ outside your
envelope again. No one opens my letters.
“Yours affectionately,
“L. M. HONEYCHURCH.”
Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we
cannot tell whether our secret is important or not. Were Lucy and her
cousin closeted with a great thing which would destroy Cecil’s life if
he discovered it, or with a little thing which he would laugh at? Miss
Bartlett suggested the former. Perhaps she was right. It had become a
great thing now. Left to herself, Lucy would have told her mother and
her lover ingenuously, and it would have remained a little thing.
“Emerson, not Harris”; it was only that a few weeks ago. She tried to
tell Cecil even now when they were laughing about some beautiful lady
who had smitten his heart at school. But her body behaved so
ridiculously that she stopped.
She and her secret stayed ten days longer in the deserted Metropolis
visiting the scenes they were to know so well later on. It did her no
harm, Cecil thought, to learn the framework of society, while society
itself was absent on the golf-links or the moors. The weather was cool,
and it did her no harm. In spite of the season, Mrs. Vyse managed to
scrape together a dinner-party consisting entirely of the grandchildren
of famous people. The food was poor, but the talk had a witty weariness
that impressed the girl. One was tired of everything, it seemed. One
launched into enthusiasms only to collapse gracefully, and pick oneself
up amid sympathetic laughter. In this atmosphere the Pension Bertolini
and Windy Corner appeared equally crude, and Lucy saw that her London
career would estrange her a little from all that she had loved in the
past.
The grandchildren asked her to play the piano.
She played Schumann. “Now some Beethoven” called Cecil, when the
querulous beauty of the music had died. She shook her head and played
Schumann again. The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It broke; it was
resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle to the grave. The
sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should
never be Art—throbbed in its disjected phrases, and made the nerves of
the audience throb. Not thus had she played on the little draped piano
at the Bertolini, and “Too much Schumann” was not the remark that Mr.
Beebe had passed to himself when she returned.
When the guests were gone, and Lucy had gone to bed, Mrs. Vyse paced up
and down the drawing-room, discussing her little party with her son.
Mrs. Vyse was a nice woman, but her personality, like many another’s,
had been swamped by London, for it needs a strong head to live among
many people. The too vast orb of her fate had crushed her; and she had
seen too many seasons, too many cities, too many men, for her
abilities, and even with Cecil she was mechanical, and behaved as if he
was not one son, but, so to speak, a filial crowd.
“Make Lucy one of us,” she said, looking round intelligently at the end
of each sentence, and straining her lips apart until she spoke again.
“Lucy is becoming wonderful—wonderful.”
“Her music always was wonderful.”
“Yes, but she is purging off the Honeychurch taint, most excellent
Honeychurches, but you know what I mean. She is not always quoting
servants, or asking one how the pudding is made.”
“Italy has done it.”
“Perhaps,” she murmured, thinking of the museum that represented Italy
to her. “It is just possible. Cecil, mind you marry her next January.
She is one of us already.”
“But her music!” he exclaimed. “The style of her! How she kept to
Schumann when, like an idiot, I wanted Beethoven. Schumann was right
for this evening. Schumann was the thing. Do you know, mother, I shall
have our children educated just like Lucy. Bring them up among honest
country folks for freshness, send them to Italy for subtlety, and
then—not till then—let them come to London. I don’t believe in these
London educations—” He broke off, remembering that he had had one
himself, and concluded, “At all events, not for women.”
“Make her one of us,” repeated Mrs. Vyse, and processed to bed.
As she was dozing off, a cry—the cry of nightmare—rang from Lucy’s
room. Lucy could ring for the maid if she liked but Mrs. Vyse thought
it kind to go herself. She found the girl sitting upright with her hand
on her cheek.
“I am so sorry, Mrs. Vyse—it is these dreams.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Just dreams.”
The elder lady smiled and kissed her, saying very distinctly: “You
should have heard us talking about you, dear. He admires you more than
ever. Dream of that.”
Lucy returned the kiss, still covering one cheek with her hand. Mrs.
Vyse recessed to bed. Cecil, whom the cry had not awoke, snored.
Darkness enveloped the flat.
Chapter XII
Twelfth Chapter
It was a Saturday afternoon, gay and brilliant after abundant rains,
and the spirit of youth dwelt in it, though the season was now autumn.
All that was gracious triumphed. As the motorcars passed through Summer
Street they raised only a little dust, and their stench was soon
dispersed by the wind and replaced by the scent of the wet birches or
of the pines. Mr. Beebe, at leisure for life’s amenities, leant over
his Rectory gate. Freddy leant by him, smoking a pendant pipe.
“Suppose we go and hinder those new people opposite for a little.”
“M’m.”
“They might amuse you.”
Freddy, whom his fellow-creatures never amused, suggested that the new
people might be feeling a bit busy, and so on, since they had only just
moved in.
“I suggested we should hinder them,” said Mr. Beebe. “They are worth
it.” Unlatching the gate, he sauntered over the triangular green to
Cissie Villa. “Hullo!” he cried, shouting in at the open door, through
which much squalor was visible.
A grave voice replied, “Hullo!”
“I’ve brought someone to see you.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
The passage was blocked by a wardrobe, which the removal men had failed
to carry up the stairs. Mr. Beebe edged round it with difficulty. The
sitting-room itself was blocked with books.
“Are these people great readers?” Freddy whispered. “Are they that
sort?”
“I fancy they know how to read—a rare accomplishment. What have they
got? Byron. Exactly. A Shropshire Lad. Never heard of it. The Way of
All Flesh. Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! dear George reads German.
Um—um—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on. Well, I suppose your
generation knows its own business, Honeychurch.”
“Mr. Beebe, look at that,” said Freddy in awestruck tones.
On the cornice of the wardrobe, the hand of an amateur had painted this
inscription: “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.”
“I know. Isn’t it jolly? I like that. I’m certain that’s the old man’s
doing.”
“How very odd of him!”
“Surely you agree?”
But Freddy was his mother’s son and felt that one ought not to go on
spoiling the furniture.
“Pictures!” the clergyman continued, scrambling about the room.
“Giotto—they got that at Florence, I’ll be bound.”
“The same as Lucy’s got.”
“Oh, by-the-by, did Miss Honeychurch enjoy London?”
“She came back yesterday.”
“I suppose she had a good time?”
“Yes, very,” said Freddy, taking up a book. “She and Cecil are thicker
than ever.”
“That’s good hearing.”
“I wish I wasn’t such a fool, Mr. Beebe.”
Mr. Beebe ignored the remark.
“Lucy used to be nearly as stupid as I am, but it’ll be very different
now, mother thinks. She will read all kinds of books.”
“So will you.”
“Only medical books. Not books that you can talk about afterwards.
Cecil is teaching Lucy Italian, and he says her playing is wonderful.
There are all kinds of things in it that we have never noticed. Cecil
says—”
“What on earth are those people doing upstairs? Emerson—we think we’ll
come another time.”
George ran down-stairs and pushed them into the room without speaking.
“Let me introduce Mr. Honeychurch, a neighbour.”
Then Freddy hurled one of the thunderbolts of youth. Perhaps he was
shy, perhaps he was friendly, or perhaps he thought that George’s face