A Room with a View
“No _harm_, of course. But we could not be under an obligation.”
“He is rather a peculiar man.” Again he hesitated, and then said
gently: “I think he would not take advantage of your acceptance, nor
expect you to show gratitude. He has the merit—if it is one—of saying
exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks
you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an
obligation than he thought of being polite. It is so difficult—at
least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.”
Lucy was pleased, and said: “I was hoping that he was nice; I do so
always hope that people will be nice.”
“I think he is; nice and tiresome. I differ from him on almost every
point of any importance, and so, I expect—I may say I hope—you will
differ. But his is a type one disagrees with rather than deplores. When
he first came here he not unnaturally put people’s backs up. He has no
tact and no manners—I don’t mean by that that he has bad manners—and he
will not keep his opinions to himself. We nearly complained about him
to our depressing Signora, but I am glad to say we thought better of
it.”
“Am I to conclude,” said Miss Bartlett, “that he is a Socialist?”
Mr. Beebe accepted the convenient word, not without a slight twitching
of the lips.
“And presumably he has brought up his son to be a Socialist, too?”
“I hardly know George, for he hasn’t learnt to talk yet. He seems a
nice creature, and I think he has brains. Of course, he has all his
father’s mannerisms, and it is quite possible that he, too, may be a
Socialist.”
“Oh, you relieve me,” said Miss Bartlett. “So you think I ought to have
accepted their offer? You feel I have been narrow-minded and
suspicious?”
“Not at all,” he answered; “I never suggested that.”
“But ought I not to apologize, at all events, for my apparent
rudeness?”
He replied, with some irritation, that it would be quite unnecessary,
and got up from his seat to go to the smoking-room.
“Was I a bore?” said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had disappeared. “Why
didn’t you talk, Lucy? He prefers young people, I’m sure. I do hope I
haven’t monopolized him. I hoped you would have him all the evening, as
well as all dinner-time.”
“He is nice,” exclaimed Lucy. “Just what I remember. He seems to see
good in everyone. No one would take him for a clergyman.”
“My dear Lucia—”
“Well, you know what I mean. And you know how clergymen generally
laugh; Mr. Beebe laughs just like an ordinary man.”
“Funny girl! How you do remind me of your mother. I wonder if she will
approve of Mr. Beebe.”
“I’m sure she will; and so will Freddy.”
“I think everyone at Windy Corner will approve; it is the fashionable
world. I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind
the times.”
“Yes,” said Lucy despondently.
There was a haze of disapproval in the air, but whether the disapproval
was of herself, or of Mr. Beebe, or of the fashionable world at Windy
Corner, or of the narrow world at Tunbridge Wells, she could not
determine. She tried to locate it, but as usual she blundered. Miss
Bartlett sedulously denied disapproving of any one, and added “I am
afraid you are finding me a very depressing companion.”
And the girl again thought: “I must have been selfish or unkind; I must
be more careful. It is so dreadful for Charlotte, being poor.”
Fortunately one of the little old ladies, who for some time had been
smiling very benignly, now approached and asked if she might be allowed
to sit where Mr. Beebe had sat. Permission granted, she began to
chatter gently about Italy, the plunge it had been to come there, the
gratifying success of the plunge, the improvement in her sister’s
health, the necessity of closing the bed-room windows at night, and of
thoroughly emptying the water-bottles in the morning. She handled her
subjects agreeably, and they were, perhaps, more worthy of attention
than the high discourse upon Guelfs and Ghibellines which was
proceeding tempestuously at the other end of the room. It was a real
catastrophe, not a mere episode, that evening of hers at Venice, when
she had found in her bedroom something that is one worse than a flea,
though one better than something else.
“But here you are as safe as in England. Signora Bertolini is so
English.”
“Yet our rooms smell,” said poor Lucy. “We dread going to bed.”
“Ah, then you look into the court.” She sighed. “If only Mr. Emerson
was more tactful! We were so sorry for you at dinner.”
“I think he was meaning to be kind.”
“Undoubtedly he was,” said Miss Bartlett.
“Mr. Beebe has just been scolding me for my suspicious nature. Of
course, I was holding back on my cousin’s account.”
“Of course,” said the little old lady; and they murmured that one could
not be too careful with a young girl.
Lucy tried to look demure, but could not help feeling a great fool. No
one was careful with her at home; or, at all events, she had not
noticed it.
“About old Mr. Emerson—I hardly know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have
you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most
indelicate, and yet at the same time—beautiful?”
“Beautiful?” said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. “Are not beauty
and delicacy the same?”
“So one would have thought,” said the other helplessly. “But things are
so difficult, I sometimes think.”
She proceeded no further into things, for Mr. Beebe reappeared, looking
extremely pleasant.
“Miss Bartlett,” he cried, “it’s all right about the rooms. I’m so
glad. Mr. Emerson was talking about it in the smoking-room, and knowing
what I did, I encouraged him to make the offer again. He has let me
come and ask you. He would be so pleased.”
“Oh, Charlotte,” cried Lucy to her cousin, “we must have the rooms now.
The old man is just as nice and kind as he can be.”
Miss Bartlett was silent.
“I fear,” said Mr. Beebe, after a pause, “that I have been officious. I
must apologize for my interference.”
Gravely displeased, he turned to go. Not till then did Miss Bartlett
reply: “My own wishes, dearest Lucy, are unimportant in comparison with
yours. It would be hard indeed if I stopped you doing as you liked at
Florence, when I am only here through your kindness. If you wish me to
turn these gentlemen out of their rooms, I will do it. Would you then,
Mr. Beebe, kindly tell Mr. Emerson that I accept his kind offer, and
then conduct him to me, in order that I may thank him personally?”
She raised her voice as she spoke; it was heard all over the
drawing-room, and silenced the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. The
clergyman, inwardly cursing the female sex, bowed, and departed with
her message.
“Remember, Lucy, I alone am implicated in this. I do not wish the
acceptance to come from you. Grant me that, at all events.”
Mr. Beebe was back, saying rather nervously:
“Mr. Emerson is engaged, but here is his son instead.”
The young man gazed down on the three ladies, who felt seated on the
floor, so low were their chairs.
“My father,” he said, “is in his bath, so you cannot thank him
personally. But any message given by you to me will be given by me to
him as soon as he comes out.”
Miss Bartlett was unequal to the bath. All her barbed civilities came
forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable triumph to
the delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight of Lucy.
“Poor young man!” said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had gone.
“How angry he is with his father about the rooms! It is all he can do
to keep polite.”
“In half an hour or so your rooms will be ready,” said Mr. Beebe. Then
looking rather thoughtfully at the two cousins, he retired to his own
rooms, to write up his philosophic diary.
“Oh, dear!” breathed the little old lady, and shuddered as if all the
winds of heaven had entered the apartment. “Gentlemen sometimes do not
realize—” Her voice faded away, but Miss Bartlett seemed to understand
and a conversation developed, in which gentlemen who did not thoroughly
realize played a principal part. Lucy, not realizing either, was
reduced to literature. Taking up Baedeker’s Handbook to Northern Italy,
she committed to memory the most important dates of Florentine History.
For she was determined to enjoy herself on the morrow. Thus the
half-hour crept profitably away, and at last Miss Bartlett rose with a
sigh, and said:
“I think one might venture now. No, Lucy, do not stir. I will
superintend the move.”
“How you do do everything,” said Lucy.
“Naturally, dear. It is my affair.”
“But I would like to help you.”
“No, dear.”
Charlotte’s energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all her
life, but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing herself. So
Lucy felt, or strove to feel. And yet—there was a rebellious spirit in
her which wondered whether the acceptance might not have been less
delicate and more beautiful. At all events, she entered her own room
without any feeling of joy.
“I want to explain,” said Miss Bartlett, “why it is that I have taken
the largest room. Naturally, of course, I should have given it to you;
but I happen to know that it belongs to the young man, and I was sure
your mother would not like it.”
Lucy was bewildered.
“If you are to accept a favour it is more suitable you should be under
an obligation to his father than to him. I am a woman of the world, in
my small way, and I know where things lead to. However, Mr. Beebe is a
guarantee of a sort that they will not presume on this.”
“Mother wouldn’t mind I’m sure,” said Lucy, but again had the sense of
larger and unsuspected issues.
Miss Bartlett only sighed, and enveloped her in a protecting embrace as
she wished her good-night. It gave Lucy the sensation of a fog, and
when she reached her own room she opened the window and breathed the
clean night air, thinking of the kind old man who had enabled her to
see the lights dancing in the Arno and the cypresses of San Miniato,
and the foot-hills of the Apennines, black against the rising moon.
Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and locked the
door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see where the cupboards
led, and whether there were any oubliettes or secret entrances. It was
then that she saw, pinned up over the washstand, a sheet of paper on
which was scrawled an enormous note of interrogation. Nothing more.
“What does it mean?” she thought, and she examined it carefully by the
light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually became menacing,
obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized with an impulse to
destroy it, but fortunately remembered that she had no right to do so,
since it must be the property of young Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it
carefully, and put it between two pieces of blotting-paper to keep it
clean for him. Then she completed her inspection of the room, sighed
heavily according to her habit, and went to bed.
Chapter II
In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright
bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are
not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini
sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too,
to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar
fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees
and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling
against the embankment of the road.
Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy
foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for
some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the
window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms