A Room with a View
Interrogation first.”
“What _do_ you mean? No, never mind what you mean. Don’t explain. He
looks forward to seeing you this afternoon. Do you play tennis? Do you
mind tennis on Sunday—?”
“George mind tennis on Sunday! George, after his education, distinguish
between Sunday—”
“Very well, George doesn’t mind tennis on Sunday. No more do I. That’s
settled. Mr. Emerson, if you could come with your son we should be so
pleased.”
He thanked her, but the walk sounded rather far; he could only potter
about in these days.
She turned to George: “And then he wants to give up his house to the
Miss Alans.”
“I know,” said George, and put his arm round his father’s neck. The
kindness that Mr. Beebe and Lucy had always known to exist in him came
out suddenly, like sunlight touching a vast landscape—a touch of the
morning sun? She remembered that in all his perversities he had never
spoken against affection.
Miss Bartlett approached.
“You know our cousin, Miss Bartlett,” said Mrs. Honeychurch pleasantly.
“You met her with my daughter in Florence.”
“Yes, indeed!” said the old man, and made as if he would come out of
the garden to meet the lady. Miss Bartlett promptly got into the
victoria. Thus entrenched, she emitted a formal bow. It was the pension
Bertolini again, the dining-table with the decanters of water and wine.
It was the old, old battle of the room with the view.
George did not respond to the bow. Like any boy, he blushed and was
ashamed; he knew that the chaperon remembered. He said: “I—I’ll come up
to tennis if I can manage it,” and went into the house. Perhaps
anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went
straight to her heart; men were not gods after all, but as human and as
clumsy as girls; even men might suffer from unexplained desires, and
need help. To one of her upbringing, and of her destination, the
weakness of men was a truth unfamiliar, but she had surmised it at
Florence, when George threw her photographs into the River Arno.
“George, don’t go,” cried his father, who thought it a great treat for
people if his son would talk to them. “George has been in such good
spirits today, and I am sure he will end by coming up this afternoon.”
Lucy caught her cousin’s eye. Something in its mute appeal made her
reckless. “Yes,” she said, raising her voice, “I do hope he will.” Then
she went to the carriage and murmured, “The old man hasn’t been told; I
knew it was all right.” Mrs. Honeychurch followed her, and they drove
away.
Satisfactory that Mr. Emerson had not been told of the Florence
escapade; yet Lucy’s spirits should not have leapt up as if she had
sighted the ramparts of heaven. Satisfactory; yet surely she greeted it
with disproportionate joy. All the way home the horses’ hoofs sang a
tune to her: “He has not told, he has not told.” Her brain expanded the
melody: “He has not told his father—to whom he tells all things. It was
not an exploit. He did not laugh at me when I had gone.” She raised her
hand to her cheek. “He does not love me. No. How terrible if he did!
But he has not told. He will not tell.”
She longed to shout the words: “It is all right. It’s a secret between
us two for ever. Cecil will never hear.” She was even glad that Miss
Bartlett had made her promise secrecy, that last dark evening at
Florence, when they had knelt packing in his room. The secret, big or
little, was guarded.
Only three English people knew of it in the world. Thus she interpreted
her joy. She greeted Cecil with unusual radiance, because she felt so
safe. As he helped her out of the carriage, she said:
“The Emersons have been so nice. George Emerson has improved
enormously.”
“How are my protégés?” asked Cecil, who took no real interest in them,
and had long since forgotten his resolution to bring them to Windy
Corner for educational purposes.
“Protégés!” she exclaimed with some warmth. For the only relationship
which Cecil conceived was feudal: that of protector and protected. He
had no glimpse of the comradeship after which the girl’s soul yearned.
“You shall see for yourself how your protégés are. George Emerson is
coming up this afternoon. He is a most interesting man to talk to. Only
don’t—” She nearly said, “Don’t protect him.” But the bell was ringing
for lunch, and, as often happened, Cecil had paid no great attention to
her remarks. Charm, not argument, was to be her forte.
Lunch was a cheerful meal. Generally Lucy was depressed at meals. Some
one had to be soothed—either Cecil or Miss Bartlett or a Being not
visible to the mortal eye—a Being who whispered to her soul: “It will
not last, this cheerfulness. In January you must go to London to
entertain the grandchildren of celebrated men.” But to-day she felt she
had received a guarantee. Her mother would always sit there, her
brother here. The sun, though it had moved a little since the morning,
would never be hidden behind the western hills. After luncheon they
asked her to play. She had seen Gluck’s Armide that year, and played
from memory the music of the enchanted garden—the music to which Renaud
approaches, beneath the light of an eternal dawn, the music that never
gains, never wanes, but ripples for ever like the tideless seas of
fairyland. Such music is not for the piano, and her audience began to
get restive, and Cecil, sharing the discontent, called out: “Now play
us the other garden—the one in Parsifal.”
She closed the instrument.
“Not very dutiful,” said her mother’s voice.
Fearing that she had offended Cecil, she turned quickly round. There
George was. He had crept in without interrupting her.
“Oh, I had no idea!” she exclaimed, getting very red; and then, without
a word of greeting, she reopened the piano. Cecil should have the
Parsifal, and anything else that he liked.
“Our performer has changed her mind,” said Miss Bartlett, perhaps
implying, she will play the music to Mr. Emerson. Lucy did not know
what to do nor even what she wanted to do. She played a few bars of the
Flower Maidens’ song very badly and then she stopped.
“I vote tennis,” said Freddy, disgusted at the scrappy entertainment.
“Yes, so do I.” Once more she closed the unfortunate piano. “I vote you
have a men’s four.”
“All right.”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Cecil. “I will not spoil the set.” He
never realized that it may be an act of kindness in a bad player to
make up a fourth.
“Oh, come along Cecil. I’m bad, Floyd’s rotten, and so I dare say’s
Emerson.”
George corrected him: “I am not bad.”
One looked down one’s nose at this. “Then certainly I won’t play,” said
Cecil, while Miss Bartlett, under the impression that she was snubbing
George, added: “I agree with you, Mr. Vyse. You had much better not
play. Much better not.”
Minnie, rushing in where Cecil feared to tread, announced that she
would play. “I shall miss every ball anyway, so what does it matter?”
But Sunday intervened and stamped heavily upon the kindly suggestion.
“Then it will have to be Lucy,” said Mrs. Honeychurch; “you must fall
back on Lucy. There is no other way out of it. Lucy, go and change your
frock.”
Lucy’s Sabbath was generally of this amphibious nature. She kept it
without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in
the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was
sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything
up before she married him.
Mr. Floyd was her partner. She liked music, but how much better tennis
seemed. How much better to run about in comfortable clothes than to sit
at the piano and feel girt under the arms. Once more music appeared to
her the employment of a child. George served, and surprised her by his
anxiety to win. She remembered how he had sighed among the tombs at
Santa Croce because things wouldn’t fit; how after the death of that
obscure Italian he had leant over the parapet by the Arno and said to
her: “I shall want to live, I tell you.” He wanted to live now, to win
at tennis, to stand for all he was worth in the sun—the sun which had
begun to decline and was shining in her eyes; and he did win.
Ah, how beautiful the Weald looked! The hills stood out above its
radiance, as Fiesole stands above the Tuscan Plain, and the South
Downs, if one chose, were the mountains of Carrara. She might be
forgetting her Italy, but she was noticing more things in her England.
One could play a new game with the view, and try to find in its
innumerable folds some town or village that would do for Florence. Ah,
how beautiful the Weald looked!
But now Cecil claimed her. He chanced to be in a lucid critical mood,
and would not sympathize with exaltation. He had been rather a nuisance
all through the tennis, for the novel that he was reading was so bad
that he was obliged to read it aloud to others. He would stroll round
the precincts of the court and call out: “I say, listen to this, Lucy.
Three split infinitives.”
“Dreadful!” said Lucy, and missed her stroke. When they had finished
their set, he still went on reading; there was some murder scene, and
really everyone must listen to it. Freddy and Mr. Floyd were obliged to
hunt for a lost ball in the laurels, but the other two acquiesced.
“The scene is laid in Florence.”
“What fun, Cecil! Read away. Come, Mr. Emerson, sit down after all your
energy.” She had “forgiven” George, as she put it, and she made a point
of being pleasant to him.
He jumped over the net and sat down at her feet asking: “You—and are
you tired?”
“Of course I’m not!”
“Do you mind being beaten?”
She was going to answer, “No,” when it struck her that she did mind, so
she answered, “Yes.” She added merrily, “I don’t see _you’re_ such a
splendid player, though. The light was behind you, and it was in my
eyes.”
“I never said I was.”
“Why, you did!”
“You didn’t attend.”
“You said—oh, don’t go in for accuracy at this house. We all
exaggerate, and we get very angry with people who don’t.”
“‘The scene is laid in Florence,’” repeated Cecil, with an upward note.
Lucy recollected herself.
“‘Sunset. Leonora was speeding—’”
Lucy interrupted. “Leonora? Is Leonora the heroine? Who’s the book by?”
“Joseph Emery Prank. ‘Sunset. Leonora speeding across the square. Pray
the saints she might not arrive too late. Sunset—the sunset of Italy.
Under Orcagna’s Loggia—the Loggia de’ Lanzi, as we sometimes call it
now—’”
Lucy burst into laughter. “‘Joseph Emery Prank’ indeed! Why it’s Miss
Lavish! It’s Miss Lavish’s novel, and she’s publishing it under
somebody else’s name.”
“Who may Miss Lavish be?”
“Oh, a dreadful person—Mr. Emerson, you remember Miss Lavish?”
Excited by her pleasant afternoon, she clapped her hands.
George looked up. “Of course I do. I saw her the day I arrived at
Summer Street. It was she who told me that you lived here.”
“Weren’t you pleased?” She meant “to see Miss Lavish,” but when he bent
down to the grass without replying, it struck her that she could mean
something else. She watched his head, which was almost resting against
her knee, and she thought that the ears were reddening. “No wonder the
novel’s bad,” she added. “I never liked Miss Lavish. But I suppose one
ought to read it as one’s met her.”
“All modern books are bad,” said Cecil, who was annoyed at her
inattention, and vented his annoyance on literature. “Every one writes
for money in these days.”
“Oh, Cecil—!”
“It is so. I will inflict Joseph Emery Prank on you no longer.”
Cecil, this afternoon seemed such a twittering sparrow. The ups and
downs in his voice were noticeable, but they did not affect her. She
had dwelt amongst melody and movement, and her nerves refused to answer
to the clang of his. Leaving him to be annoyed, she gazed at the black