A Room with a View
think so? Italy is just about as much as we can manage. Italy is
heroic, but Greece is godlike or devilish—I am not sure which, and in
either case absolutely out of our suburban focus. All right, Freddy—I
am not being clever, upon my word I am not—I took the idea from another
fellow; and give me those matches when you’ve done with them.” He lit a
cigarette, and went on talking to the two young men. “I was saying, if
our poor little Cockney lives must have a background, let it be
Italian. Big enough in all conscience. The ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel for me. There the contrast is just as much as I can realize. But
not the Parthenon, not the frieze of Phidias at any price; and here
comes the victoria.”
“You’re quite right,” said Cecil. “Greece is not for our little lot”;
and he got in. Freddy followed, nodding to the clergyman, whom he
trusted not to be pulling one’s leg, really. And before they had gone a
dozen yards he jumped out, and came running back for Vyse’s match-box,
which had not been returned. As he took it, he said: “I’m so glad you
only talked about books. Cecil’s hard hit. Lucy won’t marry him. If
you’d gone on about her, as you did about them, he might have broken
down.”
“But when—”
“Late last night. I must go.”
“Perhaps they won’t want me down there.”
“No—go on. Good-bye.”
“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Mr. Beebe to himself, and struck the saddle
of his bicycle approvingly, “It was the one foolish thing she ever did.
Oh, what a glorious riddance!” And, after a little thought, he
negotiated the slope into Windy Corner, light of heart. The house was
again as it ought to be—cut off forever from Cecil’s pretentious world.
He would find Miss Minnie down in the garden.
In the drawing-room Lucy was tinkling at a Mozart Sonata. He hesitated
a moment, but went down the garden as requested. There he found a
mournful company. It was a blustering day, and the wind had taken and
broken the dahlias. Mrs. Honeychurch, who looked cross, was tying them
up, while Miss Bartlett, unsuitably dressed, impeded her with offers of
assistance. At a little distance stood Minnie and the “garden-child,” a
minute importation, each holding either end of a long piece of bass.
“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Beebe? Gracious what a mess everything is! Look
at my scarlet pompoms, and the wind blowing your skirts about, and the
ground so hard that not a prop will stick in, and then the carriage
having to go out, when I had counted on having Powell, who—give
everyone their due—does tie up dahlias properly.”
Evidently Mrs. Honeychurch was shattered.
“How do you do?” said Miss Bartlett, with a meaning glance, as though
conveying that more than dahlias had been broken off by the autumn
gales.
“Here, Lennie, the bass,” cried Mrs. Honeychurch. The garden-child, who
did not know what bass was, stood rooted to the path with horror.
Minnie slipped to her uncle and whispered that everyone was very
disagreeable to-day, and that it was not her fault if dahlia-strings
would tear longways instead of across.
“Come for a walk with me,” he told her. “You have worried them as much
as they can stand. Mrs. Honeychurch, I only called in aimlessly. I
shall take her up to tea at the Beehive Tavern, if I may.”
“Oh, must you? Yes do.—Not the scissors, thank you, Charlotte, when
both my hands are full already—I’m perfectly certain that the orange
cactus will go before I can get to it.”
Mr. Beebe, who was an adept at relieving situations, invited Miss
Bartlett to accompany them to this mild festivity.
“Yes, Charlotte, I don’t want you—do go; there’s nothing to stop about
for, either in the house or out of it.”
Miss Bartlett said that her duty lay in the dahlia bed, but when she
had exasperated everyone, except Minnie, by a refusal, she turned round
and exasperated Minnie by an acceptance. As they walked up the garden,
the orange cactus fell, and Mr. Beebe’s last vision was of the
garden-child clasping it like a lover, his dark head buried in a wealth
of blossom.
“It is terrible, this havoc among the flowers,” he remarked.
“It is always terrible when the promise of months is destroyed in a
moment,” enunciated Miss Bartlett.
“Perhaps we ought to send Miss Honeychurch down to her mother. Or will
she come with us?”
“I think we had better leave Lucy to herself, and to her own pursuits.”
“They’re angry with Miss Honeychurch because she was late for
breakfast,” whispered Minnie, “and Floyd has gone, and Mr. Vyse has
gone, and Freddy won’t play with me. In fact, Uncle Arthur, the house
is not _at all_ what it was yesterday.”
“Don’t be a prig,” said her Uncle Arthur. “Go and put on your boots.”
He stepped into the drawing-room, where Lucy was still attentively
pursuing the Sonatas of Mozart. She stopped when he entered.
“How do you do? Miss Bartlett and Minnie are coming with me to tea at
the Beehive. Would you come too?”
“I don’t think I will, thank you.”
“No, I didn’t suppose you would care to much.”
Lucy turned to the piano and struck a few chords.
“How delicate those Sonatas are!” said Mr. Beebe, though at the bottom
of his heart, he thought them silly little things.
Lucy passed into Schumann.
“Miss Honeychurch!”
“Yes.”
“I met them on the hill. Your brother told me.”
“Oh he did?” She sounded annoyed. Mr. Beebe felt hurt, for he had
thought that she would like him to be told.
“I needn’t say that it will go no further.”
“Mother, Charlotte, Cecil, Freddy, you,” said Lucy, playing a note for
each person who knew, and then playing a sixth note.
“If you’ll let me say so, I am very glad, and I am certain that you
have done the right thing.”
“So I hoped other people would think, but they don’t seem to.”
“I could see that Miss Bartlett thought it unwise.”
“So does mother. Mother minds dreadfully.”
“I am very sorry for that,” said Mr. Beebe with feeling.
Mrs. Honeychurch, who hated all changes, did mind, but not nearly as
much as her daughter pretended, and only for the minute. It was really
a ruse of Lucy’s to justify her despondency—a ruse of which she was not
herself conscious, for she was marching in the armies of darkness.
“And Freddy minds.”
“Still, Freddy never hit it off with Vyse much, did he? I gathered that
he disliked the engagement, and felt it might separate him from you.”
“Boys are so odd.”
Minnie could be heard arguing with Miss Bartlett through the floor. Tea
at the Beehive apparently involved a complete change of apparel. Mr.
Beebe saw that Lucy—very properly—did not wish to discuss her action,
so after a sincere expression of sympathy, he said, “I have had an
absurd letter from Miss Alan. That was really what brought me over. I
thought it might amuse you all.”
“How delightful!” said Lucy, in a dull voice.
For the sake of something to do, he began to read her the letter. After
a few words her eyes grew alert, and soon she interrupted him with
“Going abroad? When do they start?”
“Next week, I gather.”
“Did Freddy say whether he was driving straight back?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Because I do hope he won’t go gossiping.”
So she did want to talk about her broken engagement. Always
complaisant, he put the letter away. But she, at once exclaimed in a
high voice, “Oh, do tell me more about the Miss Alans! How perfectly
splendid of them to go abroad!”
“I want them to start from Venice, and go in a cargo steamer down the
Illyrian coast!”
She laughed heartily. “Oh, delightful! I wish they’d take me.”
“Has Italy filled you with the fever of travel? Perhaps George Emerson
is right. He says that ‘Italy is only an euphuism for Fate.’”
“Oh, not Italy, but Constantinople. I have always longed to go to
Constantinople. Constantinople is practically Asia, isn’t it?”
Mr. Beebe reminded her that Constantinople was still unlikely, and that
the Miss Alans only aimed at Athens, “with Delphi, perhaps, if the
roads are safe.” But this made no difference to her enthusiasm. She had
always longed to go to Greece even more, it seemed. He saw, to his
surprise, that she was apparently serious.
“I didn’t realize that you and the Miss Alans were still such friends,
after Cissie Villa.”
“Oh, that’s nothing; I assure you Cissie Villa’s nothing to me; I would
give anything to go with them.”
“Would your mother spare you again so soon? You have scarcely been home
three months.”
“She _must_ spare me!” cried Lucy, in growing excitement. “I simply
_must_ go away. I have to.” She ran her fingers hysterically through
her hair. “Don’t you see that I _have_ to go away? I didn’t realize at
the time—and of course I want to see Constantinople so particularly.”
“You mean that since you have broken off your engagement you feel—”
“Yes, yes. I knew you’d understand.”
Mr. Beebe did not quite understand. Why could not Miss Honeychurch
repose in the bosom of her family? Cecil had evidently taken up the
dignified line, and was not going to annoy her. Then it struck him that
her family itself might be annoying. He hinted this to her, and she
accepted the hint eagerly.
“Yes, of course; to go to Constantinople until they are used to the
idea and everything has calmed down.”
“I am afraid it has been a bothersome business,” he said gently.
“No, not at all. Cecil was very kind indeed; only—I had better tell you
the whole truth, since you have heard a little—it was that he is so
masterful. I found that he wouldn’t let me go my own way. He would
improve me in places where I can’t be improved. Cecil won’t let a woman
decide for herself—in fact, he daren’t. What nonsense I do talk! But
that is the kind of thing.”
“It is what I gathered from my own observation of Mr. Vyse; it is what
I gather from all that I have known of you. I do sympathize and agree
most profoundly. I agree so much that you must let me make one little
criticism: Is it worth while rushing off to Greece?”
“But I must go somewhere!” she cried. “I have been worrying all the
morning, and here comes the very thing.” She struck her knees with
clenched fists, and repeated: “I must! And the time I shall have with
mother, and all the money she spent on me last spring. You all think
much too highly of me. I wish you weren’t so kind.” At this moment Miss
Bartlett entered, and her nervousness increased. “I must get away, ever
so far. I must know my own mind and where I want to go.”
“Come along; tea, tea, tea,” said Mr. Beebe, and bustled his guests out
of the front-door. He hustled them so quickly that he forgot his hat.
When he returned for it he heard, to his relief and surprise, the
tinkling of a Mozart Sonata.
“She is playing again,” he said to Miss Bartlett.
“Lucy can always play,” was the acid reply.
“One is very thankful that she has such a resource. She is evidently
much worried, as, of course, she ought to be. I know all about it. The
marriage was so near that it must have been a hard struggle before she
could wind herself up to speak.”
Miss Bartlett gave a kind of wriggle, and he prepared for a discussion.
He had never fathomed Miss Bartlett. As he had put it to himself at
Florence, “she might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of
meaning.” But she was so unsympathetic that she must be reliable. He
assumed that much, and he had no hesitation in discussing Lucy with
her. Minnie was fortunately collecting ferns.
She opened the discussion with: “We had much better let the matter
drop.”
“I wonder.”
“It is of the highest importance that there should be no gossip in
Summer Street. It would be _death_ to gossip about Mr. Vyse’s dismissal
at the present moment.”
Mr. Beebe raised his eyebrows. Death is a strong word—surely too
strong. There was no question of tragedy. He said: “Of course, Miss
Honeychurch will make the fact public in her own way, and when she