A Room with a View
chooses. Freddy only told me because he knew she would not mind.”
“I know,” said Miss Bartlett civilly. “Yet Freddy ought not to have
told even you. One cannot be too careful.”
“Quite so.”
“I do implore absolute secrecy. A chance word to a chattering friend,
and—”
“Exactly.” He was used to these nervous old maids and to the
exaggerated importance that they attach to words. A rector lives in a
web of petty secrets, and confidences and warnings, and the wiser he is
the less he will regard them. He will change the subject, as did Mr.
Beebe, saying cheerfully: “Have you heard from any Bertolini people
lately? I believe you keep up with Miss Lavish. It is odd how we of
that pension, who seemed such a fortuitous collection, have been
working into one another’s lives. Two, three, four, six of us—no,
eight; I had forgotten the Emersons—have kept more or less in touch. We
must really give the Signora a testimonial.”
And, Miss Bartlett not favouring the scheme, they walked up the hill in
a silence which was only broken by the rector naming some fern. On the
summit they paused. The sky had grown wilder since he stood there last
hour, giving to the land a tragic greatness that is rare in Surrey.
Grey clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and
shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there
gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The
wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for
those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking,
broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural
that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery. Mr.
Beebe’s eyes rested on Windy Corner, where Lucy sat, practising Mozart.
No smile came to his lips, and, changing the subject again, he said:
“We shan’t have rain, but we shall have darkness, so let us hurry on.
The darkness last night was appalling.”
They reached the Beehive Tavern at about five o’clock. That amiable
hostelry possesses a verandah, in which the young and the unwise do
dearly love to sit, while guests of more mature years seek a pleasant
sanded room, and have tea at a table comfortably. Mr. Beebe saw that
Miss Bartlett would be cold if she sat out, and that Minnie would be
dull if she sat in, so he proposed a division of forces. They would
hand the child her food through the window. Thus he was incidentally
enabled to discuss the fortunes of Lucy.
“I have been thinking, Miss Bartlett,” he said, “and, unless you very
much object, I would like to reopen that discussion.” She bowed.
“Nothing about the past. I know little and care less about that; I am
absolutely certain that it is to your cousin’s credit. She has acted
loftily and rightly, and it is like her gentle modesty to say that we
think too highly of her. But the future. Seriously, what do you think
of this Greek plan?” He pulled out the letter again. “I don’t know
whether you overheard, but she wants to join the Miss Alans in their
mad career. It’s all—I can’t explain—it’s wrong.”
Miss Bartlett read the letter in silence, laid it down, seemed to
hesitate, and then read it again.
“I can’t see the point of it myself.”
To his astonishment, she replied: “There I cannot agree with you. In it
I spy Lucy’s salvation.”
“Really. Now, why?”
“She wanted to leave Windy Corner.”
“I know—but it seems so odd, so unlike her, so—I was going to
say—selfish.”
“It is natural, surely—after such painful scenes—that she should desire
a change.”
Here, apparently, was one of those points that the male intellect
misses. Mr. Beebe exclaimed: “So she says herself, and since another
lady agrees with her, I must own that I am partially convinced. Perhaps
she must have a change. I have no sisters or—and I don’t understand
these things. But why need she go as far as Greece?”
“You may well ask that,” replied Miss Bartlett, who was evidently
interested, and had almost dropped her evasive manner. “Why Greece?
(What is it, Minnie dear—jam?) Why not Tunbridge Wells? Oh, Mr. Beebe!
I had a long and most unsatisfactory interview with dear Lucy this
morning. I cannot help her. I will say no more. Perhaps I have already
said too much. I am not to talk. I wanted her to spend six months with
me at Tunbridge Wells, and she refused.”
Mr. Beebe poked at a crumb with his knife.
“But my feelings are of no importance. I know too well that I get on
Lucy’s nerves. Our tour was a failure. She wanted to leave Florence,
and when we got to Rome she did not want to be in Rome, and all the
time I felt that I was spending her mother’s money—.”
“Let us keep to the future, though,” interrupted Mr. Beebe. “I want
your advice.”
“Very well,” said Charlotte, with a choky abruptness that was new to
him, though familiar to Lucy. “I for one will help her to go to Greece.
Will you?”
Mr. Beebe considered.
“It is absolutely necessary,” she continued, lowering her veil and
whispering through it with a passion, an intensity, that surprised him.
“I know—I _know_.” The darkness was coming on, and he felt that this
odd woman really did know. “She must not stop here a moment, and we
must keep quiet till she goes. I trust that the servants know nothing.
Afterwards—but I may have said too much already. Only, Lucy and I are
helpless against Mrs. Honeychurch alone. If you help we may succeed.
Otherwise—”
“Otherwise—?”
“Otherwise,” she repeated as if the word held finality.
“Yes, I will help her,” said the clergyman, setting his jaw firm.
“Come, let us go back now, and settle the whole thing up.”
Miss Bartlett burst into florid gratitude. The tavern sign—a beehive
trimmed evenly with bees—creaked in the wind outside as she thanked
him. Mr. Beebe did not quite understand the situation; but then, he did
not desire to understand it, nor to jump to the conclusion of “another
man” that would have attracted a grosser mind. He only felt that Miss
Bartlett knew of some vague influence from which the girl desired to be
delivered, and which might well be clothed in the fleshly form. Its
very vagueness spurred him into knight-errantry. His belief in
celibacy, so reticent, so carefully concealed beneath his tolerance and
culture, now came to the surface and expanded like some delicate
flower. “They that marry do well, but they that refrain do better.” So
ran his belief, and he never heard that an engagement was broken off
but with a slight feeling of pleasure. In the case of Lucy, the feeling
was intensified through dislike of Cecil; and he was willing to go
further—to place her out of danger until she could confirm her
resolution of virginity. The feeling was very subtle and quite
undogmatic, and he never imparted it to any other of the characters in
this entanglement. Yet it existed, and it alone explains his action
subsequently, and his influence on the action of others. The compact
that he made with Miss Bartlett in the tavern, was to help not only
Lucy, but religion also.
They hurried home through a world of black and grey. He conversed on
indifferent topics: the Emersons’ need of a housekeeper; servants;
Italian servants; novels about Italy; novels with a purpose; could
literature influence life? Windy Corner glimmered. In the garden, Mrs.
Honeychurch, now helped by Freddy, still wrestled with the lives of her
flowers.
“It gets too dark,” she said hopelessly. “This comes of putting off. We
might have known the weather would break up soon; and now Lucy wants to
go to Greece. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
“Mrs. Honeychurch,” he said, “go to Greece she must. Come up to the
house and let’s talk it over. Do you, in the first place, mind her
breaking with Vyse?”
“Mr. Beebe, I’m thankful—simply thankful.”
“So am I,” said Freddy.
“Good. Now come up to the house.”
They conferred in the dining-room for half an hour.
Lucy would never have carried the Greek scheme alone. It was expensive
and dramatic—both qualities that her mother loathed. Nor would
Charlotte have succeeded. The honours of the day rested with Mr. Beebe.
By his tact and common sense, and by his influence as a clergyman—for a
clergyman who was not a fool influenced Mrs. Honeychurch greatly—he
bent her to their purpose, “I don’t see why Greece is necessary,” she
said; “but as you do, I suppose it is all right. It must be something I
can’t understand. Lucy! Let’s tell her. Lucy!”
“She is playing the piano,” Mr. Beebe said. He opened the door, and
heard the words of a song:
“Look not thou on beauty’s charming.”
“I didn’t know that Miss Honeychurch sang, too.”
“Sit thou still when kings are arming,
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens——”
“It’s a song that Cecil gave her. How odd girls are!”
“What’s that?” called Lucy, stopping short.
“All right, dear,” said Mrs. Honeychurch kindly. She went into the
drawing-room, and Mr. Beebe heard her kiss Lucy and say: “I am sorry I
was so cross about Greece, but it came on the top of the dahlias.”
Rather a hard voice said: “Thank you, mother; that doesn’t matter a
bit.”
“And you are right, too—Greece will be all right; you can go if the
Miss Alans will have you.”
“Oh, splendid! Oh, thank you!”
Mr. Beebe followed. Lucy still sat at the piano with her hands over the
keys. She was glad, but he had expected greater gladness. Her mother
bent over her. Freddy, to whom she had been singing, reclined on the
floor with his head against her, and an unlit pipe between his lips.
Oddly enough, the group was beautiful. Mr. Beebe, who loved the art of
the past, was reminded of a favourite theme, the _Santa Conversazione_,
in which people who care for one another are painted chatting together
about noble things—a theme neither sensual nor sensational, and
therefore ignored by the art of to-day. Why should Lucy want either to
marry or to travel when she had such friends at home?
“Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
Speak not when the people listens,”
she continued.
“Here’s Mr. Beebe.”
“Mr. Beebe knows my rude ways.”
“It’s a beautiful song and a wise one,” said he. “Go on.”
“It isn’t very good,” she said listlessly. “I forget why—harmony or
something.”
“I suspected it was unscholarly. It’s so beautiful.”
“The tune’s right enough,” said Freddy, “but the words are rotten. Why
throw up the sponge?”
“How stupidly you talk!” said his sister. The _Santa Conversazione_ was
broken up. After all, there was no reason that Lucy should talk about
Greece or thank him for persuading her mother, so he said good-bye.
Freddy lit his bicycle lamp for him in the porch, and with his usual
felicity of phrase, said: “This has been a day and a half.”
“Stop thine ear against the singer—”
“Wait a minute; she is finishing.”
“From the red gold keep thy finger;
Vacant heart and hand and eye
Easy live and quiet die.”
“I love weather like this,” said Freddy.
Mr. Beebe passed into it.
The two main facts were clear. She had behaved splendidly, and he had
helped her. He could not expect to master the details of so big a
change in a girl’s life. If here and there he was dissatisfied or
puzzled, he must acquiesce; she was choosing the better part.
“Vacant heart and hand and eye—”
Perhaps the song stated “the better part” rather too strongly. He half
fancied that the soaring accompaniment—which he did not lose in the
shout of the gale—really agreed with Freddy, and was gently criticizing
the words that it adorned:
“Vacant heart and hand and eye
Easy live and quiet die.”
However, for the fourth time Windy Corner lay poised below him—now as a
beacon in the roaring tides of darkness.
Chapter XIX
Lying to Mr. Emerson
The Miss Alans were found in their beloved temperance hotel near