A Room with a View
He held up his hand. “But you must not scold him.”
Lucy turned her back, and began to look at Mr. Beebe’s books.
“I taught him,” he quavered, “to trust in love. I said: ‘When love
comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion
is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever
really understand.’” He sighed: “True, everlastingly true, though my
day is over, and though there is the result. Poor boy! He is so sorry!
He said he knew it was madness when you brought your cousin in; that
whatever you felt you did not mean. Yet”—his voice gathered strength:
he spoke out to make certain—“Miss Honeychurch, do you remember Italy?”
Lucy selected a book—a volume of Old Testament commentaries. Holding it
up to her eyes, she said: “I have no wish to discuss Italy or any
subject connected with your son.”
“But you do remember it?”
“He has misbehaved himself from the first.”
“I only was told that he loved you last Sunday. I never could judge
behaviour. I—I—suppose he has.”
Feeling a little steadier, she put the book back and turned round to
him. His face was drooping and swollen, but his eyes, though they were
sunken deep, gleamed with a child’s courage.
“Why, he has behaved abominably,” she said. “I am glad he is sorry. Do
you know what he did?”
“Not ‘abominably,’” was the gentle correction. “He only tried when he
should not have tried. You have all you want, Miss Honeychurch: you are
going to marry the man you love. Do not go out of George’s life saying
he is abominable.”
“No, of course,” said Lucy, ashamed at the reference to Cecil.
“‘Abominable’ is much too strong. I am sorry I used it about your son.
I think I will go to church, after all. My mother and my cousin have
gone. I shall not be so very late—”
“Especially as he has gone under,” he said quietly.
“What was that?”
“Gone under naturally.” He beat his palms together in silence; his head
fell on his chest.
“I don’t understand.”
“As his mother did.”
“But, Mr. Emerson—_Mr. Emerson_—what are you talking about?”
“When I wouldn’t have George baptized,” said he.
Lucy was frightened.
“And she agreed that baptism was nothing, but he caught that fever when
he was twelve and she turned round. She thought it a judgement.” He
shuddered. “Oh, horrible, when we had given up that sort of thing and
broken away from her parents. Oh, horrible—worst of all—worse than
death, when you have made a little clearing in the wilderness, planted
your little garden, let in your sunlight, and then the weeds creep in
again! A judgement! And our boy had typhoid because no clergyman had
dropped water on him in church! Is it possible, Miss Honeychurch? Shall
we slip back into the darkness for ever?”
“I don’t know,” gasped Lucy. “I don’t understand this sort of thing. I
was not meant to understand it.”
“But Mr. Eager—he came when I was out, and acted according to his
principles. I don’t blame him or any one... but by the time George was
well she was ill. He made her think about sin, and she went under
thinking about it.”
It was thus that Mr. Emerson had murdered his wife in the sight of God.
“Oh, how terrible!” said Lucy, forgetting her own affairs at last.
“He was not baptized,” said the old man. “I did hold firm.” And he
looked with unwavering eyes at the rows of books, as if—at what
cost!—he had won a victory over them. “My boy shall go back to the
earth untouched.”
She asked whether young Mr. Emerson was ill.
“Oh—last Sunday.” He started into the present. “George last Sunday—no,
not ill: just gone under. He is never ill. But he is his mother’s son.
Her eyes were his, and she had that forehead that I think so beautiful,
and he will not think it worth while to live. It was always touch and
go. He will live; but he will not think it worth while to live. He will
never think anything worth while. You remember that church at
Florence?”
Lucy did remember, and how she had suggested that George should collect
postage stamps.
“After you left Florence—horrible. Then we took the house here, and he
goes bathing with your brother, and became better. You saw him
bathing?”
“I am so sorry, but it is no good discussing this affair. I am deeply
sorry about it.”
“Then there came something about a novel. I didn’t follow it at all; I
had to hear so much, and he minded telling me; he finds me too old. Ah,
well, one must have failures. George comes down to-morrow, and takes me
up to his London rooms. He can’t bear to be about here, and I must be
where he is.”
“Mr. Emerson,” cried the girl, “don’t leave at least, not on my
account. I am going to Greece. Don’t leave your comfortable house.”
It was the first time her voice had been kind and he smiled. “How good
everyone is! And look at Mr. Beebe housing me—came over this morning
and heard I was going! Here I am so comfortable with a fire.”
“Yes, but you won’t go back to London. It’s absurd.”
“I must be with George; I must make him care to live, and down here he
can’t. He says the thought of seeing you and of hearing about you—I am
not justifying him: I am only saying what has happened.”
“Oh, Mr. Emerson”—she took hold of his hand—“you mustn’t. I’ve been
bother enough to the world by now. I can’t have you moving out of your
house when you like it, and perhaps losing money through it—all on my
account. You must stop! I am just going to Greece.”
“All the way to Greece?”
Her manner altered.
“To Greece?”
“So you must stop. You won’t talk about this business, I know. I can
trust you both.”
“Certainly you can. We either have you in our lives, or leave you to
the life that you have chosen.”
“I shouldn’t want—”
“I suppose Mr. Vyse is very angry with George? No, it was wrong of
George to try. We have pushed our beliefs too far. I fancy that we
deserve sorrow.”
She looked at the books again—black, brown, and that acrid theological
blue. They surrounded the visitors on every side; they were piled on
the tables, they pressed against the very ceiling. To Lucy who could
not see that Mr. Emerson was profoundly religious, and differed from
Mr. Beebe chiefly by his acknowledgment of passion—it seemed dreadful
that the old man should crawl into such a sanctum, when he was unhappy,
and be dependent on the bounty of a clergyman.
More certain than ever that she was tired, he offered her his chair.
“No, please sit still. I think I will sit in the carriage.”
“Miss Honeychurch, you do sound tired.”
“Not a bit,” said Lucy, with trembling lips.
“But you are, and there’s a look of George about you. And what were you
saying about going abroad?”
She was silent.
“Greece”—and she saw that he was thinking the word over—“Greece; but
you were to be married this year, I thought.”
“Not till January, it wasn’t,” said Lucy, clasping her hands. Would she
tell an actual lie when it came to the point?
“I suppose that Mr. Vyse is going with you. I hope—it isn’t because
George spoke that you are both going?”
“No.”
“I hope that you will enjoy Greece with Mr. Vyse.”
“Thank you.”
At that moment Mr. Beebe came back from church. His cassock was covered
with rain. “That’s all right,” he said kindly. “I counted on you two
keeping each other company. It’s pouring again. The entire
congregation, which consists of your cousin, your mother, and my
mother, stands waiting in the church, till the carriage fetches it. Did
Powell go round?”
“I think so; I’ll see.”
“No—of course, I’ll see. How are the Miss Alans?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Did you tell Mr. Emerson about Greece?”
“I—I did.”
“Don’t you think it very plucky of her, Mr. Emerson, to undertake the
two Miss Alans? Now, Miss Honeychurch, go back—keep warm. I think three
is such a courageous number to go travelling.” And he hurried off to
the stables.
“He is not going,” she said hoarsely. “I made a slip. Mr. Vyse does
stop behind in England.”
Somehow it was impossible to cheat this old man. To George, to Cecil,
she would have lied again; but he seemed so near the end of things, so
dignified in his approach to the gulf, of which he gave one account,
and the books that surrounded him another, so mild to the rough paths
that he had traversed, that the true chivalry—not the worn-out chivalry
of sex, but the true chivalry that all the young may show to all the
old—awoke in her, and, at whatever risk, she told him that Cecil was
not her companion to Greece. And she spoke so seriously that the risk
became a certainty, and he, lifting his eyes, said: “You are leaving
him? You are leaving the man you love?”
“I—I had to.”
“Why, Miss Honeychurch, why?”
Terror came over her, and she lied again. She made the long, convincing
speech that she had made to Mr. Beebe, and intended to make to the
world when she announced that her engagement was no more. He heard her
in silence, and then said: “My dear, I am worried about you. It seems
to me”—dreamily; she was not alarmed—“that you are in a muddle.”
She shook her head.
“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the
world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so
dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the
things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I
used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know
better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware
of muddle. Do you remember in that church, when you pretended to be
annoyed with me and weren’t? Do you remember before, when you refused
the room with the view? Those were muddles—little, but ominous—and I am
fearing that you are in one now.” She was silent. “Don’t trust me, Miss
Honeychurch. Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.” She was
still silent. “‘Life’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance
on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’
I think he puts it well. Man has to pick up the use of his functions as
he goes along—especially the function of Love.” Then he burst out
excitedly; “That’s it; that’s what I mean. You love George!” And after
his long preamble, the three words burst against Lucy like waves from
the open sea.
“But you do,” he went on, not waiting for contradiction. “You love the
boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other
word expresses it. You won’t marry the other man for his sake.”
“How dare you!” gasped Lucy, with the roaring of waters in her ears.
“Oh, how like a man!—I mean, to suppose that a woman is always thinking
about a man.”
“But you are.”
She summoned physical disgust.
“You’re shocked, but I mean to shock you. It’s the only hope at times.
I can reach you no other way. You must marry, or your life will be
wasted. You have gone too far to retreat. I have no time for the
tenderness, and the comradeship, and the poetry, and the things that
really matter, and _for which_ you marry. I know that, with George, you
will find them, and that you love him. Then be his wife. He is already
part of you. Though you fly to Greece, and never see him again, or
forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die.
It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You
can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out
of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is
eternal.”
Lucy began to cry with anger, and though her anger passed away soon,
her tears remained.
“I only wish poets would say this, too: love is of the body; not the
body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we
confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul! Your
soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with