A Room with a View
and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By
understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be
good for both of you.”
To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.
“I only know what it is that’s wrong with him; not why it is.”
“And what is it?” asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.
“The old trouble; things won’t fit.”
“What things?”
“The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don’t.”
“Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?”
In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting
poetry, he said:
“‘From far, from eve and morning,
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I’
George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that
we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life
is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But
why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and
work and rejoice. I don’t believe in this world sorrow.”
Miss Honeychurch assented.
“Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of
the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a
Yes.”
Suddenly she laughed; surely one ought to laugh. A young man melancholy
because the universe wouldn’t fit, because life was a tangle or a wind,
or a Yes, or something!
“I’m very sorry,” she cried. “You’ll think me unfeeling, but—but—” Then
she became matronly. “Oh, but your son wants employment. Has he no
particular hobby? Why, I myself have worries, but I can generally
forget them at the piano; and collecting stamps did no end of good for
my brother. Perhaps Italy bores him; you ought to try the Alps or the
Lakes.”
The old man’s face saddened, and he touched her gently with his hand.
This did not alarm her; she thought that her advice had impressed him
and that he was thanking her for it. Indeed, he no longer alarmed her
at all; she regarded him as a kind thing, but quite silly. Her feelings
were as inflated spiritually as they had been an hour ago esthetically,
before she lost Baedeker. The dear George, now striding towards them
over the tombstones, seemed both pitiable and absurd. He approached,
his face in the shadow. He said:
“Miss Bartlett.”
“Oh, good gracious me!” said Lucy, suddenly collapsing and again seeing
the whole of life in a new perspective. “Where? Where?”
“In the nave.”
“I see. Those gossiping little Miss Alans must have—” She checked
herself.
“Poor girl!” exploded Mr. Emerson. “Poor girl!”
She could not let this pass, for it was just what she was feeling
herself.
“Poor girl? I fail to understand the point of that remark. I think
myself a very fortunate girl, I assure you. I’m thoroughly happy, and
having a splendid time. Pray don’t waste time mourning over _me_.
There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to
invent it. Good-bye. Thank you both so much for all your kindness. Ah,
yes! there does come my cousin. A delightful morning! Santa Croce is a
wonderful church.”
She joined her cousin.
Chapter III
Music, Violets, and the Letter “S”
It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered
a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer
either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept
those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The
commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without
effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and
thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate
his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions.
Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom. Lucy
had done so never.
She was no dazzling _exécutante;_ her runs were not at all like strings
of pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one
of her age and situation. Nor was she the passionate young lady, who
performs so tragically on a summer’s evening with the window open.
Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped
between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the
pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was
great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what
and over what—that is more than the words of daily life can tell us.
But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can
gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and
Lucy had decided that they should triumph.
A very wet afternoon at the Bertolini permitted her to do the thing she
really liked, and after lunch she opened the little draped piano. A few
people lingered round and praised her playing, but finding that she
made no reply, dispersed to their rooms to write up their diaries or to
sleep. She took no notice of Mr. Emerson looking for his son, nor of
Miss Bartlett looking for Miss Lavish, nor of Miss Lavish looking for
her cigarette-case. Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by
the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by
touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.
Mr. Beebe, sitting unnoticed in the window, pondered this illogical
element in Miss Honeychurch, and recalled the occasion at Tunbridge
Wells when he had discovered it. It was at one of those entertainments
where the upper classes entertain the lower. The seats were filled with
a respectful audience, and the ladies and gentlemen of the parish,
under the auspices of their vicar, sang, or recited, or imitated the
drawing of a champagne cork. Among the promised items was “Miss
Honeychurch. Piano. Beethoven,” and Mr. Beebe was wondering whether it
would be Adelaida, or the march of The Ruins of Athens, when his
composure was disturbed by the opening bars of Opus 111. He was in
suspense all through the introduction, for not until the pace quickens
does one know what the performer intends. With the roar of the opening
theme he knew that things were going extraordinarily; in the chords
that herald the conclusion he heard the hammer strokes of victory. He
was glad that she only played the first movement, for he could have
paid no attention to the winding intricacies of the measures of
nine-sixteen. The audience clapped, no less respectful. It was Mr.
Beebe who started the stamping; it was all that one could do.
“Who is she?” he asked the vicar afterwards.
“Cousin of one of my parishioners. I do not consider her choice of a
piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal
that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if
anything, disturbs.”
“Introduce me.”
“She will be delighted. She and Miss Bartlett are full of the praises
of your sermon.”
“My sermon?” cried Mr. Beebe. “Why ever did she listen to it?”
When he was introduced he understood why, for Miss Honeychurch,
disjoined from her music stool, was only a young lady with a quantity
of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going
to concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee
and meringues. He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But
before he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he
now made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved
dreamily towards him:
“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very
exciting both for us and for her.”
Lucy at once re-entered daily life.
“Oh, what a funny thing! Some one said just the same to mother, and she
said she trusted I should never live a duet.”
“Doesn’t Mrs. Honeychurch like music?”
“She doesn’t mind it. But she doesn’t like one to get excited over
anything; she thinks I am silly about it. She thinks—I can’t make out.
Once, you know, I said that I liked my own playing better than any
one’s. She has never got over it. Of course, I didn’t mean that I
played well; I only meant—”
“Of course,” said he, wondering why she bothered to explain.
“Music—” said Lucy, as if attempting some generality. She could not
complete it, and looked out absently upon Italy in the wet. The whole
life of the South was disorganized, and the most graceful nation in
Europe had turned into formless lumps of clothes.
The street and the river were dirty yellow, the bridge was dirty grey,
and the hills were dirty purple. Somewhere in their folds were
concealed Miss Lavish and Miss Bartlett, who had chosen this afternoon
to visit the Torre del Gallo.
“What about music?” said Mr. Beebe.
“Poor Charlotte will be sopped,” was Lucy’s reply.
The expedition was typical of Miss Bartlett, who would return cold,
tired, hungry, and angelic, with a ruined skirt, a pulpy Baedeker, and
a tickling cough in her throat. On another day, when the whole world
was singing and the air ran into the mouth, like wine, she would refuse
to stir from the drawing-room, saying that she was an old thing, and no
fit companion for a hearty girl.
“Miss Lavish has led your cousin astray. She hopes to find the true
Italy in the wet I believe.”
“Miss Lavish is so original,” murmured Lucy. This was a stock remark,
the supreme achievement of the Pension Bertolini in the way of
definition. Miss Lavish was so original. Mr. Beebe had his doubts, but
they would have been put down to clerical narrowness. For that, and for
other reasons, he held his peace.
“Is it true,” continued Lucy in awe-struck tone, “that Miss Lavish is
writing a book?”
“They do say so.”
“What is it about?”
“It will be a novel,” replied Mr. Beebe, “dealing with modern Italy.
Let me refer you for an account to Miss Catharine Alan, who uses words
herself more admirably than any one I know.”
“I wish Miss Lavish would tell me herself. We started such friends. But
I don’t think she ought to have run away with Baedeker that morning in
Santa Croce. Charlotte was most annoyed at finding me practically
alone, and so I couldn’t help being a little annoyed with Miss Lavish.”
“The two ladies, at all events, have made it up.”
He was interested in the sudden friendship between women so apparently
dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each
other’s company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed he
understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of
strangeness, though not perhaps, of meaning. Was Italy deflecting her
from the path of prim chaperon, which he had assigned to her at
Tunbridge Wells? All his life he had loved to study maiden ladies; they
were his specialty, and his profession had provided him with ample
opportunities for the work. Girls like Lucy were charming to look at,
but Mr. Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his
attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather
than enthralled.
Lucy, for the third time, said that poor Charlotte would be sopped. The
Arno was rising in flood, washing away the traces of the little carts
upon the foreshore. But in the south-west there had appeared a dull
haze of yellow, which might mean better weather if it did not mean
worse. She opened the window to inspect, and a cold blast entered the
room, drawing a plaintive cry from Miss Catharine Alan, who entered at
the same moment by the door.
“Oh, dear Miss Honeychurch, you will catch a chill! And Mr. Beebe here
besides. Who would suppose this is Italy? There is my sister actually
nursing the hot-water can; no comforts or proper provisions.”
She sidled towards them and sat down, self-conscious as she always was
on entering a room which contained one man, or a man and one woman.