A Room with a View

he Sunday after Miss Bartlett’s arrival was a glorious day, like most
of the days of that year. In the Weald, autumn approached, breaking up
the green monotony of summer, touching the parks with the grey bloom of
mist, the beech-trees with russet, the oak-trees with gold. Up on the
heights, battalions of black pines witnessed the change, themselves
unchangeable. Either country was spanned by a cloudless sky, and in
either arose the tinkle of church bells.

The garden of Windy Corners was deserted except for a red book, which
lay sunning itself upon the gravel path. From the house came incoherent
sounds, as of females preparing for worship. “The men say they won’t
go”—“Well, I don’t blame them”—Minnie says, “need she go?”—“Tell her,
no nonsense”—“Anne! Mary! Hook me behind!”—“Dearest Lucia, may I
trespass upon you for a pin?” For Miss Bartlett had announced that she
at all events was one for church.

The sun rose higher on its journey, guided, not by Phaethon, but by
Apollo, competent, unswerving, divine. Its rays fell on the ladies
whenever they advanced towards the bedroom windows; on Mr. Beebe down
at Summer Street as he smiled over a letter from Miss Catharine Alan;
on George Emerson cleaning his father’s boots; and lastly, to complete
the catalogue of memorable things, on the red book mentioned
previously. The ladies move, Mr. Beebe moves, George moves, and
movement may engender shadow. But this book lies motionless, to be
caressed all the morning by the sun and to raise its covers slightly,
as though acknowledging the caress.

Presently Lucy steps out of the drawing-room window. Her new cerise
dress has been a failure, and makes her look tawdry and wan. At her
throat is a garnet brooch, on her finger a ring set with rubies—an
engagement ring. Her eyes are bent to the Weald. She frowns a
little—not in anger, but as a brave child frowns when he is trying not
to cry. In all that expanse no human eye is looking at her, and she may
frown unrebuked and measure the spaces that yet survive between Apollo
and the western hills.

“Lucy! Lucy! What’s that book? Who’s been taking a book out of the
shelf and leaving it about to spoil?”

“It’s only the library book that Cecil’s been reading.”

“But pick it up, and don’t stand idling there like a flamingo.”

Lucy picked up the book and glanced at the title listlessly, Under a
Loggia. She no longer read novels herself, devoting all her spare time
to solid literature in the hope of catching Cecil up. It was dreadful
how little she knew, and even when she thought she knew a thing, like
the Italian painters, she found she had forgotten it. Only this morning
she had confused Francesco Francia with Piero della Francesca, and
Cecil had said, “What! you aren’t forgetting your Italy already?” And
this too had lent anxiety to her eyes when she saluted the dear view
and the dear garden in the foreground, and above them, scarcely
conceivable elsewhere, the dear sun.

“Lucy—have you a sixpence for Minnie and a shilling for yourself?”

She hastened in to her mother, who was rapidly working herself into a
Sunday fluster.

“It’s a special collection—I forget what for. I do beg, no vulgar
clinking in the plate with halfpennies; see that Minnie has a nice
bright sixpence. Where is the child? Minnie! That book’s all warped.
(Gracious, how plain you look!) Put it under the Atlas to press.
Minnie!”

“Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch—” from the upper regions.

“Minnie, don’t be late. Here comes the horse”—it was always the horse,
never the carriage. “Where’s Charlotte? Run up and hurry her. Why is
she so long? She had nothing to do. She never brings anything but
blouses. Poor Charlotte—How I do detest blouses! Minnie!”

Paganism is infectious—more infectious than diphtheria or piety—and the
Rector’s niece was taken to church protesting. As usual, she didn’t see
why. Why shouldn’t she sit in the sun with the young men? The young
men, who had now appeared, mocked her with ungenerous words. Mrs.
Honeychurch defended orthodoxy, and in the midst of the confusion Miss
Bartlett, dressed in the very height of the fashion, came strolling
down the stairs.

“Dear Marian, I am very sorry, but I have no small change—nothing but
sovereigns and half crowns. Could any one give me—”

“Yes, easily. Jump in. Gracious me, how smart you look! What a lovely
frock! You put us all to shame.”

“If I did not wear my best rags and tatters now, when should I wear
them?” said Miss Bartlett reproachfully. She got into the victoria and
placed herself with her back to the horse. The necessary roar ensued,
and then they drove off.

“Good-bye! Be good!” called out Cecil.

Lucy bit her lip, for the tone was sneering. On the subject of “church
and so on” they had had rather an unsatisfactory conversation. He had
said that people ought to overhaul themselves, and she did not want to
overhaul herself; she did not know it was done. Honest orthodoxy Cecil
respected, but he always assumed that honesty is the result of a
spiritual crisis; he could not imagine it as a natural birthright, that
might grow heavenward like flowers. All that he said on this subject
pained her, though he exuded tolerance from every pore; somehow the
Emersons were different.

She saw the Emersons after church. There was a line of carriages down
the road, and the Honeychurch vehicle happened to be opposite Cissie
Villa. To save time, they walked over the green to it, and found father
and son smoking in the garden.

“Introduce me,” said her mother. “Unless the young man considers that
he knows me already.”

He probably did; but Lucy ignored the Sacred Lake and introduced them
formally. Old Mr. Emerson claimed her with much warmth, and said how
glad he was that she was going to be married. She said yes, she was
glad too; and then, as Miss Bartlett and Minnie were lingering behind
with Mr. Beebe, she turned the conversation to a less disturbing topic,
and asked him how he liked his new house.

“Very much,” he replied, but there was a note of offence in his voice;
she had never known him offended before. He added: “We find, though,
that the Miss Alans were coming, and that we have turned them out.
Women mind such a thing. I am very much upset about it.”

“I believe that there was some misunderstanding,” said Mrs. Honeychurch
uneasily.

“Our landlord was told that we should be a different type of person,”
said George, who seemed disposed to carry the matter further. “He
thought we should be artistic. He is disappointed.”

“And I wonder whether we ought to write to the Miss Alans and offer to
give it up. What do you think?” He appealed to Lucy.

“Oh, stop now you have come,” said Lucy lightly. She must avoid
censuring Cecil. For it was on Cecil that the little episode turned,
though his name was never mentioned.

“So George says. He says that the Miss Alans must go to the wall. Yet
it does seem so unkind.”

“There is only a certain amount of kindness in the world,” said George,
watching the sunlight flash on the panels of the passing carriages.

“Yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Honeychurch. “That’s exactly what I say. Why all
this twiddling and twaddling over two Miss Alans?”

“There is a certain amount of kindness, just as there is a certain
amount of light,” he continued in measured tones. “We cast a shadow on
something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to
place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place
where you won’t do harm—yes, choose a place where you won’t do very
much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”

“Oh, Mr. Emerson, I see you’re clever!”

“Eh—?”

“I see you’re going to be clever. I hope you didn’t go behaving like
that to poor Freddy.”

George’s eyes laughed, and Lucy suspected that he and her mother would
get on rather well.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “He behaved that way to me. It is his
philosophy. Only he starts life with it; and I have tried the Note of
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
head again. She did not want to stroke it, but she saw herself wanting
to stroke it; the sensation was curious.

“How do you like this view of ours, Mr. Emerson?”

“I never notice much difference in views.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because they’re all alike. Because all that matters in them is
distance and air.”

“H’m!” said Cecil, uncertain whether the remark was striking or not.

“My father”—he looked up at her (and he was a little flushed)—“says
that there is only one perfect view—the view of the sky straight over
our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of
it.”

“I expect your father has been reading Dante,” said Cecil, fingering
the novel, which alone permitted him to lead the conversation.

“He told us another day that views are really crowds—crowds of trees
and houses and hills—and are bound to resemble each other, like human
crowds—and that the power they have over us is sometimes supernatural,
for the same reason.”

Lucy’s lips parted.

“For a crowd is more than the people who make it up. Something gets
added to it—no one knows how—just as something has got added to those
hills.”

He pointed with his racquet to the South Downs.

“What a splendid idea!” she murmured. “I shall enjoy hearing your
father talk again. I’m so sorry he’s not so well.”

“No, he isn’t well.”

“There’s an absurd account of a view in this book,” said Cecil. “Also
that men fall into two classes—those who forget views and those who
remember them, even in small rooms.”

“Mr. Emerson, have you any brothers or sisters?”

“None. Why?”

“You spoke of ‘us.’”

“My mother, I was meaning.”

Cecil closed the novel with a bang.

“Oh, Cecil—how you made me jump!”

“I will inflict Joseph Emery Prank on you no longer.”

“I can just remember us all three going into the country for the day
and seeing as far as Hindhead. It is the first thing that I remember.”

Cecil got up; the man was ill-bred—he hadn’t put on his coat after
tennis—he didn’t do. He would have strolled away if Lucy had not
stopped him.

“Cecil, do read the thing about the view.”

“Not while Mr. Emerson is here to entertain us.”

“No—read away. I think nothing’s funnier than to hear silly things read
out loud. If Mr. Emerson thinks us frivolous, he can go.”

This struck Cecil as subtle, and pleased him. It put their visitor in
the position of a prig. Somewhat mollified, he sat down again.

“Mr. Emerson, go and find tennis balls.” She opened the book. Cecil
must have his reading and anything else that he liked. But her
attention wandered to George’s mother, who—according to Mr. Eager—had
been murdered in the sight of God and—according to her son—had seen as
far as Hindhead.

“Am I really to go?” asked George.

“No, of course not really,” she answered.

“Chapter two,” said Cecil, yawning. “Find me chapter two, if it isn’t
bothering you.”

Chapter two was found, and she glanced at its opening sentences.

She thought she had gone mad.

“Here—hand me the book.”

She heard her voice saying: “It isn’t worth reading—it’s too silly to
read—I never saw such rubbish—it oughtn’t to be allowed to be printed.”

He took the book from her.

“‘Leonora,’” he read, “‘sat pensive and alone. Before her lay the rich
champaign of Tuscany, dotted over with many a smiling village. The
season was spring.’”

Miss Lavish knew, somehow, and had printed the past in draggled prose,
for Cecil to read and for George to hear.

“‘A golden haze,’” he read. He read: “‘Afar off the towers of Florence,
while the bank on which she sat was carpeted with violets. All
unobserved Antonio stole up behind her—’”

Lest Cecil should see her face she turned to George and saw his face.

He read: “‘There came from his lips no wordy protestation such as
formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the
lack of it. He simply enfolded her in his manly arms.’”

“This isn’t the passage I wanted,” he informed them, “there is another
much funnier, further on.” He turned over the leaves.

“Should we go in to tea?” said Lucy, whose voice remained steady.

She led the way up the garden, Cecil following her, George last. She
thought a disaster was averted. But when they entered the shrubbery it
came. The book, as if it had not worked mischief enough, had been
forgotten, and Cecil must go back for it; and George, who loved
passionately, must blunder against her in the narrow path.

“No—” she gasped, and, for the second time, was kissed by him.

As if no more was possible, he slipped back; Cecil rejoined her; they
reached the upper lawn alone.