A Room with a View

was a family saying that “you never knew which way Charlotte
Bartlett would turn.” She was perfectly pleasant and sensible over
Lucy’s adventure, found the abridged account of it quite adequate, and
paid suitable tribute to the courtesy of Mr. George Emerson. She and
Miss Lavish had had an adventure also. They had been stopped at the
Dazio coming back, and the young officials there, who seemed impudent
and désœuvré, had tried to search their reticules for provisions. It
might have been most unpleasant. Fortunately Miss Lavish was a match
for any one.

For good or for evil, Lucy was left to face her problem alone. None of
her friends had seen her, either in the Piazza or, later on, by the
embankment. Mr. Beebe, indeed, noticing her startled eyes at
dinner-time, had again passed to himself the remark of “Too much
Beethoven.” But he only supposed that she was ready for an adventure,
not that she had encountered it. This solitude oppressed her; she was
accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events,
contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking
right or wrong.

At breakfast next morning she took decisive action. There were two
plans between which she had to choose. Mr. Beebe was walking up to the
Torre del Gallo with the Emersons and some American ladies. Would Miss
Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch join the party? Charlotte declined for
herself; she had been there in the rain the previous afternoon. But she
thought it an admirable idea for Lucy, who hated shopping, changing
money, fetching letters, and other irksome duties—all of which Miss
Bartlett must accomplish this morning and could easily accomplish
alone.

“No, Charlotte!” cried the girl, with real warmth. “It’s very kind of
Mr. Beebe, but I am certainly coming with you. I had much rather.”

“Very well, dear,” said Miss Bartlett, with a faint flush of pleasure
that called forth a deep flush of shame on the cheeks of Lucy. How
abominably she behaved to Charlotte, now as always! But now she should
alter. All morning she would be really nice to her.

She slipped her arm into her cousin’s, and they started off along the
Lung’ Arno. The river was a lion that morning in strength, voice, and
colour. Miss Bartlett insisted on leaning over the parapet to look at
it. She then made her usual remark, which was “How I do wish Freddy and
your mother could see this, too!”

Lucy fidgeted; it was tiresome of Charlotte to have stopped exactly
where she did.

“Look, Lucia! Oh, you are watching for the Torre del Gallo party. I
feared you would repent you of your choice.”

Serious as the choice had been, Lucy did not repent. Yesterday had been
a muddle—queer and odd, the kind of thing one could not write down
easily on paper—but she had a feeling that Charlotte and her shopping
were preferable to George Emerson and the summit of the Torre del
Gallo. Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not
to re-enter it. She could protest sincerely against Miss Bartlett’s
insinuations.

But though she had avoided the chief actor, the scenery unfortunately
remained. Charlotte, with the complacency of fate, led her from the
river to the Piazza Signoria. She could not have believed that stones,
a Loggia, a fountain, a palace tower, would have such significance. For
a moment she understood the nature of ghosts.

The exact site of the murder was occupied, not by a ghost, but by Miss
Lavish, who had the morning newspaper in her hand. She hailed them
briskly. The dreadful catastrophe of the previous day had given her an
idea which she thought would work up into a book.

“Oh, let me congratulate you!” said Miss Bartlett. “After your despair
of yesterday! What a fortunate thing!”

“Aha! Miss Honeychurch, come you here I am in luck. Now, you are to
tell me absolutely everything that you saw from the beginning.” Lucy
poked at the ground with her parasol.

“But perhaps you would rather not?”

“I’m sorry—if you could manage without it, I think I would rather not.”

The elder ladies exchanged glances, not of disapproval; it is suitable
that a girl should feel deeply.

“It is I who am sorry,” said Miss Lavish. “We literary hacks are
shameless creatures. I believe there’s no secret of the human heart
into which we wouldn’t pry.”

She marched cheerfully to the fountain and back, and did a few
calculations in realism. Then she said that she had been in the Piazza
since eight o’clock collecting material. A good deal of it was
unsuitable, but of course one always had to adapt. The two men had
quarrelled over a five-franc note. For the five-franc note she should
substitute a young lady, which would raise the tone of the tragedy, and
at the same time furnish an excellent plot.

“What is the heroine’s name?” asked Miss Bartlett.

“Leonora,” said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.

“I do hope she’s nice.”

That desideratum would not be omitted.

“And what is the plot?”

Love, murder, abduction, revenge, was the plot. But it all came while
the fountain plashed to the satyrs in the morning sun.

“I hope you will excuse me for boring on like this,” Miss Lavish
concluded. “It is so tempting to talk to really sympathetic people. Of
course, this is the barest outline. There will be a deal of local
colouring, descriptions of Florence and the neighbourhood, and I shall
also introduce some humorous characters. And let me give you all fair
warning: I intend to be unmerciful to the British tourist.”

“Oh, you wicked woman,” cried Miss Bartlett. “I am sure you are
thinking of the Emersons.”

Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.

“I confess that in Italy my sympathies are not with my own countrymen.
It is the neglected Italians who attract me, and whose lives I am going
to paint so far as I can. For I repeat and I insist, and I have always
held most strongly, that a tragedy such as yesterday’s is not the less
tragic because it happened in humble life.”

There was a fitting silence when Miss Lavish had concluded. Then the
cousins wished success to her labours, and walked slowly away across
the square.

“She is my idea of a really clever woman,” said Miss Bartlett. “That
last remark struck me as so particularly true. It should be a most
pathetic novel.”

Lucy assented. At present her great aim was not to get put into it. Her
perceptions this morning were curiously keen, and she believed that
Miss Lavish had her on trial for an ingenué.

“She is emancipated, but only in the very best sense of the word,”
continued Miss Bartlett slowly. “None but the superficial would be
shocked at her. We had a long talk yesterday. She believes in justice
and truth and human interest. She told me also that she has a high
opinion of the destiny of woman—Mr. Eager! Why, how nice! What a
pleasant surprise!”

“Ah, not for me,” said the chaplain blandly, “for I have been watching
you and Miss Honeychurch for quite a little time.”

“We were chatting to Miss Lavish.”

His brow contracted.

“So I saw. Were you indeed? Andate via! sono occupato!” The last remark
was made to a vender of panoramic photographs who was approaching with
a courteous smile. “I am about to venture a suggestion. Would you and
Miss Honeychurch be disposed to join me in a drive some day this week—a
drive in the hills? We might go up by Fiesole and back by Settignano.
There is a point on that road where we could get down and have an
hour’s ramble on the hillside. The view thence of Florence is most
beautiful—far better than the hackneyed view of Fiesole. It is the view
that Alessio Baldovinetti is fond of introducing into his pictures.
That man had a decided feeling for landscape. Decidedly. But who looks
at it to-day? Ah, the world is too much for us.”

Miss Bartlett had not heard of Alessio Baldovinetti, but she knew that
Mr. Eager was no commonplace chaplain. He was a member of the
residential colony who had made Florence their home. He knew the people
who never walked about with Baedekers, who had learnt to take a siesta
after lunch, who took drives the pension tourists had never heard of,
and saw by private influence galleries which were closed to them.
Living in delicate seclusion, some in furnished flats, others in
Renaissance villas on Fiesole’s slope, they read, wrote, studied, and
exchanged ideas, thus attaining to that intimate knowledge, or rather
perception, of Florence which is denied to all who carry in their
pockets the coupons of Cook.

Therefore an invitation from the chaplain was something to be proud of.
Between the two sections of his flock he was often the only link, and
it was his avowed custom to select those of his migratory sheep who
seemed worthy, and give them a few hours in the pastures of the
permanent. Tea at a Renaissance villa? Nothing had been said about it
yet. But if it did come to that—how Lucy would enjoy it!

A few days ago and Lucy would have felt the same. But the joys of life
were grouping themselves anew. A drive in the hills with Mr. Eager and
Miss Bartlett—even if culminating in a residential tea-party—was no
longer the greatest of them. She echoed the raptures of Charlotte
somewhat faintly. Only when she heard that Mr. Beebe was also coming
did her thanks become more sincere.

“So we shall be a partie carrée,” said the chaplain. “In these days
of toil and tumult one has great needs of the country and its message
of purity. Andate via! andate presto, presto! Ah, the town! Beautiful
as it is, it is the town.”

They assented.

“This very square—so I am told—witnessed yesterday the most sordid of
tragedies. To one who loves the Florence of Dante and Savonarola there
is something portentous in such desecration—portentous and
humiliating.”

“Humiliating indeed,” said Miss Bartlett. “Miss Honeychurch happened to
be passing through as it happened. She can hardly bear to speak of it.”
She glanced at Lucy proudly.

“And how came we to have you here?” asked the chaplain paternally.

Miss Bartlett’s recent liberalism oozed away at the question. “Do not
blame her, please, Mr. Eager. The fault is mine: I left her
unchaperoned.”

“So you were here alone, Miss Honeychurch?” His voice suggested
sympathetic reproof but at the same time indicated that a few harrowing
details would not be unacceptable. His dark, handsome face drooped
mournfully towards her to catch her reply.

“Practically.”

“One of our pension acquaintances kindly brought her home,” said Miss
Bartlett, adroitly concealing the sex of the preserver.

“For her also it must have been a terrible experience. I trust that
neither of you was at all—that it was not in your immediate proximity?”

Of the many things Lucy was noticing to-day, not the least remarkable
was this: the ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble
after blood. George Emerson had kept the subject strangely pure.

“He died by the fountain, I believe,” was her reply.

“And you and your friend—”

“Were over at the Loggia.”

“That must have saved you much. You have not, of course, seen the
disgraceful illustrations which the gutter Press—This man is a public
nuisance; he knows that I am a resident perfectly well, and yet he goes
on worrying me to buy his vulgar views.”

Surely the vendor of photographs was in league with Lucy—in the eternal
league of Italy with youth. He had suddenly extended his book before
Miss Bartlett and Mr. Eager, binding their hands together by a long
glossy ribbon of churches, pictures, and views.

“This is too much!” cried the chaplain, striking petulantly at one of
Fra Angelico’s angels. She tore. A shrill cry rose from the vendor. The
book it seemed, was more valuable than one would have supposed.

“Willingly would I purchase—” began Miss Bartlett.

“Ignore him,” said Mr. Eager sharply, and they all walked rapidly away
from the square.

But an Italian can never be ignored, least of all when he has a
grievance. His mysterious persecution of Mr. Eager became relentless;
the air rang with his threats and lamentations. He appealed to Lucy;
would not she intercede? He was poor—he sheltered a family—the tax on
bread. He waited, he gibbered, he was recompensed, he was dissatisfied,
he did not leave them until he had swept their minds clean of all
thoughts whether pleasant or unpleasant.

Shopping was the topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain’s guidance
they selected many hideous presents and mementoes—florid little
picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded pastry; other little
frames, more severe, that stood on little easels, and were carven out
of oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap
mosaic brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from
real; pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and
Psyche in alabaster; St. Peter to match—all of which would have cost
less in London.

This successful morning left no pleasant impressions on Lucy. She had
been a little frightened, both by Miss Lavish and by Mr. Eager, she
knew not why. And as they frightened her, she had, strangely enough,
ceased to respect them. She doubted that Miss Lavish was a great
artist. She doubted that Mr. Eager was as full of spirituality and
culture as she had been led to suppose. They were tried by some new
test, and they were found wanting. As for Charlotte—as for Charlotte
she was exactly the same. It might be possible to be nice to her; it
was impossible to love her.

“The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A mechanic of
some sort himself when he was young; then he took to writing for the
Socialistic Press. I came across him at Brixton.”

They were talking about the Emersons.

“How wonderfully people rise in these days!” sighed Miss Bartlett,
fingering a model of the leaning Tower of Pisa.

“Generally,” replied Mr. Eager, “one has only sympathy for their
success. The desire for education and for social advance—in these
things there is something not wholly vile. There are some working men
whom one would be very willing to see out here in Florence—little as
they would make of it.”

“Is he a journalist now?” Miss Bartlett asked.

“He is not; he made an advantageous marriage.”

He uttered this remark with a voice full of meaning, and ended with a
sigh.

“Oh, so he has a wife.”

“Dead, Miss Bartlett, dead. I wonder—yes I wonder how he has the
effrontery to look me in the face, to dare to claim acquaintance with
me. He was in my London parish long ago. The other day in Santa Croce,
when he was with Miss Honeychurch, I snubbed him. Let him beware that
he does not get more than a snub.”

“What?” cried Lucy, flushing.

“Exposure!” hissed Mr. Eager.

He tried to change the subject; but in scoring a dramatic point he had
interested his audience more than he had intended. Miss Bartlett was
full of very natural curiosity. Lucy, though she wished never to see
the Emersons again, was not disposed to condemn them on a single word.

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that he is an irreligious man? We know that
already.”

“Lucy, dear—” said Miss Bartlett, gently reproving her cousin’s
penetration.

“I should be astonished if you knew all. The boy—an innocent child at
the time—I will exclude. God knows what his education and his inherited
qualities may have made him.”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Bartlett, “it is something that we had better not
hear.”

“To speak plainly,” said Mr. Eager, “it is. I will say no more.” For
the first time Lucy’s rebellious thoughts swept out in words—for the
first time in her life.

“You have said very little.”

“It was my intention to say very little,” was his frigid reply.

He gazed indignantly at the girl, who met him with equal indignation.
She turned towards him from the shop counter; her breast heaved
quickly. He observed her brow, and the sudden strength of her lips. It
was intolerable that she should disbelieve him.

“Murder, if you want to know,” he cried angrily. “That man murdered his
wife!”

“How?” she retorted.

“To all intents and purposes he murdered her. That day in Santa
Croce—did they say anything against me?”

“Not a word, Mr. Eager—not a single word.”

“Oh, I thought they had been libelling me to you. But I suppose it is
only their personal charms that makes you defend them.”

“I’m not defending them,” said Lucy, losing her courage, and relapsing
into the old chaotic methods. “They’re nothing to me.”

“How could you think she was defending them?” said Miss Bartlett, much
discomfited by the unpleasant scene. The shopman was possibly
listening.

“She will find it difficult. For that man has murdered his wife in the
sight of God.”

The addition of God was striking. But the chaplain was really trying to
qualify a rash remark. A silence followed which might have been
impressive, but was merely awkward. Then Miss Bartlett hastily
purchased the Leaning Tower, and led the way into the street.

“I must be going,” said he, shutting his eyes and taking out his watch.

Miss Bartlett thanked him for his kindness, and spoke with enthusiasm
of the approaching drive.

“Drive? Oh, is our drive to come off?”

Lucy was recalled to her manners, and after a little exertion the
complacency of Mr. Eager was restored.

“Bother the drive!” exclaimed the girl, as soon as he had departed. “It
is just the drive we had arranged with Mr. Beebe without any fuss at
all. Why should he invite us in that absurd manner? We might as well
invite him. We are each paying for ourselves.”

Miss Bartlett, who had intended to lament over the Emersons, was
launched by this remark into unexpected thoughts.

“If that is so, dear—if the drive we and Mr. Beebe are going with Mr.
Eager is really the same as the one we are going with Mr. Beebe, then I
foresee a sad kettle of fish.”

“How?”

“Because Mr. Beebe has asked Eleanor Lavish to come, too.”

“That will mean another carriage.”

“Far worse. Mr. Eager does not like Eleanor. She knows it herself. The
truth must be told; she is too unconventional for him.”

They were now in the newspaper-room at the English bank. Lucy stood by
the central table, heedless of Punch and the Graphic, trying to answer,
or at all events to formulate the questions rioting in her brain. The
well-known world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magic
city where people thought and did the most extraordinary things.
Murder, accusations of murder, a lady clinging to one man and being
rude to another—were these the daily incidents of her streets? Was
there more in her frank beauty than met the eye—the power, perhaps, to
evoke passions, good and bad, and to bring them speedily to a
fulfillment?

Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not
matter, seemed oblivious to things that did; who could conjecture with
admirable delicacy “where things might lead to,” but apparently lost
sight of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the
corner trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag
which hung in chaste concealment round her neck. She had been told that
this was the only safe way to carry money in Italy; it must only be
broached within the walls of the English bank. As she groped she
murmured: “Whether it is Mr. Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr.
Eager who forgot when he told us, or whether they have decided to leave
Eleanor out altogether—which they could scarcely do—but in any case we
must be prepared. It is you they really want; I am only asked for
appearances. You shall go with the two gentlemen, and I and Eleanor
will follow behind. A one-horse carriage would do for us. Yet how
difficult it is!”

“It is indeed,” replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded
sympathetic.

“What do you think about it?” asked Miss Bartlett, flushed from the
struggle, and buttoning up her dress.

“I don’t know what I think, nor what I want.”

“Oh, dear, Lucy! I do hope Florence isn’t boring you. Speak the word,
and, as you know, I would take you to the ends of the earth to-morrow.”

“Thank you, Charlotte,” said Lucy, and pondered over the offer.

There were letters for her at the bureau—one from her brother, full of
athletics and biology; one from her mother, delightful as only her
mother’s letters could be. She had read in it of the crocuses which had
been bought for yellow and were coming up puce, of the new
parlour-maid, who had watered the ferns with essence of lemonade, of
the semi-detached cottages which were ruining Summer Street, and
breaking the heart of Sir Harry Otway. She recalled the free, pleasant
life of her home, where she was allowed to do everything, and where
nothing ever happened to her. The road up through the pine-woods, the
clean drawing-room, the view over the Sussex Weald—all hung before her
bright and distinct, but pathetic as the pictures in a gallery to
which, after much experience, a traveller returns.

“And the news?” asked Miss Bartlett.

“Mrs. Vyse and her son have gone to Rome,” said Lucy, giving the news
that interested her least. “Do you know the Vyses?”

“Oh, not that way back. We can never have too much of the dear Piazza
Signoria.”

“They’re nice people, the Vyses. So clever—my idea of what’s really
clever. Don’t you long to be in Rome?”

“I die for it!”

The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no
flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting
patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—unless we believe in a
presiding genius of places—the statues that relieve its severity
suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment
of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and
Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something,
and though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after
experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might
a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god.

“Charlotte!” cried the girl suddenly. “Here’s an idea. What if we
popped off to Rome to-morrow—straight to the Vyses’ hotel? For I do
know what I want. I’m sick of Florence. No, you said you’d go to the
ends of the earth! Do! Do!”

Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:

“Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in the
hills?”

They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square, laughing
over the unpractical suggestion.