Chapter: "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business
at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead
of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way
apart. Oh, Lucy!"

"And a Cockney, besides!" said Lucy, who had been further saddened by
the Signora's unexpected accent. "It might be London." She looked at the
two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row
of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between the
English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late Poet
Laureate that hung behind the English people, heavily framed; at the
notice of the English church (Rev. Cuthbert Eager, M. A. Oxon.), that
was the only other decoration of the wall. "Charlotte, don't you feel,
too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all kinds of
other things are just outside. I suppose it is one's being so tired."

"This meat has surely been used for soup," said Miss Bartlett, laying
down her fork.

"I want so to see the Arno. The rooms the Signora promised us in her
letter would have looked over the Arno. The Signora had no business to
do it at all. Oh, it is a shame!"

"Any nook does for me," Miss Bartlett continued; "but it does seem hard
that you shouldn't have a view."

Lucy felt that she had been selfish. "Charlotte, you mustn't spoil me:
of course, you must look over the Arno, too. I meant that. The first
vacant room in the front--" "You must have it," said Miss Bartlett, part
of whose travelling expenses were paid by Lucy's mother--a piece of
generosity to which she made many a tactful allusion.

"No, no. You must have it."

"I insist on it. Your mother would never forgive me, Lucy."

"She would never forgive me."

The ladies' voices grew animated, and--if the sad truth be owned--a
little peevish. They were tired, and under the guise of unselfishness
they wrangled. Some of their neighbours interchanged glances, and one
of them--one of the ill-bred people whom one does meet abroad--leant
forward over the table and actually intruded into their argument. He
said:

"I have a view, I have a view."

Miss Bartlett was startled. Generally at a pension people looked them
over for a day or two before speaking, and often did not find out that
they would "do" till they had gone. She knew that the intruder was
ill-bred, even before she glanced at him. He was an old man, of heavy
build, with a fair, shaven face and large eyes. There was something
childish in those eyes, though it was not the childishness of senility.
What exactly it was Miss Bartlett did not stop to consider, for her
glance passed on to his clothes. These did not attract her. He was
probably trying to become acquainted with them before they got into the
swim. So she assumed a dazed expression when he spoke to her, and then
said: "A view? Oh, a view! How delightful a view is!"

"This is my son," said the old man; "his name's George. He has a view
too."

"Ah," said Miss Bartlett, repressing Lucy, who was about to speak.

"What I mean," he continued, "is that you can have our rooms, and we'll
have yours. We'll change."

The better class of tourist was shocked at this, and sympathized with
the new-comers. Miss Bartlett, in reply, opened her mouth as little
as possible, and said "Thank you very much indeed; that is out of the
question."

"Why?" said the old man, with both fists on the table.

"Because it is quite out of the question, thank you."

"You see, we don't like to take--" began Lucy. Her cousin again
repressed her.

"But why?" he persisted. "Women like looking at a view; men don't." And
he thumped with his fists like a naughty child, and turned to his son,
saying, "George, persuade them!"

"It's so obvious they should have the rooms," said the son. "There's
nothing else to say."

He did not look at the ladies as he spoke, but his voice was perplexed
and sorrowful. Lucy, too, was perplexed; but she saw that they were in
for what is known as "quite a scene," and she had an odd feeling that
whenever these ill-bred tourists spoke the contest widened and deepened
till it dealt, not with rooms and views, but with--well, with something
quite different, whose existence she had not realized before. Now the
old man attacked Miss Bartlett almost violently: Why should she not
change? What possible objection had she? They would clear out in half an
hour.

Miss Bartlett, though skilled in the delicacies of conversation, was
powerless in the presence of brutality. It was impossible to snub any
one so gross. Her face reddened with displeasure. She looked around as
much as to say, "Are you all like this?" And two little old ladies, who
were sitting further up the table, with shawls hanging over the backs
of the chairs, looked back, clearly indicating "We are not; we are
genteel."

"Eat your dinner, dear," she said to Lucy, and began to toy again with
the meat that she had once censured.

Lucy mumbled that those seemed very odd people opposite.

"Eat your dinner, dear. This pension is a failure. To-morrow we will
make a change."

Hardly had she announced this fell decision when she reversed it. The
curtains at the end of the room parted, and revealed a clergyman, stout
but attractive, who hurried forward to take his place at the table,
cheerfully apologizing for his lateness. Lucy, who had not yet acquired
decency, at once rose to her feet, exclaiming: "Oh, oh! Why, it's
Mr. Beebe! Oh, how perfectly lovely! Oh, Charlotte, we must stop now,
however bad the rooms are. Oh!"

Miss Bartlett said, with more restraint:

"How do you do, Mr. Beebe? I expect that you have forgotten us: Miss
Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch, who were at Tunbridge Wells when you
helped the Vicar of St. Peter's that very cold Easter."

The clergyman, who had the air of one on a holiday, did not remember
the ladies quite as clearly as they remembered him. But he came forward
pleasantly enough and accepted the chair into which he was beckoned by
Lucy.

"I AM so glad to see you," said the girl, who was in a state of
spiritual starvation, and would have been glad to see the waiter if
her cousin had permitted it. "Just fancy how small the world is. Summer
Street, too, makes it so specially funny."

"Miss Honeychurch lives in the parish of Summer Street," said Miss
Bartlett, filling up the gap, "and she happened to tell me in the course
of conversation that you have just accepted the living--"

"Yes, I heard from mother so last week. She didn't know that I knew you
at Tunbridge Wells; but I wrote back at once, and I said: 'Mr. Beebe
is--'"

"Quite right," said the clergyman. "I move into the Rectory at Summer
Street next June. I am lucky to be appointed to such a charming
neighbourhood."

"Oh, how glad I am! The name of our house is Windy Corner." Mr. Beebe
bowed.

"There is mother and me generally, and my brother, though it's not often
we get him to ch---- The church is rather far off, I mean."

"Lucy, dearest, let Mr. Beebe eat his dinner."

"I am eating it, thank you, and enjoying it."

He preferred to talk to Lucy, whose playing he remembered, rather than
to Miss Bartlett, who probably remembered his sermons. He asked the girl
whether she knew Florence well, and was informed at some length that she
had never been there before. It is delightful to advise a newcomer, and
he was first in the field. "Don't neglect the country round," his advice
concluded. "The first fine afternoon drive up to Fiesole, and round by
Settignano, or something of that sort."

"No!" cried a voice from the top of the table. "Mr. Beebe, you are
wrong. The first fine afternoon your ladies must go to Prato."

"That lady looks so clever," whispered Miss Bartlett to her cousin. "We
are in luck."

And, indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them. People told
them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the electric trams, how to
get rid of the beggars, how much to give for a vellum blotter, how
much the place would grow upon them. The Pension Bertolini had decided,
almost enthusiastically, that they would do. Whichever way they looked,
kind ladies smiled and shouted at them. And above all rose the voice of
the clever lady, crying: "Prato! They must go to Prato. That place is
too sweetly squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off the
trammels of respectability, as you know."

The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned
moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do. Lucy, in
the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave her no
extra pleasure that any one should be left in the cold; and when she
rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous little
bow.

The father did not see it; the son acknowledged it, not by another bow,
but by raising his eyebrows and smiling; he seemed to be smiling across
something.

She hastened after her cousin, who had already disappeared through the
curtains--curtains which smote one in the face, and seemed heavy with
more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing
good-evening to her guests, and supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and
Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt
of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even
more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the solid
comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really Italy?

Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed arm-chair, which
had the colour and the contours of a tomato. She was talking to Mr.
Beebe, and as she spoke, her long narrow head drove backwards and
forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she were demolishing some
invisible obstacle. "We are most grateful to you," she was saying.
"The first evening means so much. When you arrived we were in for a
peculiarly mauvais quart d'heure."

He expressed his regret.

"Do you, by any chance, know the name of an old man who sat opposite us
at dinner?"

"Emerson."

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"We are friendly--as one is in pensions."

"Then I will say no more."

He pressed her very slightly, and she said more.

"I am, as it were," she concluded, "the chaperon of my young cousin,
Lucy, and it would be a serious thing if I put her under an obligation
to people of whom we know nothing. His manner was somewhat unfortunate.
I hope I acted for the best."

"You acted very naturally," said he. He seemed thoughtful, and after
a few moments added: "All the same, I don't think much harm would have
come of accepting."

"No harm, of course. But we could not be under an obligation."

"He is rather a peculiar man." Again he hesitated, and then said gently:
"I think he would not take advantage of your acceptance, nor expect you
to show gratitude. He has the merit--if it is one--of saying exactly
what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would
value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than
he thought of being polite. It is so difficult--at least, I find it
difficult--to understand people who speak the truth."

Lucy was pleased, and said: "I was hoping that he was nice; I do so
always hope that people will be nice."

"I think he is; nice and tiresome. I differ from him on almost every
point of any importance, and so, I expect--I may say I hope--you will
differ. But his is a type one disagrees with rather than deplores. When
he first came here he not unnaturally put people's backs up. He has no
tact and no manners--I don't mean by that that he has bad manners--and
he will not keep his opinions to himself. We nearly complained about
him to our depressing Signora, but I am glad to say we thought better of
it."

"Am I to conclude," said Miss Bartlett, "that he is a Socialist?"

Mr. Beebe accepted the convenient word, not without a slight twitching
of the lips.

"And presumably he has brought up his son to be a Socialist, too?"

"I hardly know George, for he hasn't learnt to talk yet. He seems a nice
creature, and I think he has brains. Of course, he has all his father's
mannerisms, and it is quite possible that he, too, may be a Socialist."

"Oh, you relieve me," said Miss Bartlett. "So you think I ought to
have accepted their offer? You feel I have been narrow-minded and
suspicious?"

"Not at all," he answered; "I never suggested that."

"But ought I not to apologize, at all events, for my apparent rudeness?"

He replied, with some irritation, that it would be quite unnecessary,
and got up from his seat to go to the smoking-room.

"Was I a bore?" said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had disappeared. "Why
didn't you talk, Lucy? He prefers young people, I'm sure. I do hope I
haven't monopolized him. I hoped you would have him all the evening, as
well as all dinner-time."

"He is nice," exclaimed Lucy. "Just what I remember. He seems to see
good in everyone. No one would take him for a clergyman."

"My dear Lucia--"

"Well, you know what I mean. And you know how clergymen generally laugh;
Mr. Beebe laughs just like an ordinary man."

"Funny girl! How you do remind me of your mother. I wonder if she will
approve of Mr. Beebe."

"I'm sure she will; and so will Freddy."

"I think everyone at Windy Corner will approve; it is the fashionable
world. I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind
the times."

"Yes," said Lucy despondently.

There was a haze of disapproval in the air, but whether the disapproval
was of herself, or of Mr. Beebe, or of the fashionable world at Windy
Corner, or of the narrow world at Tunbridge Wells, she could not
determine. She tried to locate it, but as usual she blundered. Miss
Bartlett sedulously denied disapproving of any one, and added "I am
afraid you are finding me a very depressing companion."

And the girl again thought: "I must have been selfish or unkind; I must
be more careful. It is so dreadful for Charlotte, being poor."

Fortunately one of the little old ladies, who for some time had been
smiling very benignly, now approached and asked if she might be allowed
to sit where Mr. Beebe had sat. Permission granted, she began to chatter
gently about Italy, the plunge it had been to come there, the gratifying
success of the plunge, the improvement in her sister's health, the
necessity of closing the bed-room windows at night, and of thoroughly
emptying the water-bottles in the morning. She handled her subjects
agreeably, and they were, perhaps, more worthy of attention than
the high discourse upon Guelfs and Ghibellines which was proceeding
tempestuously at the other end of the room. It was a real catastrophe,
not a mere episode, that evening of hers at Venice, when she had found
in her bedroom something that is one worse than a flea, though one
better than something else.

"But here you are as safe as in England. Signora Bertolini is so
English."

"Yet our rooms smell," said poor Lucy. "We dread going to bed."

"Ah, then you look into the court." She sighed. "If only Mr. Emerson was
more tactful! We were so sorry for you at dinner."

"I think he was meaning to be kind."

"Undoubtedly he was," said Miss Bartlett.

"Mr. Beebe has just been scolding me for my suspicious nature. Of
course, I was holding back on my cousin's account."

"Of course," said the little old lady; and they murmured that one could
not be too careful with a young girl.

Lucy tried to look demure, but could not help feeling a great fool. No
one was careful with her at home; or, at all events, she had not noticed
it.

"About old Mr. Emerson--I hardly know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have
you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most
indelicate, and yet at the same time--beautiful?"

"Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not beauty
and delicacy the same?"

"So one would have thought," said the other helplessly. "But things are
so difficult, I sometimes think."

She proceeded no further into things, for Mr. Beebe reappeared, looking
extremely pleasant.

"Miss Bartlett," he cried, "it's all right about the rooms. I'm so glad.
Mr. Emerson was talking about it in the smoking-room, and knowing what
I did, I encouraged him to make the offer again. He has let me come and
ask you. He would be so pleased."

"Oh, Charlotte," cried Lucy to her cousin, "we must have the rooms now.
The old man is just as nice and kind as he can be."

Miss Bartlett was silent.

"I fear," said Mr. Beebe, after a pause, "that I have been officious. I
must apologize for my interference."

Gravely displeased, he turned to go. Not till then did Miss Bartlett
reply: "My own wishes, dearest Lucy, are unimportant in comparison with
yours. It would be hard indeed if I stopped you doing as you liked at
Florence, when I am only here through your kindness. If you wish me to
turn these gentlemen out of their rooms, I will do it. Would you then,
Mr. Beebe, kindly tell Mr. Emerson that I accept his kind offer, and
then conduct him to me, in order that I may thank him personally?"

She raised her voice as she spoke; it was heard all over the
drawing-room, and silenced the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. The
clergyman, inwardly cursing the female sex, bowed, and departed with her
message.

"Remember, Lucy, I alone am implicated in this. I do not wish the
acceptance to come from you. Grant me that, at all events."

Mr. Beebe was back, saying rather nervously:

"Mr. Emerson is engaged, but here is his son instead."

The young man gazed down on the three ladies, who felt seated on the
floor, so low were their chairs.

"My father," he said, "is in his bath, so you cannot thank him
personally. But any message given by you to me will be given by me to
him as soon as he comes out."

Miss Bartlett was unequal to the bath. All her barbed civilities came
forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable triumph to the
delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight of Lucy.

"Poor young man!" said Miss Bartlett, as soon as he had gone.

"How angry he is with his father about the rooms! It is all he can do to
keep polite."

"In half an hour or so your rooms will be ready," said Mr. Beebe. Then
looking rather thoughtfully at the two cousins, he retired to his own
rooms, to write up his philosophic diary.

"Oh, dear!" breathed the little old lady, and shuddered as if all the
winds of heaven had entered the apartment. "Gentlemen sometimes do not
realize--" Her voice faded away, but Miss Bartlett seemed to understand
and a conversation developed, in which gentlemen who did not thoroughly
realize played a principal part. Lucy, not realizing either, was reduced
to literature. Taking up Baedeker's Handbook to Northern Italy, she
committed to memory the most important dates of Florentine History. For
she was determined to enjoy herself on the morrow. Thus the half-hour
crept profitably away, and at last Miss Bartlett rose with a sigh, and
said:

"I think one might venture now. No, Lucy, do not stir. I will
superintend the move."

"How you do do everything," said Lucy.

"Naturally, dear. It is my affair."

"But I would like to help you."

"No, dear."

Charlotte's energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all her
life, but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing herself. So
Lucy felt, or strove to feel. And yet--there was a rebellious spirit
in her which wondered whether the acceptance might not have been less
delicate and more beautiful. At all events, she entered her own room
without any feeling of joy.

"I want to explain," said Miss Bartlett, "why it is that I have taken
the largest room. Naturally, of course, I should have given it to you;
but I happen to know that it belongs to the young man, and I was sure
your mother would not like it."

Lucy was bewildered.

"If you are to accept a favour it is more suitable you should be under
an obligation to his father than to him. I am a woman of the world, in
my small way, and I know where things lead to. However, Mr. Beebe is a
guarantee of a sort that they will not presume on this."

"Mother wouldn't mind I'm sure," said Lucy, but again had the sense of
larger and unsuspected issues.

Miss Bartlett only sighed, and enveloped her in a protecting embrace as
she wished her good-night. It gave Lucy the sensation of a fog, and when
she reached her own room she opened the window and breathed the clean
night air, thinking of the kind old man who had enabled her to see the
lights dancing in the Arno and the cypresses of San Miniato, and the
foot-hills of the Apennines, black against the rising moon.

Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and locked the
door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see where the cupboards
led, and whether there were any oubliettes or secret entrances. It was
then that she saw, pinned up over the washstand, a sheet of paper on
which was scrawled an enormous note of interrogation. Nothing more.

"What does it mean?" she thought, and she examined it carefully by the
light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually became menacing,
obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized with an impulse to
destroy it, but fortunately remembered that she had no right to do so,
since it must be the property of young Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it
carefully, and put it between two pieces of blotting-paper to keep it
clean for him. Then she completed her inspection of the room, sighed
heavily according to her habit, and went to bed.



It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright
bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are
not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport
in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to
fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings,
to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble
churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the
embankment of the road.

Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy
foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for
some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the
window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms were
overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried to
hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their faces
to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared--good-looking, undersized
men--wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat
which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers,
looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning
somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled in their
ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a swarm of ants.
One of the little boys fell down, and some white bullocks came out of
an archway. Indeed, if it had not been for the good advice of an old man
who was selling button-hooks, the road might never have got clear.

Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away,
and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of
Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing
but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it. So it was as
well that Miss Bartlett should tap and come in, and having commented on
Lucy's leaving the door unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window
before she was fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the
best of the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready her cousin
had done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among the
crumbs.

A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett
was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the
morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy would
rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of
course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of
course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy
would stop with her cousin. Oh, no! that would never do. Oh, yes!

At this point the clever lady broke in.

"If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that you
can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be
perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of mine, Contessa
Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to school
with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead. Every one takes
them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained tightly
behind."

Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa Baroncelli's
daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself, her head not being
so very bad. The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a
long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be
delighted.

"I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and if you
bring me luck, we shall have an adventure."

Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker, to
see where Santa Croce was.

"Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from Baedeker.
He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true Italy--he does
not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found by patient
observation."

This sounded very interesting, and Lucy hurried over her breakfast, and
started with her new friend in high spirits. Italy was coming at last.
The Cockney Signora and her works had vanished like a bad dream.

Miss Lavish--for that was the clever lady's name--turned to the right
along the sunny Lung' Arno. How delightfully warm! But a wind down
the side streets cut like a knife, didn't it? Ponte alle
Grazie--particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San
Miniato--beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that kissed
a murderer--Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The men on the
river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most information.) Then
Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the white bullocks, and she
stopped, and she cried:

"A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has its
own smell."

"Is it a very nice smell?" said Lucy, who had inherited from her mother
a distaste to dirt.

"One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for
life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!" bowing right and left. "Look at that
adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple soul!"

So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence,
short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten's
grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one so clever and so
cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an Italian officer wears,
only increased the sense of festivity.

"Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will
never repent of a little civility to your inferiors. That is the
true democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now you're
shocked."

"Indeed, I'm not!" exclaimed Lucy. "We are Radicals, too, out and out.
My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so dreadful about
Ireland."

"I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy."

"Oh, please--! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote Radical
again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the glass over our
front door was broken last election, and Freddy is sure it was the
Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp."

"Shameful! A manufacturing district, I suppose?"

"No--in the Surrey hills. About five miles from Dorking, looking over
the Weald."

Miss Lavish seemed interested, and slackened her trot.

"What a delightful part; I know it so well. It is full of the very
nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway--a Radical if ever there
was?"

"Very well indeed."

"And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?"

"Why, she rents a field of us! How funny!"

Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured: "Oh, you
have property in Surrey?"

"Hardly any," said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. "Only thirty
acres--just the garden, all downhill, and some fields."

Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of her
aunt's Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember the last
name of Lady Louisa someone, who had taken a house near Summer Street
the other year, but she had not liked it, which was odd of her. And just
as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke off and exclaimed:

"Bless us! Bless us and save us! We've lost the way."

Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the tower
of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But Miss
Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that Lucy
had followed her with no misgivings.

"Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have
taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us!
What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is
what I call an adventure."

Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution,
that they should ask the way there.

"Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, NOT to
look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan't let you carry it. We will
simply drift."

Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown streets,
neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the
city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady
Louisa, and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy
appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the
living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can
ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from
the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended against
circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more
beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her
forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a
mile.

The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast begins, or
rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste
out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly
of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the
great unknown. But it gave them strength to drift into another Piazza,
large and dusty, on the farther side of which rose a black-and-white
facade of surpassing ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It
was Santa Croce. The adventure was over.

"Stop a minute; let those two people go on, or I shall have to speak to
them. I do detest conventional intercourse. Nasty! they are going into
the church, too. Oh, the Britisher abroad!"

"We sat opposite them at dinner last night. They have given us their
rooms. They were so very kind."

"Look at their figures!" laughed Miss Lavish. "They walk through my
Italy like a pair of cows. It's very naughty of me, but I would like
to set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who
couldn't pass it."

"What would you ask us?"

Miss Lavish laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy's arm, as if to suggest
that she, at all events, would get full marks. In this exalted mood they
reached the steps of the great church, and were about to enter it when
Miss Lavish stopped, squeaked, flung up her arms, and cried:

"There goes my local-colour box! I must have a word with him!"

And in a moment she was away over the Piazza, her military cloak
flapping in the wind; nor did she slacken speed till she caught up an
old man with white whiskers, and nipped him playfully upon the arm.

Lucy waited for nearly ten minutes. Then she began to get tired. The
beggars worried her, the dust blew in her eyes, and she remembered that
a young girl ought not to loiter in public places. She descended slowly
into the Piazza with the intention of rejoining Miss Lavish, who was
really almost too original. But at that moment Miss Lavish and her
local-colour box moved also, and disappeared down a side street, both
gesticulating largely. Tears of indignation came to Lucy's eyes partly
because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her
Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way
about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never
be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high spirits,
talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading herself that she
was full of originality. Now she entered the church depressed and
humiliated, not even able to remember whether it was built by the
Franciscans or the Dominicans. Of course, it must be a wonderful
building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it
contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values
she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell
her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be
enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was
no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved
the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one
that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of
acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the
Italian notices--the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into
the church--the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and
out of respect to the sacred edifice in which they found themselves,
not to spit. She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their
Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that
overtook three Papists--two he-babies and a she-baby--who began their
career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to
the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it
very slowly and from immense distances, they touched the stone with
their fingers, with their handkerchiefs, with their heads, and then
retreated. What could this mean? They did it again and again. Then Lucy
realized that they had mistaken Machiavelli for some saint, hoping
to acquire virtue. Punishment followed quickly. The smallest he-baby
stumbled over one of the sepulchral slabs so much admired by Mr. Ruskin,
and entangled his feet in the features of a recumbent bishop. Protestant
as she was, Lucy darted forward. She was too late. He fell heavily upon
the prelate's upturned toes.

"Hateful bishop!" exclaimed the voice of old Mr. Emerson, who had darted
forward also. "Hard in life, hard in death. Go out into the sunshine,
little boy, and kiss your hand to the sun, for that is where you ought
to be. Intolerable bishop!"

The child screamed frantically at these words, and at these dreadful
people who picked him up, dusted him, rubbed his bruises, and told him
not to be superstitious.

"Look at him!" said Mr. Emerson to Lucy. "Here's a mess: a baby hurt,
cold, and frightened! But what else can you expect from a church?"

The child's legs had become as melting wax. Each time that old Mr.
Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar. Fortunately an
Italian lady, who ought to have been saying her prayers, came to the
rescue. By some mysterious virtue, which mothers alone possess, she
stiffened the little boy's back-bone and imparted strength to his knees.
He stood. Still gibbering with agitation, he walked away.

"You are a clever woman," said Mr. Emerson. "You have done more than
all the relics in the world. I am not of your creed, but I do believe in
those who make their fellow-creatures happy. There is no scheme of the
universe--"

He paused for a phrase.

"Niente," said the Italian lady, and returned to her prayers.

"I'm not sure she understands English," suggested Lucy.

In her chastened mood she no longer despised the Emersons. She was
determined to be gracious to them, beautiful rather than delicate,
and, if possible, to erase Miss Bartlett's civility by some gracious
reference to the pleasant rooms.

"That woman understands everything," was Mr. Emerson's reply. "But what
are you doing here? Are you doing the church? Are you through with the
church?"

"No," cried Lucy, remembering her grievance. "I came here with Miss
Lavish, who was to explain everything; and just by the door--it is too
bad!--she simply ran away, and after waiting quite a time, I had to come
in by myself."

"Why shouldn't you?" said Mr. Emerson.

"Yes, why shouldn't you come by yourself?" said the son, addressing the
young lady for the first time.

"But Miss Lavish has even taken away Baedeker."

"Baedeker?" said Mr. Emerson. "I'm glad it's THAT you minded. It's worth
minding, the loss of a Baedeker. THAT'S worth minding."

Lucy was puzzled. She was again conscious of some new idea, and was not
sure whither it would lead her.

"If you've no Baedeker," said the son, "you'd better join us." Was this
where the idea would lead? She took refuge in her dignity.

"Thank you very much, but I could not think of that. I hope you do not
suppose that I came to join on to you. I really came to help with the
child, and to thank you for so kindly giving us your rooms last night. I
hope that you have not been put to any great inconvenience."

"My dear," said the old man gently, "I think that you are repeating what
you have heard older people say. You are pretending to be touchy; but
you are not really. Stop being so tiresome, and tell me instead what
part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a real
pleasure."

Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been
furious. But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one's temper as it
is difficult at other times to keep it. Lucy could not get cross. Mr.
Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour him. On the other
hand, his son was a young man, and she felt that a girl ought to be
offended with him, or at all events be offended before him. It was at
him that she gazed before replying.

"I am not touchy, I hope. It is the Giottos that I want to see, if you
will kindly tell me which they are."

The son nodded. With a look of sombre satisfaction, he led the way to
the Peruzzi Chapel. There was a hint of the teacher about him. She felt
like a child in school who had answered a question rightly.

The chapel was already filled with an earnest congregation, and out of
them rose the voice of a lecturer, directing them how to worship Giotto,
not by tactful valuations, but by the standards of the spirit.

"Remember," he was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa Croce;
how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before
any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these
frescoes--now, unhappily, ruined by restoration--is untroubled by the
snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more
pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge and
technical cleverness against a man who truly feels!"

"No!" exclaimed Mr. Emerson, in much too loud a voice for church.
"Remember nothing of the sort! Built by faith indeed! That simply means
the workmen weren't paid properly. And as for the frescoes, I see no
truth in them. Look at that fat man in blue! He must weigh as much as I
do, and he is shooting into the sky like an air balloon."

He was referring to the fresco of the "Ascension of St. John." Inside,
the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted
uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with
these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and
so strange that she could not remember how to behave.

"Now, did this happen, or didn't it? Yes or no?"

George replied:

"It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go up to
heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs; and if I got there I should
like my friends to lean out of it, just as they do here."

"You will never go up," said his father. "You and I, dear boy, will
lie at peace in the earth that bore us, and our names will disappear as
surely as our work survives."

"Some of the people can only see the empty grave, not the saint, whoever
he is, going up. It did happen like that, if it happened at all."

"Pardon me," said a frigid voice. "The chapel is somewhat small for two
parties. We will incommode you no longer."

The lecturer was a clergyman, and his audience must be also his flock,
for they held prayer-books as well as guide-books in their hands. They
filed out of the chapel in silence. Amongst them were the two little old
ladies of the Pension Bertolini--Miss Teresa and Miss Catherine Alan.

"Stop!" cried Mr. Emerson. "There's plenty of room for us all. Stop!"

The procession disappeared without a word.

Soon the lecturer could be heard in the next chapel, describing the life
of St. Francis.

"George, I do believe that clergyman is the Brixton curate."

George went into the next chapel and returned, saying "Perhaps he is. I
don't remember."

"Then I had better speak to him and remind him who I am. It's that Mr.
Eager. Why did he go? Did we talk too loud? How vexatious. I shall go
and say we are sorry. Hadn't I better? Then perhaps he will come back."

"He will not come back," said George.

But Mr. Emerson, contrite and unhappy, hurried away to apologize to the
Rev. Cuthbert Eager. Lucy, apparently absorbed in a lunette, could hear
the lecture again interrupted, the anxious, aggressive voice of the old
man, the curt, injured replies of his opponent. The son, who took every
little contretemps as if it were a tragedy, was listening also.

"My father has that effect on nearly everyone," he informed her. "He
will try to be kind."

"I hope we all try," said she, smiling nervously.

"Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people
because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or
frightened."

"How silly of them!" said Lucy, though in her heart she sympathized; "I
think that a kind action done tactfully--"

"Tact!"

He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the wrong
answer. She watched the singular creature pace up and down the chapel.
For a young man his face was rugged, and--until the shadows fell upon
it--hard. Enshadowed, it sprang into tenderness. She saw him once again
at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, carrying a burden of
acorns. Healthy and muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of greyness,
of tragedy that might only find solution in the night. The feeling soon
passed; it was unlike her to have entertained anything so subtle. Born
of silence and of unknown emotion, it passed when Mr. Emerson returned,
and she could re-enter the world of rapid talk, which was alone familiar
to her.

"Were you snubbed?" asked his son tranquilly.

"But we have spoilt the pleasure of I don't know how many people. They
won't come back."

"...full of innate sympathy...quickness to perceive good in
others...vision of the brotherhood of man..." Scraps of the lecture on
St. Francis came floating round the partition wall.

"Don't let us spoil yours," he continued to Lucy. "Have you looked at
those saints?"

"Yes," said Lucy. "They are lovely. Do you know which is the tombstone
that is praised in Ruskin?"

He did not know, and suggested that they should try to guess it. George,
rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the old man wandered
not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which, though it is like a barn,
has harvested many beautiful things inside its walls. There were also
beggars to avoid and guides to dodge round the pillars, and an old lady
with her dog, and here and there a priest modestly edging to his
Mass through the groups of tourists. But Mr. Emerson was only half
interested. He watched the lecturer, whose success he believed he had
impaired, and then he anxiously watched his son.

"Why will he look at that fresco?" he said uneasily. "I saw nothing in
it."

"I like Giotto," she replied. "It is so wonderful what they say about
his tactile values. Though I like things like the Della Robbia babies
better."

"So you ought. A baby is worth a dozen saints. And my baby's worth the
whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in Hell."

Lucy again felt that this did not do.

"In Hell," he repeated. "He's unhappy."

"Oh, dear!" said Lucy.

"How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is one
to give him? And think how he has been brought up--free from all the
superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name
of God. With such an education as that, I thought he was bound to grow
up happy."

She was no theologian, but she felt that here was a very foolish old
man, as well as a very irreligious one. She also felt that her mother
might not like her talking to that kind of person, and that Charlotte
would object most strongly.

"What are we to do with him?" he asked. "He comes out for his holiday to
Italy, and behaves--like that; like the little child who ought to have
been playing, and who hurt himself upon the tombstone. Eh? What did you
say?"

Lucy had made no suggestion. Suddenly he said:

"Now don't be stupid over this. I don't require you to fall in love with
my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are nearer
his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. You
might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time.
You stop here several weeks, I suppose? But let yourself go. You are
inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself
go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand,
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.



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 executante; 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 III. 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.

"I could hear your beautiful playing, Miss Honeychurch, though I was in
my room with the door shut. Doors shut; indeed, most necessary. No one
has the least idea of privacy in this country. And one person catches it
from another."

Lucy answered suitably. Mr. Beebe was not able to tell the ladies of
his adventure at Modena, where the chambermaid burst in upon him in his
bath, exclaiming cheerfully, "Fa niente, sono vecchia." He contented
himself with saying: "I quite agree with you, Miss Alan. The Italians
are a most unpleasant people. They pry everywhere, they see everything,
and they know what we want before we know it ourselves. We are at their
mercy. They read our thoughts, they foretell our desires. From the
cab-driver down to--to Giotto, they turn us inside out, and I resent
it. Yet in their heart of hearts they are--how superficial! They have no
conception of the intellectual life. How right is Signora Bertolini, who
exclaimed to me the other day: 'Ho, Mr. Beebe, if you knew what I suffer
over the children's edjucaishion. HI won't 'ave my little Victorier
taught by a hignorant Italian what can't explain nothink!'"

Miss Alan did not follow, but gathered that she was being mocked in an
agreeable way. Her sister was a little disappointed in Mr. Beebe, having
expected better things from a clergyman whose head was bald and who
wore a pair of russet whiskers. Indeed, who would have supposed that
tolerance, sympathy, and a sense of humour would inhabit that militant
form?

In the midst of her satisfaction she continued to sidle, and at last
the cause was disclosed. From the chair beneath her she extracted
a gun-metal cigarette-case, on which were powdered in turquoise the
initials "E. L."

"That belongs to Lavish." said the clergyman. "A good fellow, Lavish,
but I wish she'd start a pipe."

"Oh, Mr. Beebe," said Miss Alan, divided between awe and mirth. "Indeed,
though it is dreadful for her to smoke, it is not quite as dreadful as
you suppose. She took to it, practically in despair, after her
life's work was carried away in a landslip. Surely that makes it more
excusable."

"What was that?" asked Lucy.

Mr. Beebe sat back complacently, and Miss Alan began as follows: "It was
a novel--and I am afraid, from what I can gather, not a very nice novel.
It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say
they nearly always do. Anyhow, she left it almost finished in the Grotto
of the Calvary at the Capuccini Hotel at Amalfi while she went for a
little ink. She said: 'Can I have a little ink, please?' But you know
what Italians are, and meanwhile the Grotto fell roaring on to the
beach, and the saddest thing of all is that she cannot remember what she
has written. The poor thing was very ill after it, and so got tempted
into cigarettes. It is a great secret, but I am glad to say that she is
writing another novel. She told Teresa and Miss Pole the other day that
she had got up all the local colour--this novel is to be about modern
Italy; the other was historical--but that she could not start till she
had an idea. First she tried Perugia for an inspiration, then she came
here--this must on no account get round. And so cheerful through it all!
I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone,
even if you do not approve of them."

Miss Alan was always thus being charitable against her better judgement.
A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them
unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes
rise odours reminiscent of spring. She felt she had made almost too many
allowances, and apologized hurriedly for her toleration.

"All the same, she is a little too--I hardly like to say unwomanly, but
she behaved most strangely when the Emersons arrived."

Mr. Beebe smiled as Miss Alan plunged into an anecdote which he knew she
would be unable to finish in the presence of a gentleman.

"I don't know, Miss Honeychurch, if you have noticed that Miss Pole, the
lady who has so much yellow hair, takes lemonade. That old Mr. Emerson,
who puts things very strangely--"

Her jaw dropped. She was silent. Mr. Beebe, whose social resources were
endless, went out to order some tea, and she continued to Lucy in a
hasty whisper:

"Stomach. He warned Miss Pole of her stomach-acidity, he called it--and
he may have meant to be kind. I must say I forgot myself and laughed; it
was so sudden. As Teresa truly said, it was no laughing matter. But the
point is that Miss Lavish was positively ATTRACTED by his mentioning
S., and said she liked plain speaking, and meeting different grades of
thought. She thought they were commercial travellers--'drummers' was the
word she used--and all through dinner she tried to prove that England,
our great and beloved country, rests on nothing but commerce. Teresa was
very much annoyed, and left the table before the cheese, saying as she
did so: 'There, Miss Lavish, is one who can confute you better than I,'
and pointed to that beautiful picture of Lord Tennyson. Then Miss
Lavish said: 'Tut! The early Victorians.' Just imagine! 'Tut! The early
Victorians.' My sister had gone, and I felt bound to speak. I said:
'Miss Lavish, I am an early Victorian; at least, that is to say, I
will hear no breath of censure against our dear Queen.' It was horrible
speaking. I reminded her how the Queen had been to Ireland when she did
not want to go, and I must say she was dumbfounded, and made no reply.
But, unluckily, Mr. Emerson overheard this part, and called in his deep
voice: 'Quite so, quite so! I honour the woman for her Irish visit.' The
woman! I tell things so badly; but you see what a tangle we were in
by this time, all on account of S. having been mentioned in the first
place. But that was not all. After dinner Miss Lavish actually came up
and said: 'Miss Alan, I am going into the smoking-room to talk to those
two nice men. Come, too.' Needless to say, I refused such an unsuitable
invitation, and she had the impertinence to tell me that it would
broaden my ideas, and said that she had four brothers, all University
men, except one who was in the army, who always made a point of talking
to commercial travellers."

"Let me finish the story," said Mr. Beebe, who had returned.

"Miss Lavish tried Miss Pole, myself, everyone, and finally said:
'I shall go alone.' She went. At the end of five minutes she returned
unobtrusively with a green baize board, and began playing patience."

"Whatever happened?" cried Lucy.

"No one knows. No one will ever know. Miss Lavish will never dare to
tell, and Mr. Emerson does not think it worth telling."

"Mr. Beebe--old Mr. Emerson, is he nice or not nice? I do so want to
know."

Mr. Beebe laughed and suggested that she should settle the question for
herself.

"No; but it is so difficult. Sometimes he is so silly, and then I do not
mind him. Miss Alan, what do you think? Is he nice?"

The little old lady shook her head, and sighed disapprovingly. Mr.
Beebe, whom the conversation amused, stirred her up by saying:

"I consider that you are bound to class him as nice, Miss Alan, after
that business of the violets."

"Violets? Oh, dear! Who told you about the violets? How do things get
round? A pension is a bad place for gossips. No, I cannot forget how
they behaved at Mr. Eager's lecture at Santa Croce. Oh, poor Miss
Honeychurch! It really was too bad. No, I have quite changed. I do NOT
like the Emersons. They are not nice."

Mr. Beebe smiled nonchalantly. He had made a gentle effort to introduce
the Emersons into Bertolini society, and the effort had failed. He was
almost the only person who remained friendly to them. Miss Lavish, who
represented intellect, was avowedly hostile, and now the Miss Alans,
who stood for good breeding, were following her. Miss Bartlett, smarting
under an obligation, would scarcely be civil. The case of Lucy was
different. She had given him a hazy account of her adventures in Santa
Croce, and he gathered that the two men had made a curious and possibly
concerted attempt to annex her, to show her the world from their own
strange standpoint, to interest her in their private sorrows and joys.
This was impertinent; he did not wish their cause to be championed by a
young girl: he would rather it should fail. After all, he knew nothing
about them, and pension joys, pension sorrows, are flimsy things;
whereas Lucy would be his parishioner.

Lucy, with one eye upon the weather, finally said that she thought the
Emersons were nice; not that she saw anything of them now. Even their
seats at dinner had been moved.

"But aren't they always waylaying you to go out with them, dear?" said
the little lady inquisitively.

"Only once. Charlotte didn't like it, and said something--quite
politely, of course."

"Most right of her. They don't understand our ways. They must find their
level."

Mr. Beebe rather felt that they had gone under. They had given up their
attempt--if it was one--to conquer society, and now the father was
almost as silent as the son. He wondered whether he would not plan a
pleasant day for these folk before they left--some expedition, perhaps,
with Lucy well chaperoned to be nice to them. It was one of Mr. Beebe's
chief pleasures to provide people with happy memories.

Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the
colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its
muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of
bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the
earth, and then the dripping facade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in
the declining sun.

"Too late to go out," said Miss Alan in a voice of relief. "All the
galleries are shut."

"I think I shall go out," said Lucy. "I want to go round the town in the
circular tram--on the platform by the driver."

Her two companions looked grave. Mr. Beebe, who felt responsible for her
in the absence of Miss Bartlett, ventured to say:

"I wish we could. Unluckily I have letters. If you do want to go out
alone, won't you be better on your feet?"

"Italians, dear, you know," said Miss Alan.

"Perhaps I shall meet someone who reads me through and through!"

But they still looked disapproval, and she so far conceded to Mr. Beebe
as to say that she would only go for a little walk, and keep to the
street frequented by tourists.

"She oughtn't really to go at all," said Mr. Beebe, as they watched
her from the window, "and she knows it. I put it down to too much
Beethoven."



Mr. Beebe was right. Lucy never knew her desires so clearly as after
music. She had not really appreciated the clergyman's wit, nor the
suggestive twitterings of Miss Alan. Conversation was tedious; she
wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on
the wind-swept platform of an electric tram. This she might not attempt.
It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte
had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior
to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire
others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by
means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But
if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then
despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this
point.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have
gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She
reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early
Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business,
sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas!
the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing
up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast
panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom
of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant
crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding
heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over
the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy,
not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the
show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal
Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

Lucy does not stand for the medieval lady, who was rather an ideal to
which she was bidden to lift her eyes when feeling serious. Nor has
she any system of revolt. Here and there a restriction annoyed her
particularly, and she would transgress it, and perhaps be sorry that she
had done so. This afternoon she was peculiarly restive. She would really
like to do something of which her well-wishers disapproved. As she might
not go on the electric tram, she went to Alinari's shop.

There she bought a photograph of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Venus,
being a pity, spoilt the picture, otherwise so charming, and Miss
Bartlett had persuaded her to do without it. (A pity in art of course
signified the nude.) Giorgione's "Tempesta," the "Idolino," some of
the Sistine frescoes and the Apoxyomenos, were added to it. She felt
a little calmer then, and bought Fra Angelico's "Coronation," Giotto's
"Ascension of St. John," some Della Robbia babies, and some Guido
Reni Madonnas. For her taste was catholic, and she extended uncritical
approval to every well-known name.

But though she spent nearly seven lire, the gates of liberty seemed
still unopened. She was conscious of her discontent; it was new to her
to be conscious of it. "The world," she thought, "is certainly full
of beautiful things, if only I could come across them." It was not
surprising that Mrs. Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it
always left her daughter peevish, unpractical, and touchy.

"Nothing ever happens to me," she reflected, as she entered the Piazza
Signoria and looked nonchalantly at its marvels, now fairly familiar to
her. The great square was in shadow; the sunshine had come too late to
strike it. Neptune was already unsubstantial in the twilight, half god,
half ghost, and his fountain plashed dreamily to the men and satyrs who
idled together on its marge. The Loggia showed as the triple entrance of
a cave, wherein many a deity, shadowy, but immortal, looking forth
upon the arrivals and departures of mankind. It was the hour of
unreality--the hour, that is, when unfamiliar things are real. An older
person at such an hour and in such a place might think that sufficient
was happening to him, and rest content. Lucy desired more.

She fixed her eyes wistfully on the tower of the palace, which rose
out of the lower darkness like a pillar of roughened gold. It seemed
no longer a tower, no longer supported by earth, but some unattainable
treasure throbbing in the tranquil sky. Its brightness mesmerized her,
still dancing before her eyes when she bent them to the ground and
started towards home.

Then something did happen.

Two Italians by the Loggia had been bickering about a debt. "Cinque
lire," they had cried, "cinque lire!" They sparred at each other, and
one of them was hit lightly upon the chest. He frowned; he bent towards
Lucy with a look of interest, as if he had an important message for her.
He opened his lips to deliver it, and a stream of red came out between
them and trickled down his unshaven chin.

That was all. A crowd rose out of the dusk. It hid this extraordinary
man from her, and bore him away to the fountain. Mr. George Emerson
happened to be a few paces away, looking at her across the spot where
the man had been. How very odd! Across something. Even as she caught
sight of him he grew dim; the palace itself grew dim, swayed above her,
fell on to her softly, slowly, noiselessly, and the sky fell with it.

She thought: "Oh, what have I done?"

"Oh, what have I done?" she murmured, and opened her eyes.

George Emerson still looked at her, but not across anything. She had
complained of dullness, and lo! one man was stabbed, and another held
her in his arms.

They were sitting on some steps in the Uffizi Arcade. He must have
carried her. He rose when she spoke, and began to dust his knees. She
repeated:

"Oh, what have I done?"

"You fainted."

"I--I am very sorry."

"How are you now?"

"Perfectly well--absolutely well." And she began to nod and smile.

"Then let us come home. There's no point in our stopping."

He held out his hand to pull her up. She pretended not to see it. The
cries from the fountain--they had never ceased--rang emptily. The whole
world seemed pale and void of its original meaning.

"How very kind you have been! I might have hurt myself falling. But now
I am well. I can go alone, thank you."

His hand was still extended.

"Oh, my photographs!" she exclaimed suddenly.

"What photographs?"

"I bought some photographs at Alinari's. I must have dropped them out
there in the square." She looked at him cautiously. "Would you add to
your kindness by fetching them?"

He added to his kindness. As soon as he had turned his back, Lucy arose
with the running of a maniac and stole down the arcade towards the Arno.

"Miss Honeychurch!"

She stopped with her hand on her heart.

"You sit still; you aren't fit to go home alone."

"Yes, I am, thank you so very much."

"No, you aren't. You'd go openly if you were."

"But I had rather--"

"Then I don't fetch your photographs."

"I had rather be alone."

He said imperiously: "The man is dead--the man is probably dead; sit
down till you are rested." She was bewildered, and obeyed him. "And
don't move till I come back."

In the distance she saw creatures with black hoods, such as appear in
dreams. The palace tower had lost the reflection of the declining day,
and joined itself to earth. How should she talk to Mr. Emerson when he
returned from the shadowy square? Again the thought occurred to her,
"Oh, what have I done?"--the thought that she, as well as the dying man,
had crossed some spiritual boundary.

He returned, and she talked of the murder. Oddly enough, it was an easy
topic. She spoke of the Italian character; she became almost garrulous
over the incident that had made her faint five minutes before. Being
strong physically, she soon overcame the horror of blood. She rose
without his assistance, and though wings seemed to flutter inside her,
she walked firmly enough towards the Arno. There a cabman signalled to
them; they refused him.

"And the murderer tried to kiss him, you say--how very odd Italians
are!--and gave himself up to the police! Mr. Beebe was saying that
Italians know everything, but I think they are rather childish. When my
cousin and I were at the Pitti yesterday--What was that?"

He had thrown something into the stream.

"What did you throw in?"

"Things I didn't want," he said crossly.

"Mr. Emerson!"

"Well?"

"Where are the photographs?"

He was silent.

"I believe it was my photographs that you threw away."

"I didn't know what to do with them," he cried, and his voice was that
of an anxious boy. Her heart warmed towards him for the first time.
"They were covered with blood. There! I'm glad I've told you; and all
the time we were making conversation I was wondering what to do with
them." He pointed down-stream. "They've gone." The river swirled under
the bridge, "I did mind them so, and one is so foolish, it seemed better
that they should go out to the sea--I don't know; I may just mean that
they frightened me." Then the boy verged into a man. "For something
tremendous has happened; I must face it without getting muddled. It
isn't exactly that a man has died."

Something warned Lucy that she must stop him.

"It has happened," he repeated, "and I mean to find out what it is."

"Mr. Emerson--"

He turned towards her frowning, as if she had disturbed him in some
abstract quest.

"I want to ask you something before we go in."

They were close to their pension. She stopped and leant her elbows
against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at
times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have
suggested to us eternal comradeship. She moved her elbows before saying:

"I have behaved ridiculously."

He was following his own thoughts.

"I was never so much ashamed of myself in my life; I cannot think what
came over me."

"I nearly fainted myself," he said; but she felt that her attitude
repelled him.

"Well, I owe you a thousand apologies."

"Oh, all right."

"And--this is the real point--you know how silly people are
gossiping--ladies especially, I am afraid--you understand what I mean?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"I mean, would you not mention it to any one, my foolish behaviour?"

"Your behaviour? Oh, yes, all right--all right."

"Thank you so much. And would you--"

She could not carry her request any further. The river was rushing below
them, almost black in the advancing night. He had thrown her photographs
into it, and then he had told her the reason. It struck her that it was
hopeless to look for chivalry in such a man. He would do her no harm by
idle gossip; he was trustworthy, intelligent, and even kind; he might
even have a high opinion of her. But he lacked chivalry; his thoughts,
like his behaviour, would not be modified by awe. It was useless to say
to him, "And would you--" and hope that he would complete the sentence
for himself, averting his eyes from her nakedness like the knight in
that beautiful picture. She had been in his arms, and he remembered it,
just as he remembered the blood on the photographs that she had bought
in Alinari's shop. It was not exactly that a man had died; something
had happened to the living: they had come to a situation where character
tells, and where childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth.

"Well, thank you so much," she repeated, "How quickly these accidents do
happen, and then one returns to the old life!"

"I don't."

Anxiety moved her to question him.

His answer was puzzling: "I shall probably want to live."

"But why, Mr. Emerson? What do you mean?"

"I shall want to live, I say."

Leaning her elbows on the parapet, she contemplated the River Arno,
whose roar was suggesting some unexpected melody to her ears.

 Miss Lucy Honeychurch is a somewhat naive young woman sent on holiday to Italy under the charge of her older cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett. The two are staying at the Bertolini Pension in Florence. The story opens around the dinner table at the pension, where Lucy and her cousin lament that though promised rooms in the front of the pension, they have been given rooms in the back, with no view. One of the other guests, Mr. Emerson, offers to switch rooms with them, as he and his son George, a quiet young man, have a view from their two rooms. However, his generous offer is viewed with suspicion by the other pension guests, just as his abrupt and open manner offends their own "upper class" notions of tactful behavior. Charlotte refuses the offer. Mr. Beebe, a clergyman who once worked in Lucy's parish and will be returning there in a few months, makes a surprise appearance. He is now vacationing at the pension, which excites and pleases Lucy. He intercedes in order to help the Emersons save face, and the two parties do switch rooms. Affixed to the wall in George Emerson's former room, Charlotte finds a large question mark drawn on a piece of paper. The next day, Lucy goes out for a first look at Florence, under the guidance of another pension guest, the "clever," energetic Miss Eleanor Lavish. Lavish, a writer, claims she can show Lucy "the true Italy," and takes away her copy of Baedeker's guidebook. After losing their way, they finally reach Santa Croce church, where Lucy's companion becomes distracted by an acquaintance and abandons her. However, Lucy finds the two Emersons inside the church, and the three admire the fine Giotto frescoes and carved tombstones. The Rev. Cuthbert Eager is leading a tour through the church and Mr. Emerson offends him by loudly criticizing his lecture on Giotto's frescoes. Alone together, George speaks to Lucy about his father's frank manner of speaking and how it offends everyone despite his good intentions. Then Mr. Emerson and Lucy walk together and he explains his son's mysterious melancholy, saying that George's trouble is that he is distressed that the "things of the universe...don't fit." He asks Lucy to make George realize "that there is a Yes," a joyfulness in the world itself. Then Charlotte arrives on the scene and whisks her unescorted cousin away. Lucy plays the piano at the pension on a rainy afternoon, while Miss Catharine Alan, an old wealthy woman, and Mr. Beebe discuss the other guests, particularly the Emersons, who have fallen out of nearly everyone's favor. Miss Catharine decides that they are "not nice," and points out, "they don't understand our ways. They must find their level." Lucy says that she thinks the Emersons are nice. The rain has cleared, and Lucy, on a rebellious impulse, decides to go outside, wanting to take the circular electric tram. Her elders disapprove of the notion, and she sadly agrees to walk. Walking in Florence, Lucy feels discontented and dull, thinking that "nothing ever happens to me." She buys some photographs of Italian artworks. Suddenly, as she enters the Piazza Signoria, she comes near two Italians bickering about a debt. As one turns toward her, blood pours from his mouth while the other stabs him in the back. Lucy faints, seeing George out of the corner of her eye as she falls. She awakes next to him on the steps nearby, apologizing for herself. George insists on walking her to the pension; Lucy tries to evade him while he collects her fallen postcards. He commands her to wait, and they walk back together. He suddenly throws the postcards into the River Arno, explaining upon rigorous questioning that they were covered in blood. Lucy, fearing gossip and disapproval, asks George not to tell anyone about her "foolish behavior" . As they gaze down to the roaring river, Lucy sums up their experience saying, "How quickly these accidents do happen, and then one returns to the old life." George simply says mysteriously, "I shall probably want to live."

