Chapter: The Miss Alans did go to Greece, but they went by themselves. They alone
of this little company will double Malea and plough the waters of the
Saronic gulf. They alone will visit Athens and Delphi, and either shrine
of intellectual song--that upon the Acropolis, encircled by blue seas;
that under Parnassus, where the eagles build and the bronze charioteer
drives undismayed towards infinity. Trembling, anxious, cumbered with
much digestive bread, they did proceed to Constantinople, they did go
round the world. The rest of us must be contented with a fair, but a
less arduous, goal. Italiam petimus: we return to the Pension Bertolini.

George said it was his old room.

"No, it isn't," said Lucy; "because it is the room I had, and I had your
father's room. I forget why; Charlotte made me, for some reason."

He knelt on the tiled floor, and laid his face in her lap.

"George, you baby, get up."

"Why shouldn't I be a baby?" murmured George.

Unable to answer this question, she put down his sock, which she was
trying to mend, and gazed out through the window. It was evening and
again the spring.

"Oh, bother Charlotte," she said thoughtfully. "What can such people be
made of?"

"Same stuff as parsons are made of."

"Nonsense!"

"Quite right. It is nonsense."

"Now you get up off the cold floor, or you'll be starting rheumatism
next, and you stop laughing and being so silly."

"Why shouldn't I laugh?" he asked, pinning her with his elbows, and
advancing his face to hers. "What's there to cry at? Kiss me here." He
indicated the spot where a kiss would be welcome.

He was a boy after all. When it came to the point, it was she who
remembered the past, she into whose soul the iron had entered, she
who knew whose room this had been last year. It endeared him to her
strangely that he should be sometimes wrong.

"Any letters?" he asked.

"Just a line from Freddy."

"Now kiss me here; then here."

Then, threatened again with rheumatism, he strolled to the window,
opened it (as the English will), and leant out. There was the parapet,
there the river, there to the left the beginnings of the hills. The
cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might
be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve
months ago. A passion of gratitude--all feelings grow to passions in the
South--came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things
who had taken so much trouble about a young fool. He had helped himself,
it is true, but how stupidly!

All the fighting that mattered had been done by others--by Italy, by his
father, by his wife.

"Lucy, you come and look at the cypresses; and the church, whatever its
name is, still shows."

"San Miniato. I'll just finish your sock."

"Signorino, domani faremo uno giro," called the cabman, with engaging
certainty.

George told him that he was mistaken; they had no money to throw away on
driving.

And the people who had not meant to help--the Miss Lavishes, the Cecils,
the Miss Bartletts! Ever prone to magnify Fate, George counted up the
forces that had swept him into this contentment.

"Anything good in Freddy's letter?"

"Not yet."

His own content was absolute, but hers held bitterness: the
Honeychurches had not forgiven them; they were disgusted at her past
hypocrisy; she had alienated Windy Corner, perhaps for ever.

"What does he say?"

"Silly boy! He thinks he's being dignified. He knew we should go off in
the spring--he has known it for six months--that if mother wouldn't give
her consent we should take the thing into our own hands. They had fair
warning, and now he calls it an elopement. Ridiculous boy--"

"Signorino, domani faremo uno giro--"

"But it will all come right in the end. He has to build us both up
from the beginning again. I wish, though, that Cecil had not turned so
cynical about women. He has, for the second time, quite altered. Why
will men have theories about women? I haven't any about men. I wish,
too, that Mr. Beebe--"

"You may well wish that."

"He will never forgive us--I mean, he will never be interested in us
again. I wish that he did not influence them so much at Windy Corner. I
wish he hadn't--But if we act the truth, the people who really love us
are sure to come back to us in the long run."

"Perhaps." Then he said more gently: "Well, I acted the truth--the
only thing I did do--and you came back to me. So possibly you know." He
turned back into the room. "Nonsense with that sock." He carried her
to the window, so that she, too, saw all the view. They sank upon their
knees, invisible from the road, they hoped, and began to whisper one
another's names. Ah! it was worth while; it was the great joy that they
had expected, and countless little joys of which they had never dreamt.
They were silent.

"Signorino, domani faremo--"

"Oh, bother that man!"

But Lucy remembered the vendor of photographs and said, "No, don't be
rude to him." Then with a catching of her breath, she murmured: "Mr.
Eager and Charlotte, dreadful frozen Charlotte. How cruel she would be
to a man like that!"

"Look at the lights going over the bridge."

"But this room reminds me of Charlotte. How horrible to grow old in
Charlotte's way! To think that evening at the rectory that she shouldn't
have heard your father was in the house. For she would have stopped me
going in, and he was the only person alive who could have made me see
sense. You couldn't have made me. When I am very happy"--she kissed
him--"I remember on how little it all hangs. If Charlotte had only
known, she would have stopped me going in, and I should have gone to
silly Greece, and become different for ever."

"But she did know," said George; "she did see my father, surely. He said
so."

"Oh, no, she didn't see him. She was upstairs with old Mrs. Beebe, don't
you remember, and then went straight to the church. She said so."

George was obstinate again. "My father," said he, "saw her, and I prefer
his word. He was dozing by the study fire, and he opened his eyes,
and there was Miss Bartlett. A few minutes before you came in. She was
turning to go as he woke up. He didn't speak to her."

Then they spoke of other things--the desultory talk of those who have
been fighting to reach one another, and whose reward is to rest quietly
in each other's arms. It was long ere they returned to Miss Bartlett,
but when they did her behaviour seemed more interesting. George, who
disliked any darkness, said: "It's clear that she knew. Then, why
did she risk the meeting? She knew he was there, and yet she went to
church."

They tried to piece the thing together.

As they talked, an incredible solution came into Lucy's mind. She
rejected it, and said: "How like Charlotte to undo her work by a feeble
muddle at the last moment." But something in the dying evening, in the
roar of the river, in their very embrace warned them that her words fell
short of life, and George whispered: "Or did she mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"Signorino, domani faremo uno giro--"

Lucy bent forward and said with gentleness: "Lascia, prego, lascia.
Siamo sposati."

"Scusi tanto, signora," he replied in tones as gentle and whipped up his
horse.

"Buona sera--e grazie."

"Niente."

The cabman drove away singing.

"Mean what, George?"

He whispered: "Is it this? Is this possible? I'll put a marvel to you.
That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we
met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this--of
course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she
hoped. I can't explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me
alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after
month she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted
her--or she couldn't have described us as she did to her friend. There
are details--it burnt. I read the book afterwards. She is not frozen,
Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but
in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us
happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe
that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is
glad."

"It is impossible," murmured Lucy, and then, remembering the experiences
of her own heart, she said: "No--it is just possible."

Youth enwrapped them; the song of Phaethon announced passion requited,
love attained. But they were conscious of a love more mysterious than
this. The song died away; they heard the river, bearing down the snows
of winter into the Mediterranean.

 Chapter 20 is titled "The End of the Middle Ages" because it marks the beginning of Lucy's Renaissance, her rebirth as a happily married woman. The Miss Alans go to Greece, but they go alone. Lucy and George, newly married, go back to the Pension Bertolini in Florence, where they first met. George has his head in Lucy's lap and is being silly and childish, which endears him to Lucy. He gets up to look out the window at the view, feeling full of gratitude that he is here with Lucy, and thinking of all the people who helped him to get there. Lucy's happiness is less complete. All of Windy Corner is upset, and Freddy has written an indignant letter protesting their "elopement. The two have had to marry without Mrs. Honeychurch's consent. Cecil has grown cynical about women, and Mr. Beebe still has not forgiven them. George and Lucy can only hope that if they act the truth, people who really love them will come back to them in the end. A carriage driver pesters them from the street below, trying to sell them on a ride in the countryside. Lucy thinks of Charlotte, and how rude she would be to such a man. She grows cross thinking of Charlotte and how her cousin had tried to ruin her happiness with George. George stops her. On the day that Lucy spoke to Mr. Emerson, Charlotte had known very well that the old man was in the Rectory, and yet she did not stop Lucy. It even seemed, on reflection, that Charlotte had deliberately arranged it so that Lucy would talk to Mr. Emerson. Charlotte, deep down, could have been hoping for them to be together all along, although she objected on the surface. At the Rectory she had given them one last chance to be happy. Lucy rejects the idea, but then decides that "it is just possible. The two of them are enwrapped in youthful love, but as they contemplate the mystery of how they came together, they are conscious of something deeper and more mysterious than this--a love eternal as the river outside their window.

