Chapter: The drawing-room curtains at Windy Corner had been pulled to meet, for
the carpet was new and deserved protection from the August sun. They
were heavy curtains, reaching almost to the ground, and the light
that filtered through them was subdued and varied. A poet--none was
present--might have quoted, "Life like a dome of many coloured glass,"
or might have compared the curtains to sluice-gates, lowered against
the intolerable tides of heaven. Without was poured a sea of radiance;
within, the glory, though visible, was tempered to the capacities of
man.

Two pleasant people sat in the room. One--a boy of nineteen--was
studying a small manual of anatomy, and peering occasionally at a bone
which lay upon the piano. From time to time he bounced in his chair and
puffed and groaned, for the day was hot and the print small, and the
human frame fearfully made; and his mother, who was writing a letter,
did continually read out to him what she had written. And continually
did she rise from her seat and part the curtains so that a rivulet of
light fell across the carpet, and make the remark that they were still
there.

"Where aren't they?" said the boy, who was Freddy, Lucy's brother. "I
tell you I'm getting fairly sick."

"For goodness' sake go out of my drawing-room, then?" cried Mrs.
Honeychurch, who hoped to cure her children of slang by taking it
literally.

Freddy did not move or reply.

"I think things are coming to a head," she observed, rather wanting
her son's opinion on the situation if she could obtain it without undue
supplication.

"Time they did."

"I am glad that Cecil is asking her this once more."

"It's his third go, isn't it?"

"Freddy I do call the way you talk unkind."

"I didn't mean to be unkind." Then he added: "But I do think Lucy might
have got this off her chest in Italy. I don't know how girls manage
things, but she can't have said 'No' properly before, or she wouldn't
have to say it again now. Over the whole thing--I can't explain--I do
feel so uncomfortable."

"Do you indeed, dear? How interesting!"

"I feel--never mind."

He returned to his work.

"Just listen to what I have written to Mrs. Vyse. I said: 'Dear Mrs.
Vyse.'"

"Yes, mother, you told me. A jolly good letter."

"I said: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse, Cecil has just asked my permission about
it, and I should be delighted, if Lucy wishes it. But--'" She stopped
reading, "I was rather amused at Cecil asking my permission at all. He
has always gone in for unconventionality, and parents nowhere, and so
forth. When it comes to the point, he can't get on without me."

"Nor me."

"You?"

Freddy nodded.

"What do you mean?"

"He asked me for my permission also."

She exclaimed: "How very odd of him!"

"Why so?" asked the son and heir. "Why shouldn't my permission be
asked?"

"What do you know about Lucy or girls or anything? What ever did you
say?"

"I said to Cecil, 'Take her or leave her; it's no business of mine!'"

"What a helpful answer!" But her own answer, though more normal in its
wording, had been to the same effect.

"The bother is this," began Freddy.

Then he took up his work again, too shy to say what the bother was. Mrs.
Honeychurch went back to the window.

"Freddy, you must come. There they still are!"

"I don't see you ought to go peeping like that."

"Peeping like that! Can't I look out of my own window?"

But she returned to the writing-table, observing, as she passed her
son, "Still page 322?" Freddy snorted, and turned over two leaves. For a
brief space they were silent. Close by, beyond the curtains, the gentle
murmur of a long conversation had never ceased.

"The bother is this: I have put my foot in it with Cecil most awfully."
He gave a nervous gulp. "Not content with 'permission', which I did
give--that is to say, I said, 'I don't mind'--well, not content with
that, he wanted to know whether I wasn't off my head with joy. He
practically put it like this: Wasn't it a splendid thing for Lucy and
for Windy Corner generally if he married her? And he would have an
answer--he said it would strengthen his hand."

"I hope you gave a careful answer, dear."

"I answered 'No'" said the boy, grinding his teeth. "There! Fly into a
stew! I can't help it--had to say it. I had to say no. He ought never to
have asked me."

"Ridiculous child!" cried his mother. "You think you're so holy and
truthful, but really it's only abominable conceit. Do you suppose that
a man like Cecil would take the slightest notice of anything you say? I
hope he boxed your ears. How dare you say no?"

"Oh, do keep quiet, mother! I had to say no when I couldn't say yes. I
tried to laugh as if I didn't mean what I said, and, as Cecil laughed
too, and went away, it may be all right. But I feel my foot's in it. Oh,
do keep quiet, though, and let a man do some work."

"No," said Mrs. Honeychurch, with the air of one who has considered the
subject, "I shall not keep quiet. You know all that has passed between
them in Rome; you know why he is down here, and yet you deliberately
insult him, and try to turn him out of my house."

"Not a bit!" he pleaded. "I only let out I didn't like him. I don't hate
him, but I don't like him. What I mind is that he'll tell Lucy."

He glanced at the curtains dismally.

"Well, I like him," said Mrs. Honeychurch. "I know his mother; he's
good, he's clever, he's rich, he's well connected--Oh, you needn't kick
the piano! He's well connected--I'll say it again if you like: he's
well connected." She paused, as if rehearsing her eulogy, but her face
remained dissatisfied. She added: "And he has beautiful manners."

"I liked him till just now. I suppose it's having him spoiling Lucy's
first week at home; and it's also something that Mr. Beebe said, not
knowing."

"Mr. Beebe?" said his mother, trying to conceal her interest. "I don't
see how Mr. Beebe comes in."

"You know Mr. Beebe's funny way, when you never quite know what he
means. He said: 'Mr. Vyse is an ideal bachelor.' I was very cute, I
asked him what he meant. He said 'Oh, he's like me--better detached.' I
couldn't make him say any more, but it set me thinking. Since Cecil has
come after Lucy he hasn't been so pleasant, at least--I can't explain."

"You never can, dear. But I can. You are jealous of Cecil because he may
stop Lucy knitting you silk ties."

The explanation seemed plausible, and Freddy tried to accept it. But at
the back of his brain there lurked a dim mistrust. Cecil praised one too
much for being athletic. Was that it? Cecil made one talk in one's own
way. This tired one. Was that it? And Cecil was the kind of fellow who
would never wear another fellow's cap. Unaware of his own profundity,
Freddy checked himself. He must be jealous, or he would not dislike a
man for such foolish reasons.

"Will this do?" called his mother. "'Dear Mrs. Vyse,--Cecil has just
asked my permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy wishes
it.' Then I put in at the top, 'and I have told Lucy so.' I must write
the letter out again--'and I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very
uncertain, and in these days young people must decide for themselves.' I
said that because I didn't want Mrs. Vyse to think us old-fashioned. She
goes in for lectures and improving her mind, and all the time a thick
layer of flue under the beds, and the maid's dirty thumb-marks where you
turn on the electric light. She keeps that flat abominably--"

"Suppose Lucy marries Cecil, would she live in a flat, or in the
country?"

"Don't interrupt so foolishly. Where was I? Oh yes--'Young people must
decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son, because she
tells me everything, and she wrote to me from Rome when he asked her
first.' No, I'll cross that last bit out--it looks patronizing. I'll
stop at 'because she tells me everything.' Or shall I cross that out,
too?"

"Cross it out, too," said Freddy.

Mrs. Honeychurch left it in.

"Then the whole thing runs: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse.--Cecil has just asked my
permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy wishes it, and
I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very uncertain, and in these days
young people must decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your
son, because she tells me everything. But I do not know--'"

"Look out!" cried Freddy.

The curtains parted.

Cecil's first movement was one of irritation. He couldn't bear the
Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture.
Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent them swinging down
their poles. Light entered. There was revealed a terrace, such as is
owned by many villas with trees each side of it, and on it a little
rustic seat, and two flower-beds. But it was transfigured by the view
beyond, for Windy Corner was built on the range that overlooks the
Sussex Weald. Lucy, who was in the little seat, seemed on the edge of a
green magic carpet which hovered in the air above the tremulous world.

Cecil entered.

Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described. He
was medieval. Like a Gothic statue. Tall and refined, with shoulders
that seemed braced square by an effort of the will, and a head that
was tilted a little higher than the usual level of vision, he resembled
those fastidious saints who guard the portals of a French cathedral.
Well educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he
remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows
as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision,
worshipped as asceticism. A Gothic statue implies celibacy, just as
a Greek statue implies fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr. Beebe
meant. And Freddy, who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same
when he failed to imagine Cecil wearing another fellow's cap.

Mrs. Honeychurch left her letter on the writing table and moved towards
her young acquaintance.

"Oh, Cecil!" she exclaimed--"oh, Cecil, do tell me!"

"I promessi sposi," said he.

They stared at him anxiously.

"She has accepted me," he said, and the sound of the thing in English
made him flush and smile with pleasure, and look more human.

"I am so glad," said Mrs. Honeychurch, while Freddy proffered a hand
that was yellow with chemicals. They wished that they also knew Italian,
for our phrases of approval and of amazement are so connected with
little occasions that we fear to use them on great ones. We are obliged
to become vaguely poetic, or to take refuge in Scriptural reminiscences.

"Welcome as one of the family!" said Mrs. Honeychurch, waving her hand
at the furniture. "This is indeed a joyous day! I feel sure that you
will make our dear Lucy happy."

"I hope so," replied the young man, shifting his eyes to the ceiling.

"We mothers--" simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that she
was affected, sentimental, bombastic--all the things she hated most.
Why could she not be Freddy, who stood stiff in the middle of the room;
looking very cross and almost handsome?

"I say, Lucy!" called Cecil, for conversation seemed to flag.

Lucy rose from the seat. She moved across the lawn and smiled in at
them, just as if she was going to ask them to play tennis. Then she saw
her brother's face. Her lips parted, and she took him in her arms. He
said, "Steady on!"

"Not a kiss for me?" asked her mother.

Lucy kissed her also.

"Would you take them into the garden and tell Mrs. Honeychurch all about
it?" Cecil suggested. "And I'd stop here and tell my mother."

"We go with Lucy?" said Freddy, as if taking orders.

"Yes, you go with Lucy."

They passed into the sunlight. Cecil watched them cross the terrace,
and descend out of sight by the steps. They would descend--he knew their
ways--past the shrubbery, and past the tennis-lawn and the dahlia-bed,
until they reached the kitchen garden, and there, in the presence of the
potatoes and the peas, the great event would be discussed.

Smiling indulgently, he lit a cigarette, and rehearsed the events that
had led to such a happy conclusion.

He had known Lucy for several years, but only as a commonplace girl
who happened to be musical. He could still remember his depression that
afternoon at Rome, when she and her terrible cousin fell on him out
of the blue, and demanded to be taken to St. Peter's. That day she had
seemed a typical tourist--shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But
Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and--which he held
more precious--it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful
reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci's, whom we love
not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The
things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo's could have
anything so vulgar as a "story." She did develop most wonderfully day by
day.

So it happened that from patronizing civility he had slowly passed if
not to passion, at least to a profound uneasiness. Already at Rome he
had hinted to her that they might be suitable for each other. It had
touched him greatly that she had not broken away at the suggestion.
Her refusal had been clear and gentle; after it--as the horrid phrase
went--she had been exactly the same to him as before. Three months
later, on the margin of Italy, among the flower-clad Alps, he had asked
her again in bald, traditional language. She reminded him of a Leonardo
more than ever; her sunburnt features were shadowed by fantastic rock;
at his words she had turned and stood between him and the light with
immeasurable plains behind her. He walked home with her unashamed,
feeling not at all like a rejected suitor. The things that really
mattered were unshaken.

So now he had asked her once more, and, clear and gentle as ever, she
had accepted him, giving no coy reasons for her delay, but simply saying
that she loved him and would do her best to make him happy. His mother,
too, would be pleased; she had counselled the step; he must write her a
long account.

Glancing at his hand, in case any of Freddy's chemicals had come off
on it, he moved to the writing table. There he saw "Dear Mrs. Vyse,"
followed by many erasures. He recoiled without reading any more, and
after a little hesitation sat down elsewhere, and pencilled a note on
his knee.

Then he lit another cigarette, which did not seem quite as divine as
the first, and considered what might be done to make Windy Corner
drawing-room more distinctive. With that outlook it should have been a
successful room, but the trail of Tottenham Court Road was upon it; he
could almost visualize the motor-vans of Messrs. Shoolbred and Messrs.
Maple arriving at the door and depositing this chair, those varnished
book-cases, that writing-table. The table recalled Mrs. Honeychurch's
letter. He did not want to read that letter--his temptations never lay
in that direction; but he worried about it none the less. It was his
own fault that she was discussing him with his mother; he had wanted her
support in his third attempt to win Lucy; he wanted to feel that others,
no matter who they were, agreed with him, and so he had asked their
permission. Mrs. Honeychurch had been civil, but obtuse in essentials,
while as for Freddy--"He is only a boy," he reflected. "I represent all
that he despises. Why should he want me for a brother-in-law?"

The Honeychurches were a worthy family, but he began to realize
that Lucy was of another clay; and perhaps--he did not put it very
definitely--he ought to introduce her into more congenial circles as
soon as possible.

"Mr. Beebe!" said the maid, and the new rector of Summer Street was
shown in; he had at once started on friendly relations, owing to Lucy's
praise of him in her letters from Florence.

Cecil greeted him rather critically.

"I've come for tea, Mr. Vyse. Do you suppose that I shall get it?"

"I should say so. Food is the thing one does get here--Don't sit in that
chair; young Honeychurch has left a bone in it."

"Pfui!"

"I know," said Cecil. "I know. I can't think why Mrs. Honeychurch allows
it."

For Cecil considered the bone and the Maples' furniture separately; he
did not realize that, taken together, they kindled the room into the
life that he desired.

"I've come for tea and for gossip. Isn't this news?"

"News? I don't understand you," said Cecil. "News?"

Mr. Beebe, whose news was of a very different nature, prattled forward.

"I met Sir Harry Otway as I came up; I have every reason to hope that I
am first in the field. He has bought Cissie and Albert from Mr. Flack!"

"Has he indeed?" said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what a
grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a
gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his
stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be,
he still thought Mr. Beebe rather a bounder.

"Unpardonable question! To have stopped a week at Windy Corner and not
to have met Cissie and Albert, the semi-detached villas that have been
run up opposite the church! I'll set Mrs. Honeychurch after you."

"I'm shockingly stupid over local affairs," said the young man
languidly. "I can't even remember the difference between a Parish
Council and a Local Government Board. Perhaps there is no difference, or
perhaps those aren't the right names. I only go into the country to see
my friends and to enjoy the scenery. It is very remiss of me. Italy and
London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance."

Mr. Beebe, distressed at this heavy reception of Cissie and Albert,
determined to shift the subject.

"Let me see, Mr. Vyse--I forget--what is your profession?"

"I have no profession," said Cecil. "It is another example of my
decadence. My attitude--quite an indefensible one--is that so long as I
am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought
to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don't
care a straw about, but somehow, I've not been able to begin."

"You are very fortunate," said Mr. Beebe. "It is a wonderful
opportunity, the possession of leisure."

His voice was rather parochial, but he did not quite see his way to
answering naturally. He felt, as all who have regular occupation must
feel, that others should have it also.

"I am glad that you approve. I daren't face the healthy person--for
example, Freddy Honeychurch."

"Oh, Freddy's a good sort, isn't he?"

"Admirable. The sort who has made England what she is."

Cecil wondered at himself. Why, on this day of all others, was he so
hopelessly contrary? He tried to get right by inquiring effusively after
Mr. Beebe's mother, an old lady for whom he had no particular regard.
Then he flattered the clergyman, praised his liberal-mindedness, his
enlightened attitude towards philosophy and science.

"Where are the others?" said Mr. Beebe at last, "I insist on extracting
tea before evening service."

"I suppose Anne never told them you were here. In this house one is so
coached in the servants the day one arrives. The fault of Anne is
that she begs your pardon when she hears you perfectly, and kicks the
chair-legs with her feet. The faults of Mary--I forget the faults of
Mary, but they are very grave. Shall we look in the garden?"

"I know the faults of Mary. She leaves the dust-pans standing on the
stairs."

"The fault of Euphemia is that she will not, simply will not, chop the
suet sufficiently small."

They both laughed, and things began to go better.

"The faults of Freddy--" Cecil continued.

"Ah, he has too many. No one but his mother can remember the faults of
Freddy. Try the faults of Miss Honeychurch; they are not innumerable."

"She has none," said the young man, with grave sincerity.

"I quite agree. At present she has none."

"At present?"

"I'm not cynical. I'm only thinking of my pet theory about Miss
Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so
wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be
wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down,
and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good,
heroically bad--too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad."

Cecil found his companion interesting.

"And at present you think her not wonderful as far as life goes?"

"Well, I must say I've only seen her at Tunbridge Wells, where she was
not wonderful, and at Florence. Since I came to Summer Street she has
been away. You saw her, didn't you, at Rome and in the Alps. Oh, I
forgot; of course, you knew her before. No, she wasn't wonderful in
Florence either, but I kept on expecting that she would be."

"In what way?"

Conversation had become agreeable to them, and they were pacing up and
down the terrace.

"I could as easily tell you what tune she'll play next. There was simply
the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them. I can show
you a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss Honeychurch as a
kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string
breaks."

The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he
viewed things artistically. At the time he had given surreptitious tugs
to the string himself.

"But the string never broke?"

"No. I mightn't have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should certainly
have heard Miss Bartlett fall."

"It has broken now," said the young man in low, vibrating tones.

Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous,
contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He
cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and
that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?

"Broken? What do you mean?"

"I meant," said Cecil stiffly, "that she is going to marry me."

The clergyman was conscious of some bitter disappointment which he could
not keep out of his voice.

"I am sorry; I must apologize. I had no idea you were intimate with her,
or I should never have talked in this flippant, superficial way. Mr.
Vyse, you ought to have stopped me." And down the garden he saw Lucy
herself; yes, he was disappointed.

Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down
his mouth at the corners. Was this the reception his action would get
from the world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every
thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. But he was
sensitive to the successive particles of it which he encountered.

Occasionally he could be quite crude.

"I am sorry I have given you a shock," he said dryly. "I fear that
Lucy's choice does not meet with your approval."

"Not that. But you ought to have stopped me. I know Miss Honeychurch
only a little as time goes. Perhaps I oughtn't to have discussed her so
freely with any one; certainly not with you."

"You are conscious of having said something indiscreet?"

Mr. Beebe pulled himself together. Really, Mr. Vyse had the art of
placing one in the most tiresome positions. He was driven to use the
prerogatives of his profession.

"No, I have said nothing indiscreet. I foresaw at Florence that her
quiet, uneventful childhood must end, and it has ended. I realized dimly
enough that she might take some momentous step. She has taken it. She
has learnt--you will let me talk freely, as I have begun freely--she has
learnt what it is to love: the greatest lesson, some people will tell
you, that our earthly life provides." It was now time for him to wave
his hat at the approaching trio. He did not omit to do so. "She has
learnt through you," and if his voice was still clerical, it was now
also sincere; "let it be your care that her knowledge is profitable to
her."

"Grazie tante!" said Cecil, who did not like parsons.

"Have you heard?" shouted Mrs. Honeychurch as she toiled up the sloping
garden. "Oh, Mr. Beebe, have you heard the news?"

Freddy, now full of geniality, whistled the wedding march. Youth seldom
criticizes the accomplished fact.

"Indeed I have!" he cried. He looked at Lucy. In her presence he could
not act the parson any longer--at all events not without apology.
"Mrs. Honeychurch, I'm going to do what I am always supposed to do, but
generally I'm too shy. I want to invoke every kind of blessing on
them, grave and gay, great and small. I want them all their lives to be
supremely good and supremely happy as husband and wife, as father and
mother. And now I want my tea."

"You only asked for it just in time," the lady retorted. "How dare you
be serious at Windy Corner?"

He took his tone from her. There was no more heavy beneficence, no more
attempts to dignify the situation with poetry or the Scriptures. None of
them dared or was able to be serious any more.

An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all
who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe. Away from it, in the
solitude of their rooms, Mr. Beebe, and even Freddy, might again be
critical. But in its presence and in the presence of each other they
were sincerely hilarious. It has a strange power, for it compels not
only the lips, but the very heart. The chief parallel to compare one
great thing with another--is the power over us of a temple of some alien
creed. Standing outside, we deride or oppose it, or at the most feel
sentimental. Inside, though the saints and gods are not ours, we become
true believers, in case any true believer should be present.

So it was that after the gropings and the misgivings of the afternoon
they pulled themselves together and settled down to a very pleasant
tea-party. If they were hypocrites they did not know it, and their
hypocrisy had every chance of setting and of becoming true. Anne,
putting down each plate as if it were a wedding present, stimulated them
greatly. They could not lag behind that smile of hers which she gave
them ere she kicked the drawing-room door. Mr. Beebe chirruped. Freddy
was at his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"--family honoured
pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as
a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been
built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest
worshippers should, for the disclosure of some holier shrine of joy.



A few days after the engagement was announced Mrs. Honeychurch made Lucy
and her Fiasco come to a little garden-party in the neighbourhood, for
naturally she wanted to show people that her daughter was marrying a
presentable man.

Cecil was more than presentable; he looked distinguished, and it was
very pleasant to see his slim figure keeping step with Lucy, and his
long, fair face responding when Lucy spoke to him. People congratulated
Mrs. Honeychurch, which is, I believe, a social blunder, but it pleased
her, and she introduced Cecil rather indiscriminately to some stuffy
dowagers.

At tea a misfortune took place: a cup of coffee was upset over Lucy's
figured silk, and though Lucy feigned indifference, her mother feigned
nothing of the sort but dragged her indoors to have the frock treated
by a sympathetic maid. They were gone some time, and Cecil was left with
the dowagers. When they returned he was not as pleasant as he had been.

"Do you go to much of this sort of thing?" he asked when they were
driving home.

"Oh, now and then," said Lucy, who had rather enjoyed herself.

"Is it typical of country society?"

"I suppose so. Mother, would it be?"

"Plenty of society," said Mrs. Honeychurch, who was trying to remember
the hang of one of the dresses.

Seeing that her thoughts were elsewhere, Cecil bent towards Lucy and
said:

"To me it seemed perfectly appalling, disastrous, portentous."

"I am so sorry that you were stranded."

"Not that, but the congratulations. It is so disgusting, the way an
engagement is regarded as public property--a kind of waste place where
every outsider may shoot his vulgar sentiment. All those old women
smirking!"

"One has to go through it, I suppose. They won't notice us so much next
time."

"But my point is that their whole attitude is wrong. An
engagement--horrid word in the first place--is a private matter, and
should be treated as such."

Yet the smirking old women, however wrong individually, were racially
correct. The spirit of the generations had smiled through them,
rejoicing in the engagement of Cecil and Lucy because it promised the
continuance of life on earth. To Cecil and Lucy it promised something
quite different--personal love. Hence Cecil's irritation and Lucy's
belief that his irritation was just.

"How tiresome!" she said. "Couldn't you have escaped to tennis?"

"I don't play tennis--at least, not in public. The neighbourhood is
deprived of the romance of me being athletic. Such romance as I have is
that of the Inglese Italianato."

"Inglese Italianato?"

"E un diavolo incarnato! You know the proverb?"

She did not. Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent a
quiet winter in Rome with his mother. But Cecil, since his engagement,
had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far from
possessing.

"Well," said he, "I cannot help it if they do disapprove of me. There
are certain irremovable barriers between myself and them, and I must
accept them."

"We all have our limitations, I suppose," said wise Lucy.

"Sometimes they are forced on us, though," said Cecil, who saw from her
remark that she did not quite understand his position.

"How?"

"It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in,
or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?"

She thought a moment, and agreed that it did make a difference.

"Difference?" cried Mrs. Honeychurch, suddenly alert. "I don't see any
difference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in the same
place."

"We were speaking of motives," said Cecil, on whom the interruption
jarred.

"My dear Cecil, look here." She spread out her knees and perched her
card-case on her lap. "This is me. That's Windy Corner. The rest of the
pattern is the other people. Motives are all very well, but the fence
comes here."

"We weren't talking of real fences," said Lucy, laughing.

"Oh, I see, dear--poetry."

She leant placidly back. Cecil wondered why Lucy had been amused.

"I tell you who has no 'fences,' as you call them," she said, "and
that's Mr. Beebe."

"A parson fenceless would mean a parson defenceless."

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect
what they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling
that prompted it.

"Don't you like Mr. Beebe?" she asked thoughtfully.

"I never said so!" he cried. "I consider him far above the average. I
only denied--" And he swept off on the subject of fences again, and was
brilliant.

"Now, a clergyman that I do hate," said she wanting to say something
sympathetic, "a clergyman that does have fences, and the most dreadful
ones, is Mr. Eager, the English chaplain at Florence. He was truly
insincere--not merely the manner unfortunate. He was a snob, and so
conceited, and he did say such unkind things."

"What sort of things?"

"There was an old man at the Bertolini whom he said had murdered his
wife."

"Perhaps he had."

"No!"

"Why 'no'?"

"He was such a nice old man, I'm sure."

Cecil laughed at her feminine inconsequence.

"Well, I did try to sift the thing. Mr. Eager would never come to the
point. He prefers it vague--said the old man had 'practically' murdered
his wife--had murdered her in the sight of God."

"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Honeychurch absently.

"But isn't it intolerable that a person whom we're told to imitate
should go round spreading slander? It was, I believe, chiefly owing to
him that the old man was dropped. People pretended he was vulgar, but he
certainly wasn't that."

"Poor old man! What was his name?"

"Harris," said Lucy glibly.

"Let's hope that Mrs. Harris there warn't no sich person," said her
mother.

Cecil nodded intelligently.

"Isn't Mr. Eager a parson of the cultured type?" he asked.

"I don't know. I hate him. I've heard him lecture on Giotto. I hate him.
Nothing can hide a petty nature. I HATE him."

"My goodness gracious me, child!" said Mrs. Honeychurch. "You'll blow
my head off! Whatever is there to shout over? I forbid you and Cecil to
hate any more clergymen."

He smiled. There was indeed something rather incongruous in Lucy's moral
outburst over Mr. Eager. It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the
ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay
her vocation; that a woman's power and charm reside in mystery, not
in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the
beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he
contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain
approval. He forebore to repress the sources of youth.

Nature--simplest of topics, he thought--lay around them. He praised the
pine-woods, the deep lasts of bracken, the crimson leaves that spotted
the hurt-bushes, the serviceable beauty of the turnpike road. The
outdoor world was not very familiar to him, and occasionally he went
wrong in a question of fact. Mrs. Honeychurch's mouth twitched when he
spoke of the perpetual green of the larch.

"I count myself a lucky person," he concluded, "When I'm in London I
feel I could never live out of it. When I'm in the country I feel the
same about the country. After all, I do believe that birds and trees and
the sky are the most wonderful things in life, and that the people who
live amongst them must be the best. It's true that in nine cases out of
ten they don't seem to notice anything. The country gentleman and
the country labourer are each in their way the most depressing of
companions. Yet they may have a tacit sympathy with the workings
of Nature which is denied to us of the town. Do you feel that, Mrs.
Honeychurch?"

Mrs. Honeychurch started and smiled. She had not been attending.
Cecil, who was rather crushed on the front seat of the victoria, felt
irritable, and determined not to say anything interesting again.

Lucy had not attended either. Her brow was wrinkled, and she still
looked furiously cross--the result, he concluded, of too much moral
gymnastics. It was sad to see her thus blind to the beauties of an
August wood.

"'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height,'" he quoted, and
touched her knee with his own.

She flushed again and said: "What height?"

"'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height, What pleasure lives
in height (the shepherd sang). In height and in the splendour of the
hills?' Let us take Mrs. Honeychurch's advice and hate clergymen no
more. What's this place?"

"Summer Street, of course," said Lucy, and roused herself.

The woods had opened to leave space for a sloping triangular meadow.
Pretty cottages lined it on two sides, and the upper and third side was
occupied by a new stone church, expensively simple, a charming shingled
spire. Mr. Beebe's house was near the church. In height it scarcely
exceeded the cottages. Some great mansions were at hand, but they were
hidden in the trees. The scene suggested a Swiss Alp rather than the
shrine and centre of a leisured world, and was marred only by two ugly
little villas--the villas that had competed with Cecil's engagement,
having been acquired by Sir Harry Otway the very afternoon that Lucy had
been acquired by Cecil.

"Cissie" was the name of one of these villas, "Albert" of the other.
These titles were not only picked out in shaded Gothic on the garden
gates, but appeared a second time on the porches, where they followed
the semicircular curve of the entrance arch in block capitals. "Albert"
was inhabited. His tortured garden was bright with geraniums and
lobelias and polished shells. His little windows were chastely swathed
in Nottingham lace. "Cissie" was to let. Three notice-boards, belonging
to Dorking agents, lolled on her fence and announced the not surprising
fact. Her paths were already weedy; her pocket-handkerchief of a lawn
was yellow with dandelions.

"The place is ruined!" said the ladies mechanically. "Summer Street will
never be the same again."

As the carriage passed, "Cissie's" door opened, and a gentleman came out
of her.

"Stop!" cried Mrs. Honeychurch, touching the coachman with her parasol.
"Here's Sir Harry. Now we shall know. Sir Harry, pull those things down
at once!"

Sir Harry Otway--who need not be described--came to the carriage and
said "Mrs. Honeychurch, I meant to. I can't, I really can't turn out
Miss Flack."

"Am I not always right? She ought to have gone before the contract was
signed. Does she still live rent free, as she did in her nephew's time?"

"But what can I do?" He lowered his voice. "An old lady, so very vulgar,
and almost bedridden."

"Turn her out," said Cecil bravely.

Sir Harry sighed, and looked at the villas mournfully. He had had full
warning of Mr. Flack's intentions, and might have bought the plot before
building commenced: but he was apathetic and dilatory. He had known
Summer Street for so many years that he could not imagine it being
spoilt. Not till Mrs. Flack had laid the foundation stone, and the
apparition of red and cream brick began to rise did he take alarm.
He called on Mr. Flack, the local builder,--a most reasonable and
respectful man--who agreed that tiles would have made more artistic
roof, but pointed out that slates were cheaper. He ventured to differ,
however, about the Corinthian columns which were to cling like leeches
to the frames of the bow windows, saying that, for his part, he liked
to relieve the facade by a bit of decoration. Sir Harry hinted that a
column, if possible, should be structural as well as decorative.

Mr. Flack replied that all the columns had been ordered, adding, "and
all the capitals different--one with dragons in the foliage, another
approaching to the Ionian style, another introducing Mrs. Flack's
initials--everyone different." For he had read his Ruskin. He built
his villas according to his desire; and not until he had inserted an
immovable aunt into one of them did Sir Harry buy.

This futile and unprofitable transaction filled the knight with sadness
as he leant on Mrs. Honeychurch's carriage. He had failed in his duties
to the country-side, and the country-side was laughing at him as well.
He had spent money, and yet Summer Street was spoilt as much as ever.
All he could do now was to find a desirable tenant for "Cissie"--some
one really desirable.

"The rent is absurdly low," he told them, "and perhaps I am an easy
landlord. But it is such an awkward size. It is too large for the
peasant class and too small for any one the least like ourselves."

Cecil had been hesitating whether he should despise the villas or
despise Sir Harry for despising them. The latter impulse seemed the more
fruitful.

"You ought to find a tenant at once," he said maliciously. "It would be
a perfect paradise for a bank clerk."

"Exactly!" said Sir Harry excitedly. "That is exactly what I fear, Mr.
Vyse. It will attract the wrong type of people. The train service has
improved--a fatal improvement, to my mind. And what are five miles from
a station in these days of bicycles?"

"Rather a strenuous clerk it would be," said Lucy.

Cecil, who had his full share of mediaeval mischievousness, replied
that the physique of the lower middle classes was improving at a
most appalling rate. She saw that he was laughing at their harmless
neighbour, and roused herself to stop him.

"Sir Harry!" she exclaimed, "I have an idea. How would you like
spinsters?"

"My dear Lucy, it would be splendid. Do you know any such?"

"Yes; I met them abroad."

"Gentlewomen?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes, indeed, and at the present moment homeless. I heard from them last
week--Miss Teresa and Miss Catharine Alan. I'm really not joking. They
are quite the right people. Mr. Beebe knows them, too. May I tell them
to write to you?"

"Indeed you may!" he cried. "Here we are with the difficulty solved
already. How delightful it is! Extra facilities--please tell them they
shall have extra facilities, for I shall have no agents' fees. Oh,
the agents! The appalling people they have sent me! One woman, when
I wrote--a tactful letter, you know--asking her to explain her social
position to me, replied that she would pay the rent in advance. As
if one cares about that! And several references I took up were most
unsatisfactory--people swindlers, or not respectable. And oh, the
deceit! I have seen a good deal of the seamy side this last week. The
deceit of the most promising people. My dear Lucy, the deceit!"

She nodded.

"My advice," put in Mrs. Honeychurch, "is to have nothing to do with
Lucy and her decayed gentlewomen at all. I know the type. Preserve me
from people who have seen better days, and bring heirlooms with them
that make the house smell stuffy. It's a sad thing, but I'd far rather
let to someone who is going up in the world than to someone who has
come down."

"I think I follow you," said Sir Harry; "but it is, as you say, a very
sad thing."

"The Misses Alan aren't that!" cried Lucy.

"Yes, they are," said Cecil. "I haven't met them but I should say they
were a highly unsuitable addition to the neighbourhood."

"Don't listen to him, Sir Harry--he's tiresome."

"It's I who am tiresome," he replied. "I oughtn't to come with my
troubles to young people. But really I am so worried, and Lady Otway
will only say that I cannot be too careful, which is quite true, but no
real help."

"Then may I write to my Misses Alan?"

"Please!"

But his eye wavered when Mrs. Honeychurch exclaimed:

"Beware! They are certain to have canaries. Sir Harry, beware of
canaries: they spit the seed out through the bars of the cages and then
the mice come. Beware of women altogether. Only let to a man."

"Really--" he murmured gallantly, though he saw the wisdom of her
remark.

"Men don't gossip over tea-cups. If they get drunk, there's an end of
them--they lie down comfortably and sleep it off. If they're vulgar,
they somehow keep it to themselves. It doesn't spread so. Give me a
man--of course, provided he's clean."

Sir Harry blushed. Neither he nor Cecil enjoyed these open compliments
to their sex. Even the exclusion of the dirty did not leave them much
distinction. He suggested that Mrs. Honeychurch, if she had time, should
descend from the carriage and inspect "Cissie" for herself. She was
delighted. Nature had intended her to be poor and to live in such a
house. Domestic arrangements always attracted her, especially when they
were on a small scale.

Cecil pulled Lucy back as she followed her mother.

"Mrs. Honeychurch," he said, "what if we two walk home and leave you?"

"Certainly!" was her cordial reply.

Sir Harry likewise seemed almost too glad to get rid of them. He beamed
at them knowingly, said, "Aha! young people, young people!" and then
hastened to unlock the house.

"Hopeless vulgarian!" exclaimed Cecil, almost before they were out of
earshot.

"Oh, Cecil!"

"I can't help it. It would be wrong not to loathe that man."

"He isn't clever, but really he is nice."

"No, Lucy, he stands for all that is bad in country life. In London he
would keep his place. He would belong to a brainless club, and his wife
would give brainless dinner parties. But down here he acts the little
god with his gentility, and his patronage, and his sham aesthetics, and
everyone--even your mother--is taken in."

"All that you say is quite true," said Lucy, though she felt
discouraged. "I wonder whether--whether it matters so very much."

"It matters supremely. Sir Harry is the essence of that garden-party.
Oh, goodness, how cross I feel! How I do hope he'll get some vulgar
tenant in that villa--some woman so really vulgar that he'll notice
it. GENTLEFOLKS! Ugh! with his bald head and retreating chin! But let's
forget him."

This Lucy was glad enough to do. If Cecil disliked Sir Harry Otway and
Mr. Beebe, what guarantee was there that the people who really mattered
to her would escape? For instance, Freddy. Freddy was neither clever,
nor subtle, nor beautiful, and what prevented Cecil from saying, any
minute, "It would be wrong not to loathe Freddy"? And what would she
reply? Further than Freddy she did not go, but he gave her anxiety
enough. She could only assure herself that Cecil had known Freddy some
time, and that they had always got on pleasantly, except, perhaps,
during the last few days, which was an accident, perhaps.

"Which way shall we go?" she asked him.

Nature--simplest of topics, she thought--was around them. Summer Street
lay deep in the woods, and she had stopped where a footpath diverged
from the highroad.

"Are there two ways?"

"Perhaps the road is more sensible, as we're got up smart."

"I'd rather go through the wood," said Cecil, With that subdued
irritation that she had noticed in him all the afternoon. "Why is it,
Lucy, that you always say the road? Do you know that you have never once
been with me in the fields or the wood since we were engaged?"

"Haven't I? The wood, then," said Lucy, startled at his queerness, but
pretty sure that he would explain later; it was not his habit to leave
her in doubt as to his meaning.

She led the way into the whispering pines, and sure enough he did
explain before they had gone a dozen yards.

"I had got an idea--I dare say wrongly--that you feel more at home with
me in a room."

"A room?" she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.

"Yes. Or, at the most, in a garden, or on a road. Never in the real
country like this."

"Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean? I have never felt anything of the
sort. You talk as if I was a kind of poetess sort of person."

"I don't know that you aren't. I connect you with a view--a certain type
of view. Why shouldn't you connect me with a room?"

She reflected a moment, and then said, laughing:

"Do you know that you're right? I do. I must be a poetess after all.
When I think of you it's always as in a room. How funny!"

To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.

"A drawing-room, pray? With no view?"

"Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?"

"I'd rather," he said reproachfully, "that you connected me with the open
air."

She said again, "Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean?"

As no explanation was forthcoming, she shook off the subject as too
difficult for a girl, and led him further into the wood, pausing every
now and then at some particularly beautiful or familiar combination of
the trees. She had known the wood between Summer Street and Windy Corner
ever since she could walk alone; she had played at losing Freddy in it,
when Freddy was a purple-faced baby; and though she had been to Italy,
it had lost none of its charm.

Presently they came to a little clearing among the pines--another tiny
green alp, solitary this time, and holding in its bosom a shallow pool.

She exclaimed, "The Sacred Lake!"

"Why do you call it that?"

"I can't remember why. I suppose it comes out of some book. It's only a
puddle now, but you see that stream going through it? Well, a good deal
of water comes down after heavy rains, and can't get away at once, and
the pool becomes quite large and beautiful. Then Freddy used to bathe
there. He is very fond of it."

"And you?"

He meant, "Are you fond of it?" But she answered dreamily, "I bathed
here, too, till I was found out. Then there was a row."

At another time he might have been shocked, for he had depths of
prudishness within him. But now? with his momentary cult of the fresh
air, he was delighted at her admirable simplicity. He looked at her as
she stood by the pool's edge. She was got up smart, as she phrased it,
and she reminded him of some brilliant flower that has no leaves of its
own, but blooms abruptly out of a world of green.

"Who found you out?"

"Charlotte," she murmured. "She was stopping with us.
Charlotte--Charlotte."

"Poor girl!"

She smiled gravely. A certain scheme, from which hitherto he had shrunk,
now appeared practical.

"Lucy!"

"Yes, I suppose we ought to be going," was her reply.

"Lucy, I want to ask something of you that I have never asked before."

At the serious note in his voice she stepped frankly and kindly towards
him.

"What, Cecil?"

"Hitherto never--not even that day on the lawn when you agreed to marry
me--"

He became self-conscious and kept glancing round to see if they were
observed. His courage had gone.

"Yes?"

"Up to now I have never kissed you."

She was as scarlet as if he had put the thing most indelicately.

"No--more you have," she stammered.

"Then I ask you--may I now?"

"Of course, you may, Cecil. You might before. I can't run at you, you
know."

At that supreme moment he was conscious of nothing but absurdities. Her
reply was inadequate. She gave such a business-like lift to her veil.
As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. As
he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened
between them.

Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been a
failure. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget
civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature.
Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.
Why could he not do as any labourer or navvy--nay, as any young man
behind the counter would have done? He recast the scene. Lucy was
standing flowerlike by the water, he rushed up and took her in his
arms; she rebuked him, permitted him and revered him ever after for his
manliness. For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.

They left the pool in silence, after this one salutation. He waited for
her to make some remark which should show him her inmost thoughts. At
last she spoke, and with fitting gravity.

"Emerson was the name, not Harris."

"What name?"

"The old man's."

"What old man?"

"That old man I told you about. The one Mr. Eager was so unkind to."

He could not know that this was the most intimate conversation they had
ever had.



The society out of which Cecil proposed to rescue Lucy was perhaps no
very splendid affair, yet it was more splendid than her antecedents
entitled her to. Her father, a prosperous local solicitor, had built
Windy Corner, as a speculation at the time the district was opening up,
and, falling in love with his own creation, had ended by living there
himself. Soon after his marriage the social atmosphere began to alter.
Other houses were built on the brow of that steep southern slope and
others, again, among the pine-trees behind, and northward on the chalk
barrier of the downs. Most of these houses were larger than Windy
Corner, and were filled by people who came, not from the district, but
from London, and who mistook the Honeychurches for the remnants of an
indigenous aristocracy. He was inclined to be frightened, but his wife
accepted the situation without either pride or humility. "I cannot think
what people are doing," she would say, "but it is extremely fortunate
for the children." She called everywhere; her calls were returned with
enthusiasm, and by the time people found out that she was not exactly
of their milieu, they liked her, and it did not seem to matter. When Mr.
Honeychurch died, he had the satisfaction--which few honest solicitors
despise--of leaving his family rooted in the best society obtainable.

The best obtainable. Certainly many of the immigrants were rather
dull, and Lucy realized this more vividly since her return from Italy.
Hitherto she had accepted their ideals without questioning--their kindly
affluence, their inexplosive religion, their dislike of paper-bags,
orange-peel, and broken bottles. A Radical out and out, she learnt to
speak with horror of Suburbia. Life, so far as she troubled to conceive
it, was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and
identical foes. In this circle, one thought, married, and died. Outside
it were poverty and vulgarity for ever trying to enter, just as the
London fog tries to enter the pine-woods pouring through the gaps in
the northern hills. But, in Italy, where any one who chooses may warm
himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished.
Her senses expanded; she felt that there was no one whom she might not
get to like, that social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, but not
particularly high. You jump over them just as you jump into a peasant's
olive-yard in the Apennines, and he is glad to see you. She returned
with new eyes.

So did Cecil; but Italy had quickened Cecil, not to tolerance, but to
irritation. He saw that the local society was narrow, but, instead
of saying, "Does that very much matter?" he rebelled, and tried to
substitute for it the society he called broad. He did not realize that
Lucy had consecrated her environment by the thousand little civilities
that create a tenderness in time, and that though her eyes saw its
defects, her heart refused to despise it entirely. Nor did he realize
a more important point--that if she was too great for this society, she
was too great for all society, and had reached the stage where personal
intercourse would alone satisfy her. A rebel she was, but not of the
kind he understood--a rebel who desired, not a wider dwelling-room, but
equality beside the man she loved. For Italy was offering her the most
priceless of all possessions--her own soul.

Playing bumble-puppy with Minnie Beebe, niece to the rector, and
aged thirteen--an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in
striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net
and immoderately bounce; some hit Mrs. Honeychurch; others are lost. The
sentence is confused, but the better illustrates Lucy's state of mind,
for she was trying to talk to Mr. Beebe at the same time.

"Oh, it has been such a nuisance--first he, then they--no one knowing
what they wanted, and everyone so tiresome."

"But they really are coming now," said Mr. Beebe. "I wrote to Miss
Teresa a few days ago--she was wondering how often the butcher called,
and my reply of once a month must have impressed her favourably. They
are coming. I heard from them this morning.

"I shall hate those Miss Alans!" Mrs. Honeychurch cried. "Just because
they're old and silly one's expected to say 'How sweet!' I hate
their 'if'-ing and 'but'-ing and 'and'-ing. And poor Lucy--serve her
right--worn to a shadow."

Mr. Beebe watched the shadow springing and shouting over the
tennis-court. Cecil was absent--one did not play bumble-puppy when he
was there.

"Well, if they are coming--No, Minnie, not Saturn." Saturn was a
tennis-ball whose skin was partially unsewn. When in motion his orb was
encircled by a ring. "If they are coming, Sir Harry will let them move
in before the twenty-ninth, and he will cross out the clause about
whitewashing the ceilings, because it made them nervous, and put in the
fair wear and tear one.--That doesn't count. I told you not Saturn."

"Saturn's all right for bumble-puppy," cried Freddy, joining them.
"Minnie, don't you listen to her."

"Saturn doesn't bounce."

"Saturn bounces enough."

"No, he doesn't."

"Well; he bounces better than the Beautiful White Devil."

"Hush, dear," said Mrs. Honeychurch.

"But look at Lucy--complaining of Saturn, and all the time's got the
Beautiful White Devil in her hand, ready to plug it in. That's right,
Minnie, go for her--get her over the shins with the racquet--get her
over the shins!"

Lucy fell, the Beautiful White Devil rolled from her hand.

Mr. Beebe picked it up, and said: "The name of this ball is Vittoria
Corombona, please." But his correction passed unheeded.

Freddy possessed to a high degree the power of lashing little girls
to fury, and in half a minute he had transformed Minnie from a
well-mannered child into a howling wilderness. Up in the house Cecil
heard them, and, though he was full of entertaining news, he did not
come down to impart it, in case he got hurt. He was not a coward and
bore necessary pain as well as any man. But he hated the physical
violence of the young. How right it was! Sure enough it ended in a cry.

"I wish the Miss Alans could see this," observed Mr. Beebe, just as
Lucy, who was nursing the injured Minnie, was in turn lifted off her
feet by her brother.

"Who are the Miss Alans?" Freddy panted.

"They have taken Cissie Villa."

"That wasn't the name--"

Here his foot slipped, and they all fell most agreeably on to the grass.
An interval elapses.

"Wasn't what name?" asked Lucy, with her brother's head in her lap.

"Alan wasn't the name of the people Sir Harry's let to."

"Nonsense, Freddy! You know nothing about it."

"Nonsense yourself! I've this minute seen him. He said to me: 'Ahem!
Honeychurch,'"--Freddy was an indifferent mimic--"'ahem! ahem! I have at
last procured really dee-sire-rebel tenants.' I said, 'ooray, old boy!'
and slapped him on the back."

"Exactly. The Miss Alans?"

"Rather not. More like Anderson."

"Oh, good gracious, there isn't going to be another muddle!" Mrs.
Honeychurch exclaimed. "Do you notice, Lucy, I'm always right? I said
don't interfere with Cissie Villa. I'm always right. I'm quite uneasy at
being always right so often."

"It's only another muddle of Freddy's. Freddy doesn't even know the name
of the people he pretends have taken it instead."

"Yes, I do. I've got it. Emerson."

"What name?"

"Emerson. I'll bet you anything you like."

"What a weathercock Sir Harry is," said Lucy quietly. "I wish I had
never bothered over it at all."

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe,
whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that THAT was
the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.

Meanwhile the name of the new tenants had diverted Mrs. Honeychurch from
the contemplation of her own abilities.

"Emerson, Freddy? Do you know what Emersons they are?"

"I don't know whether they're any Emersons," retorted Freddy, who was
democratic. Like his sister and like most young people, he was naturally
attracted by the idea of equality, and the undeniable fact that there
are different kinds of Emersons annoyed him beyond measure.

"I trust they are the right sort of person. All right, Lucy"--she was
sitting up again--"I see you looking down your nose and thinking your
mother's a snob. But there is a right sort and a wrong sort, and it's
affectation to pretend there isn't."

"Emerson's a common enough name," Lucy remarked.

She was gazing sideways. Seated on a promontory herself, she could see
the pine-clad promontories descending one beyond another into the Weald.
The further one descended the garden, the more glorious was this lateral
view.

"I was merely going to remark, Freddy, that I trusted they were no
relations of Emerson the philosopher, a most trying man. Pray, does that
satisfy you?"

"Oh, yes," he grumbled. "And you will be satisfied, too, for they're
friends of Cecil; so"--elaborate irony--"you and the other country
families will be able to call in perfect safety."

"CECIL?" exclaimed Lucy.

"Don't be rude, dear," said his mother placidly. "Lucy, don't screech.
It's a new bad habit you're getting into."

"But has Cecil--"

"Friends of Cecil's," he repeated, "'and so really dee-sire-rebel. Ahem!
Honeychurch, I have just telegraphed to them.'"

She got up from the grass.

It was hard on Lucy. Mr. Beebe sympathized with her very much. While she
believed that her snub about the Miss Alans came from Sir Harry Otway,
she had borne it like a good girl. She might well "screech" when
she heard that it came partly from her lover. Mr. Vyse was a
tease--something worse than a tease: he took a malicious pleasure
in thwarting people. The clergyman, knowing this, looked at Miss
Honeychurch with more than his usual kindness.

When she exclaimed, "But Cecil's Emersons--they can't possibly be the
same ones--there is that--" he did not consider that the exclamation
was strange, but saw in it an opportunity of diverting the conversation
while she recovered her composure. He diverted it as follows:

"The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don't suppose it
will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends
of Mr. Vyse's. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest
people! For our part we liked them, didn't we?" He appealed to Lucy.
"There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and
filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have
failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so
pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine's great stories. 'My dear
sister loves flowers,' it began. They found the whole room a mass of
blue--vases and jugs--and the story ends with 'So ungentlemanly and yet
so beautiful.' It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those
Florentine Emersons with violets."

"Fiasco's done you this time," remarked Freddy, not seeing that his
sister's face was very red. She could not recover herself. Mr. Beebe saw
it, and continued to divert the conversation.

"These particular Emersons consisted of a father and a son--the son
a goodly, if not a good young man; not a fool, I fancy, but very
immature--pessimism, et cetera. Our special joy was the father--such a
sentimental darling, and people declared he had murdered his wife."

In his normal state Mr. Beebe would never have repeated such gossip,
but he was trying to shelter Lucy in her little trouble. He repeated any
rubbish that came into his head.

"Murdered his wife?" said Mrs. Honeychurch. "Lucy, don't desert us--go
on playing bumble-puppy. Really, the Pension Bertolini must have been
the oddest place. That's the second murderer I've heard of as being
there. Whatever was Charlotte doing to stop? By-the-by, we really must
ask Charlotte here some time."

Mr. Beebe could recall no second murderer. He suggested that his hostess
was mistaken. At the hint of opposition she warmed. She was perfectly
sure that there had been a second tourist of whom the same story had
been told. The name escaped her. What was the name? Oh, what was the
name? She clasped her knees for the name. Something in Thackeray. She
struck her matronly forehead.

Lucy asked her brother whether Cecil was in.

"Oh, don't go!" he cried, and tried to catch her by the ankles.

"I must go," she said gravely. "Don't be silly. You always overdo it
when you play."

As she left them her mother's shout of "Harris!" shivered the tranquil
air, and reminded her that she had told a lie and had never put it
right. Such a senseless lie, too, yet it shattered her nerves and
made her connect these Emersons, friends of Cecil's, with a pair of
nondescript tourists. Hitherto truth had come to her naturally. She
saw that for the future she must be more vigilant, and be--absolutely
truthful? Well, at all events, she must not tell lies. She hurried up
the garden, still flushed with shame. A word from Cecil would soothe
her, she was sure.

"Cecil!"

"Hullo!" he called, and leant out of the smoking-room window. He
seemed in high spirits. "I was hoping you'd come. I heard you all
bear-gardening, but there's better fun up here. I, even I, have won a
great victory for the Comic Muse. George Meredith's right--the cause of
Comedy and the cause of Truth are really the same; and I, even I, have
found tenants for the distressful Cissie Villa. Don't be angry! Don't be
angry! You'll forgive me when you hear it all."

He looked very attractive when his face was bright, and he dispelled her
ridiculous forebodings at once.

"I have heard," she said. "Freddy has told us. Naughty Cecil! I suppose
I must forgive you. Just think of all the trouble I took for nothing!
Certainly the Miss Alans are a little tiresome, and I'd rather have nice
friends of yours. But you oughtn't to tease one so."

"Friends of mine?" he laughed. "But, Lucy, the whole joke is to come!
Come here." But she remained standing where she was. "Do you know where
I met these desirable tenants? In the National Gallery, when I was up to
see my mother last week."

"What an odd place to meet people!" she said nervously. "I don't quite
understand."

"In the Umbrian Room. Absolute strangers. They were admiring Luca
Signorelli--of course, quite stupidly. However, we got talking, and they
refreshed me not a little. They had been to Italy."

"But, Cecil--" proceeded hilariously.

"In the course of conversation they said that they wanted a country
cottage--the father to live there, the son to run down for week-ends.
I thought, 'What a chance of scoring off Sir Harry!' and I took
their address and a London reference, found they weren't actual
blackguards--it was great sport--and wrote to him, making out--"

"Cecil! No, it's not fair. I've probably met them before--"

He bore her down.

"Perfectly fair. Anything is fair that punishes a snob. That old man
will do the neighbourhood a world of good. Sir Harry is too disgusting
with his 'decayed gentlewomen.' I meant to read him a lesson some time.
No, Lucy, the classes ought to mix, and before long you'll agree with
me. There ought to be intermarriage--all sorts of things. I believe in
democracy--"

"No, you don't," she snapped. "You don't know what the word means."

He stared at her, and felt again that she had failed to be Leonardesque.
"No, you don't!"

Her face was inartistic--that of a peevish virago.

"It isn't fair, Cecil. I blame you--I blame you very much indeed. You
had no business to undo my work about the Miss Alans, and make me look
ridiculous. You call it scoring off Sir Harry, but do you realize that
it is all at my expense? I consider it most disloyal of you."

She left him.

"Temper!" he thought, raising his eyebrows.

No, it was worse than temper--snobbishness. As long as Lucy thought
that his own smart friends were supplanting the Miss Alans, she had
not minded. He perceived that these new tenants might be of value
educationally. He would tolerate the father and draw out the son, who
was silent. In the interests of the Comic Muse and of Truth, he would
bring them to Windy Corner.

 Most of the second half of the book takes place around the Honeychurch residence at Windy Corner, on Summer Street in a small country town in the Surrey hills of England. It is a wealthy town filled with members of the leisure class. Lucy has been home from Italy for a week. A young man named Cecil Vyse, of the Vyse family whom Charlotte and Lucy visited in Rome, visits, and, for the third time, asks Lucy to marry him. Lucy's mother, Mrs. Honeychurch, and her brother, Freddy, observe this process from the drawing room. Mrs. Honeychurch approves of the match, judging Cecil to be bright, rich, genteel, and well-connected, but Freddy has reservations that he can't fully explain. Cecil enters the room with the news that Lucy has accepted his proposal. Everyone expresses their happiness, and Cecil suggests that Lucy take mother and brother out to the garden to tell them about it, while he writes to his mother. Alone, Cecil reflects upon how he came to know Lucy in Rome and admired her for her reticence, picturing her like a painting by Leonardo, whom he loved "for the things that she will not tell us," things "not of this life." He proposed twice in Italy, and though she gently refused him, they remained on good terms. He asked permission from both Mrs. Honeychurch and Freddy on the most recent attempt as he wanted support, and Freddy was somewhat rude in his response. Mr. Beebe, now rector of Summer Street, arrives to have tea with the Honeychurches. He brings news that two villas, named Cissie and Albert, have been bought by Sir Harry Otway from a Mr. Flack. Without mentioning the engagement, Cecil discusses Lucy with Mr. Beebe, who compares Lucy to a kite waiting to find its wings and fly away. Cecil suggests that the cord has finally been cut, and announces their engagement, then inwardly regrets, too late, the arrogance suggested by the metaphor. Mr. Beebe is taken aback but manages to wish the couple well. A few days later, Cecil and Lucy attend a garden party at which Cecil finds the local population highly provincial. The topic of Mr. Beebe comes up, and Lucy remembers the chaplain in Florence, Mr. Eager, who accused Mr. Emerson of "practically" murdering his wife; however, she changes the name to Harris to protect the Emersons. In her vehement expression of hatred for Mr. Eager, Lucy surprises Cecil, who finds her ranting to be unwomanly. The carriage drives past the two ugly little cottages, Cissie and Albert, where they find Sir Harry Otway, who regrets that he can't take them down because Mrs. Flack, a sick old woman, still inhabits Albert. He must therefore find a suitable tenant for Cissie, someone who isn't the "wrong" sort of person. Lucy suggests the spinster Miss Alans, whom she met in Florence, and proposes to write to them, as they need a home. Mrs. Honeychurch, however, suggests finding younger male tenants--people who are going up rather than down in the world. Cecil and Lucy walk the rest of the way home, and Cecil expresses his disapproval of Sir Harry, whom he regards as brainless. Lucy asks him whether it matters so much, and Cecil says that it matters very much. Cecil wants to walk in the woods, asking if Lucy would feel more comfortable there than in a room, and Lucy assents that she would, more than in a room with no view. At a clearing, Cecil asks if he can kiss her, and she agrees, but he realizes too late that he has asked awkwardly and should have simply kissed her. Lucy, Freddy, and Mr. Beebe's niece Minnie are hitting tennis balls and chatting about Cissie Villa with Mrs. Honeychurch. Freddy reveals that he has heard the name of the new tenants: Emerson. Mrs. Honeychurch wants to know what Emersons they are, to decide if they are the right kind. Freddy says that they are friends of Cecil, which worries Lucy. Mr. Beebe remembers the Emersons in Florence but doubts whether such people would be friendly with the wealthy Vyses. He recall that the Emersons filled the room of the Miss Alans with blue violets upon hearing that the women loved flowers, and describes it as an act "so ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful." Mr. Beebe mentions that Mr. Emerson, though very likeable, was said to have murdered his wife, which reminds Mrs. Honeychurch of the name Harris that Lucy mentioned in the carriage. Lucy finds Cecil inside and chides him for inviting people after she asked the Miss Alans but says she thinks his "nice" friends will probably be better. Cecil reveals that he has planned to get back at Sir Harry's snobbishness by inviting some lower-class Emersons, a father and son, whom he met in the National Gallery, and who had been to Italy. Cecil claims that the classes should mix and says he believes in democracy, but Lucy says that he doesn't know what democracy is. She accuses him of being disloyal, and berates him for interfering with her plans to invite the Miss Alans. Cecil thinks inwardly that bringing the Emersons to Windy Corner will make Lucy less snobbish, as well as creating entertainment suitable for the "Comic Muse."

